The future of religious spaces (V)

The challenges faced by religious institutions in today's West are highlighted even when celebrating the year's best artistic and architectural achievements. Editor Michael J. Crosbie noted increasing numbers of nominations in recent years discussed their projects at least in part in terms of the "need [to] forge connections between the faith community and the context" (Crosbie 2018).

Here on Holy Mountain, we're all about the context i.e. the work of the religious body in the world, and how the group acts out its relationship to the world. Often that starts with the building. So while something like this is eye-catching and would probably be even more impressive if I knew all of the design and engineering that had to go into it...

Snyder Chapel, Lynn University, Boca Raton FL (Source: faithandform)

...an urbanist would rather know [a] how does this work with the street [hypothetically, as in this actual case it's a college campus building], and [b] how does this building's design contribute to the communal act of worship?

Other trends: a lot of renovation-related nominations, but only two entries in the adaptive re-use/re-purpose categories. Also, "The absence of megachurches submitted might indicate a decline in their construction." I am not sorry if this is true. Marc Auge (Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity [Verso, 2nd ed, 2008]) considers all houses of worship to be "anthropological places" because the people who gather there have specific identity, rituals, stories and such. The standardizing of the megachurch form, however, verges on making it a non-place, with the individual worshiper in the role of spectator-consumer, sort of like at a religious mall.

Churches, synagogues and other houses of worship surely have a lot on their plates:

• They provide both welcome to the stranger and a haven for their members, which must be hard to balance in practice; 
• The best of them maintain a presence in their neighborhood, while accommodating the vast majority of their attendees who arrive by single-family auto; and 
• Their worship spaces are at once functional (this is where the act of worshiping gets done) and political (their design speaks volumes to group dynamics like community and hierarchy).

All this must be accomplished in the context in which many public and quasi-public institutions find themselves today: declining resources and increasing demands/needs.

With that said, and with every disclaimer you can possibly imagine, three award winners struck me as particular examples of successful religious urbanism.

1. All Saints Episcopal Church, Chicago, Illinois (Religious Architecture--Restoration).

(Source: faithandform)

All Saints Chicago, initially constructed in 1884, sits on a busy street corner in the Ravenswood neighborhood near the Damen L stop. According to their website, they nearly closed in 1992 after losing most of their membership base to the suburbs. Their resurgence stressed celebration of diversity, engagement with the real world, and "commitment to our neighbors"--as well as a lot of fundraising. They don't say a lot about the restoration of the worship area, but the altar is notably in the center, a feature commended by Professor James F. White (Protestant Worship and Church Architecture, Oxford University Press, 1964) to reinforce the communal nature of worship.

(Source: Google street view screen capture)

2. Phap Vu Buddhist Cultural Center of Florida, Orlando, Florida (Religious Architecture--New Facilities)

(Source: faithandform)

The Buddhist Cultural Center is located on a busy stroad just north of the East-West Expressway. The entrance, however, is welcoming and accessible to the sidewalk. According to their contractor, Rowland Construction, the entire project built four buildings and a parking lot on six acres, taking nearly a year and costing "multi" millions of dollars. Not every congregation has access to those kinds of resources, or would spend that much on a campus. The availability of land and/or access to the highway probably account for the decidedly un-urban choice of location, but they've done a lot to create human scale.  (Compare the Jehovah's Witnesses more remote structure down the street.)

3. Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, Deepdene, Victoria, Australia (Religious Architecture--Renovation).

(Source: faithandform)

Deepdene is a suburb of Melbourne, recently carved out of another suburb, Balwyn. The church is located on Whitehorse Road, a major east-west stroad through metropolitan Melbourne. So both the municipal and the street situation raise red flags.  On the plus side, I love the worship space with its somewhat cured seating area and plenteous natural light. And the church is built close to the street, so if people walk there, they can walk here. The original church, from 1922, is still part of the campus; the current church was built in 1955.

(Source: Google street view screen capture)

The interior picture may be misleading; it's hard to see how far back the seats go. The sanctuary is described as distinctively narrow because of the constraints of the property. So someone seated in the far back of the row of seats could feel quite remote from the worship activities--better get there early!

Religious organizations have a lot to offer America in the 21st century--a sense of the sacred and permanent, experience acting in common, a place to be quiet--and design has a lot to contribute to that. Design needs to emphasize neighborliness, though, without which the house of worship is merely an isolated island. A structure like this clearly received a lot of expert attention and boasts some striking design features.

Christ Cathedral Arboretum and Tower of Hope, Garden Grove CA (Source: faithandform) 

I see rows and rows of seats all facing forward, and huge windows overlooking a huge parking lot. We owe it to our neighbors, and to ourselves, to do better.

Primary Source: Michael J. Crosbie (ed), "2018 International Awards Program for Religious Art and Architecture," Faith and Form 51:4 (2018)

Last Year's Model: "The Future of Religious Spaces (IV)," 1 January 2018

The Fall 2018 issue of The Wheel includes a review of an intriguing book analyzing worship spaces from an Eastern Orthodox perspective: Nicholas Denysenko, Theology and Form: Contemporary Orthodox Architecture in America (Notre Dame Press, 2017). Hat tip to F. John Herbert for this item.

