The space and the plan of this church correspond exactly to the ancient Christian vision of the church as the body of Christ; it is as organically united and, at the same time hierarchical separated according to the function, as human body is.
Foreword
Of all architectural typologies sacred architecture is the one where the function of the building extends beyond the basic requirement of organising particular social and private activities, such as participation in the liturgy in the case of churches, and has first of all a task of influencing our mind and spirit. Church buildings not only lead us through our social-religious activities but also tell things to our mind. Whilst most of other architectural typologies address the issue of social functioning of the body through the intellect, the function of church architecture (above the rest) is to address functioning of our intellect and spirit through the body experience. As R. Schwarz says, “Building is based on the inner spaciousness of the body, on the knowledge of its extent and the form of its growth, on the knowledge of its articulation and of its power to expand. Indeed, it is with the body that we experience the building... space...is the body’s space turned inside out and projected into the outer world[1].” As Schwarz shows through a very poetically constructed philosophy, the space and the body become continuation, reflection and complement of each other. The architectural organisation of the space is informed by the body requirements and the body moves and acts in the space influenced by the architecture. “... for each time it is the ‘body’, that turns about, which moves to the outside and which makes itself into its own shelter. That, which made the body as the first answer given to the world, builds for it the house of architecture...Works are 'other body'...body can live in its work, work can become the body’s house[2].”
The question of this essay is to understand the message that church architecture carries and the methods of communicating that message. St. Paul’s church, Bow Common is one of very few churches which has an absolute synchronised and organic unity of the message to be communicated (function), the manner of that communication (form) and the architecture of the building (shape). For many centuries these ingredients-form, shape and function have been misused and confused, and only during first part of the 20th century with the emergence of the Liturgical movement in theology and modernism in architecture, the church was brought back to its original roots and the ecclesiastical architecture-to its integrity. This essay is not merely a description of St. Paul’s architecture. This is a story about the historical path through which both the religious philosophy and architecture have passed throughout the centuries, from losing its’ origins till finding its' purpose and meaning again in the 20th century. St. Paul’s church is the embodiment of these historical and ideological developments. It is a pioneer of this revived and reformed theology and ecclesiastical architecture. To understand the story of this church we have to start tracing its development since the birth of Christianity and follow it across centuries.
Pentecost church ministers "warming up" before the service
Understanding the Church
The first Christian churches in the 4th century were simple rooms in houses, where people would gather for their communal worship, referred to as Domus Ecclesia. Originally the building itself did not matter, since “table, space and walls make up a simplest church”[3]. What mattered was the gathering of people, the worship and the liturgy itself. The Church was the unity, the bond of the believers. As it is said, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst”[4]
The church building in those times of early Christianity was seen as Lord’s body, a body that “had not grown out of a series of accidents but had been given by the Creator in accordance with the sacred plan”[5]. The human body was seen as an absolute form, where each part has its role and function but the whole form of the body is shaped as an ideal correspondence of the separate parts’ function with the whole. Though in the body no organ is superior to the others, there is still a hierarchy, gradation according to the function. The Church as social formation and the church as a building was seen as an equally integrate and functionally gradated, mutually dependant compound structure: very much like the modernistic philosophy of the unity of form and function.
