Church Architecture Today

* Robert J. Burman is an Adventist architect in California and has done some outstanding work in his profession. We believe our leaders, and pastors in particular, will appreciate this forthright analysis in trends of church architecture. —Editors.

NEVER before in the his­tory of architecture has there been such a startling and visual change as that to be found in the new churches. Until quite recently the most advanced concepts in architec­ture were almost exclusively used for commercial and industrial build­ings. For more than a century most churches have chosen to ignore the changes in the art and technology of their culture, and thus their physical plants have not been representative of the times in which they were living. Their churches represented a God of the past instead of a God of the ever-present. They failed to recognize that architecture is a social art, vitally related to the life of the people it serves, and not merely some form of applied archeology or academic exercise in applied ornament. Today this attitude is rapidly changing, and there is a great possibility that the church may again regain its rightful place as the source of inspiration for great creativity, daring, and imagination.

The danger of scientific atheism when confronted with the possibility of the total annihilation of mankind has caused men to take a new look at religion. Not only has church construction shown phenomenal growth, the total contract figures for 1959 running well over $800 million, but the church itself is revising its attitudes and concepts because of the needs of these times. Only in the last few years have some of our most gifted and deservedly famous architects been given the opportunity to de­sign church buildings. With an amazing and rapidly growing technology these ar­chitects, in collaboration with enlightened and progressive church leaders, are leading the way in the design of meaningful church architecture.

This change has been so sudden that many people have a reaction not unlike the owner of a model-T Ford who awoke after thirty years of sleep to find a modern free­way passing through his front yard. He is understandably confused, or even shocked, by the changes in the appearance of the automobile. We who have been awake to the gradual changes in automobile design accept the modern car, and we look for­ward to the new models. Even though we may not be pleased with the tail fin and chrome-happy features of Detroit products, we have no desire to return to the model-T. This same condition exists in architecture. Our equivalent to "Detroit iron" is found in the many modernistic buildings that dis­play the ill-use and misuse of materials, as well as a total disregard for basic design principles. And we have our good modern architecture pioneered by such "name ar­chitects as Belluschi, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Mendelssohn, Niemeyer, Saarinen, and Wright. To stand still today is to go backward. Unfortunately, many people, in­cluding too many practicing architects, have never learned to distinguish between modernistic and modern architecture. This has been the most retarding influence on the modern movement.

In those periods of architectural history preceding the Industrial Revolution the church was not only the source of the new­est and greatest advances in architecture but it was also the mother of the other arts, such as music, art, and literature. But with the advent of the Industrial Revolu­tion the people with the greatest financial resources, regardless of their educational and cultural training, determined values by their commercial, in lieu of esthetic, worth. Architecture separated itself from engineering, and it soon became nothing more than the process of imitating the facades of bygone eras. The Victorian age became known as the "dark ages of archi­tecture." The design of everything about us today has now sunk so low that we are no longer capable of judging what is good. We have to be educated and trained to acquire taste, because we have only ac­quired habits—generally bad. With a grad­ually increasing level in the educational background of our new generation it is hoped that the church will again lead out in raising the standards in the arts. Too often, however, taste has become synony­mous with a safe and uniform mediocrity. Today, architects are again carrying on the Gothic tradition of exploring the pos­sibilities of lightness and poise. In the nine­teenth century, antique ornaments were grafted onto new structures, and the struc­tural framework was hidden behind mas­sive piles of masonry. Today our modern architecture is noted for its economy, econ­omy in material and means, and for its own inherent aesthetic value. Man should never build less skillfully than he knows how. Today our products are machine made, and we know exactly how they will behave. Precision and calculation have be­come new tools of the designer. To be over­sized or overweight is to be uncouth. Not long ago craftsmen constructed a building from materials and tools that they brought to and worked with on the job site. Today, the labor of producing parts for a building is fast becoming nothing more than the process of assembling ready-made parts. The machine has replaced the craftsman, and we have invented or dis­covered many new materials. We have found a modern equivalent for ornament to lie in the natural qualities of materials, because ornament divorced from handi­craft is meaningless. Qualities possible through the use of the machine have pro­vided us with the basis for a new art. We can now use lighter materials such as alu­minum, glue-laminated wood, stressed skin and sandwich panels, lightweight con­crete, and plastics. Instead of an architec­ture of mass, we now have an architecture of volume. We are evolving a style that ap­pears liberated from matter, although joined to it more completely than ever.

Pre- and post-stressed concrete, the use of textured forms, precasting, deflatable and reusable forms, tilt-up and lift-slab, new ag­gregate surfaces—these are some of the de­velopments in concrete that are influencing the design of our churches. Concrete blocks have now been put out with new designs that make them a desirable building ma­terial. With the rising costs in construction, concrete is no longer veneered over now that we have new finishes and waterproof­ing techniques. Architects are creating many new textures and patterns with brick masonry. New finishes and colors are creat­ing new possibilities in beauty and use.

Some of our newest churches are again using one of the oldest of building mate­rials—mosaic tile. Some of the most beauti­ful is the Venetian glass mosaic being im­ported from Italy.

Because of rising costs steel is assuming-more economical shapes that are being ex­ploited by leading architects for new design expression. Because steel is most effective in tension, we can expect more buildings to be suspended. A classic example of the use of steel for its own sake as a means of ar­chitectural expression is the steel, brick, and glass chapel at the Illinois Institute of Technology, by Mies van der Rohe. Mies van der Rohe recently received the 1960 A.LA. gold medal for service to the profes­sion.

Wood is very popular in modern church construction because of its warmth, beauty, workability, and economy. The churches of Pietro Belluschi, dean of the School of Architecture at MIT, are well known for their beauty, derived from the sensitive and creative use of wood with other indigenous materials. Some of the most daring work, made possible by the use of glue-laminated wood technology, is being done by Victor Lundy of Florida.

The church can no longer spend hun­dreds of years in the construction process. Today, only a year or two may elapse from the first idea to the final completion of the church building, and the church must be designed for the needs of a constantly changing constituency. Spaces must be flexible. With its current emphasis on the needs of the whole man and its concept of the membership as a community as well as a congregation, new facilities are required for the education and social and recrea­tional requirements of its membership. The late Frank Lloyd Wright in his meetinghouse of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin, blended all these fa­cilities under one triangular roof, which expresses reverence without recourse to the steeple.

In Gothic times the church did not even have to provide seats. Today we have to concern ourselves with plumbing, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, off-street parking, acoustics, radio, sound recording, TV, and many more items which will in­crease in number as time goes on. It is small wonder that churches do not look the same as they did yesterday.

Good modern churches are difficult to find because they take much time and care­ful design to be the honest, logical, and or­ganic expression of the needs of the church. Unfortunately, many of our churches are unwilling to invest their money in the services of a competent archi­tect, and when an architect's services are used he must be willing to take a reduced fee. Therefore, unless he has an outside source of income he cannot spend the time necessary to perfect his plans. The only concept many people have of the church is the message contained in the way atti­tudes and aspirations (or the lack of the same) are expressed in the physical ap­pearance of their church. If it expresses those finer qualities we should expect from the church its architecture can be a lead­ing and formulating force in the world today.