>< if religious people could build powerful religious architecture, the Pope would be the finest at it.  They should stick to singing hyms and chanting.

the Great Pyramids by Marvin Martian

All things Corbusier.

I assure you that religious architecture is anything but obsolete and absurd.  There are many, many religious people building spiritual places, and there always will be.  It's part of the human condition.

It is unfortunate that religion itself is not obsolete. 

Why?

CD.Arch, is your statement that atheists attack people more than do religious people an objective opinion? 

hold on, we've got a bad-ass over-here.

The OP implies that only people of faith can design religious architecture which is a rather dumb position. Religion deserves many times-over all the criticism it receives.

And now, CD.Arch, you're accusing someone else of holding "ignorant beliefs" because they decline to participate in your beliefs. The circle goes around and around and around.

I'll bite, but only because my coffee is not quite ready yet.

Anyone regardless of their superstitious tendencies can design religious buildings/temples/monuments/etc.  Any decent architect can take a program and organize it properly even-though they may not know nothing about said program. One does not need to understand basketball to put together a stadium. The same applies to religious places of abuse/worship. Things people find nice in churches / mosques / synagogues, mostly light, sound reflection, scales and decoration, are not unique to just one type of architecture. To answer the OP directly, if I recall from art history years ago (and I am ready to be proven wrong on this), Michelangelo was not too fond of the Vatican yet his contribution to religious architecture are rather substantial. Most important religious architecture was produced over many decades and more than one architect and add to that the fact that unless you automatically subscribed to the faith of the day / land, you would be not be left alive let alone designing cathedrals, does not suggest there to be a big sample of religious architecture by non-religious architects.

I would like to think that those architects  without such attraction to magical thinking, superstition and ritual working today would prefer to spend their time with clients and projects outside of the world of religion.

In direct response to CD.Arch above, you can choose how tightly you wear your blinders. If you want to ignore the negative impacts of religion on society: mainly the systematic covering of child rape by clergy, the displacement of victim money, the assault on intellectual freedom and basic human rights, the spread of AIDS and illiteracy throughout the developed world by the banning of contraception, their role in retarding access to abortion, gay-rights, women's rights, public education, etc... that is your choice. Just don't start crying when people bring you up to speed on reality but I guess you can't argue against that warm fuzzy feeling you have from following your childhood indoctrination.

Donna, circles are fun sometimes. Now my circle (more of a cylinder really) is filled with black gold. Maybe a good thing I get these permit drawings out now. I tend to get more critical after a cup or four of coffee.

it was my understanding michelangelo was having an affair with the pope at the time.  that's not to say he liked the vatican as an institution, but i believe he had a close relationship with the person heading the institution.

some religious beliefs do have fairly significant architectural implications, such as the catholic interest in statuary and muslim lack of interest in statuary.

I'll bring it back to the original question of the post: my thought is that the basis for whether or not one can adequately design for religion is based more on understanding than actual belief. I think that an architect (whether or not she agrees) must respect the fact that a religious space, like religion, is not purely functional. Religion is informed by something more than logic (or less than, according to some), so religious architecture should reflect the same. I think a few of the myriad fine examples would be the St. Ignatius Chapel or the Bruder Klaus Chapel. Both are informed far more by a deep understanding of religious tradition and iconography than blind belief or idolatry. Do you all disagree or agree, and for what reasons?

mfvoll, disagree.  i think you need to disassociate the 'magic' from both religion and architecture.  an ability to design a good space or a good building has nothing to do with religion or magic.

your examples are both christian chapels.  how would those spaces be perceived by a muslim or a hindu or a buddhist or a shinto?  (is someone who practices the shinto religion referred to as 'a shinto?'). 

without the stained glass or other iconic depictions of scripture one might say your examples aren't the best examples of christian architecture.  traditional christian services have evolved with the singing and organs and whatnot to be presented in a large space with noticeable reverberation.  the bruder klaus chapel certainly doesn't take that into account does it? 

it sounds to me like you've given up on the practical and programmatic requirements associated with religious architecture and instead replaced them with someone's opinion on what's "neat."

Bruder Klaus is a *purely* material, physics-based construction that somehow has the ability to move people - to put them into a mystical state of mind, one of worship/awe/spirituality what-have-you.

