Archive for the ‘art’ Category

Greeks with OCD, or: Why Entasis Matters

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

This past week while in Memphis visiting my family I was pleased as punch to again have the opportunity to give a presentation on Architecture and Church History to Seventh Graders at a nearby Catholic school.  Last year I did the same, only via video-conferencing.  No matter what they tell you, there’s still no technology quite like the real thing of a classroom.

Anywho, the presentation went well, but I came nowhere near finishing in 45 minutes.  Afterwards, (because in Seventh Grade, when the bell rings… the bell rings) I was able to stay and visit with the majority of each of the Church History classes that day (broken into 5 blocks).  Each class had its particular interests, questions and enthusiasm for various aspects of architecture and history, but what stuck around in my mind at the end of the day was the ensuing conversation we had about a question one of the students asked…

You see, I started out talking about the Greeks—everything seems to go back to the Greeks, for better or for worse.  I noted in the presentation that Greek temples like the Parthenon exhibit a slight (or sometimes rather pronounced), but clearly calculated, curvature on their surfaces (columns, stylobate, etc.).  This is called “entasis”.  Now, I was taught that entasis was used to ‘correct’ what the Greeks observed to be an optical illusion: that straight lines, depending on thus and such, can appear to the eye to be curved concavely.  As a remedy, the Greeks, so I learned, designed a slight convex curve into their stylobates and columns.  Likewise, elements placed together at regular interval can appear unevenly spaced at their ends and so the Greeks corrected this by actually spacing the last two columns closer together at the end of a colonnade… and so on and so on—extensive geometric proportions and mathematics were clearly integral in the design of Greek architecture.  Furthermore, the Parthenon is situated on the Acropolis in such a manner that when viewed from the Propylaea it can be observed from the ‘perfect’ perspective such that the depth of the building and the width appear equal despite their obvious difference.  Suffice it to say, the Greeks were highly interested in precision, detail and hardly noticeable effects.

Why?  That was the question the student asked.  Why was this so important to them?  Well, I suppose we can only conjecture, in the end, as to why these seemingly insignificant things ‘mattered’ so much to the Greeks.  It seemed, someone observed, that the Greeks were a bit OCD (obsessive compulsive, that is, not Discalced Carmelites).  My answer was, OK, we can think about it that way… but there’s bound to be a lesson in all of this.  Turns out, the lesson I found was that of “Why is architecture, art, beauty, anything like it, important anyway?”  And what better question to ask at what better place than here?

My answer was simple, but I still stick by it: the Greek’s so-labeled obsession with ‘getting it right’ might be taken in several ways, but I chose to point out that their emphasis on entasis (1) gave an insight into what was most important to them.  Greek philosophy, namely Plato, gave us the One, the Good and the True… the transcendentals, the ‘attributes’ of God… to which we can add beauty because, as St. Thomas Aquinas will direct us, that which is good is pleasing to ‘apprehend’ (i.e., behold, see, hear, experience) and thus beautiful.  Now, beauty is a heavily-charged word, but at this point all we need to hang onto is that beauty is related to the transcendentals—those things which we seem to be able to legitimately say that God is. (God is one, God is good, God is true… and likewise, God is beautiful.)

All of this means, for the ancients, beauty was of the gods, beauty was something for the gods.  What appears to our modern minds as OCD-piety was likely to be seen by them as the appropriate reverence due  toward all things divine.  In other words, entasis matters because the gods matter.  The art (music, poetry, great literature, sculpture, architecture, etc.) of a culture tells you what is important to that culture.   That’s a no-brainer, I know.

Now, art is important—it is intrinsically human (but, for an interesting discussion, read this)—and it expresses the deepest desires, fears, hopes, dreams and values of a person, a community, or an entire society.  Thus, that which we do as artists, as imitators of the one true Creator, is fundamental to what it means to be who we are and to express that and develop in understanding that.  It seems right, meet, and just, in fact, that we might be so interested in the intricacies of the things that we do.

Just as ornamentation, in many ways, has been seen as superfluous in the past century-or-so, we can look back at the detail of the ancients and think “wow!” or “why?” or we can say “Why not?”  I question and struggle with my modernist training that says ornamentation is anathema.  I see that the modernists had their own obsession for straight lines and perfect curves, perfectly aligning window shades and soffit corners.  But I’ve also visited a few Modernist buildings—one of my preferred Modernists, Rudolf Schindler and his King’s Road House come to mind—and they are imperfect.  Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater leaks like a sieve, Corbu’s Villa Savoye was a nightmare in a rainstorm, and the King’s Road House couldn’t keep an ice cube warm in the winter time it has so many cracks and gaps and holes.  Their detail is different, but it is ornamentation in its own right.

After all, a bird can make a nest, a termite can build a mound, a gopher can burrow a hole, an ant can dig a tunnel, but only man can build a monument, sculpt a gargoyle, paint a battle scene, make a movie about aliens, or sing an anthem to the abstract concept of a nation or a god.  God, I am beginning to believe, truly is in the details.  Perhaps not in the way that the die-hard modernist might say, but rather, because detail, intricacy, even superfluousness, is at the heart of humanness.  Ornamentation and all the trappings of human life that can appear to be ‘ornamental’, ‘traditional’, or ‘excessive’ speak precisely to what it means to be human: to be able to contemplate the ‘extras’—and by ‘extra’ I mean what goes beyond our daily bread, what goes beyond bread and circus, what goes beyond commuting, texting, and drinking, what goes beyond simply functioning, and into thinking, believing, laughing, praying, and loving.

