minimalism or nothingness?  

I was for a time quite in...
I was for a time quite in awe of Pawson's monastery. I was comfortable with calling it an exemplary work of minimalism in which, as Koen says, the architecture was not a mannerism, but an expression of the way of life of this monastic order.
But Koen also said this:
"Mannerisms are bad design because design is a process by which you reach a solution. If the solution is given where is the design process?"--Koen
Put another way, -isms are ideologies and ideologies are right by assumption rather by solution.
Koen's comments about the absense of design (i.e., of solution) in mannerist architecture have slowly, persistently and, I believe, now, inexorably opened my eyes.
Let me cut to the chase about Pawson's monastery.
It is mannerist minimalism of the worst kind: it is fundamentally a cliche of form language.
I had to look at the picture of the monastery posted above repeatedly over several days to see it. I had to read and reread the posts above to grasp it.
I had to come back to a basic question that has nagged me for decades and about which I have contemplated briefly elsewhere on this site: why did the ceilings of the Gothic cathedrals have to be so tall? Why couldn't they have been a little shorter? Why couldn't they have been a lot shorter? Why was the height selected organic to the faith of that theocracy? Was it organic? Or was it just a wow factor to lure them into the seats? Was it just as tall as the contemporary technology and economics could make it in that time?
And then it crystallized: why does the sanctuary ceiling in Pawson's monastery have to be so high? Why can't it be a foot shorter? Why does it have to be high at all?
Answer: because the cliched spatial symbolization of spirituality is the high ceiling. Because this formal symbolization of spirituality is "manner" in which church santuaries are made.

There is nothing about the...
There is nothing about the Cistercian order's beliefs and values that dictate that the sanctuary ceiling needs to be the height that it is.
Nor is there anything about their beliefs and values that determines that the brothers sit in opposition to each other.
Nor is there anything about their beliefs and values that dictates that the brothers ought to be placed that distance apart from each other.
It is all mannerist contrivance masquerading as a rigorous design solution.
Why are there two steps and not one, or three leading to the furtherest part of the sanctuary?
Why is the santuary longer than it is wide?
There is a lot of duality expressed in the design, and that duality may well express some of the theology underpinning the order, but is the duality in the design the same as a design solution, or is it just mannerist expression of the Christian world view to be found in all "manner" of Christian churches?
Why is the seating wood and not particle board, or stone, or polyester? Why is lumbar support contrary to an ascetic life? Is it? Should it be?
What is miminalist about the values, bureaucracy and finance of an order that is part of a religion rooted in one of the most theologically and historically rich and complex legacies in world religion?
How mininalist can a monastic order's values actually be that can afford to hire an architect from far beyond its walls to build a reasonably complicated and exceptionally sophisticated structure availing itself of some of the latest techologies?

