Product of being busy

Often, when I have many things I need to work on, I feel more creative. I'll find myself procrastinating by putting my mental energies into things that I find more interesting. Part of me thinks its a complete and utter waste of time to indulge in this habit, yet, I can't help but thinking that sketching or designing for fun teaches me things that can be applied later. Or that allowing a creative outburst stimulates the brain and allows me to be more productive overall. In any event, I've been a flurry of activity lately, as we find ourselves in the pre-Spring Break crunch.

Today, I partially developed a design for a house. The behind-the-scenes work has its genesis in a number of thoughts I've been having about an ideal room. What does the ideal room for living look like? While in France, I was consistently drawn to the high ceilings and comfortable proportions that the French employ in their apartments. Part of the delight was due to the large, famed French windows that could be accommodated by the larger proportions of the room. My other inspiration is also French in a roundabout way - the beautiful home of our Paris studio professor here in Washington. He designed and built a house on a wooded site in northwest DC that takes advantage of heavy timber construction and a large "great room" that can be adapted to many uses.

So, back to the ideal room. Assuming myself as the client, what would my main living space look like? Where would I want to invite people for dinner? I think a large room would be ideal - with the kitchen elsewhere (I wouldn't want my dirty dishes on view during after dinner conversation). Not too much furniture, either. After our final dinner in Paris, we went back to my sketching professor's apartment, and the evening quickly turned into a salsa-dancing lesson - we were able to push all of the furniture to the edge of the room, open the windows and have a dancing extravaganza til the wee hours (the good Côtes du Rhône helped considerably). Regardless, the ability to be flexible is important to me. Of course, whenever I'm designing a house, I always think about what Christmas would look like there, and how Thanksgiving dinner could be accommodated. These rituals comprise only a fraction of the year, but then again, given their importance, shouldn't they be easily adapted into the architecture of a home?

Above, you can see the fruits of my labors. Essentially a two-story concrete box, the room makes use of a variety of wood details to add warmth. Steel beams and simple lightbulb light fixtures add a casual, industrial feel. Bookshelves divide the dining area from the entry hall and kitchen beyond. Upstairs, a small balcony overlooks the space, providing an isolated perch for reading. The master bedroom and a small office space are behind the balcony.

So now I've designed a house and taken the time to write about it. I really should get back to real work.

Born in a barn

After a long hiatus including - among other things - four months in Paris, I am back in Washington, back at the grindstone of my last year of academic study, and back - incidentally - at the drawing board. Why not inaugurate the year of Our Lord two thousand and fifteen with a bit of paper architecture? This particular design is for a small parish church (seating perhaps 200-300 persons). The seeds of this scheme have been germinating for quite some time now (including while in Paris). The genesis was a small corner of the fascinating architectural museum at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine where there were several models of the wooden structure of European barns exhibited. The one below caught my eye:

Of course, perhaps it says something about a mental imbalance of mine that the first thing I thought of when I saw that model was "man, this would make an interesting church!" Perhaps instead the thought came to mind because it reminded me both of the St. Henry Ecumenical Chapel in Finland and - albeit more tangentially - to Kramer Chapel on the campus of Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Fort Wayne.

Whatever the method, my brain began associating these varying images. One of my personal challenges when I undertake a theoretical design such as the one below - free from all constraints of budget and disobliging clients - is to strike the appropriate note when it comes to traditional architecture. Many have noted well that we may be in the midst of a nascent renaissance [a rebirth about to be born? Etymology...] of Catholic church architecture. Indeed, the "heavy hitters" of the movement such as Duncan Stroik, James McCrery, and others, have already blazed an encouraging path. However, I must confess that it sometimes leaves me a bit unsettled. Perhaps I have been too much indoctrinated by architectural modernists, but I can't help but feeling like much neo-traditional church building is a bit artificial. Much of the work seems archaeological; going to the high Renaissance or the Counter-Reformation for example, and choosing your favorite model to build cheaply.

Of course, I generalize, but I also don't think it need work this way. I am convinced we can develop an architecture that points to God and to Catholic truth without slapping Corinthian columns and pink marble on every sanctuary we come across. Yet, the iconoclasm and disorientation of churches in the dominant contemporary idiom of the moment go in a far worse direction. I certainly don't have all of this figured out - and I probably never will - but I will just reiterate by saying that this intellectual feeling outlined above is constantly in my mind when I put pen to paper for these sorts of little exercises.

Back to the church at hand. Thus inspired by the above precedents and thoughts, I did a few studies of different elements in my sketchbook. I liked how in the original barn model the wood structure was so expressive and layered. I also enjoyed how readable the structural principles were: wooden arch descending to rest on heavy stone walls. Now, nobody goes to church with the intention of a structures lesson, but it speaks to a deeper point nonetheless. Intelligibility and reason are two aspects of God that figure prominently in our thinking about the incarnate logos Jesus Christ. God created an intelligible and ordered universe which we are to have careful stewardship over. Building in a manner consistent with the logic and proportions (and materials) found in nature reveals our thoughts on the universe and our place in it.

After considering what I had drawn, I was unsure what the overall feeling would be, so I quickly built a prototype in SketchUp to see how the trusses would work together. As this was a quick, half-baked study, I just borrowed some elements from a previous design to mock up the sanctuary and the pews, etc. I was pleased with the overall form and impression given by the design. However, in the original model, the roof would've covered the entire structure, allowing daylight only through small windows in the stone walls. In a church I think that lack of light would be inexcusable (though it is the case in some of the more horrific suburban churches thrown up in the 70s). I decided on a sort of skylight method that would allow light in above the main arch of the nave. Playing with the shadow settings in SketchUp, I was pleasantly surprised with the way the light would play off the surface of the ceiling and filter through the trusses.

