old & new architecture
building typology
religious building
When we talk about old architecture, what would you think about
in the first place? There’s a subjective question where how do youdefine an architecture is old architecture? Is it pyramids in Egyptthat built thousand years ago? Or the historical buildings found in our surrounding that contains people’s memory? How old is
old? For me, old architecture is the building that is common to
see where there’s hundred or thousand of similar style and so called “outdated” in terms of construction method, materials and
form.
Whenever i think of old architecture, the first thing that come into my mind
was the elegant churches that can be found in city in western country. For
instance, St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and Notre Dame Cathedral in
Paristhat has very strong and obvious architecture style.
A church is a religious building where people gather and worship their god.
It’s more often used by Christian. The first ever identified church was a
housechurch that found between 233 and 256. Throughout almost 2000 years of time, there’s huge change from an ordinary house church to cathedral
until current contemporary church.
One of the oldest church that I love is St Paul’s Cathedral locatedin London. It was an English baroque style church that
completed on 17th century. With a height of 111m, it was once
the tallest building in London until 1967 and second largest
church building after Liverpool Cathedral. One of the dominated characteristic of this cathedral is the dome which rises 111m to the cross at its summit, and dominated the views of the city.
Similar to typical cathedral, St Paul’s cathedral also has cross-shaped plan, bell towers, fully decorated interior with colourful mosaics and so on.
On the other side, San Josemaría Escrivá Church is one of the modern and contemporary church in Maxico. It was designed by Javier Sordo Madaleno Bringas with a form that’s totally
different from the classical church. This church has triangle
form like flat cone with little curve on the surface, make it looks stylish and beautiful. Space between the walls allows the
natural light enter the building and give a rays effect on the
Cross, make it looks more glorious.
There’s quite a lot of significant changes when we compare St Paul’s Cathedral (old
architecture) and San Josemaría Escrivá Church (Present architecture). The most
obvious changes that can be found when we comparing this two churches is the overall
form of the church. For old church, the exterior is more rigid where most of the cathedral has the similar design. Everything is symmetrical including the facade but for San
Josemaría Escrivá Church, the form is more freely,not restricted to classical cathedral
form. The wall can be curved with the aids of advance building technology. Some of
characteristic elements that dominate the old church such as dome and bell towers are
absent in San Josemaría Escrivá Church as well.
For the material of facade , people tend to use only stone or masonry as the wall for old
church but for present church, many kind of materials can be integrated for example
zinc and timber. The possibility of new materials has been explored and applied to our
current architecture. During old days, the construction technology is quite limited so
people choose stone as main material for their architecture. After years of exploration,
stone isn’t the only material that can be used. This has shown how innovative human is
in finding new way or better solution. With more advanced technology,we are not limited
anymore. The form can be as dramatic as you want.
The interior space is more well designed as well. In St Peter’s Cathedral, the openings are quite limited where the interior space is more enclosed. Only a small amount of sunlight is allowed to lighten up the interior space. Compare to San Josemaría Escrivá
Church, the interior of St Peter’s Cathedral is more dim but it shows the richness of the culture by the painting at the dome. For thecurrent church, skylight plays an important role in design because we believe that light can change our mood. Light and shadow is more concerned in this case.
In conclusion, we can see that the design of church has changed a lot century by century. Technology of that era can determine thedirection of development of architecture during that era. People keep changing in order to achieve something better, so does
architecture, from old to new. Not every changes are good but most of them are moving steps further . The more advance the
technology, the more challenging it is to achieve good design. People has to keep on learning and be as creative and innovative as
possible in order to prevent ‘outdated’ design. The trend of changes is happening so we as an architecture student has to be ready
for the rapid changes of architecture.
Notre Dame Cathedral
St Peter’s Basilica