So, originally Church is a gathering of people united in a joint worship. And the building is just the context framing the act of worship and liturgy but not a deliberately planned structure to serve other social or political purposes. As Nigel Melhuish has written about earliest Christian churches, “What was wanted in a church building was a workable and congruous setting for a quit analysable ‘function’, rather than a vague and undefinable ‘devotional atmosphere’”[6]. It was in coming centuries that the building started to matter more than the Scripture itself and together with the ritualised liturgy and intricate social hierarchy within and beyond the Church clergy it became a ‘synthetic’ symbol to replace the meaning of the Church as a joint worship of people. “In the fourth century we find a theological distinction of functions within the body of Christ...The ecclesia is an organic body, hierarchical in its structure...The old distinctions of function has been largely superseded by the sociological categories of clerk and layman...The very words layman and laity have been severed from their biblical roots and have acquired a purely negative sense...He (the layman) is considered only in terms of what he is not, and what he cannot do. He has become the one who is not initiate but rather an outsider, a non-expert; in brief, one who is not a clergyman”[7]
Going astray
Following the adoption of Christianity by Byzantine as state religion during the 4th century separate church buildings started to be erected, which “were based on secular basilica, an aisled hall with an apse at each end”[8]. Further historical development of the church architecture in the West Catholic world evolved towards gradual sophistication of the plan of the church building according to the emergence of new social and ritual functions of the Liturgy (pic.3). Such compartments as additional altars and private chapels, transepts and inner and outer aisles, belfries, etc. were included in the later design of churches and cathedrals. All these transformations made the “churches that had begun as simple two-cell structures, the nave for the people and chancel for the clergy”[9] to turn gradually into a strictly functional and hierarchical formal social institution. “The proliferation of side altars and shrines let to many churches becoming extremely cramped... They suited the development of private devotions...but they did not work for any form of corporate worship”[10].
In the course of time Christian worship gradually lost the link and unity between earthly life beyond the church and the liturgy as a praise of God and life. As Peter Hammond says, “The prayer of the Church became formalised and clericalised. It was expounded in novel and fantastic ways which betray a profound misunderstanding of the very nature of the liturgy and of its place in the life of the Church and the individual Christian. There was a growing divorce between the heart and the intellect, dogma and liturgy, theology and piety”[11]. As a result the church building started to lose its original meaning and function of a space for joint worship of God. It started to lose its spatial unity as well and turned into segmented and segregated authoritative formation. In the same way as Christian ideology started detach itself from its purpose and turned into a philosophy for its own sake (or sometimes even a tool for execution of political agendas) similarly the Christian church building became a formation serving purposes other than it was originally intended to.“For the early Church dogma and liturgy, theology and personal piety, were indissolubly linked. In the writings of the great Fathers of the fourth century, theology is not a system of philosophical ideas but a mystery to be lived...In the west during the Middle Ages theology ...slowly but surely was transformed into an arid scholasticism: a technical science more concerned with philosophical ideas than with experimental knowledge of the living God in liturgy and in personal spirituality”[12]. It is in the course of this period that we witness the first major cleavage of form into separate and detached, autonomous matters, a process which is clearly expressed in the ideology and architecture of medieval western Christianity.
All these processes and developments were quite alien to the original Christian philosophy which preached unity of the material and immaterial, inner and outer worlds, body and spirit. The basilica type itself was from the beginning not an appropriate architectural type for Christian ideology and liturgy. The basilica is a longitudinally stretched structure which creates a form of a path to some final destination. This structure was more suitable for Greek and Roman temples, where the monumental statue of the god was placed at the end of the nave, and before this ancient Egyptian temples, where the narrow and impressive passage between the ‘forest’ of huge columns was a ritual passage towards the sanctuary of the god. Thus similarly the basilica is a structure which is constituted from a sanctuary as final end after passing through the stretched nave itself. This is obviously a hierarchic structure. No wonder that this structure adopted by Christian church later gave birth to such a segregation and separation between the laity and the clergy. As it was in former heathen basilicas the nave was for the congregation and the chancel for the priesthood and “there were two services taking place: the liturgy of the clergy on one side of the screen and the private devotions of the laity on the other. The links between the two were infrequent and highly formalised”[13]. One form of ritualised domination (idol, pharaoh) came to replace the other (the Church and clergy) and architecture was there to frame these transitions. Or perhaps it was the force of the architectural structure that influenced such evolution of the Church into a stage of power and domination performance...
Whatever the initial cause was, the result of the above lasted for centuries until the mid 20th century-the time of second revival of the western culture which brought new visions and fresh and questioning on seemingly apparent and conventional matters, including the role and the architecture of the Christian Church. In this respect St. Paul’s, Bow Common was the first church in Britain and one of the firsts in the whole world to address the problem.