To a person like me, who was...
To a person like me, who was raised a Presbyterian protestant (quasi Pennsylannia Dutch/Calvinist ethos and aesthetic) from the bible belt milieu of third quarter 20th Century suburban Kansas City, the whiteness and lack of ornament are frankly both conventional and maybe even a tad ostentatious. We used to eat such austerity as Pawson designed for breakfast. In fact, I can recall some in my inhibited, conventional, middle class community that would have found Pawson's sanctuary a bit on the decadent side. What is with the unnecessary extravagence of the horse shoes of light on the walls? Aren't white walls good enough for you monks? They are for us. And drinking real wine for communion? Why, you monks have lost your starch. We have purified to grape juice, you party animals. And we put the little glasses in little holes drilled in the brackets that hold the hymnals behind the pews...after downing the alchohol-free blood of Christ like a bunch of obedient, austere, but very decent vampires. Are you kidding me? People who really walk the talk of an austere life fill the communion glasses with cheap grape juice, got it? No alcohol; that would be a major indulgence on Sunday mornings at the Village Presbyterian Church in Kansas City on a fine Sunday morning in 1964. No hair of the dog shall touch these lips. You monks got nothing on us. We can top you not having sex as unmarried celibates. We don't have sex and we're married! But I digress. 🙂
In short, where once I saw brilliance and originality in Pawson's minimalist church, I now see mannerism that is not unlike the mannerism in the architecture the church I was raised in...and an absence of design.
Pawson has used minimalism applied to cliche and convention to avoid designing a truly rigorous solution to the problem of communal religious space and its programming.
I am not saying that Pawson needed to reinvent the wheel here and do a self indulgent work of idiosyncratic modernist ego here.
I am saying that the space programming and massing of communal religious space is among the most hide bound and obsolete in conception of all human building space. I am saying communal religious space needs design. I am saying the space he devised for the monks is not designed. It is the same old massing with a minimalist coat of paint, minus the transcept. Big deal.
I am shocked to write this, but this is the sort of discontinuity in thought that occurs occasionally, when someone is offered a new lens by a thought optometrist like Koen. And yes I am painfully aware that this lens has led me to a significantly different opinion about Pawson and his monastery than Koen has expressed, and that I previously shared with him.
Ah, but aren't such divergences also the stuff of civilized discourse?
Absolutely.
No doubt he or someone else will shortly awaken me to the error of my ways.
Until then, however, this is the insight that burdens me now.

The spatial symbolism of the high ceiling is everything
where 12th and 13th century cathedrals are concerned. The vast majority of the peasant population, scratch the word "vast", the "entire" peasant population lived in hovels with ceiling heights under 8 feet, or perhaps they slept in the great hall of their feudal overlord which had ceiling heights of 20 or thirty feet. Intimidation through cathedral construction ceiling heights was absolutely a goal.
Imagine the awe and fear struck into a populace that control upon and over was the desired end result by the church. When the unwashed masses walked in and saw a ceiling height in excess of 125 or even 150 plus feet or more, their jaws would literally be agape as they tilted their heads back.
A completely uneducated person of the day could easily be made to believe that this edifice was controlled by a god that was to be feared, especially when contrasted with their limited ability to build even a rudimentary shelter capable of keeping the rain off.

let's continue...
?.. aren?t such divergences also the stuff of civilized discourse?
Yes they are, and so let?s continue.
I have no doubts about the pure austerity cultivated in Kansas in the middle of the previous century, so I am not going to ask the hot questions about not having sex while married, and why the natural process of grape juice, natural yeasts and time used to make alcohol is incompatible with symbolically drinking the blood of the Kansas saviour?.
But I would like to argue another point. Before doing that let me explain what I see when looking at the same picture and in general by looking at any designed space or object.
I see first of all an acquired cultural model, in other words a set of manners accumulated over a long and rich history. It includes the longitudinal space, the height of the ceiling, the traditional left and right row or rows of monks on traditionally wooden benches. I see very much the same elements that BTM so skilfully describes and that condition the visitor both visually and acoustically to the service of the chosen god. The narrowing choir, the corner less curved back wall that was so nicely introduced by Le Corbusier and other church building modernist architects.
I see first of all, all these things that in this particular culture is the established standard, the acquired canon, not unlike looking at any piece of architecture in any culture by analyzing what existed already and what is the value of the next step. Very much the same way as we consider the pyramid of Kheops the most important one, not only because it is the highest but because Kheops demonstrated a monumental step forward compared with his father Snefrou who?s pyramid was not only lower but with curved stepped surfaces, indicating that the architects did underestimate the shear of the sandstone and corrected that ignorance half way up. The two other great pyramids, Khefrem and Mykorinos are basically just copies with no other innovations than the pattern of the secret corridors inside.
My point is that Pawson starts where all the acquired culture and knowledge ends. To me this has always been the essence of the post modern critique. Modernism wanted to reconsider everything and rejected even acquired culture to be able to build a new one. Of course they never did completely but it was worth the exercise. In a certain sense the Pawson architecture, especially in this monastery is post-modern because it builds with history and known generic form in mind. Looking at it this way may at the end reduce considerably the part he his playing in the end result, well so be it. I think it is an important part.

