Tuesday, May 24, 2005
LOOK AT THIS...!
Disneyland unveils the newest death-defying rolle....ah, no wait....this is the architect's rendering of the new Oakland cathedral.
John King, offers his commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Imagine a woven wooden basket that's 120 feet high, broad at the base and curving gently inward as it rises.
Now imagine that basket wrapped in opaque glass. In daylight the glass is a veil, shrouding what's within; but at night, light seeps out through the basket and the veil, glowing for all to see.
That's the ethereal promise of the design for Oakland's Christ the Light Cathedral, which marked its ceremonial groundbreaking Saturday. For today's Bay Area, it's a uniquely adventurous work of architecture -- and the only high-profile one that isn't by a globe-trotting celebrity architect.
Do you like it? If not, chances are this is what's wrong. Sara Garlick, on the Bryn Mawr website offers an opinion of the architectural firm that has done the designs for the Oakland cathedral:
Despite attempts by some to create links between the modernist architecture of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the classical tradition, it represents a clear departure from previous architectural traditions....Modernism created a break with prior architectural tradition and was therefore successful in creating forms that were anti-historical, but despite their attempts the creation of "obscelesense-proof", a-historical architecture is impossible.
Other failures of modernist architecture are apparent. Though firms such as Skidmore Owings & Merrill did not seem to intend to move beyond the realm of corporate architecture, the critics of modern form have recognized it not only as a failure, but as detrimental to society as a whole. To the extent that their forms, and those of modernism on the whole were imposed upon their environments, and adopted both as a universal corporate form and later as a form of private housing (including government subsidized housing), this phase in American architecture has been seen as harmfully generic and arrogant.
A break with past architectural tradition is not the only thing represented here in this architecture. It is also a break with Catholic Tradition that is represented. This "Light of Christ" is a new religion being thrust upon Catholics with their own money used to fund it. That is not Catholicism. It is Theosophy. Don't underestimate the power of the non-verbal message. Architecture is symbolical as is religion, and the symbolism of the new Oakland Cathedral is not the symbolism of the faith. This is a new faith being ushered in.
Michael Rose calls this cthedral "ugly as sin" on the Crux News website.
John King indicates in his article that "local talent" was chosen. The original architect, Santiago Calatrava, parted company with the Diocese, and this local firm was chosen instead. King implies they were chosen at considerably less cost. The firm might be local, but their reputation is international. As Sara Garlick reports:
The modernist architecture represented by the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill--the first transnational architectural bureaucracy...was readily adopted by corporate America in the post-war period....The product of their demand was the development of what seems to be a universal corporate style, whose form came to exemplify the magnitude of American business.
She also places this style of architecture in the style of Mies van der Rohe. The Movements in Twentieth-Century Art Before World War II website places Frank Lloyd Wright in the De Stijl movement and notes that Wright was a theosophist, and that this movement influenced the Bauhaus, including Mies van der Rohe, which in turn influenced modern architecture.
This is delt with in more detail in Susan Henderson study "Architecture and Theosophy: An Introduction".
In conclusion I can only say let's hope that the new Oakland cathedral really is death-defying, even if it isn't located in Disneyland. Picture all that glass after the next earthquake, especially if it hits during Sunday Mass.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