The Liturgical Movement
The liturgical movement started as a reaction against this position which the Church acquired in the course of centuries. Liturgists basically were demanding a reform of the liturgy which would create closer relations between the laity and the clergy, make the participation of the laity in the liturgy more active and, in a word, bring back the Church and the space of the church to the common people, the laity.
However reformed liturgy would not on its own rectify the situation, since it is the unity of the (Christian) ideology with the form (of the church) which creates truly functional and live environment. The two are mutually and organically interconnected. P. Hammond also believes that “the whole character of the liturgy can be transformed if the layout of the building in which it is celebrated is modified in accordance with the new theological insights. Liturgical reform can well begin with the church building itself”[14]. So, by the mid 20th century church architecture faced the very difficult task to find a spatial and architectural ‘mounting’ of the new Christian ideas. In Britain it was St. Paul’s, Bow Common church, which first answered to these visions.
Quest for an appropriate church form
Liturgists’ demand was to create an architectural space which would make possible the full participation of the congregation in the liturgy and would remove the segregation between various social groups-mainly between the clergy and the congregation.
But what does ‘participation’ mean? Participation is not merely a presence in the liturgy as a religious service but as a continuous process not limited to the ritual. Participation in the church is a mode of living, acting and relating oneself to the church as to a House of God or Domus Ecclesia. We may equally interpret the demand of liturgical reformation as not only an eradication of the separation of the clergy and congregation, but also between the secular life existing beyond the church and the sacred, spiritual life set within the church. The demand was to bring back the original Christian ideology of the unity of the outer and inner worlds, to create one holistic form or mode of life which retains its integrity and does not put separation and distinction between the manner of living and the preaching of that life manner, between theory and practice, between life and liturgy.
So, the important question concerning the design of a church is: How can people be made to participate in the Church and get involved with it by means of architectural, spatial organisation? In other words, how can the church talk to people? Surely, buildings can talk about their function or impose that function on us directly through visual and other kind of formal symbols, such as religious symbols, sculptures, symbolic shape of the building or its plan, etc. But there are other ways of structuring the space, which makes it talk to us ‘without words’ simply by placing us into spatial experiential ‘scenarios’ of behaviour and acting. As Peter Hammond says; “A church will take on the nature of a symbol only in so far as its plan and structure are informed by a genuine understanding of the Christian community and its liturgy...and if the building is an honest piece of construction, free from sham and irrelevant ornament, than its symbolic aspect can be left to take care of itself”[15].
These space-organising architectural methods are very diverse and usually are wrongly called ‘symbols’ when they are not. “The notion of architecture ‘speaking’ of this or that should not be confused with the use of literary symbols...such devices depend on translation into an intellectual concept-the building needs to be explained by an idea which is extraneous to it as a building. Architecture does not need to be explained: it is a manifestation, understood at a simple, fundamental level of consciousness”[16]. Symbol is merely a mediating means appearing as a messenger of the meaning[17]. But the architectural form of the spatial arrangement is the meaning itself; the shape of the building through which the space conveys the meanings or executes its functions is not detached from the function and performance of the building. “If the meanings are not made manifest in the architecture then the symbolic means of architecture will be ‘speaking’ of something different and there will be a conflict, an implied negation”[18].
So, in order to avoid this discrepancy, the first thing is to understand those meanings, namely the function and the purpose of the Church as an institution and the church as a building. As Hammond says, “...One cannot hope to design a satisfactory church unless one is prepared to face fairly and squarely a question of what a church is for...”[19]. And this is exactly what Robert Maguire and Keith Murray were going to find out.
Birth of St. Paul’s, Bow Common
In Britain, liturgists’ ideas were pioneered by Fr. Gresham Kirkby and architects Robert Maguire and Keith Murray who were among the firsts to start thinking about a new Church and new architecture for the church.
St. Paul’s church had to be built on the site of the original Victorian church built in 1858 by William Cotton and destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. The parish priest Fr. Gresham Kirkby who was a very radical, anarchist socialist had chosen Robert Maguire and Keith Murray as the architects. They both were very young then, in their mid twenties and had very little experience in church design; Maguire had just failed his design of a church in AA because it had not conventional ecclesiastical look and because of the way he had arranged the movement of the clergy and the congregation. Later he adopted the structure of the cupola from this design to be applied in the St. Paul’s architecture. Murray was working at Watts & Co., one of the leading ecclesiastical design firms.