So, I stopped there for awhile until coming back to the project just yesterday. I've been pretty busy this week working for my professor on a very, very, VERY, tedious project (the joys of being a research assistant!), and I needed some time to do something creative. As the process of this design has been largely an interior matter, I went for an exterior view:

This design is a variant of a couple of aesthetic themes that litter my sketchbooks. The first is the "big triangle". Now, gabled roofs are nothing new in church design, but they are seldom very expressive. The major exception are the small English Gothic parish churches that are often almost all gable but typically feature a little bell-tower at the peak. Perhaps I am being too Postmodern, but I love the symbolism and power of the pure gabled roof (it calls to mind images of home, points the eyes heavenward, and even has a monumental purity because of its descent from the pyramid). Thus, the "big triangle" fits in well with the other theme I enjoy developing which is austerity - particularly in its Art Deco-ish manifestations: pure, largely unornamented geometrical volumes combining in varying compositions.

Thus, in this scheme, there is little exterior ornament. It is applied sparingly where it would be to greatest effect. The most detailed portion of the entire exterior are the portals - arguably where most people would come into direct contact with the building. Thus, I've hinted at perhaps carved tympanums (tympana?) above the doors and perhaps a carved saint or two in the niches flanking the central door. Beyond that, the exterior is quite severe.

Today, I took another look at the interior - paying close attention to the sanctuary, which I had not given thought to in the first SketchUp iteration. Again, ornament and detail is applied where it can be to maximum effect - here it is at the altar and the reredos. The form of the altar and its setting is based on the design of the exterior portals at the front of the church. A symbol often co-opted from the Romans in the basilican churches of the Mediterranean was that of the triumphal arch: Christ's death has opened the gates to heaven, toward which we gaze during the Holy Mass. It is architecturally and theologically fitting, then, that the priest - the alter Christus - would stand at such a gate to offer the holy sacrifice.

The rest of the sanctuary is traditionally arranged. Several steps separate the altar from the floor of the sanctuary, which is itself a few steps up from the nave. Certain folks with certain agendas may say that this engenders a much too clerical view of the mass. However, apart from the purely practical benefit of making the actions of the altar more visible, the elevation of the altar has beautiful scriptural symbolism. I think of the Psalmist singing "Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord, and who shall stand in this holy place" and Isaiah saying "Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength [...] say to the cities of Judah 'Behold your God!'" and of course one also thinks of the Lord's ascent to Calvary which gives meaning and weight to both images.

A Church

After what seems like months away from my own personal drawing board, I've recently made a creative inroad or two. I've returned to my usual muse, Mater Ecclesia, for a few graphic thoughts on the relationship between tradition and modernity. The program chosen is that of a small parish church (perhaps seating 250-300 people).

click to view larger

I was inspired by a number of historical precedents in the development of this scheme. There are allusions to the Ottonian Hallenkirche of the former Holy Roman Empire. The material patterning hearkens to the playfulness of Siena Cathedral, while the alternating stone surrounding the altarpiece is a small (and very toned-down) homage to Mario Botta - one of the preeminent postmodern masters - and his chapel at Mogno, Switzerland. American Art Deco sensibilities play out in the relative streamlining and minimizing of detail throughout. The image of Christ used for the altar mosaic comes from the Medieval Codex Bruchsal. 

The sanctuary follows a very traditional layout, making it ideal for both the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, or a Novus Ordo Mass said ad orientem. Permit me a small digression on the orientation of liturgy. Notwithstanding all of the sound theological reasons for facing toward God as a whole community during worship, having the altar arranged in the more traditional manner often works so much better from an architectural standpoint. A freestanding altar necessarily requires a larger sanctuary, which, depending on the size of the church, can distort the cohesiveness of the sanctuary as a whole. In short - a freestanding altar has a higher probability of getting visually lost in a sea of objects. In this case, I have contrasted an ornately vested altar against a slab of gray stone, so that the eye is naturally drawn toward it, then to the tabernacle, the crucifix, and finally to the Son of God, occupying what in Old Testament theology would be termed the Mercy Seat.  

On a more mundane note, this project was entirely developed in SketchUp, with only the shadows and lighting added later in Photoshop. It's a technique I've been working on for about a year now, and I think I've finally been able to strike an appropriate balance.

Lake House

I've been enjoying developing a design for a lake house that I worked on intermittently during February and March. Previously, everything was done in my sketchbooks, but over the past two days, I've been translating my hand drawings into a SketchUp model. Here's the first design sketch I began with:

Design influences include the work of Brian Mackay Lyons in Nova Scotia, the firm of Olson Kundig in Seattle, and even the work of Richard Meier in his more poetic houses. I think some of the more laudable goals of the modernist movement in architecture can be achieved more readily in a more naturalistic setting. The ability to truly take advantage of a site's topographical proclivities, for instance, is much more easily accommodated in a rural setting.

This is the model in SketchUp so far. Naturally, some things had to give a little bit in order to be accommodated. Things tend to shift as soon as real-life dimensions are applied. In a sketch, one can "draw around" difficult moments in a plan, and simply make things proportional. It is difficult to do the same in a 3 dimensional computer-measured model. This dialog between digital and analog design greatly enhances the architectural process, in my opinion.

