Architecture

Modernism Triumphs in the Eternal City

American architect Richard Meier wins a Church competition to design the Church for the Third Millennium

By Duncan G. Stroik

In its earthly state the Church needs places where the community can gather together. Our visible churches, holy places, are images of the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, toward which we are making our way on pilgrimage.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1198

A recent architectural competition held by the diocese of Rome leads one to believe that the city=s vicariate thinks the future of Church architecture lies in the recent past. To be precise, the Church of Rome seems to suggest that new architecture should be based firmly on the tradition of mid-20th-Century modernism.

On the eve of the "jubilee of Jubilees"--the celebration of the opening of the third Christian millenium--the diocese of Rome invited six internationally recognized architects to compete in the design of a new parish church for Tor Tre Teste, a fragmented modern suburb of ten-story apartment blocks located thirty miles east of the center of Rome. The parish, named in honor of St. Silvester the pope, is one of fifty churches which the Rome diocese plans to build by the Year 2000, as an act of hospitality for the millions of pilgrims who are expected to make the journey to Rome in what will be "virtually a reversal of the apostolic pilgrimages of Pope John Paul II. The church has a budget of $5 million and is planned for 400 worshippers.

The Catholic Church of Rome--the patron of the architects of the Early Christian and Romanesque basilicas, and most of the Renaissance and Baroque architects--has promoted some of the greatest works of art and architecture known to man. In fact there is no other city in the world which has such a wealth and diversity of sacred architecture. The last forty years have seen less successful, even ugly churches built in and around the city. Thus at the beginning of the third millennium of her existence, the Church has the noble intention of regaining a leading position in the cultural life of society, through the significant design of new sacred architecture.

The six architects--Tadao Ando from Japan, Gunter Behnisch from Germany, Santiago Calatrava from Spain, and Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman and Richard Meier from the US--were hand-picked and paid by the Vicariate of Rome to design a church, basing their work on few architectural or liturgical requirements (Calatrava and Gehry are also on the list of six architects competing for the design of the Cathedral of Los Angeles). The winner of the competition for the "Church of the Year 2000, chosen by a jury made up of architects and clerics, was announced May 28 by Msgr. Luigi Moretti, secretary general of the Vicariate of Rome and president of the jury. The jury chose a project by Richard Meier of New York City, known for his sophisticated neo-Corbusian essays in white steel panels and gridded glass.

The architect of the High Museum in Atlanta, Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art, and the billion-dollar Getty Center which will soon be completed in Los Angeles, Meier is a true believer in the reductionism of the International Style. He is known for his employment of a complicated minimalism, which is refined yet spatially ambiguous. His elegant object-buildings are designed with an abstract kit of parts and look like they could have been built anywhere. His design for the "Church of the Year 2000," a series of curvilinear and rectilinear concrete walls with glass infill, is consistent with his designs for museums, private residences, and public buildings. In an age when it is often remarked that the art museum is the modern equivalent of a cathedral, is it not ironic that the See of Peter would hire a secular museum architect to try to breathe new life into the design of its parishes?

Urban Context and Exterior:

The church is placed at the center of a triangular site wedged in between two large slab apartment blocks planned, in the 1970s and a public park. A series of walls, benches, and three-dimensional elements project from the Church in order to delineate two courtyards, a pool of water in the rear, and a paved area in front. At first glance, it appears as a sculptural object in the expressionist tradition of Jorn Utzon's Sydney Opera House or Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal building. Without a recognizable architectural language in which to converse, modernism is left to react against or contrast with its surroundings, and this conventional modernist solution was employed by most of the competitors. Meier's church design has no recognizable figure or image; it has no reference to a typology of civic or sacred architecture; it is merely differentiated from surrounding buildings which themselves have no memorable form. It becomes a fragmentary building for a fragmented environment.

One of the glories of the city of Rome is its manifold piazzas and fountains, which give identity to neighborhoods and are central to the civic life of its inhabitants. Meier missed an opportunity to create a church with a defined piazza that could give identity to the faceless anonymity of the Tor Tre Teste neighborhood. With its diminutive size and its lack of recognizable form, it is questionable whether the church will be able to compete with the massive apartment buildings which surround it.

The Church proper is a series of three curved concrete walls joined by glass walls and glass ceilings. The architect states that the three walls discretely imply the Trinity. The incompleteness of the arcs intentionally leaves the building looking unresolved and unfinished. A vertical wall separates the church from the parish center, which is a conventional modernist essay in vertical and horizontal grids, while a rectangular block containing a fire stair is a weak attempt at a bell tower.

Given the siting at the apex of a triangle, a recognizable and monumental bell tower could have helped to anchor the site and proclaim the "New Evangelism" called for by John Paul II and indeed by the competition program. Architecturally, the church's form, massing, articulation, and iconography are not powerful enough to create a place of refuge and of welcome within the Tor Tre Teste neighborhood. While Meier has spent a lot of time in Rome, there is nothing on the exterior of the building--not even a cross--to indicate that it is a house of God or give any hint that the architect studied the varied tradition of basilica, temple, centralized, or baroque nave churches in Rome.

Interior

For a Church built ostensibly to welcome pilgrims for the Jubilee, the building lacks a clear sense of journey and arrival. The lack of a clearly defined piazza fronting the main street is further exacerbated by lack of a profound threshold. The entrance is merely the space between two incomplete walls, and an implied porch protects from neither rain nor sun. The pilgrim passes through a glass wall, rather than thick sheltering walls, into the narthex or atrium, which is simply a part of the nave which has been interrupted by a wall.

The nave is conceived as an asymmetrical space in which every element which might bring harmony is bisected or cut into by some other object. The vertical south wall of paneled wood contrasts with the curving concrete north wall which hangs precipitously over the assembly. The curving wall on the north has a large L-shaped cutout in the direction of the baptistry and daily chapel, which takes away from the directionality toward the altar. The glass ceiling is sloped in one direction and has a series of struts which lean in the opposite direction. All of these elements serve to create those most compelling of post-modern requirements: tension and distraction. Yet it is not a tension which leads to a resolution, nor a distraction in which one might lose oneself, as in a Renaissance side chapel or a medieval altarpiece.

Instead, the worshipper is left with fragments and disharmony. The focus of the church is always in question: in the shape of the room, in the contrasting materials and shapes of the six major planes which compose it, and in the constant need to balance any centralizing element such as altar or cross with large cutouts or treatment of light on the side. There is nothing other than a few steps to signify the transition to the sanctuary which contains the table-altar and box-like ambo. The east wall of sanctuary has become a sophisticated game of collage, with the sacristy "tower" extruded from the gridded glass wall. The deep conical window behind the cross, the clear glass slit running around the church, and the addition and subtraction of elements are all quotations from the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier--in particular from his church of Ronchamp and his monastery of La Tourette.

Other than the cross, which appears to have been extruded from the window glazing, Meier has designed a perfectly puritanical Reformation space. No iconography, stations of the cross, or statue of the Virgin Mary are indicated in the design, despite the fact that the liturgical guidelines published by the Italian bishops, and given to the participants in the design contest, state that "the artistic designs (pictorial images) that will describe and illustrate the mysteries that are celebrated, relating them to the Story of Salvation and to the assembly, must be conceived at the very outset of the project. . . these contribute to promote the correct devotion of the people of God, priority being given to those signs and symbols of sacramental life."

The iconoclasm of imagery in St. Silvester Pope is consistent with the reductionism of the architecture. Meier offers us complicated abstract parts rather than richness of iconography, materials, color, and meaning. This should not be confused with the noble simplicity of Franciscan or early Renaissance churches which are fully figural and use an architectural language. St. Silvester is a building which would have made a perfectly suitable assembly hall for a progressive Protestant denomination in the 1960s. This is not surprising since modernist art and architecture find their roots in an atheistic Calvinism which prefers function over beauty, the word over image, and the mind over body. When modernism replaced the paradigm of the human figure with the machine, abstract functionalism was born.

Of all of the building types left to Modern man, the church continues to cry out for meaningful expression. In an age when the church competes with the stage, the television, video, and the art museum, we are in need of greater attention to imagery, not less. Meier has sought to create an Enlightenment sense of the sublime through a collagist juxtaposition of forms and the use of reflected light on severe monolithic forms. For inspiration Meier cites in particular the qualify of light and space in the baroque church of St. Ivo by Francesco Borromini. The play of light and shadow in St. Ivo help create a sense of mystery, but in the case of St. Sylvester one must wonder whether it is the light of transcendence or merely an indirect lighting effect acceptable for illuminating modern art. A sense of transcendent mystery which reflects the paschal mystery cannot be simply reinvented using abstract forms of technology; it must grow out of the forms and elements employed by earlier generations.

Reflecting on the competition

Does this competition signal a step forward or a step backward for the Church of Rome? In inviting these six architects to compete, the Catholic Church places herself on par with the cultural institutions of the contemporary world: museums, foundations, multinational corporate headquarters, and city halls. In doing so the Church recaptures the attention of the news media and the cultural elite. Or does she?

While new churches should certainly (as Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope=s vicar for the city of Rome would have it) express the "religious climate of our times," they should also express the ancient tradition of liturgy as well as the timeless precepts of Catholic belief. Did the jury make the right choice? When presented with six projects which have more to do with each architect's self-expression than with any understanding of the history of liturgical architecture, Meier's design may have been the most reasonable choice. Unlike some of the other submissions, at least this design could "function" for a Catholic liturgy.

All six of the architects= entries grow out of the ill-fated tradition of modernism, which today no longer looks avant garde. Does the Church really think that these 1960s revivals point the way to the future? These designs already look dated before they are built.

How was this group of architects chosen for the competition? Six trendy designers in the international set, they are not known for religious structures (except for Ando) nor to be particularly religious themselves. According to the guidelines furnished by the Italian bishops= liturgical commission, the "architect is a person particularly qualified on professional level, but should also have a special grasp of the theological and liturgical values involved." Hiring these establishment architects today could be considered the safe choice for a Church which is uncomfortable with its cultural heritage and unsure about the future. However, if this is so, the Church looks to be merely riding the wave of contemporary culture rather than creating a new culture of life.

Clearly, Rome does not view the last fifty years of church architecture as any more successful than most pilgrims or tourists do. Otherwise, why didn't the vicariate invite some of the many architects who presently monopolize the design of sacred edifices for their dioceses? But while looking outside of Italy for top architects is laudable, the diocese of Rome ignored the well publicized critique of modernism which has been articulated during the past thirty years by both European and American critics. This critique has operated on a number of levels, including an indictment of modernist architecture's inability to express meaning outside of itself and its lack of connection with the history of architecture.

Modernism has also been critiqued for its lack of functionalism and durability, and for its destructive social effects. Its legacy in our cities has been catastrophic; many cities have been all but ruined by the random distribution of unrelated buildings and destruction of human scale. Modernism has also been found lacking by sociologists, anthropologists, social historians, and recently by Catholic liturgists. Msgr. Francis Mannion, president of the Society for Catholic Liturgy, has written that "the modern movement in architecture is not adequate to the service of Catholic liturgy: modernism in art, architecture and liturgy is hampered by a mechanistic model of social and religious reality."

Those who have been critical of modernism's effect on the traditional city have included Italian architects Aldo Rossi, Paolo Portoghesi, and recently Gabrielle Tagliaventi. In Europe and the United States, the post-modern critique of abstraction, coupled with a new interest in the use of historical elements and paradigms, led many architects to re-learn the precepts of classical architecture and urbanism which had formed the basis of architectural practice as recently as the 1940s. This new classical movement has grown dramatically in the last decade and begun to win noteworthy commissions. Therefore it is surprising that Rome did not include at least one of these classical architects such as Allan Greenberg, Leon Krier, Thomas Gordon Smith, Robert Stern, or Quinlan Terry. (Terry recently completed the exquisite Wentworth Cathedral in England, and Greenberg's elegant church of the Immaculate Conception in New Jersey will be finished this fall.) And why did not Rome invite prominent international architects who are Roman Catholic, such as Kevin Roche or John Burgee? These architects are members of a worldwide movement who would see the opportunity to design a Catholic church in the Eternal City as a tremendous opportunity to work in the tradition of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Bernini.

One must applaud the attempt by the See of Peter to revive the tradition of beautiful sacred architecture in the Eternal City, especially at this important turning point in the history of Christianity. The positive news is that the Vatican realizes that to design new churches it is important to hire excellent architects and spend money. The sad news is that hiring a notorious modernist architect and spending a lot of money is no guarantee that the building will be an appropriate edifice for liturgy, much less an inspiration to worship. While the fifty churches that are to be built in time for the Jubilee are intended to welcome pilgrims, one expects that only architects will visit Tor Tre Teste. The millions of other laity, religious, and tourists will surely be inspired by the finest of Roman Catholic culture, including St. Sabina and St. Mary Major, St. John Lateran and the Gesu, St. Peter=s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. One hopes that these pilgrims will take back to their dioceses both a deeper faith and an understanding of these architectural masterpieces as the appropriate models for their own churches in the year 2000.

Duncan Stroik is associate professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame.