2/29/24 Construction Visit to Trinity Presbyterian Church Owasso, Oklahoma by Ethan Anthony

Construction is fully underway on the interior of the new Multipurpose Room which will serve as the new Sanctuary for the new church facility for Trinity Presbyterian Church under construction in Owasso, Oklahoma.

Owasso is a fast growing new suburb of Tulsa.

Underway during our visit: Steel grid that will support the ceiling, HVAC ductwork, Gypsum wallboard and preparations for the wood work that is coming.

James curl lecture night by Ethan Anthony

Luz and I Attended the Excellent Lecture given by Professor James Curl author of "Making Dystopia, The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism" given at the Institute for Classical Architecture on Thursday Night. Great. And Great to mee…

Luz and I Attended the Excellent Lecture given by Professor James Curl author of "Making Dystopia, The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism" given at the Institute for Classical Architecture on Thursday Night. Great. And Great to meet Professor Curl at his last appearance on his American Book Tour.

Renderings for the new St. John Catholic Student Center by Ethan Anthony

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The St. John Catholic Student Center is in design with construction planned to commence in 2021. The Center will be composed of a 50,000 square foot student facility and a 10,000 square foot church, seating 400 students for daily Mass. A limestone veneer is planned for the church and brick for the student center. The church design is inspired by the Church of San Ambrosio in Milan Italy, an early Christian church dating back to the fifth Century.

San Ambrosio is also a red brick Romanesque structure with limestone accents. The student center exterior design is also inspired by Romanesque architecture, one of the original traditional Christian styles. Cram and Ferguson are designing the interior of the church in traditional religious furnishings. 

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In Charlottesville, Virginia, the new St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish Church is taking shape! by Ethan Anthony

I visited St Thomas Aquinas Church in Charlottesville, Virginia on the 16th to attend the weekly project meeting. These photos capture the state of the construction mid-April 2019. After an extraordinarily wet winter and spring held construction behind schedule, warm weather has finally arrived and the speed of events is beginning to pick up .

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The copper-clad cupola atop the central dome was placed just two weeks ago and was gleaming in the sun. On entering the parking lot which is at the front of the Parish building below the church, one sees it sparkling above the brick Parish building.

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The view from Alderman road conceals that fact that matching the existing Parish Building floor level required the church to be set into the hill below the level of Alderman Road. The full interior height of the church is not discernible on the Alderman Road elevation helping the church to fit in with the scale of the surrounding residential neighborhood.

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On the interior of the church we see how the nave is quite large with the dome soaring above the future crossing. The dome rises 55 feet above the nave floor and the top of the cross is 74 feet above the floor. The dome will be roofed in copper as is the cupola and recalls the rotunda at the University Campus nearby.

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The transept visible from Alderman Road will have three great Romanesque windows that will eventually be filled with religious glass.

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Where formerly there was a bridge from Alderman Road to the church entrance now has been filled and a retaining wall now creates a gracious entrance plaza and a memorial rose garden will be planted in the space along the side of the church.

 

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Brickwork has begun, a brick and mortar color chosen and a portion of one wall has been laid up for the architect to view and it was approved during my visit.

Father Barranger with the new Tabernacle for the church, handmade in Spain.

Father Barranger with the new Tabernacle for the church, handmade in Spain.

 

 

 

 

The AIACM Award night November 17, 2018 had many highlights and deserving winners! by Ethan Anthony

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Our own Daniel Morel was the recipient of the Student Scholarship Award. Pictured from left: Ethan Anthony, Daniel Morel, Benita Morel and Jertrudis Morel.

Darrell Swanson, of Swanson Architects Inc., received the AIACM Honor Mention Award for Excellence in Architecture. Pictured from left: Darrell Swanson, Martia Swanson and Ethan Anthony.

Darrell Swanson, of Swanson Architects Inc., received the AIACM Honor Mention Award for Excellence in Architecture. Pictured from left: Darrell Swanson, Martia Swanson and Ethan Anthony.

The first AIACM Presidential Medallion was presented to Jamie Walsh in honor of his late father Massachusetts Representative Chris Walsh. Pictured from left: Ethan Anthony, John Nunneri and Jamie Walsh.

The first AIACM Presidential Medallion was presented to Jamie Walsh in honor of his late father Massachusetts Representative Chris Walsh. Pictured from left: Ethan Anthony, John Nunneri and Jamie Walsh.

There were many lucky raffle and silent auction winners! As well as a shooting gallery to raise money for the scholarship fund.

There were many lucky raffle and silent auction winners! As well as a shooting gallery to raise money for the scholarship fund.

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Kevin Hogan, Darrell Swanson, Daniel Morel, Benita Morel and Jertrudis Morel.

Kevin Hogan, Darrell Swanson, Daniel Morel, Benita Morel and Jertrudis Morel.