***

(1) That’s right, I just rhymed using the word ‘entasis’.

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, beauty, ornamentation | No Comments »

Thinking Post-PoMo, or the “Organic” Revolution

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

More than three years ago, when I finished my Master’s thesis for architecture, I decided that I would never talk about it again… I actually went so far as telling job interviewers that they could read about it in my portfolio, but that I did not want to explain it to them (and they still hired me)!

Well, in this exclusive, I’m going to break the silence. You see, I’ve noticed more and more through this field-switch of my own—from architecture to theology and philosophy—that the cultural and intellectual crisis (or movement, or development, depending on your own  opinions) that I perceived through the lens of architecture, surely enough, can be observed in other fields as well.

pompidou1In other words, let us begin with some of my thesis research.  Some background is necessary at first.  In the “world” of architecture, there are more than a handful of architects interested in some edgy stuff in the way of what is called ‘programming’.  If you remember, Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), author of one of the world’s first “skyscrapers”—the Wainwright Building here in St. Louis—and the hand behind the pen of the phrase “form ever follows function,” gave voice to the ideas that would take the world of architecture by a Modernist storm.  Though Sullivan died almost a century ago, his words ring out through history.  Sullivan’s intentions in these words were most certainly other than what they are often taken to mean today, and yet they are but the first whisper of what would become a great cry against sentimental aesthetics.

Form following function, indeed, is no “new” idea.  The form of any created artifact with a functional intention is inevitably dictated by its purpose.  To separate the two is to render the work impotent—like making a chair out of sugar cubes or glass shards.  But Sullivan’s Modernist successors would construe his words to demand the stripping of anything ’superfluous’ of structure and function from buildings.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers about their Centre Pompidou (pictured above right).  Now, granted, Pompidou is a bit tongue-in-cheek, and a better example would perhaps be the sleek and orthogonal steel, glass and concrete of the international style, but the point is that this over-emphasis on function dictating the shape and appearance of buildings came to a head in the last century and carried itself over even into the Postmodern styles of the latter half.

This denuding of ornamentation was exemplified by later iconic statements such as “less is more” and surely enough, “God is in the details”.  Both quotes end up exulting the details themselves as a kind of obsessive-compulsive ornamentation: Mies van der Rohe’s designs were extremely difficult to execute because of their precision.  They can appear, to the uninitiated eye, as rather bleak, sterile, elitist… or simply ugly.

campus-iitConsider Mies’ campus design for Illinois Institute of Technology (pictured at left) which is exemplary of the fusing of the German Bauhaus and international style in the United States.  The drawing itself speaks volumes about Modern architecture’s presumptuous intentions: the rectangular and simple buildings seem to float like dominoes on an air hockey table, rising up above their grungy neighborhood surroundings like the architectural liberator of Chicago.

207aSee also Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin (pictured at right) for urban Paris which planned to replace entire sections of the city’s landscape with an entirely new and much larger-scale project composed of glass cruciform skyscrapers surrounded by highways, parks and airstrips (and this is philosophically telling: Corbu’s skyscrapers were called none other than CARTESIAN sky-scrapers!).  The parks are meant to re-introduce the human scale—how lovely.    Each ‘function’ or ‘program’ (that is, use of a space) is segregated and neatly packed into a glass box.  All of this was done with the automobile, the true motor behind architectural modernism, in mind.  Most of the 20th century hero architects, like Wright, Corbu and Mies, had some forays into massive urban planning (daydreaming about cities of the future) especially funded by none other than—drumroll—automobile manufacturers (hey, architects got to eat too).  For more on Corbu and technology, read my post “Because Writing the Word Modernism Is Fun…“

Now, it’s true, I’ve been really down on Mies van der Rohe and Corbu up to this point—but, that’s what blogs are supposed to do, right, be critical?  But, I have a point in all this, so bear with me.  At this point, I want to focus more closely on the design for IIT’s campus because it contains within it a paradigmatic building for Modernism, and even contemporary state-of-the-art architecture, and… inevitably my thesis.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s design for the architecture school building at IIT’s campus, S. R. Crown Hall (pictured at left), consists of two levels, the upper level being an entirely open and column-free space for architecture studios.  It was called a “universal space”.  This was achieved by way of steel trusses spanning over the roof (see the beams that seem to pop up over the building?).  Now, the structure is clear, the function is clear, the intention is crystal-clear.  The building, I can’t deny, is marvellously executed.  But here’s the crux of this post (I know, 12 minutes later)… Mies’ “universal space”, entirely open, free to interpretation, without limits in its use, is the beginning of something entirely different for architecture.

layout_reviewiiWhich leads me to my thesis (finally, you say).  It should come as no surprise that my thesis bordered more on urbanism than architecture, or rather, it was precisely that no-man’s-land between the human scale of architecture and the communal scale of urbanism that attracted me.  “Up from the Road” it was called, and its intentions, at least, were golden.  Take a strip of would-be interstate in my hometown, Memphis, and find a way to use it to re-habilitate the texture of the damaged urban landscape.  You see, as you might have already, interstates and highways in general had a tendency at their inception to bore their way through cities in a rather destructive manner.  For the sake of progress, they left a ruinous path through the dense patchwork of American cities—but gosh if I couldn’t make it to work on time from my suburban chalet.  Memphis’ own Sam Cooper Boulevard was a piece of “living” history: one of the first interstates in the country to be stopped by a local initiative, I-40 stopped dead in its tracks at the edge of Overton Park in Midtown Memphis.  Now, it was never finished, but a four-mile strip of 6-lane highway remained.  For almost fifty years now it has served as a highway to Midtown, carrying mostly local traffic.  On weekends and at off-peak hours it is rather empty.  My thesis, among other things, proposed ways of re-using the road surface for other purposes.  Think universal space here.

