First Things recently published this piece.

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In recent years, much work has been done to restore the traditional principles of church design; one principle, however, is still often overlooked: siting. St. Germanus is brief and clear on the subject, as always. In the final section of Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation, which deals directly with architectural matters, he says:

Praying toward the East is handed down by the holy apostles, as is everything else. This is because the comprehensible sun of righteousness, Christ our God, appeared on earth in those regions of the East where the perceptible sun rises, as the prophet says: "Orient is his name" (Zech 6:12); and "Bow before the Lord, all the earth, who ascended to the heaven of heavens in the East" (cf Ps 67:34); and "Let us prostrate ourselves in the place where his feet stood" (cf Ps 67:34); and again, "The feet of the Lord shall stand upon the Mount of Olives in the East" (Zech 14:4). The prophets also speak thus because of our fervent hope of receiving again the paradise in Eden, as well as the brightness of the second coming of Christ our God, from the East.

For St. Germanus, praying toward the east meant that at Mass, the priest and assembly were both on the same side of the altar. The priest was not facing the people; all faced God together. Likewise, church buildings, including St. Germanus’ Hagia Sophia, were commonly orientated, that is, the front doors were located toward the west and the sanctuary was located toward the east.

Note in his last sentence St. Germanus mentions two goals: Eden and the Second Coming. Thus one's movement through the church building, from west to east, darkness to light, front door to Sanctuary, is a metaphor for the personal Christian life: conception in original sin; baptism and life in sanctifying grace; increasing sanctifying grace through a life of virtue assisted by the sacraments; and finally, death, judgment, and (we hope) the Beatific Vision, that is, Eden. This structural orientation is also a metaphor for all of salvation history: from the Old Testament age of prophecy, to the New Testament age of grace, to the Second Coming and the end of the world.

There is a prominent exception to this basic rule for church siting. The earliest church buildings in Rome, built centuries before St. Germanus was born, were oriented in the exact reverse direction, that is, with the doors to the east and the sanctuary to the west. The priest in these churches stood on the west side of the altar and effectively faced the people on the other side. Liturgical scholars tell us that, at a certain point in the Mass, the assembly turned around, the church doors were opened, and all faced the rising sun in the east.

So far as I know, we can only speculate as to why these basilicas were sited this way. Three reasons are commonly offered: first, it may have been to accommodate the confessio, the tomb of a saint located underneath the high altar, often with steps leading down to it (as at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome), or the sanctuary and altar can be raised up a few steps so that the confessio is at the same level as the nave (as at San Clemente, for example). Either way, a small, simple confessio prevents the celebrant from standing on the same side of the altar as the congregation. Second, it may have been an attempt to imitate the Temple at Jerusalem, whose doors were to the east, and Holy of Holies to the west. Finally, some claim the orientation was intended to imitate synagogues, which pointed toward the Temple at Jerusalem.

The confessio below the high altar at Santa Maria in Trastevere
makes it impossible to say Mass from the assembly's side of the altar.

St. Germanus' explanation of the symbolism of the parts—that the sanctuary is Christ's tomb; and that the apse is the cave in which He was buried; and that the altar is the spot in the tomb in which Christ was placed suggests a fourth possible reason: as one moves from east to west, from light to darkness, one joins Christ's Passion, death, and burial. When one turns around part way through the liturgy and moves from west to east, one is joined to his resurrection and ascension, and is ready to greet him when he comes again.

As beautiful as the architectural symbolism of this reverse orientation is, it strikes most people as a rather awkward arrangement for liturgy. Yet the orientation of church buildings was considered so important that people were willing to live with unusual siting in order to get it. The result sometimes produces churches like Saint Agnes Outside the Walls in Rome, where the front door is not located on the main road (the Via Nomentana) but rather near the apse. To gain access from this side, a small portico just to the north of the apse leads to the side aisle mezzanine, the ancient matroneum. This was a difficult architectural problem. On the other hand, it is just this sort of problem which sets the stage for an original and memorable solution.

A contemporary view from the Via Nomentana.

After the Middle Ages, Christians gradually stopped insisting on orientated churches. Nevertheless, we continue to refer to the sanctuary as "liturgical east" whether it is truly east or not. Of course, the orientation of our church buildings is wrapped up in liturgical questions which are beyond the scope of the architect, to be sure. But so far as this profession is concerned, a recovery of the practice would be most welcome. For a church which prays toward the east is architecturally, if not necessarily spiritually, richer for it.

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This concludes our review of St. Germanus's Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation. I invite readers to review the previous posts. St. Germanus's timeless architectural lessons will change the way you think about church design.

The Church Building and the Garden of Eden

The Apse

The Altar

The Ciborium

The Sanctuary

The Bema

The Altar Rail

The Ambo

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The calles and avenidas of Madrid are decorated with some of the most elegant apartment house entry halls in the world. What a delight to take a stroll just after sunrise when doors are flung open, floors are swept, brass is polished—the city's portales are made ready to welcome and to bid goodbye in style.

But it doesn't only serve this practical purpose. This is the first room offered by the building, so it is key to forming a first impression of social standing, one that residents can be proud of. Architectural themes introduced in the facade are developed, and the status of the residence is reinforced through detail, scale, and quality of materials. It should convey dignity without pomposity.

There are exceptions, of course!

The best of these apartment houses were built in the 19th and early 20th century, and come in a fairly broad range of manners, from Ibero-Moderne to neo-Renaissance.

The prestigious corner entrance conveys status thanks to its greater visibility on the street, increased natural light, and more ample views.

And of course tile is always an option on the Iberian peninsula.

The best of these entry halls, and there are many model examples in Madrid, provide both a convenience and a charming architectural identity which avoids pretension on the one hand and a false humility on the other.

Dino Marcantonio AIA

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We've discussed how the church building is an earthly heaven, in particular how all the structural elements seem to be alive. The column capitals are like floral bouquets, the beams sprout leaves and eggs, the heads of animals and men form bosses, etc. There is no death in the Garden of Eden, after all, so it would make no sense to have a column made of a dead tree there. It would make even less sense to imitate the Garden using dead machine iconography. Life must be the primary subject.

We can take the metaphor further. Have you ever noticed how effortless the work of holding things up seems to be for these plants, animals, and people who populate our buildings? The graceful tendrils of the Corinthian capital support a huge load, yet remain uncrushed. The saint carries a section of ceiling, yet his posture suggests no burden. This is not an accidental feature. I would argue that architecture not only imitates the bodies of living things, but in fact, it imitates the glorified bodies of living things.

A "glorified body" is the body one receives in heaven, i.e., the New Eden, after the General Resurrection. St. Thomas Aquinas described seven qualities of the glorified body:

1. Identity: We will retain our original identity; we will be essentially the same persons as before we died. (John 20:11-16)

2. Integrity: We will retain all of the parts of our old bodies – our bodies will be complete. (John 20:24-27)

3. Quality: Our bodies will be youthful and will retain our original gender. (Rev 1:12-18)

4. Impassability: We will be immune from death and pain. (Rev 21:4, I Cor 15:50-57)

5. Subtlety: Our bodies will be free from restraint by matter, yet palpable. (John 20:19-23)

6. Agility: We will have complete freedom of movement, our souls will direct our bodies without hindrance. (Luke 24:15,31,36)

7. Clarity: The glory of our souls will be visible in our bodies.  We will be beautiful and radiant. (Rev 4:3, I Cor 15:40)

Is it not clear that architectural elements in their fullest expression, from columns, to entablatures, to vaults, etc., evince all these qualities? Let's have a look. The first two are fairly obvious. Identity: vegetable, animal, and human forms continue to be perfectly recognizable. Integrity: no parts are omitted from these bodies.

Then the comparison becomes a little more startling. Quality: plants are a sculpted at their most lush, flowers in full bloom, animals in perfect health. Impassibility: plants, animals, and persons do their structural jobs painlessly. Subtlety: architectural motifs often penetrate one another, as though they momentarily occupy the same space. Agility: again, due to "the dominion of the glorified soul over the body," plants, animals, and persons are physically unhindered and do work far beyond their natural limits. And finally, Clarity: these architectural elements are beautiful, represented in an idealized fashion. The soul seems to shine through the matter.

All this doesn't just hold true for church buildings, it's true for all buildings. But since church buildings tend to be the most fully expressive, the analogy is more evident in them. Something to keep in mind the next time you walk into a beautiful room and think "Glorious!"

Dino Marcantonio AIA

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The Maine Monument at Columbus Circle is one of the most beautiful in Manhattan. Architect Harold Van Buren Magonigle, and sculptor Attilio Piccirilli, there provided us with an object lesson in memorial design that is more important and more relevant now than ever. What it does, and what all monuments should do, is very simple: it tells a story that we have a duty to remember.

The monument was built in memory of the 258 American sailors who perished when the battleship Maine mysteriously exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, an event which provoked the Spanish-American War. It is composed of a central pylon and four gatehouses which together effectively form a gate to Central Park. Completed in 1912, it continues to hold its own, despite recent contributions to the Circle.

The sculpture group in front is entitled: "The Antebellum State of Mind: Courage Awaiting the Flight of Peace and Fortitude Supporting the Feeble." Peace stands over Courage to her right, and Fortitude to her left. The young lad in front holds his hands in the sign of victory. The prow of the ship is guided by dolphins, as though Nature herself were an ally. And it is modeled on the ancient Roman battleship with its prominent ram, as if to embody the ideals of the Roman Republic which inspired the constitution of the United States.

This monument is far from mute--it speaks, it informs us, and with poetry. It employs elegant rhetoric to enlighten us of the grave issues that were at stake in this event in the life of the body politic: the just war, the courage and fortitude required to pursue a just cause, and just rule in the wake of a hard-won victory. This ballad in stone and bronze is beautifully designed to help generations remember the Maine.