I imagined my future self as my client. The site is a vacant sloping lot on Lake Ogemaw, in northern Michigan, where my parents have built a cottage. The lifestyle of such a house is naturally informal, and almost playful. I have attempted to have the architecture reflect such a laid-back way of living.

First Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

The plan includes four bedrooms and three bathrooms split between two main living levels (above an unfinished basement). The main living space includes a kitchen and dining area that open up into a two-story sitting area. A covered deck is off the dining area. The second floor includes a master suite that boasts a deck that views the lake. Two smaller bedrooms and a bathroom round out the floor.

This section through the main living room shows the high ceilings and the prominent fireplace. Stairs lead to the basement mud room, which is on the main route outside to the lake.

These perspectives show views through the main living spaces of the house. In the first, the kitchen, living room, and main stair to the sleeping quarters are shown. The second shows the panoramic views over the lake from the window-lined main floor.

The house is not completely modeled yet, but it's at a good phase at the moment. It's been fun to think through how the house would be used as I've enjoyed time at my parent's cottage the past few weekends. There are interesting programmatic requirements to consider in such a place: where will the wet bathing suits be hung out to dry? where will the euchre tournaments be played? where does the grill go?

Koloman Moser in Dusseldorf

Koloman Moser was an important artistic figure of the Vienna Secession - the Austrian variant of Art Nouveau. His most famous work is perhaps the group of stained glass windows he designed for the Church Am Steinhof, the magnum opus of the architect Otto Wagner. Of interest is this unexecuted scheme for the interior decoration of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Dusseldorf. The iconography is quite beautiful and calls to mind the restraint of the Beuronese school.

View toward the sanctuary

Section through the sanctuary and nave

View of the entrance wall and the choir loft

Wrightian Houseboats

As an American architecture student, I have been inundated with things Frank Lloyd Wright for time immemorial. For many, he is the American architect, and for others perhaps the only famous architect they've ever heard of. Thus, for much of my youth, relatives and friends would give me book upon book on the man, so that by the time I began studying architecture in earnest, I was quite sick of him (a feeling not uncommon among my colleagues).

It is then a special pleasure to come across a Wrightian project one has never seen before. Many of Wright's unbuilt schemes are fascinating in their fantastic, slightly whimsical formulations. One such project was his proposal for a summer resort colony on the shores of Lake Tahoe, for which he designed more conventional lodges and cabins, in addition to a rather fanciful fleet of floating cabins. I present a few images of these rustic houseboats below, courtesy of our own Library of Congress.

This project was proposed in 1923, which was after Wright's Prairie house period (though, in plan, there are certainly still similarities between the houseboats and the Prairie houses), but before his stylistic transformation into the unapologetic modernism of his later works (Fallingwater, the Usonian houses). One can sense the influence of the California textile block houses, which were being built around similar time in a relatively similar setting and climate.

The last image bears a striking resemblance to the Beth Sholom Synagogue, which wouldn't be built for another thirty years.

Small Parish Church

Last week I was privileged to hear a lecture by Mr. Jim Leggitt, an architect and architectural illustrator who is the author of a book, Drawing Shortcuts, that was one of my constant companions in studio my freshman year. Mr. Leggitt discoursed at length on how modern technologies and hand drawing techniques can be fused harmoniously to create a pleasing result in less time - an important consideration in these times of shrinking building budgets and shrunken firms. This weekend, I used one of the techniques Mr. Leggitt discussed to develop the drawing below. I began with a simple, monochrome SketchUp model. I exported and printed the view from that model. I then added several layers of colored pencil, rescanned the image and then altered it slightly in Photoshop.

The subject matter is a small parish church in a style that attempts to hearken back to the days of the Church's infancy in the Near East. There is something I delight in when I see materials that are visibly strong in some way. I have explored this concept many times over in my various projects in the studio, but I push it into a more traditional idiom here. The arches are massive and they rest on immense piers. The gilded and painted wood beams give a heaviness to the ceiling. The small clerestory windows pierce the thick, rammed earth wall.

We often think of a church's architecture lifting the mind to the things of heaven, but in this example, I have attempted to marry the things of heaven with the things of earth. The sanctuary is traditionally arranged, but the altar is located in a particularly cave-like apse. This was often the case in the early Christian basilicas. But, more than mere architectural precedent, this decision reflects the mystical meaning of the cave in Christian belief. The central act of our redemption - the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - centers on burial within a rock-hewn tomb. Additionally, we can recall the early Christians worshiping in the catacombs at the martyrs' tombs.

Yet, though the apse is exaggeratedly small, it is the most resplendently decorated portion of the church. A richly ornamented altar (itself often mystically related to the tomb of Christ - His altar of sacrifice) sits in front of a gilded icon of the Holy Trinity, flanked by two angels bearing incense. This arrangement recalls the Ark of the Covenant and the "mercy seat", whose nature has been revealed to us by Jesus.

Though it is perhaps not as visible at this scale, the decorative elements in the nave and the sanctuary are embellished with vines and other plants. This not only evokes Christ as the True Vine encompassing his Body gathered, but it also recalls the garden - the garden of Eden where we lost God's friendship, the garden where Christ's tomb was located where we are given a chance to regain God's friendship, and the garden of the new creation when all things will be restored in Christ.

