The chicken or the egg? building anglican churches and building congregations in a victorian london suburb

ABSTRACT

There was lively debate in the mid-Victorian Church of England as to whether it was more effective for the construction of physical church buildings to precede the formation of a new parish and congregation, or whether it was advisable instead for the human church to precede the material one. This article explores the realities on the ground through a case study of the four new churches built in the North London suburb of Finchley between the 1840s and the 1890s. Where the church before congregation strategy was modestly costed and efficiently executed, it could, as at Holy Trinity East Finchley (1846) and St. Paul's Long Lane (1886), enable the rapid growth of thriving congregations. However, at Christ Church North Finchley (1868), where the congregation came first, subsequent pastoral activity was hampered for many years by the financial demands of an unnecessarily expensive building. At All Saints Durham Road (1892), initial plans to set up a congregation in an “iron church” were frustrated due to large donations conditional on the immediate erection of a permanent church. In a context of strong competition from Nonconformity, the desire to make a strong material statement of presence in a community was understandable, but its long-term consequences for the Church's mission were ambivalent ones.     

Divine Living: Marketing and Selling Churches as Lofts in Toronto,Canada

In recent years, a growing number of churches no longer used by religious groups have been converted to loft housing. Church lofts offer consumers heritage architecture and unique aesthetics, elements that distinguish these spaces in the housing market. In order to sell converted churches as viable homes, however, developers and their marketing teams deploy a variety of marketing strategies. Through an analysis of advertising media in Toronto, Ontario, in this paper, I show how former churches are repackaged and promoted with a heritage identity that fits a normative ideal of upscale loft living. In particular, I analyse three central marketing themes: the reinvention of a church to a house and home, the production of identity through place names and the representation of church lofts in the urban landscape. Woven together, these themes rewrite a building’s religious past and legitimize an emerging housing market that makes use of built religious heritage.     

新安庄天主教堂构造分析——中式手法营造的西式外形

1840～1924年是山西教堂建筑发展的高峰期。这一时期的教堂大多采用欧洲传统教堂建筑形式。然而不同于近代开埠城市,内陆地区的外来建筑更多的受到当地建筑材料和建造技术的制约,并经由本地工匠的理解,实现其移植和落户的过程。该文以山西省朔县新安庄天主教堂为例,分析外来的教堂建筑如何在传统观念的诠释下,运用本地的建造技术,实现西式的建筑造型。通过分析,可以发现植根于本土的基本观念和基本特色,以期为当代建筑追求本土化的创作提供参考。     

The Light of the World: Mediating Divine Presence through Light and Sound in a Contemporary Megachurch

Abstract

The paper explores the interplay of elaborate light and sound technologies used in the worship services of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. During the renovation and reconstruction of the church venue from former basketball stadium to church auditorium, the church hired professional companies to design and outfit the huge 16,000 seat auditorium in order to create a worship space, which simultaneously is meant to serve as a meeting space for the congregation and as an intimate place for a personal encounter with God. Worship services at Lakewood Church are multi-sensory events in which lights on the ceiling, in the auditorium, and on stage interplay with sound, vision, and space in order to structure the worship service and to mediate divine presence. The analysis is based on fieldwork data acquired on site and textual data drawn from portfolios of the technological companies involved in the reconstruction and outfitting of the church auditorium. I argue that despite the capaciousness of the space an atmosphere of intimacy is created through a specific lighting scheme that departs from traditional church lighting practices.     

Pilgrimage in graeco-roman and early christian antiquity seeing the gods Elsner,JaŚ and Rutherford,Ian (eds.)

ABSTRACT

This study is an ethnographic and conceptual analysis of religious objects, their uses, and mediation of authority within the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (Universal Church) in Brazil. Drawing on scholarship within media studies, religion and media, and material religion, I distinguish between artifacts used to cement implicit contracts between Universal Church followers and their church community, which I call contractual media, or swag, and those that followers bring to meetings to be blessed and then take home to mediate both good and evil forces in family, work, and social life—these I call portable media. While portable object media are seen by their owners as powerful tools, contractual media, on the other hand, create implicit power relations that keep followers tied to the institutional church in a reciprocal exchange predicated upon expected prosperity as evidence of faithful attendance, fidelity, and personal sacrifice. The physical exchange of material goods in religious spaces constitutes a perpetuation rather than a disruption of institutional religious authority. As infrastructure, contractual object media establish and maintain conditions for otherwise mundane materials to mediate power on a daily basis. Through attention toward portable and contract object media, as part of what I am calling material microstructure, we can further complicate religious authority as it is mediated through objects, not just in one-way flows but as dynamic exchanges and trade-offs between personal empowerment and institutional control.     