And there you have it: the universal space becomes the point of encounter between the generic and the specific, infrastructure and detail, the massive scale and the exquisitely ornate human scale, the imposition of a global network on the local bricolage.  Ah, now you’re talking my language, you say.  The concrete monster, the autistic and monolithic freeway system speaks of imposition, globalization, generic, and incites the local, grassroots, human, yes, yes YES!  Fight the man!!!––wait, just a second.

Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in urbanism, from the New Urbanism of Seaside, Florida to plans to rebuild New Orleans, there is renewed attention paid to public space and communal usage.  The urban plaza, especially those of Europe, have become iconic again for urban design.  Public spaces, urban spaces—what is called “negative” space on a field-ground diagram of a city (where buildings are shaded and open areas and streets left white)—is the place to be, in short.  My thesis was certainly about finding a way to create public, specific, local space within the generic language of the interstate highway system.  Now, whether or not it succeeded is not particularly important.  I want to draw attention, rather, to the interests… the process, if you will, because here I think is the connection with theology/philosophy.

So, at this point I want to introduce yet another project: Foreign Office Architects’ Yokohama International Port Terminal (below left).  Here is an excerpt from their own writings about the project:

“We started with certain principles and later combined and changed them. The changes are never visual or aesthetic; they are always technical or practical. We do not believe in the origin or in the end of a project. We believe in the medium of the process. We are totally opportunistic. The end is determined only by external forces, like deadlines of the contractors or the client.”  (emphasis added)

archartdNotice two particularly important statements: “the changes are never visual or aesthetic” (sound familiar… an extrapolation of “form follows function” maybe?) and “we believe in the medium of the process” (the architects are less interested in the completion of the project and more in the design and building of it).  The project lives on precisely because of its flexibility, its capacity to change drastically over time according to use and interpretation.

Where are we going?  Well, one more thing.  I researched, for the thesis, some infrastructural and manufacturing terms like ‘post-fordist’ infrastructure and ‘just-in-time’ manufacturing.  Particularly interesting was Stan Allen’s “Infrastructural Urbanism” in his magnificent book Points + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City.  Allen and other writers such as Gandelsonas led me along a path that saw America’s own particular development of urban space as linear.  As opposed to the more European standard of plaza/square surrounded by buildings, America was built up around Main Streets and Broadways.  But, that’s a bit off topic.  Allen and others like Reiser + Umemoto talk about generic infrastructures and their ability to respond to local contingencies and adapt to topography and urban environments (for the liturgical buffs, here Re: Inculturation) while maintaining continuity of the system.  Allen focuses specifically on a ‘bottom-up’ infrastructure which establishes a loose envelope of fixed points of service, access and structure setting technical and instrumental limits to other designers’ work on the same site.

There seemed to be, in my summation, an important shift in design which suggested a re-arrangement of the relationships between form, structure and program (anticipated use).  Skipping ahead to the end of it all, we can observe a sort of massive shift in systems.  We see it in governments (post-Franco Spain’s de-centralization into autonomous communities), we see it in urbanism, in the way our cities exist (freeway systems connecting sporadic suburban technoburbs in the outskirts of a de-centralized city), in our architecture, in our liturgy (inculturation, adaptation, structure and form), even in the way we eat (organic foods, homegrown, free-range, small farms and free-trade coffee)… in short, in a variety of our systems today, we can observe a sort of de-centralization.  Now, this is a generalization, and becomes even more so the more that I add other disparate systems.

My whole point is this: much of this work done toward adaptation, local color, contextualism, autonomy, individuality, particularism, regionalism, etc. often over and against universal structures and the imposition of what are seen as inhuman infrastructures, and so on… stems from a general rejection of the Modernist movement. Sure, it took long enough, but Postmodernism came around to reject Modernism’s till then unabated hunger for the novel and universal, the panacea to end all panaceas, the search for the global solution, only to fall on its own rather Modernist foothold.

The organic revolution, as I’d like to term it rather irresponsibly and just for fun at the moment, is something that, I think, comes out of this.  The desire to create buildings and spaces, for example, or inculturate-able liturgies, that anticipate future uses in their own vagueness draws a fine line between what can reasonably be called organic and what is decidedly and unabashedly manipulated and imposed.  What do I mean?  In some way, the organic fuses together form and function.  In some other ways, organic connotes the lack of the artificial, the exterior.  In another way, it is about harmony and continuity, the necessary and natural.

apple-bite-lgWhen the Church, for example, stipulates that something should be organic, I have the urge to laugh.  Not because I think that the Church is silly for saying this, but because in reality, I think she’s saying something that is not coming across as clearly as it might.  The organic does not come about by imposition, whether it is on the local or global scale… by defintion, the organic comes about by necessity (not argued, rationalized necessity but real necessity)…by natural processes, over a long period of time, and is RARELY observable while in progress.  Does this mean that we cannot intervene?  I don’t think so… what is it to be a human author if it is not intervention in nature?  What is human art but the manipulation and imitation of nature?  A fin de cuentas, we’re going to have to answer the question: what is organic?

. . .  . . .  . . .

