Thursday, December 6, 2007

Inspiration in Glass






Most of the posts are intended to be more inspirational than literal...to provide churches with new ideas and thinking about exteriors, interiors, landscapes, furnishings, and building usage.

For example, here are some of this year's shortlisted winners from the Bombay Sapphire prize (also shown on dezeen), which gives awards for the innovative use of glass. Each of these concepts are profoundly meditative, and could be stunning additions to a church setting.

From top to bottom, "No 091138-05" by Yoav Reches, Zik Group- imagine this sort of stacked sculpture in a window frame as an alternative to stained glass; it looks as though it is assembled from commercial glass of different formulations (thus the different shades of blue-green), and I especially like the quilt-like nature of the block pattern, which would fit my midwestern setting especially well. "Attracted to light" by Geoffrey Mann would be a stunning ecclesiastical light fixture, and picture something like "Singing Water" by Eva Mendez over the altar...wow.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was hunting for a place to vent my environmental outlet, when I saw this bit on glass. It's very interesting in terms of texture and depth.

Beauty is great, however, I think churches need to be places of physical comfort. Many is the time I have gone to a church building and it has been too hot, or too cold, or too stuffy, or the seats too hard, or too small for me (I am a big man and the gap between my seat and that in front has been too short), and it makes it harder to relax and worship.

I am also worried that modern churches should incorporate materials that are environmentally sound,and have environmentally sound heating and cooling systems, all as an act of worship, or how can the modern church speak with authority to a world where there is so much waste and damage.

Thanks for reading this far :-)

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