Ethan's speech for the Catholic Art Guild Conference and Gala: 'Formed in Beauty' November 4, 2018 by Ethan Anthony

THE SYMPHONY OF CREATIVITY

St John Neumann Catholic Church

St John Neumann Catholic Church

Throughout history, artists, architects and theologians have often developed prescriptions for achieving beauty in building and the arts. The earliest of these, the Ten Books on Architecture by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, was written by a Roman architect and engineer who lived in the first century B.C.

St Charles Borromeo’s Instructiones Fabricae Et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae applied the teachings of the council of Trent to Church architecture and in the post Reformation era, the revival of Catholic Church Design was guided by The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, published in 1841.

In our own era we have had the SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM of POPE PAUL VI promulgated in 1963 and better known as Vatican Two and most recently Built of Living Stones was published by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2000, a theological reflection on the liturgy and church architecture including church planning and art in worship spaces.  In addition, in the last 15 years a number of books have questioned the teachings of Vatican II in favor of a return to those of Borromeo and Pugin.

Also the Bishop, Pastor, Building committee and various Diocesan Councils also play a part in the design and planning of American churches. After taking into account all of these, the architect must carefully solve the program needs. This must be done while respecting both general and specific building codes and achieving a great and beautiful space fit for the Catholic Liturgy. And, finally if that is not sufficient, all of this must usually be done on a budget that is too small to provide greatness of materials or finishes or any decent artwork let alone art glass windows.

So how do we architects of a new round of American Catholic churches avoid mediocrity and find a path through these many difficulties and restrictions to create a building which is beautiful and holy and filled with the Spirit?

How can the architect function as a resource for the Parish and the Pastor? If this new creation is to include the art and craft of other individual creators, how does the architect conduct this sometimes cacophonous orchestra and achieve a coordinated symphony of creativity?

And, did I forget to mention Beauty? We know it when we see it, we feel it, it goes to the core of our being…touches us personally, breaks through our defenses, our sophistication. Can beauty still be a possibility after all of these other factors have been taken into consideration?

Finding and following beauty is the beginning and end of my every day. I know it is a thing, that it exists. In fact I spend much of my time judging the beauty of the work of the multitude of artists, crafters and contractors who are working on our projects often far away.

When the concerted efforts of so many are required to produce a project, how can so many different people come together and how, can the architect guide the crafter or artist and still allow them some freedom to contribute?

How can one director provide guidance that may not be understood by the workers who produce the work or even the owner who pays for it until it is substantially complete? Can a guiding vision overcome differing levels of skill and conflicting ideas and guide the owner, the user and the many producers to a cohesive and beautiful result?

Cram wrote in 1914: “Every architect knows that the success of his work depends largely on the craftsmen who carry it out and complete it with all its decorative features of form and color, and yet in a nation of 100 million people, with a dozen schools of architecture practically nothing is done toward educating these same craftsmen, and either we secure the services of foreign-trained men, accept tenth rate native work or go without.”

The situation remained as Cram described through the 1960’s but has improved greatly in the last ten years. There are now schools of traditional art and craft in some major cities and crafters of high skill are becoming available as  the demand for that kind of work begins to grow.

The great art workshops of the past such as those of  Rembrandt and Rodin,  and John Angel in the twentieth century followed a guiding vision that directed many individual artists to produce a vision of great beauty. They depended on many assistants working more or less independently, all learning the work from the master and each other and all gaining a common understanding of beauty based on starting from Precedent.

As the great artists did, we now gather around us a small group of arts and crafts specialists who carry out this vision and contribute as they produce artifacts and parts of buildings that follow these universal principles. We provide guidance for the wood, stone and iron work and other skills needed to complete the project.  Truly, the architect is a composer and conductor to the orchestra of arts and crafts workers who create the building, their symphony.

We begin with the iconographic planning and a look at the traditional placements of iconography throughout the building. The placements for iconography are ultimately finally committed to drawings and there begins an iterative process with the artists and crafters and one that is more cycled than the typical shop drawing process such as that, for example, of producing wood cabinets.

The first drawings may be loose sketches which are then drawn in CADD. The artist then returns a submittal drawing that further refines the concept which is critiqued by us and returned with notes. In sculpture the next step after the sketch is a clay then, after it is approved, finally the marble is carved.

And what guides us as the Director of this symphony? 

Two writers have provided clear guidance for the architect in this task; Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and John Ruskin.

A.W.N. Pugin studied, measured and sketched medieval catholic churches across England and began the gothic revival with his 1835 design for St George’s Cathedral in Southwark England the first new Catholic church to be built in England in 300 years. Much of the revival was framed by Pugin in his books, Contrasts and The true Principles of Pointed Architecture.

In his Principles of Pointed Architecture Pugin wrote:

“The two great rules for design are these:

1st, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety.

2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building.”