*** Apple-bite used without permission: http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/Pickover/pc/apple-bite-lg.jpg

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, cartesian skyscraper, continuity, le corbusier, liturgy, louis sullivan, mies van der rohe, modernism, organic development, organic revolution, plan voisin | 1 Comment »

Sacred Art for Sacred Heart

Monday, September 28th, 2009

portfolio_305_image1I first caught wind of this at Whispers today and given that I was recently “encouraged” to post to my long-neglected blog, I thought what better thing to share with my faithful 4 readers than a bit of beauty for the upcoming long haul into winter.  To the point: Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT has dedicated a new chapel in the heart of its campus.  Designed by Sasaki Associates Architects, the chapel features mosaic art designed by  Father Marko Rupnik, SJ, a Slovenian Jesuit who is director of the Centro Aletti’s Atelier of Art in Rome—a part of the Pontifical Oriental Institute which was founded by JPII to foster opportunities for exchange between Rome and the Eastern Churches.  Fr. Rupnik is also the artist responsible for the late Holy Father’s Redemptoris Mater chapel at the Vatican.

02bThe University’s website has a veritable plethora of images and information about the chapel’s design, construction and artwork here.  Be sure to browse the galleries.

I’d be happy to know what people’s opinions are about this particular chapel and the art installation.  It’s clear that the style is decidedly contemporary—a sort of post-postmodern exemplifying the direction mainstream architecture is going since the fall of the modern era and the postmodern movement.  However, the mosaics, while they have a bit of a contemporary flare, are clearly rooted in their historical origins—drawing from eastern iconography and (perhaps more Roman) mosaic styles.

Something I’ve noticed about having conversations about church “architecture” with those who do not have a formal training in architecture is that the discussion generally focuses around the sacred art (or lack thereof) rather than the use of spatial arrangements or architectural styles.  I think there’s something basic here.  I don’t know if I posted about this previously, but one thing I noticed a bit more than a year ago when watching the dedication of Duncan Stroik’s Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, was that this lovely church was just a style change.  As far as imagery went, it featured a crucifix and a copy of Juan Diego’s tilma with the image of Our Lady.  Essentially, it had little more sacred art than your typical contemporary parish church built since the 1970s.  This may be an unfair criticism, but I’d ask others to consider whether I am totally off-base here.  The style is decidedly Renaissance… and well-executed, but what of the content?  I find Rupnik’s work more compelling, evocative and didactic while all the same being in conversation, in continuity, with the liturgical traditions of the Church universal.

I’ll leave it at that, however, because I’d rather see if anyone has any thoughts (Although I know that, ‘historically’ speaking, no one responds to my architecture posts!).

UPDATE (9/29): I should mention just to be clear, the chapel building was designed by Sasaki Associates, the art installations were by Rupnik… i.e., Rupnik did not design the chapel.

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, beauty | No Comments »

Because Writing the Word “Modernism” Is Fun…

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

I had a professor who once said “You can’t put something [a building] up that is funny and expect people to laugh at it for the next 50 years.” His point was, what seems vogue, cool, hip, in style today and makes a witty critique or a showy statement, in 50 years will just be trash. Mind you, he was a European Modernist. I think the same kind of principle goes for liturgy……. but before you say anything, that’s another conversation!

So, with some “free” time on my hands I can return to my ‘real’ passion: poking fun at Modernist and Postmodernist architecture. Er… I mean, talking about the pros and cons of contemporary design. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have: I get more comments when I talk about things other than architecture. But, thankfully, I’m not in the business of getting comments.

VillaSavoyeYou might not be as disappointed as I was when I realized it, but today one of my old images of the Swiss-French architect-high priest of the Modernist movement, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris (otherwise known as Le Corbusier), as self-styled (re-)incarnation of all things “good and holy” about architecture… was shattered. That is, slightly so. You see, for a while now I had thought—in my limited knowledge about the French language—rather naïvely, I admit, that the pseudonym ‘Le Corbusier’ meant ‘The Builder’. Long story short, it doesn’t. Thus, Jeanneret’s choice of a new, reinvented name is not such a satisfying story of architectural delusions of grandeur as I had thought. Granted, there are still some overtones of classism in his appropriation of this name, but since it doesn’t mean what I was told it did (most likely a rumor perpetuated by anti-Corbu types like myself)… I was a little chagrined.

In ‘honor’ of my discovery, I decided to read an article on The New Liturgical Movement that I had been meaning to look at for quite some time now: “The Dangers of Architectural Positivism” written by Matt Alderman of the Shrine of the Holy Whapping. But, before a certainly more substantial foray into the world of cornerstones and filigree, a quick jaunt into the world of history:

In investigating good ol’ Corb, I found something more interesting to my now Dominicanly-sensitized ears, this:

Jeanneret [that is, "Corbu"] was also fascinated by his more distant ancestors, the Albigensians and Cathars passionate heretics persecuted by the Church. The persecution mattered to him as much as the passion, as Corb thought of himself, not without cause, as a despised loner. “Some men”, he groused in his autobiographical My Work, “have original ideas and are kicked in the arse for their pains.” [emphasis mine]

That explains, at least for me, why every time I heard him spoken of in school, my pre-Dominican hairs bristled with unease. Granted, I know little about what Le Corbusier would have appreciated about his dualist ancestors [who thought the material world was created by an evil demiurge in order to trap human souls in physical bodies], but how fascinating, nonetheless. It seems, of course, he was probably more interested in the fact of being persecuted—as it seems most (Post)Modernists are—but I think the question of dualism in Modernism and Postmodernism is still worth further investigation. I think it confirms, at least superficially, my observations about the dualism/spiritualism of minimalist design (see: Novy Dvur Monastery & “A Christian Critique of Minimalism”).