Murray and Maguire started working on the design of the church with the following question; "What will Christian worship be like in the year 2000, and how can we build a church to reflect this?"[20]. Being staunch socialists themselves their idea perhaps proceeds from deep understanding of what ‘participation’ in the Church is and how it should be architecturally framed. As equally staunch modernists they believed in the unity of the form and function and that architecture is formed according to the certain message and function it has to carry out. They deeply disliked the idea that the architectural shape should be separate from its function and detached from the form-the mode by which architecture solves its tasks. “Architectural quality is aptness at all levels-a ‘nearness’ to need, an appropriate place for the activity the building houses (which it houses so well that it becomes a symbol of that activity, of that aspect of man); and a relevance to its environment and the kind of culture of which it is the product, down to the stuff it is made of and the way the stuff is used”[21]. So, they started to look for a structure that would frame the function of the church calling for ‘participation’ rather than which would look as any symbol (of that function). As Maguire writes “architecture articulates and presents meaning, and values; it expresses these things. It does not ‘express’ function, because function is not in itself capable of expression. The underlying meaning and values of ‘functions’ – purposes – are, however, capable of expression: capable, that is, of articulation and presentation”.
Centrical Space
“The rediscovery of the half-forgotten world of Eastern Orthodoxy has cast an unfamiliar light on familiar western controversies, and has begun to bring home to us the limitations of a purely western-European view of Christian history”[22]. The theological and architectural quest of liturgists for true and the original church forms revealed the Eastern Orthodox Church which, due to the course of the history perhaps, had retained the purer Christian forms. The first thing that architects following the liturgical movement would derive from eastern Orthodoxy is definitely the centrically arranged space of the church. We have no information whether Maguire or Murray or Fr. Kirkby had this in mind while conceiving the plan, the form and particularly the shape of the dome of St. Paul’s. However the fact is that they chose this centrical structure, which was also the main architectural motif of Eastern Orthodoxy, as the architectural theme responding to the demand of having a united space calling for ‘participation’.
Centrically arranged space is one of the forms of spatial arrangement which ‘talks’ to people by placing them into a spatial experiential scenarios. It is not a symbol; however it talks to us and influences certain modes of social and individual acting and communication. And one of its messages is being a ring, circle of people; “When people know they are at one they form a ring in accordance with an inner law...Ring is inviolability. Neither beginning nor end exists in it, it begins and ends everywhere. Bending back completely into itself, it is the strongest and the most inward of all figures, the figure which is most at one”[23]. The ring has no precise direction, it does not offer a path towards the end, an ‘answer’, as it was in basilicas. The ‘answer’ is there and nowhere and everywhere at the same time, God and the life is everywhere, it happens here and now. No need to seek for an idol at the end of the way.
“In addition to its first meaning as circle the ring receives a second meaning as bond. The ring becomes the form of cohesion, of girdling, of embrace”[24]. That is how centrical space solves the demand of ‘participation’. It organises the congregation into one united body, bond together and bond with the church ministry in the sanctuary. Without any precise and distinct architectural means, without words and without addressing the intellect the centrical space calls people to come together and to create the place-the Church by their presence only. No other architectural means are required. The architecture becomes only a blank sheet on which people build up their own church themselves. “A place is made by the circle of people (where before there was only placelessness) for the time of the service; A centre is created. In the very simplest form a church is created”[25].
The centrical structure of St. Paul’s is, on the other hand, a logical architectural response to the placement of the free standing altar in the middle of the hall (pic.7) “designed to permit celebration facing the people, and the one-room plan based on the square, the circle and the ellipse, with the congregation gathered around the holy table”[26]. By this means the architects wanted to break down the architectural separation of the space between the congregation and the clergy. They not only eliminated the spatial distinction between these two places but also put the altar on the same level with the hall for congregation. The result is fascinating; one should be in the church and participate in the liturgy to feel how this spatial structure bonds together the priest and the laity, what a novel and unique feeling of unity and bond it conveys. This is the effect of the centrical arrangement, which Hammond has compared to Shakespearean plays where “the physical and psychological barriers separating actor from spectator are broken down, and all are drawn into the action which is taking place”[27].
