The Church

Of PerpetualExperimentation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A Manifesto For A New Church

A1 Introduction

A Apostolic Rules Of Intent

A The Inaugural Address Of Our Most Holy Father

A The Story Of The Church Recollected from the posthumously published memoirs of Cardinal S__ of A__

B Precedents Analogy, Fiction, Colour, Imagination

- "Relics" a story from "Nostalgia" by Marcel Proust

-"La-Bas" by Joris-Karl Huysmans

-"Wild Ass's Skin" by Honore de Balzac

-"Salammbo" by Gustave Flaubert

-"Zibaldone" by Giacomo Leopardi

-"Lectures On Aesthetics" by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

-"Preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin" by Theophile Gautier

-"The Painter of Modern Life" by Charles Baudelaire

-""The Eloquence of Colour" by Jacqueline Lichtenstein

C The Committe For The Architecture Of Ecclesiastical Engagement

-Chapter II Publimartyrium

-Chapter III Recorpistery

-Chapter IV Spectacular Mass

-Chapter V Confessorium

-Chapter VI Holy Auction

-Chapter VII Mausochapeleum

-Chapter VIII Multi-Nave

-Chapter IX Unnaplied Innovations

D Technical Documentation For Diocese Wishing To Follow The Path Of The CPE

E Plates Of The Church

F Acknowledgements

A

ManifestoFor A

New Church

1

A1

11

Introduction

Compound Unit

Assemblage of Spectacular Vault Construction Units

1

1

This project explores the spatial qualities of as-

semblage on three scales:

the construction unit (or the assemblage of con-

struction units),

the spatial unit (or the assemblage of spaces)

and the compound unit (or the re-assembly of

both construction units and spaces).

The three scales when linked together in time

create a process of formal involution, a process

which moves from discrete spatial unit to the

juxtaposition of these units in the site, to the in-

definite multiplication of their boundaries and

ultimately the formulation of a new and com-

pound spatiality.

This process, as an ongoing chain can have new

units assembled into it at any time, each of which

will in turn come apart and serve to enrich the

site and its spaces with further formal material.

Contiguous Palimpsests

Process of Formal and Spatial Involution

1

1

The exploration of assembly is an attempt to

recreate within a rapid and contemporary for-

mal process the manner in which the millennial

Palimpsests of our older cities and cathedrals

carry the marks of every stage of their history.

Spaces layered with their own histories are

rarely produced today as buildings and urban

areas are rapidly replaced in their entirety by an

economy that demands continuous change.

Using the contemporary pace of urban change

as a positive generator, the project sets up its

process of assemblage as a way in which rapid

change can not only occur, but be used to build

up a formal continuity and architectural rich-

ness.

The Catholic Church as an institution exempli-

fied the millennial continuity of cities through

its timeless liturgies and layered cathedrals, but

never quite discovered a way to mark itself in

the post-industrial landscape. The project oc-

curs within a fictive context which is initiat-

ed through and propelled by the desire of the

Church to come to terms with its inability to

engage contemporary society. The Church in

principle requires continuity, but in practice

seeks novelty, and the narrative follows it's hap-

hazard journey towards discovering, through the

architectural practice of assembly, the manner

in which it can create constant novelty while

maintaining formal continuity.

1

A

1

ApostolicRules ofIntent

Cultural Research

Architectural Research

1

GENERAL

How can the Church grapple with the spiritual

salvation of Wealthy Man?

How can the Church once again connect with a

Man whose society sates him so elaborately?

How can the Church console a population whose

pains are no longer physical but are entirely psy-

chopathological?

The Church will step outside of itself, into the

contemporary world. It will study both how the

human needs it used to fulfil are being satisfied

so much more effectively elsewhere; and it will

examine what ills and anxieties are besieging the

minds of its potential congregations.

Then firstly it will reconfigure its sacraments

according to the lessons learned, so that it may

speak the message and convey salvation in a

manner that contemporary man will under-

stand; and secondly it will create new spaces and

rituals which will offer release from and conso-

lation for the anxieties of today's world.

The Church wishes to re-inject meaning into the

contemporary world, and to do that it will learn

from that world, but note that it will not become

that world; rather it will be an edified reformu-

lation of that world, it will be a re-sanctification

of culture. The Church will continue this ex-

periment -unceasingly- until it has managed to

attain a blueprint for the re-sanctification and

consolation of contemporary man.

Confessorium

Elecro-Baroque Ecclesiology

Neo-Goth Musical Sermon

SPECIFIC

There is a hierarchy of formal concerns which

must govern the language of the new Church:

1. A balance must always be found between rec-

ognisable historic form, and novelty. One must

never be found without the other. Where the

content of the space is a new introduction, the

recognisable should dominate; whereas where

the content is unchanged novelty should prevail.

References may vary according to region but

the principle must remain.

. Although the Church will clearly define how

each layer of its space should be expressed as

a formal expression of its purpose, and thereby

be distinct and recognisable, the different layers

should come together at as many points as pos-

sible to convey a vigorous, contrasting, combina-

tory unity.

. As new liturgical developments are expect-

ed to continue for some time, the new Church

should be within an open framework which

should never be seen as finished lest the possibil-

ity of expansion be precluded.

A

The InauguralAddress Of Our

Most Holy Father

Detail from the "Temptation of St Anthony" panel from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Mattias Grunewald

The Speech As It Was Being Delivered

When waking with the sun and then plough-

ing fields or tending to sheep or sweating in the

smithy all day until the sun set was the breadth

of man's horizon;

When the written word was a mystical cipher of

which man knew nothing;

When Nature was vast, terrifying, dangerous

and inexplicable;

When death wasn't only an idea -something one

knew would happen one day- but was a smell to

be avoided in the streets;

When the body was so often a burden of pain to

be suffered and from which there was no res-

pite;

When life was such a narrow path of tedium

peppered with horror and misery, the Church

proclaimed the transcendence of every individ-

ual beyond his sores and abscesses; the Church

placed man's life and his death within an in-

imitable and beautiful plan of salvation beyond

the stink of corpses; the Church extracted man

from his narrow and incessant toil to celebrate

creation and existence, which, rather than being

cursed for its hardship, was glorified and illu-

minated in ceremony and stone. Man was over-

whelmed by the intoxicating mixture of liturgy,

icon, statue and story; he was convinced through

the mysteries of the Church and their represen-

tations that life indeed did have meaning, that

indeed there was something magical and pro-

found about existence, about life, and also about

pain and suffering.