… … …

There is, it would seem, a strong ‘tradition‘ (I use this word rather tongue-in-cheekedly) among more than a few Catholics, when thinking about architecture (because I know, you think about it all the time!), to bemoan the rather destructive renovations and restorations of church buildings in the past several decades and, inevitably to blame modernism—”why are our churches so ugly?” I, personally, will admit to having done this. The blame, nowadays, is often laid squarely on the shoulders of the liturgical/architectural consultants, but their ideas and designs are founded in something much more basic that stems back to the beginnings of Modernism. So, in short, I think this criticism of Modernist trends in all fields is valid, and can be useful. After all, we learn from history and the mistakes, sins, and generally stupid things done, as well as the rare successes. It is, in my summation, highly important that people generally know that the horrible things done to their cities, homes and churches in the name of architectural progress were because of heinous totalitarian philosophies and utilitarian cultural-renovation machines like the Modernist movement. Postmodernism, we must remember, is a Modernist rejection of Modernism.

In reading up on my architectural history, something struck me though. It is the distinctly unfortunate but necessary character of historical study that it tends to ‘leave off’ at the point of current events. This is not what struck me though. Instead, it was a paraphrase of the words of Frank Lloyd Wright in 1901:

“the architecture of the future would be built of machine-formed elements; the modern architect would of necessity need to embrace the machine in every aspect of design.” [Understanding Architecture, first edition, p. 456]

Now, those familiar with architectural education today will know the fascination in the biz. with technology, especially in the way of innovative materials, prefabrication, SIPS panels, pre-stressed concrete, building ’skins’, computer-engineered shapes, and the ubiquitous plasma screen. Architecture students in general are heavily doused in this and many a thesis is about machine-engineered furniture, the manufacturing process, and the reuse of industrial technologies as architectural elements. In many ways, Wright’s vision has come true. The relative ease with which an entire subdivision can be constructed in several months out of mostly pre-fabricated materials, the reality that to work in the most prestigious of firms today you have to have extensive knowledge of 3D drafting programs, or the fact that you too can have a kitchen that looks like a Starbucks is certainly nothing new (back in ‘the day’ you could order a house from the Sears catalog).

This emphasis on technology, as far as I can tell, will not die out soon. It is patently more enticing to the 20 year old iPod-carrying architecture student than Palladio and Vitruvius. And, of course, maybe it does not have to die out. However, if we are expecting a resurgence in beautiful Catholic churches we have to take some things into consideration, as we do in other cultural matters when it comes to Catholics in contemporary North American culture. It is true, I think, that Catholics are more and more craving the splendors of their religion’s traditions, especially among the youth. Now, I’m not interested in the traditionalist-progressive debate here. We can, as I said, bemoan the destructive, renovationist tendencies of the past that, in so many words, ruined many a well-designed church. But, and this is what I was thinking of when I read Wright’s thoughts, we can also recognize that, again, secular humanist culture is still exuberantly flying off tangentially from generally ‘religiously-minded’ world views. That means, and I think that New Urbanism learned this the hard way, that for all the re-creating we can try and do, we’re recreating a physical world stylized by a culture that no longer exists. We can make of that observation whatever we like, suggesting that now we have to build modern, or that now we have to close ourselves off at times from the influences of contemporary society, or that now we have to find a synthesis of the two. But, and especially if the answer is either the first or the third, how can that be achieved? Are we satisfied with the results so far? (Re: Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland) For the sake of argument, I’m going to make some generalizations.

Architecture school, like most higher education, produces a kind of idealism which can certainly be healthy. But, in most, I would say, this tends to wear off. After a few years of being a ‘CAD-monkey’ [computer draftsman] one tends to be at least a little disillusioned and shaken of those ideals. This is probably to be expected. What happens, however, is that over time the exigencies of career advancement take precedent over delusions of revolutionary architectural innovations. Practically, this means that most will be designing shopping malls, public schools, office buildings, restaurants and the occasional bank. These architects are, for lack of a better term, cheap—they cost less, and they spend less. What’s the result? Well, more people hire them. Most likely, they, not Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris or Bernini nor even those brave and chosen few who spent their money on a good (and rare) classical education, will be designing the new sanctuary for your parish. They follow, sometimes slavishly, the trends of the business that are presented to them monthly in publications like Architectural Record. It’s not necessarily their fault, they don’t have the time or money to explore these kinds of things. What’s more, these students graduating today, the Catholic ones, grew up in these churches we tend to think are ugly: auditorium churches, churches in the round, churches with nothing but crucifixes (if even that), university chapels with huge graffiti murals behind the altar, etc… or, they’re converts! But, there is a good chance that they won’t think they’re ugly. There’s a good chance they will have emotional attachments to these buildings and see good in them that others do not. There’s a good chance, dare I say it, that they will see the ‘old’ and think ‘ah, that’s nice…’ and that’s about it. These new architects are now further removed from the church designs even of the not-so-distant past. They see them in Architecture History courses, and they see them in cathedrals every now and then, and in books… but they don’t know how to produce anything like these things [at least I don't!].