cont.
To take the end result and to identify the known culture as a lack of innovation or a lack of design is an interesting point of view but it seems to me that it ignores part of the thinking in architecture of the last twenty years. What applies for the building?s outside, how it relates to the existing natural site, the existing neighbouring buildings the existing infrastructure etc. is equally important for the choices on the inside and how that relates to existing generic form. As much as the architect is responsible for taking the site and neighbouring buildings into consideration, he or she should take existing culture into consideration?new?.no, that?s what Sullivan was expressing when he wrote: ?Form follows function? When read in the context of the complete essay, he really means, Form follows acquired culture.

Well put Koen!
It seems that this thread is mining some of the same thoughts on the "Visual Research & the Designer" thread a bit down page.
Not only do the cultural references influence design, one must also consider the sum total of life experiences to that point when the pencil, as an extension of the designers hand and brain, comes to bear upon a clean sheet of paper.

I always feel like an ape debating Cary Grant about suavity...
when I disagree with Koen about design, but, well, get me my banana and away we go. 🙂
Note: I never disagree with Koen to win; that would be folly to think that this village idiot could ever exceed his understanding of design. Rather, I hurl myself intellectually naked into the cross hairs of his telescopic mind (as rarely as possible for I have at least a few shreds of vanity) in order to force him to be even more articulate about what he assumes we know but often do not. With this caveat, let me resume.
I did not notice the rounded surface and you are correct that that is an interesting incremental innovation in a post modern framework, but again those starched shirt (vernacular, folks, meaning overly serious and righteous) Presbyterians of the Great Plains of my childhood beat Pawson to that, too. I half wonder if Pawson attended my Sunday school class and I missed him the day I played hookie (vernacular for cutting class and going wading in the the creek behind the church). Is he wittingly reviving protestant church architecture in a Catholic order's bricks and mortar? Now that would be a very ironic joke! Robert A. M./P.M. Stern take note.
But back to my basic point--why DOES the roof have to be the height that it is? Is it "design" to make the roof high, because that's what the monks expect of accrued monastery architecture? Is the accrued knowledge of architecture to be accreted upon by small advances even without a sound explanation of why the accrued knowledge is useful?

pt2
Note: each time I ask a question in this post,imagine me sticking my jaw out and waiting to be K.O.'ed by an intellectual upper cut. Somebody's gotta train the champ, ya know. 🙂
To repeat from my previous post, why couldn't it be a foot lower?
Or a foot higher? Or plus or minus ten feet?
Note: about this time, the champ is arising from the indifference of training with a palooka and getting annoyed. He starts to dance a little, dangling gloves at his side Muhammad Ali style, and starts to cut me off in the ring...to size me up for surgically removing my consciousness.
So why wouldn't it express the brothers' ascetic tastes to use less wall?
Couldn't a low ceiling express the burden of the world's suffering on the shoulders of the brothers?
Aren't church sanctuaries with high ceilings just cliche and not necessary?
Are we dealing in golden mean rectangles here? Or are we dealing with mannerist design?
Does form follow function in Pawson's sanctuary, or does cliche follow manner?

pt3
Note: here I reckon is where the champ moves in to make fast work of the plug, who tries lamely to give the champ a brief work out. 🙁
The argument that design can be legitimately effective, even progressive, when it accretes on the accrued knowledge and sensibility of past design, is quite right.
Note: the champ is getting irritated now. Accreted and accrued? Who does this cauliflower eared street fighter think he is?
I do not want Pawson to abandon the use of foundation, roof, and elements like walls that enclose, though a geodesic dome's minimalist use of materials might well express the monk's sensibilities, equally well, if the monks were to insist on high ceilings and large unused volumes to carry on the tradition of tall, majestic churches.
Note: the champ throws a combination just to taunt the plug, who was expecting the lights to go out immediately. The plug is cut, but gamely punches on.
Is their something more Cistercian about a box than a geodesic dome?
What about a gold ceiling, if this is truly post modern revival expressed through minimalist lenses?
Note: One punch. Lights out.
End Note: Disagreeing with someone with work in museums requires the use of such lame rhetorical devices as I have deployed here. Insecurity paralyzes otherwise.
Donations to the home for punch drunk fighters are welcome. 🙂

