Modern Architecture & Sacred Space

[atma]

 

I like the concept of the hands in prayer. Why the church is not giving the money for the Cathedral? If they don't have a place of worship why can't they help with the building?

I looked at some of the brigdes that Calatrava built and some of them are interestings.

Which one was the New York project? The one the looks like a pigeon flying?

[Gauracandra]

Here is a pictures of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that was under consideration.

 

 

Are ya scared yet?

 

Gauracandra

[stonehearted]

 

Originally posted by Gauracandra:

Here is a pictures of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that was under consideration.Are ya scared yet?

Yeah, just a little. It looks like something done by aliens who had conquered the planet might so to co-opt Earth's cultural institutions.

Jeez, Louise! There must be some way to incorporate 21st-century ideas that actually works with that old Gothic building.

Having grown up in the Washington, D.C. area, I always liked the National Cathedral. I actually sang there a few times when I was in high school. Amazing acoustics, as I remember.

[Gauracandra]

Your alien comment hits the mark on the head. It looks like some sort of bio-mech H.R. Giger design.

 

I know the story already. An intergalactic alien race is shooting eggs into outer space hoping to colonize the universe. One such egg comes soaring through the atmosphere above New York City. Then...

 

BWAMMMMM!!!!

 

It smacks right into a gothic cathedral. Within a hours the pod starts to grow and overtake the structure.

 

It really does look out of place. For the most part it looks pretty traditional. Then all of a sudden this growth is just covering it. Its not the best look for sure.

 

Gauracandra

[atma]

To me reminds me of a skeleton of a dinosaur with a cannon in the middle.

[Gauracandra]

In case anyone wants to see the Los Angeles cathedral the Catholic church is building, here is the website:

 

http://cathedral.la-archdiocese.org/

 

I don't think much of it. But figured some might like to check it out.

 

Gauracandra

[Gauracandra]

Here is another interesting Cathedral I came across:

 

Exterior

 

 

Interior

 

 

I don't care all that much for the exterior, but from what I see I like the inside look. Stained glass really has an interesting effect. Perhaps its purely psychological, in that I associate stained glass with religion, but I really like the feel of buildings with it. I mentioned in the travel section going to a Catholic church, and the whole stained glass setup was very nice.

[Gauracandra]

I saw a small segment on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) about the Catholic Cathedral that is being built in Los Angeles. You can see a link to the church site in a post above. Anyways, they showed some interior and exterior, and it really to me looks plain, big, and ugly. No offense to Catholics, it is simply lacking in aesthetic appeal.

 

There was an interview with some Catholic protesters who serve the homeless. They were against the building of the Cathedral (costing somewhere around a quarter of a billion dollars) because there are so many poor. They said the message of Christ was to clothe the naked, feed the poor. It was not to spend the money on the rich. Some of them were even calling this building the TajMahoney (after Cardinal Mahoney). But it was pointed out that Cardinal Mahoney has spent lots of money feeding the poor, and working through Catholic charities and that all of the money comes from private donations.

 

One thing that really surprised me was a mention of crypts that were being built into the cathedral. I must not have heard it correctly, but it sounded like these places were for sale. And so the protesters were complaining that the rich were trying to buy their way into heaven. I only caught this real quick, so I might be wrong. It just seemed real odd.

 

While there were some against, it was pointed out that many of the poor immigrant families were among the biggest supporters of this new Cathedral. Many come from strong Catholic countries with large Cathedrals, and so they find it a source of pride and inspiration. Personally, I like the Calatrava design that starts this post a whole lot more than this one.

[Gauracandra]

Yesterday’s Srila Siddhasvarupananda summary made mention of a preacher who built a glass cathedral on the San Andreas fault. I’m pretty sure he was referring to the Reverend Robert Schuller. He is a famous preacher in the U.S. who has a weekly Sunday television program. This reminded me of this modern architecture thread so I figured I’d put up some pictures of this cathedral.