Rabbits Held For Medical Testing

Genetically Modified Mouse

1

But now that the rising of the sun has little sig-

nificance, man wakes as he pleases, where he

pleases, and knows that during the coming day

his horizons may extend to embrace the globe;

Now that knowledge clings to each man as

thickly as an odour, as thickly as a smell that

emanates from the autopsy table on which lies

the dissected, analyzed, categorized and pre-

served remnants of Nature's mysteries;

Now that death and pain have been marginalized

to the periphery of vision, to specially quaran-

tined buildings;

Now that the body is so often a collection of

parts to be perfected or changed at will;

Now that magic and representation have hemor-

rhaged into every corner of the Real, and stand

for nothing but distraction;

Now that life is such a vast landscape of end-

less choice peppered with information, oppor-

tunity and answers, the Church must proclaim

the transcendence of every individual beyond

the boredom of perfection; the Church must

place man's boundless freedom and his unlim-

ited emptiness back within a plan of salvation

beyond the cadaver of mystery.

CGI Scene from Spiderman III

Michael Jackson aged 1, and

The Church must rediscover and reclaim the

magic of representation and re-inject it with

an amazement of existence. The Church must

plunge itself into the contemporary world to

find the raw material, the techniques with which

it can once again convince man that indeed life

does have meaning, that indeed there is some-

thing magical and profound about existence:

that man's great plague -the blight of meaning-

lessness- is no different today than it was when

pain and suffering ruled, only now it is impos-

sible to seduce man into belief with only cer-

emony and stone.

A lot more is needed, man is waiting, and to that

effect, on the eve of my election I am announc-

ing the convention of the Third Vatican Coun-

cil. The Grand Conciglio will no doubt continue

to examine our faith in great depth for many

years to come, and beyond my time in the pon-

tificate. Taking this into consideration I will be

focusing my efforts on the formation of a sub-

council which will endeavor to re-engage the la-

ity through a direct, and possibly radical recon-

struction of our tangible presence in their lives.

First Signs of Construction at the site in EUR

In order that the ideas and decisions of this sub-

council do not remain as exciting intention im-

prisoned on paper, in order that from the first

steps of this Grand Council we will lead by con-

crete example, in order that the laity may engage

with us while we are proceeding, in order for

these things to happen I have set aside a parcel

of land in this very city, the heart of our faith, so

that it may become the physical register of our

will to change.

I hereby convene the Third Vatican Council,

convene and chair the First Committee for the

Architecture of Ecclesiastical Engagement,

and initiate the founding of the Church of Per-

petual Experimentation.

A

The Story OfThe Church

Recollected from the Posthumously Published Memoirs of Cardinal S______ of A___

Contemporary Burdens. The Insatiable Index Of Perfect-able Parts

The Seductive Allure of Instantaneously Consumable Loca-tions

The Diverting Illusion of Choice

Contemporary Burdens. Primark Blues

CHAPTER I

Its been a while now but I can still re-

member that mute disbelief that met the

pope's inaugural address, and his proc-

lamation launching the third Vatican

Council. Paying homage to the Church's

past as the provider of meaning and secu-

rity in a world of ever present toil, death

and physical suffering; he made the point

that we didn't live in a world like that

anymore, we had different burdens and

expectations. Death and pain had long

disappeared into quarantined buildings,

people could fly anywhere in the world if

they woke up bored one day, bodies had

become objects to be changed and per-

fected at will, and nature was no longer

a mystery but just another dissected, ana-

lysed, categorised and preserved speci-

men of science's triumph. The world was

full of endless choice, and was busy sat-

isfying people's every whim in boundless

ways, and yet the Church was still per-

forming ceremonies crafted for people

a thousand years ago. He made the case

that the Church had to go out and trans-

form itself as much as the world around

it had changed, and that this needed to

be done not only in its liturgies, but also

in its physical form, in the immediate

presence of its architecture so that the

lay could tangibly see and experience the

Church's will to change. For this to hap-

pen he announced that he had set aside

a parcel of land in Rome itself, so that

construction could begin immediately

on the Vatican's newest experiment, on

what was to become the Physical register

of the Church's will to change, the newly

founded Church of Perpetual Experimen-

tation in EUR.

Organising this project was the Council s

first Committee, the Committee for the

Architecture of Ecclesiastical Engage-

ment, a panel of priest's whose job it was

to travel western Europe both interview-

ing a broad spectrum of society, from

1

Production Spaces Under Spectacular Mass Stage-Sanctu-aries

Routes and Stages For Alter-Floats, and Parades of Spec-tacular Mass

Consultation With Cultural and Economic Movers and Shakers

media moguls and billionaires, to young

athletes and hoodies; and researching the

current paradigms governing people's

daily lives and its architecture. With this

material they hastily set about propos-

ing, discussing and deliberating upon a

whole range of liturgical and sacramen-

tal transformations, and it was here that

the architects were brought in as the

link in the chain between the innova-

tions and their imminent construction.

For them it was a bit like working on

several competitions at the same time,

only that the programmes with which

they were working were being argued

out and typed up almost at the same

time as they were throwing themselves

onto their computers to design them.