A note about the chandeliers: I am of the opinion that many churches nowadays are simply dreadfully over lit (and over sound-systemed). If you light everything equally, nothing is emphasized and you lose the dramatic interplay of light and shadow that so often enlivens a space. The hanging lights are of a design common among the Eastern churches, which would provide ample light to the nave and sanctuary for evening services. I think the apse would have some discreet lighting tucked under the arch someplace, but I also like the thought of the soft light of the six altar candles glinting off the gold mosaic.

Of parabolic vaults

Here's a little design that I came up with. It is a cross-sectional view through a church, looking toward the altar. Stylistically, it is a bit of a curiosity. It started from a square plan based on some Byzantine precedents. Then, it got a rather Baroque looking altar. Add in some Art Nouveau lines and a parabolic arch reminiscent of the Engelbrekts church in Stockholm, and you have something quite intriguing indeed.

If a may engage in a bit of self-congratulation: this is the type of design that is appropriate for a modern church. Yes, the form, plan, and decor is arranged in a traditional manner. But, the stylistic cues come from very diverse sources. The arch over the apse has a certain Louis Sullivan feel to it. The altar, with its domed canopy, evokes Otto Wagner's work on the Church Am Steinhof in Vienna. Even the slim proportion of the Roman brick hearkens to Frank Lloyd Wright.

Short story long: it is traditional, but not historicist. It cannot be pegged to one time period, but it attempts to synthesize some of the highlights of the past 150 years into a cohesive whole.  

Something vaguely Byzantine

A little sketch project of the interior of a somewhat Byzantine or Romanesque church. I tend to use the terms interchangeably, as they refer to basically the same architectural movements in the Western and Eastern Roman Empire, respectively. Of course, there are distinctions to be made. As a rule, Byzantine architecture has a deeper focus on the surface and its ornamentation, while Romanesque tends to be focused on massing of architectural elements. The two can form interesting hybrids, though, with Byzantine surface treatments (mosaic, etc.) grafted onto a Romanesque body. And, that's basically what I attempted here.

A few notes are in order. The ceiling is heavy timber and the walls are stone - preferably of the warm, sandy color often found in Romanesque construction, especially in Germany. The nave is rather undecorated, save for a mosaic frieze that runs around the top of the walls, and the windows, which would be stained glass. The sanctuary is dealt with in a detail drawing below.

The sanctuary of any church should be the most rigorously thought-out in terms of iconography and graphic organization. It is the meeting place of heaven and earth during the liturgy, and its artistic scheme should reflect this nexus. In this particular design, I have divided the iconography among three vertical zones.

The first zone is from the vaulted ceiling to the tops of the windows. This zone represents heaven, and is centered on a mosaic image of Christ in Majesty, surrounded by seraphim. The panels to the left and right depict the Twelve apostles, gathered around the heavenly throne. The floral patterns to the far right and left recall the perfection of creation and the restoration of Eden in the New Jerusalem.

The second zone is that of the windows, which represent God's dealings in human history, through the person of Jesus Christ. Windows depicting the Nativity, the Transfiguration, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and Pentecost show the working of God throughout the timeline of our earth. The bottom third of the middle three windows is taken up by a depiction of the Last Supper, which graphically connects the image of the Crucifixion with the altar below.

The altar is the focal point of the third zone: that of God's continuing work in the life of humanity. The central crucifix and tabernacle recall the throne of God depicted above, while the gathering of priests and other ministers around the altar recalls the gathering of the Apostles to the throne of Christ. The altar itself is a fairly straightforward model that recalls many of the altars built in this country in the period between 1870 and 1910 or so.

These three zones work organically in the context of the liturgy. The mass, an event taking place at the altar in real time, re-presents the historic sacrifice of the Cross depicted in the central window, and reminds us of the glory of heaven that we are journeying toward.

Churches are theology in stone, and we should strive to have them reflect the divine order of creation instituted by God. We should not make churches mute buildings that we fill with our own meaning. Neither should we be superficial about the way we decorate or adorn our churches. The church building should be a gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, where all things within drive home a unified message.

Counter-proposal for the Cathedral of Los Angeles

Perhaps no other church-building endeavor in modern history has caused more controversy and consternation than the construction of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. And, with a pricetag of $250 million and a design aesthetic best described as Concrete Spaceship Nouveau, it's easy to understand the reasons behind the distress. I visited the building during my field trip week sojourn through the City of Angels:

Quaint, no? Interesting architecture does not an effective place of worship make. If the cross was not there, would you, O Casual Reader, realize that this was the cathedral church of the most populous diocese in the United States? I somehow doubt it. It does not speak in the architectural language of the Church. It is a mute building. It is not a Catholic building.

I put a pen to paper the other day in an attempt to come up with something a bit more appropriate, given the historical and built context of the city of Los Angeles. Now, I'm not saying this is the way the project should've looked, but I think it attempts some of the continuity in tradition that the built cathedral lacks.

Inspired both by the Art Deco of downtown Los Angeles and the historic Spanish Colonial style of the California Missions, this design attempts to merge the massing of a Gothic cathedral with the flavor of Southern California. One of my perennial favorites, Bertram Goodhue (who did a fair bit of work in California himself), provided inspiration for the overall form of the imagined cathedral.

Fountain Street Church

This past weekend, while back in Grand Rapids for ArtPrize viewing, I was able to have a look inside one of my favorite downtown buildings - Fountain Street Church. Founded as a liberal Baptist church in the 19th Century, Fountain Street has remained committed to a loose doctrinal understanding of Christianity and is now someplace deep in the realm of the New Age/Unitarian Universalist/radical liberal/feminist/nonsense Department. However, that is for another day. My point in this post is to draw your attention to their fantastic worship space. The Romanesque/Byzantine hybrid happening in this church is first-rate, and is a model that we would do well to imitate in new construction.

