St. Luke’s Parish Church, Uxbridge Road, London W12 was designed by A. J. Monk of Hutchison, Locke and Monk and was constructed 1976-78, The church replaced an earlier church on the site of 1871-72 by A. Evers and C. H. M. Mileham. The stained glass is from this earlier church.
Whenever the Catholic Church creeps into the general news cycle, certain pet peeves of mine get tickled. Most notably there is a tendency to refer to “the Church” or “The Vatican” doing or thinking or saying something. When this tendency combines with retreading the debates about style and unhealthy assumptions about the role of architects in church building, I am sure to be agitated. A post on the IFRAA discussions on the AIA KnowledgeNet earlier this week invoked just such an agitation, so I wanted to share my response here, as it succinctly encapsulates a number of relevant issues that have been floating around my head of late.
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While the Roman Catholic church is often assumed to be a linear authoritarian hierarchy, the truth is much more dynamic, with overlapping jurisdictions and a great diversity of organizations, departments, rites, dioceses, national and language councils, etc. There are also dynamic hierarchies of documents depending on the nomenclature, the author, the situation, etc.
I believe as a professional organization, we should be particularly careful with these particularities because there is so much disinformation. It has become shorthand to say “The Vatican says…” or “The Catholic Church says…” without specificity, and these abbreviations breed detrimental presumptions and over-generalizations. As architects, this dilutes our ability to serve.
The idea that building style and meeting the needs of a community are mutually exclusive is abhorrent. It may be somewhat ingrained in the popular church mind, but we (architects) should be a force for the amelioration of that ill. Where there is such a tension, it is precisely the problem architects should solve and a excellent design opportunity. We should be doing both and; is that not why we exist as a profession?
Would it were that every type of professional involved in any building project were unbiased. It is true that the “Liturgical Design Consultant” has tended to be a title used by a particular set of biases, and this is unfortunate. It is why I myself cannot use the title. The error comes from an imbalance in the relative values of agency and submission stemming from a misunderstanding of the role of creativity in and around the Latin Rite (which is drastically different than for Eastern Rites or Anglican, for example). As a culture (and architectural culture) we put too much faith in creativity and not enough in humility. You cannot approach the liturgy as something which can be designed, as the very title “Liturgical Design Consulant” somewhat implies. Liturgy grows organically, but it pre-exists its manifestation and any attempt to specify its nature is already a reduction, if not an abomination. But reverently approached, there are ample opportunities to beautifully participate in its manifestation.
Conforming one’s will to the Magisterium of the church does not negate the value she places in the human person and that person’s role as sub-/co-creator in participating in creation. Nor does she come remotely close to prescribing something so specific as a style. To quote the well-known Conciliar Constitution on the Liturgy (an Apostolic Constitution and therefore considered universal doctrine, to be precise):
“123. The Church has not adopted any particular style of art as her very own; she has admitted styles from every period according to the natural talents and circumstances of peoples, and the needs of the various rites. Thus, in the course of the centuries, she has brought into being a treasury of art which must be very carefully preserved. The art of our own days, coming from every race and region, shall also be given free scope in the Church, provided that it adorns the sacred buildings and holy rites with due reverence and honor; thereby it is enabled to contribute its own voice to that wonderful chorus of praise in honor of the Catholic faith sung by great men in times gone by.”
We cannot forget that we are a part of a tradition, nor can we forget that that tradition is living.
2013 is going to be a big year for my family and consequently a light year for Locus Iste. My eldest daughter is scheduled for a major medical procedure this week, so much of my time has been devoted to preparing for that. We might also be building a house in 2013, so I will also been working on the designs for that project.
There are still follow up posts from both the Pugin initiative and the Netherlands trip that will come out over the next months, but aside from possibly attending the ACS symposium in the summer, I am not planning any major projects for this year. So the posts on this site may be sparse until the fall.
On the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica this year, I was very fortunate to be in retreat at Abdij Sint Benedictusberg, Vaals and was therefore able to pray the entire Divine Office for the day. Reflecting on these texts, prayers, and hymns was an excellent reminder of some of the fundamental Biblical concepts and attitudes towards buildings. As it happened, I was also already working on a (still-forthcoming) post on the importance of the concept of locus iste in Christianity, a phrase repeated throughout the day.
And so, as a sort of preemptive appendix to that post and as the first in a series of posts intended as references for all those working in this area, I thought it would be helpful to collect the prayers of the day. I have long intended to do a survey of scriptural references to architectural themes, but this is a daunting undertaking. Examining these prayers, however, I came to realize that this approach is a good start to this task. The chosen prayers and readings provide a subset of scriptures to consider, selected by centuries of the church at prayer.