This led to the architects influencing

some of the liturgical developments,

such as the spaces for Spectacular

Mass. The committee wanted perform-

ances of Mass that would be as varied

as the choice of bands on MySpace, but

where the priests had just proposed a

stage-and-audience set up, the architects

developed a participatory landscape

of multiple and moving performance

parades. Altar-floats were developed

to be the centre of the moving events,

Spectacular Vaults were designed to

provide a suitably vivid backdrop, and

underground backstage facilities were

arranged for visitors to get involved in

the construction of scenography for the

productions above.

5-Axis Machines used at the Site For Milling

Multi-Nave

Recorpistery

CHAPTER II

The committees ideas poured out, from

Recorporation, a replacement for baptism

where the body and soul were reclaimed

from an age where people's bodies had

been fragmented and turned into a list of

impossible goals; to Multi-Naves where

the Church sought to create true public

spaces where people could escape from

the all seeing eyes of the CCTV camera;

to Mausochapeleums, combined mauso-

leums and chapel-towers that would be

built and funded by wealthy and famous

members of society, bringing money and

celebrity glamour back into the church

and onto the skyline.

It was demanded that each of these be

given a durable form, and using the lat-

est in technology and the entire palette

of local materials the team developed

an approach that could be applied to

whatever the committee dreamt up. A

range of complex construction units

were designed along the themes of the

programmes within. The first two of

these were for the Recorpistery, and the

vaults above Spectacular Mass, and they

pleased the committee so much, that

they sent a representative to the coun-

try's biggest milling-machine company

(where the units had been manufactured)

and managed to haggle several machines

from them gratis. For the priests on the

panel these construction units were like

revisiting the way that cathedrals used

to be built from masonry, and having

the machines on-site was like having all

the stone masons chipping away at their

blocks. For the architects however these

machines were like the proverbial candy-

shop, and they were the kids, for the free-

dom they afforded in terms of shape led

to the excesses of the Multi-Nave area,

the over articulation of the Holy Auction

route, and the wildly ornate Mausochape-

leums screaming out over the city.

The Architects’ Formal Playground

Mausochapeleums And Their Respective Sponsors

Example of Two Construction Units Fabricated On-Site

Multi-Nave

Even while construction pushed ahead

on the site, even while new material was

being constantly lifted in, even as new

vaults rose onto the skyline, even with all

this activity visitors came not only from

all over the city, but pilgrims began to

add the site to their list of places to visit,

and the various finished and half finished

spaces were alive with praying, celebrat-

ing, chanting, muttering and declaiming

devotees. Each one came either expecting

to be indignant and horrified or thrilled

and pleased, but they all came nonethe-

less because the sheer novelty of the ex-

periment was magnetic.

Plan As The Site Began To Reach Full Capacity

CHAPTER III

Although the novelty of the project at-

tracted visitors in the first place, once

they arrived their experience of the con-

trasting assemblage of architectures and

liturgies kept each occupant moving

around the spaces, encountering vari-

ous ceremonies and rituals in an endless

proliferation of routes. The site had been

rapidly filling-up with programme; wor-

shippers could walk directly out from

the gloomy depths and the initiatory rite

of their, or someone else's recorpora-

tion, and into the glaring display of the

Spectacular Vaults and a performance

of Mass, look up and see a Publi-Martyr

displaying his abstemiousness in a Pub-

limartyrium, and then pass immediately

through to join the crowds arriving for

HolyAuction, the committees pilgrimage

for an age of possession.

These navigable juxtapositions in space

and ceremony were the way in which the

priests made the experiment accessible.

In their research they had found that peo-

ple were used to, and even expected the

simultaneous intake of multiple inputs,

people were used to the appearance of

choice. And it was through the discontin-

uous assemblage of their Church, through

the way that the visitor could always see,

hear -and if they wish- experience more

than one, and probably three or four cer-

emonies and spaces at the same time,

that the committee created the Church's

contemporary transformation of its old,

mono-directional hierarchy. The Church

was breeding an Ecclesiology of simulta-

neous difference through assemblage.

An Area Of The Church Being Re-Built. Stage III

An Area Of The Church Being Re-Built. Stage II

An Area Of The Church Being Re-Built. Stage I

A Recorpistery Corridor Being Dis-and-re-Assembled

CHAPTER IV

So within a few years the committee had

developed a whole range of doctrines, the

architects had evolved a method to rap-

idly put them into the site, and the priests

were precisely choreographing their use

of the spaces to embody their experiment

of contemporary Ecclesiology; and when

the site became full they seized the mo-

ment to determine the final nature of the

Church. I say nature because it couldn't

stay the way it was, its very mandate

from the Pope was to be the "physical reg-

ister of the institution's will to change",

it was called the Church of Perpetual

Experimentation after all. But they also

couldn't wipe away what was before and

begin again as the committee, and indeed

everyone involved had had everything

built from durable construction units

with the intention that every stage of this

great experiment would last, marking it-

self in posterity.

The choice seemed to be between piling

the new innovations on top of the old

or requesting a new site from the pope.

Seemed to be that is, until the priests fell

upon the logic that they could extend the

experiment's spatiality of simultaneous

difference through assemblage, from just

being between the simultaneity of events

and spaces occurring at the same time,

to a simultaneous difference of all events

and spaces that have occurred in the past

and are happening in the present.

They began to take apart and then re-as-

semble the construction units from cer-

emonies that the Committee was replac-

ing, and incorporating them into their

replacement spaces. Through this the

priests added the history of the experi-

ment to the manner in which the visitors

experienced it. Now anyone could not

only stand in the Church and experience

multiple spaces and events at the same

time, but also see and be in the presence

Working Model Archive

An Area Of The Church After Being Re-Built. Remains From Stage I

An Area Of The Church Being Re-Built. Stage V

An Area Of The Church Being Re-Built. Stage IV

of every space that had come before it.