Gothic Doodles

Remember two posts ago when I was going on and on about how creative I've been feeling lately and how much my vision of architecture has solidified in that past few months? No? Well, shame on you for not hanging on my every word. Anyways, below is a little sketch project that I penned in those in-between times of day during school. It's a church of a certain Gothic persuasion with the capacity of about three-hundred persons (just a guess). My specific precedent was Cram and Ferguson's rather reserved South Dutch Reformed Church in New York City.

The nave is one unified space, without columns, bounded by corridor-like aisles. The nave flows directly into the apse, which houses a fairly elaborate English Gothic altar and reredos. Large stained glass windows illuminate the space, evoking the magnificent jewelry box feeling of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. The exterior is fairly muscular and reserved. It has very little in the way of traditional Gothic detailing, though it has a Gothic body.

As always, click to view larger. Opinions are welcome and appreciated.

Reinvigorating

I have been going through an intensely creative period of late, so I do apologize for my lack of posts on this blog. Sometimes one gets too carried away on the currents of the mind, his hands do not have the time to record what is happening. The re-immersion into the academic environment has stimulated my mind in new ways - which, I suppose, is the great asset of education. It takes one out of one's sealed spheres of mental activity and forces one into foreign realms of thought. This has been happening in the area of my architectural education these past few weeks. I feel as though I am standing on a pinnacle, able to see all that I have learned about architecture as a cohesive, living thing. It's finally coming together, as they say.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am rather devoted to traditional forms of architecture - especially in the realm of church design. This remains true. I sketch and design traditional structures to better understand the inherent order that is found in the best of all architecture. These forms remain beautiful to modern eyes, but the reason they are beautiful is seldom examined by modern architectural education. There is an unspoken attitude of "that's all lovely, but you can't design that anymore, you should do something more honest". Traditional architecture is inappropriate for our contemporary design challenges - the argument goes - because it is dishonest and does not adequately respect the materials and methods of modernity which are, admittedly, far superior to any other age in terms of brute potential.

So, the great pinnacle I find myself atop at this juncture in my education is that which attempts to synthesize the best of modern materials, methods, and sensibilities, with the timelessness and beauty represented by classical or traditional styles. I consider myself shamelessly eclectic in this way. I do agree with modernist thinking that we cannot adequately reestablish the Gothic tradition in 21st Century America - we are not peasants living under the same societal conditions of 12th-14th Century Europe. But, we can seek to reinvigorate architecture with principles borrowed from the Gothic (or whichever tradition you prefer).

Some may call this a sort of Revivalism, and it is at least partly true. When the last phase of Gothic Revival architecture hit this country, it saw the development of new, unique forms that would've been inconceivable during the High Gothic period of the Middle Ages. The Gothic style was reinvigorated - literally, given new life - in the US around the turn of the century. And its new life was utterly distinct from its old life.

If I were to design a building now - a Gothic church for instance - I would be subconsciously borrowing from theories of design espoused by people as diverse as Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Viollet-le-Duc, and numerous others. History has made them my teachers, for better or worse, and to ignore their influence on architecture does a disservice to design. I would much rather approach any project with a true sense of open-mindedness that puts the Vitruvian triad of beauty, utility, and durability at the heart and leaves a range of paths open to reach that lofty ideal.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a sense of pride among much of the 'classical architecture' establishment in this country. It is a certain species of pride that seems to say, "We were right all along." I do not identify with this point of view. Yes, I think Modernism went astray of beauty, but I do think there are things to be learned about architectural expression from Modernism. I think it will be my mission as a design professional to bridge that gap between architectural theories by being a-theoretical.

Like I said, it's been an intellectually fertile time for me.

An Art Deco Altar (plus some artistic ranting)

I am an avid admirer of the Art Deco period of American architecture and design, and this little liturgical flight-of-fancy attempts to reconcile the aesthetics of that era with the ancient traditions of the Church.

The altar is arranged in a manner reminiscent of the English Gothic, with the reredos sandwiched, as it were, between two turret-like piers. Crisp 45 and 90 degree angles dominate the composition and anchor the aesthetic program in artistic milieu of the earlier half of the 20th Century. Wrightian influence lurks in the background.

Three rather traditional icons are framed by slender concrete mullions. Iconographically, I borrowed from our Eastern brethren and depicted Christ Pantokrator (the Last Judge), flanked by the Blessed Virgin and St. John the Baptist. This arrangement is the default for the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic iconostasis - the typically ornate screen that separates the sanctuary from the rest of the church. Floral patterns in gold and green dominate the remainder of the reredos, alluding to our eventual restoration, through Christ, to the purity of Eden. Two angels crown the concrete piers and bear the instruments of the Passion.

The altar itself is a monolithic piece of reddish stone that is slightly tapered, evoking the image of a sarcophagus or coffin. It is through Christ's death that we are justified before God. Thus, the tomb symbolism is apt for the celebration of the Holy Mass, itself the re-presentation of Christ's very death. A gilded Chi-Rho adorns the front of the altar, reinforcing the Christ-as-altar-of-sacrifice theme. The tabernacle is front and center, surmounted by a gold crucifix and flanked by the six candlesticks peculiar to our Roman Rite traditions.