informed discourse and charlie brown
i read and read again the posts from our beloved and astute contributors. what part of the discourse i actually understand i find enlightening and for the most part interesting; but i confess that i feel much like charlie brown in the following scenario:
* * *
linus and charlie brown are walking to school together with their lunches and show-and-tell treasures in tow. charlie brown begins the conversation:
charlie brown: "what did you bring for show-and-tell today?"
linus [greatly paraphrased from memory only.]: "i made these copies of the dead sea scroll fragments from a passage in isaiah chapter 53 that foreshadows the temporary suffering and ultimate victorious reign of the messiah for which the hebrew people are waiting for their promised redemption. what did you bring, charlie brown?"
charlie brown [dejected]: "i was going to show this little toy fire truck, but maybe now i'll just forget it."
* * *
if dcwilson feels like he's at the bottom of the intellectual pile in comparison to koen, then i'm somewhere far under the pile altogether.
anyway, even though i haven't really participated in the discussion of late, i'm reading with interest, and in the off-chance i have any observation or inquiry, i'll pipe back up with something like, "hey, you guys, did you notice the dude in the monastery chapel who forgot to wear his robe for the photo shoot?"
sincerely ... all in good fun!
seriously, though, i did have one observational question: could not the ceiling height have something to do not merely with the visual aesthetic but in its contribution to the desired acoustic quality?

OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!! (echoing Gregorian chant)
Excellent point kdc! We have only been approaching this from the visual and not the aural.
Although I still think the soaring cathedral heights of the 12th and 13th century were a function of the available technology with the primary aim of making the people stand back in awe and say; Holy Shit! or whatever the 12th century equivalent was.

First of all, I would...
...not like to face DCWilson in any ring especially not one that is enclosed by his kind of intellectual flexibility. It would make me defy gravity each time he punches me in the cords. So dear friend allow me to stay in the corner supported by my trainer, coach and cut man I am sure I will need all three of them.
I do not think that anybody on this forum has to feel classified on one level or another and I am sure we enjoy as much the fire truck show of Charlie Brown than the Dead Sea scrolls conference of Linus
If your question of the height of the building is more than a rhetorical one and requires more than the symbolic and acoustic reasons that were suggested, I think we agree. Without breaking neither any of St Benedict rules amended by St Bernard, nor any of the great traditions in building churches in and outside the Czech Republic, the ceiling height could probably have been somewhat lower or somewhat higher. I suspect that it was a rather simple decision. I have not measured it but the church section seems as high as the top of the roof of the existing buildings?but I could be wrong. I would argue that regardless weather the height of the roof or the width of the building came first, the proportions are right, which raises the question of whom and what decides on the right proportions. This is where I have to call in the referee?
I know it is an unpopular point of view but I firmly believe that there is a universal canon that has remained the same throughout centuries and that disregards country of origin and has been passed on from practitioner to practitioner of any art?I know I might step out of the Marquess of Queensbury rules but than again boxing was just an analogy.
Rules and any difficult to access knowledge is rather unpopular these days. Knowledge that requires the acknowledgement of some authority to start with and a long learning process to acquire it, is seen as an obstacle to true democratisation and so we prefer a certain level of ignorance as long as it can be shared. To understand why Giotto is a better painter than his teacher and contemporary Chimabue or Pietro Cavallini of the same period is not a simple matter but in spite of the usual personal considerations, all critics, commentators, historians or practitioners agree. We also agree on the value of art from all over the globe, not on it?s anthropological relevance but on a common set of rules that can only be learned by continious observation of art and good and reliable guidance.
Mannerism to me is partly defined by the fact that the building, the product or the piece of music is made by assembling a few or more characteristics of the original, without understanding this foundation that links art of all periods, regardless if it was innovative at the time, regardless the now so important narrative and regardless the stature of the artist, architect etc.