 

For more info, you can go to www.crystalcathedral.com

 

[Gauracandra]

I've finally been able to locate some video of the interior of the Mormon Temple up above. I've seen the exterior (which I really like) and have seen a few stills of the interior. Here is the link for video:

 

http://www.lds.org/media/newsrelease/extra/display/0,6025,203-1-416-6,00.html

 

Medium resolution comes through fairly well. Now having seen the interior I can better understand Stonehearted's comments about "hotel kitsch". Its kind of fascinating but a bit gaudy. But I still have an attraction to it. I like the patterned glass, which really comes through nicely if seen on the high resolution video, and the snowflake ceiling design (I had heard about this, but couldn't picture it in my mind how it would fit architecturally). But overall it is sterile and cold.

 

 

 

[atma]

I was downtown today and I stumbled across the Cathedral the Catholic church is building in Los Angeles. I was VERY disappointed. It officially opens up in about 3 weeks to the public so I only had a chance to view the exterior. I went down and walked around. Because you see the cross you realize it is a church, otherwise it just looks like a big warehouse building. It is blocky, square, brownish. The newspapers have been putting articles for the last few weeks and said they spent $165 million dollars and I'm wondering where all the money went because even though I didn't see the inside the exterior was very plain. I spoke with one of the security guards and in the beginning he said he likes it, but when I prompt him that I didn't like it he said he too likes it better in the old style. He did say that the inside is better. That I will have to see when they open to the public. For me its not that it is modern or anything, it is just plain ugly.

[Dharma]

Here are renderings of Kalki center currently under construction. The architect is from LA I believe. It is built according to principles of vaastu. Click the links right under Golden City.

 

http://www.srikalki.org/CGoldenCity.html

 

 

It includes:

1) Dhyana Vihars (meditation centers)

 

2) Prarthana Vihars(prayer halls)

 

3) Homa Sthals

 

4) Samskara Shuddhi Sthals (spiritual cleansing centers)

 

5) accommodation for devotees and visitors

 

6) an educational center for problem children

 

7) a center for training rural youth

 

8) a center for rehabilitating the poor

 

9) self sufficient rural communities .

 

 

The Golden City project is a very large multi-crore project that is very unique in several aspects. It is a project aimed at helping members of our society who are in very great need of such help. Sri Amma’s and Sri Kalki’s grace shall flow in abundance here.

 

[stonehearted]

I have to say the video looks better than I remember. However, when I visited the temple, it was nighttime, so I didn't have the benefit of the natural light. Still, I echo your verdict: cold, sterile.

[atma]

I just returned from the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Today was the first Sunday open to the public and I just went to check it out. While I still have reservations about the exterior, I was overall very impressed with the Cathedral as a whole. I made a point not to go during the mass time because I knew it would be very crowded, yet when I arrived it was still packed. The church made a special mass to handle this additional crowd. It was the fourth mass of the day. People were standing in line waiting, and the line stretched throughout the whole plaza complex. The arrangement was very nice because it was designed that everyone would be sheltered in the shade.

 

When they let us in the enormous crowd flowed through very quickly. The Cathedral holds 3000 and the place was packed. One very nice feature was a glass wall on the outside grand plaza that paralleled the freeway. The glass was sound proof, and made a nice contrast. It overlooked the freeway system which was very busy and hectic, but from my vantage point above them on a hill, it was very peaceful and quiet. The grand plaza was 2.5 acres and included a nice garden with Mediterranean looking trees (reminded me of Italy), water pools and fountains, and sitting arrangements. I had read that the architect liked the freeway system which he said was like the rivers old cathedrals would be built next to. The glass wall contained all the names of the major donors for the cathedral and some nice etchings of flying angels. One donor I noticed was Arnold Schwarzenneger who donated for the massive bronze doors (by the way, I saw him bicycling past our Rathayatra carts last time). Another nice feature were the bells which were ringing. The main bell tower is 150 feet tall [from brochure].

 

Finally, I entered the Cathedral and participated during the mass. Because this was an additional (spontaneous) mass due to the overflow of people, Cardinal Mahoney asked the people if they wanted it in Spanish or English. It was mostly latinos in the audience, and by the crowd's reaction it was decided to hold a bi-lingual mass (but mostly it was in Spanish). I was impressed that Mahoney knew Spanish, and he was quite good. The first question he asked was if the people liked the cathedral, and everyone clapped in appreciation. The arrangement was very different because I'm not so used to people going so close to the altar. It was designed to have the congregation circling the altar so that they are facing each other (to be more communal). The nave stretched very long, starting from the altar and going back to the baptismal font.