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This is clearly a traditional altar, well-grounded in the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church, but it is also clearly modern in its aesthetics. In reading about various new churches being built in classical styles (though a laudable trend), I am slightly discouraged that we are merely 'swinging the pendulum back' towards things that are artificially antiquarian. Contemporary trends in our liturgical discussions are busy equating traditional Catholicism with (usually) Gothic or Baroque art and architecture. While I don't think that Catholic liturgy can survive on what is currently described as modern architecture, I think that aspects of modern design and construction can be successfully merged with other older building traditions. This very synthesis was occurring in small doses in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the floodgates of the 'Spirit of Vatican II' brought forth a deluge of utilitarian, soulless, ugly churches. I think of the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore as a decent example of where we left off.

Lake House Dreaming

 This is a little sketch idea for a lake house for a site in northern Michigan. The vacation home incorporates natural materials, a plan that is very open to the outdoors, and an aesthetic borrowed equally from the Prairie style, the Great Camps of the Adirondacks, and cruise liners. I think the blend of these influences, plus the desire to encompass a no-frills 'up north' experience, lends the house a dignified elegance that makes it feel timeless and at home in its natural surroundings.

The house is situated on a sloping site that leads down to a lake (to the left of the sketch). This topographic change manifests itself in the spatial organization of the house: the 'anchoring' three story portion of the house steps down to the airy great room that juts out into the site with the help of a sweeping wraparound porch protected from the elements by an elegantly cantilevered roof. The inside-outside fireplace at the terminus of the great room provides a secondary 'anchor' to the composition.

The great room and its porch is conceived as the focal point of the life of the house. The two-story room is rather luxurious in size and boasts a continuous linkages to the outside through many French doors and ribbon windows. A narrow band of clerestory windows light the space from above. The porch cantilevers out from the great room toward the lake, providing ample space for outdoor entertainment, even in rainy weather. Personally, I rather like sitting out on the porch at our cottage when it is raining.

The three-story (including the partially-exposed basement) volume 'up the hill' includes the kitchen, dining room, and a bedroom with an en suite on the main floor. The upper floor includes three more bedrooms and two baths. The basement is mainly storage.

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I personally love looking at and designing cottages and vacation homes. They are meant to be flexible, recreational places, so they are often less fussy than a traditional home. I particularly enjoy the Adirondack camps of the late 19th Century and the Shingle style East Coast 'cottages' of that same era. Michigan, since it is a bit of a cross-breed between the planar Great Plains and the woodsy Northeast, is in a unique position when it comes to architectural heritage and influence. Hence, with this design, I felt comfortable borrowing elements from Frank Lloyd Wrights' Prairie Houses as well as from more Eastern elements such as the styles mentioned above.

Byzantine dabblings

Recently the combination of heat, humidity, and on-again-off-again thunderstorms have kept our usual stream of customers away from Twisters Ice Cream, my current place of employment. But, as I am now a manager - and thus do not have the luxury of being sent home on slow days - I've been doodling at work to pass the time. Naturally, my drawing schizophrenia turned toward things ecclesiastical.

The results of these doodles are shown below. The image is a section through an octagonal-planned church in a rather Byzantine style. It was inspired by the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna and Charlemagne's Palatine Chapel in Aachen. Both of these historic structures predate the East-West split of Christianity known as the Great Schism, which occurred in 1054. As such, they show a synthesis of both Eastern and Western liturgical and architectural sensibilities. The sanctuary, dominated by a simple baldachin and gilded wood reredos, is the most dominated by Western, Romanesque ideals. The domed nave and intricate polychrome stone and mosaic work is more clearly Byzantine in expression.

The nave, as aforementioned, is an octagonal volume crowned by a dome (which would ideally be given some sort of iconographic scheme). A one-story gallery rings the nave and provides access to the sacristy, vestry, entry, baptistry, chapel, and other spaces not shown in this image. The choir is lofted above the main entry, directly opposite the sanctuary. The ambo, depicted to the left of the sanctuary, is based on early Christian designs found in the ancient basilicas of Italy. 

I had no particular dedication in mind for this church, so the iconographic program is left deliberately vague. Ideally, the panels of the 'second story' would be filled with images of various saints, evoking the image of the "great cloud of witnesses" (Heb. 12:1) in mystical union with the congregation gathered below. The penditives (the triangular spaces between the arches and the base of the dome) could be used to depict the four traditional doctors of the Western Church (St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and St. Ambrose) and the four doctors of the Eastern Church (St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Athanasius, and St. Gregory Nazianzus). 

As with a previous exercise undertaken last year, this sketch and theoretical design was an attempt at squaring the modern desire for what might be termed a 'grand nave' where the entire congregation can be gathered together in a single space (rather than in a more traditional, disjointed nave-aisle-transept organization), with traditional liturgical orientation and majesty. We don't need all circular or octagonal 'churches in the round' to be bland, whitewashed, conference rooms. There are historical precedents a-plenty for something far more dignified and befitting of Christian worship.

UPDATE: Below are two further drawings of this concept. The first is the main elevation, showing the overall massing of and exterior aspect of the building. The style of the exterior continues the Byzanto-Romanesque aesthetic of the interior, while adding a bit of stylistic flair, particularly in the detailing of the dome. It has a certain affinity with some of Otto Wagner's designs for parish churches in turn-of-the-century Vienna. 

Though the inner dome is hemispherical, the outer dome (as can be seen above) is octagonal, following the walls. The octagonal protrusions to the left and right of the main entrance volume are the chapel and baptistry. Their relationship to the rest of the church can be seen more clearly in the plan, which is shown below.

