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GLAMOUR IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Glamour is the elusive element of celebrity culture that elevates the star. It is the careful transformation of a person from how they truly appear to an unreal, idealized fantasy. Photoshop-adjusted images in fashion magazines of unattainable clothing, impeccable hair, flawless makeup, and the occasional nip/tuck, construct contemporary icons that we meditate upon whilst in line at the grocery store; celebrated figures imbued with an otherworldly character. The public instinctively craves these images.

The Church, an institution that once maintained a near monopoly on the production of glamorous visions of the supernatural, has fallen behind pop culture in the output of such imagery. Having taken on the austere desires of the Reformation, The Church no longer has the capacity to seduce. Although the Reformation favorably led to an age of rationality and the beginning of greater class equality, something was lost. Like modern architecture, The Church fell victim to a narrow view of functionalism, but can regain its position as a primary source of glamour and lure followers back into the fold.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF GLAMOUR AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE CHURCH

Before the Reformation Glamour was employed throughout the Church to emphasize the wealth, power and otherworldliness of the institution. Entry into the space of the Church allowed Feudal peasants the the rare opportunity to experience opulence and supernatural beauty, resulting in the consolidation of religious belief. In this way, the Baroque Church utilized a glamourous aesthetic to dislocate people, suspending the ordinary routine of their lives.

The Enlightenment and Reformation saw a transformation of Church conventions in terms of the  glamour aesthetic. The proliferation of the printed word and Biblical translation encouraged personal interpretations of the Bible and of the natural world. These factors coupled with the rise of capitalism and industrialization planted the seeds of modern individualism. Secularism and the dominance of science increased during the Enlightenment, further contributing to the decline of religious faith and to the rise of the liberal state. Contemporary capitalism has emphasized the individual and eroded social ties including those that bind religious communities. The power of the church has diminished as a result. Instead of coherent religious communities, contemporary society is composed of isolated, atomized individuals. As people struggle for meaning against this historical backdrop, rediscovering religious identity will likely play an important role in re-constructing collective identity.

La Chiesa del Sacro Fascino seeks to bring back glamour as a a persuasive device. By recalling the function of glamour in pre-Reformation Churches, the glamorous church seeks to persuade the masses using a visual language recognizable to contemporary society, to produce an encounter with glamour that functions to renew faith.

In the modern era, Glamour has been harnessed by the fashion industry to cultivate elitism and individualism, defining patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Rather than glamour being consumed to elevate the individual, La Chiesa del Sacro Fascino harnesses glamour for collective experience. Glamour at the scale of architecture permits shared experience.

GLAMSPACE

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 referred to a spell which may be cast on a person to change how things appear. The primary modern meaning of glamour alludes to fascination, charisma, beauty, a kind of exciting and often illusory, romantic attractiveness. Thereby, it describes both a material quality and an immaterial one. Glamour gives utopian fantasy a sensuality, permitting a human connection., providing just enough familiarity to lure the imagination. It is a highly mysterious blend of engagement coupled with distance that 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 opulant treatment of space in the Baroque era not only communicated its otherworldliness but also served to seduce and convince those who experience it of the institution’s power.

Considering this two-fold formal characteristics of glamour the built form of glam space is a structure within a structure. The relatively sober outer structure alludes to the interior space but obscures its contents. Enclosed within is a seamless undulating surface which transforms from wall to floor to pulpit to pew and so on. Continuous soft 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 sheath will work to define the spaces of The Church where transformative events occur: the areas which host The Sacraments.

Similarly, the iconic costumes associated with the rituals of the church, underscore a long-standing tradition of marking transformational events through elaborate dress. The Sacraments, the most intensely transformative rituals within the church, demand a distinct set of highly articulated garments such as wedding gowns, christening gowns, vestments etc. which serve to set apart their wearer through complex fabric manipulations and to mark the unique importance of both the individual and the divine encounter. Taking into account fashion's ability to provide an everyday means of transforming one's appearance and acknowledging its position as the most common contemporary medium of glamour, the glamorous church will depart from the austere tendencies of recent church design by using certain techniques of fashion, in particular dressmaking, as a way to re-establish glamorous associations with The Church.

Prior to constructing the garment, a sensuous body must be defined upon which to lay the garment. In the Glamourous Church, the garment is fitted to a body which is defined by the building’s program. The body is composed of a proliferation of glamorous curves: oval segments which are organized by inflection. Oval segments are used in reference to the Baroque, a period when the Catholic Church used glamour to persuade the laity. The most significant shape during this time was the oval (which results from the transformation of a circle), as the space within the oval was symbolic of heaven. inflection connects oval segments to create a sensuous curvature as the oval alone is not enough. The glamorous curve must express transformation and duality. The glamorous curve takes heavenly perfection (the oval) and makes it accessible through an organic language (oval segments joined by inflection). Because inflection marks the point where a curve changes sign from positive to negative, it represents the sign of the in-between and the form of the vague.