Most graduating architecture students don’t know the first thing about how to design a column [myself included]. “Design a column?” we might say, “You mean, like, structural sizing? You know, figuring out how big it needs to be?” Not exactly. I mean, like, this:

Classical_orders_from_the_Encyclopedie

In the time between when I started and graduated from architecture school there was a considerable change. When I entered first-year, the only reason you took your computer to studio was to check e-mail and play music. We did not produce drawings using computers for the first two years of our education [I think this was a good thing]. By the time I graduated, however, new students were coming in and very early-on learning the latest techniques in 3D design. I would be surprised if many schools haven’t altogether stopped teaching students how to draft on paper.

The implications are that, perhaps apart from Notre Dame, architecture schools are few and far between that are producing architects that will be capable of successfully designing new Catholic churches expressive of the values of a contemporary American Catholicism that cherishes a real cultural continuity with the past and not just an “in the Catholic tradition…” slogan.

In the Baroque style, the Catholic Reformation had a unique style of its own to express its values and ends. In the Gothic, likewise, the entire spirituality and worldview of the Medievals was expressed in stone and glass. What… however… will be the architectural expression of Evangelium vitae and the Culture of Life? Where will it come from? Can it legitimately find a home in the Post-Postmodernist highly industrialized, over-technologization of contemporary architecture? Or must it resort to drumming up the best and brightest of 13th-16th century design?

If Thomism could survive all these years and still find refreshingly new (and faithful) expression in the writing of some of today’s philosophers, why not the same for Gothic, Renaissance, Romanesque, and Baroque architecture? Now, this is an analogy of course. When it comes to the plastic arts we are dealing with a rather different creature—not exactly a question of transporting or copying buildings like snippets of the Summa transplanted into modern texts—but, all the same, what can be done, practically speaking, to put all the right elements in place that future Catholic architects, nourished in a revived faith, can develop a true embodiment of the ideals of the Culture of Life in a language intelligible to modern sensitivities? That is, must we, really, first reproduce architecture like that of the past before we can hope to move again in the direction of a true physical expression of our time?

If we take the route of recovering architectural forms of the past, which I don’t think is a bad idea, what happens when this intersects with modern technology? What happens when it runs up against modern budget constraints, or modern skill limitations? I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood parish now, built by your friendly local architect who wears black all the time, not this diocesan cathedral or that one, this monastery, or even this university chapel.

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, catholic church, le corbusier, life | No Comments »

A Christian Critique of Minimalism

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

This is going to be fairly straightforward, actually.  I’d just like to draw your attention to a contrast.  For those of you who read my post about John Pawson’s monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur and saw the clean, polished, magazine-quality photograph of the chapel that I posted (from the Novy Dvur website)—and especially for those of you who did not like it—you might appreciate this photograph that I found on Flickr, taken by Lorenzzo.  For copyright reasons I can’t post it to the blog, but I recommend that you go see it and compare it to the one in this post (on the right).1

So, go check out the one on Flickr.  You’ll see the chapel in a whole different light.  And why do I call this a Christian critique of minimalism?  Well, minimalism is almost like the newest kind of dualism.  Consider the (in)famous motto of minimalism: “Less is more” attributed to Mies van der Rohe.  The implication in architecture has a tendency to drive one to a puritan-like rigorism that produces buildings that only look good when they are not occupied and used by people.  Consider even the magazine photo above: yes, it has the monks in it, but you might notice that conceptually the monks appear more as an extension of the space, an ornament to the furniture, than as the owners and users of the space.  What I delight in about the photo on Flickr is that it shows you how the space is actually used.  Suddenly you see benches that appear in front of the choir stalls, clearly not designed for the space, a couple of folding chairs, flowers in front of the altar, the appearance of a presider’s chair along with accompanying stools, and not the most flattering of daylighting.

The punchline to the minimalist enterprise, it seems to me, is that humans are not minimalists.  We accumulate things, we get things dirty, we don’t all do the same things, we don’t all pray the same way, we don’t all look the same, we have bodies, for heaven’s sake!   This is why I called minimalism almost a kind of dualism.  There seems, to me, an underlying message that we must blot out the material world because it is uncontrollable.  There’s another photo of the chapel at Novy Dvur that I have seen that lacks all the usual liturgical furniture you would expect in a monastery oratory: choir stalls, altar, ambo, tabernacle, etc… you only see the blank walls, the bare forms, the play of shadows and light.  You lose all concept of scale (there are, of course, no humans in the picture) and it becomes a meaningless composition, perhaps pleasing to the eye.  It is a strange worship of shadows.
Now, all of this is said in contrast to the ‘praises’ I sang of the monastery in the last post.  I think there is something lovely about it, but it is the same thing that is lovely and romantic about a monk’s life to someone who is not a monk.  That is to say, the contemplative life, though it may appear so to the observer, is not minimalist, it’s ascetic, and in this life the distance between the two is like the east from the west.

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, beauty, distinguishing, minimalism, modernism, novy dvur monastery | No Comments »

The Renewal of Religious Life and Architecture

Monday, March 16th, 2009

So, it’s been a while… again.  But, here’s a bit of a subject that I have neglected for a bit.  That is, until I discovered this gem on an architecture blog (I forget which one).  The “gem” is English minimalist architect John Pawson’s (b. 1949) Cistercian Monastery of Novy Dvur in Bohemia in the Czech Republic—the monastery’s website can be seen here.

1.jpgGive it a look see, but lest you complain that it is too austere or blank, remember that’s the way the Cistercians do it.

Be sure, also, if you are still intrigued after viewing the photos, to read Pawson’s essay about the design of the monastery.  This, I think, tells you more about the design than the pictures will.

 Now, to the main topic swimming around in your minds.  Does he (meaning I, myself) like this?

