I chose the ‘Monsalvat’ as the name for the project in order to somehow reflect my relationship to the church, as well as it’s to me – I had been looking for a redundant church of this quality for a long time, just as the church itself was indeed in rather desperate need of saving from imminent ruin – a sort of mutual salvation! Otherwise, any reference to Monserrat, the Grail legend or Parsifal are not particularly significant, much as I love Wagner! As a boy I used to visit, with my parents, a rather splendid complex of buildings in Eltham, Victoria (Australia) that were created in the 1930’s by a Danish-born architect as an artists’ colony - which he called ‘Montsalvat’ - I suppose the name and ideal always stayed with me…

Montsalvat - Eltham