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<\/a><\/p>\nNotre-Dame du Haut<\/p>\n
Last month, I was blessed to attend a Writers and Artists Retreat at St Patrick\u2019s Seminary in Menlo Park sponsored by the Benedict XVI Institute. A range of artists poets, architects, dramatists, and writers were present for discussions on faith, liturgy, evangelization, and culture.<\/p>\n
Classical architect Duncan Stroik joined us, and over lunch we had an interesting discussion on authenticity in sacred architecture. I posed a question: \u201cGiven the low cost and abundance of modern building materials, isn\u2019t it rather dishonest to use them to fabricate old-fashioned-looking churches?\u201d I gave him some examples: When masonry was the only really permanent material for building, walls had to be thick to hold up the high roofs and upper stories. Masonry pillars had to be solid and substantial to hold up the arches that supported the walls above.<\/p>\n
Now we have steel. Walls can be thin. Pillars can be slender. In our new church in Greenville, South Carolina, the architect used steel-frame construction but padded out the walls with an extra layer of steel and layers of plasterboard to give the illusion of depth and weight. \u201cIsn\u2019t that sort of Disney-land type pastiche? Isn\u2019t it fake? If it\u2019s steel and plasterboard should the walls be thin and the pillars slender? Indeed, why have pillars at all because you don\u2019t need arches to support the upper walls. Properly placed steel beams will do.<\/p>\n
Stroik pointed out that \u201chonesty\u201d of materials was one of the arguments used by the modernists. Architects like Le Corbusier (who designed\u00a0Notre-Dame du Haut<\/a> in Ronchamp, France) would say steel-reinforced concrete lends itself to a new, honest austerity: \u201cConcrete is a noble material.\u201d He wrote,\u00a0 \u201cIt is by the economy of its use and the sincerity of its expression that we can achieve a truly modern architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n Maria K\u00f6nigin des Friedens<\/p>\n Others considered that the sincere slabs and honest monoliths made churches resemble Stalinesque office blocks, inner-city parking garages, or machine-gun bunkers. They really thought their honesty gave their churches integrity. So German architect Gottfried B\u00f6hm ( who designed Maria, K\u00f6nigin des Friedens<\/a> church in Germany) wrote: \u201cThe church must look like what it is: a house of God, not a house of man. This means simplicity, honesty, and strength.\u201d<\/p>\n Stroik agreed that this was disingenuous\u2014the modern, brutalist church architects were really driven not by a desire for authenticity, but by a modernist, iconoclastic ideology. The old world with its fancy churches, lacy vestments, precious art, and Mozartian masses was out. This was a modern world of factories, public housing\u2014a world of\u00a0 steel and concrete, concrete and steel.<\/p>\n Especially in mid-twentieth century, architects (along with modernists in the other arts) sought an idiom that reflected the new, post-war realism. There was no room for frippery, decoration, or ornamentation. Thus British liturgist Peter Hammond,<\/p>\n The church must speak the language of its own time, not that of a past age\u2026 The architecture of a church should be functional, honest, and appropriate to the liturgy and life of the Christian community today.<\/p>\n I told Duncan Stroik about the conversation I had with our architect Christian LeBlanc while building the new Our Lady of the Rosary, Greenville. The pillars in the church are steel encased in a fiberglass shell that is painted to look like marble. I asked whether this wasn\u2019t dishonest. \u201cShouldn\u2019t they be masonry pillars that really do support the walls above?\u201d<\/p>\n Christian answered, \u201cFather, you know those massive pillars in Durham Cathedral in England?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course. I\u2019ve been there several times.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know they have that marvelous Norman decoration\u2014carved zig-zags and chevrons?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUh huh\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, the decoration is the outer skin of the stone pillars. Inside they are rubble and rough stone. It\u2019s the same principle. The inner pillar bears the weight. Then they made them look pretty with an outer layer of decoration. Its just that our inner pillars are steel.\u201d<\/p>\n Stroik agreed. We imagine that in times past every building had a perfect integration of materials and design. Certainly in the past the need for a truly structural arch demanded that the architect combine this need with the demand for overall harmony and beauty of design, and the intrinsic balance and beauty of an arch contributed to the overall pleasant result. It is no different today. Architects from the beginning have weighed the balance between structural integrity and beauty of design, and this was considered to be honest workmanship. It is the modernists who focussed only on the \u201chonesty\u201d of modern materials which fed a brutalist and iconoclastic ideology. Man-made ideology that required a distrust beauty as part of the manifesto.<\/p>\n When I lived in England, I worked as a charity fundraiser and traveled to a different Catholic parish every weekend. I will never forget visiting one particularly ugly, brutalist structure in the Southwest of England. When I commented on the church\u2019s unattractiveness, the parish priest said, \u201cOh yes. You\u2019re right. In fact the architect was a committed brutalist. He stated explicitly that churches should be so ugly on the inside that people will want to leave as soon as possible to go out and do God\u2019s work in the world\u201d<\/p>\n In that respect the architect succeeded. The people did leave. Whether or not they went out to do God\u2019s work in the world is an open question. From the present state of England I\u2019m guessing not.<\/p>\n __________<\/p>\n The Imaginative Conservative\u00a0applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics\u2014we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider\u00a0donating now<\/a>.<\/p>\n The featured image, uploaded by seier+seier<\/a>, is a photograph of the pilgrimage church, Maria K\u00f6nigin des Friedens, Neviges, Germany.\u00a0This file is licensed under the\u00a0Creative Commons<\/a>\u00a0Attribution 2.0 Generic<\/a> license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n