cont.
I suspect that part of the success of innovators is that they were educated in the previous system and so well versed in it that they felt the need to innovate but at the same time did it along well established standards. In architecture thousands of modernist buildings have been build after Mies v.d. Rohe but really get to the same level. Almost the same can be said about the Eames?. In spite of great interest for mid century design and the modernist revival, nobody seems to be able to do it with their understanding of proportion, relations between material and form etc. In another thread a kind-of-tulip chair is shown. We all know that it is not the original one but imagine that this was the one Eero Saarinnen designed?would we still find it an exceptional design?certainly not, it is simply an ugly thing, and yet it has so many of the characteristics of the original design. I suspect that the difference we see is the result of the fact that Mies, Eames, Saarinnen etc. weer educated in a system that still recognized a universal canon. Does it make a difference?, yes, the difference is that untangible knowledge and sensibility that, well applied makes the Novy dvur monastary a masterwork.
?.we might not reach the usual 25, 3 minutes rounds, but I will be waiting in my corner.

Round 2 🙂
BTM has opined that the high ceilings of medieval cathedrals served to inform the local citizens with a sense of the grandeur of the theocracy of the time and, I suppose, if I dare put some paraphrased words in his mouth, to put the fear of god in them, too. Along these lines, it probably inspired/intimidated them to come to be a part of the church ordering of society. How ya gonna say no to an outfit that worships the sacrifice of a human being and that forces its priests to wear black and go without sex? Talk about difficult fellows to persuade toward tolerance about the virtues of worshipping trees and sex out of wedlock! But I digress.
The medieval cathedrals had what I also previously called the wow factor of high church ceilings. Movie theater operators employed a similar design strategy in the 1920s and 30s. They built high ceilings (using, shall we say, "maximalist" formal and ornamental languages using a lot of, to me anyway, weird Egyptian/Art Deco revivalism) to attract theater goers and get them to buy cokes and popcorn, or as was put more colorfully by Hollywood folk--to put knuckle draggers in the seats in Peoria. Note: I am not saying BTM agrees with me on my broad thematic assertion that Pawson's work is mannerist. To the contrary, he seems to greatly admire Pawson's work. Rather, I am just saying he notes the same wow factor that I do to make the point that I am not alone in noting this wow factor.
To me, Pawson's work is mannerist precisely, because it does use high ceilings, and other traditional space programming and massing (though shorn of much ornament as minimalist modern and post modernism are wont to do), in a church that is not trying to attract a citizenry into it.
Recall, if you will, that the sanctuary pictured above in this thread is intended chiefly for the monks. Monks have already pledged themselves to the order more or less for life. They do not need a wow factor to keep them coming. Monks do not really need a philosophically, or visually sexy sanctuary, because: a) they already know the liturgical drill; and b) they are supposed to be trying to live a fairly ascetic life, while knowing it. The monks are already full of the spirit of and love for god. Hence all of this traditional form language is essentially wasted on them. And there are going to be no families with fathers nodding off, mothers in Easter bonnets nudging them, and bored children playing hangman on the backs of the tithing cards during Sunday morning church services; that is, to say, there will be no souls in need of saving, just brothers requiring modest weekly recharging of their spiritual batteries, and a bit of resonance for some chants. Therefore, IMHO, all of this accrued form language has minimal philosophical/theological function for the brothers, anyway. Without putting too fine a point on it, Pawson's design is preaching to the choir. Hence, I can only conclude: it is unnecessary and mannerist.