One of only two cathedrals completed this year in the United States, the Cathedral of Christ the Light is a wonder of religious architecture.
Designed by Craig Hartman, a partner in the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the $190 million cathedral, which seats 1,300, is a 12-story oval structure. Its light-filled nave, laced together with a web of hidden steel bars, is supported by long timbers of Douglas fir and enclosed by wooden louvers and more than 1,000 panes of glass. The combination of wood, glass, concrete and brushed aluminum somehow creates the sensation of serenity and transcendence.
But for residents, city leaders and neighbors, the development is more than just the sanctuary. The 253,000-square-foot complex, on a $32.7 million, 2.5-acre site in Oakland’s downtown, also offers a spacious plaza, below-ground parking for 200 cars, a conference center that seats 500 people and an aggressive ministry in free health and law clinics.
Quite a contrast with the National Cathedral, isn’t it? Especially since they offer so much to people who need help.
Yikes, I can’t say that architecture does anything for me.
What an abomination! A worthy companion to the Taj Mahony in LA.
Every age and culture has to build in its own materials, and to have a vision of what speaks to its age. The cathedral seems to do that. My only reservation is the minimalism of the interior. Despite the warm pattern of the wood shuttering, which is picked up and repeated by the semi-circular rows of pews, the whole has a rather cold effect. And that video projection of Christ rather like the Turin Shroud: something for the youngsters of our times? Or something that will quickly look contrived? Quite simply, I am not sure. At 6
oops apologies At 61 I freely admit to being out of touch with the younger generations. They seem to find that the place has the ‘Wow’ factor. But how will it look in 50 years? Chartres, Westminster, St Paul’s, stand the test of time.
What time does the rocket blast off?
I think the rocket already left the docking port.
Architecturally, it’s not my cup of tea, but I am filled with awe at its message of confident, broad-shouldered Christianity. May God bless this Cathedral and make it a source of many a saved soul.
Even Chartres was new and innovative at one time. Something tells me that the builders of Chartres weren’t trying to copy a design produced one thousand years earlier.
It looks like a lamp-shade. 🙂
I think it’s beautiful.
I’ve seen worse. And it’s tragic that I have to say that about a Catholic Cathedral that cost $190 million to build.
I usually don’t warm up to “modern” churches, but this is an exception. Unfortunately the previous cathedral, St. Francis de Sales, an 1870’s vintage church, was too much damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake to be restored. In But the new cathedral does symbolize the hoped for recovery of Oakland from its long period of decay. Its interesting that in San Francisco, the Archdiocese, the “new” cathedral, St. Mary of the Assumption, replaced in 1962, I think, the 2nd St. Marys, which was built in the 1880s, and looked like a giant brick German castle. I thought it was great, but academic architects certainly didn’t! It succumbed to a tragic fire in 1960 or 61. It was located at O’Farrell & Van Ness. The New St Marys was the first modern church built in SF, and earned the unfortunate nickname “Our Lady of Maytag”, because the roff looks quite a bit like a washing machine spindle. You can see it from far off looking out O’Farrell from downtown as it blocks the view further out the street. But the worship space inside is impressive. It replace the space occupied by a Safeway store. The first St. Mary’s, Cathedral, built in 1854, still stands at the corner of California & Grant in Chinatown. Several other nearby dioceses in the Archdiocese have very historic and interesting cathedrals, especially St. Joseph in San Jose which dates from the 185os, and Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento, once the largest church west of Chicago, which dates from the 1880s. There is also St. Mary Annunciation in Stockton, St. Eugene in Santa Rosa, St. John in Fresno, and actually, I forgot, the most historic, St. Charles in Monterey, which dates from the 1770s. Thx.