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The Byzantine style, like Gothic, Georgian, and Art Deco, is another wonderful experiment in that great laboratory called the Greco-Roman tradition. Constantine planted the seed when he moved the capital of his empire from Rome to Byzantium. At that time, owing to its history, the tradition in Byzantium would likely have been Greco-Roman with a Persian flair. Constantine set the Greek craftsmen practicing there to work on monumental projects the scale of which they had never seen, and he made New Rome the greatest city in the empire.

The Church of the Holy Apostles, here depicted in an illuminated manuscript, was built by Constantine as a tomb for himself with relics of the twelve apostles. Rebuilt by Justinian, it was the most important church in Christendom after the Hagia Sophia.

Over time the Byzantine style matured as two potent ideas, one architectural and the other theological, led to its two characteristic features. They are the pendentive, and the concern about idolatry.

THE PENDENTIVE

The pendentive was the invention of the brilliant architects and masons of Constantinople who wanted to figure out a way to unite the monumental Roman dome with the traditional basilican plan and cruciform plan. The problem they had was that the only way anyone knew how to support a dome was to set it upon a circular or polygonal plan, as at the Pantheon, for example. For it is impossible to build a dome on top of a cube out of masonry.

Imagine the volume above built out of brick. The bricks defining those flat wedges at each of the corners next to the dome would fall instantly to the ground. So they had to devise a way to mediate between the dome and the cube so that, brick by brick, the forces of gravity would be transferred smoothly down to the ground. Here is how it was done.

Step 1: Start with a hemisphere.

Step 2: Take four slices out of the hemisphere such that each slice meets the next at a point. (This volume is called an umbrella dome.)

Step 3: Slice off the top. Voilà, you are left with a volume which is circular on top, and square on the bottom. The shaded areas are the actual pendentives which are doing all the heavy lifting.

Step 4: Now you can add a hemispherical dome to the top, and a cube on the bottom. Perfect for a church crossing.

Step 5: For added lift, you can add a cylinder, or drum, between the pendentives and the dome.

Thanks to the invention of the pendentive, the Byzantines were able to build the Hagia Sophia and its many offspring. Aside from the symbolic value of the monumental dome, there is also the practical advantage that comes with roofing a building with masonry instead of timber trusses: fire protection. The masons in the region had already developed by this time the ability to build small domes without centering, or temporary supports (this little video will give you an idea how). The monumental dome would have been the natural ambition for them.

Domes were often arrayed in a quincunxial pattern. For the sake of formal coherence with the dome motif, its close relatives the vault and the arch play supporting roles (no pun intended!). Rather than the usual entablature spanning a colonnade then, one finds rows of arches lined up liked camels in a caravan. Horizontal lines in general are muted.

The pendentives of the Hagia Sophia are decorated with Seraphim, the highest of the choirs of angels, with six wings and many eyes (Revelation 4:8). They support the dome of Heaven.

[Image source]

THE CONCERN ABOUT IDOLATRY
The second idea which dominated Constantinople was the concern that sculpture smacked of idolatry. Even before Iconoclasm reared its ugly head there was, and is, in the East a certain prejudice against solid statues. And it explains why one sees so few sculptures in eastern rite churches, even today.

I believe this concern also explains the second feature of the Byzantine style, namely the flatness of the architectural ornament. Compare these two column capitals. The first (from the Pantheon) is relatively classic, with fully sculpted, very three-dimensional, acanthus leaves, volutes, fleurons, etc.

Corinthian capital from the Pantheon. Note the pronounced three-dimensionality of the individual leaves.
[Image source]

The second, from the Hagia Sophia, is more like bas-relief sculpture. The bowl shape of the capital is fairly intact, the expression of the volutes muted. The leaves are made by drilling the stone to form an outline and making a few shallow incisions to depict the veining.

Composite capital at the Hagia Sophia. Note that the leaves are defined by a minimal carving out of their outline, preserving the overall bowl shape.

[Image source]

The restriction of sculptural relief is also evident in what horizontal banding there is in these buildings. Where a Roman would have built a strongly projecting cornice, the Byzantine builds a modest band.

The palpable absence of sculptural form, which by nature symbolizes high status, has to be compensated for. The buildings at the top of the pecking order in the city, the churches, have to look like they are "that than which nothing greater can be built." So, they are profusely decorated in mosaics and frescoes instead.

St. Mark's Basilica in Venice.

THE BYZANTINE STYLE TODAY
The style spread with the institutions associated with it. In the East, it is practically the definitive style of the Orthodox, having traveled through the Ukraine and across Russia till it reached North Korea in 2006. In the West it spread as far as Venice (especially the glorious Basilica of St. Mark, above), Ravenna, and even Rome to some degree, until the Great Schism and the fall of Constantinople took the wind out of its sails. It picked up again only in the 19th century. Westminster Cathedral in London is perhaps the most important example (though it's not up to the standard of its forebears). 

Today it is gaining somewhat in popularity in the West, and understandably so. (It's even inspired famed fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld.) The concern about solid sculpture hampered the Byzantine artist and architect, restricting possibilities for expression. Yet, their coherent response to the problem produced a beautiful style which we cherish today even in the absence of that restriction. For those of the Latin Rite persuasion, it is associated not with a concern for idolatry, but with a young Church armed with simplicity, energy, and a zeal for conversions in pagan lands.

Dino Marcantonio AIA

MARCANTONIO ARCHITECTS

333 West 56th Street, No. 3A
New York, New York 10019
Tel 212 765 6606
dmarcantonio@marcantonioarchitects.com
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Returning to our series on the parts of the church building, with St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople as our guide, he continues:

10. The ambo manifests the shape of the stone at the Holy Sepulchre [on which the angel sat after he rolled it away from the doors of the tomb,] proclaiming the resurrection of the Lord to the myrrhbearing women (cf Mt 28:2-7). This is according to the words of the prophet, ["On a bare hill raise a signal" (Is 13:2)] "Climb, O herald of good tidings, lift up your voice with strength" (Is 40:9). For the ambo is a mountain situated in a flat and level place.

The ambo is essentially a large, raised platform whence clergy can address an assembly. In fact, the word ambo derives from the Greek for ascending. And its architecture, the ever-concise St. Germanus tells us, should remind us of two things: the stone at the Holy Sepulchre, and a mountain.

Review a few classic ambones, and you will notice first, that in all of them, the raised platform is round in plan. It is as though the disc-like stone of the Holy Sepulchre has itself been raised up so the priest standing upon it might more perfectly imitate the angel at the Tomb proclaiming the Gospel. Second, there are two sets of steps leading up to the raised platform, one to the east and one to the west. The resulting triangular profile of the ambo reminds us of a mountain.

The Gospel ambo at San Clemente (where else?) on the patronal feast day. "He went up into a mountain--and opening his mouth he taught them" (Matthew 5:1, 2).

[Image source]

The ambo at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.

[Image source]

The ambo at St. Lawence Without the Walls, Rome, beautifully detailed with Cosmatesque opus tesselatum.

[Photo by Br. Lawrence Lew, O.P.]

As lovely as these pieces are, they are but a pale shadow of St. Germanus's ambo at the Hagia Sophia, perhaps the most beautiful ever constructed. The description of it by Paul the Silentiary is worth a read. Essentially, the ambo, a larger and higher cousin of the examples above, sits in a slightly elevated enclosure defined by a colonnade of eight large columns. The columns, which Paul calls "flowers of stone," support an ornate entablature, and between them, a wall as high as a man. The platform of the ambo proper is itself raised up on eight columns (unlike the examples above) such that there is a domed space underneath for a chorus. It was all highly ornamented in gold, silver, bronze, ivory, and exotic marbles.

The plan of the ambo at the Hagia Sophia. The upper part of the ambo is described to the left, and the lower part to the right.

Here is how Paul describes its effect on viewers.

And as an island rises amidst the swelling billows, bright with patterns of cornfields, and vineyards, and blossoming meadows, and wooded heights, while sailors, as they steer by it, are gladdened, and the troubles and anxieties of the sea are beguiled; so in the middle space of the boundless temple rises upright the tower-like ambo of stone, with its marble pastures like meadows, cunningly wrought with the beauty of the craftsman's art.

Not a bad way to demonstrate and inspire a reverence for Sacred Scripture! The ambo has been developed in all sorts of ways over the centuries, so you will find a great deal of variation on the basic motif. Perhaps the most unusual is this triple-decker in St. Mark's Basilica, Venice.

The ambo at St. Mark's Basilica, Venice. I hope the lower level is not normally used to store folding chairs.

[Photo by Brian McMorrow]

Many authors use the word ambo interchangeably with the word pulpit; however, the ambo is really something more. A pulpit is an elevated platform with a book-desk, while an ambo can in fact contain more than one pulpit. (Sarnelli humorously takes Durandus to task on this point in his Antica Basilicografia.)

This beautiful piece of liturgical furniture has now all but disappeared in the West. I will leave it to the liturgists to decide whether it will make a comeback. From this architect's point of view, it would make a most welcome return to the palette.

The Cosmatesque ambo at Westminster Cathedral

[Photo by Br. Lawrence Lew O.P.]

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Nicolai Ouroussoff teams up with Dutch architect and uber-gobbledegook-meister Rem Koolhaas to sow more confusion regarding principles that are fairly obvious to most people. For example, it is obvious to most that it is good to preserve things which are worth preserving. Likewise, only get rid of something when you can replace it with something better. Apparently, these common sense principles escape Koolhaas and Ouroussoff, who evidently suffer from an irrational fear of old things.

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An Architect’s Fear That Preservation Distorts

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

Has preservation become a dangerous epidemic? Is it destroying our cities?

