RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21646, 6 May 1940, Page 10

RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS

INSPIRATIONAL ARCHITECTURE Talbot Hamlin. a well-known authority on architecture, has a bright article in “Pencil Points” on the influence of religion on architecture through the ages. “As one runs through the history of architecture." | he writes, “one cannot fail to be I struck of the Extraordinary importance I which religious buildings have always enjoyed in the development of the I building art. Again and again the . greatest architectural work of any I culture has been the building it con- ■ structed to enshrine its gods. In the | design of these, architects have always I had opportunities denied to many of I their co-workers in other fields. | Religion has been, as it were, the final i flower of an age, and on religious I buildings have been lavished enormous efforts, enormous expenditures, as though nothing were too good for I them.

“The challenge of this magnificent opportunity has frequently resulted in the development of great architects: men who have designed masterpieces. One has but to think of the Parthenon, the great ruins of Karnak, the amazing structures of India, the broad serenity of Chinese temples—not to speak of all the superb creations of Christian architecture through Early Christian, Byzantine, Romanesque. Gothic and Renaissance times—to realise this.

“Even to-day the problem of church design is one unusually free. The basic requirements are simple. The desire to create a fitting monument is usually present; and frequently there is. if not the great prodigality of past times, at least a fairly adequate appropriation. Is it wrong, then, since the opportunities are so great, to demand an equal performance on the part of the architects? Should we not apply to religious buildings of to-day a standard of criticism more stringent than that we apply to other buildings, just as the religious bodies who build them claim a greater superiority, a more controlling influence, over secular life? “This problem, stated in these words, is not without relevance to the whole question of church building to-day. Frankly, taking it as a whole, and judged by any such criteria as these, the greater part of it must fail signally. The most imaginative creation on the part of our architects seems in general to-day to be called forth by other problems than those of the religious buildings. Housing and factories, office buildings and public works—these seem to-day to be taking the most expressive, the most significant, and the most creative forms. By contrast, church design is sterile In searching for the reasons for this disturbing fact, one is forced back behind the architects to the clients for whom they work; one is forced back to an analysis of. the whole problem of religion in the world to-day.”