Consecrated in 1963, the parish church of St. John the Baptist is a major contribution to ecclesiastical architecture of the second half of the 20th century. This avant-garde building is the central feature of the Ermine Estate in the provincial city of Lincoln. Its importance lies in combining innovative minimalist architectural thinking with advanced liturgical planning. The structure was designed by an architect largely invisible in architectural history, Sam Scorer, and a structural engineer, Hajnal Konyi. It consists of an impressive hyperbolic paraboloid roof made in reinforced concrete. Its form was fashionable and functional (romantically rational). It gave an impression of contradicting laws of gravity. It summarizes the post-war excitement with engineering.
The paper contains a discussion about contradictions and discontinuities that occur in the story of this intriguing architectural precedent
