This Is The Best Religious Architecture Of 2015

[rug]

What makes a space sacred?

12/31/2015 06:27 pm ET
Antonia Blumberg
Associate Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

Sacred space is hard to define, but it's something many of us have experienced in our lives. The challenge for designers and architects is to find ways of evoking the divine through structures and shapes.

Every year for the past 30 years, Faith & Form magazine and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture have honored outstanding religious architecture and design through their annual awards program. This year's winners were selected by a panel of five independent judges, and they demonstrate the diverse and creative ways in which human beings experience and depict the sacred.

View the 16 winners of the 2015 Faith & Form/IFRAA Religious Art and Architecture Award below:


St. Katharine Drexel Chapel, New Orleans


Jeff Goldberg/Esto

(Religious Architecture, New Facilities)
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects


Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Central Oregon New Home, Bend, Oregon


Lara Swimmer

(Religious Architecture, New Facilities)
Hacker


Mission San Juan Capistrano, San Antonio


Blind Dog

(Religious Architecture, Restoration)
Ford, Powell & Carson Architects & Planners, Inc.


The Memorial Church, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts


Mark Menjivar

(Religious Architecture, Restoration)
Finegold Alexander Architects


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/best-religious-architecture-2015_5685a86be4b014efe0da7bcf

[CanadianComrade]

1. I can't help thinking.....

.....how all that money could've helped so many people in need, rather than being used to construct these buildings. It makes no sense.

[MisterP]

8. that'd apply to museums--or, for that matter, anything but a hirise slum

at least they'll have shelter, nu?

[guillaumeb]

2. I cannot help thinking that the 1 trillion that the US wastes every year

on the war machine could be better spent helping people rather than destroying lives and countries in pursuit of power.


Number three, the mission at San Juan, is my favorite. I am generally not a fan of modern architecture.

[TygrBright]

3. That which feeds the soul.

"If thou of fortune be bereft
and in thy store there be but left
two loaves-
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths, to feed thy soul."

John Greenleaf Whittier

The intrinsic worth of any religion or philosophy may be measured in a hundred ways.

The intrinsic worth of art transcends measurement.

Those who built the Parthenon may have been soaked with the blood of the innocent, and the worship of Athena and her wisdom is long a memory. The society of Athens practiced slavery and misogyny.

Yet still the Parthenon, what's left thereof, feeds souls.

philosophically,
Bright

[edhopper]

4. Some of them

especially the interiors, are quite nice.
Others are boring.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. I like #3, the interior shot

I wonder if the captions for #3 and #4 are reversed.

[Leontius]

6. Evidently a bad year for religious architecture.

Dull and uninspiring.

[kwassa]

7. The picture captions are wrong in this .....

here is the Memorial Church at Harvard.



Here is Mission San Juan Capistrano in San Antonio

before restoration: