A Song of Glass and Fire: Glass Architecture and Losing My Religion
I am not a religious person. I was never much of a fan, to be honest. I was raised Catholic, dragged along to Sunday service every week by parents desperate to instill some moral discipline in me. But I never really caught on, though I can’t exactly say why. I wasn’t some strong-headed child who demanded proof at every turn — I just didn’t see the appeal.
If anything could have appealed to me though, it would have been the architecture.
I would sit in the pews by mom’s side and stare up at the ornate ceiling or past the priest’s somber face at the altar behind him, and just admire the artwork. All the talk of heaven and salvation was more digestible when I was looking at a beautiful rendering of it. I liked to imagine that light poured through the colourful stained glass and bounced off the shiny, bald head of Father Andrew, making the scene look like something out of a medieval painting of a Saint.
As I got older, the architecture became less and less effective at arresting my attention, through no fault of its own. I had always gone to the same church week after week, the Cathedral Basilica of Christ the King, and I had already grown familiar with the art inside its walls after my fourth Sunday there. Of course, there were other reasons too, but let’s not get into those on a History blog.
The year I started being too cool for church, someone set fire to it. Not the whole thing, just a part of it, but it was enough damage that everyone else stopped going there too for a little while. When I had heard the news, I remember immediately wondering if any of the artwork I so loved had been damaged. Some of it was. For a while, I put the whole spiel of losing my religion on halt, and started going to church with the family again. I lasted three months.
It seems that this whole pattern of enticing me back to the church via architectural tragedy would not end with the Cathedral Basilica of Christ the King.
On 15 April 2019, the Notre-Dame de Paris caught fire, and its spire collapsed. I watched the videos of the burning wreckage, the behemoth of a church disintegrating before my eyes, with a lump in my throat. As a historian, this sort of thing wets my eyes.
How did they let this happen? was my first mournful thought.
I had been to Paris only once, long ago on a graduation trip. Of all the beauties that France had to offer I can easily say that the Notre Dame was the most astounding. What captivated me most were the rose windows, looming high upon the walls, flanked by panels of stained glass. And in the back, tucked behind the surprisingly modern organ, the rose window to rule them all, an unapologetic testament to artistic bravado glowing with luscious blues and purples.
Every panel, every window told a story.
They drew your eyes upwards, forcing you to linger on them with your neck craned, forcing you to confront the heavens and have a conversation with God.
If every church looked like this, I thought, I’d have no reason to leave.
I kept thinking about the rose windows in the days following the fire. Initial reports had said that they were destroyed, and my heart sank. There were others like me, people primarily concerned about the preservation of of these windows, and they eventually found out that the windows had all survived, even if some of them had been a little damaged.
It must be a divine miracle, the dormant, guilty, Catholic in me couldn’t help but think.
And again, I spent a moment allowing myself to be moved by Catholicism’s stronghold over human culture, and very shortly after, reverted to my heathen ways.
Life went on, and there was some squabble about the restoration of the church. Billionaires had promised money they never delivered. Politicians had promised priorities they never intended to have. Netizens argued over the publicity of this incident over other similar incidents in the non-Western parts of the world. I tuned out of the discussions for the most part, being a strong believer in the cynical fact that politicians will never regulate billionaires and the Twitterverse will never (effectively) regulate politicians.
And then yesterday, architecture firm Gensler revealed their design for a temporary worship pavilion in Parvis Square, and I got all concerned again.
My initial impression was that I was impressed with the sleek and minimalist design, but then the old man in me started whining about why architecture could not look unapologetically ostentatious and ornate anymore like it used to. This is a Gothic church we’re talking about here — was the best complement to its aesthetic really minimalism? I started wondering if the architects actually understood the history and intention of this style of architecture, or if they were just opting for the simplest solution.
And then I saw the inside of the pavilion.
So this is what a church of the future is supposed to look like.
I guess I did see it (the influence of the Gothic) — I saw it in the glass ceilings, letting in streams of heaven’s light from above, and the high walls drawing the eyes upwards. The giant cross at the altar was the accent piece, I suppose.
