Robert Schuller: Patron of Modern Architecture

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-architecture-robert-schuller-20150402-story.html

Garden Grove Community Drive-In Church
Richard Neutra, 1961
Garden Grove, California
en.wikipedia.org

Hello Everyone:

Throughout the history of architecture, religious organizations have patronized architects, painters, and sculptors.  The Catholic Church, beginning in the thirteenth century, embarked on a building campaign to repair the church building and build the Apostolic Palace, which would become home for the pope.  Religious patronage of architects continued into the twentieth century under the direction of the Reverend Robert H. Schuller.  In 1961, Richard Neutra completed a drive-in church for his Orange County, California Christian ministry.  Over the course of time, the spectacular Crystal Cathedral by Philip Johnson (1980) and the Richard Meier-designed International Center for Possibility Thinking (1998-2003) were added to the campus.

The Crystal Cathedral
Philip Johnson and John Burgee, 1980
Garden Grove, California
archdaily.com

The late-Rev. Schuller, who passed away on April 2, 2015, was the least likely candidate for the title of architectural patron.  Reverend Schuller was simply following the tradition of clergy persons using architecture to further promulgate the faith.  Christopher Hawthorne describes the his interest in architecture in his article, "Robert Schuller: A patron of modernist architecture," "..long infatuation with high-profile architects--There's a place for monuments"...if the monument can be an instrument, you've got a winner--"produced something quite rare: a collection of buildings that has something to important to say about the evolution of both modern architecture and Orange County."

Robert Schuller preaching
businessinsider.com

In 2011, the Catholic Diocese of Orange County bought the Garden Grove Community Church complex, renaming the Crystal Cathedral the Christ Cathedral.  The purchase was more than just gaining a foothold in a part of Southern California that is home to over a million Catholics.  It acquired an architectural ensemble, thanks to Rev. Schuller's patronage. Mr. Hawthorne writes, "Perhaps only Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles where buildings by Isozaki, Gehry, Becket. Prix, and Moneo line up side by side, Southern California get such an efficient education in the architecture of the last half-century."

Before hiring Richard Neutra in 1959, the Rev. Schuller and his wife, Arvella, held services in a drive-in movie theater in Orange.  The reverend stood on top of a concession and preached the gospel.  When his church was ready to expand on a 10-acre site in Garden Grove, the reverend asked the architect, who by then was near the end of his prolific career, if he could design a new building that retained some of the elements of that drive-in.

Walk-in/Drive-in Worship
Garden Grove, California
publicculture.org

Richard Neutra designed a long, low-slung, flat-roofed building with movable glass wall that enabled the congregants to follow the service whether they were inside or in the parking lot.  Mr. Hawthorne does not, blogger concurs, consider this to be the Viennese-born architect's best work, although it was an important experience for both men.  Rev. Schuller once considered Mr. Neutra a "key influence on his intellectual development" together with John Calvin, Norman Vincent Peale, and Billy Graham.  Richard Neutra's son Dion, also an architect, contributed a 15-story "Tower of Hope" in 1967, "a vertical marker that in the words of architectural historian Thomas Hines was more prominent than anything on Orange County landscape except the nearby Matterhorn at Disneyland."

A little more than ten years later, Rev. Schuller wanted to build another expansion.  This time he turned to Philip Johnson and his partner John Burgee, who produced a $20 million enormous one-room "...under a faceted glass ceiling, 207 feet wide, 415 feet long and 128 feet tall."  Blogger recalls begin in the Crystal Cathedral once for a wedding and it is definitely an enormous naturally lit room.  The Crystal Cathedral was completed in 1980 and designed in a similar manner to Mr. Neutra's low slung building, "...with an eye toward multiple audiences--this time around, television viewers sitting at home.  The glass backdrop and giant interior space of Johnson's building suggested a perfectly up-to-date tableau of modern Orange County, as the Reagan years dawned, to a national audience.

Interior of the Crystal Cathedral. 2005
en.wikipedia.org

This was architectural eye candy.  A viewer in other parts of the United States could tell just how sunny it was by the way the light danced across the reverend's face.  More than the dazzling visual effects, there was a touch of futurism in the broadcasted images of this "glittering and transparent monument."  Architect Charles Moore's 1984 book, City Observed: Los Angeles, was the first architectural guide book to seriously look at Orange County's architecture.  The late-Mr. Moore wrote that Rev. Schuller wanted a church embedded in nature, a bit recollective of the Garden of Eden.  What he got is a church that might seem rather more at home in outer space.  It may sound rather dismissive but it seems like an appropriate description of a somewhat monolithic glass and steel-frame building.

Crystal Cathedral in one-point perspective
ca.myphotoscout.com

Like Rev. Robert Schuller, Philip Johnson also looked to historic precedent.  At an event held at the cathedral, not long after it was completed, Mr. Johnson cited German modernist Erich Mendalsohn, whose period of significance was the 1920s, Architects will be remembered by their one-room buildings.  Mr. Johnson remarked that he was proud of this single room building, adding, I hope to be remembered by this building.  He was more fondly remembered by his own glass house in New Caanan, Connecticut and the Crystal Cathedral than that post-modernist aberration for AT&T not long after the cathedral was completed.  Like the Neutra office, Mr. Johnson waited a few years before adding the spire, giving church accountants a chance to figure out how to pay for Rev. Schuller's grand building campaign.

International Center for Possibility Thinking
Richard Meier, 1998-2003
Garden Grove, California
richardmeier.com

The Richard Meier addition to the ensemble was completed in 2003.  Christopher Hawthorne describes the building, "The cylindrical four-story building, wrapped in embossed stainless-steel panels and officially called the International Center for Possibility Thinking was a shinier version of Meier's pavilions at the Getty Center, completed six years before."  Mr. Hawthorne wonders "Was the Meier building the equivalent of a McMansion commissioned by a family living beyond its means?"  It is quite possible because the church declared bankruptcy in 2010.  A year later the campus was acquired by the Roman Catholic Diocese, which commissioned Los Angeles-based firms Rios Clementi Hale and Johnson Fain to renovated it.

Be that as it may, the Richard Meier-designed center, despite its stylistic and philosophic differences from the other buildings, somehow managed to bring a sense of cohesion.  It accomplished this task by eliminating the automobile, a vital element to the Schuller vision of "...expansive, even sprawling ministry, in favor of the pedestrian, and trading the suburban design cues of Neutra and Johnson for a more civic, even urban idea of collective space."

Together, the three buildings look at each other across a precisely laid out courtyard which suggests, in its own imprecise way, an Italian piazza.  The Neutra and Johnson buildings, originally intended to serve a commuter congregation, now tell a story about the community.  The vitality of the architecture is now focused inward rather than outward, across parking lots and televisions.  The courtyard is not for the people in cars who pulled in to here Rev. Robert Schuller deliver the Sunday sermon.  Rather, the courtyard is a place of permanence, a place for buildings that have been there for a long time.