Re: Re: reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

On the point that it was the church, more than any other group or organization, that repeatedly pioneered the most adventurous and innovative architecture down the centuries

@Praxiteles wrote:

True, and precisely the reason why we must move beyond the “modernist” phase which has not produced much -at least in Ireland- of significance in terms of phenomenal buildings.

OK, I think you’re probably right about that, and I’d be with you on the need to ”move beyond the ‘modernist’ phase”, but I don’t think that Stroik and his circle are moving beyond the modernist phase, I think they’re just the architectural equivalent of Mennonites. They’re not going back to find a better way to go forward, they’re just going back, end of story.

@Praxiteles wrote:

Well, what do we make of the Salute in Venice, St. Peter’s in Rome, Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi etc.?

I think there is a fundamental difference. The great works of the renaissance, like those three examples, were completely new and innovative works, inspired by classical antiquity yes, but radical in their modernity too.

The Salute for example was apparently the product of an architectural competition in 1630 and this design won [presumably] because it’s architect, Longhena, produced a strikingly imaginative work that combined the serenity of Palladianism with the urban dynamism of baroque, exactly what the Venetian Republic wanted to mark the deliverance from a great plague. Flying buttresses for example [as discussed above] are here creatively transformed into giant stone scrolls and worked into the composition

That’s not revivalism.