The Archdiocese of New York posted this video from the Discovery Channel showing a few of the techniques used for cleaning stone as part of the St Patrick Cathedral restoration project.
For further in formation on the restoration effort, visit the cathedral's website. There are a few other videos there as well.
The National Churches Trust, along with the 20th Century Society and the Ecclesiastical Architects and Surveyors Association held a competition last year (2013) to name the best modern churches in the UK. The criteria for modern was that they opened after 1 January 1953. The top honor went to St Paul, Bow Common—previously featured here and here and in this flickr set and again in this one, and the subject of my master's thesis. So needless to say it is a favorite.
As part of the competition, the National Churches Trust released a video profile of the church that really helps describe the experience of the space. The potency of the space does not translate well in photographs alone due to its raw appearance, so the movement and light possible in video help. And you have a wonderful guide for the video tour: Prebendary Duncan Ross, who has been an incredible pastor for the neighborhood and steward of the building. I believe his efficacy comes in large part because he understands how those two are related, especially when you have a building of such personality as a partner.
The UK's Best Modern Churches: St Paul's Bow Common from National Churches Trust on Vimeo.
Here is the full top 10, which you can see illustrated on bestmodernchurches.org.uk or the Architects Journal.
This video has been making the rounds this week on everything from The Atlantic Cities to Gizmodo to HuffPo. Since I've posted on the Basilica and Expiatory Temple of the Holy Family (Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família) in the past (on the occasion of its consecration), and I'm going to feature it in a lecture in the spring, it's worth sharing again.
So there it is! La Sagrada Familia rendered as complete, c. 2026. The descriptions were always grand, but it is even more complex and massive than I expected. The video is very well made, building up each pice to reveal the underlying structure before showing the end result.
Of course many of the outlets covering the video release refer to the building as "cathedral," but we all know better than that. Almost all of them refer to the building as "Gaudí's masterpiece," an epithet that is at least an over-simplification. Architecture as a whole has suffered from the insistence on the ideal of the individual artistic genius, and particularly so in this case. No substantial architectural work is ever the work on an individual; the common practice of referring to individuals as their authors marginalizes the work of many and establishes unhealthy expectations of the nature of the work.
In the particular case of La Sagrada Familia, even during Gaudí's tenure, he worked closely with the sculptors and craftsmen on the individual elements. This does not detract from Antonio Gaudí's work, which went even far beyond the typical roles of the architect. His attitude towards this project was more monastic—as it embodied the evangelical counsels—than the obsessive artistic narrative more commonly cited.
He ignored his Catholic faith until he was 42, by which time he was a famous and well-paid architect, something of a dandy courted by wealthy Barcelona industrialists to design their show-off houses. ... Over the next 30 years, he shed his wealth, spent more and more time in prayer, gave up meat and alcohol, put his money into improving the lot of the poor of his barrio, and dedicated himself entirely to the Sagrada Família, convinced that God had called him to this great task. (Austen Ivereigh in the Guardian)
And of course since Gaudí's death, the task of completing the basilica has fallen to many different artists and craftspeople using a wide range of techniques ancient and modern. The story of the ongoing work is at least as interesting as the original design. But perhaps the fact that a building started in the 1880s can be harmoniously and organically grown—and even be improved—by including some of the most cutting-edge digital generative/parametric and fabrication proves the genius of the design. Or at least its flexibility and resiliency, traits not shared by some of the more fussy, ego- and fashion-driven pavilions.
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.
Exquisite rendered reconstruction of the Alvar Aalto designed church in Riola di Vergato, Italy. The video highlights the interplay of the space, light, and material by removing everything else.
Read a very nice description of the building here, or check input on the Locus Iste Building Database.
More evidence that the small chapel has more in common with liturgical vestments, furnishings, and artifacts than it does with full-scale churches. This tiny community chapel in Portugal really is a piece of furniture, and it does exemplify one of the tasks of the church building: the unification of all other physical elements required for and desired by the sacraments.
Note the many details where the system of construction breaks away to accomodate everything from a small (wooden) organ, to a stoup, to a book. I do wish the lighting were slightly more integrated with the construction.
Video with commentary (in Portugese):
[youtube_sc url="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4OuBW_MUnlQ" modestbranding="1" autohide="1"]
There is also a time-lapse video of the construction:
[youtube_sc url="http://youtu.be/3GMqCaa9iJQ" modestbranding="1" autohide="1"]
Shigeru Ban designs another paper structure for the aid of natural disaster victims, this time a Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Read MoreThe familiar ghost bike memorials transformed from object to spatial folk-art sculpture.
Read MoreCoverage of the monumental consecration of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona including videos of the liturg, excerpts from the homily given by Pope Benedict XVI, and notes on the cause for Gaudi's sainthood.
Read MoreOctober's Architectural Record features a new Cistercian abbey designed by and completed in 2009: Val Notre-Dame Abbey, Saint-Jean-de-Mathas, Quebec. Here is yet one more example that the Cistercians have always been and continue to be the finest architectural patrons in Christendom.
Read MoreWell now, the Congregation for Divine Worship does in fact say that for vestements and colors "preference should be given to materials, forms and colors which are in use in the country." [youtube_sc url="http://www.youtube.com/v/LEWANtdtQ2o" modestbranding="1" autohide="1"]
Here is an introduction to another theme of liturgical architecture: the personal chapel, home shrine or ofrenda. Decidedly vernacular, adaptive (redemptive?) reuse, these small spaces provide insight into the organic development of devotional practice and therefore have some bearing on the development of communal architecture as well. Though most can certainly be written off as kitsch from the top-down high-culture standpoint, to do so is to amputate a living member. To paraphrase Dom Hans van der Laan, individual devotion based on the communal liturgy must be seen as a derivation. So too, the personal chapel is a derivation of the communal liturgical space. But as devotion has a way of organically integrating into tradition, practice and even doctrine, these small spaces of personal preference may inform our communal building practices. This is especially important since liturgical building and expression require far more guidance from below than does liturgical practice itself.
And so I am pleased to find this high quality video introduction to the personal chapel in the preserved chambers of Venerable (soon-to-be Blessed) John Henry Cardinal Newman.
The Cardinal's Personal Chapel from Corpus Christi Watershed on Vimeo.
