Cistercian Monastery in Novy Dvur - an Expression of Restraint

Quite by chance, in 1999, the abbot of Sept-Fons in France came across John Pawson's book Minimum, which contained a depiction of the Calvin Klein store he had designed in New York. In the precise, spare architectural language of that scheme, the abbot recognized the basic formal tenets of the Cistercian order. Pawson was therefore seen as the appropriate architect for a new monastery to be founded in the Czech Republic. The clear lines of Pawson's design reveal the consensus that was reached in formal and aesthetic concepts between the religious order and the architect.