I decided it was an adequate temporary solution. But make no mistake, I want my arrogantly flamboyant stained glass reinstated, the ominous stone walls repaired, and the gloomy vaulted ceilings returned to their glory.
I want my churches campy.
Imagine listening to a two-hour sermon on the elaboration of Paul’s teachings to the Philistines in this boring, monochromatic spaceship that looks like scaffolding. Do we want everyone to lose their religion?
So here’s my thesis: glass as a building material has the extraordinary ability to convey spiritual awe and facilitate religious connection. Today, architectural glass has taken on a completely new form, and is valued more for their function than their style.
If you want to create something (such as a temporary pavilion, in this case) that invokes or plays off the grandeur of the Notre Dame, which comes from an era of architecture that very much over-exploited (I mean this in the kindest, most reverent way) the devotional properties of glass, you’re going to need to use glass more for its style than its function, and the Gensler pavilion just screams function to me.
Glass is a building material primarily because of its functional qualities — its transparency. It lets light through while keeping a barrier between the inside and outside. But did Gothic architecture respect this principle at all? No. They painted all over the glass, letting in only as much as light as was needed to illuminate those paintings, and then they went ham with collages and mosaics, essentially using glass more as an art material than a building material.
The glass ceiling of the Gensler pavilion is not art; it looks like building material and only that.
Of course, there are exceptions that try to combine glass’ uses as a building material and as an art.
Industrial processes and the introduction of sheet glass manufacturing meant the mass production of glass, and therefore, the centering of glass as a functional material rather than an art material. I’m not saying Gothic architecture died because of the Industrial Revolution — the Reformation had more to do with that. I am saying that the industrial mass production of a particular product almost certainly formalizes, in the minds of our collective culture, an item’s status as purely functional and below artistry.
The Crystal Palace stood as an ironic monument to the tension regarding glass’ place as a building material and glass as an art material. Using sheet glass and industrial processes, as well as other materials commonly associated with function over style such as cast iron, the Crystal Palace was a feat of architectural innovation and finesse, and for that reason alone became art.
Perhaps intention plays a larger role in what gets classified as art than we think.
Nowadays, glass manufacturers and fabricators almost certainly do no think of themselves as producing art materials — except when they do.
Custom etched glass, frosted glass, sandblasted glass — you get the deal. A far cry from stained glass, but also not a purely functional, utilitarian, industrial use of glass either. There is whimsy and artistry here, and more importantly, intention.
I call it art for the middle class, and it should be perceived no differently than art for the upper classes or nobility (which art was traditionally geared towards). Stained glass, church architecture, or most religious art in general, is the exception here. By virtue of their appearance in public places of worship, they are meant for everyone, regardless of class, to enjoy.
Churches of old still give me the sense that everyone, regardless of their background, is welcome. Maybe it is because these churches are old, and they have traditionally, for centuries, actually welcomed all sorts of people within. Therefore, the assumption is that they wouldn’t suddenly change and become unwelcoming. On the other hand, the new Gensler pavilion looks… corporate. It doesn’t look welcoming. It doesn’t look like a place of “sanctuary.”
Perhaps this is my cynicism coming through, my over-romanticization of the old, or my bias about how “new” things just don’t seem as welcoming. They definitely don’t seem as lived-in, and with the way the Gensler design postures itself as some kind of futuristic tent there is too much of a feeling like I have to gingerly unwrap its fragile packaging and hope my shoes don’t make skid marks on the floor.
I don’t want to come off as overly critical of the Gensler pavilion, because by itself it is an aesthetically-pleasing structure. With that said, in context as it being a complementary structure to the Notre Dame, I think there is more work to be done on their part about Gothic art and the Notre Dame before settling on a design. Maybe they have indeed done that work, though it really doesn’t show.
So here I am, back at square one: I am not a religious person. But religious contributions towards human arts and culture have and will always draw my eyes upwards, admiring mankind’s quest to depict the divine, and I’m not sure what a blank, transparent glass ceiling is meant to say about God.
