top: St. Louis Roman Catholic Church , 1890. Cache Creek, BC below: Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Ukrainian Catholic Church , 1916. Camrose, Alberta Both of these wooden churches have a combi- nation of a cupola with a spire on top reaching upward. The imagery of these spires reaching up towards heaven with no visible ground place is sig- nificant in their physical symbolism. The congrega- tions could observe this spiritual meaning upon entering the front doors. The detailing on both the spires show a local vocabulary that is both original and influenced by the origins of European Catholic churches. The metal strapping which envelops the spire on the Catholic Church at Camrose is also symbolic of divine protection.
Apotheosis: temporal and transcendental landscapes
Apotheosis is a visual arts project that explores the idea of architecture reverencing the divine within the landscape in two different but not mutually exclusive dimensions: the temporal and the transcendental.
Michael Leeb + Heather Bretz
t he prairie landscape lends itself to discussion about the nature of a temporary architecture. A strong horizontal defines the ground plane: a building on this plane is a great visual contrast against the wide expanse of sky. In Alberta, there has been a tradition of build- ing light structures that have a temporary relationship with the earth; few structures in the prairies permeate deeply into the ground. This has allowed for the practice of relocating buildings, creating a feeling of temporary architecture. Though it can be argued that all buildings located on the praires have this sense of the temporary within the land- scape, here we will look at only the topology of churches, with their symbolic and physical expression of reaching towards heaven. The symbolism and significance of the architecture of these buildings was been conceived of in terms of traditional Christian theology in keeping with the designers, architects and builders of these churches.
For Apotheosis about a hundred, mostly wood, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic churches were studied and pho- tographed. Details such as spires and cupolas or domes, spatially situated between the temporal (earth) and the transcendental (heaven), are indicative of what may be called an architecture of the great-in-be- tween: firstly in terms of the church building itself situated within an expansive landscape forming an indisputable landmark, and secondly in terms of the spire or dome literally situated between heaven and earth and also representing a threshold between heaven and earth. The prairie landscape of rural Alberta aptly suits F. M. Simpson’s com- ment that “spires are most telling on flat or undulating country...” 1 These spires and domes are visible from great distances and certainly the pioneer settlers that built these church structures would have been
on |site 14 53
architecture and land
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator