The Importance of Slow Architecture

Last updated on: May 3, 2016 at 7:19 am by Elias Crim

The Importance of Slow Architecture 2016-05-03T07:19:47-05:00 Elias Crim

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Image: Jonell Galloway

I’ve not been to Las Vegas since my high school Latin group stopped there briefly on the way back from the Junior Classical League convention up in Bozeman. But I take it the new resorts look much more glamorous than their original models in Europe, Egypt, wherever. For some tastes, Paris in Nevada trumps (forgive me) Paris in France, even at 50% scale.

It’s been remarked that theme parks can offer a kind of childlike introduction to a more grownup understanding of civic beauty, of an authentic urbanism that honors the human person and human scale. Urbanists have always found the Disney parks simultaneously awful and yet enormously instructive as cultural pointers toward a more organic kind of town planning.

This wider understanding is what rescues us from confusion over what constitutes various misguided attempts at “Catholic” architecture and city planning. (It is enough here merely to mention the planned community of Ave Maria, Florida.)

One architect who has written especially well on questions of sacred architecture, sacred space and urbanism is Philip Bess, whose Till We Have Built Jerusalem remains one of the best explications of how natural law underpins the great Western traditions of building, including those of Catholic architecture.

In some ways I can see this Aristotelian, natural law basis for the human habitat behind the work of the dizzying Nassim Taleb, author of the Black Swan and Antifragile. In his extraordinary broadside against system-building and our accompanying hubris about it, Taleb is arguing for human scale approach of the kind that gradually created a city dear to his memories, Beirut. Only by working in small, incremental steps, he argues–i.e., not through huge “planned” endeavors–can we avoid more of the fragile (meaning, systemically unstable), unsustainable building of the kind we created after 1945. (Taleb’s work is about much more than architecture, I hasten to add.)

I’ve come to think any true Catholic architecture must fall into the category of “slow architecture,” in order that it display the patina of constant interaction with the human person and the community. When and if we finally build the new Jerusalem, that’s how it must look.

Art

Catholic Social Teaching

Elias Crim

Uncategorized

Previous Post

April 29, 2016

The Father of Catholic Social Teaching

Next Post

May 4, 2016 Why You Might Not Want a 'Strong Work Ethic'

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Alternative economics, worker and family empowerment, the spirituality of work, the economy of sharing Art Care for Our Common Home Catholic imagination Catholic Social Teaching Christian Friendship Christian Persecution Community building, models or forms of community, radical hospitality Corporal & Spiritual Works of Mercy Daniel Schwindt Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, CW aims and means, spirituality Elias Crim Grace Potts Greg Guest Josh Brumfield Mark Gordon Matthew Cooper Mercy Michael Stafford Paul Grenier Peace, nonviolent resistance, conscience and conscientious objection Pope Francis Poverty, economic inequality, consumerism, unemployment, underemployment, living wage Racial Reconciliation Radical Christianity Stan Goff Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does Siloam mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Gift Received Sent Love