Ornamented Architecture

The instructions contained in Pointed architecture were in large part specific design principles for ornamenting architecture both in the elaboration of the building fabric and in the addition of artistic content. In advocating an ornamented architecture Pugin was advocating a return to an architecture that contained Catholic liturgical meaning after most aspects of the Catholic liturgy were banished for 300 years. First in the Reformation of Henry VIII then in the “enlightenment” and Revolution in France the Catholic church and religion had been systematically destroyed.

During the Puritan years Catholic ornament had become a particular target for the suppression of the Catholic liturgy and, the puritans and after them the French Revolutionaries stripped the saints and Doctors of the church from the walls.

Pugin began, after the Catholic Restoration act of 1829, to work on new designs for a Catholic architecture that would replace the Roman classical architecture of the Renaissance. Catholics of the day were still persecuted and viewed the dominant architecture as pagan based as it was on pagan temples and worship. But the Renaissance also had done much to simplify and remove liturgical information from the surface of buildings.

If ornament was to be returned to the church once more, Pugin said it would have to be integral. Pugin felt that ornament must be limited to elaboration of the structure what we today refer to as architectonic.  This, he felt would bring life to the underlying building and avoid mere decoration, which might mask and confuse the underlying architecture of the building.

During his short working life he succeeded through his gothic revival in re-establishing gothic architecture as the language of religious building. Of course, the gothic revival faded to be replaced by other revivals until the rise of modernism just before the Second World War.

What happened to ornament? Why don’t we see it on buildings today?

After World War II with the rise and dominance of the modern movement, the architect was once again told to delete all ornament and with it we lost the hand of the crafter and artist. The new iconoclasm.

In the post modern era that followed the decline of the modern movement, we have seen the re-emergence of building arts and crafts and our work is part of that revival.

A Place for Art and Craft

We have continued the long-established practice within our firm of making space in the building for the work of arts and crafts. A void space is created and it becomes a place for an iconographic statement: a bas-relief or statue, a mural, iron hardware, custom designed marble furnishing sets, altar, ambo and Tabernacle throne,  carved and moulded terminations and in wood, glass, paint and other new materials, symbols that add layers of meaning onto the framework provided by the building.

Adding iconography to the work is part of a process of design and partly a process of visualizing what the final result will be after the artist or crafter has added symbolic or representational meaning to an architectural element. Where in a Roman classical building a column represents a plant form, a lunette over the door at St John Neumann contains a scene that Father Dowling felt crystalized the relationship between the church and the parishioner.

Matthew 19:14. “Let the little children come to me…” This church is a pedagogical tool for the children in the parish school next door as well as for the adults of the parish who are reminded that like children they too need to come to God with an open heart.

The creation of space for iconography and symbolic meaning becomes one important source of inspiration for the design. In our buildings a column maybe has a representation of a biblical scene that is of vital importance to the liturgy and the life of the people. The artist and crafter, fashion parts of the building while adding a higher symbolic life.

During most of the history of humankind building projects have been the result of the work of many hands directed by the priest or religious and the artist and or architect/interior designer even the landscape designer gets into the act. The contribution and mark of the crafter also is there and is not seen to be a disfiguration but the seat of the iconographic conversation.

John Ruskin in his 1850 work The Stones of Venice made the argument that the maker and the making were inextricably intertwined. He further noted that the Gothic architects of Venice created for the glory of God. The gothic building was the book of Christianity written in stone. In gothic architecture as Ruskin saw it, the maker is not only the producer but also another worshipper, praying in stone or iron or wood or paint. Every part of the creation is infused with a unique and critical message. The message of a building is its soul.

The language of Architecture

In fact, even the modern architect who avoids religious architecture describes modern buildings with a language that is derived from spiritual references, Mies said: “God is in the Details”, Paolo Soleri titled one of his books: The Bridge between Matter and Spirit is Matter becoming Spirit.

Frank Lloyd Wright said: “Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.”; “Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”

But, “the Building does not matter” and the “God is nature” 

We hear sometimes today that the building in which we worship doesn’t matter. What is important we are told, is the body of the faithful, the congregation, the worshipper wherever the worship takes place and that sounds good but in fact worship almost always takes place in a building. Further the building imparts much to the essence of worship.

In a recent essay in the Jesuit publication America Magazine the author described how on a visit to Rome, he came away feeling that a tree was more inspiring than the “grandiose” churches of Europe. Only Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia inspired him even in comparison to the great cathedrals.

Wright expounded a similar theme: “I believe in God, only I spell it nature.” “God is the great mysterious motivator of what we call nature, and it has often been said by philosophers that nature is the will of God. And I prefer to say that nature is the only body of God that we shall ever see.”