Pilgrims began to come back time and

again; and whilst they were trying out

the new liturgies which had been dreamt

up, they would all try to outdo each other

in spotting the re-assembled fragments

embedded in the building around them,

viscerally reminding them of past visits

when they had enjoyed discarding the

sagging breasts that had haunted them

for so long, or winning a real Vatican

authorised relic at Auction. Through this

re-assembling, the committee managed

to create continuity in time through an

experiment which demanded rapid al-

teration. In The Church of Perpetual Ex-

perimentation, discontinuity in space and

form created a spatiality of simultaneous

difference. This spatiality of simultane-

ous difference allowed for the church s

formal continuity in time, and this was

all achieved through the unceasing act of

perpetual assembly.

It is perpetual because they are still going

at it.

The Pope died a long time ago, and gener-

ations upon generations of Committee in-

novations are embedded in the structure

of the building; but the priests still keep

inventing, the architects still keep design-

ing and most importantly the people still

keep coming. It has become the one site

in Christendom where people go both to

remember the past, and to be surprised

by the present. The cranes have never

stopped turning above that plot of land in

EUR, and many of us who visit so often,

hope and believe that they never will.

B

Precedents

Analogy,Fiction,Colour,

Imagination.

The analogical fecundity opened up by the indistinct, and by the inexplicable power of Architectural Accumulation and Decay.

From LA-BAS by Joris-Karl Huysmans

As far as he was concerned, prose fiction

had now been supplanted by history. The

novel in its every aspect vexed him; the

over-arching plot structure, portioned

out chapter by chapter, neatly packaged

up by the gross, how could it be otherwise

than dull and conventional? Yet history,

too, only seemed a stop-gap in light of the

fact that he had little belief in its scien-

tific foundations; events, he told himself,

are only a springboard for style and ideas,

since all facts could be emphasized or

played down depending on the tempera-

ment and bias of the historian who as-

sembled them.

As for the primary documents them-

selves, it was worse still! None was ir-

reducible and all were liable to revision!

Even if they were not apocryphal to begin

with, other sources, no less valid, could al-

ways be advanced which challenged their

authenticity, these new documents them-

selves being subject to dispute as fresh ar-

chival evidence emerged, evidence which

in turn could be refuted.

Did history itself, given the contempo-

rary predilection for grubbing around in

dusty archives, serve any greater purpose

than to allow a bunch of amateur annal-

ists to pursue their literary ambitions by

constructing Chinese boxes packed with

succulent morsels which the institutes

could duly reward, salivating as they did

so, with medals and diplomas?

For Durtal, history was the most gran-

diloquent of lies, the most childish decep-

tion of all. In his opinion, old Clio (the

French Muse of History) should by law

be represented with a sphinx's head, flap-

ping mutton chop whiskers and a padded

bonnet. The truth of the matter was that

exactitude was an impossibility.

"RELICS" a Story from "NOSTALGIA" by

Marcel Proust

I have bought up all of her belongings that were put on sale -that woman whose friend I would like to have been, and who did not even conde-scend to talk to me for a few minutes. I have the little card game that kept her amused every evening, her two marmosets, three novels that bear her coat of arms on their boards, and her bitch. Oh, you delights and dear playthings of her life, you had access -without enjoying them as I would have done, and without even desiring them- to all her freest, most inviolable, and most secret hours; you were unaware of your happi-ness and you cannot describe it.Cards that she would hold in her fingers every evening with her favourite friend who saw her getting bored or breaking into laughter, who were witnesses to the start of her liaison, and whom she threw down to fling her arms round the man who thereafter came every evening to enjoy a game with her; novels that she would open and close in her bed, as her fancy or her fatigue bade her, chosen by her on impulse or as her dreams dictated, books to which she confid-ed her dreams and combined them with dreams expressed by the books that helped her better to dream for herself -did you retain nothing of her, and can you tell me nothing about her?Novels; she dreamt in turn the lives of your char-acters and of your authors; and playing cards, for in her own way she enjoyed in your company the tranquillity and sometimes the feverishness of intimate friendships -did you keep nothing of her thoughts, which you distracted or filled, or of her heart, which you wounded or consoled?Cards, novels, you were so often in her hands, or remained for so long on her table; queens, kings or knaves, who were the still guests at her wild-est parties; heroes of novels and heroines who, at her bedside, caught in the cross-beam of her lamp and her eyes, dreamt your silent dream, a dream that was nonetheless filled with voices: you cannot have simply let it evaporate -all the perfume with which the air of her bedroom, the fabric of her dresses, and the touch of her hands or her knees imbued you.You have preserved the creases left when her joyful or nervous hand crumpled you; you per-haps still keep prisoner those tears which she shed, on reading of a grief narrated in some book, or experienced in life; the day which made her eyes shine with joy or sorrow left its warm hues on you. When I touch you, I shiver, anx-iously awaiting your revelations, disquieted by your silence. Alas! Perhaps, like you, charming and fragile creatures, she was the insensible and unconscious witness of her own grace. Her most real beauty existed perhaps in my desire. She lived her life, but perhaps I was the only one to dream it.......................................................................................Desire makes all things blossom, and possession makes them wither away.

Scene in the Antique Shop from "THE WILD ASS'S SKIN" by Honore De Balzac

At first site the showrooms offered him a chaotic medley of human and divine works. Crocodiles, apes and stuffed boas grinned at stainless glass windows, seemed to be about to snap at carved busts, to be running after lacquer-ware or to be clambering up chandeliers. A Sevres vase on which Madame Jaquetot had painted Napoleon was standing next to a sphinx dedicated to Ses-ostris. The beginnings of creation and the events of yesterday were paired off with grotesque good humour. A roasting-jack was posed on a monstrance, a Republican sabre on a medieval arquebus. Madame du Barry, painted in pastel by Latour, with a star on her head, nude and envel-oped in cloud, seemed to be concupiscently con-templating an Indian chibouk and trying to divine some purpose in the spirals of smoke which were drifting towards her.