Some people will find god(s) in Bruder Klaus.  I find physics, which is even more awe-inspiring...and which, in Einstein's case apparently, led back to (a) god.

I'm glad we are getting into an interesting conversation about this! I've thought about what you've said and these are my thoughts in response. Full disclosure: I personally am not religious (for no reason other than logic, I have no moral issue with religion itself) but many of the people whom I love still are.

To your first point, the “magic” can’t be dissociated from religion itself. It is literally the thing that defines religion and makes it separate from fields like philosophy. So with that in mind, I think every architect has a commitment to design for her client, rather than for herself (as many of us, myself included, are often tempted to do). So if the client wants a space that is “magical” in keeping with their religion, than it is the architect’s responsibility to design that. I think it is safe to say that every religious organization wants this type of space? (if they can afford it).

Second, specificity is key. Nondescript “religious spaces” tend to be limited to government facilities and the occasional office building. Much more often, an architect will be confronted with designing for a specific religion, which in keeping with above should be respected. In the same way that every building should be designed for its specific site, religious buildings (more than office buildings or homes) occupy a cultural context that they must respond to. So, the truth is that I have no idea what a Muslim or Hindu might think when they enter a Christian chapel, but I don’t think it particularly matters as long as they aren’t offended. Both of the projects I mentioned are Christian because I am familiar with both of them, I have really no familiarity with mosques or Hindu temples, so I don’t really think it’s appropriate for me to try and speak on them.  As far as “traditional” religious architecture goes: should contemporary religious architecture be bound by the conventions of stained glass? It seems to me that the important thing for the designer to keep in mind is the wider idea of that religion, because like anything else, the specifics of any religion change over time. Contemporary religious architecture ought to advance at the same pace of contemporary secular architecture.

A different side of specificity: a religious space isn’t always a place for ceremony. The program of the clients at Bruder Klaus is for a pilgrimage chapel that serves as a place of quiet reflection and prayer. It was designed to this end as well as to be able to be built by locals without heavy machinery, so I would say that rather than ignoring program in favor of what’s neat, it is a response to a set of unique programmatic challenges that it deftly maneuvers. To think that every religious space is a cathedral is foolish.

Lastly, to round out the subject of programming, being able to lay out a sensible floor plan is a prerequisite of being any architect, but has nothing to do with the answer to the question, which is about a specific type of architecture. Whether or not the program is that of Notre Dame Du Haut, a monastery, or a tiny chapel, it is being dealt with.

'magic' is what you fall back on when you fail to comprehend reality.  if religion was truly based on 'magic,' i think it would be considered a mental health disorder.  lots of people choose to follow religions and believe in various sorts of higher powers for reasons other than 'magic.'

so zumthor's religious structure is a christian building, intended to represent that religion, but not to house the ceremony or services associated with that religion.  the 'magic' intended is to guide people towards reflection and meditation.  if a follower of islam or hinduism were to enter that space, wouldn't they perceive the same sort of 'magic?'  that would imply it is not religion but design, and either way it's not magical.  it's space, texture, light, and things that architects should be studying rather than attributing to 'magic.'

i would say that zumthor's pilgrimage chapel is more shinto than christian anyway.  they should fix it by getting rid of the cross and dropping a tori gate in front of it.  he's designing for the wrong religion because his 'magic' doesn't really reflect the christian 'magic.'

"have you ever given the bible a good read"

yes I have (new and old) as well as decent chucks of all the other books too... twice: once as a child and again as an educated adult. I've always find them all, without exception, bland and intellectually insulting, but I have also had the good-fortune of not living through a childhood where such non-sense was force-fed under the guise of "good morals".

I respect one's freedom of free-association, but I do not give a mm of respect to the faiths for they have deserved none; nevertheless, you are correct, there seems to be some meat building up on the importance of experience (magic) through space and will avoid steering this tread further from that.

and I know that lack of religion is one of them.

i believe you are mistaken

/

I miss Hitch.

curtkram: I completely agree that the "magic" created by faith is phenomenological, which is coincidentally why I am a humanist. My arguments about magic are an illustration of faith, not the process by which the building is designed. Reiterating my initial argument then: this type of experience could be designed by religious and non- religious folks alike, the only caveat is that the designer must have a deep understanding of the religion and why people have faith in it.

