RSS
Home
Let there be light: the Oakland cathedral
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.JPG)
photo: Calys
Cathedral. The word evokes images of medieval European villages; the well known Gothic structures at Rheims, Chartres, and Notre Dame, all come to mind. The Bay Area, hardly a bastion of conventional religion, isn't often connected to the great monumental structures of the church.
Oakland's Christ the Light Cathedral, as an architectural statement, has made an immediate and powerful change to the Lake Merritt urban landscape. Its role as a center for spiritual and social change may be powerful as well; that will depend on the clergy and congregation that make up the Diocese of Oakland and its 24 member parishes.
The architect
The Diocese initially engaged the "celebrity" Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava to design the Cathedral. Calatrava is well known for buildings where the structure is highly expressed in the architecture; since Calatrava is also a structural engineer, it's not suprising. His first completed American project was the 2001 addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, which exhibited a soaring, inspirational quality. It wasn't hard to imagine Calatrava designing something equally inspirational in Oakland.
But it wasn't meant to be.
During an early stage of the project, the Diocese parted ways with Calatrava and instead turned to Skidmore Owings and Merrill and the highly talented Craig Hartman. Hartman, although not possessing the cachet of the Calatrava name, had shown over the past decade that he was producing well designed buildings and furthermore, monumental buildings with light-filled, large interiors. The International Terminal at San Francisco International Airport had clearly shown that Hartman was indeed a creative master of spanning large volumes with delightful strutural solutions.
In a decade plus period of large important buildings in the Bay Area, the Diocese had made an unconventional move. Nearly every major piece of Bay Area architecture has been designed by non-Bay Area architects, many of them out of the "celebrity" category of architects. Botta's SFMoMa, de Meuron and Herzog's de Young Museum, Handel's Four Seasons, Piano's California Academy of Sciences, Stern's Gap headquarters, and Pelli's 535 Mission Street were all examples of major building projects designed by so-called starchitects.
While there is nothing wrong with that group of architects (and I personally admire each of them and their work), it was nonetheless refreshing to see one major building owner (the Diocese) turn to a local architect.
Site on Lake Merritt
Tucked next to the Kaiser Building on Lake Merritt's northwestern, the Oakland cathedral complex nicely fills a niche in Oakland's downtown. By developing the site on two levels, the main upper entrance into the cathedral and a lower level that opens to Harrison Street at 21st along the Lake, the cathedral complex effectively makes use of the natural slope of the property. Taking a cue from ancient temples that had grand processional paths, a large wide ramp leads you from 21st Street to the main entrance of the cathedral. This ramp could become a grand ceremonial walkway for the pageantry of the cathedral.
photo: SOM
Light
From the great Gothic cathedrals with their light modified by brilliant stained glass to the murky, incense-filled light of Agia Sophia to the deep window penetrations of Ronchamp, light and its modifications have been central to church design. In calling Oakland's cathedral Christ the Light, as the replacement for the earthquake-damaged former cathedral St. Frances de Sales was to be named, the concept of light within the architecture was impossible to ignore.
Hartman effectively has captured the essential element of Bay Area natural light--its often muted quality. When standing in the sanctuary, one is aware of the outside weather, sunny or overcast, but the inside quality of transcendent light remains regardless. From the inner wooden structure of columns and slats that warm the light to the geometrically punctured oculus (at the roof) and "alpha" wall (at the rear) that allow slivers of light in, you are aware that it is outside, natural light that fills the space, but that light has been played with if you will, modified. This modification of light by different mechanisms in different eras is a big part of how cathedrals have achieved their etherial, inspiring feel. Christ the Light doesn't disappoint us here.
Spatial geometry
Spatially, the cathedral was conceived of as two separate enclosures. The shape of the inner wooden structure mathematically created through the intersection of two huge spheres. It's as though two giant globes intersected in space and the non-intersecting parts were erased.
The outer enclosure, a glass envelope, is really two conical sections that contain the inner wooden structure. It's the outer envelope that is actually keeps the weather out.
This device, inserting one structure within another, harkens back to the double walled dome of Brunelleschi at the Basilica in Florence. Of course, Brunelleschi didn't have use of modern materials such as glass and glue laminated wood beams. What he did do, and what Hartman as also done, is utilized the materials and technology of his time to do something new. In Brunellischi's case, it was constructing the largest dome of its time without the use of wooden supports during construction. In the case of the Oakland cathedral, the new twist is the use of the wooden structure to both support the glass enclosure as well as modify the light within the space. In my mind, that is a fairly innovative of technology and architecture, perhaps unique in church design.
The spatial geometry of the Oakland cathedral goes further than a mere tour de force of technology, however. The majority of very large worship spaces being constructed today belong to the so-called megachurch movement, very large congregations, often in the evangelical tradition, that can seat 1,500 or more in a single setting. Those facilities, with their emphasis on preaching and teaching, have evolved into what amount to conference facilities to house large numbers of people. Built at the most affordable cost possible, megachurches, in my opinion, are fairly lifeless and lacking in the inspirational quality of great church architecture. Admittedly, the Oakland cathedral, being a Catholic church, is focused on the liturgical and ceremonial aspects of worship, which argues for an awe-inspiring space. The Oakland cathedral, although seating a large congregation, successfully creates awe and reverence without becoming a mere auditorium.
-0269031_small.jpg)
photo: SOM
Modern materials
Hartman's creation is true to the modernist tenet (really a tenet of every age's architecture) that a building should apply the technology of its time using the materials of its time. The cathedral uses three predominant materials--concrete, wood, and glass--and uses them in a way that the occupant understands intuitively what each material does and why it's there.
The massive concrete base of the building appears solid and hefty when walking up to the building. That heft is moderated once you enter the building as the concrete base is punctured with openings revealing numerous chapels and ancillary spaces contained within the concrete base. But the concrete retains that solidity from which spring the wooden inner structure.
Constructed of Douglas fir, the inner structure consists of the deep, glue laminated columns that rest on the concrete base and thinner slats that span between the columns. It's the wooden inner structure that dominates the cathedral interior and, as observed before, creates the light quality within the space.
Why was wood chosen as the primary structural material? In the seismically active Bay Area, why not use steel? Obviously, the warmth and light modifying qualities would not be present with a steel structure. Just as importantly, the use of glue-laminated wood (many individual pieces of wood glued together to form a larger piece of wood) allows the wood to be engineered to savely flex under seismic loads. An additional benefit of the glue-laminated columns is their ability to withstand a fire for many hours before collapsing; that characteristic allowed the cathedral to forgo a fire sprinkler system and lower the building cost.
The glass outer enclosure is what the viewer sees from the exterior. The appearance of that glass, however, constantly changes due to the translucency of the glass, the fact that it is fritted (etched), and the changing angle of sunlight. Standing on the shady side of the building, you see the shadow of the wooden structure cast on the glass; the light moving through the building is modified just as the interior light is.
Although I haven't seen it, I am imagining that at night the cathedral will glow as the interior lighting illuminates the glass. The jewel-like effect could be magical on the shore of Lake Merritt.
Cathedrals of the 21st century don't occupy the same central place in society as did those of medieval times. That doesn't mean that a cathedral can't hold an important place and play a modern role in the urban setting; recognizing the need to acknowledge and correct past wrongs, the Diocese has gone as far as to include a contemplative garden on the site, dedicated to victims of clergy abuse, certainly a controversial issue to confront. Perhaps the role of a cathedral in our time is not to place the church in the central power role, but to elevate those who choose to walk through the doors. Perhaps the play of light in this cathedral is just as much an illumination of the individual worshipper and a celebration of the light each person adds to the whole.