Instruments of death, poniards, quaint pistols, weapons with secret springs were hobnobbing with instruments of life: porcelain soup-tureens, Dresden china plate, translucent porcelain cups from china, antique slat-cellars, comfit-dishes from feudal times. An ivory ship was sailing under full canvas on the back of an immovable tortoise. A pneumatic machine was poking out the eye of the Emperor Augustus, who remained majestic and unmoved. Several portraits of French aldermen and Dutch burgomasters, insen-sible now as during their lifetime, rose above this chaos of antiques and cast a cold and disapprov-ing glance at them.

All the countries on earth seemed to have brought here some remnants of their sciences and a sam-ple of their arts. It was a sort of philosophical mid-den in which nothing was lacking, neither the Red Indian's calumet nor the green and gold slipper of the seraglio, nor the yatogan of the Moor, nor the brazen image of the Tartar. There was even the soldier's tobacco pouch, the ciborium of the priest and the plumes from a throne. Furthermore, these monstrous tableaux were subjected to a thousand accidents of lighting by the whimsical effects of a multitude of reflected gleams due to the con-fusion of tints and the abrupt contrasts of light and shade. The ear fancied it heard stifled cries, the mind imagined that it caught the thread of unfinished dramas, and the eye that it perceived half-smothered glimmers. Lastly, persistent dust had cast its thin coating over all these objects, whose multiple angles and numerous sinuosities produced the most picturesque of impressions.To begin with the, the stranger compared these three showrooms, crammed with the relics of civ-ilizations and religions, deities, royalties, master-pieces of art, the products of debauchery, reason and unreason, to a mirror of many facets, each one representing a whole world. After registering this hazy impression, he tried to make a choice of specimens he enjoyed; but, in the process of gazing, pondering, dreaming, he was overcome by a fever which was perhaps due to the hunger which was gnawing at his vitals. His senses ended by being numbed at the sight of so many national and individual existences, their authenticity guar-anteed by the human pledges which had survived them.

The longing that had caused him to visit the shop was satisfied: he left real life behind him, ascended by degrees to an ideal world, and reached the enchanted palaces of ecstasy where the universe appeared to him in transitory gleams and tongues of fire; just as, long ago, the future of mankind had filed past in flaming visions before the gaze of Saint John of Patmos.

A multitude of sorrowing faces, gracious or terrifying, dimly or clearly described, remote or near at hand, rose up before him in masses, in myriads, in generations. Egypt in its mysterious rigid-ity emerged from the sands, represented by a mummy swathed in black bandages; then came the Pharaohs burying entire peoples in order to build a tomb for themselves; then Moses and the Hebrews and the wilderness: the whole of the ancient world, in all its solem-nity, drifted before his eyes. But here, cool and graceful, a marble statue posed on a wreathed column, radiantly white, spoke to him of the voluptuous myths of Greece and Ionia. Oh, who would not have smiled, as he did, to see upon a red background, in the fine clay of an Etruscan vase, the brown girl dancing before the god Priapus and joyously saluting him? Facing her was a Latin queen lovingly fondling her chimaera! The capricious pleasures of im-perial Rome were there in every aspect: the bath, the couch, the dressing-table ritual of some indolent, pensive Julia awaiting her Tibullus. Armed with the power of Arabian talismans, the head of Cicero evoked memories of republican Rome and unwound for him the scroll of Livy's histories. The young man gazed on the Senatus pupulusque romanus: the consul, the lectors, the purple-edged togas, the fights in the Forum, the plebs aroused to wrath. All this filed past him like the insubstantial figures of a dream.Then Christian Rome became the dominant theme in these pres-entations. One painting showed the heavens opened and in it he saw the Virgin Mary bathed in a cloud of gold in the midst of angels, eclipsing the sun in glory, lending an ear to the lamenta-tions of the sufferer on whom this regenerate Eve smiled gently. As he fingered a mosaic made of different lavas from Vesuvius and Etna, in imagination he emerged into sun-drenched Italy: he was an onlooker at the Borgias' feasts, he rode through the Abruzzi, sighed after Italian mistresses, worshipping their pale cheeks and dark, elongated eyes.

Espying a medieval dagger with a hilt as cunningly wrought as a piece of lace, with rust patches on it like bloodstains, he thought with a shudder of mighty trysts interrupted by the cold blade of a husband's sword. India and its religions lived again in an idol dressed in gold and silk with conical cap and lozenge-shaped ear-flaps folded upwards and adorned with bells. Near this grotesque figure a rush mat, as pretty as the Indian dancer who had once rolled herself in it, still exhaled the perfume of sandalwood. The mind was startled into perceptiveness by a monster from China with a twisted gaze, contorted mouth and writhing limbs: the crea-tion of an inventive people weary of unvarying beauty and draw-ing ineffable pleasure from the luxuriant diversity of ugliness.

A salt-cellar from Benvenuto Cellini's workshop brought him back to the bosom of the Renaissance at a period when art and licence flourished together, when sovereign princes found diversion in tor-ture and prelates at Church Councils rested from their labours in the arms of courtesans after decreeing chastity for mere priests. He saw the conquests of Alexander carved on a cameo, the mas-sacres of Pizarro etched on a match-lock arquebus, the wars of religion -frenzied, seething, pitiless- engraved on the base of a hel-met. Then the charming pageantry of chivalry sprang up from a Milanese suit of armour, brightly furnished, superbly damascened, beneath whose visor the eyes of a paladin still gleamed.

For him this ocean of furnishings, inventions, fashions, works of art and relics made up an endless poem. Forms, colours, concepts of thought came to life again; but nothing complete presented it-self to his mind. The poet in him had to finish these sketches by the great painter who had composed the vast palette on to which the innumerable accidents of human life had been thrown in such disdainful profusion.