So while these prayers are specifically Roman Catholic—and their direct source more specifically Benedictine—their basis in scripture should be of great interest to all Christians. Even the sermon excerpted in the early morning readings comes from the turn of the 6th century and is therefore relatively universal and outside many of our later schism-inducing disputes.
The first half of this post contains my explanatory notes (and on commentary aside). The second half contains the prayers and readings themselves and you can skip directly there or use the index below if you prefer.
Continue reading:
Antiphons & Readings for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica
The host Dutch seminary has posted a summary of the Liturgy and Sacred Space conference I attended in November. They also posted a large number of photos on their facebook page in two sets: Day 1 and Day 2.
Trailer for a recently released (in Switzerland) documentary on the ongoing nature of the construction of the Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família.
The take seems to be post-religious, humanistic, and artistic. Or at least I expect it to be because I’m a pessimist.
More information available here.
Oh, and repeat after me:
Sagrada Familia is not a cathedral.
Sagrada Familia is not a cathedral.
Sagrada Familia is not a cathedral.
But it is a minor basilica.
Your curated weekly collection of links to news, articles, blog posts, images, and events related to liturgical architecture and church-building from around the internet.
Earlier this year I wrote about the massive found-wood crucifix by Charles Lutyens entitled Outraged Christ currently installed at St Paul, Bow Common in London. The conclusion was that this was an encouraging direction for liturgical arts, an appropriate and timely expression of the content, and an exemplar of art and architecture working in concert in the service of liturgy.
Fortuitous scheduling for travel to the Netherlands gave me 18 in hours in London on a Sunday morning. This meant allowed me to both participate in worship at St Paul, Bow Common (which I was not possible during my previous research trip) and to see the Outraged Christ sculpture in person.
Continue reading:
Outraged Christ and St Paul, Bow Common (Re)visited
The second reason I traveled to the Liturgy and Sacred Space conference at de Tiltenberg in the Netherlands was the opportunity to visit churches designed by Dom Hans van der Laan, his family, and his students. The culmination of this pilgrimage was a two night stay at his masterwork, the St Benedictusberg Abbey at Vaals.
In addition to celebrating the Feast of the Dedication of the St John Lateran Basilica and participating in praying the monastic offices, I had time to carefully consider a significant portion of the architecture. I also spent time in lectio, completing Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Love Alone is Credible and re-reading parts of van der Laan’s The Play of Forms. This post is intended to be more personal reactions to that experience than critical architectural response, though for me the two are probably not too far apart.
This was a foundational formative experience, and it will take a long time to fully internalize it. But here are a number of rough reactions, part thematic and part chronological.
You can also see the complete set of photos from the Abbey on flickr.
Continue reading:
Ecstasies of Logic: Reflections on van der Laan’s Abbey at Vaals
Today is the feast of St Francis Xavier Cabrini (Mother Cabrini), the first US citizen to be canonized in the Roman Catholic Church. She founded numerous orphanages and hospitals throughout the country. Many of these institutions still function and now bear her name.
Her partially incorrupt body rests at a shrine in Washington Heights, Manhattan. The photos here come from a visit to the shrine last month. The shrine building dates from 1959.
And here is an additional photo of Mother Cabrini from the doors to St Patrick Cathedral, New York, which features saints with ties to the diocese.
Because of her work in service of immigrants, and because she was herself an immigrant, she is counted a patron of immigrants.
Collect for today:
God our Father, who called Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini from Italy to serve the immigrants of America, by her example, teach us to have concern for the stranger, the sick, and all those in need, and by her prayers help us to see Christ in all the men and women we meet. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
I am currently in the O’Hare airport in Chicago, about the begin the last leg of travel to return home. It has been a beautiful trip and very fruitful in ways I had hoped for and in ways unexpected.
Over the next few weeks I will have a number of posts containing descriptions of trip and the buildings visited and reflections on the topics raised at the Liturgy and Sacred Space conference attended.
Here are a few of the planned posts to give you an idea of what to expect. Some of them I have already sketched out, some are just ideas of topics to address in the future.
And then there are the buildings. I have not yet decided how best to present those, but expect some Flickr sets soon at the very least.
In an appropriate confluence (as I am currently in the Netherlands), today is the feast of St Willibrord, missionary to the Friesians, first bishop of Utrecht, and Patron of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and one of the patrons of the host seminary of this conference.