Nature is indeed very nice but it is not human worship and those who espouse the beauty of nature as more beautiful than the beauty of the Catholic Liturgy writ in ston risk losing the worshipper. Human kind finds great comfort in a familiar Liturgy and a Liturgical setting that contains reinforcing symbols and iconographic information. From the day of the Sacred Groves our civilization has made places of the spirit and of remembrance lest we forget in everyday life the values and spiritual knowledge we have gained. God, in a real sense dwells in these places. How can they not be about God, contain God, be where God lives. 

And it was to make sure that God was not alive in the great cathedrals or Abbey churches that the Rationalists and Naturalists of the French Revolution demolished so many great churches. Glastonbury Abbey, Syon Abbey, Tintern, Rievaulx, Fountains, literally thousands of great foundations once homes for religious men and women, defiled, destroyed, desecrated, the occupants sometimes murdered, the great fabrics pulled down and the stone stolen away to build great houses for the new rich of the land.

Their spirit and the spirit of God is still present in these great places, in all of these abbeys, even when the remains are only a tiny sliver of their former greatness. This presence instills me with awe to this day.

Even when the bones that remain are only a few, only broken, only barely still there, they yet contain this power, this awe-inspiring presence, this inspiration, this infusion of the spirit. And we pick up their work where they had to lay it down, to do the same work, to pick up the same spade and dig enthusiastically.

 

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Ruins & Rosemary Travel Blog by Ethan Anthony

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Have you checked out Ethan's travel blog yet?

He has been posting beautiful blog posts once or twice a week of his adventures around France and will soon be updating to include his more recent research trip from this summer.

If you're traveling to France soon, whether for business or leisure, Ethan will point you to some of the best hotels and restaurants that France has to offer. He does all the research so you don't have to! 

He points out the best tourist spots, and when to go to avoid the crowds. From the Roman Coliseum full of history, to the castle being built using only medieval tools, you won't want to waste a second.

And don't forget to stop along the way to eat lunch! And dinner. And snacks in between. Be sure to take lots of pictures, because the presentation is flawless but the food is so good it won't last long. 

And if you're not traveling to France soon? This blog will absolutely change your mind.

 

 

 

 

Ruins and Rosemary Travel Blog - Guedelon & Sully Sur Loire by Ethan Anthony

On our way to Guedelon, we stopped for the night at La Closeraie Hotel in Sully-Sur-Loire. When we arrived, the sun was setting, and the castle looked spectacular.

In the morning, we packed up and continued towards Guedelon.

During the planning of our trip, we viewed the brief documentary on the Guedelon Project. Guedelon is a newly built castle using medieval methods and technology. It celebrates and preserves the methods of another era, just like Jamestown in Virginia, Sturbridge Village, and Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts.

Guedelon is distinguished by the fact that construction is ongoing and the partially completed building is there among the workshops of the craftspeople who are building it. Guedelon reportedly has had to slow construction recently to maintain the unfinished nature of the site which is so compelling to the visitor.

A number of things stood out to me during the visit:

First- the parking lots, massive and stretching out into the woods on all sides and full of cars. People from across Europe and the US were traveling to see this magnificent site. Apparently many more people than I thought have discovered this fascinating visit.

Second- the organization of the site and its orientation to the visitor. Everything seems to be planned around the onlookers; the café and restaurant, the facilities, the cart trails around the site, and the workshops with ongoing craft work everywhere.

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The feel is close to what I had imagined it would be like to be on the construction site of a castle. The only thing I felt was missing was a more accurate sense of the reality that this is a first in military construction underway in an unforgiving world.

A few knights on horseback would help bring it home.

The overall sense is unpretentious and resistant to commercialization. Disney would most certainly not be welcome here, yet the books and other historical materials available for kids in Europe are generally far better than those in the US.

The craft work at Guedelon is first class. Stone and iron, ceramic, masonry, carpentry, basket making and so on.

There are also plenty of opportunities for a hands on taste for the young and the older. Luz could not resist the chance to carve a little stone...

To explore more posts, click here

Travel Blog by Ethan Anthony

My travel blog is now live and ready to view! Come check out some beautiful photographs of European architecture from my adventures around Europe. Also included are links to some favorite recipes, and travel tips for places to stay, eat, and explore!

Copyright 2017 Ethan Anthony 

Copyright 2017 Ethan Anthony 

 

 

Our Lady of Good Voyage Dedicated by Ethan Anthony

The opening and dedication of Our Lady of Good Voyage Shrine in the Seaport District of Boston stretched over two events, the Dedication Mass on Saturday, April 22nd and the Mass of Thanksgiving on Sunday, May 21st, 2017.

Cardinal O'Malley greeted the assembled congregation which included Mayor Marty Walsh, Police Commissioner William Evans, Ambassador Ray Flynn and his wife and Seaport Square Developer, John Hynes Jr and his family.

Cardinal Sean O'Malley delivers his Homily to the congregation assembled for the Dedication Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Voyage.