That’s the conclusion you may come to after seeing “Cronocaos” at the New Museum. Organized by Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu, a partner in Mr. Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the show draws on ideas that have been floating around architectural circles for several years now — particularly the view among many academics that preservation movements around the world, working hand in hand with governments and developers, have become a force for gentrification and social displacement, driving out the poor to make room for wealthy homeowners and tourists.

[Is gentrification not a result of demand outstripping supply? If land values rise as a result of preservation policies, surely this means that we need more, not less, preservation. Here is a clear sign that people like these neighborhoods, and we can help the poor best by providing more of them so that prices come down.]

Mr. Koolhaas’s vision is even more apocalyptic. A skilled provocateur, he paints a picture of an army of well-meaning but clueless preservationists who, in their zeal to protect the world’s architectural legacies, end up debasing them by creating tasteful scenery for docile consumers while airbrushing out the most difficult chapters of history. The result, he argues, is a new form of historical amnesia, one that, perversely, only further alienates us from the past.

[To me, "tasteful scenery" is a good thing. And "airbrushing out the difficult chapters of history" probably means taking out the trash--also a good thing. What Koolhaas' really wants is to use a few problems with modern preservation philosophy as a weapon to gut the original purpose of preservation, i.e., to defend our living architectural traditions and identities. Progress--true progress--is achieved by generations and generations preserving the good, and getting rid of the bad when they can make an improvement. True preservation does not alienate us from the past, it makes the past continually relevant to the present.] 

“Cronocaos” was first shown at the 2010 architecture biennale in Venice, the ultimate example of what can happen to an aged city when it is repackaged for tourists. In New York the show is housed in a former restaurant-supply store next to the museum on the Bowery, in a neighborhood where the threats to urban diversity include culture as well as tourism. The Bowery’s lively bar scene has been pushed out by galleries and boutiques. CBGB, the former rock club, is a John Varvatos store. 

[Ouroussoff's conflation of Venice and CBGB's is breath-taking. Let us pass over a consideration of the values of a man who would do such a thing, and go directly to what he says about Venice. Venice's status today as a museum city has little to do with an overzealous sense of preservation, a "repackaging for tourists," and a lot to do with historical realities and it's siting. Venice's lagoon setting was an advantage in the Middle Ages when it provided an excellent defense and when it was an important port on the trade route with the Orient. But with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, and the discoveries of America and the Cape of Good Hope route to Asia, its days as an economic powerhouse were numbered. The fact that Venice today still provides a living for its citizens through tourism is due entirely to the preservation of its beautiful architecture. Less beautiful cities have not done so well with the passage of time. As for the Bowery, "urban diversity" is code for drug dealers and prostitutes, and it's a form of diversity most people would rather do without. The same argument is often made for Times Square. Few people miss the Times Square of the 70s.] 

To highlight this transformation, Mr. Koolhaas and Mr. Shigematsu have kept the supply store’s yellow awning, painting the show’s title directly over the old lettering. Inside, the architects drew a line down the middle of the space, transforming one side into a pristine white gallery and leaving the other raw and untouched.

The result is startling. The uneven, patched-up floors and soiled walls of the old space look vibrant and alive; the new space looks sterile, an illustration of how even the minimalist renovations favored by art galleries today, which often are promoted as ways of preserving a building’s character, can cleanse it of historical meaning. (To sharpen the contrast further, Mr. Koolhaas scattered a few beat-up tables and chairs, salvaged when CBGB was closed five years ago, throughout the room.)

[Ouroussoff is right that minimalism looks sterile--I think that's the point of minimalism. The anti-dote to sterility, however, is not the accumulation of junk, as mere accumulation does not historical meaning make. The anti-dote is a meaningful renovation (from the Latin renovatio, meaning renewal). Take a gander at these slides, and ask yourself whether you'd like your home treated one way or the other. It's a false choice. That floor, for example, simply needs to be redone and improved.]

This has become a global phenomenon. All over the world, historic centers are being sanitized of signs of age and decay, losing any sense of the identity that buildings accumulate over time. Facades are carefully scrubbed clean; interiors, often blending minimalist white walls and a few painstakingly restored historic details, are reduced to a bland perfection. And new buildings are designed in watered-down period styles, further eroding the distinction between what’s real and what’s fake, and producing what Mr. Koolhaas calls a “low-grade, unintended timelessness.”

[A few points here. First, the phrase "sanitized of signs of age and decay" is a disparaging way to describe what is a good and natural practice. It is good and natural to restore and preserve what is beautiful in our cities. An old building does not have to look decayed to be meaningful. Second, Ouroussoff is correct that the renovation of our patrimony with a combination of minimalism and watered-down architecture is a soul-sapping exercise. The solution is to renovate our patrimony in the spirit with which it has been handed down to us, without scrubbing away its fine grain, so that we have something of value to hand down to the next generation. Third, this distinction between what is real and what is fake is a canard designed to deplete people's confidence in their desire to preserve their traditions. There is nothing fake about modern traditional architecture. The truth is, the inhuman architectural environment into which the Koolhaas and Ouroussoff would like to shoehorn humanity is what is completely fake. It is fake because it is based on a fictional account of human nature.] 

Mr. Koolhaas argues that this process continues to spread. Using an assortment of graphs and charts, he claims that 12 percent of the earth’s surface has already been landmarked by groups like Unesco, and that figure is expected to rise steeply in the near future. What’s more, the age of what is being preserved continues to shrink. In the late 19th century only ancient monuments received legal protection; today buildings that are 30 years old are regularly listed as historic sites. (Mr. Koolhaas’s own architecture is part of this trend. A house he designed in Bordeaux, France, was declared a national monument only three years after its completion in 1998.)

[The steady expansion of the category of "historic site" should be taken by the architectural profession as a rebuke to its recent efforts. People by now rightly expect architects to make a place uglier, so preservation is their only practical defense. The solution is for the profession to clean up its act. Unfortunately, it has not. Rather, it has co-opted the preservation movement, such that buildings which would not otherwise stand the test of time, like Koolhaas' house in Bordeaux, are protected with legislation, and old buildings which have stood the test of time cannot be renovated in the spirit in which they were designed. Preservation legislation now actively forces additions and renovations to historic buildings to be incompatible with the original. More on that here.]  

This phenomenon is coupled with another disturbing trend: the selective demolition of the most socially ambitious architecture of the 1960s and ’70s — the last period when architects were able to do large-scale public work. That style has been condemned as a monstrous expression of Modernism.

[Does anyone really care if it was socially ambitious? It was a complete social disaster, and style was but a minute part of the problem.]

In Germany monuments like the Palast der Republik, whose government offices, restaurants and nightclubs were once the social heart of East Berlin, became shorthand for a period many West Germans wanted to forget. Kisho Kurokawa’s 1972 capsule tower, one of the most radical housing experiments built in postwar Japan, lies in a state of ruin, awaiting demolition. To Mr. Koolhaas, these examples are part of a widespread campaign to stamp out an entire period in architectural history — a form of censorship that is driven by ideological as much as aesthetic concerns. 

[Censorship? Wow. The suggestion that there is a partisan political motivation here is galling. Perhaps it is Koolhaas who is putting his Marxist concerns ahead of anything else. There is no vast conspiracy to stamp out an entire period of architectural history. What Koolhaas is having trouble grappling with is the natural human impulse to rid one's surroundings of ugliness. The fact that almost everything built during a particular period of architectural history is ugly is of no importance to the average citizen.]

The New Museum show is essentially a manifesto, of course, but what saves it from becoming pure polemic is that Mr. Koolhaas is a first-rate architect as well as an original thinker. Some of the best parts of the show involve his efforts to find ways out of this mess. 

[In fact, Mr. Koolhaas' architecture is completely polemical.]

A 1995 competition design for an expansion of Zurich international airport sought to make sense of what had become a confusing labyrinth of mismatched terminals built over several decades. Rather than tear down the existing structures, Mr. Koolhaas proposed filling in leftover spaces between them with centralized entrance halls and new retail zones. He then created a circulation route to tie it all together. The experience would have been more like traveling though a real city than through a conventional airport. By keeping the various historical layers intact, and playing up their differences, he aimed to breathe new life into a dead environment. (The plan was rejected.) 

[Read Koolhaas' bloated description of the project on his website. Here's a sound bite: "Perhaps only a paroxysm of the pragmatic, a fanatical fixation on the 'now,' on the most concrete and actual conditions, can avoid the futility of forward-looking strategies, whose failure is prefigured by the glaring imperfections of the present." If this is not polemical, I don't know what is. The project which resulted from this theory-speak is an unintelligible mess, and its rejection is perfectly understandable.]

In another, more extreme proposal, from 2003, Mr. Koolhaas suggested creating preservation sectors in Beijing, in which everything from traditional hutongs to postwar Communist housing blocks would be protected, along with the way of life they housed. The rest of the city would be a kind of free-for-all, where planners and architects could experiment with new ideas and urban strategies without the crushing burden of history. 

[Again, this is pure polemic. There would be nothing free about this vision. It is a form of architectural apartheid, designed to keep traditional architecture in tightly circumscribed bantustans. For architects who know what they are doing, history is not a crushing burden, it is a liberating standard and a challenging responsibility.]

Not all of his ideas are viable; some seem intended mainly to challenge conventional wisdom about preservation and its benefits, and in doing so, to liberate architecture just a little from stale ideas. Yet Mr. Koolhaas’s bigger point is worth paying attention to: in the realm of preservation, as in so much else, we seem to have become a world terrified of too much direct contact with reality. 

[The opposite is true. Koolhaas proposes a complete divorce from reality, especially the reality of human nature. He proposes a two-class system: the unwashed masses who do not know what is good for them and who must be weaned from an irrational nostalgia for "dead architecture," and the architectural politburo which decides what is good based on ever-changing, opportunistic criteria and a complete absence of standards.]

