Church architecture
Church architecture refers to the architecture of Christian buildings, such as churches, chapels, convents, seminaries, etc. It has evolved over the two thousand years of the Christian religion, partly by innovation and partly by borrowing other architectural styles as well as responding to changing beliefs, practices and local traditions. From the Early Christianity to the present, the most significant objects of transformation for Christian architecture and design were the great churches of Byzantium, the Romanesque abbey churches, Gothic cathedrals and Renaissance basilicas with its emphasis on harmony. These large, often ornate and architecturally prestigious buildings were dominant features of the towns and countryside in which they stood. However, far more numerous were the parish churches in Christendom, the focus of Christian devotion in every town and village. While a few are counted as sublime works of architecture to equal the great cathedrals and churches, the majority developed along simpler lines, showing great regional diversity and often demonstrating local vernacular technology and decoration.
Buildings were at first from those originally intended for other purposes but, with the rise of distinctively ecclesiastical architecture, church buildings came to influence secular ones which have often imitated religious architecture. In the 20th century, the use of new materials, such as steel and concrete, has had an effect upon the design of churches.
The history of church architecture divides itself into periods, and into countries or regions and by religious affiliation. The matter is complicated by the fact that buildings put up for one purpose may have been re-used for another, that new building techniques may permit changes in style and size, that changes in liturgical practice may result in the alteration of existing buildings and that a building built by one religious group may be used by a successor group with different purposes.
Postmodernism[edit]
As with other Postmodern movements, the Postmodern movement in architecture formed in reaction to the ideals of modernism as a response to the perceived blandness, hostility, and utopianism of the Modern movement. While rare in designs of church architecture, there are nonetheless some notable for recover and renew historical styles and "cultural memory" of Christian architecture. Notable practitioners include Dr. Steven Schloeder, Duncan Stroik, and Thomas Gordon Smith.
The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building—often maintaining meaning in literature, poetry and art—but which had been abandoned by the modern movement. Church buildings in Nigeria evolved from its foreign monument look of old to the contemporary design which makes it look like a factory.[45]
The Rotunda of St. George, Sofia; some remains of Serdica can be seen in the foreground (early 4th century)
Santa María, Cambre, Galicia, Spain
San Pedro de Dozón, Spain
Margarita, Cuneo, Italy
St Gregory the Great, Kirknewton, Scotland
Wooroolin Church, Queensland, Australia
Collegiate Church of St Vitus
San Bartolo, San Gimignano
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, Bulgaria
Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano, Tuscany
Resiutta, Italy
St Martin's in the Fields, London
Presbyterian church, Washington, Georgia, 1826
Katowice, Poland
Rococo choir of Church of Saint-Sulpice, Fougères, Brittany, 16th – 18th century
Saint John the Baptist of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, France
Romanesque interior, Schöngrabern, Austria
St Bartholomew-the-Great, London
Katowice, Poland
Saint Augustine Church of Paoay, Ilocos Norte