Well, you knew, I hope, it wasn’t going to be that easy… (Never deny…)

With that said, I can hear the objections now to the picture I chose to show here: it looks like something from Star Trek, like some inter-galactic council about to meet.  Where are the Christian symbols, for instance?

“Some of the vocabulary of Novy Dvur may be new – the cantilevered cloister, for instance, has no literal precedent in Cistercian architectural history – but my aim has been to remain true to the spirit of the twelfth century blueprint, to express the Cistercian spirit with absolute precision, in a language free from pastiche and charged with poetry.”

The “Cistercian spirit” is not for everyone, nor is minimalism.  But, as Pawson points out so concisely, in life as well as architecture, there is a beauty in simplicity that is unmatched by the crowding of superfluities and ornamentation.  One could easily contrast the austerity of Pawson’s minimalism with the extravagance of the Baroque.  One might also be tempted to choose between them, to say “I prefer” one to the other.  One might also be led to believe that simplicity in design is really proof of a lack of imagination or skill.  However, as many an architect will attest, and perhaps first among them Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, simple architectural details are often more difficult to realize than complicated ones.  Why?  Consider the complexities of construction, the delays, the inefficiency, the myriad professions on the jobsite that must be coordinated, the intricacies of accurate measurement, the difficulty of “getting it just right” and making things line up… for all the technology we have these days, making a truly straight line is still nearly impossible in construction.  Further inspection into minimalist design reveals the real driving force behind the forms and materials: the play of light and space.  This is of the essence of architecture—to create space and to illuminate it.  In such an environment the tiniest of subtleties become massive design elements.  The shape of a corner, the detail of how a wall meets the floor, all fill roles with which they are not commonly associated.

So, you might be saying “That’s great… you mean to tell me that these minimalist designs are actually the most complex and beautiful of them all, surpassing even the baroque in attention to detail? And, of course, all of this is lost on the lay observer.”  Well, to a certain extent, yes!  I couldn’t appreciate the delicacy of Vivaldi’s Requiem Mass as well as some of my more musically inclined brothers can.  Likewise, I wouldn’t expect them to immediately take delight in the simplicities of Pawson’s architecture.

What’s my personal verdict.  Well, it is a critique as any architectural critique goes: Pawson is a master at minimalism, without a doubt, but he is also an architectural force to be reckoned with.  Though one could not fully appreciate (or abhor) the full reality of the monastery at Novy Dvur without experiencing it in person, I believe it is safe to say from the material presented that Pawson exhibits a deft hand at design and with respect to the building as a monastery (aesthetics ‘aside’) has succeeded in creating a space well-proportioned to the life of a Christian monk.  Is it beautiful?  Without a doubt it expresses with clarity and precision the truths of monastic life and spirituality.  Is it tasteful?   I don’t deny that I would have liked it to be clearer about what it is… but this is the language of symbols, something that architecture has struggled with for the past century.  In that respect, I have some compassion for the design and Pawson, because I think that he has attempted to incorporate Christian symbolism in what is undeniably a very rigorist modern tendency to avoid what is classified as ‘pastiche’.  Now, every architect might have his own notion of what consists of pastiche, but it is the contemporary problem par excellence in my opinion.  The question is: how much can it look like the past without being unoriginal?  It is the deadly flaw of modernism: the unswerving and uncompromising desire for originality.

And the subject line of the post?  The Renewal of Religious Life?  I thought it would be important to highlight that a project like this can’t come to pass without a few things in place first, most importantly, monks to live in the monastery.  You look at the pictures and you notice quite a few young men.  On the monastery website there are a few photos of what looks like a profession of vows or reception of the habit taking place in the chapter room (with the Patroness of the Americas and the unborn, Our Lady of Guadalupe, conspicuously watching over).

Pawson writes in his essay:

“The new Cistercian monastery of Novy Dvur is one of the less documented consequences of the fall of communism in former Czechoslovakia. For those with religious vocations the Velvet Revolution of 1989 brought not only political freedom, but the chance to travel abroad in pursuit of a contemplative way of life which no longer existed at home.”

It seems that a particular Cistercian Abbey in Burgundy by the turn of the century (that is, 2000) had admitted a dozen or so monks from the Czech Republic after the fall of Communism.  The wealth of vocations led the abbey to consider what one might call a “monastery plant” back in Bohemia.

The only way we will see a renewal of Catholic architecture is with a prior renewal of Catholic vocations (of all kinds, religious, sacerdotal, and familial).  Only with a renewed and reformed Catholic culture will Catholic architecture be able to follow a still rather undetermined path towards a brighter, richer, more beautiful future.

 

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, beauty, catholic church, religious life, vocations | 3 Comments »

The Epiphany

Saturday, January 3rd, 2009

00110650.jpgWell, what better place to talk about the Epiphany of Our Lord than on a blog like mine, so interested in beauty?  John Paul II addressed his “Letter to Artists” to all those who are “passionately dedicated to the search for new ‘epiphanies‘ of beauty.”   John Paul the Great here defines the artist as one who is devoted to the search for epiphanies!