+ + +

Koolhaas and Ouroussoff pretend to confuse the true spirit of preservation with hoarding. A hoarder makes no value judgments about what should be kept. It all stays, and the result is his home is a dump. If we keep everything, we wind up preserving nothing--and that, my friends, is what Koolhaas is really all about. His endgame is the embalming of our architectural identity. He is suffering from an acute case of cronophobia, the irrational fear that old things might still be alive to us today.

Consider another approach taken by the Venetians toward the beautiful church Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Completed in the early 14th century, it has been lovingly embellished by generations and generations, all meaningfully, and without any angst about what is authentic and what is not. It has also suffered through suppression, looting, and radical restoration. I Frari has been through it all. It is almost 700 years old, yet because it has been properly cared for, it still looks fresh as a garden daisy. And it is mobbed by visitors year-round who yearn to follow its example, not only in the preservation and handing down of churches, but also our cities, our homes, our culture.

View of the nave of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, looking through the gate of the Schola Cantorum toward Titian's sumptuous Assumption of the Virgin over the high altar. Note that not tiles in the floor have been left missing for the sake of historical meaning.

[Image source]

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Here follows a piece I penned for the New Liturgical Movement website.

If you are looking for an ideal model of a church building, then look no further than the Minor Basilica of San Clemente in Rome. It has all the traditional symbolical elements expressed almost entirely without abbreviation, from the spatial sequence to the liturgical furnishings. And its perennial relevance is attested to by its age--it has been preserved by countless generations ever since the first century when the Roman Consul Titus Flavius Clemens donated his property to the Church. The church building we see today is substantively the same as that erected in 385 A.D. Though we don't know how the good Consul's property before 385 was adapted to accommodate the liturgy, I don't think it is a stretch to assume that the natural and good instinct for conservation which has served San Clemente so well for the last 1,625 years is the same which informed the construction of that first church.

The most important symbol perhaps is the arrangement of the spaces.  The movement from the street, through the forecourt and nave to the Sanctuary symbolizes the individual's passage through life: from conception and birth in Original Sin (i.e., life without Sanctifying Grace), through initiation into and increase in Sanctifying Grace, and then finally salvation, and the Beatific Vision. It also symbolizes salvation history: from the Age of the Old Testament Prophets, through the Age of the New Covenant, through the Second Coming and the end of time. Between each space, a distinct threshold is crossed.

Most churches around us abbreviate this spatial sequence due to practical considerations. The forecourt, for example, may be reduced to a simple porch, and the schola cantorum is almost always left out entirely. Nevertheless, the basic symbol of our movement through time remains. Even the traditional placement of the Baptismal font and the confessionals, at the threshold between the forecourt and the nave (where we are initiated and re-initiated into Sanctifying Grace), is the fruit of this basic, traditional diagram.

There is a fly in the ointment, however: note that the movement is from east to west. I cannot definitively explain why the church was laid out this way as a glance at the property would suggest that it could easily have been orientated, which is to say, designed so that one's movement through the church was from west to east, toward the rising sun. All the churches built by Constantine in Rome were laid out "backwards" this way (except Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which was built into an existing building). A convincing case can be made that  this was done to accommodate the confessio, which is a tomb of a saint under the altar accessible from the nave (more on that later). Or perhaps this was done in imitation of the Temple at Jerusalem.

There are other possibilities as well. The priest offering the Holy Sacrifice is facing east, of course--the design of the altar makes it impossible for Mass to be offered any other way. It is thought that in antiquity the assembly would actually turn around and face east with the celebrant, putting the Sanctuary behind them. This is not as strange as it might at first sound. A shepherd is always behind his flock. This is why the celebrant always comes last in procession. Furthermore, the church building symbolizes the Barque of Peter. In fact, the word nave derives from the Latin navis, which means boat. So the Sanctuary is where the helm in an ancient ship would be--at the back.

We have a dual movement, then. We move into the church building toward the west, and then we turn around at a certain point in the liturgy and proceed east. Now consider for a moment St. Germanus' text (which I have been commenting on bit by bit over the past year). He says that the Sanctuary is an image of the tomb in which Christ was buried; the Altar is "the spot in the tomb where Christ was placed"; and the apse corresponds to the cave in which He was buried. So perhaps our movement from east to west toward the Sanctuary, toward the setting sun, is actually a representation of our burial with Christ. And turning around and proceeding east, toward the rising sun, represents our sharing in His Resurrection.

I have no textual evidence for all this. But I can certainly see why this manner of orienting church buildings did not stand the test of time. Having the shepherd behind you while in procession is one thing, but having him lead an assembly in prayer from behind is another.

Let us now review the component parts individually. Just as the Temple at Jerusalem had a forecourt into which the uninitiated could enter (the Court of the Gentiles), so does San Clemente. At the center of San Clemente's forecourt there is a fountain, a traditional symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary through whom Our Savior came into the world. In like manner, the world now approaches Him through her.

From the atrium we pass through the exo-narthex, or porch, into the nave. The walls of the nave are decorated with images describing the life of St. Clement, the one closest to the Sanctuary depicting his martyrdom. These images act as encouragements along our metaphorical way, providing us with a specific example to follow. The fourth century church was similarly frescoed.

View of the nave, the schola cantorum with ambos to either side,
the altar and confessio under the ciborium,
and the bema at the back of the apse.

Half way up is the 6th century Schola Cantorum, which was preserved from the original church. Essentially an extension of the Sanctuary, here the clergy chant the Liturgy and the Divine Office. From the left one gains access to an elaborate ambo or tribune for the reading of the Gospel, designed to accommodate a procession up one side, and down the other. An exquisitely elaborate candelabrum for the Paschal candle sits atop a pedestal in the knee-wall (the templon) surrounding the Schola. Its shaft, a column of the composite order, is encrusted with colored marble pieces, and spirals upward in imitation of the columns Joachim and Boaz of the Temple of Solomon (3 Kings 7:13-22). To the right is a comparatively modest ambo for the Epistle. The more prominent book stand at the top of several steps and facing the altar is for the Epistle, while the more humble one at floor level and facing the nave is for the prophetical lesson.

The location of the Gospel and Epistle ambos are perhaps the reverse of what one would expect. Traditionally, the Gospel side is liturgical north and the Epistle side is south, while here the reverse is the case. Jungmann argues that the determining factor in this early period was the Gospel’s position relative to the bishop’s throne, traditionally located against the back wall of the apse. It was most fitting that the Gospel be read to the bishop’s right, which is the position of honor. The priest or deacon reading the Gospel was then not facing away from the assembly, as would be the case if this were an orientated church, but rather toward the assembly, toward geographical north.

View from the high altar looking toward the east

(as Mass ad orientem would be said).
Note the Gospel ambo is to the south (right),

so as to be situated to the bishop’s right hand.
The Gospel would have been read, then, facing left, which is north.
The columns flanking the nave are ancient spolia,
only the capitals having been refashioned by Fontana.

Several steps above the nave, the altar  is sheltered and highlighted by a ciborium, an exemplary product of the 12th century Roman Renovatio. There was at that time a heightened desire to recover knowledge of and maintain clear continuity with the Greco-roman architectural tradition that had been obscured as the Roman Empire and its component institutions fell into decline–in fact this period is sometimes called “the first Renaissance.” Already one can see progress is being made. The Corinthian columns are more clearly delineated than they would have been had they been built two centuries before (assuming they were built in the 12th  century rather than the 5th as some have surmised).

Below, the richly profiled altar is inscribed with a dedication to St. Clement, whose relics, along with those of St. Ignatius, lie directly underneath in the confessio. Here is a beautiful detail, common in paleo-Christian churches, yet unfortunately never seen today. The confessio is simply a chamber for relics below an altar. As a unit, the confessio and altar form a cube, which is the ideal geometry of an altar. For a cube is the traditional symbol of the earth, and by Christ’s sacrifice upon it, the world is remade and sanctified. Additionally, the confessio reminds us that the altar is also Christ’s tomb, and that the saints mysteriously have a share in His Divine Life (Rev. 6: 9).

The altar over the confessio, and the ciborium above.
Just this bit is composed of elements constructed at
various times over a span of more than 1200 years.

The altar sits just proud of the center of the half-dome, the apse. The spectacular mosaic tells us that this is truly the new Garden of Eden. From the Cross's base grows a sumptuously poetic Tree of Life, filled with doves, peacocks, phoenixes, and images of various saints. From its base also spring the four rivers which water Paradise and the whole world (Gen. 2: 10-14). Above the Cross is the crowned Hand of God the Father, and below the scene is the Lamb of God surrounded by twelve lambs, the apostles, each with a corresponding portrait on the wall below (plus the Blessed Virgin to Christ's right).

The apse. The cathedra is partially visible over the altar.
[Image source]

Below the apostles, appropriately, is the throne of a successor, the bishop (now the titular Cardinal, as in all the station churches). This is the Bema. As is traditional, because the bishop’s cathedra is in this church, there is no Tabernacle on the main altar. The Tabernacle at San Clemente sits on the altar in the Chapel of the Rosary to the south of the main Sanctuary.

The floor of the whole church is another marvel. This Cosmatesque pavement, so named because the Cosmati family were the principal craftsmen, is a geometric extravaganza added to the church in the 12th century as part of an ornamental program to assert the authority of the papacy, then at the zenith of its temporal power. The Lazio region of Italy is replete with examples of this kind of pavement. The Cosmati, exponents of the broader conscious attempt at that time to maintain and clarify continuity with antiquity, adopted and extended many of the ancient geometric conventions for floor design, and merged them with iconography which developed specifically to serve Christianity. The quincunx is the most important example.

The floor is designed to complement the building's spatial sequence, and to underscore the movements of the liturgy, from those which form part of the consecration of the church, to those of daily Mass. The elaborate guilloche (the sinusoidal rope pattern) for example, marks a cross in the nave and the processional axis in the Schola Cantorum. Note that there are twelve roundels of valuable porphyry and serpentine marble in the Schola, as if to say that this is the place for the Apostles.

