|
dixonbooks.com: Church Architecture
Some of these books will inspire architects, pastors, and building committees with pictures and floorplans, others with the history of church design or the debate about its future.
NEW!
Book Review for Faith & Form magazine:
Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy
by Denis R. McNamara
hardcover, 226 pages, $50.00, November 2009
From amid a myriad of writings on Catholic church architecture over the last half century, which were too often motivated by personal agendas, opinions, and emotions, this sensible and scholarly treatise has emerged to offer a firm foundation of facts and a common language for further discussion. The author has no strong allegiance to the professional prejudices of architects, clergy, or artists, but rather, as an architectural historian and a worshiper he respects the role of each discipline in their interdependent efforts to weave something substantial and sacred out of the details of structure and symbolism, placement and proportion, and –most importantly– liturgy and beauty.
The author’s personal preference for traditional building styles is honestly acknowledged as an informed appreciation of the rich history of Catholic architecture, and is tempered by the inclusion of some contemporary design examples (although photo selection does rely heavily on churches of Western Europe and the author’s own region of America). But even modern minimalists will find this book helpful to familiarize themselves with the traditions or principles they are minimizing as they explore a new aesthetic.
This ambitious and generously illustrated volume would serve well as a textbook in the seminaries, and in the Catholic colleges of art and architecture, where more courses or even workshops on the subject are sorely needed. Until then, it will be a ready reference or useful remedial reading for any priest, designer, or parishioner who takes on a church building or renovation project, giving them all a vocabulary and a historic basis on which to plan or debate worship spaces for the future.
Dixon Books is a service of Dixon Studio
323 N Central Avenue; Staunton, VA 24401
Phone: 800-619-1112
Email: dixonstudio@earthlink.net
©2010 Dixon Studio
Image at top left: stained glass window at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Mathews, Virginia.
See more original works in glass, wood, marble, and mosaic at www.dixonstudio.com
|
