Sacred Architecture Cathedrals

Where to begin? Well, there are hardly any right angles in this building. Broken forms, discontinuities, and protrusions in its geometry both inside and outside characterize the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Such imbalance and departure from mathematical harmony is usually explained away by labeling it a “postmodern-deconstructivist” building, as if style were sufficient reason to violate tectonic harmony and geometrical coherence. 

We have here a celebration of asymmetry, which might be understandable if there were a sound reason for it coming either from design necessities, or from religion. But there is none. The building’s asymmetry serves an essentially negative purpose: to deny coherence and harmony.

Ornament is rigorously (religiously?) forbidden. The worshiper is given the nicely executed representational hanging tapestries by John Nava to enjoy. The architect, however, eschews any architectural ornamentation. 

You are allowed decoration in the form of tapestries but little else to connect to, for that is ruled out by the design ideology. Not outlawed by Christianity or Catholicism, mind you, but by a sort of “geometrical fundamentalism” responsible for this building. 

Furthermore, the tapestries are hung so that they appear unattached to the walls. This is a telling detail. The deliberate impression is that they are an afterthought: not an integral part of the Cathedral’s essential surface geometry, but a compromise to religious art that poses no risk to the ideological purity of the architect’s forms.

Originally writen by crisismagazine and most pictures collected from pinterest