John Pawson

In 2016, four years after a ceremony of reconsecration marked the conclusion of major renovation to the interior of the thirteenth century basilica, specialist workmen returned to the Archabbey of Pannonhalma in Hungary. The focus of this new stage in the unfolding narrative of revelation through reduction was the removal of the canopied high altar in the sanctuary, to strengthen the sense of visual and spatial clarity and wholeness. The resulting ‘emptiness’ is powerfully experienced not as an absence, but as a charged presence whose character modulates with the changing light conditions.