An aside, I grabbed a link to the Wikipedia page about the human “Bruder Klaus” for you. If you’re interested in learning more about the chapel, the life of the man will give you quite a bit of insight into many of the design decisions for the chapel, you’ll find the design is actually rather specific: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Fl%C3%BCe

Quondam: I am not very familiar with the work of Hejduk, but his work clearly had a good bit to say about the relationship of religion, iconography, and building. I’m curious to do some more research on my own in the future, but do you have any additional information about it/him or his ideas about this subject?

"You don't need religion to have morals.  If you can't determine right from wrong, you lack empathy, not religion."

Where does empathy come from?

Did anyone mention/discuss the notion of the Genius Loci yet?  Wasn't that in there in the first couple of weeks of Arch School?  The notion that particular places embody special qualities.  Then the people come along and plop a rock in it and then tell everyone else "That rock means this is a special place."

The hippies are still frolicking about the various Henges on the solstices, aren't they?  "I'm a Druid Princess!!"  No. You're not, Moonflower, or whatever you're calling yourself these days, Annabelle.  Your Birkenstocks are untied.

Pretty successful religious architecture.  The people who made the Henges didn't pass the ARE.  I bet they didn't even graduate from an accredited program.  Yet they stuck some rocks on a hill lined up with the sun on a few key points in the calendar and it's all mystical and religious for vast tracts of time.

The notion of a religious space is basically the notion of a special place.  The notion that there is a special place delineated by human beings that tells us, or allows us to consider that we are more than mere animals, that there is something ineffable to existence.  You don't need a god for that.  It's more than a cave that keeps the rain off of us, or that is easily defensible against Bears and Tigers and Dinosaurs (for the more hocus-pocus-edly minded).  

The best religious places are more likely designed by the heretics who simply want to allow people to have a place to go and consider their existence.  Individually or as a group.   Their ridiculous, precious, commonly unique existence.  This is universal and can be utilized by any particular Kool-Aid company that is selling it to the masses.

mfvoll, your link indicated bruder klaus died in 1487.  what's the point in designing a space for someone who is dead?  do christians believe in reincarnation now, and maybe he'll come back to use that space?  sounds to me like your religious architects keep skipping back and forth between different religions.  which is fine.  they're all pretty much the same anyway.  the only question is why people are killing or raping in the name of their religion.

also, one has to wonder if eke really needs the fear of fire and brimstone to have empathy towards others?  sociopath much?  greek and roman architecture typically invoked pagan religions far different from those commonly practiced today as well

it appears obvious to me, in this context, that it isn't any specific religion one has to understand when designing a 'spiritual' place.  just a pick a religion that sounds good and postrationalize it.

I believe any architect can sufficiently design a spiritual space however; an architect that proscribes to a particular faith can enrich the design in a manner someone from outside the faith cannot. The same can be said for engineers or home designers playing architect. Anyone can design, but to capture the intangible qualities and emotions derived from the nature of the space lies in the heart of an architect exhibiting a rare talent and sense of feeling for what wants to be brought forth.

Louis Kahn was undoubtedly a mystic. This manifested in his architecture, gripping the inhabitants of his spaces by the heart and soul in a manner I believe no architect except perhaps Zumthor has done to this day. While the designs of Kahn and Zumthor differ in many ways, the spirituality within their sacred and secular spaces transcends the material world into the intangible realms of existence.

Space, whether preexisting or man-made serves as an instrument to capture experiences that influences the lives of its inhabitants. Every photon that leaves the surface of the sun and enters a space records a moment in time, an memory in the consciousness of individuals. Every particle of dust floating through the cosmos is accounted for as are the very air molecules we breathe at a given moment in time. With that said the power architecture exhibits to shape our lives both physically and spiritually, is perhaps the hardest facet of the profession/art to capture.

I find it hard to believe that we as designers cannot see and feel the thought and love that went into designing the creation we were gifted to live in. 

Quondam: first, thank you for the book recommendation. Second, your thoughts on the interplay of religion, 9/11, worship, and memorial were interesting to read and something I had not thought of before.

curtkram: there are plenty of reasons to build for a dead person, as you know, memorial and reincarnation are not the same. The point about specific religion is that the specificity is a result of a belief in a higher power intersecting with other more local forces. This influences architecture in important ways. The original question in the thread isn't about "spiritual" places but religious places. The major difference between the two being the expression of culture.