古典新构——基于类型学的永川凤凰湖公园教堂设计思考

教堂建筑是物质空间与宗教精神的统一体,如何通过空间形态的安排来营造合适的场所精神,是设计时应解决的重要问题。本文基于类型学理论对重庆市永川区凤凰湖公园教堂设计进行分析,并针对教堂建筑的特殊性,探讨了其文脉溯源和宗教历史传承的问题,对哥特式建筑艺术进行解析及再现,结合场地的具体条件,总结出设计教堂建筑时继承宗教传统并反馈在地环境的针对性策略。     

Vernacular miracles: blood and bones in neapolitan religion

ABSTRACT

Naples is a city run by miracles. Canonical miracles like the thrice-annual liquefaction of San Gennaro's blood, and vernacular miracles, like those effected by the capozzelle, anonymous skulls venerated at Fontanelle, the largest ossuary in Europe. Devotees visited these “little skulls” at the cemetery, cleaned them, adopted them into their families, even had them rebaptized. In return for these favors, the anime pezzentelle (vagabond souls) conjured by the skulls were expected to be conduits for divine favors or to provide more concrete benefits, like revealing winning lotto numbers in dreams. In the wake of Vatican II reforms, the Neapolitan archbishop denounced the anime pezzentelle cult as fetishism, and ordered the closure of Fontanelle, along with public access to the last two churches which still housed capozzelle. Based on field research in 1999, 2002, 2006, and 2013, I have documented the contest between the official church and partisans of the vernacular cult over the stewardship of the capozzelle, as well as the significance of this struggle for the practice of vernacular religion in Naples.     

Striking elements – A lifebelt or a fad? Searching for an effective way of adapting abandoned churches

Are avant-garde elements added to historical objects as a temporary fashion to fulfill the aspirations of designers or an attempt to draw attention to themselves? It may be the exact opposite, and this type of controversial project is the best lifebelt for such monuments. This article explores issues related to external avant-garde elements added to adapted churches and their influence on the efficiency of such adaptation projects. Gothic churches located in the north of Europe that have changed their religious function, entirely or in part, were considered. This work examined former churches in Maastricht, namely, the Minorite Church, the Church of the Kruisheren Monastery, the Dominican Church, as well as Polish churches located in Gdańsk, including St. John’s Church and St. Catherine’s Church. This article attempted to identify the factors that contribute to the successful adaptation of former churches and the benefits and drawbacks of adopting avant-garde design solutions. Results of this study might provide valuable inspiration for other churches that are losing worshippers. This study was conducted on the basis of a wide range of literature, statistical data, logical reasoning, and comparative methods. Observations from selected edifices were checked for their correlation over time. This study also included in situ investigations.     

中西建筑文化融合下的苏州杨家桥天主堂

在跨文化融合和地域环境的互相影响下，苏州现存的近代天主教教堂，既传承了西方古典主义的建筑特征，又吸取了本土地域建构文化，并展现出独特的中西文化融合的教堂建筑。苏州杨家桥天主堂建于1892年，坐落在苏州古城城外，其建筑特征是中西建筑文化融合下的代表之一。文章从建筑学的角度出发，通过对教堂的历史资料和实地测绘定性研究，从教堂平面、立面、剖面、细部、景观及文化等六个方面，来探究杨家桥天主堂跨文化的建筑语言和嬗变进程，并将其保留下去。     

公元11～17世纪欧洲基督教教堂空间嬗变研究

公元11～17世纪,欧洲的基督教从中世纪的极盛时期逐渐走向世俗化,整个社会文化亦渐渐退去了中世纪经验主义与神秘主义,走向对理性精神的推崇.教堂建筑随之经历了相应的变化：从哥特式教堂走向推崇理性主义的文艺复兴时期的教堂和追求感官猎奇的巴洛克教堂,同时也出现了体现新教理念的教堂建筑.这一时期是欧洲传统基督教教堂建筑发展的重要时期,这一时期建造的大量教堂都成为人类文明史上的宝贵财富.     