Inclusive Space
Robert Maguire called the space of St. Paul’s church as 'inclusive space' in view of the fact that wherever in the church one stands one is still participating and included in the action taking place at the altar site. Fr. Duncan, current vicar of St. Paul’s, explains that whilst the space is inclusive it is also private at the same time. The aisles created by rows of simple white columns enclosing the central space from four sides comprise secondary side places within this one inclusive space. Whilst the columns do not really separate the hall and do not break its wholeness still the aisles have their unique individual atmosphere. One has to do just a step from the aisles’ space to the hall to find oneself in a completely new atmosphere. Maguire explains the effect of this phenomenological space because “these columns do not cut off people in the lower aisles, since the form of the aisle roofs projects the space of towards the centre” [28].
The space and the plan of this church correspond exactly to the ancient Christian vision of the church as the body of Christ; it is as organically united and, at the same time hierarchical separated according to the function, as human body is. Even the deliberately designed passage from the shade of the aisles to the light of the hall under the glass domed cupola hints the distinction and the unity of these two seemingly contrasts, each of which has, however, its function and role in the church and in the life generally. The font which traditionally stands just at the entrance to the main hall, again talks about this unity; it reflects the glass cupola which is not seen yet from the entrance. By this symbolical method the architects want to hint again about the unity of the inner and outer worlds; we, human beings are part of the whole universe and we reflect the world-God’s creation as the surface of the font reflects the church.
This inclusiveness of the church space thus evolved from being simply a place for liturgical participation and showed its capacity to encompass much wider social activities. St. Paul’s has become a Church in its true and original meaning as a unity of the congregation not only in the joint worship of God but also in the joint praise of life. This church is a home for everybody regardless of race, colour and even belief. The list of various social, religious and cultural activities hosted by this church is numerous. Fr. Duncan describes that “today our life includes exhibitions, from intimate display of just one art work to 800 square feet dazzling external installation or walls completely bedecked with textile panels in partnership with the V&A! At other times you will find Jumble Sales or Bazaars and Fayres going on! The church is used as an ideal space for conferences and use by community organisations and in 2009 became (literally) a home for a week for over 70 Vietnamese Catholic pilgrims who lived and slept under our lofty roof! Concerts or suppers, dance or performance projects; even a Christmas party shared by homeless people and ‘Sockmob’ volunteer befrienders, as well as use by Pentecostal fellowships-all of these various aspects of our life are embraced and given dignified and appropriate space in this remarkable building”[29].
This is a church which does not seek meanings in grandeur and splendour or richness but in simplicity and sincerity of everyday life, something which is expressed also in the used materials; “the church is built out of cheap flint brick and fair-faced concrete, exposed rolled steel sections and ordinary concrete paving slabs like the pavement of the street outside; each things carefully done, an affirmation if the intrinsic value of ordinary industrial materials and good work”[30]. Even the mosaics called ‘The Heavenly Host’, which are the work of Charles Lutyens, are created in a very simple but emotionally expressive, modernistic fashion. Images of depicted angels are in a sense very human and not dramatic and histrionic, as it was traditionally used to depict them. Each of the angels has its personality, its character, its psychology which is clearly shown in their images. They are not much other than we-human beings. This is another architectural method to point out that there is no difference and separation between the outside life and that within the church, the church is nothing else than our everyday life. And this is exactly what the lettering at the entrance talks about; “TRULY THIS IS NONE OTHER – BUT THE HOUSE OF GOD – THIS IS THE GATE OF HEAVEN”.
