gunter
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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.
Regarding the ‘Church of the Autostrada’, I think I might have said:
@gunter wrote:
The exterior is less successful, but the interior is powerful and evocative.
@Praxiteles wrote:
Allowing for the difference between “modernity” and “contemporary”, and suggesting that the connection with “tradition” is an essential, Praxiteles would agree that some fine churches have been built in the modern idiom. That point we have made several times (we have mentioned Plecnik; Wagner; Barry Byrne; Gaudi).
These gentlemen hail from the 19th century and their work is essentially pre-modernist, as well as being acknowledged to be utterly individualistic, I don’t think we can include any of them in a discussion on contemporary directions in church architecture, without slipping back into revivalism.
@Praxiteles wrote:
. . . . I do not think that much of what is around in Ireland is anything more than imitative and deficient dross.
@Praxiteles wrote:
. . . proposed new oratory in Oxford dedicated to Cardinal NewmanI think the point I would try to make is that Duncan Stroik and the ‘new classicists’ [I’m assuming Oxford is a Stroik?] in seeking to return church architecture to it’s classical tradition, misses the whole point about what the church’s tradition in architecture is.
Down the centuries, the church fostered the tradition of pioneering the most adventurous and innovative architecture ever contemplated, There was no guarantee that flying buttresses would work, or that Brunelleschi’s dome would stand up, and indeed there were numerous catastrophic collapses, but that didn’t stop the church from continuing to take enormous leaps of faith in creating the legacy of phenomenal buildings that came to symbolize medieval and renaissance Europe.
For the church to abandon that visionary role as patron and progenitor of great architecture and to slip to a retrospective comfort zone would not just dishonour all those who went before, but it would be powerfully symbolic that the church itself does not believe in the future.
Looks like some interesting reading there.
Some people will say that the renewed interest in the re-use of historical styles in current religious architecture constitutes something of a whacky sub-culture and that the practice of forging [or revealing] connections between historical revivalist architecture and liturgy or spirituality is little more than an attempt at retrospective justification.
Other people might say that exploring classical models and reviving historical styles is a legitimate response to some godawful modern church architecture that expensively failed to evoke the essence of a religious building and wantonly disregarded tradition without offering anything new that was of anything approaching equal value.
The fact is however that these extreme positions are not the full story. Some architects have made the leap to modernity and created striking contemporary church architecture that does evoke the valuable connection with tradition.
This is the ‘church of the autostrada’ outside Florence by Giovanni Michelucci, built 1960 – 64 [concurrent with Vatican 2].
The church is a sort of wayside chapel constructed to mark the completion of the major north/south motorway in Italy, and also as a way to commemerorate the construction workers who had died in the course of the road construction.
The exterior is less successful, but the interior is powerful and evocative. I can’t find any decent pictures on the web, this b+w pic comes from Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, still the best book on architecture ever written.
Does this architecture not move Praxiteles?
@notjim wrote:
Irish Times http://bit.ly/aY3i7v
The council intends to exempt JC Decaux from applying for planning permission for the new advertising structures, a process which had resulted in a refusal by An Bord Pleanála of one-fifth of the company’s applications when the scheme was established.
That can be tested very easily. For €80 anyone can initiate a Section V referral to the local authority seeking a declaration as to whether a particular described development [even one intended to be carried out by, or on behalf of, the same local authority] is Exempted Development, or not. After 4 weeks from the date of submission, the matter can then be referred to Bord Pleanala, if the answer that comes back seems dodgy, or if the local authority hasn’t issued any response in that time.
@publicrealm wrote:
Using Part 8 (“Local Authority Own Development”) procedures for the erection of controversial commercial advertising – in order to avoid scrutiny by ABP – is tantamount to an abuse of process in my view, and is open to legal challenge. This is really stretching the concept of Local Authority Own Development.
The Part 8 provisions are intended to facilitate public works. Although there is sufficient wiggle room to allow abuse, any project, other than the limited ones set out in the Regulations, must exceed €126,000 (2001 figure – not sure if its index linked) to qualify.
Dodgy.
I think we’re getting mixed up here, it is works under the €126,000 project cost threshold that are deemed Exempted Development under Part 8, where they are carried out by [or on behalf of] the local authority. Development that is carried out by a local authority and which exceeds that project cost is not exempt under Part 8.
Again a Section V referral should expose any dodgy interpretations of ‘Exempted Development’ by the local authority by bringing Bord Pleanala into the loop.
If Bord Pleanala were happy to deal with each advertising stand as a separate planning application the last time, and each unit individually would come in under the €126,000 cost threshold, the issue would hinge of whether the development is in fact a local authority development, or a commercial development. For Bord Pleanala to agree that the advertising structures are exempt from planning would effectively mean that their earlier decisions to refuse planning permission for one-fifth of the first batch were invalid determinations.