From SALAMMBO by Gustave Flaubert

Behind extended the city, its tall, cubed shaped houses rising in tiers like an am-phitheatre. They were made of stone, planks, pebbles, rushes, seashells, trod-den earth. The temple groves stood out like lakes of greenery in this mountain of multi-coloured blocks. Public squares levelled it out at regular intervals; count-less intersecting alleys cut it up from top to bottom. The walls of the three old quarters, now mixed together, were still distinguishable; they rose here and there like great reefs, or extended huge sections -half covered with flowers, blackened, widely streaked where rubbish had been thrown down, and streets passed through their gaping apertures like rivers under

bridges.The Acropolis hill, in the centre of Byrsa, was covered over with a litter of monu-ments. There were temples with twisted pillars, bronze capitals, and metal chains, cones of dry stone with azure stripes, copper cupolas, marble architraves, Ba-bylonian buttresses, obelisks balancing on their points like upturned torches. Peri-styles reached to pediments; scrolls un-folded between colonnades; granite walls supported tile partitions; in all this one thing was piled on another, half-hiding it, in a marvellous and unintelligible way. There was a feeling of successive ages and, as it were, memories of forgotten lands.Behind extended the city, its tall, cubed shaped houses rising in tiers like an amphitheatre. They were made of stone, planks, pebbles, rushes, seashells, trod-den earth. The temple groves stood out like lakes of greenery in this mountain of multi-coloured blocks. Public squares levelled it out at regular intervals; count-less intersecting alleys cut it up from top to bottom. The walls of the three old quarters, now mixed together, were still distinguishable; they rose here and there like great reefs, or extended huge sections -half covered with flowers, blackened, widely streaked where rubbish had been thrown down, and streets passed through their gaping apertures like rivers under

bridges.Foam model of the Spectacular Stairacses from theChurch of Perpetual Experimentation

From Giacomo Leopardi's ZIBALDONE

Extract1

When something is experienced in reality,

the spirit is saddened and deadened. Yet

when it is experienced in imitation or in

some other mode in the works of genius

(as for example in the lyric, which is not

properly imitation), the heart is touched

an revived.

So it is with the author who feels and

describes the vanity of illusions so well,

and yet retains a great store of illusions

and gives them noble expression by dem-

onstrating their vanity so clearly. In the

same way the reader, however disillu-

sioned about himself and literature, is

drawn by the author into that same de-

ception and illusion that was hidden in

the deepest recesses of his mind. And the

very knowledge of the irreparable van-

ity and falsity of everything beautiful

and great becomes a thing of beauty and

greatness itself that fills the mind when it

is found in the works of genius.

Extract

The sensation of the intellect is imagina-

tion. Therefore the object of the intellect

is imagining (not truth, as I will show).

Man desires an infinite pleasure in eve-

rything but cannot experience such an in-

finity except in the imagination, because

all material is limited.

Therefore man feels pleasure in the

greatest possible extension of his imagi-

nation, or in the act of the intellect. This

is independent from truth.

Man does not desire to know but to end-

lessly feel. He is unable to feel endlessly

except with his mental faculties in some

way, but principally with his imagination,

not with his science or knowledge which

circumscribe the objects, thereby exclud-

ing the infinite.

Extract

...Children find everything in nothing.

Men nothing in everything

Extract

The longest lasting and most pleasing

thing is the varity of things, if only for

the reason that nothing is long lasting and

truly pleasing.

Mausochapeleum and Inverted Vault Under Construc-tion in theChurch of Perpetual Experimentation 1

From Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's

LECTURE'S ON AESTHETICS

Extract1

The beauty of art presents itself to sense,

to feeling, to perception, to imagination;

its sphere is not that of thought, and the

apprehension of its activity and its pro-

ductions demand another organ than that

of scientific intelligence. Moreover, what

we enjoy in the beauty of art is precisely

the freedom of its productive and plas-

tic enegrgies. In the origination, as in the

contemplation, of its creations we appear

to escape wholly from the fetters and

rules of regularity.

Extract

We would exchange the shadowland of

the idea for cheerful vigorous reality.

And lastly, the source of artistic crea-

tions is the free activity of fancy, which

in her imagination is more free than na-

ture's self. Not only has art at command

the whole wealth of natural forms in the

brilliant variety of their appearance, but

also the creative imagination has power

to expatiate inexhaustibly beyond their

limit in products of its own.

Extract

And on the other hand seeing that art is

what cheers and animates the dull and

withered dryness of the idea, reconciles

with reality its abstraction and its disso-

ciation therefrom, and supplies out of the

real world what is lacking to the notion,

it follows, we may think, that a purely

intellectual treatment of art destroys this

very means of supplementation, annihi-

lates it, and reduces the idea once more

to its simplicity devoid of reality, and to

its shadowy abstractness.

From the Preface to Theophile Gautier's "MADEMOISELLE DE MAUPIN"

Extract1

I should like to know first of all the pre-cise meaning of the great gangling fellow of a noun they pepper their vacuous col-umns with every day, and which they use as a shibboleth or a sacred word. Utility. What does it mean and what is its appli-cation?There are two sorts of utility and the meaning of this word is only ever relative. What is useful to one person is no use to another. You are a cobbler, I am a poet. It is useful for me that my first line rhymes with my second. A rhyming dictionary is very useful to me; but you don't need one to mend a pair of old boots; and it is fair to say that a shoe-maker's knife would be no good to me for writing odes. Then you will object that a cobbler is far superior to a poet, and that you can more easily do without the one than the other. Without wishing to disparage the noble profession of cobbler, which I esteem equal to that of constitutional monarch, I humbly sub-mit that I should prefer to leave my shoes unstitched than my verses badly rhymed, and that I should rather do without boots than poems. As I almost never go out and since I make better progress with my head than my feet, I get through fewer pairs of shoes than a virtuous republican who does nothing but run from one min-istry to the next, in the hope of landing a job somewhere.I know some prefer windmills to church-es, and the bread of the body to that of the soul. I have nothing to say to them. They deserve to be economists in this world, and in the next.Does anything exist on this earth of ours, in this life of ours, which is absolutely useful? In the first place there is very lit-tle use in our being on earth and alive.

