Tuesday, November 11, 2008

William Heyer, Architect, The Classical Architecture Studio



Bill Heyer, one of the top traditional architects practicing today, has livened up his website, with plenty of images of his work and proposals. Heyer, probably best known in Chicago for his work at the Institute of Christ the King, hails from Columbus Ohio, with a Notre Dame degree and a practice in Sacred, Educational, and Residential architecture.

Here are two images of William Heyer's work on the classic (Old Main?) Building at the Josephenium Pontifical College in Columbus Ohio.

Here's Bill Heyer, Architect

Barat Woods Development in Foreclosure


No surprise here, but the developer who simonized the Chapel at Barat College is in foreclosure proceedings for defaulting on a $16 Million Loan payment. The Chapel, of course was destroyed first before the developer went broke. Priorities!

"After closing in 2005, Barat College in Lake Forest was supposed to be transformed into a $125 million development featuring a variety of homes, preserved historic structures and a service attendant for residents.

Instead, the land on Lake Forest's posh east side is just another U.S. foreclosure statistic.

On Monday, there were no-trespassing signs and fencing around the property at Westleigh and Sheridan roads, where the private school opened in 1904. Harris Bank filed a foreclosure lawsuit against Robert G. Shaw and his Barat Woods LLC development team Oct. 16. Barat Woods is accused of not repaying a $16 million loan before the Dec. 31, 2007, termination date.

Attorney Jeffrey Close, who represents Harris, said the bank was forced to foreclose on the land because of court action two contractors are pursuing against Barat Woods in federal court."

Link on title to Daily Herald story.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Saint Michael the Archangel in Leawood, Kansas


Denis McNamara has a informative piece (lifted here from the Creative Minority Report) on St. Michael's Parish in Leawood Kansas.

St. Michaels’ new church partakes of a “high” theology of ecclesiastical architecture, meaning that the building is understood as a "sacrament."

In the broad sense of the word, a sacrament is a sign which makes an otherwise unknowable spiritual reality knowable, active and present, to the senses. The Eucharist, of course, is our supreme sacrament, but a church building is a sacramental image of the Heavenly Jerusalem, the biblical term for heaven itself. So the church building is more than simply a luxurious meeting hall, but in its very art and architecture, allows worshippers to participate in the “signs and symbols of heavenly realities” as the Second Vatican Council requested in its document on the sacred liturgy called Sacrosanctum Concilium.

While the world still shows evidence of the Fall, when humanity and the rest of creation fell into disorder and chaos, the church building shows us what our heavenly future might “look like”: radiant, ordered, centered on the worship of God in Christ, restored, renewed, and populated with the harmonious interaction of angels and saints.

In theological terminology, this looking forward to the realities of heaven is called “anticipated eschatology,” the participation now in the things of the eschaton, or end times, when God has fully restored his creation through the sharing His own Divine Life. The church building is therefore oriented toward the east, the direction from which Christ will return at the end of time (Acts 1:10). As the congregation assembles, it takes an eschatological orientation; in its very arrangement, it looks to the return of Christ, signaling the completion of his mission of restoration.

In the world outside, people interact with discord and slander; in the church they speak in one voice, praising God in liturgical texts and songs. Outside, the world is filled with the smell of stench and decay; the church gives us the scent of a renewed creation in its flowers and the sweetness of rising prayer in its fragrant incense.

The dullness of concrete and asphalt gives way in the church to marble, bronze, silk and gold. The chaotic tone and secular content of movies and television are replaced in church by images of Christ, the saints, angels—with whom we all worship as a sacramental image of the Mystical Body of Christ. For this reason, the small, high windows of the new church design allow light to flood in, but prevent looking out to the fallen world. Instead, they allow the faithful to enter a sacramental image of the new heaven and earth, participating now by way of foretaste in the realities of heaven.

More Images Here