Watercolor study of the Schola Cantorum by my wife and partner, Paloma Pajares.
Read her book Cosmatesque Ornament for more information on the subject.

 

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This in my opinion is the most beautiful facade in all of Rome.

Santi Luca e Martina, Rome, by Pietro da Cortona

It is the church of Saints Luke and Martina, by the great Pietro da Cortona, and it will make your heart skip a beat. It positively oozes Roman gravitas and austere grandeur. So muscular without being flamboyant, so robust it borders on forceful, yet it is reserved.

It is perhaps under-sculptured, admittedly. What, no statues of either Saints Luke or Martina? I wouldn't mind some color in there as well--either mosaics or panels of stone of varying hue. (Let's blame those absences on the theological currents of the 17th century which were giving frank appeals to the senses a hard time.) However, the brilliant massing articulated with dense detailing carry the day.

Yes, facades can be "read" in much the same way as a building's massing. There are three basic parts to this facade: two piers at each side, and a slightly convex center bay. Now look at it (in person, if possible, after a strong cappuccino) and try to sympathize physically with its general shapes. You should be able to feel its posture within you. (Might take some practice.) The center bay feels like it is swelling out, the way your heart feels when you swell with pride.

There is also a feeling of restraint, however, conveyed by the flattening out of the center bay. If you pass through that front door, you will find yourself at the end of the nave in a semi-circular apse. So the facade gives the impression that it is holding back the internal pressure of the apse inside as if out of a sense of modesty. Look at the articulation of the center bay. The columns and pilasters seem to be doing the work of holding back the apse all the while standing at attention to maintain a sense of decorum.

Plan of Saints Luke and Martina
Note how the center bay of the facade
(bottom) "expresses" the apse inside.

The articulation of the piers enhances this sense that the center bay is exerting outward pressure. See how the pilasters multiply where they meet the apse? Additional actors had to be deployed in order to keep the apse in check, as if it might spring out.

Pilaster pile-up. Note the bee in the Ionic capital.
It is the symbol of the Barberini family.
[Image source]

The apse is pushing out, the columns push back, and the piers are pressing in. There is a real struggle there! And it is designed to prepare you emotionally for the spiritual struggle that lies beyond. This emotional appeal is typical of Baroque art and architecture, and why it is so popular.

Once drawn in emotionally, of course, one's intellect naturally wants to get involved. So the facade offers specific symbols to tell us what it is all about. The words in the lower frieze tell us, "Urban VIII, Pope, [dedicated/dedicates] [this church] to Saint Martina Virgin and Martyr." Urban VIII, the patron, was of the noble Barberini family whose symbol was the bee, so you will find lots of bees strewn about the facade. Why no mention of St. Luke? Well, the church on the site had been dedicated to St. Martina since the 7th century, and was only given to the Academy of St. Luke in the 16th century when it was rededicated to include St. Luke. So perhaps out of reserve, he was given second billing, and iconography related to St. Martina predominates:

Lilies, symbol of St. Martina's purity, chastity,
and innocence, set in a sumptuous frame.

Palms of victory, symbol of martyrdom, under
a Roman shield, set in another lively frame.

Flaming urn, symbol of immortality (with bees to boot!)

The Papal coat of arms, flanked by angels.

The facade also prepares you formally, introducing the architectural motifs which will be developed inside. The apse has already been introduced. The lower story of columns match the columns of the interior, and the shorter upper story corresponds with the vault of the ceiling.

The crossing surmounted by a dome. Even the
most subtle forces are expressed and resolved.
[Image source]

The structure continues to be articulated as the facade is: with clusters of columns, pilasters, and other details deployed with subtle articulation to suggest compression and relief, conflict and resolution. The facade is like an overture to an opera: it introduces the audience to the themes, the rhythmic variations, the style of conflict and resolution which will be employed throughout to help tell the story.

More than an overture, the facade is a large threshold which introduces one to the world that lies beyond. This is true not only for church facades, but for all facades, right down to the most humble abode. The facade of Santi Luca e Martina is a most instructive model for all. Like all good facades it draws one in emotionally, communicates to the intellect, and presents a coherent formal composition. And thus, it is rightly called beautiful.

The facade in context, surrounded by other thresholds.
[Image source]

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By the term "massing" we mean the general shape or shapes of a building. It is analogous to the composition of a painting, its broadest strokes, but in three dimensions. And like a painting's fundamental composition, if a building's massing is not right, no amount of excellence in the details will compensate.

Look at the tiny Temple of Fortuna Virilis, for example. Take away all the detail of the columns and the entablature, and you are left with a rectangular cuboid.

Temple of Fortuna Virilis, Rome, 40 B.C.
[Image source]

Note the relative proportions of width to height to length. They are approximately 1 to 1.5 to 2 (depending on where exactly you strike your baselines). The overall proportions of that basic mass are pleasing. It doesn't seem too tall or too short or too long. Imagine it shorter--it would look inelegant and squat. Now imagine it taller--it would look rather gangly.

Now let's look at a building whose massing is a little more involved. Here is the celebrated Santa Maria della Consolazione in Todi.

Santa Maria della Consolazione, Todi, Italy
by Cola da Caprarola and Peruzzi, 1508

While the massing is more complex than that of the Temple of Fortuna Virilis, it remains intelligible. Breaking it down to its simple components, you have a central cube supporting a drum which supports a dome on top. And on each side of the cube, you have a half-drum supporting a half-dome. The proportions of all of these pieces relative to one another are perfect, and none could be changed significantly but for the worse.

Note also that the overall volume is very roughly pyramidal. It gives one the sense of stability, that it could not easily topple over. It also gives one a feeling of aspiration, as though the building were struggling, without a loss of serenity, to hold the Cross up as high as it could.

For massing is more than a clinical description of volumes, and even more than the building's composition. In some mysterious way it is really a description of a building's posture, and through its posture, its emotional attitude. How this happens, that massing can convey emotion, was perhaps best explained by Sir Geoffrey Scott in his essential book The Architecture of Humanism. Imagining a "top-heavy" building, one not so balanced as Santa Maria della Consolazione, he writes:

[The appearance of instability] has done what the mere idea [of instability] could not: it has stirred our physical memory. It has awakened in us, not indeed an actual state of instability or of being overloaded, but that condition of spirit which in the past has belonged to our actual experience of weakness, of thwarted effort, or incipient collapse. We have looked at the building and identified ourselves with its apparent state. We have transcribed ourselves in terms of architecture.

In other words, we feel a building's massing in our bodies, we identify with it physically. So when we look at Santa Maria della Salute in Venice (below), we get a sense of muscular, vigorous movement, an irrepressible bursting with joy. The drum under the dome does not simply rest tranquilly on the volume below as at Santa Maria della Consolazione. Here tightly wound volutes are necessary to contain it, as if it would explode from the pressure inside. From the central octagonal volume, pedimented cubes jut out with sharper edges, and therefore greater force, than at Todi. This is the image of a pulsating, fleshy cosmos created by the muscular God of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

Santa Maria della Salute, Venice
Baldassare Longhena, 1631
[Image source]

Evelyn Waugh described our physical identification with architecture very poetically in his masterpiece Brideshead Revisited. Charles Ryder falls in love with the house Castle Howard, pre-figuring a later conversion of another sort:

This was my conversion to the Baroque. Here under that high and insolent dome, under those coffered ceilings; here, as I passed through those arches and broken pediments to the pillared shade beyond and sat, hour by hour, before the fountain, probing its shadows, tracing its lingering echoes, rejoicing in all its clustered feats of daring and invention, I felt a whole new system of nerves alive within me, as though the water that spurted and bubbled among its stone, was indeed a life-giving spring.

Noble repose at Castle Howard by Sir John Vanbrugh, 1699
[Image source]

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Continuing our series on the parts of the church building, St. Germanus goes on to say:

8. The entablature is the legal and holy decoration, representing a depiction of the crucified Christ by means of a decorated cross.

9. The chancel barriers indicate the place of prayer: the outside is for the people, and the inside, the Holy of Holies , is accessible only to the priests. The barriers, made of bronze, are like those around the Holy Sepulchre, so that no one might enter there by accident.

An entablature is a decorated beam supported by either a wall or at least two columns. (More on that here.) In this case, it is supported by columns as St. Germanus is referring to the barrier dividing the nave from the chancel, or sanctuary. In fact, the word chancel derives from the Latin word for gates, cancelli (pronounced kan-chelly).

However, St. Germanus is not describing what we call a chancel screen in the West. A chancel screen separates the nave (the area traditionally reserved for the laity) from the choir and the sanctuary (the area traditionally reserved for clergy). The barrier St. Germanus describes separates the sanctuary from the choir. It is the boundary of the Holy of Holies, and is the forerunner of the eastern iconostasis and the western altar rail.

A view from the choir looking toward the
sanctuary at Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.
Columns and entablature atop the low wall,
or templon, mark the boundary of the sanctuary.
In antiquity, curtains hung between the columns
[Image source]

Now, footnote eight in the text explains that by "Holy Sepulchre" St. Germanus is referring to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built by Constantine. However, surely St. Germanus is showing us the mystical meaning of these barriers and is referring to the tomb of Christ.

Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. [Matthew 27:59-60]

“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. [Matthew 27:65-66]

Just as the sanctuary symbolizes the tomb, so the barriers symbolize the stone, the seal, and the guard. The sanctuary is a sacred place, and as such must appear secured. One is also reminded of the barrier set up at the gate to the Garden of Eden after the expulsion of Adam:

After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. [Genesis 3:24]

Original sin created a barrier between the visible world and the invisible world.