Window Wonderland

Next Page Books on 3rd St SE (Window Wonderland winner)

The Czech Village-New Bohemia Main Street District is celebrating the winter holidays and welcoming shoppers with festive window displays. A brisk walk around the district last weekend identified these memorable efforts, which hint at placemaking days of yore when store windows like Marshall Field's in Chicago were must-see destinations.

Analog Vault on 11th Av SE (best newcomer) warmed the heart of this former college radio dj

Fong's Pizza on 3rd St decorated their totem pole

Parlor City on 3rd St has a lot of window space to cover. They went with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme.

Found & Formed on 16th Av SW went for the more traditional "Night Before Christmas"

Lucky's Tavern on 16th Av is having a white Christmas

Create Exchange on 16th and C (2016-17 winner). This is a small sample of their efforts.

Our arrival in Cedar Rapids coincided with the end of Armstrong's, the last of the downtown department stores; it was up to Smulekoff's Furniture on 1st Street SE to keep up the window tradition for years after that. In that heyday of shopping malls, hardly anyone cared about having a civic space where people gathered to celebrate holidays like Christmas.

Today's resurgent downtowns have smaller shops, so decoration-as-destination/placemaking requires coordinated effort. The district is... getting there.

Official city tree in Green Square downtown

The public library as base for belonging

Sophia Rodriguez at the Center for Urban Research and Learning

Until schools reinvent themselves, which I don't see happening anytime soon, after-school programs are going to be the micro-spaces where students gain a sense of positive identity.--SOPHIA RODRIGUEZ

After a lull after the 2008 recession, immigration to America is at historically high levels--maybe not as much in percentage terms as in the 1850s or 1880s, but about 1.5 million newcomers arrived in 2016, which is a lot. Their impacts are felt strongly in some places, less so in others, as these newcomers are not randomly distributed.

One such place is Hartford, Connecticut, where 130 students from Puerto Rico moved into the school district following Hurricane Sandy, adding to an influx of immigrants from a variety of Latin American and African countries, as well as Myanmar (Burma). With 20,000 students in the public school system, this would have been a major event, even without the challenges of language, academic background, and housing uncertainty.

Dr. Sophia Rodriguez, assistant professor of Educational Foundations at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, spoke at Loyola University's Center for Urban Research and Learning about an unusual pilot program based at the Hartford Public Library. Library and school district officials saw an opportunity because many immigrant students lack permanent homes and so hang out at the library. Dr. Rodriguez's report on the first year of the program was cautiously positive: Students reported greater feelings, not only of belonging, but also civic competence.

Newcomers refers to people who have been in the United States less than 30 months. Some are seeking refugee status, some are going through naturalization, and some are undocumented. Some are fleeing violence, some seek economic opportunity, some have lost everything they had in a hurricane or other natural disaster. Rodriguez, who has worked in a variety of school systems throughout the country including Chicago's, notes that even in culturally diverse urban areas, school-aged newcomers face hostility, lack of staff awareness, lack of support staff for languages other than Spanish, and a powerful norm for conducting classes in English, all in schools that are often under-resourced.

The Hartford program sought effective integration of newcomer youth into the community. Dr. Rodriguez used the word belonging, and I gather the program does, too, but as she pointed out that traditionally refers to improving the individual's comfort level with his or her surroundings. Hartford worked up a "civically-minded social justice curriculum... including policy awareness, accessing resources, and how to engage in activism." She describes three levels of belonging: (1) personal-individual day-to-day feelings; (2) relational i.e. networks of peers; (3) civic awareness i.e. feelings of belonging to the city.

The good news is, observation and surveys from 2017-18 showed improvements on all three dimensions, and responses from participants and staff were broadly positive. The program's small size (never more than 35 participants) and national-linguistic diversity improved students' levels of belonging by creating an instant peer network. Using the public library as a base showed that institution's potential in any city to be a "springboard to other resources and opportunities." All this was achieved despite numerous "logistical, methodological and staffing challenges."

Side note: As someone occasionally involved in after-school activities, the apparent willingness of students simply to hold still after a long school day seems miraculous.

With such a small sample--only 22 students participated in the surveys--inferences are made cautiously. Indeed, only on the second dimension  of belonging ("relational") were improvements statistically significant. Participants in the second year of the program are all Spanish-speaking, which presents a different dynamic from the diverse first-year group.

If someone, say library director Bridget Quinn-Carey, were to talk about this program at 1 Million Cups, very soon someone would ask if the program could be scaled up. Aye, there's the rub. One of the favorable circumstances of the program is the relatively small size, smaller than the typical class at Hartford or Bulkley High Schools. Effective integration of newcomers takes investment in staff and other resources, at a time when schools are hardly flush. This program was funded in part by the U.S. Institute for Museum and Library Services, but they're not going to be good for more than piloting and research.

In the richest society in the history of Earth, resources for those investments are here, just historically hard to tap. It might be worth it. Diversity can be a source of strength for this uncertain century--no ecologist in the world speaks favorably of monocultures--but only if newcomers are effectively integrated. Large-scale immigration is a fact, and we can choose how to respond. We can follow the example of our President, and respond with bigotry, political opportunism, and what amounts to a government kidnapping ring. Or we can rise to the challenge of inclusion, and support the work necessary to make it happen.