Extract

Nothing that is beautiful is indispensable to life. If you did away with flowers, the world would not suffer in any material way. And yet who would wish there not to be flowers? I could do without pota-toes more easily than roses and I think

there is only one utilitarian in the world capable of tearing out a bed of tulips to plant cabbages. What use is the beauty of women? Provided a woman is medi-cally fit and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough for the economists. What is the good of mu-sic? What is the good of painting? Who would be mad enough to prefer Mozart to M.Carrel, and Michelangelo to the inven-tor of white mustard? The only things that are really beautiful are those which have no use; everything that is useful is ugly, for it is the expression of some need, and the needs of men are ignoble and dis-gusting, like his poor and infirm nature. The most useful place in the house is the lavatory.Whether these gentlemen like it or not, I belong to those for whom the superflu-ous is necessary. And I prefer things and people in inverse proportion to the serv-ices they render me. Instead of a certain useful pot, I prefer a Chinese one deco-rated with dragons and mandarins, which is no use to me whatsoever. I should be quite happy to renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a Citizen to see and au-thentic picture by Raphael, or a beautiful naked woman.

Extract

Pleasure seems to me to be the aim of life and the only useful thing in the world. God has designed it thus. He who cre-ated women, perfumes, light, beautiful flowers, good wine, thoroughbred horses, greyhounds and angora cats; Who did not say to his angels "Be virtuous", but: "Be loving"; and who has given us a mouth more sensitive than the rest of our skin for kissing women; eyes which can look up to see the light; a subtle sense of smell to breathe in the souls of flowers; strong thighs to grip the flanks of stallions and fly as fast as thought without railway or steam engine; delicate hands to stroke the long heads of greyhounds, the velvety backs of cats, and the satin shoulders of creatures with very little virtue; God who, in short, who has given to us alone the threefold glorious privilege of drink-ing without being thirsty, of striking a light, and of making love all year round, which distinguishes us from the animals much more than does the custom of read-

ing journals and making charters.

Extract

The whole visible universe is but a store-house of images and signs to which the imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of pasture which the im-agination must digest and transform. All the faculties of the human soul must be subordinated to the imagination, which puts them in requisition all at once.

Extract

I spoke a moment ago of the remarks of certain bricklayers. By this word I wish to categorize that class of heavy and boor-ish spirits (their number is legion) who appraise objects solely by their contour, or worse still, by their three dimensions, length, breadth and height -for all the world like savages and rustics. I have of-ten heard people of that kind laying down a hierarchy of qualities which to me was unintelligible; I have heard them declare, for example, that the faculty that enables one man to produce an exact contour, or another a contour of supernatural beau-ty, is superior to the faculty whose skill it is to make an enchanting assemblage of colours. According to those people, col-our has no power to dream, to think or to speak. It would seem that when I contem-plate the works of one of those men who are specifically called "colourists", I am giving myself up to a pleasure whose na-ture is far from a noble one; they would be delighted to call me "materialistic", reserving for themselves the aristocratic title of "spiritual".

Extract

As far as art is concerned I admit that I am no enemy of extravagance; modera-tion has never seemed to me to be a sign of a robust artistic nature.

Extract

Laughter is satanic: it is thus profound-ly human. It is the consequence in man of the idea of his own superiority. And since laughter is essentially human, it is, in fact, essentially contradictory; that is to say that it is at once a token of an infi-nite grandeur and an infinite misery -the latter in relation to the absolute Being of whom man has an inkling, the former in relation to the beasts. It is from the perpetual collision of these two infinities that laughter is struck.As humanity uplifts itself, it wins for evil, and for the understanding of evil, a power proportionate to that which it has

won for good.

From Charles Baudelaire's "THE PAINT-ER OF MODERN LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS"

Extract1

In contrast to the academic theory of an unique and absolute beauty; to show that beauty is always and inevitably of a double composition, although the im-pression that it produces is single -for the fact that it is difficult to discern the variable elements of beauty within the unity of the impression invalidates in no way the necessity of variety in its com-position. Beauty is made up of an eternal, invariable element, whose quantity it is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative, circumstantial element, which will be, if you like, whether severally or all at once, the age, its fashions, its mor-als, its emotions. Without this second el-ement, which might be described as the amusing, enticing, appetizing icing on the divine cake, the first element would be beyond our powers of digestion or appre-ciation, neither adapted nor suitable to human nature. I defy anyone to point to a single scrap of beauty which does not

contain these two elements.

Extract

Evil happens without effort, naturally, fatally; Good is always the product of some art. All that I am saying about Na-ture as a bad counsellor in moral matters, and about Reason as true redeemer and reformer, can be applied to the realm of Beauty. I am thus led to regard external finery as one of the signs of the primitive nobility of the human soul.

Extract

Fashion should thus be considered as a symptom of the taste for the ideal which floats on the surface of all the crude, ter-restrial and loathsome bric-a-brac that the natural life accumulates in the human brain: as a sublime deformation of Na-ture, or rather a permanent and repeated attempt at her reformation. And so it has been sensibly pointed out (though the rea-son has not been discovered) that every fashion is charming, relatively speaking, each one being a new and more or less happy effort in the direction of Beauty, some kind of approximation to an ideal for which the restless human mind feels a constant, titillating hunger.

Detail of a Study For “The Judgement of Paris” Peter Paul Rubens and Workshop

the absence of charm becomes the indubitable sign of truth. To the sophists seductive persons and sparkling words, philosophers must then op-pose an expression whose dreary pride and tedium present themselves as signs of the highest wisdom, and speeches whose repellent form lays claim to unfathomable depth.Defined differentially, rhetoricians and philoso-phers are compelled to take on the negative at-tributes that each assigns to the other. The char-acterization strips rhetoric of all legitimacy and abandons it to the reprehensible pleasure of a seduction, condemning its effectiveness while recognizing its force. As for philosophy, the defi-nition affords it an indisputable eminence and at the same time deprives it of any power, drawing truth as the unpleasant and unseductive image of a pale and dull negation of pleasure. Placed by Plato within a single frame in a scene where they respond to each other as complementary figures, rhetoric and philosophy take up their positions at the poles of ever-deceptive pleasure and necessar-ily bleak knowledge.