The plan clearly shows the main volume of the nave, encircled by the one-story gallery. The gallery provides a unifying transitional space for the entire church. The small chapel, suitable for private prayer, Adoration, or daily mass, is to the left of the entrance, and would ideally be separated from the gallery space by a carved screen of some kind. The baptistry balances out the right hand side and continues the octagonal theme. In Christian art and symbolism, the number eight signifies the Resurrection and new creation. Traditionally, this symbolism was applied to baptism - resulting in a number of octagonal baptistries. This proposal maintains this laudable tradition and places the baptismal font three steps lower than the rest of the church. 

All in all, this idea is a fairly ornate one for a small parish, but combines many important aspects of our entire Christian building tradition in both the East and the West.

Proposed Chapel Redesign

Regular readers of this blog (if you are, I'm terribly sorry) will no doubt be familiar with my penchant for coming up with conceptual or theoretical designs, sometimes for renovations of places that already exist. Such is the case with this post. My high school has a chapel for perpetual adoration, where the Sacred Host is exposed on the altar throughout the school year, so that students are able to avail themselves of prayerful time spent before Our Lord. Members of the community are also welcome to come pray throughout the school day.

Currently (I was there today filling in for my mom during her usual prayer hour), the chapel is in a rather sorry state. I do not have a photograph, but picture if you will a standard-height room with concrete block walls, three narrow blueish-green stained glass windows, an altar that looks like it belongs on a spaceship, and pious clutter of every possible description. In short, it's a bit of a holy mess, making it an uninspiring place to spend time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament.

Thus, since I had nothing better to do this afternoon, I spent a bit of time imagining what such a chapel could look like if it were shown a bit of tender loving care and a few spare bucks. The results of my imaginative scribblings are shown below:

 

The first, most profound, change is the height of the space. Since this chapel is located near the front of the one-story school, raising its exterior profile speaks to the priorities of Catholic education to the wider public, while the added interior volume results in a room more able to inspire thoughts of heavenly things. Structurally, this addition could be accomplished rather easily by simply continuing the concrete block walls an additional story.

The rest of the changes amount to some liturgical reorganization, clarification, and beautification. The altar remains the focus of the chapel, though it has been replaced by a more noble and beautiful model of (preferably) red stone. A small tabernacle and space for candlesticks are provided on the small ledge immediately above and behind the altar. The reredos, or altarpiece, is imagined as a mosaic illustration of the Divine Mercy encased within a gilded, red-stained, wood frame. The words Jezu Ufam Tobie crown the composition. These words were revealed to St. Faustina along with the image of the Divine Mercy and are translated as Jesus, I Trust in You.  

The iconographic program of the Divine Mercy was chosen, in part, because of its connections with Poland. The west side of Grand Rapids is known for its Polish heritage, and many students of my high school are of Polish descent. Of course, the image and message of the Divine Mercy are things which are very pressing for our times and would be of great spiritual reassurance to those who frequent the chapel. Another, more subtle, nod to Grand Rapids' Polish Catholic heritage is the colored bands of stone composing the pilasters on both sides of the altar. A similar coloration pattern can be found on the columns of the Basilica of St Adalbert - one of Grand Rapids' finest churches, a monument to Polish immigrant faith, and the location of my high school's baccalaureate mass each May.

In doing this little exercise, it was tempting to treat the space as larger and grander than it is or needs to be. Small spaces and projects are always a little trickier because they force the designer to be succinct about the visual points he or she is making. I stuck with one iconographic program, a warm color scheme, a limited palette of materials, and a rather straightforward composition in order to make this little chapel someplace dignified and beautiful without being cluttered.

I'd be pleased to hear what you think.

Otto Wagner + Sundry Liturgical Rants

Here's a little parish church design based on some built and unbuilt precedents from Otto Wagner. Wagner was a key figure in the artistic movement known as the Viennese Secession, a group of Art Nouveau artists who rebelled against the classicist artistic establishment. However, though they rebelled against the Beaux-Arts classicism of Vienna, they maintained much in terms of ornament, decoration, and composition that would be discarded around the middle of the 20th Century.

This particular design is based a bit on Wagner's design for a Franciscan church in Vienna. It is a small church, with room for perhaps 300 persons. It is my humble opinion that many parish churches built in the past thirty-ish years are over-sized (as well as over-lit and over-microphoned, but that is for another post). People get lost in large parishes.

Anyways, the composition is essentially a circle within a square in plan, and a cube topped with a dome in three-dimensions. The circle and square are primal geometric shapes that have a lot of symbolic richness to them: the circle represents the eternity of God, while the square represents the earth and its four corners (decided by whomever decided the earth has corners). Consequently, the unity of the circle and square can be interpreted as God and earth uniting - which of course occurs in the mass as the sacrifice of Jesus is re-presented.

Though the nave is round, the altar is located in the liturgical east. In this scheme, I have actually pushed the altar against the wall, which would allow for ad orientem worship only. Translation: the priest and the people face the same direction during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Already I hear the howling of a certain generation saying that Vatican II did away with that unpastoral practice. But, ladies and gentlemen, having read Sacrosanctum Concilium (Vatican II's constitution on the liturgy), I can find no mandate that orders the priest face the people. But, I digress: ad orientem worship has its own benefits which I will no doubt enumerate someplace else sometime in the future.

