Word: church
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Little if anything, reports ARCHITECTURAL FORUM in its current issue, out last week. Church architecture is in a rut, and has been for a generation. "Almost without exception," says the FORUM, "the houses of worship erected in this, country since 1920 could more appropriately have been built in England about the time of Crecy and Agincourt or in colonial America in the reign of George III." And few of the new churches will represent any advance. Among the reasons: traditionalism among laity and clergy (a preference for watered-down Gothic and imitation Colonial), and the failure of architects to offer...
Expendable Churches. But, says the FORUM, there is hope on the horizon. A handful of moderns are trying to restore to church architecture the pioneering role it once played. Their tentative answers to the problem (see picture supplement) may not seem equally inspiring to all worshipers, but they do suggest some brand-new approaches...
...common denominator is a simplicity forced by economy, since, as the FORUM points out, "the church of the future . . . will have to be regarded as expendable. New York is currently witnessing the impact of present-day economy on the traditional concept of the church: the dramatic demolition of the Collegiate Reformed Church of St. Nicholas, which Frank Lloyd Wright declared the finest in New York. Located on one of Fifth Avenue's costliest and most coveted corners [48th Street], it will make way for an office building...
...problem of building a functional church involves more than letting the construction materials show. The function of a church, after all, "is primarily one affecting the spiritual and emotional side of man." In other words, modern "expendable" churches may be bare but not barren, small but not confining. What the architects must achieve in new ways, concludes the FORUM: "Dignity, loftiness and reverence...
...fortnight, U.S. Methodists have been studying the state of the world and the dangers it holds for religion. Behind closed doors in a Manhattan hotel, 36 bishops of the Methodist Church spent three days trying to analyze the strengths and weaknesses, the failures and successes of Communism. Last week, at Buck Hill Falls, Pa., Methodists assembled for the tenth annual meeting of their Board of Missions and Church Extension. Some of what they heard was cheering: Chinese Communists were treating missionaries better than had been expected and the church in the U.S. was growing fast enough...