"also, one has to wonder if eke really needs the fear of fire and brimstone to have empathy towards others?  sociopath much? "

Nice.  Not sure how you got from my question, to me being branded a sociopath.  Well, I guess that's the way things roll around here.

i never said anything remotely referring to "fire and brimstone", whatever that means.  I simply asked the question, "where does empathy come from?"  I would never suggest that empathy is something people adopt because they fear punishment from God if they were to act otherwise.  On the contrary...I think that empathy is innate, it's part of our nature.  I'm asking, "why you think this is so?"

i would venture to guess that empathy is an important part of humanity because as a species we rely on social institutions and each other to survive.  it probably comes from evolution.  however it might serve you better to ask a psychologist who studies emotions rather than asking an architect or making up a ridiculous superstition to fill in your gaps of knowledge.

of course there are powers higher than people.  wind and rain and tectonic shifts sculpt the environment in ways people would have a very difficult time imitating.  there is no reason to pretend there is an anthropometric or otherwise intelligent life source of some sort causing the wind to blow, just as there is no reason to assume god is responsible for implanting empathy into people.  as a social animal, people have developed a fairly complicated social structure with socialization of labor, part of which includes meteorologists who spend their lives studying how the wind blows.  if it was 'god did it,' then there wouldn't be much point in having meteorologists.

where does your empathy come from eke?  were you not trying to imply that some sort of divine intervention caused empathy to be introduced into the human psyche?  if empathy does come from god, does it have to be from your god, or the roman pantheon, or the hindu gods, or the shinto gods?  maybe it came for a god who died long ago?  as many gods are out there giving people empathy, what are the odds your choice of gods is the wrong one?

i have nothing against most religions or religious people.  however, i don't think religion should be used an excuse to be stupid.  (i also don't think religion should be used to kill or rape people)  if you don't understand something like empathy or space or light or the wind, try asking google instead of your priest why it is the way it is.  more than likely somebody somewhere has devoted their life to discovering the truth rather than ascribing things they don't understand to the man in the moon.

1 Corinthians 13:11New International Version (NIV)

11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

Thumbs way up Curt for a great response.

I'm Open, Vedder/Irons

"When he was six he believed that the moon overhead followed him, by nine he had deciphered the illusion, trading magic for fact ...no tradebacks... So this is what it's like to be an adult; if he only knew now what he knew then..."

Thanks for the reply Curt.  

There's a lot there in your reply, and I don't have the time to go through it exhaustively, but I will touch on a couple of points.

I think that there is a lot of mystery in the world, a lot of things that are very difficult to explain. Questions like what are the source of human empathy, or our innate sense of right and wrong, or our capacity to be awed by beautiful things.  Science tries to answer these questions, but I find the answers incomplete or unsatisfactory.  There remains for me an understanding that science, and the human capacity for knowledge, while powerful, are insufficient to explain the universe.  Even at the atomic level, scientists are running up against things that they simply can't explain, and the closer they look, the more puzzles are revealed, like Chinese boxes, one inside the other.

Others my disagree, and it's clear from your response that you do.  That's fine, and I like these discussions, although I certainly wish that you were a bit less condescending about it.  But no matter, you clearly feel strongly about it. I get it.

Regarding your "many gods" comment...  I think there is one reality which underlies everything.  I think that all religions are constructs created by people, imperfect people, trying to explain the reality they observe around them.  Religions are the map, not the territory.  They are stories designed to explain the same underlying reality.  That's why there is so much similarity between religions.  But we are not perfect, we are human beings, and our descriptions of reality are necessarily flawed, in the same way that the descriptions of a traffic accident by five bystanders will contain some consistency, but many outright discrepancies.

But here's the kicker:  Science is also a story.  Science is a construct, a model we have crafted to explain reality.  It is a map, and corresponds closely but imperfectly to the underlying territory, and has its own limitations, just as religion does.  I believe we need both a scientific and a spiritual view in order to get closer to a complete picture of the universe.  And we have to accept that even with those two views, we cannot know everything.  Just as in physics, the grand unified "theory of everything" has eluded science, we cannot fully know the mind of God.