Checking in from the Liturgy and Architecture conference in de Tiltenberg, the Netherlands. Plenty of good discussion and a great opportunity to expand/refine my own thoughts in a church setting. This really is a rare opportunity, and I am so grateful I was able to take advantage of it. Full reports on the blog will follow after some time to process.
The chapel is the first of the van der Laan family of buildings for the trip (this by his brother Nico but as always, in dialog with Hans). This is a clear setp in the early applications of the Plastic Number between the guesthouse at Oosterhout or the St Joseph Chapel, Helmond and the later monasteries.
Chapel of de Tiltenberg, Vogelenzang (Netherlands)
Seminary of the Diocese of Haarlem-Amsterdam
Nico van der Laan, architect with Dom Hans van der Laan
1953
Seminary building:
Jan Stuyt, architect
1931
In Part 4 of the series marking the bicentenary of AWN Pugin’s birth, we will look at what Pugin called the “True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture.” This article comes from one section (with slides!) of the presentation given at the Texas Society of Architecture (AIA) Annual Convention with subtitle “From polemics to principles.” Part 3 discussed polemics, and so now we must turn to the principles before considering applications and analytics.
Pugin’s writing has been unduly dismissed as a polemical argument for a style, not unlike many current arguments for the exclusivity of a style. But reading the texts, they are instead based on more fundamental principles which Pugin recognized (for his time and place) as most fully realized in the models of English Gothic parish churches.
In the prospectus to the book True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, Pugin proposed to outline six guiding principles to counter the architectural criticism that he saw as “little more than mere capricious opinion.” Consistent with his gregarious style of discourse, he only clearly enumerated two. The following represents one enumeration of the six principles based on the themes repeated throughout the text.
Pugin gives the first great rule of design, “there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety.”
The statement is remarkable for its unremarkableness. There is not earth-shattering here, as it sounds very much like the basis of my own education late twentieth century architectural education. Nor was it in Pugin’s time. As a tripartite criteria for architecture, Its archetype comes from the earliest treatise in Western architecture. The Vitruvian triad “firmitas, utilitas, venustas” is rendered as “construction, convenience, propriety.”
Propriety may sound to us a strange choice for beauty, but in the context of the elevated status of taste in the 19th century it makes sense. Propriety has come to be more associated with manners and conformity, but in this context it must be understood as an objective ideal and not a subjective preference.
Beauty must retain its transcendental status, but absolute Beauty does not require absolute conformity to visual expression. Nor does the objectivity of Beauty negate conditional beautiful expressions. In Pugin’s principles, propriety functions exactly to retain the objectivity of Beauty while seeking the form responding to all other concerns of architecture: function, climate, geography, culture, materiality, tectonics, etc.
Continue reading:
AWN Pugin at 200: Gothic Revival in the 21st Century (Part 4)
Today is the feast of St Winefride, a Welsh saint from the 6th or 7th century.
The intercessions for morning prayers (via Universalis) is fitting for the start of an architectural pilgrimage:
We pray for all who plan and build in our cities:
give them respect for every human value.
- Lord, help us as we work.Pour it your Spirit on artists, craftsmen, and musicians:
may their work bring variety, joy, and inspiration to our lives.
- Lord, help us as we work.Be with us as the cornerstone of all that we build:
for we can do nothing without your aid.
- Lord, help us as we work.You have created us anew in the resurrection of your son:
give us the strength to create a new life, and a new world
- Lord, help us as we work.
With just over 12 hours to go before departure to the Netherlands for a diocesan conference on Liturgy and Sacred Space and a pilgrimage around the country, preparations are nearly complete.
The trip will begin with a Sunday morning stop in London (with mass/services at All Saints, Margaret Street; St Paul, Bow Common; and the Metropolitan Cathedral, Westminster). St Paul, Bow Common still has the Lutyens Outraged Christ, and my last visit did not permit participating in worship there, so this will be a real treat in and of itself.
As for the Netherlands, and my first trip, I had to narrow down a potential list of 150 buildings. These were churches only, and ignored everything north of Utrecht. In the end, I decided to focus on the early modern through reconstruction churches and the work of Dom Hans van der Laan, his family, teacher, and students. Another highlight will be three days at van der Laan’s Abbey, especially praying the Offices with the monks there.
There will also be a side trip from the Abbey to a trio of Rudolph Schwarz churches and the Zumthor Bruder Klaus chapel.