On both sides of the nave reside confessionals. Yes, those archaic boxes have returned as well! They're in continuation with tradition, and seem to me to convey the sacramental nature of confessing a bit better than some whitewashed "Reconciliation Room" that turns the sacrament into some sort of postmodern self-help session. Wow, I am ranting a lot tonight!

The choir is placed in a choir loft, along with an organ. Ah, the organ, another vintage element, which, according to Vatican II, was to "maintain pride of place" in liturgical music. Well, we certainly have ignored that haven't we? We've tossed out the organ and Gregorian chant in favor of folk-guitar renditions of "Gather Us In"...because they're more prayerful?

Back to the architecture, please! The detailing is the flowing, organic lines typical of the Art Nouveau movement. Because of this movement's short lifespan, very few churches were built in this style. This, I think, is unfortunate. Let us overlook the architectural mediocrity of 1950-present and attempt to grow from the tradition where we left off.

Here endeth the rant. In short: Wagner, Vatican II, organ, church.

Some Gothic Revival Thoughts

Last night I was struck with what I call an "art attack" - ideas that have been germinating for a while simply needed to be let onto the paper. The result was a facade of a Gothic Revival church. This facade design takes in a number of influences, chiefly the civil and ecclesiastical architecture of Bertram Goodhue, the Craftsman aesthetic of early 20th Century America, and King's College Chapel at Cambridge University. Oh, and perhaps a bit of Art Deco snuck in on the sidelines.

In composition, this facade hearkens back to Goodhue's noble and austere design of the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago. There are two small towers that flank a large, gabled, central mass pierced by an immense window. Twin portals finish out the bottom of the picture. In detail, however, the more - how shall I say - American aesthetic comes into play. Preference for straight lines, right angles, and clarity is established in the overall decorative scheme. This preference was perhaps best elucidated by the well-known works of Frank Lloyd Wright.

The overarching decorative scheme centers on the person of Christ in various ways. The twin portals are divided by a stylized stone depiction of the crucifixion. Below the crucifixion scene are the symbols of the Four Evangelists over the door frames - symbolic of the Church's mission to take Christ out into the world and evangelize. Above the portals is the large western window. This window would likely depict scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary - a lens through which we can view the way to Christ more clearly. The small towers are crowned with twin angels, each holding a shield depicting a Christological symbol (the cross, the Chi-Rho, the Alpha and Omega, and the Lamb). Crowning the entire facade is the Resurrected Christ in glory (similar, perhaps, to the great statue of the Cristo Redentor that crowns Rio de Janeiro). The angels on either side bow down, bearing the instruments of the Passion.

Driving this particular mental exercise was a desire to attempt to develop an American style for church building. I am indeed enthused with the contemporary drive toward a more traditional ecclesiastical design ethos, but sometimes these projects can seem slightly imported, or foreign, in a way. I think this is because some traditional designers tend to interpret tradition to simply mean "anything from the Italian Renaissance" or "anything Gothic" instead of perhaps its more authentic definition of "building on our shared past." This is why I attempted to draw so many architectural allusions to American movements - we need to build on our shared architectural heritage as a nation, while not disregarding the architectural traditions of our mother, the Church, and our teacher, Western civilization.

Please click the image to view larger, so that the detail can be better viewed.

House in My Head

 We've been apart too long, O Blog Readers! Recently, I have been inordinately busy with the culmination of my first studio project of the semester. Now that everything has been completed, presented, and turned in, things are a great deal quieter on this side of the screen. That said, I thought I'd discuss my studio project in general and give you a feel of what I learned et cetera, et cetera.

The title of the project was The House in My Head, giving one a clue as to its residential nature. The crucible of the project was that we were to design and give life to a house that our client had in their head. Now, our clients were other members of our studio section. So, in essence, each person was both a client and an architect during this project: we shaped someone else's house while giving another person direction on where to take our own house. It was a very insightful project in that it allowed a first-hand experience with the client-architect relationship.

In order to make this project more successful, we, as clients, were not allowed to simply dictate to our architects the number of bedrooms we wanted, or what we wanted our kitchen to look like. On the contrary, we had to express to our architect the overall feeling and experiences of dwelling that we want our house to embody. This was achieved through a series of preliminary experiential exercises such as narrative writing, collage, and conceptual models.

From this idealistic level of feelings, it was the architect's challenge to translate them into concrete elements of living. But, we were consistently challenged to not think in terms of conventional house "parts" but in terms of what we need to accommodate in the client's everyday life. To that end, perspective drawings and models took center stage in the requirements of the project - as these are the easiest means of placing yourself into created spaces.

My client wished to live in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains overlooking Denver. His original narrative and illustrative collage conveyed feelings of intrigue, overlapping, folding, and pushing the boundary between landscape and building. To that end, I developed a house that folds along the crest of the ridge along the main datum of a very thick stone wall. This stone wall is the device that weaves throughout the home, creating spaces as it interacts with other planes throughout.

The house is not enormous, as the client wished to maintain a tight-knit sense of familiarity throughout the house. However, it is zoned in a way that makes each portion of the house seem distinct from the others: there are two sleeping zones that bookend the house, and in the middle are a dining/kitchen zone and a more private family gathering zone. Thinking in terms of zones rather than rooms can help guide the design more forcefully - putting together four large puzzle pieces is much easier than putting together seventeen small puzzle pieces.

In the end, I thought this project was very rewarding. My client agreed that this was a successful visualization of the house in his head. As an aside, my project, and a few other selected projects of my colleagues, will be on display at The Artist Within in downtown Muncie during the Art Walk this Thursday evening.