These screens in the more important churches were always made of the most precious materials, and were highly ornamented. The screen at the Hagia Sophia, St. Germanus's cathedral, consisted of twelve columns surmounted by an entablature, with icons in between, all made of silver.

In the East, in reaction to the iconoclast heresy, the barrier was further elaborated with icons. Here is the sumptuous iconostasis in the Church of Elijah the Prophet, in Yaroslavl, Russia. It provides the faithful many windows into the heaven that lies just on the other side.

Church of Elijah the Prophet
[Image source]

In the West, the barrier was simplified to form what is now called an altar rail. Here is one of the most charming altar rails I've seen, at Borromini's Spada Chapel, in San Girolamo della Carità, Rome.

Cappella Spada, San Girolamo della Carità
[Image source]

Normally, the modern altar rail is composed of balusters and a rail. Here is our proposal for the conversion of an old school gymnasium into a perpetual adoration chapel, at the Church of St. Agnes, New York City. The stone altar rail is simple yet dignified, it suggests an important boundary, and provides an ideal setting for Holy Communion--when heaven and earth touch.

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In 1929 the Belgian painter Rene Magritte unveiled his iconoclastic work "The Treason of Images." Below the image of the pipe is the statement "This is not a pipe." The man apparently was scrupulous enough not to want to lie to his audience, yet not so scrupulous as to have minded boring the audience with the obvious: neither the image of the pipe nor the word "pipe" are actual pipes, they are symbols for the thing we know is a pipe. Even a child can grasp that.

Painting by René Magritte, 1929

Magritte wanted to destroy the image, and he succeeded. Now that iconoclasm is De Fide among the undogmatic, a curious reversal has taken place. While it used to be that words and images symbolized things, now they have become the things themselves. For example, we are told that this is a library.

Ceci est une bibliothèque.
[Image source]

Without the label "library" on this pile, however, there would be no way to know that it is a library. The word is necessary to substitute for the thing. For this, my friends, is in fact not a library--it is a meaningless lump.

Designed by Steven Holl, the lump will house books for the denizens of the Hunters Point neighborhood in Queens, New York. The architecture critic for the New York Times heaps predictable praise upon it, using many words, words that have no relation to things. I give them a good fisking below for the convenience of readers.

Civic Engagement Trumps ‘Shhh!’
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

There may be no better example of the worrying state of American architecture than the career of Steven Holl.

At 63, this New York architect is widely considered one of the most original talents of his era. His work has influenced a generation of architects and students. And over the last decade or so he has become a star in faraway places like Scandinavia and China, where he is celebrated as someone able to imbue even the most colossal urban projects with lyricism.

Yet his career at home has been negligible. He has had only a handful of notable commissions in the United States, and his output in New York is embarrassingly slight: a modest addition to Pratt Institute’s school of architecture, a cramped (if underrated) gallery at the edge of Little Italy and a handful of interior renovations.

So when the Queens Library Board of Trustees approved the design of the new Hunters Point community library this month, it was a well-deserved and long overdue breakthrough. The project, done in collaboration with Mr. Holl’s partner Chris McVoy and scheduled to begin construction early next year, will stand on a prominent waterfront site just across the East River from the United Nations. It is a striking expression of the continuing effort to shake the dust off of the city’s aging libraries and recast them as lively communal hubs, and should go far in bolstering the civic image of Queens. [I struggle to find anything civic about this building. It is pure self-indulgence foisted upon a community, the very antithesis of civic.]

The building’s beguiling appearance — with giant free-form windows carved out of an 80-foot-tall rectangular facade of rough aluminum — should make it an instantly recognizable landmark [perhaps for all the wrong reasons]. Seen from Manhattan, it will have a haunting presence on the waterfront, flanked by the red neon Pepsi-Cola sign to the north and the remnants of an abandoned ferry terminal to the south. At dusk the library’s odd-shaped windows will emit an eerie glow, looking a bit like ghosts trapped inside a machine. And late at night, when the building is dark, spotlights will illuminate its pockmarked facade and the windows will resemble caves dug into the wall of a cliff. [Why a haunting presence, an eerie glow, ghosts, and a cave are desirable or relevant is left unstated.]

At night, the proposed lump is designed to be a blur.
[Source: New York Times]

Only at the site itself, however, will the optimism driving Mr. Holl’s design come into focus. [Optimism? What makes this building optimistic?] The library will stand at the western edge of Queens West, a soulless mix of generic apartment towers and barren streets built up in the last decade or so that has neither the dilapidated charm of the old manufacturing neighborhoods to the east nor the density of a real urban neighborhood. (The development’s one saving grace is a narrow park that snakes along the riverfront; its steel gantries, once used for loading boats, are an ode to the area’s industrial past.) [Alas, this building will add to the soullessness.]

Mr. Holl ’s design is not about escaping this world but transforming it into something more poetic. [Irrational shapes do not poetry make. True poetry is intelligible and conveys meaning. This building offers nothing substantive.] Approaching from the towers across the street, visitors will enter a tranquil reading garden, a little paradise walled off from the gloomy scene that surrounds it. Ginkgo trees will shade the garden, partly blocking the view of the towers. As visitors move closer to the library, they will be able to see through the lobby windows and out over a reflecting pool and the riverfront park. Other odd-shaped windows will allow diagonal glimpses up through the building and out to the sky. [It's a pity that this library seems to be giving up on the contributing to the street, the very first thing a civic building is supposed to do. It's telling that a site plan and a ground floor plan are not provided to us.]

When I first saw a rendering of this facade it brought to mind Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1975 “Day’s End,” in which Matta-Clark used a power saw to carve big circular openings into the exterior of an abandoned industrial building on the Hudson River in Lower Manhattan. In both works the overscaled cut-out openings are powerfully metaphorical. They suggest the desire to expose private, interior worlds to public scrutiny, and — by seeming to undermine the buildings’ structural stability — they evoke an unstable, ever-changing world. [First, such a juvenile sculptural statement hardly rises to the level of metaphor. Metaphors have depths that reward plumbing. Second, if this is supposed to be a public library, how is the metaphor relevant? A public library is by definition open to public scrutiny. It is not a private, interior world. Holl's library is certainly not the first to have large windows. Finally, is there any point in evoking an unstable, ever-changing world? It's all around. The point of these kinds of institutions, particularly libraries, is to be a kind of anchor, a signpost. Signposts are what distinguish civilized life from life in the jungle.]

Apparently even a regular door is too recognizable
a type for Holl who provides a pivoting section of wall
for access to the Meeting Room. Quite impractical.
[Source: New York Times]

But Mr. Holl’s design is also a statement about the individual’s place in a larger communal framework. The lobby is a towering space framed on both sides by several big, balconylike reading rooms. To get to them visitors climb a staircase that runs up the lobby’s back wall and past one of the huge free-form windows that afford views of the East River and Manhattan. The stairs lead first to the main reading room, which overlooks the lobby, then cross back to a children’s area or continue up to another reading room for teenagers. Eventually they emerge onto a rooftop terrace, where during nice weather people will be able to attend lectures and performances, or , when nothing is going on, lounge around and enjoy the spectacular view. [Again, what do these words have to do with the reality? The very opposite of a communal framework is suggested here. Communities share certain values in common, and they express those values through commonly understood symbols, be they words or images. Here the building offers a mere view of other people. But a view is no substitute for the things that bind men together. A crowd is not a community.]

The strength of this layout is that it allows Mr. Holl to balance the reader’s need for solitude with a strong sense of community. The main reading room, cantilevering out over the lobby, is the most open. The children’s reading room, the noisiest, is enclosed behind a curved wall with a few small windows cut into it so that kids can look across to the adults or up to the teenagers. [This is crowd control, not the binding together of a community.]

But it is the constant reminders of the larger world provided by the giant cuts through the building’s surface that give the design so much resonance. Mr. Holl is not interested in creating a monastic sanctuary; he wants to build a monument to civic engagement. The views aren’t just pretty; they remind us that the intellectual exchange of a library is part of a bigger collective enterprise. It’s a lovely idea, and touching in its old-fashioned optimism. [Sorry, Nicolai, the windows...er, "giant cuts,' do not resonate, they are banal. A monastery is infinitely more engaged with the civitas than this lump. In fact, it provides a model for any community in search of the common good. This building, in stark contrast, through its specific avoidance of the symbols and types which make up the identity of our culture, isolates all the individuals who aspire to become a part of a "bigger collective enterprise." Each is left to his own devices, each babbling a private language no one else understands, striving vainly to impose meaning on the void.]

Now this is what a library is supposed to look like.

Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge. Large windows and everything.
[Image source]

I propose it as a source of inspiration for the library at Hunters Point. A smaller variation of course. It would compare appropriately with the main branch of the New York Public Library in Manhattan. A work of architecture of this dignity is the only way to bolster the civic image of Queen's. While the building may look expensive, I can assure you good design costs no more than bad design. In fact, it's cheaper, particularly over the long run.

There's no mistaking this for a Louis Vuitton outlet.
[Image source]

Such a design would suggest that what our forebears have given us is not all for naught. We can continue the civilizing project they continued when it was handed to them. That is true old-fashioned optimism.

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One finds the pattern everywhere, from the common arrangement of trees in an orchard, to the exalted arrangement of domes on a church.

St. Mark's, Venice
[Photo by Dave Curtis]

There is much more to the pattern than it might at first seem. In fact, in pagan antiquity, the pattern was understood to be a geometric emblem of an ordered world. And after the Christian revelation, a summary of a sanctified universe. 

The ancient Romans, who sought to bring physical order to their world, saw that the sun suggested an ideal diagram which should be imitated. The sun's movement through the celestial sphere divided the world into four cardinal directions: north, south, east, and west. The very word cardinal derives from the Latin for hinge: the hinge on which hangs the sun.