I can’t see that happening and in any case, just threatening to use Section V seems to send a shiver up local authority spines, which is never a bad thing 🙂
@apelles wrote:
Another York Minster boss featuring Saints Peter & Paul.
Saints Peter + Paul as an aging pair of righteous dudes 🙂
I think I see them, they are the centre boss at the crossing under the central tower.
I recall that there was some initial shock at the impact of the restored colour scheme at York when it was unveiled in the late 70s. These are images of craftsmen carrying out the gilding of a restored boss in the south transcept in 1979.
Buildings like York Minster are just mesmerizing in scale and detail and magnificently maintained, especially when you think that it was nearly destroyed by fire at least twice
More exuberant carving from York Minster.
Gripping jaws open seems to have been something of a theme
@onq wrote:
. . . I support rejection of sterile modernist boxes . . . . .
. . . . . a more traditional, classical approach.
ONQ.Can ONQ be making an architectural comment . . . . after all this time?
. . . . and it reveals that ONQ and CK could actually get on very well 🙂
agree with BTH
Open ended stadiums are not all that bad, Croke Park being the obvious example, and there were other great ones two, included the old Cardiff Arms Park/National Stadium which seemd to open directly off a street with a bank of tall redbrick buildings looking in at the open end. The stadium as an urban colosseum – perfect.
It’s the whole distortion of the structure, particularly the roof, in a hopeless attempt to make the stadium look somehow ‘complete’, that comes across as jarring and stupid. You’d also have to suspect that the decision not to equalize both ends [somewhere between the two extremes] had more to do with creating a concert venue than a ball park, which also diminishes it’s value in my eyes.
I totally agreed with the decision to run with the Lansdowne Road site, but it’s not good enough to say that restrictions meant that this is the best they could have done.
A lot to think about with that magnificent dissertation on the ‘West’ shopfront by Graham 🙂
Certainly managed to highlight qualities I had never noticed before, and qualities I wouldn’t have necessarily regarded particularly highly until they were set out and explained in that way.
I read the beginnings of a debate [which unfortunately then died] on this subject on another forum recently where it was pointed out that the ability of the trained eye to search out and reveal delight in the detail of a pretty mundane and tacky building, poses a challenge to the architectural critic: Does he explore and extol these hiden delights in the hope that others may be challenged to look more deeply at the built environment around them, or does he lose the plot in doing this, by bluring the distinction between the good and the bad . . . in finding some good in the bad.
Then you add nostalgia into the mix and you start to wonder if your growing affection for some building or feature isn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to finding out that it’s about to be demolished, rather than any dispassionate evaluation of it’s worth. Liberty Hall would be another case in point – personally I’m fighting off feeling of affection for this eyesore that I had no feelings for at all until there was talk of knocking it down.
It’s a complex field. If there is merit in preserving the West shopfront, I’ don’t think the deep, bland, boxy, facia should be included, notwithsatanding the high quality of the lettering.
Just on that white horse,
Is that one of those ‘protestant’ white horses, I wonder? [as discussed of the ‘Billy’ thread a good while back]
@Praxiteles wrote:
An article from the Wall Street Journal on the work of Duncan Stroik published on 18 March 2010:
By CATESBY LEIGH
. . . . Duncan Stroik, a 48-year-old, Yale-educated professor at Notre Dame’s architecture school . . . . has labored long and hard to reconnect Catholic artistic patronage with its ancient heritage.
Tireless labouring . . . or shameless plundering of architecture’s back catalogue? :rolleyes:
Speaking of which, that High Altar at the church of San Paolo Fuori Mura in Rome, posted by Praxiteles, looks a tad familiar.
the original 13th century gothic alter canopy on the left and the gothic revival Albert memorial on the right.
Apparently there was controversy at the time [1860s] over the Albert Memorial, because of the similarities in the design to that of the Albert Memorial in Manchester.
However, writing in his Recollections, the architect George Gilbert Scott suggested his own design was original:
“My idea in designing the Memorial was to erect a kind of ciborium to protect a statue of the Prince; and its special characteristic was that the ciborium was designed in some degree on the principles of the ancient shrines. These shrines were models of imaginary buildings, such as had never in reality been erected; and my idea was to realise one of these imaginary structures with its precious materials, its inlaying, its enamels, etc. etc. … this was an idea so new as to provoke much opposition.”
Yeah right :rolleyes:Attended one of those RIAI – ‘Urban Design’ – CPD courses a couple of years ago, it was truely dismal, and three days long.
I see this one is six days.
That’s a good over-view of the complex, it shows the additions to the standard crucuform church, the tower/spire, the additional trancept/chapel facing the square, the peristyle arcade around the west end and the baroque flights of steps, each era adding it’s own layer, wonderful stuff.