An epiphany is a sudden insight, a revelation, a manifestation.  Typically on this feast we celebrate the arrival of the Magi at Jesus’ birth: his revelation as King and Messiah to all those outside the House of Israel—the Gentiles.  The Magi, the wise men, are the epitome of those who searched for “new epiphanies of beauty”.  That beauty manifestly revealed is the glorious radiance of the face of God who desired to show himself to all peoples through his Son, Jesus Christ.  The Magi’s watchful waiting for the sign (the star of Bethlehem) and their laborious and treacherous (think Herod) search for the child Jesus is a powerful image of the human race’s search for the face of God.  It has often been said that in all the religions of the world men and women have searched for God and attempted to reach Him, but in the Judaeo-Christian faith, God has searched for us, and attempted to reach us.  He says in Scripture: “I was there to be sought by a people who did not ask, to be found by men who did not seek me” (Isaiah 65:1).  For all of us who consider ourselves “seekers” or “sojourners” it would be good to keep in mind that, ultimately, God reveals himself to us, we do not find him.

And finally, I can’t help it, I have to quote Chesterton:

“Such learned men would have doubtless come, as these [the Magi] learned men did come, to find themselves confirmed in much that was true in their own traditions and right in their own reasoning…. Buddha would have looked upon a new renunciation, of stars rather than jewels and divinity than royalty.  These learned men would still have the right to say, or rather a new right to say, that there was truth in their old teaching.  But after all, these learned men would have come to learn…. even to balance their imperfect universe with something they had not yet conceived; even to balance their imperfect universe with something they might have once contradicted.  Buddha would have come from his impersonal paradise to worship a person.  Confucius would have come from his temples of ancestor worship to worship a child.”                    -(The Everlasting Man, 175)

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in art, beauty, preaching | No Comments »

Yes, this is a church (III): “Letter to Artists”

Sunday, December 14th, 2008

Easter, 1999 (Servant of God) Pope John Paul II issued a letter addressed “To all who are passionately dedicated to the search for new ‘epiphanies’ of beauty so that through their creative work as artists they may offer these as gifts to the world.”

Later in that same year, he re-dedicated the renovated Redemptoris Mater Chapel (pictured at left).  Quoted from Cardinal Marini on the occasion of the  dedication of the chapel: “The Chapel is also, implicitly, an invitation to take up a new dialogue between art, culture and faith, themes often echoed in the Pope’s thinking and an essential part of his call to the Church to ‘invent’ new paths for evangelization.“

A few observations:

It must be acknowledged to whom the Pope addressed his letter: the title is entirely ’secularized’ if you will.  It makes no mention of the Christian faithful, or really any kind of religious or theistic reference.  This seems to reflect John Paul’s desire to evangelize the whole world, certainly, but I think he must have seen, and the letter attests to this, that in order for art to be of real and creative service to the Church again, some reconciling is in order.  John Paul seems to recognize that, as philosophy seems to no longer put itself at the service of theology (re: Fides et Ratio), likewise art no longer flourishes and develops within the heart of the Church.  Rather, with the rise of the Enlightenment and Modernism, art explores its own ends… art for art’s sake, anyone?

But, of course, any believer will know ultimately what John Paul is referring to when he says “new epiphanies of beauty”.  Indeed, at the end of the letter he defines ‘true beauty’ as a glimmer of the Spirit of God (16).  This Spirit of God is that same inspiration, or epiphany, to which he refers in the address.  Speaking about the “unbridgeable gap” between the inspiration and the artist’s actual work, he says that the artist is aware of how the finished work of art pales in comparison to that “splendor which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit” (6) and inspired them to create in the first place.  In this sense, as John Paul states early on, drawing the comparison between the artist and the Creator, all artists participate to some degree in the divine act of creation.  Because God’s creation was wholly a gift—none of it was necessary—the Pope seems to want to say the same about the artist: that, at the core of art, is gift.

Also interesting to note is that the Pope has captured well the sort of pathos and ethos of the artist: that constant struggle to bring to fruition the powerful ideas that are borne in the mind of the artist; the torment of “expressing the world of the ineffable” (13); the birthpangs of releasing an inspiration from the mind into created form; the artist’s fascination with the work of his hands; the need to work independently of constraint (the starving artist) and the notion of artistic “service” (4); and the ongoing battle between the desire for recognition and the hunger for freedom of thought (the fear of ’selling out’).

More on the question of beauty to come (considering that John Paul II says beauty is the vocation of the artist, it is going to be very important for us).  In the meantime:

Reading John Paul II’s letter suggested some themes in reference to the ongoing subject of architecture in the Church:

1. art is expression of self & communication with others (need for recognition) — in contrast to unintelligible forms we often see in modern church art and architecture.

2. the starving artist — mark of ‘authentic’ artists.

3. art and the gospel of life — wonder at the sacredness of life & the human person/our lady of guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, tota pulchra; true beauty is a glimmer of the Spirit of God… each generation of art within the Church is a response to a particular need or struggle in the Church.  What will the art of Evangelium vitae look like?

4. Sacramentality: the “unfathomable mystery which engulfs and inhabits the world”. — Dostoyevsky: “Beauty will save the world.”

5. Two goals of early Christian art: to express the faith, to distinguish it from other religions (perennial role of Christian art: to make the spirit world perceptible & attractive)

The icon is not venerated for its own sake, it points beyond to the realm of the spirit–if it cannot do this, it has failed. (See duck & decorated shed theories of Learning From Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form)

Art functions as a bridge to religious experience (10) [evangelization] (Ratzinger: only two effective arguments for Christianity: the beauty of the church’s art, and the beauty of the church’s saints)

6. Art gives witness to the universal desire for redemption — love songs, hero stories, etc.

[N.B. please note, again, these are my thoughts as I am in the process of developing them; so they are by no means conclusive.]

Next up, What is Beauty? 

  • Share/Bookmark

Posted in architecture, art, beauty, distinguishing | No Comments »