Dr .Mervyn Miller and the company clerk, David Cole-Adams.
The reception for WCCA 'mentors' and their students, atGibberd on 30 August 2011, was attended by a baker's dozen. The tube and other circumstances conspired to prevent more people being there.Dr Mervyn Miller gave a very informative presentation on the work of Oscar Niemeyer. Born 1907 and still working! It was fascinating to see the innovative forms that Niemeyer created in concrete, particularly in Brazilia. Most of the illustrations were from photographs taken by Mervyn during the Company's visit to Brazil in 2007, and included WCCA members in company with Niemeyer himself.
Our host at Gibberd, Richard Biggins, gave a presentation on the work of the practice's founding partner, Frederick Gibberd (1908 -1984). It was enlightening to see the similarities and complete contrasts of almost exactly contemporary designers.
I think we shall have to persuade Mervyn and Richard to do a repeat performance....
Bread, cheese and wine was provided by Rosemary Curry and Jaki Howes.
WCCA Students, Jennifer White & Linda Hagberg with WCCA 'mentors'.
Printed below is the sermon delivered by the Reverend Dr Allan Doig FSA - Fellow and Chaplain to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford at the Company's Annual Service at St Lawrence Jewry on Monday 5 July;
A few days ago I was in Edinburgh where I spent a long while in a small octagonal room in the National Gallery of Scotland. It is dedicated to Poussin’s paintings of the Seven Sacraments. These absorbing works develop intense, focussed, relationships amongst their central figures in a variety of situations. Their action is suspended in the almost breathless pivotal moment of transformation, even transfiguration, of relationships between people, and with God.
The Book of Common Prayer helpfully defines a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’. Even in the strictest sense, many other traditions recognise a greater number of sacraments than the two, baptism and Holy Communion, discussed in the Book of Common Prayer, and it can be illuminating to try living in a sacramental world, even for brief moments – a sacramental world where God has left his ‘fingerprints’, so to speak, all over his creation. In that small octagonal room punctuated by Poussin, the main transformative and revelatory moments of life rhythmically paused your circuit of the room. Similarly, out in the world it can be more of a syncopated interruption of our journey, as we are frequently surprised by transformative moments of God’s grace, caught and made visible in a plethora of outward signs.
The ‘fingerprints’ God has left on his creation, like all fingerprints, are a sign of the identity of the creator. If you look at a work, the fingerprints, the special characteristics of its form and the relationships within it, you can come to recognise significant things about it creator. That is true of Poussin and those seven paintings, it is true of you and the buildings you create, it is true of the New Jerusalem of living stones being fashioned by that heavenly Architect, and it is true of that great Architect, and the whole Universe he has made.
Job’s life had been collapsing around him, as had his self-understanding, and his understanding of Divine justice, so his faith demanded that he question God. We heard God’s answer in that first reading. God answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions?
Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set?
Or who laid its cornerstone?
When the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
After this opening, follows a great song of creation – a reflection on God’s Wisdom imposing finely detailed order on chaos.
You have before you a visual reflection and meditation on the same theme. On the service sheet you see a 13th-century manuscript illumination, frontispiece for a Bible Moralisée. Text and image together were a revelation of the Wisdom, the ways, and the works of God.
God made a place for mankind in the order of his Creation. You, as architects do something very similar: you create places for human habitation, human flourishing, and the luckiest of you (or the chosen few) create places for human encounter with the Divine.
Those places of encounter are special places with a special sacramentality that I want to look at in a couple of special examples, but I do not want to pass over the sacramental possibilities of architecture in general. Buildings in general at the very least influence, and sometimes control, the type and quality of human relationships and human flourishing that take place within and around them. If they do that well they can be outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace in the fulfilment of the second part of our lord’s two-fold commandment – to ‘love our neighbours as ourselves’.
Churches, on the other hand, are sacramental signs of the fulfilment of all the Law and the Prophets. As places of encounter and unity of the worshipping community as the Body of Christ in the presence of God and the whole company of heaven, they are a sacramental sign of that Communion and the growing fulfilment of the twofold commandment:
“The first and great commandment is this: to love the Lord thy God with all thy heard, with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength; the second is lie unto it, namely this, to love thy neighbour as thyself. No other commandment is greater than these; on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
These buildings are sacramental signs of the coming of God’s Kingdom – the New Jerusalem – ‘on earth as it is in heaven’. The apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana, shown on the order of service, was among the first figural mosaics in Rome, from around 390. It shows Christ seated on a jewelled throne on the rock of Calvary which is surmounted by a jewelled cross. In a golden toga, he is the Emperor of Heaven, surrounded by the Apostles dressed in togas as his heavenly court within the courtyard in front of the Holy Sepulchre. Beyond the arcade of the courtyard are seen the buildings of Constantine’s new Jerusalem. The Beasts of the Apocalypse fill the skies.
