The architect Eugenio Velazquez has had a tough couple years. Back in 2012, he was jailed for smuggling cocaine from Mexico into the United States. Now, his design for a new cathedral in Tijuana has been shut down—11 years after work first started.
The Archbishop of Tijuana, Francisco Moreno Barrón, cancelled the project because he felt that Velazquez’s contemporary design didn’t look like a cathedral. So now he’s launched a competition for a new, assumedly more traditional, design. It’s open only to Mexican architects, although foreigners are allowed to team up with Mexican ones.
“In its eagerness to be modern, the project does not resemble a Catholic temple, much less a cathedral,” Archbishop Barrón wrote in a statement.
The whole project has a rather dark side to it. While the site was obtained back in the late ‘70s, construction was delayed due to the 1993 assassination of the previous archbishop of Tijuana, Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, who was mistaken for a drug lord. And Velazquez, apparently, didn’t smuggle the cocaine of his own volition. Rather he was forced to by a client.
H/T Global Construction Review
By the way, the design shown in this article is NOT by Eugenio Velazquez. This project was designed by architect Hector Lopez after the original design by Velazques was rejected by the church.
All 7 Comments
No, it's the fact that it looks like a government office building. Putting a cross on a building doesn't make it a church.
This is what happens when architects ignore the archetype.
go to Los Angeles and look at every storefront/mini mall church...some have crosses others don't, all of them ignore the archetype, yet all are churches.
Well, the church in Mexico sometimes acts like a government!
By the way, the design shown in this article is NOT by Eugenio Velazquez. This project was designed by architect Hector Lopez after the original design by Velazques was rejected by the church.
You can't put a cross on anything. It doesn't make what you put it on a church.
yes you can.
Sorry, typo. I meant to say "You can put a cross on anything..."
and a bird
Catholics finally trying to be cool like the Jews with contemporary architecture.
Actually, it's more like "Architects trying to be cool, and Catholics rejecting it".
type and architype
nameable objects vs. so-called objects? What a limited framework in which to conceptualize a practice.
Yet that is exactly why the Church rejected the design. They wanted their cathedral to look like a cathedral and not an office building.
Factory, Hangar, and Cooling Tower are arguably modernist forms. Put the rest in front of an average person (those exact drawings) and see how many would use the names listed for the "nameable objects." And that's being charitable.
That's completely beside the point, Pete.
You used the image to try and prove your point. It failed to do so. Church architecture has evolved over many years and has taken many forms. You claim that Churches MUST look a certain way. The onus is on YOU to prove that. A single example (the article) of a congregation (or individual) rejecting a design because it does not fit THEIR idea of what a church looks like does NOT prove anything. So pony up with the proof.
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