 

Some things I liked, the lamps were very unique with a triangle with a trumpet in the middle. This trumpet is where the sound came from, and I never saw a mike on the Cardinal. Also on the walls were very nice tapestries, and I really liked one of John baptizing Jesus. The organ was very large, but when they were playing the Spanish songs, the music sounded very Mexican, and other sounds were really heavy or sad.

 

Before he finished mass, the Cardinal told us that we were welcome to visit the sanctuary and touch the altar and Jesus on the cross. This is very different for a Catholic church (at least from my time). The whole congregation walked on to the altar, and I touched the feet of Jesus. The deity was metallic and very big. The altar itself was solid red marble from Turkey. Really really nice. Below it were several gold angels. Also, the vyasasan (the Cardinal's seat) was very simple and artistic. It was funny, after the Cardinal left a number of people sat their kids on the chair and had pictures taken (it was very cute).

 

Within the Cathedral were a number of relics including a massive door (I think) from the 1680s from Spain. It was really artistic and they are still restoring it and put more such items from the Getty museum. Also, there were different side altars for the Virgin.

 

On my way out I left through the massive bronze doors. Combined the two doors weigh 25 tons, and have various incarnations of the Virgin Mary. I thought it was interesting that not only do the doors open, but also the door walls open up [its hard to describe]. Above the doors was a very, very different modern Mary. The deity is 8 feet tall, and stands on top of a moon with the sun rising above her head. To me when you look from the front it doesn't look ok. Her lips are too African, and she seems to have short short hair. Her nose is too Caucasian. They were trying to create a racially mixed Mary to reflect Los Angeles diversity. From the side she looks better because you can see her hair in a long braid (like a native American).

 

The mausoleum was closed today but by the brochure it looks very nice with the stained glass and sarcophagus. In the brochure they are offering 1200 crypts and 5000 cremation niches for lay people to be buried. My question is I was always taught as a Catholic that you can't be cremated. That you are resurrected in the same body. Then how they accept cremation now? Outside Mahoney was greeting the people and I should have asked him but my friend didn't want to approach him.

 

The rest was conference rooms, a café, gift shop, and the quarters for the Cardinal and the others. In the plaza they also are planning to hold mass for 6000 people. I thought it was a good place for the community to come together and it was a very nice experience. The time went by very fast.

[Gauracandra]

Thank you for these reports. I am so happy to hear about this, and having checked out their website, the pictures they show are breathtaking. Architecture it seems to me is art done on a grand scale. Too often these days churches have given up on making grand works of art for God instead choosing to go for a purely utilitarian approach. But I think this is a shame. Great civilizations and great religions should produce great works of art, monuments to God that will stand for thousands of years.

[Gauracandra]

What do you guys think of pews? The main problem I see with pews is that they take up so much space that there wouldn’t be room for dancing before the deity. But I find them organizationally very nice. I think it is a subtle difference between the aesthetics of Eastern vs. Western cultures. Eastern cultures seem to be organizationally looser and this can create a nice open atmosphere, but can also lead to a messiness. Western culture is very “cut at right angles” with everything neat and tidy, everything having its place. I do remember on my visit to the Greek Orthodox Church (see Travelogue) the guide informed us that in traditional Orthodox churches there are no pews as one should stand before the Lord.

[Gauracandra]

Here is a snippet of an article I came across that I found interestig regarding sacred architecture:

 

 

Thomas More may have been right when he said, “All places on earth are equidistant from heaven.” Perhaps any place where humans choose to build a sacred shrine can become a holy place and satisfy their need to locate worship. But whether divinely appointed or humanly chosen, the places people regard as holy, from shrine to cathedral to modest parish church, are important to them. These are the places where faith becomes concrete. Without them, without at least one of them to claim as his or her own, the individual is a religious orphan, homeless, destitute.