The message of the mosaic is clear: “the kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ”.
“It is a long time coming!” I hear you say? I suppose the answer is the same as God’s answer out of the whirlwind to Job’s challenge: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand!” That is to say, it will come in God’s good time.
Meanwhile there are sacramental signs of its coming, visions of the Kingdom of God, signs of God present with and in his people, fashioning us as living stones to build the New Jerusalem. Churches are signs of God’s presence with his people, the sacramental image of the New Jerusalem, and I want to look at just one particular example to bring that home. The example is Wells Cathedral, and not just the Cathedral, but the mediaeval building brought to life by the mediaeval Sarum liturgy.
The West Front of Wells (the last illustration on your service sheet) was completed by 1250. The whole elaborate system of niches and aedicules is populated by Old and New Testament figures, saints and angels; all were originally brightly polychromed – ‘angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven’ and indeed there are times when you could hear the ‘singing of their endless praise. In the double register of quatrefoils above the West Doors, and just below the Apostles in the topmost full register, if you look carefully you can see rows of holes. These open from a singers’ gallery within the facade above the Doors, and a musicians’ gallery at the top. Crowning the composition of the facade is the figure of Christ Enthroned, flanked by winged seraphim.
The liturgy of the Sarum Rite is characterised by elaborate processions and dramatic presentations. On Palm Sunday, for example, after the morning office, processions would proceed round the cloister to the cemetery in front of the West Doors. Meanwhile, at the Altar, a consecrated host was placed in a shrine with relics. The ‘Body of the Lord’, present with his saints, preceeded by a light, was taken directly to the West Doors where it met the main procession. Everyone standing in the western graveyard ‘in the midst of death’ was holding a blessed palm and the passage from Matthew 21 was read out: Christ was about to enter Jerusalem in triumph:
‘And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the tress and strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!’
At that there was a blast from the musicians’ gallery, high in the facade and all proceeded to the West Door where ‘Gloria, laus, et honor’, ‘All Glory, laud and honour’, was sung by the choir in the hidden gallery behind the carved angels above the West Door. The congregation responded with the refrains.
From Christ Enthroned with seraphim, through ranks of Saints, angels, biblical scenes and figures, down to the ground where the present generation of God’s people thronged, singing in response to the hidden choirs of angels, the facade was the entry both to Jerusalem of old and the New Jerusalem yet to come – foretold in the Revelation of John the Divine, and already prepared to receive us. It both is, and is to come. So, the processions and the people then entered the Cathedral under the shrine containing the ‘Body of the Lord’ and the relics of his saints held aloft. Inside, they were probably met by the clamour of a nave organ that seems to have been supported by two large corbels still seen in the south gallery. Carefully and elaborately coordinated liturgy and architecture brought all participants into the real presence of the Kingdom of God. The Cathedral is a sacramental sign of the New Jerusalem.
So, to return to where I began: that octagonal room in the National Gallery of Scotland had a wall for each of Poussin’s paintings of the Seven Sacraments. That is the traditional, even orthodox doctrinal number, but I invite you, through reflection on the general definition of a sacrament to see yet more sacraments – at the very least, more potential for true sacramentality. The eighth wall of that octagonal room naturally contained the entrance portal. By the time you leave that room, having seen those seven intensely spiritual paintings, the eighth wall and it doorway open into a world with renewed sacramental possibility. Architecture is a powerful force for its realisability. Architecture creates luminal places, places of encounter between people, and between the people and the Divine breaking into the world.
These are places for human habitation, places that hold and shape human experience, places that enhance human flourishing, places that unfold and reveal all that is Good, and Beautiful, and True.
Given these possibilities, you as architects, have a great calling, a Vocation. In theological terms, it is to reveal the Christ, who is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by this Way, this Truth and this life, revealed and shaped and enhanced by the places where we meet, those luminal places shaped by you.
You can hold heaven in the palm of your hand. Take care how you handle it.
Those of you who did not manage to visit the City Marketing Suite at The Guildhall, London on 26th April 2010 missed a fantastic opportunity. The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects hosted two eminent Urban Designers/Planners to discuss City environments. Roger France, Master of the Company introduced the speakers.
Georgia Butina Watson, PhD (pictured left) is Head of the Department of Planning and a Research Tutor in the Joint Centre for Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford, UK. Her experience is international and she has noted expertise in urban morphology and place-making.
Joe Weiss, FICE, FIHT (on right) is the Transportation and Projects Director for the Corporation of the City of London, UK. He has wide-ranging experience of rail, highways, urban design and even airlines, the last of which had him arrive from North America moments before he was asked to speak.
Georgia’s segment of the Lecture focussed on the Art of Place-making and Sense of Identity. We loved her definition of place identity: ‘…any cultural landscape which users draw on in constructing their personal and social identities.’ Managing townscapes produces character and supports ‘empowerment’. According to Butina Watson, empowerment includes a sense of roots, inclusiveness, co-dwelling with nature (sustainability) and an evolution of the place. ‘Nostalgia’ is fine provided it doesn’t prevent development and gradual change.
Cities, and indeed urban spaces, require permeability, stability, perimeter blocks and variety, so that people can experience the place and connect with its identity. We need responsive environments that can be animated by people.
So, how does Georgia recommend we make them? Even in Oxford, a relatively small City (but it does have a Cathedral!), there must be districts, nodes, parks, edges, landmarks and legibility. Magic.
Joe’s section of the Lecture was very much the view of our City of London, the not-very-Square-Mile, and rightly so, given our lecture venue at Guildhall and his role in the Corporation. He started with a summary of the history of London, at least from 11th century; he didn’t have time to go back to the pre-Roman era. (Is Peter Ackroyd following our blog?)
Despite the seriousness of Joe’s talk, there were certainly some wonderful ‘sound-bites’ in his potted history. The ‘Blitz’ was ‘unauthorised town-planning’, but created the wasteland that facilitated a site large enough to develop the Barbican, an English icon.
Joe’s discussion of the recent past was more serious and possibly sobering, even for us. His map of what has been redeveloped/reconstructed since the 1970s was surprising. Over HALF of the City has been remoulded.
Sustainability-economic, social and environmental-is crucial. So Joe, picking up on Georgia’s themes, went on to discuss what the Corporation is doing to make the City a better place for people, vehicles and companies. Of course, the City can not exclude vehicles, but they have set up ‘security zones’, traffic capacity control to manage the number of vehicles that are in the zones at a given time. Clever, actually. To facilitate pedestrians the City has lowered curbs and defined what could be pedestrian zones (or vehicular zones, or even bicycle zones) by intricate paving patterns and an occasional ‘sleeping policeman’.
Artistic works, lighting and green spaces, even trees, feature in the Corporation’s all-encompassing plans. Making places that are easy to access for pedestrians and moving traffic appropriately are crucial to making a City that people actually want to be in. Even if Moorgate Junction is ‘Telly-Tubby Land’, many of the Corporation’s concepts seem to work well.
Knowing your customer, whether it’s the City-worker trying to get in-and-out of his/her office or the tourist trying to work out the intricacies of medieval Oxford, town-planning and an integrated approach are clearly critical.
The 2008 Peter Milo Memorial Lecture was given this year by British architect David Nixon a co-founder of the London office of Future Systems and currently the principal of Altus Associates in Los Angeles. He has been involved in the space field since 1984 and his office has carried out space and ground projects for clients such as NASA, the European Space Agency, McDonnell Douglas and British Aerospace. It is no surprise that the topic of his excellently illustrated lecture was 'An Architect's Guide to the International Space Station'. This gave a very clear view of the design and technical issues which had to be resolved in the setting up of the space station and presented some truly amazing statistics.
In a radical shift away from the format of previous Milo lectures and, it must be said, the majority of Livery Company lectures, the lecture was given in Drapers' Hall and was the precursor to a wider event billed as Extreme Architecture II - A Space Odyssey. Spread through the duration of a 3 course black tie dinner were further illustrated talks by David Nixon on Britain's role in space exploration and Jonathan Firth of Virgin Galactic whose topic was Space for Everyone.In this he drew heavily on the proposals prepared (as a winning competition entry) by Foster and Partners for the inter-galactic space station in the USA. He also dealt with the visionary plans from the Virgin Group to make space travel (in Sir Richard Branson's words, 'the final frontier') a realistic possibility for anyone with an adequate bank balance in the near future.
There was to have been a third speaker - Australian Oceanographer and astronaut Dr Paul Scully-Power. Sadly, he was prevented from travelling as a result of a family bereavement. He did, none the less, allow the use of many of the photographs he took on his Challenger voyage and asked that a prepared statement be read to the assembled guests.
The evening was set up and compered by William Murray in great style.
By way of advertising the next Milo lecture that is to be given on Tuesday next week, we offer three recent NASA images which tell how far the urbanism of space has progressed! Contact William Murray for tickets to the dinner and talk - cheap at £99.00.
