October 2007 Archives

Baroque buildings used a combination of concave and convex curves to direct movement through a space. Similarly, the glamorous church uses concave extrusions, along an oval path (as the space within an oval is considered to be heavenly), to define areas where the sacraments take place, and convex extrusions along an oval path, to define where circulation occurs. The transformational spaces are ordered hierarchically moving towards spaces of increased intensity.

Today I met with Father Allen Morris of The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady, in St. John's Wood. The purpose of the meeting was to gain a better understanding of the spaces where The Sacraments take place within the Church. Beyond our discussion, he recommended two documents, which I found to be really useful: The General Instruction of the Roman Missal and Consecrated for Worship. The former outlines all the details related to the ritual of Mass and the latter provides an explicit description of the current requirements for Church building.

The Baroque was a period when the Catholic Church used glamour to persuade the laity. The most significant shape during this period was the oval. The space within the oval was symbolic of heaven.

1. Serilio's four ovals.


As the glamorous curve expresses transformation and duality, it adopts the heavenly curve and couples it with the sensuous curve. It takes heavenly perfection and makes it accessible through an organic language.






2. Inflection - where a concave curve meets a convex curve.

The glamorous wall is visually porous so that the eye may easily move from the space within to the space beyond. It is highly textured on the interior and comparatively austere on its exterior. It is voluminous and dramatic. It employs a language of sensuality. It presents the eye with an ephemeral form, an apparition of a wall.


Proto-Glam Walls:

                                                                                                    
















The Church of S. Maria in Campitelli demonstrates the baroque convention of having a relatively regular exterior wall in contrast to an exuberant interior wall condition.




More recently, Le Corbusier's Firminy presents a porous, textured wall...gorgeous!

Glam Space describes an architectural agenda for a chuch in Rome that highlights spatial qualities which signify that which is glam or glamorous.

Originally, glamour refers to a spell which may be cast on a person. This spell changes how things appear. Support for this definition appears in Christopher Priest's fantasy novel, “The Glamour”, where the ability to render oneself invisible is to possess the glamour. Additionally, in his book “It”, Stephen King uses the word glamour in reference to a creature (It) who is able to shapeshift, or who may be seen differently by different viewers. Finally, in the supernatural t.v. show “Charmed” the glamour is a bewitching power that enables the wielder to transform into another's physical appearance. The primary modern meaning of glamour relates to fascination, charisma, beauty, a kind of exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness. Thereby, it describes both a material quality and an immaterial one.

Glamour gives utopian fantasy a sensuality, permitting a human connection. Glamour provides just enough familiarity to lure the imagination. It is a highly mysterious blend of engagement coupled with distance. It is neither transparent nor opaque, but translucent: a partially revealed environment.

This shifting concept of glamour as that which is tangible/intangible is echoed in the notion of The Church which serves as a material representation of the trancendental world. The Church’s often opulant treatment of space not only communicates its otherworldliness but also serves to seduce  and to convince those who experience it, of the institution’s power.

Many believe The Church, as described in The Bible, has a dual form that can be described as both the visible and invisible church. The Church visible exists in its physical form in all mortals who identify themselves as Christians. The Church invisible, consists of all those from every time and place, who are eternally united to Christ through regeneration and salvation.

Glamour’s ever-shifting relationship between singularity and duality can be further explored in debates of contemporary building practice, where it is enjoying a resurgence. The modernist mandate of “form follows function” dictated an aesthetic of streamlined forms, void of ornament, historical reference, or gratuitous sensuality. Any decorative feature that was not structurally necessary was deemed architecturally dishonest. Architects today are able to address this issue of honest expression with digital technologies that allow for the integration of pattern, texture, and expressive form into the very structure of buildings, allowing “ornament” to be performative.

Considering the formal characteristics of glamour, the built form of glam space will be a structure within a structure. The outer structure alludes to the interior space but obscures its contents. Enclosed within is a seamless undulating surface which transforms from floor to wall to pulpit to pew and so on. Continuous curves make it difficult to discern depth in the space.

The interior shell will take its cues from the dramatic walls of its baroque predecessors. This undulating skin will work to define the spaces of The Church where transformative events occur. The areas where the clergy convene intensely with God visibly and invisibly in a rite, instituted by Christ, that mediates grace, constituting a sacred mystery: the areas which host The Sacraments.

This first plan investigates a layered wall that separates and converges repeatedly, shifting between single and double strands to make space.