Extract

The choice and frequent use of such metaphors and comparisons, which define beauty essentially from the viewpoint of health, show the extent to which most aes-thetic judgments are determined by moral evaluations, that is, based on criteria borrowed from nature, not art. The most striking evidence of this overlap of moral and aesthetic values comes from the way in which the various figures of femininity -chaste or indecent, virtu-ous or corrupt- constantly offer up metaphors for the faults and qualities of eloquence.

Extract

Forced to balance precariously between pleasure and reason, rhetoric has always found itself trapped be-tween an ornamentation whose brilliance is suspected of lending discourse a purely sophistic seductiveness and an austere philosophy whose somber gleam threat-ens to deprive rhetoric of the means necessary to as-sure its effectiveness.The courtesan and the prostitute always appear as em-blematic figures of the culpable temptation of a pure pleasure to which art, when unable to save itself from

the dangers of its own power, succumbs.

Extract

The traditional place of the image necessarily af-fects our perception of its power. Its legitimacy is still in doubt though its importance is not. To rid ourselves of such a contradiction we would need to abandon traditional hierarchies and reach a complete reevaluation that allowed a relation between the visible and discourse in terms of complementarity and not subordination. All these relations weave into the weft of their history im-age and language as complementary figures that an archaic gesture has torn apart. More than rival sisters, they resemble separated lovers haunted by a desire for the unity of an origin perhaps forever lost, each seeking in the figure of the other the missing part of the self. As if this other's absence

were the heart of all representation.

From "THE ELOQUENCE OF COLOUR"

by Jacqueline Lichtenstein

Extract1

The true fine wit praised by Ariste: ju-dicious and delicate reasoning. And this delicacy of wit is expressed in a very particular kind of knowledge that spans knowing, sensing and seeing. Neither a concept nor an affect, not a perception, and yet all of these at once, it is a cer-tainty felt but not demonstrable, an ob-viousness accompanied by no proof. It is a knowledge that depends on eyesight and manifests as a feeling, that senses the vantage point for accurate perception. This delicacy of wit that infallibly places an individual at the right distance from the object of contemplation -neither too close nor too far away- has all the char-acteristics of visual judgment.Intuition is the capacity to discern the in-finitesimal differences existing between things that are apparently confused in nature, realities indiscernible to mathe-matical minds seeking clear, obvious and palpable principles.

Extract

Moral puritanism and aesthetic auster-ity, along with resentment and old, stub-born, and underhanded desire to equate drabness with beauty, thus make their righteous alliance and take delight in a constantly reiterated certainty: only what is insipid, odorless, and colourless may be said to be true, beautiful and good.

Extract

[Painting] does not present us with an il-lusory appearance but with the illusion of an appearance whose very substance is cosmetic. Unlike other forms of adorn-ment, this one does not exceed reality by adding ornaments that mask its nature: it takes its place by offering an image whose nature is entirely exhausted in its appearance, a universe that is the pure il-lusory effect of an artifice.In denaturalizing appearance, painting thus realizes the essence of ornament that consists in being without essence. It is like an adornment from which na-ture is absent, makeup whose colouring does not merely correct the faults of a face but invents its features and gives it a form, a garment that cannot be taken off without pulling off the skin, an origina-

tive metaphor.

Extract

If the charms of enunciation are the marks of the rhetorical and thus decep-tive character of an individual's words,

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Plates of theChurch ofPerpetual

Experimentation

plan

Spectacular Staircases

(the hills of which are sanctu-

aries, and the valleys of which

are spectacular mass parade

routes)

View of interior after years

of innovation and recombina-

tion

Process of formal and spatial

involution

Sections through three areas

on the site

Site History and timeline over

the period of the Church's

development

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Automonument produced by

the Committee to comemorate

the filling of the site

A Recorporation Room just

after the conclusion of a

ceremony

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fabrication of voussoirs

Technical and structural

Breakdown

Staircase summit sanctuary,

Altar-Float coming back to

rest, and vaults under re-com-

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following people,

without whom the church may have never ex-

tended further than the borders of the piece of

A paper on which the pope's inaugural was

printed.

Natasha Sandmeier, for kicking sense and re-

ality into the heads of the Cardinals whenever

they were lost in the nightmares of their own

delusions, and making them see that their ideas

were instead dreams, and exciting ones at that.

Monia De Marchi, for always steadying the shak-

ing hands of so many of our architects when they

couldn't face up to the mad schedules imposed

on them by the pace of the project; without her

constant clarifications I fear we would have lost

the whole team.

Marie Isabel De Monseignat, for being an inspi-

ration, role model, and constant support, both by

cheering up those chastity-sworn male members

of our team with her rather gracious profile, and

by showing all of us how to compete with only

love for each other in our hearts.

Marco Ginex, for building and maintaining all

that scaffolding which we used to go on up to

the high vaults everyday, and that we stopped

noticing after a while, but without which our

entire edifice would have come immediately

crashing down.

Mike Weinstock, for putting the substance into

our structure, and for reading the future (even

though that is black-magic, and not condoned by

us, it was indeed helpful).

Paul Davies, for letting us know that we do not

need to feel guilty about not being Puritans.

Oliver Domeisen, for his luminous penumbra of

belief that shone occasionaly in dull corridors,

and sad juries.

Emily and Horacio Furman, for their robust

support of the endeavour, both in terms of the

solid financial commitment they lavished on the

team, and for all the meals, drinks, and love they

kept delivering to our offices, in entirely unnec-

essary, overly copious, but ultimately reassuring

and entirely appreciated quantities.