欧洲教堂建筑的适应性再利用研究:对遗产转型的批判性评价

欧洲璀璨的建筑遗产,尤其是基督教和天主教教堂建筑,正处在功能逐渐退化甚至彻底消失的危险境地中。 其主要原因在于西方基督教社会面临的社会变迁连带冲击了大众宗教知识、教会参与度以及圣召的数量。如今, 很多西方国家面临着一个共同的问题,即如何应对众多逐渐遭到弃用的教堂和修道院,以及如何解决随之而来的 关于这些建筑的使用、维护、财务、所有权分配和遗产保护的问题。本文是对濒危遗产的批判性评价。那些已经 失去其原有用途的教堂建筑,未来将何去何从？谁来决定这些建筑该以何种方式,或被退役,或再利用,又或被 拆除？是否还有其他的使用模式？遗产保护会对教堂的再利用产生什么影响？半个世纪以来,我们在与冗余的教 会建筑和适应性再利用的经验中学到了什么？笔者对教堂建筑的各种不尽相同的适应性再利用方式、不断变化的 建筑遗产价值以及可能会在未来发挥作用并能引发中国读者思考的全新决策模式等问题作出回顾性思考。     

Generative history: Marcel Poëte and the city as urban organism

The study by Robin Evans of the centralised churches of the Renaissance explores the idea of centrality, and argues that architecture does not simply invest in one geometric centre. Evans's analysis makes detours into the histories of theology, geometry and mathematics attempting to find how architecture participates with these fields. In a footnote, he suggests that architecture in its singular artistic physicality ‘suspends our disbelief in the ideal’, offering a world that does not reflect culture, in all its fullness, but rather supplements culture's incompleteness. This idea reiterates psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Kristeva that qualify the notion of transcendence with the psychoanalytic concept of transference. Architecture, like art, is able to resolve that which in society and in other fields remains a contradiction, giving a picture (albeit fictional) of a harmonious and unified order and wholeness.

In this essay, I turn to Hagia Sofia (532–537AD) in present-day Istanbul, a church that marks the beginning of a Christian empire relocated to Constantinople, East of Rome, and built one thousand years before the Renaissance churches discussed by Evans. Hagia Sofia is a building that symbolises the shift towards a domed centralised form, away from a basilica form, and a building that develops an innovative interior. Hagia Sofia is usually observed and described in a devotional manner, as though addressing the architecture of the church is equivalent to a pious person addressing the church itself, and more significantly, addressing the Divine figure of God, through the architecture of the church. Its influence on Islamic mosque design has been noted. What rôle does Hagia Sofia play in the kind of artistic mastery that Evans is proposing, and what other dimensions of centrality and transcendence in architecture are offered by a study of Hagia Sofia?     

PLACES OF WORSHIP AND NEIGHBORHOOD STABILITY

ABSTRACT: Despite ongoing interest in religious group involvement in community development, only limited research has considered whether the mere existence of a place of worship can be linked to neighborhood well‐being. This exploratory study uses a cross‐sectional design to examine the relationships between the presence of churches in high‐poverty neighborhoods and specific measures of neighborhood stability. One‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and geographic information system (GIS) software were employed to compare measures of structural permanence, residential tenure, and property valuation from a sample of two types of church (freestanding and storefront) and non‐church areas or “clusters.” The findings provide limited support for the conclusion that storefront churches, while modest and often regarded as less architecturally significant, may be overlooked contributors to the sort of stable urban space where residential population is preserved and investment maintained.     

THE WAGON ROOFS AT ST JAMES’S PRIORY,BRISTOL

Abstract

In most regions of England in the medieval period there was a strong overlap between the carpentry traditions employed in churches and domestic buildings. While some forms of assembly may be the exclusive preserve of either the ecclesiastical or secular spheres, certain technologies are common to both. In the south-west of England, extending into the southern Marches and South Wales, however, the two are entirely different — wagon or cradle roofs are found only in churches, never in vernacular domestic structures, which normally adopt a variant of cruck construction. Little systematic analysis has been done on church roofs, mainly because they are difficult to access. The chronological range of wagon roofs in the South-West has normally been placed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The firm dating of the two wagon roofs of St James’s Priory, Bristol, has pushed the conventional range back to the mid-fourteenth century, and other examples in the region may be considerably earlier. This paper uses the Bristol roofs to speculate about the origins of the wagon roof type and the reasons why it remained an exclusively ecclesiastical form.     

