ARCHITECTURE

 

THE INCREDIBLE HUMANITY OF BRUTALISM

San Francisco's St. Mary's Cathedral

By Lesly Gonzalez

A Brutalist Beauty

No matter what one’s religious beliefs are, the loss of a church is devastating. In under sixty years, the Catholic community of San Francisco lost two cathedrals. The first, the Cathedral of Saint Mary’s, was damaged in the 1906 earthquake, although it was repaired and continued to welcome congregants. The second larger cathedral, located at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and O’Farrell Street, was destroyed by a fire on September 7th, 1962. The damage was too extensive to repair, and that may have prompted Archbishop Joseph McGueken to dream of a new kind of cathedral, one that was of the times, but yet not: “It is my feeling that we should rebuild on the same site … a modern, contemporary design, but not what people call modernistic.”

McGueken wanted a grand cathedral, but that called for a larger lot. Determined to find the ideal site, the Diocese under McGueken’s leadership wheeled, dealt, and negotiated a few land trades that led to the purchase of a corner site at Gough Street and Geary Boulevard. Then the initial talks on design began, which set off a number of competing interests, civic and religious, about what the project would look like and, most importantly, who would be the architects to design it. On April 1963, McGueken announced that a local architecture firm, McSweeney, Ryan, and Lee, would lead the project. Due to their obscurity, the most common reaction was “Who?” followed by more than a few biting remarks about whether they were up to the challenge of such an important project. Like many San Franciscans, Allen Temko, the architecture critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, was more than a little dubious: “now disfigure large areas of San Francisco.” He was also more than critical of his feelings for McSweeney’s work: “One cannot possibly associate his name with a single significant piece of modern architecture.” After Temko’s attack and copies of the initial design circulating, the public backlash grew before one bit of cement had been poured.

In the midst of this burgeoning PR nightmare, McGueken sought advice from the prominent theologian, Godfrey Diekman. Diekman’s recommended that they hire Pietro Belluschi as a consultant, who at the time was serving as the dean of Architecture and Planning at MIT. Belluschi was trained as an engineer, but was an architect by practice and in 1962 had already designed twenty churches. Belluschi’s worries centered around the sheer scale of the project, and he began producing various iterations of designs he considered “impossible structures,” one of which was the implementation of hyperbolic paraboloids along a sweeping, warped surface.

Plans

Even though it was “impossible,” Belluschi could not let this ambitious design go; in turn, he sought out the expertise of another engineer, Pier Luigi Nervi, who the Diocese subsequently hired as a structural consultant. Their design process centered around several physical models to test different structural challenges. Nervi built models in four different scales and materials: 1:100, 1:40, 1:37, and 1:15 scale. The first model was designed for wind-tunnel testing. The following two models were cast in resin and subjected to seismic movement testing. The final model was cast in reinforced concrete for gravity load testing. Once the test results were in, they determined that the hyperbolic paraboloids that would form the exterior envelope of the church would need to be scaled down and set on a square base to aid in rigidity. The American engineering firm then cross-checked his findings and created a digital model of the project that they then tested in the MIT-developed STRESS computer program. These tests are what unleashed the architects to proceed with a design of incredible beauty and audacity and to realize the Church’s three key goals: an occupant load of 2,400 congregants; the feeling that the congregants were worshiping in the middle of a modern city; and that they would all be close enough to feel an intimate connection to the Altar, especially for the Eucharist.

The beginning of the vision

In many ways, the Cathedral set a series of impossible goals, and the architects made the impossible into a building of stunning beauty and grace. In concrete! That it wasn’t immediately appreciated, either in the design phase or after it was first erected, isn’t surprising. After all, we’re dealing with people, and people are slow to realize the truly beautiful. Today, however, I imagine most people’s experience is like mine.

I remember the first time I walked by the Cathedral and taking a double-take. What was I looking at? Well, for one, a complexly calculated composition of geometric forms. The dramatically curved roof isn’t just a simple curve; it's a calculated hyperbolic curve. These curves not only converge to form the central cross of the cathedral, but are also somewhat continuous. However, in order to see this, you have to step into the cathedral. This design instinctively draws your glance upwards, just above the brilliant patinated doors, where you see Christ rising to the heavens. The beautiful bronze patina is the culmination of nearly 55 years of exposure to the natural elements, a touch only architects with an eye to the future would ever try to achieve.

A stunning entrance

Before entering the cathedral, you are met with yet another set of doors, heavy in appearance but easy to open and slow to close behind you. It's another perfect detail that sets the scene and expresses the drama of worshiping in a modern city. The baptismal font is right in front of you—it has traces of a geodesic gemcut that’s been turned upside down with a purposely carved-out dome in the center to hold consecrated water. If you sit in the middle of the 3rd-to-last row, you can observe the convergence of the roof segments where the concrete meets the stained glass. The stained glass walks its way down the seams of the roof segments and stops just above the pylons that bear the weight of the roof. The effect is both epic and highly personal.

But let’s look up again.

The reinforcing vaulting pattern on the interior of the roof segments is in stark contrast to the smooth appearance of the exterior. As your eyes move from right to left, the vaults create an illusion that they are cascading downwards to the center altar. The effect comes from the way they rest against the hyperbolic curvatures. Follow it all the way to the corner seams of the roof, and you will find a multiplex of triangles that converge to form a uniquely shaped pylon. From an engineering perspective, the vaults are there to add strength and reinforce the concrete structure: triangles are a rigid shape that distributes force evenly, resisting both compression and tension to prevent any sort of deformation or buckling. There are a total of four pylons that bear the weight of the hyperbolic paraboloid shell-like roof. It’s an engineering marvel that in turn becomes an aesthetic one.

The stunning ceiling

Take a step closer to any of the four pylons, and you’ll see how human concrete feels. Like us, concrete is not perfect; there will always be minor imperfections. Along with these imperfections, there are clear outlines of the formwork that was once the shell that contained the liquid screed. The evenly spaced lines are the markings left behind by the pattern of the formwork, but if you look closely, you can see grain markings similar to wood grain. My only assumption is that the formwork was wood formwork, but the wood was carefully selected so as not to leave behind deep grain streaks across the pylons. But concrete will do what concrete does best: show all the small details that architects try to conceal, and which in this beautiful cathedral, the architects have deliberately revealed to great aesthetic and spiritual power. Most architects seek perfection; here, they went for a building that feels as if it’s alive. For a cathedral, that imperfection is perfect.

The Groundbreaking

The Cathedral of Saint Mary’s of the Assumption is the perfect embodiment of making the impossible possible while showcasing the beauty of imperfection. Its raw concrete surfaces and rigid forms categorize it as brutalist and modern, yet the innate perception of brutalism does not fit here. Brutalist and modern are often perceived as lacking humanity, but brutalist is the closest humanlike expression in architecture; it is virtually impossible to hide imperfections in concrete. The imperfections add character and create beautiful moments within the building—moments that invite you to sit with them and appreciate them. This is the most sublime architecture, an appreciation of the raw imperfections of concrete and that leaves us in awe. St. Mary's Cathedral is a one-of-a-kind experience, where brutalist architecture in a complex choreography between engineering and design, achieves a kind of true human kindness.

©The CCA Arts Review and Lesly Gonzalez