So they designed their cities with two principal roads. One road, called the Cardo, ran from the city's center to the northern gate and to the southern gate, and another road, called the Decumanus, ran from the center to the western gate and to the eastern gate. Four principle quarters were created by the crossroads: northeast, southeast, southwest, and northwest. The city was a nine-square geometry and it was a microcosm of the world.

Inside its walls is order and civilization, in which the architecture puts everything in its place and shows the place and meaning of every thing. One is always perfectly oriented in a nine-square as one can easily understand one's relationship to the center. Outside the walls there is chaos, where there are no signposts, where one does not know where one stands or the right way to go. It is rightly said that the Romans invented the city.

With the Incarnation and Christian revelation, the natural world is now understood to foreshadow a supernatural destiny. Consider this passage from the Book of Revelation in which John is shown the Heavenly Jerusalem.

And [the angel] carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. ... It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. ... I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. (Revelation 21)

 

Illuminated manuscript showing the Heavenly Jerusalem, a nine-square.

The Heavenly Jerusalem is a nine-square. Note the parallel between the natural world and the Old Covenant. Just as the twelve tribes and the Passover lamb of the Old Covenant foreshadow the twelve apostles and the Paschal Lamb of the New Covenant, so the sun of our natural world foreshadows God's glory.

With the introduction of this supernatural destiny to the nine-square, however, it is natural to want to introduce the circle. If the square is an emblem of the earth, the circle is the geometry of heaven. No special revelation is needed to see this, as the shape imitates the dome of the sky, it has no beginning and no end, and all points on it are equidistant from the center. This is why the Pantheon is a large dome: it symbolized the dwelling of all the gods.

As there is only one God, the place for the circle is the center of the nine-square. The combination of the circle and the square describes the aspiration of earthly things toward heaven in general, and Christ's dual natures (human and divine) in particular. In fact, the very geometry of the human body suggests the combination. This famous diagram comes from the pagan Vitruvius who said of man that he is

naturally gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with face to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the starry firmament...

Cesare Cesariano's illustration of Vitruvius's text,
more geometrically unified than Leonardo's famous drawing,
as the circle and the square share the same center.

One might even go so far as to say that Christ with His dual natures is the fulfillment of Vitruvian man.

Note that a St. Andrew's cross runs through the diagram as well. And to complete it, because the number four is so important (four Evangelists, four cardinal virtues) four smaller circles are added to the first as if to provide an echo, both literal and metaphorical, in the quadrants.

Taking stock, we have a center, a square, a circle, and two crosses (a Greek cross and a St. Andrew's cross) in one harmonious arrangement. It tells us that the physical universe, and God's salvific plan for it, compose a single coherent whole. I know of no richer symbol. Here are a few of its geometric permutations.

The basic diagram.

Rotated.

Circles tangent to one another.

The quincunx can be a floor pattern, as it often was in the work of the Cosmati. They were designed to complement the rite of consecration of the church.

Cosmatesque Quincunx at S. Maria in Cosmedin.
The central roundel was often made of porphyry to symbolize Christ's royalty.
See Paloma's book Cosmatesque Ornament for more.

Or it can be brought out in three dimensions, as it was at St. Mark's in Venice, and in the large number of churches in the East where centrally planned churches are the norm.

St. Michael's Monastery in Kiev.
 Domes over side chapels are here added to the quincunx
which defines the central mass of the church.

So the next time you see a quincunx, remember that it is much more than the latest from Karl Lagerfeld, or a pleasing geometric pattern. It is your universe.

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It's the birthday of Fr. Luigi Taparelli d'Azeglio (1793–1862), the man who coined the phrase "social justice." Here's a nice little piece by Ryan Messmore in First Things which summarizes his contribution. Give it a quick read and consider the implications for architecture. He taught:

... that human beings naturally join together in groups. “The social fact, considered at its maximum generality, presented us subjects as intelligent beings and human society as men, that is to say made of intelligence and sense,” Taparelli says, and because of his intelligence and sense, men are able to share common ideas which produces a “unity of will” to achieve various ends and this is “the essential idea of society.”

Some of these societies, however, are more natural and intimate than others. We come together not just in cities and states, but first and most importantly in families, neighborhoods, religious bodies, clubs (or, in his day, guilds) and a variety of informal organizations. Through these natural associations, people strive to meet the basic goals and goods of life.

For society to be organized, it must be organic, that is, it is a body which is composed of a variety of organs each of which has a purpose.

Taparelli believed that people have the right to freely form different levels of association and to interact through them to fulfill needs and accomplish necessary tasks. Each of these social spheres, institutions, or consortia has its own proper identity and purpose. According to Taparelli, “every consortium must conserve its own unity in such a way as to not lose the unity of the larger whole,” but at the same time “every higher society must provide for the unity of the larger whole without destroying the unity of the consortia.”

This is a beautiful summary of the principle of subsidiarity.

What are the implications for architecture, then? Simple: architecture will naturally be a reflection of a society's just ordering. Building on Taparelli: the architecture of a particular institution will express the unity of that institution, as well as the unity of the whole society of which that institution is a part.

So a city must have a certain degree of architectural unity about it if it is to be just. It cannot be a collection of fragments, each the product of an individual's rootless personal expression. Such supposedly free expression is in fact unjust in that it does not respect the rightful claims of the whole.

An organic collection of Georgian buildings.

That unity is supplied by a respect for the architectural tradition. It's not a formulaic unity as the tradition is continually refined and perfected. And certainly there is ample room for personal expression. In fact, personal expression is at its most powerful in the context of a tradition which provides traction. Just ask Michelangelo.

Leon Battista Alberti, the great 15th century architect and canonist, called this coherence between the whole and the parts the principle of congruity. He said:

The Business and Office of Congruity is to put together Members differing from each other in their Natures, in such a Manner, that they may conspire to form a beautiful Whole...

Of course it would be beautiful!

In short, a building which is socially just is:

1. Expressive of the identity of the institution it represents, be it the family, the neighborhood, the corporation, or the state

2. Expressive of the whole of which the institution is a part

3. Orderly, hierarchical, and organic (in the true sense of the word) in and of itself

4. Respectful of the tradition which provides the context

And, if the building gets all that right, it's almost sure to achieve...

5. Beautiful

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My review of Steven Semes' book The Future of the Past is up at the American Arts Quarterly website. Here it is in its entirety below.

The Future of the Past: A Conservation Ethic for Architecture, Urbanism and Historic Preservation

by Steven W. Semes. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2009. 272 pages, hardcover, illustrated with black-and-white and color images

Book Review by D. V. Marcantonio

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The Gothic style is a favorite for many, particularly when it comes to ecclesiastical structures. Indeed, who is not impressed with the majesty of the ordered cosmos arrayed on the facade of Reims cathedral, the other-worldly luminosity of the Saint Chapelle (below), or the virtuosic vaulting of King's College Chapel in Cambridge? It can rightly be said that, just as God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, so these masterpieces are that than which nothing greater can be built.

Unfortunately, the Gothic is often opposed to the Classical, as if they were two totally different animals with totally different agendas representing totally different worlds. I suppose we can thank the 19th century style wars for this architectural dualism. Some in that debate went so far as to suggest that Gothic was the Christian style, while Classical was the pagan style. To me that is like arguing that true Christian poetry is to be written in terza rima, while ottava rima is for pagans.

In an effort to restore a hermeneutic of continuity to the question, let's have a brief look at what the canonical Classical forms and the Gothic forms have in common. For the Gothic style did not arise sui generis from the medieval mind and culture. Rather it was a perfectly natural development of the architectural culture which preceded it. The Gothic was a stylistic twist on the Romanesque, which itself was a twist on the Byzantine which preceded it, etc. etc. Each generation experiments with the formal world into which it is born, looking for improvements, recovering lost knowledge, and expressing new ideas.

A twelfth century French abbot by the name of Suger is widely credited with having mid-wifed the Gothic style. His new idea was: God is light. He was a proponent of the a theological school of thought which saw in light the perfect metaphor for God. To express it, he simply harnessed the structural advantages of the pointed arch, the ribbed vault, and the flying buttress to make the windows as large as possible. Part of the inscription on the facade reads:

The noble work is bright, but, being nobly bright, the work
Should brighten the minds, allowing them to travel through the lights
To the true light, where Christ is the true door.
The golden door defines how it is imminent in these things.
The dull mind rises to the truth through material things,
And is resurrected from its former submersion when the light is seen.

Otherwise, the story of the Gothic style is one of continuity with the tradition. The very plans of these churches all derive from the ancient Roman basilica. Many of their facades, like that of Suger's church, the historic Basilica of St. Denis, below, make prominent use of the ancient Roman triumphal arch motif: major arched opening in the center, and minor arched openings to either side, just like the Arch of Constantine. The rose window above, a motif which would go on to be developed to spectacular effect (have a look at Strasbourg Cathedral), originated with the Roman oculus. And the Corinthian order used throughout comes, of course, from the ancient Greeks.

The facade of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Denis outside Paris.
(Image source)

In the ambulatory, below, we can have a closer look at the Corinthian columns. The proportions of the free-standing columns are roughly standard. The capitals sport a slightly exaggerated cincture at their base, a basket of leaves, volutes at the corners, and an over-developed abacus block above (or perhaps it is an underdeveloped entablature). The column bases are fairly standard Attic bases. One can see Greece and Rome clearly in those columns. Against the walls, the columns are essentially the same, only proportionally thinner.

The ambulatory of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Denis.
(Image Source)

To summarize, Gothic architecture is classical. Or to put it another way, the Gothic style is a collection of wonderful experiments in that great laboratory called the Western Tradition.

For you Goth-o-philes, and for those of us who continue to work in that laboratory, I've just received news (from a former student of mine, and now Ph. D. candidate at Columbia University, Zachary Stewart) of a wonderful resource called Mapping Gothic France. It's a work in progress (good work, Zach!), but there are already lots of beautiful photographs there, including details, and useful historical information. Prepare to lose track of time.