Pilgrimage and Visual Genre: The Architecture of Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic Pilgrimage in Scotland

Abstract

As Roman Catholics gained confidence in twentieth-century Scotland, they revived pre-Reformation shrines and pilgrimages and created new shrines with transnational connections to the modern Catholic world. Three sites in this campaign were Carfin, a new pilgrimage center based on Lourdes; Whithorn, site of medieval pilgrimages to Saint Ninian; and Dunfermline, associated with the canonized Queen Margaret of Scotland. Each had different meanings for Scottish Catholicism. The landscapes of these shrines included proposed new buildings, completed buildings, including shrines and churches, and existing features, notably caves or grottoes and medieval ruins. Whether found, professionally designed, or made by the clergy and their congregations, these sites framed and ordered pilgrimage rituals and lent them meaning. Seeing common architectural, visual features across these pilgrimages, and drawing on new archival research, we suggest that the employment of recognizable visual genres was a key way of creating a consensus among the faithful. International symbols of saintly presence were remade for the local context, with intertwined religious and political intentions, giving tangible expression to a revived Catholicism in Scotland, and promoting a new vision of Scotland as a Catholic nation.     

Activating sacred objects in public space: Bernini’s angels on the ponte sant’angelo in early modern Rome

ABSTRACT

In 1667, Pope Clement IX commissioned Gian Lorenzo Bernini to design 10 sculptures of angels to decorate the Ponte Sant’Angelo in Rome. Contemporary accounts record that the faithful experienced Bernini’s statues as animated celestial figures at the heart of the city. The ability of the marble angels to persuasively move beholders fulfilled the aims of the papal commission to expand the reach of the Church into the urban space of Rome. This paper examines how these religious objects were activated in a public space, a setting composed of sacred and profane elements. In the early modern era, the Ponte Sant’Angelo connected Rome’s city center to St. Peter’s Basilica while also serving as a setting for civic processions, spectacular fireworks displays, and public executions. While angels were ubiquitous in the city’s sacred spaces, like church interiors, Bernini’s sculptures materialized a flock of angels at an outdoor, urban nexus of theology, spectacle, and justice. Drawing on theories of performance that conceptualize the profound religious encounter that can result from the simultaneous juxtaposition of sacred and profane elements, this paper argues that the public setting activated Bernini’s marble statues so that they were experienced as lively celestial figures by the faithful.     

Notes on ANT for designers: ontological,methodological and epistemological turn in collaborative design

This article aims to explore how ANT might help us to rethink collaborative and participatory design (C&PD) practices through converting Bruno Latour's call for risky accounts to a call for design things together. What if ANT starts to be in the business of designing new pieces of technology and not just actor-network accounts of them? What would the design process and its outcomes look like? In response to these questions and to the challenge of co-habitation as vital condition for our technical democracy, I propose three turns in C&PDs. The first is ontological and suggests to design actor networks and to look for ways to make these networks visible. The second is methodological and suggests reimagining co-design as actor networking in public, aided by a much-needed cartography of design. The last is epistemological: it is concerned with what knowledge should inform action in the design process, and it proposes to the idea of the designer as an agnostic Prometheus.     

Dreams of an Iconic Mosque: Spatial and Temporal Entanglements of a Converted Church in Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the making of iconicity through religious architecture in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Examining the Fatih Mosque housed in a former Catholic church in the city center, we show in what ways the efforts at making this mosque iconic are shaped by the building’s iconic field, by which we denote its entanglement with other (religious and non-religious) sites in the past and the present. This iconic field is characterized by the conversion chains that preceded the mosque, material and discursive legacies of “hiddenness” and contemporary symbolic interactions with nearby sites such as the Western Church. By developing an analysis of the mosque’s temporal and spatial entanglements in Amsterdam’s urban space, we seek to revitalize a relational and diachronic approach that has suffered from neglect, particularly in social-scientific studies of mosques in the West. Rather than looking at a singular place of worship at a particular moment in time, we draw attention to the relations between Islamic and other religious architecture and to the ways in which this mosque intersects with broader genealogies and geographies of religion, not only by association but also by actual links in relationships, politics or material culture.     

清末教堂建筑的风格与类型研究

教堂是一种功能独特的公共建筑。该文以清朝末年在我国境内大量建造的基督教教堂建筑为研究对象,对这一时期我国境内基督教教堂建筑的建筑风格、类型进行了探讨、研究。     

A landscape cannot be a homeland

What is the problem for which landscape is the answer? In this paper, I offer a response to this question, first posed at a meeting of landscape researchers in Brussels in 2011. I argue that the problem can be defined as ontopology, or what I call here homeland thinking, and I propose that a landscape cannot be a homeland. The salience of landscape as a critical term instead involves modes of thinking and feeling that chafe against invocations of homeland as a site of existential inhabitation, as a locus of sentiment and attachment, and a wellspring of identity. The paper explores the connections between ideas of landscape and homeland through discussions of the European Landscape Convention, phenomenology and the term homeland itself. I conclude by arguing that a landscape must be understood as a kind of dislocation or distancing from itself. There are, after all, no original inhabitants.