 

For many theologically literate people, the “place” of religious experience is a local church, a particular building on a particular street in a particular town. It is the place where we caught our first glimpse of God’s love, and the building itself played a decisive part in that experience.

 

It is sad that relatively little thought is given to the design, construction and maintenance of churches being built now, the churches where our children will catch their glimpses. We tend to forget how important a church building’s physical structure is to the religious experience of the men and women who will call it their place, who will worship there, who will be molded by it.

 

A church building, like the people it serves, is a living thing. It is conceived, it is born, it flourishes and does its appointed work, and it dies. It does all these things well or poorly depending on its fitness to serve as a meeting place for people searching for God. It demonstrates God’s concern, and his compassion, for his people. It shares in a triune relationship with God and with his people.

 

A church is at its best when its form and style are determined by the people who worship in it. It most clearly transmits its truth when it gives material expression to their beliefs, when it effectively facilitates their worship. Frank Lloyd Wright was correct when he allowed that the best of buildings is the indigenous folk building. A church, then, should be a place whose shape and decor emerge from the collective religious experience of the people who, in the words of Epictetus, “enjoy the great festival of life” there together.

 

It’s a great pity when a congregation does not shape its own place of worship, for a building can lead people into moods and practices that might be wrong for them. “We shape our buildings,” Winston Churchill wrote; “thereafter they shape us.” But they shape us even when we don’t shape them. The less control people have over shaping their buildings, the more likely those buildings are to be misshapen and to misshape.

 

The degree to which a congregation is able to design and construct its own building depends, of course, upon the vision and skills of its members. Few congregations have the necessary conceptual, architectural and carpentry gifts to mold and make a building with their own minds and hands. But as Frank Lloyd Wright said, an architect should first be a poet, and the good poet observes closely and listens carefully. It shouldn’t be too much to ask an architect to observe the people who will worship in the building and listen to them before beginning the blueprints. The designer should make the structure express them in such a way that they will continue on their path of progress without losing their way. The building should be not the architect’s but the congregation’s.

 

 

[stonehearted]

Can you tell me where you found it?

[Gauracandra]

I stumbled across the following site:

 

http://www.religion-online.org

 

It has a lot of articles on various topics from a Christian perspective. Look under architecture and they have a few articles. The article I quoted makes a lot of sense to me. I first noticed this when I drove down to Alachua and saw their temple. The Alachua temple itself is fairly simple. But just walking in I felt a certain happiness. You could tell it was designed to be a temple. That someone put thought into how it should be presented. It was really nice, and simple, and open.

 

I think historically Iskcon has not designed their own temples in the U.S. For the most part I think this was for practical purposes. It was easier to take out a mortgage on an existing property, and use that as a temple. But we have to remember that the design of a building is incorporated into its price tag. So really, we could spend the same amount for a building and make it look as we wish. It would just require assembling the resources ahead of time (rather than over a 30 year mortgage). In addition, temple design says something about the philosophy in subtle and direct ways. Sometimes you won't even be able to express in words what the philosophy is, but the look of the temple impresses it upon you in a subtle manner.

[Siri]

I have vistied the Bahai Lotus temple in Delhi a few years back. It looked very beautiful and had a wonderful atmosphere which attracted people from various walks of life. since I live in Sydney, the temple architecture is to a large extent a copy of the Sydney Opera House. But it works! See attached photo.

 

[Guest guest]

That's way cooler than the Sydney opera house, it's a shame it's not featured in a more attractive setting like Sydney where it would get more exposure, I think it would look nice in the middle of a large lake or harbour.

Whats it like inside?

[Gauracandra]

Yes, that is an interesting interpretation for a modern temple. And you are right, it does look abit like the Sydney Opera House. Interesting historical footnote: when the Sydney Opera House was first built, I understand everyone hated it; but now it is considered a landmark in architecture, and one of the worlds most recognizable buildings. I like it myself.

[Gauracandra]

This is the temple design for the future Mayapur Temple of the Vedic Planetarium.

 

[Gauracandra]

Mayapur design at night.

 

[theist]

WOW