Can’t find anything further on the 12th century door, other than the figures are Christ, ‘as judge over the worlds’, flanked by the two patrons of the church, the apostle Peter and the pope/martyr Alexander, not sure which is which.
The spire of that church in Aschaffenburg is a minor gem. I think it was completed in the 15th century, but the real hit is that unusual, cloister like, arcade running around the west end of the church and the great flight of steps up to it from the little square.
The west door struck me as interesting when I saw it first [sketch below] and being sheltered under the arcade, the detail is very sharp. The interweaving plant patterns on the continuous moulding mirrors, to some extent, the plant patterns in Celtic art.
I’ll look for a photograph on the web
@Praxiteles wrote:
St. Denis (Dionysius) (October 9), bishop and martyr, invoked against headache
a slightly extreme cure for headache 🙂
sorry for interrupting
@Praxiteles wrote:
Vierzehnheiligen
“The pilgrimage church occupies a beautiful position over the river Main, opposite the monastery of Banz. . . .
As a teenager, a student with a summer job in Germany [a hundred years ago], I took myself off to Vierzehnheiligen one weekend.
Words just can’t convey what this building is like.
It’s a pilgrimage church in an isolated location and if you’re going to do it, do it properly. Get a train from Bamberg to a little market town called Lichtenfels [the basket-making capital of Germany according to wiki] and walk up the pilgrimage trail through the autumn hills. The first glimpses are magical, Praxiteles would probably say spiritual, and then you reach this amazing building built of a golden yellow stone with it’s mesmerizing interior spaces. Mind blowing
Don’t let this crude sketch put anyone off, it’s a must-do before death.
@Praxiteles wrote:
The punchline to the minimalist enterprise, it seems to me, is that humans are not minimalists. We accumulate things, we get things dirty, we don’t all do the same things, we don’t all pray the same way, we don’t all look the same, we have bodies, for heaven’s sake! This is why I called minimalism almost a kind of dualism.
. . . . That is to say, the contemplative life, though it may appear so to the observer, is not minimalist, it’s ascetic, and in this life the distance between the two is like the east from the west.
Very interesting there Praxiteles :)You don’t normally come out with stuff that I instantly agree with.
I don’t know about the ascetic or the ‘contemplative life’, but there’s long been two branches of minimalism at work in church architecture, the minimalism of avowed poverty [the Cistercian monastic model] and the minimalism of the Calvinist intervention.
the Grote Kerk in Haarlem painted by Pieter Saenredam in the mid 17th century after it had been ‘cleansed’ by the CalvinistsBoth are reasonably valid sources for contemporary inspiration and both are defined by what they’re not; they’re not encrusted jewel boxes. I think this is also exactly what Mies was on about with his ”less is more”. The point with Mies is that you have to be familiar with ‘more’ before you can appreciate ‘less’.
The concept works as a contrary position, a detox antidote, but when it becomes imposed as a mass doctrine, it loses it’s power and we’re just left with less.
In a sense ”less is more” was a brilliant concept, stripping away all the unnecessary accretions to let the clarity of the architecture reveal a cool purity, but the more ‘less is more’ was adopted as a doctrine during the modern movement the lower the ambient temperature dropped, eventually to a level that wouldn’t support life.
Minimalism, by definition, is an extreme position, it is intended to challenge us to look at our condition and be ashamed.
Personally I refuse to be ashamed.;) Conveniently, I take my clutter as an affirmation of my humanity.
That’s why they do it.
They know if they can make the sign big enough, alonso will weave through four lane of traffic . . .on his crutches . . . for a crusty foot long with five toppings.
Burgos is a very interesting structure for several reasons.
The cathedral is predominantly mainstream French gothic, with Spanish flourishes, but the openwork spires are German.
According to Wiki, the Bishop of Burgos travelled north to attend the four-year-long Council of Constance in 1417. Part circus, part trade fair, this was the council that dealt finally with the Avignon schism which had resulted in there being no less than three sitting popes at this time, presumably slugging it out like a Dave Allen sketch while dispatching liberal quantities of papal bull.
Job done, the Bishop of Burgos apparently returned to Spain with some teutonic master-masons including one Juan de Colonia . . . [John of Cologne] . . . and that’s how Burgos ended up with German openwork spires 🙂
Juan may have embellished his cv somewhat, since we know that the towers of Cologne Cathedral were just half-built stumps at this time [posted a few pages back] and just about the only actual built example of the fabled ‘German openwork spire’ at this time was the 14th century masterpiece at Freiburg Minster
Freiburg is one of the true high points of gothic, there is subtlety in every detail and unlike the cluttered spires subsequently built [to the medieval plans] at Ulm and Cologne in the 19th century, the space under Freiburg spire is totally open and has to be one of the most extraordinary spaces ever constructed.