Empathy comes from mirror neurons, the part of our nervous system that allows us to feel what others feel. But people damage that system by doing things like watching TV and pounding CAD then what? They need an artificial source for it. Just stirring the pot...

The Chapel at the Air Force Academy has Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist,  Jewish and "all-worship" areas all under one roof. You can go from one to another. Any more examples of all-worship under one roofs that you can think of? 

Beyond empathy you find compassion.

eke,

if you want to find the unifying theory of everything you could study particle physics and develop a better scientific understanding the proposals already out there and come up with a new story to advance research and understanding in that field.

or you could make a story about how promethus stole fire from zeus.

neither of those are really good solutions.  the better solution would be to recognize our individual shortcomings, and find a way to collaborate and work with others who can specialize in developing working hypothesis and experiments to discover how the world really works.  invest in global science and research.  support politics and politicians who are willing to invest in expanding global knowledge of the natural world.  too often certain religious institutions stand in the way of that progress, as if their power structure was threatened by people discovering natural truths.

just because we don't yet know everything doesn't mean we can't know everything.  you're not going to figure it out all on your own, and neither am i.  however, with specialized focus on research in different fields and good collaboration between those fields, we as humans can start coming up with a better picture of how things actually work.  in fact, we're doing a pretty good job.  we're answering old questions and coming up with new questions all the time.  it's really quite exciting.

"But here's the kicker:  Science is also a story"

Yes it is to a certain extent but it is a story which has the ability to change as more information is gathered. Religion is just glorified ignorance... a fill in the blank type of knee-jerk reaction to complicated questions with the added bonus that once god gets shoe-horned into the picture it stays there for good regardless of further research, new evidence or intelligent criticism.

"we cannot fully know the mind of God."

That is simply not true. There is a vast amount of information available on the functioning of the mind and since the idea of god is most certainly a creation of the human mind we can therefore build an accurate "story" so to speak as to explain why some tend to lead towards superstition to explain things.

Perhaps the problem here is that there is no "grand theory" that ties the swarm of randomness we all live through... outside of a nice pint of Guinness though.

Personally, my grand unified theory is that "God" is within each one of us. Feel free to adopt it. 

There is a scientific theory called Far From Equilibrium Thermodynamcis that comes the closest to explaining life. I just googled it and see that Sanford Kwinter wrote a book with that name. Interesting. 

tint, I own a copy of that book and it is a great read. The book is also bound in a puffy plastic cover just FYI.

Really great discussion, all.

tint, perhaps it is different now, but my recollection from Arch History class in the early 80s is that the Air Force chapel was designed and built as a Christian worship space on the main level;  the basement was designed for Jewish worship.  This was confirmed by an evangelical classmate of of mine who showed around his pictures from visiting it while loudly proclaiming that the basement was "really nice, too" and therefore the Jews should not feel at all slighted by the design.

Donna, I was there a year ago. Yes the main part of the space, the best part, is the Protestant chapel. The other areas are in the basement and they are nice but small. The non-protestant areas are clearly not the focus, yes. I was wondering about that too. Does that mean it isn't successful? I think given the times, it was, but we can certainly do better now. 

Jewish chapel

And the Buddhist space

There is an all-faith area that has other services too, but I can't find a picture of it. 

ug, not a good picture of the Jewish Chapel, sorry. It is circular. 

I totally agree that given the religious attitudes of the time it was a fairly respectable attempt to be inclusive. I also agree that we can do much, much better now. And the building is gorgeous, inside and out, as well as being a structural nerd's dream, in other words, back to the awesomeness of physics...

NS, thanks, maybe I will pick that book up and attempt it. I learned about Far From Equilibrium in a lecture from a microbiology class. Cool idea. 

Mormonism is the fasting growing religion in the US. I wonder if they only use Mormon architects. Too bad we scared Saint in the City away, I bet he knows. 

I am not a Mormon, but I know the answer to that question.  They often use Mormon architects, but not exclusively.  What they do demand is that the architects that design temples for the LDS church be classically trained, and all temples are now to be designed in classical styles.  This is a relatively recent requirement by the church - in the last ten years or so.  The LDS church is currently one of the biggest patrons of institutional classical architecture in the world.

Thanks EKE. Hard to believe they adopted a strict classical style, seems they have their own style, are they abandoning it? Mormon temple architecture website.

Cow baptismals! Why haven't I heard of these before???