The North Transept of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Denis.
From Mapping Gothic France

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The term Bema has several different meanings. The word is most commonly a synonym for the Sanctuary, especially in the East. However, it can also refer to:

1. The raised, gated area which projects from the Sanctuary into the nave called the schola cantorum
2. A separate raised platform for clergy which, in antiquity--particularly in Syria--was located in the middle of the nave and completely separated from the Sanctuary (like the bema of a synagogue, or a dislocated schola cantorum)
3. The Ambo
4. The Pulpit (more rarely)

All these meanings stem from the original definition of the Greek word Bema (βήμα): a raised platform, or tribune, for a speaker or, more importantly, for the official seat of a judge.

In this passage from St. Germanus, he is using the term to mean the Sanctuary, the whole raised area reserved for clergy, with a particular emphasis on the area which contains the bishop's throne at the back of the apse. He states:

The bema is a concave place, a throne on which Christ, the king of all, presides with His apostles, as He says to them: "You shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Mt 19:28). It points to the second coming, when he will come sitting on the throne of glory to judge the world, as the prophet says: "Thrones were set for judgment over the house of David" (Ps 121:5)

The apse of the cathedral in Torcello, near Venice.
Note the prominent cathedra and surrounding amphitheater,
or synthronon, for the officiating bishop and his assistants.
Above, Christ is enthroned in the arms of the Blessed Virgin,
His Apostles arrayed like supreme court justices to either side.
(Image source)

 

St. Germanus shows us that there is a second meaning to the architectural element that is the Sanctuary. We have already seen that the Sanctuary looks back in time and makes present the holy tomb of Christ. Now in this passage, St. Germanus shows that it also looks forward in time and makes present the Judgment Seat of Christ. It looks forward both to the end of our own lives when we shall face our Particular Judgment, and to the end of time when we shall face the General Judgment.
 
There is, of course, a foreshadowing of this architectural element in the Temple at Jerusalem and in the synagogues which imitated it. Once every seven years, in the feast of tabernacles, an elevated platform with a throne for the King was erected in the Women's Court of the Temple. From the throne, the King would read from the Torah the law against which the actions of all would be judged. Under the New Dispensation, Christ is King, so the throne and judgment seat is naturally moved into the Holy of Holies.

The Bema at St. John Lateran, the Alter Christus, or Other Christ, presiding.
St. Germanus's cathedral the Hagia Sophia would have had a similar throne.
(Image source)

The Bema is also foreshadowed in the Royal Stoa of the Temple at Jerusalem. This building, located on the southern side of the Temple Mount complex, was a basilica with, believe it or not, an apse at it's eastern end. The Sanhedrin sat in that apse when they heard cases. It was built by Herod and modeled on the pagan Roman basilica, which also served as a court of law, the judgment seat in the apse.

The Eastern rites have continued the tradition of featuring a bishop's throne and synthronon at the rear of the apse, even in parish churches. Adrian Fortescue, in his book The Orthodox Eastern Church, was moved to write:

The principle of having the bishop's throne in every church of his diocese, which waits till he comes to fill it, is again one of the very beautiful and right practices which the comparative conservatism of the Orthodox Church has kept. It is true that the way in which she clings to one stage of development is altogether unjustifiable theologically, but it results in a number of very curious and picturesque remnants of a past age, which exist only in her services. Nothing in the world is more dead than the Empire that fell with Constantine XII, and yet its ghost still lingers around the Byzantine altars.

In Western cathedrals, the bishop's cathedra has moved to the side where it is not obscured by the much more elaborate altar than is usually found in the East. And of course, such a move is absolutely unavoidable when, out of practical necessity or other considerations, there is no apse and hence no space behind the altar. Nevertheless, the Sanctuary as a whole in the West remains raised, usually three or five steps, and the seat retains its visual prominence. Its elevation reminds us that Christ is not only Savior, but also Judge.

The Bema--altar, throne, and synthranon--
at St. Vladimir's Skete at the Valaam Monastery
(Image source)

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The brilliant authoress of the blog Adoptio has honored your humble correspondent with a Premio Dardos, awarded in recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values shared in the form of creative and original writing.

Adoptio deals primarily with Mrs. C's experience with the adoption process as she and her husband build a family together, but she also gets into cultural criticism, and even home decoration. I am much obliged to Mrs. C, and I thank her.

The award is supposed to be passed along, therefore I bestow it hereby upon Andrew Cusack of andrewcusack.com whose entertaining writing, including his architectural criticism, surpasses that of most professionals. Read it and be merry.

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1. What is traditional architecture?

Traditional architecture is that way of building which makes serious use of the familiar symbolic forms of a particular culture of a particular people in a particular place.

2. What is classical architecture?

Classical architecture is that segment of the body of traditional architecture of a people which has achieved the highest, most articulate, and most refined expression.

3. What is vernacular architecture?

Vernacular architecture is that segment of the body of traditional architecture of a people which serves the more humble purposes in their society.

4. Are classical and vernacular architecture related to one another?

The terms classical and vernacular describe the two ends of a single spectrum. If you were to line up all the buildings in a city from most important to least important you would find a smooth gradation from most ornamented to least ornamented; from the grandly scaled to humbly scaled; from precious materials to common materials; etc.

5. Why restore traditional architecture?

By using traditional forms, that is forms which are recognizable and communicate substantive content, the architecture becomes intelligible to the people of a particular place. As such, a people is able to communicate through their architecture who they are and what they value both to themselves for their own edification, to future generations, and to others.

6. Doesn’t modernist architecture communicate?

By its rejection of traditional forms, modernist architecture in its purest form rejects the possibility of communicating content, so its possibilities of expression are severely limited. It consigns itself chiefly to: (a) communicating the rejection of tradition by undermining expectations; (b) stimulating empty emotional responses with no particular content; or (c) expressing in code the private theories of the architect. Implicit in the rejection of traditional forms is the idea that nothing permanent about the human condition can be learned from previous generations or can be taught to future generations. Hence, this rejection also runs counter to common sense, as we naturally want to teach our children what we have learned about how to live well.

7. Doesn’t traditional architecture just blindly repeat the past?

Traditional architecture is not a blind repetition of the past any more than the poetry of Robert Frost is a blind repetition of the poetry of Shakespeare. Traditional language does necessarily entail play with precedent and historical continuity; however, they increase the possibilities for artistic expression. Indeed they are practically unavoidable and even today’s modernists play with Modernist precedents.

8. Then can’t Modernism represent a new tradition?

In theory Modernism rejects tradition and seeks continually to break with the past by continually rejecting recognizable forms, so it’s technically a contradiction to speak of Modernist tradition. In practice, this perpetual state of revolution is impossible to achieve since man’s artifacts naturally accrue meaning as time passes. However, if we accept that tradition is inevitable and even good, why not recover our regular traditions which have the benefit of millennia of refinement?

9. But traditional architecture does not speak to modern man.

A brief scan of the architectural and design magazine section at your local news stand would suggest otherwise. An overwhelming majority of these magazines feature traditional homes, both of the middle and upper classes, and they are then widely imitated. The average layman, who has not received an architectural education and has not learned the codes of Modernism, generally understands and appreciates traditional architecture but remains mystified by Modernism. It is the latter which does not speak to modern man.

10. Traditional architecture is elitist.

Au contraire, it is Modernist architecture which is elitist. The general perception is that, to understand Modernist architecture, one must belong to the special gnostic class, those few who have special knowledge and powers of interpretation.

11. Modernism is liberating while traditional architecture is an imposition.

The goal of Modernism is essentially a Marxist vision of emancipation. It seeks to strip the built environment of "oppressive" preconceptions of an objectively ordered and purposeful universe. Modernist apologists claim that the viewer is now given the opportunity to bring his own order to his world, but of course nothing of the sort actually occurs as it's impossible to impose one's personal order on the world. The only result is that people become disoriented. Consequently, they are more vulnerable than ever to the power class, as there are no longer any objective standards against which the power class's actions may be judged. What starts out as Marxist dream of emancipation immediately becomes a Nietzschean nightmare of might makes right.

12. Then why are buildings like the new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao so popular?

For a number of reasons, chief among them that they are trendy, titillating novelty items that garner a lot of press attention. However, they are destined to look dated within a short period just as the buildings which were trendy in the 1960s look dated today. Traditional architecture, in contrast, represents a body of forms which has endured generations of winnowing out the ephemeral and the unsuccessful. Hence, traditional architecture is more likely to be appreciated for generations to come.

13. You can’t turn back the clock.

Those who consider traditional architecture as relevant today as ever are not turning back the clock—they are the ones who correctly read the time. Traditional architecture allows each generation a try at improving that which has been handed down, and uses the past as a measure against which to judge a generation’s efforts. It’s a much tougher standard for success than the one Modernism sets for itself. Architectural history is chock full of efforts to restore clarity and refinement by learning from past generations. The Renaissance, perhaps the best known of these efforts, produced some of the most beautiful buildings in history. No one could seriously denigrate the efforts of Renaissance architects with the charge that they were turning back the clock.

14. Traditional architecture rejects modern technology.

Traditional architecture does not reject modern technology by any stretch of the imagination. When a new technology comes along which is an improvement over past techniques, it is natural to embrace it. Your humble correspondent regularly designs buildings with the best in mechanical, electrical, plumbing, audio-visual, and general construction technology.

15. How can I learn more about traditional architecture?

Study what are generally considered the greatest buildings and the best treatises, regardless of when they were built or written.

This masterpiece is an 18th century Baroque reworking of a tradition which stretches back to antiquity. Completely destroyed in World War II, its meticulous reconstruction was completed in 2005 by popular demand.

(Image source)

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