I am guilty

I read this the other day, and it hits directly on the regional thinking I've been doing about architecture, and on designing for this place and this time. I'm certainly guilty of this fakery in the past and am repenting by building things that are truthful. Here's the quote:

"Let us be clear about this, the forms that people used in other civilizations or in other periods of our own country's history were intimately part of the whole structure of their life. There is no method of reproducing these forms or bringing them back to life; it is a piece of rank materialism to attempt to duplicate some earlier form, because of its delight for the eye, without realizing how empty a form is without the life that once supported it. There is no such thing as a Modern Colonial house any more than there is such a thing as a Modern Tudor house. If one seeks to reproduce such a building in our own day, every mark on it will betray the fact that it is a fake, and the harder the architect works to conceal that fact, the more patent the fact will be...

"The great lesson of history - and this applies to all the arts - is that the past cannont be recaptured except in spirit. We cannont live another person's life; we cannot, except in the spirit of a costume ball...

"Our task is not to imitate the past, but to understand it, so that we may face the opportunity of our own day and deal with them in an equally creative spirit."

- The South in Architecture, The Dancy Lectures, Alabama College, 1941, by Lewis Mumford (emphasis mine).

So when the church seeks to build - how does it jive with our view of the world - of creativity - of creation itself - to copy and cut and paste designs into the year 2008 and into this place called Alabama?

It still makes me laugh when I see real estate yard signs pointing up some Homewood, Alabama street stating, not "3 Brm" or "Pool" but "Tudor"! Is this the UK and I just didn't know it? Did we lose that war?

Seriously - we need to know and love our place. Within the framework of place there is so much freedom - to consider this climate - these local materials - this local community's memory of how to build - to then construct things that fit into this soil as seemlessly as an oakleaf hydrangia or a southern longleaf pine.

I have a lot to learn.

Architects must have supernatural powers

It is very, very rare that you see anything written about the architecture of churches. And of those rare instances, the writer will refer to the actual buildings as churches. So they're off track from the get-go.

There was an article written last month in the Associated Baptist Press that re-kindled my desire to write about this subject.

To start with, I agree with a lot of what they are saying - so much is being written and discussed about the trend for what's called the "emerging church" and how it is leaning back towards more traditional elements (liturgy, art, music, aesthetics etc) as young people want to feel more connected to the last 2000 years of Christianity. It goes to that whole idea of rootlessness that is so prevalent. I love the idea (mentioned in the article) that regionalism begins to inform the form of the architecture - where it can be more about the place and immediate culture of the people who worship there - rather than a copy of something else, or try to look like it could be anywhere.

Interesting how the article talks about American church architecture trying to be opposite of European - I hadn't considered that before. There's this demand from younger (20/30 yr olds) for something real & for there to be solid reasons for why we do what we do, and to be part of smaller congregations. That seems to be a trend (even see it in "starbuck's" culture - this longing for community). Lots of young pastors are reading "The Younger Evangelicals" by Bob Weber and other books trying to understand/categorize/disect the emerging church and if there is a shift from modern evangelicalism of the mid-late 20th century then we will probably early in the conversation. I'm not sure we'll ever see a full swing back to the kind of symbolism you see in European churches, but definitely a desire for everything we do to have a reason/purpose/deeper meaning. That allows the building to communicate more consistently.

I disagree strongly with these statements though: "It's God's calling card -- it's all he has," said Texas architect Tim Blonkvist. "People are going to make an evaluation based on what they can see before they hear anything." Where does that idea come from?!?! Scripture says "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing the word of God." The new testament only mentions buildings 2 or three times, and in all cases is talking about spiritual buildings made up of people themselves. This guy is putting words in God's mouth to say that buildings are such an essential way that God communicates - that idea doesn't come from scripture at all. Not to say that buildings shouldn't agree with what the church is saying, but this guy is going a lot farther than that. And un-churched post moderns (people 30 & younger) are less and less likely to just try out a church on a drive by - they are more likely to go if someone invites them (see next comment)...

And with this: "Whether they speak with bold clarity or subdued elegance, church buildings are often the most prominent and persistent gospel message their non-Christian neighbors encounter." That makes me very nervous... we're finding more and more (B'ham, Seattle, New York, Greenville SC) that non-Christians really pay attention to how their Christian friends/neighbors treat them. If they don't feel that Christians love & care for them for being just who they are - rather than as prospective targets for evangelization - they they will never give Christians the time of day. They hear the gospel in that way loud and clear. I'm not sure how a building can preach a gospel message. In fact I think it's impossible that a building could alone communicate the gospel. It can be inviting for sure, but that is limited.

How great would it be if regionalism and green/stewardship ideas could inform the way we design buildings for churches. I would bet our clients will be slow in moving towards this trend (as compared to other parts of the country), but it would be great if they would start to recognize it! Regionalism is definitely biblical - you see throughout Acts how Paul planted churches all around the Mediterranean, and how he would adjust based on the culture of the place. Finding a "regionalism" for Alabama would be difficult though... we've been dropping far-away styles like "tudor", "french country", and "georgian" into the Birmingham landscape for so long that you have to look really hard to see anything that really has grown out of this place. A local/regional architecture would definately have to speak to the values of the people here somehow (that could be interesting).

We'll see if anything begins to shift...