A nifty notion, to say the least.
The visibility of the church depends on the angle at which a person is viewing it. From certain heights it looks like a complete structure. From various sides, the gaps become more and more evident and can look almost invisible. I quite like it.
The architect, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh , writes about the work he did to create a see through church, but I don’t know Dutch. “Reading Between the Lines” looked to be the only available English, what the large installment piece winds up signifying, apparently.
I resort to Babelfish to make sense of the Dutch, at least in part.
The Church has no definite function and sets the visual experience itself Central. At the same time shows the construction to that that experience is a result of the design.
If anyone’s set foot in a fantastic cathedral or any decently sized church at any point in their lives, most of the breathlessness comes from the architectural wonder that makes it such a peaceful and resonant place. The domes, arches, the windows, the floor plan.. whatever it is that catches the eye and the heart as soon as you step in there. I still wish sometimes that I’d gone into a few more churches in London when I was there but I was too damned atheist (and kind of cheap).
(And also, I’m weirded out anyway by crypts and gravestones for some reason. The fellow I’d gone to visit there took me to see an old church that had used gravestones to pave the inside. I don’t remember if the people were buried under them still but it just dialed the creep factor up to 11 for me and I didn’t even take any pictures of the place.)
Were cathedrals built for the music, or did the music develop because the acoustics were perfect for music? From NPR:
Legend has it that the magnificence of the Cologne Cathedral inspired Robert Schumann to compose a symphony, whereby he responded with his “Rhenish” Symphony. Earlier in the millennium, structural aspects of a cathedral were sometimes reflected literally in a musical work. Such is the case with the music of Perotin, a 12th-century composer working at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Bob Eisenstein of the Folger Consort remarks that in Perotin’s Sederunt principes, the lowest voice moves in slow, deliberate tones, suggesting the firm foundation of the edifice, while the upper three voices soar in gracious arches, suggesting the interior’s huge, vaulted ceilings.
Just add this to the ever growing list of the things I know nothing about. Good thing I have the blog as an excuse to read more.
One Minion's Opinion 