So here is the list of 19 primary churches in the itinerary. There are a number of other nearby churches I may peek into, and I may not make it to all of them. We’ll see how the driving goes, and the weather, and the daylight.
Sint Bavokerk Cathedral of Saint Bavo, Haarlem
Joseph Cuypers and Jan Stuyt (1895-1930) Sint Jozef / St Joseph, Leiden
Leo and Jan van der Laan (1924-1925) Sint Jozef / St Joseph, Wassenaar
Jos van der Laan (1962) Parochie De Goede Herder / Good Shepherd, Wassenaar
L? van der Laan (1923) O.L.Vrouw van Goede Raad / Our Lady of Good Counsel, Den Haag
Jan van der Laan (1954) Pastoor-van-Ars-Kerk / Curée of Ars, Den Haag
Aldo van Eyck (1970) Our Lady of Perpetual Help / O.L.Vrouw van Altijddurende Bijstand, Breda
Grandpré Molière (1951-1953) Betlehemkerk / Bethlehem Church, Breda
??? (1980) St Paulusabdij / St Paul Abbey, Oosterhout
Dom Bellot, Hans van der Laan (1907-) Johannes Geboorte / Nativity of St John the Baptist, Nieuwkuijk
Nico van der Laan (1955) St Martinus / St Martin, Gennep
Nico van der Laan (1954) Zoete Naam Jezus / Sweet Name of Jesus, Oeffelt
Nico van der Laan (1954) Sint Josephkapel / St Joseph Chapel, Helmond
Dom Hans van der Laan (1948; rebuilt 1995) H. Kruisvinding / Holy Cross, Odiliapeel
Jan de Jong (1959)Abdij Sint Benedictusberg / St Benedictusberg AbbeyFronleichnamskirche / Corpus Christi Church, Aachen
Dominikus Böhm, Dom Hans van der Laan
Schwarz (1930) St Bonifatius / St Boniface, Aachen
Schwarz (1961) Annakirche / St Anna, Düren
Schwarz (1956) Bruder Klaus Feldkepelle
Zumthor (2005-2007)
Depending on wireless availability, I may post some updates in transit. And stay tuned for a plethora of photos and analysis in the weeks after the trip. Many of these are not well documented (or at least documentation not easily accessible), so I will be making available as much material as possible.
Thinking about traveling to New York, churches are not the first destinations that come to mind even though by default “churchcrawling” is my primary activity when traveling. But of course they are there, especially for someone interested in Gothic Revival Architecture.
I have posted my complete flickr collection, but this post will feature a few favorite images from the trip with some reflections on the buildings visited. This is actually a fairly unusual post for this blog to have this much personal reactions to visiting churches. But perhaps this will be good, since I usually dodge questions for which the following would be an answer.
Your curated weekly collection of links to news, articles, blog posts, images, and events related to liturgical architecture and church-building from around the internet.
Earlier this week, the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed St Hildegard of Bingen a Doctor of the Church. Among her multitude of roles and accomplishments, she helped articulate the medieval Christian understanding of creation and the role of arts within it. Here are a few quotes included in the order of worship for the proclamation and mass.
The light that I see is not spatial, but much more luminous than a cloud that sustains the sun, and I can not tell its height, nor its width, nor its depth. And as the sun, the moon and the stars are reflected in water, so shine the writings, the words, the virtues and many works of men – in them reflected – in me. (from: In the fire of the dove)
Man is in fact the absolute divine work, because through him one recognizes God, and for him God created all creatures. (from the Liber Divinorum)
For creation itself received a kiss from the Creator, when God gave it all of which it has need. (from the Liber Divinorum)
The senses lead man to the knowledge of God and transform him in the image of God. (from: Exegesis of the Creed)
And as work for the TSA/AIA presentation wraps up, here is a great summary remark from AWN Pugin on what it means to build a church:
“The greatest privilege possessed by man is to be allowed, while on earth, to contribute to the glory of God: a man who builds a church draws down a blessing on himself both for this life and that of the world to come, and likewise imparts under God the means of every blessing to his fellow creatures; hence we cannot feel surprised at the vast number of religious buildings erected by our Catholic forefathers in the days of faith, or at their endeavours to render those structures, by their arrangement and decoration, as suitable as their means could accomplish for their holy and important destination.”
All Saints Chapel
Trinity Church, Wall Street
Manhattan, New York, US
Episcopal (ECUSA)
Richard Upjohn, Architect
completed 1846
First photos from my September New York City trip are up on flickr. More to follow.
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