Issue 04: Dear Eliza, Part i

Church of Saint Francis of Assissi, Oscar Nieymeyer
Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

1. EXTERIOR
2. INTERIOR - parabolic mural, Candido Portinari

.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Perhaps the most heretical action on that slippery slope towards architectural profanity is not a space that has been desecrated, but is the space left unconsecrated. It is the unconsecrated church.
.
As in [e.g] Oscar Nieymeyer’s Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Oscar Nieymeyer’s design was begot from French Poet Paul Claudel’s line: “A church is God’s hangar on earth” - a technologist’s analogy, typical of our ceaseless exertions to periodise language.
- ‘The mechanical perfection of the workings of the universe are akin to a watchmaker, wherein the watchmaker is God’(1700)
- ‘Architecture is a wedding, the architect is the lingering whore from the night before’ (1938
- ‘Cities are Highways’ (1956)
- ‘Cities are Networks’ (1975)
- ‘Networks are SuperHighways’ (1998)
- Networks are Candybars (2013)

Although the Church was completed in 1943 the local archbishop, Antonio dos Santos Cabral, opposed consecration until 1959 due to the profanity of its architectural and artistic forms.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The four abutting parabolic vaults lack a certain gravitas, they are pillowy and sensual. They do, however, fulfill Nieymeyer’s attraction to the curve, as he once said:
“It is not the right angle that attracts me, neither straight line, tough, inflexible, created by man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve, in the course of its winding rivers, in the waves of the sea, in the clouds of the sky, in the body of the preferred woman. From curves is done throughout the universe. The curved universe of Einstein.”
To which the Archibishop looked at the church and said, “you are a godless communist.”
This honour was extended to Candido Protinari who had painted both the exterior mural of St Francis of Assisi and the emaciated Christ glaring out from behind the altar in this ‘Devil’s bomb shelter.’
.
Perhaps some part of the impasse lay in the potential for organic shapes to resemble the truth, but also express the opposite. Oscar Nieymeyer may be alluding to the body of his preferred woman, but Organicism does not respect natural rules. Like the original cave painters it may express boredom with the depressing similarity of all bodies – the same extremities in the same places, the same kind of trunk, more or less the same kind of movement. Hence, our fascination with the shape of the human figure as a theme for endless variation.
[illustration page 2]
The scrambling of bodies and limbs gives the devil more facility to decrease human stature in a way that is decidedly pre-enlightenment. The contrast it creates does not respect the rules.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

The Unfashionable Human Body, 1971,
Bernard Rudofsky

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Archbishop Santos Cabral declared the church “unfit for religious purposes” and a local mayor tried to have it condemned and demolished. The church was stuffed with anachronistic monuments and altars, weeds sprang up, tiles cracked and started to fall, paintings and artifacts were put in storage.
.
Over time the building was recognised as a national monument and restored by the National Department of Artistic and Historical Patrimony. Archbishop Cabral’s successor agreed upon its great significance and spiritual atmosphere and declared it as a wonderful homage to the Creator. The church was consecrated 16 years after its completion.
.
Sacred space creates an orderly world by imposing ordering principles and the inscription of zones of silence. To speak profanely has set consequences. The creation of sacred space is a heroic, hubristic challenge – to set something apart in an official capacity, in special purpose to make holy or sacred (sanctificare, sanctus (holy) facere (to make)). It is only through these vessels and time designations that we can receive sanctified gifts. The space is a vessel of the sacred.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
The antonym for consecration, or dedication to sacred space ‘to sanctify’ is ‘to desecrate’.
However, there is a linguistic deficiency here; we are missing the adequate word to describe the extreme profanity of space built for the sacred that is yet to be consecrated.
.
This is a kind of forced boundary loss – a revelation of anxieties. It is a unique opening of the trickster’s role through a rare removal of an injunction towards silence, a removal of the act by which a particular narrative is eliminated from the everyday and made sacred, a removal of the framework by which the fragile psycho-social individual is exposed to the atomising effects of chaos. The rules of silence – of sacredness and profanity - that maintain reality are broken risking Ekpyrosis - destruction of the cosmos.
.
.
.
.
Regards,
.
.
Pther
Eleanor Tllck
The Editor
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.