Afterword
The most peculiar thing of this church, as Fr. Duncan explains, is that he never needs to thinks of what event to organise there. The church expresses itself what it can welcome and what it is willing to host. And apparently it is willing and open to host any kind of human expression, creation and activity. The architects no doubt never imagine that this building would evolve so far in its functions.
“I designed the building as ‘liturgical space’, informed by how I saw the nature of liturgy as the formative activity in realising the community as the Body of Christ. Later (and now) I would call it ‘inclusive space’-space that enables everyone within it, wherever they are, to feel included in what is happening, wherever in the space that may be. So this quality naturally extends inclusiveness to anything the community wishes to do in the building, and the building should lend itself creatively to community-building of any kind”[31].
Although while designing the church Murray and Maguire were “centred on the flexibility of the worship” nevertheless this church proved to be infinitely more flexible creating possibility of ‘participation’. Architecture shows to be much a more powerful and autonomous phenomenon than it originally was designed to be. When the architectural form is correctly designed and responds deeply and truly to its function, then the building becomes a living organism. It starts to live its own life. It softly leads and hints its users what it ‘wants’ to be done with itself by means of its architecture.
...Fr. Duncan tells that during the Shamiana[32] exhibition in 1998 he saw a man weeping in the corner of the church. When he approached him the man turned to be Robert Maguire himself who visited the church for the first time in 40 years. Fr. Duncan’s first thought was that Maguire dislikes what has been done to the building, the way it has been exploited and evolved. But it was exactly the reverse, those were tears of happiness. He was touched by the life that the church had obtained...He must have felt himself, in a way, like Pygmalion whose Galatea was so truly carved that came to life!
On this occasion Robert Maguire wrote; “You are doing wonderful things in this building, things so important for the surrounding community and far beyond. They are things that I, certainly, could never have dreamt of when I designed it...It turns out to my great joy, to be flexibility for many other things that build trust and grow true community. But those are really worship, too”[33].
Bibliography
- Schwarz, Rudolf. 1958 The church incarnate; the sacred function of Christian architecture. Translated by Cynthia Harris, H. Regnery Co., Chicago
- Nigel Yates. 2008 Liturgical space: Christian worship and church buildings in western Europe 1500-2000, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd
- Robert Alfred Maguire, Keith A. Murray. 1965 Modern churches of the world, Studio Vista, ltd
- Peter Hammond. 1960 Liturgy and architecture, Barrie and Rockliff,
- New American Standard Bible, Foundation Publications, publisher for the Lockman Foundation, 1997
- Kenneth Leech, Father Gresham Kirkby, The Guardian, 22 August, 2006 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/aug/22/guardianobituaries.religion
- Duncan Ross, St. Paul’s Church, 2010
- Robert Maguire, “Some thoughts on the occasion of the jubilee of St. Paul’s church, Bow Common”, a letter
[1] Schwarz, p. 27
[2] Schwarz, p. 29-30
[3] Hammond, p.32
[4] New American Standard Bible, Matthew 18:20
[5] Schwarz, p.7
[6] Quoted in Hammond, p.8
[7] Hammond, p.20
[8] Yates, p.3
[9] Yates, p.6
[10] Yates, p.7
[11] Hammond, p.17
[12] Hammond, p.16
[13] Yates, p.6
[14] Hammond, p.25
[15] Hammond, p.30
[16] Murray and Maguire, p.8
[17] See the Semiotic triangle
[18] Murray and Maguire, p.9
[19] Hammond, p.7
[20] Kenneth Leech
[21] Murray and Maguire, p.10
[22] Hammond, p.13
[23] Schwarz, p.39
[24] Schwarz, p.40
[25] Murray and Maguire, p.8
[26] Hammond, p.32
[27] Hammond, p.26
[28] Murray and Maguire, p.90
[29] Duncan Ross
[30] Murray and Maguire, p.93
[31] Duncan Ross
[32] “Shamiana, A Moghul Tent which had its genesis in our (St. Paul’s, Bow Common) part of East London through the beautiful textile work of local Asian women expressing their hopes and aspirations”. (http://www.achurchnearyou.com/st-paul-bow-common/)
[33] Robert Maguire