St Wren Cathedral Essay
A PLACE FOR THEM, A PLACE FOR US
The choir of St. Paul’s, Cathedrals of England and Wales
“With a few exceptions, city churches that were rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 were rebuilt under the direction of Christopher Wren” who combined the renaissance and baroque styles to create St. Paul’s cathedral, an empathetic masterpiece. The sheltering embrace of the dome as one walks through the nave is appeasing yet humbling, creating a sense of place comparable to Bernini’s St. Peter’s colonnade. This essay deliberates Wren’s impact in devising place for a post 1666 London within cultural and contemporary contexts that construe the evolution of the role of the architect.
“Architecture is stifled by custom.” Le Corbusier argues. “Styles …show more content…
For this reason architectural meaning can never be objectified, reduced to functions, formal or stylistic formulas.
“Architecture tries to create a place for people and current human needs in anticipation of tomorrow.” The interior of St. Paul’s effectively captures this idealism emphasized by the uncluttered ceiling and clear glass windows, which lighten the spaces, inspiring hope a precarious time. Contemporarily, the duty of care has evolved and the focal point has become the pursuit of earns. “Architecture must reawaken in itself the potential to communicate ideas about human identity and reestablish a relationship with cultural identity.”
The architect has always been subservient to the client; nowadays, few clients exist in whose interest it would be to hire an architect to express an idea outside of functionality. Ironically, the modern world necessitates only one agenda, economic …show more content…
In ‘architecture depends’, Plato describes “the architect as a metaphor but despised him as an early laborer because the actual architect and architecture itself, are exposed to contingency.” The sense of place Wren created in St. Paul’s could be one of such contingencies subject to time and timing. “As American philosopher Karsten Harries rightly notes, “architects live in the terror of time.” Times change but the desire to belong is constant with humanity. “What is so suggestive about the concept of ‘belonging’ as a product of performativity it that it enables us to go beyond the limitations of simple narrative.” In ‘rethinking architecture’, Neil Leach implies that “architects aid the alienating nature of contemporary existence. Not only are architects dominated by the dictates of bourgeois capitalism, but with their abstracted methods of representation, they have reduced the world to a domain of blue-prints.” Wren too was subject to higher powers but he tactfully executed St. Paul’s, neglecting directive to complete the choir first, instead opting to build all parts of the cathedral simultaneously because he feared funding would cease after the choir was complete. Today, architecture is largely monetized and enslaved by economics. Lionel Robbins defined economics as “the science that studies ‘human behavior’ as a relationship between
The choir of St. Paul’s, Cathedrals of England and Wales
“With a few exceptions, city churches that were rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 were rebuilt under the direction of Christopher Wren” who combined the renaissance and baroque styles to create St. Paul’s cathedral, an empathetic masterpiece. The sheltering embrace of the dome as one walks through the nave is appeasing yet humbling, creating a sense of place comparable to Bernini’s St. Peter’s colonnade. This essay deliberates Wren’s impact in devising place for a post 1666 London within cultural and contemporary contexts that construe the evolution of the role of the architect.
“Architecture is stifled by custom.” Le Corbusier argues. “Styles …show more content…
For this reason architectural meaning can never be objectified, reduced to functions, formal or stylistic formulas.
“Architecture tries to create a place for people and current human needs in anticipation of tomorrow.” The interior of St. Paul’s effectively captures this idealism emphasized by the uncluttered ceiling and clear glass windows, which lighten the spaces, inspiring hope a precarious time. Contemporarily, the duty of care has evolved and the focal point has become the pursuit of earns. “Architecture must reawaken in itself the potential to communicate ideas about human identity and reestablish a relationship with cultural identity.”
The architect has always been subservient to the client; nowadays, few clients exist in whose interest it would be to hire an architect to express an idea outside of functionality. Ironically, the modern world necessitates only one agenda, economic …show more content…
In ‘architecture depends’, Plato describes “the architect as a metaphor but despised him as an early laborer because the actual architect and architecture itself, are exposed to contingency.” The sense of place Wren created in St. Paul’s could be one of such contingencies subject to time and timing. “As American philosopher Karsten Harries rightly notes, “architects live in the terror of time.” Times change but the desire to belong is constant with humanity. “What is so suggestive about the concept of ‘belonging’ as a product of performativity it that it enables us to go beyond the limitations of simple narrative.” In ‘rethinking architecture’, Neil Leach implies that “architects aid the alienating nature of contemporary existence. Not only are architects dominated by the dictates of bourgeois capitalism, but with their abstracted methods of representation, they have reduced the world to a domain of blue-prints.” Wren too was subject to higher powers but he tactfully executed St. Paul’s, neglecting directive to complete the choir first, instead opting to build all parts of the cathedral simultaneously because he feared funding would cease after the choir was complete. Today, architecture is largely monetized and enslaved by economics. Lionel Robbins defined economics as “the science that studies ‘human behavior’ as a relationship between