Letters.

MESSAGE OF HOPE

SIR: What a pleasant welcome with your March 2008 issue of the AR at this tragic and sad time for our civilization. How good you put together with the 'Letter from Baghdad' the beautifully rendered essay on 'Chandigarh: Once the future city', to better understand other cultures. In 'building faith' through samples shown, you give testimony to the possible connections between the earthy, visible forms and those invisible of the soul.

But is the monumental temple like that of Los Angeles cathedral better fulfilling that spiritual aim than the little church near Oslo? The religious needs vary of course from one place to another. If they contribute to the well-being of their communities, for example, the Muslims in Portugal in their Ismaili Centre, or the Jews in Germany in their Chemnitz Synagogue, then we all can celebrate harmonious mutual understanding and peaceful living.

Yours etc

ADAM MILCZYNSKI KAAS

Pamplona, Spain

RONCHAMP REASSESSED

SIR: After eagerly awaiting AR March, I was disappointed to read the comments made by Catherine Slessor in her article 'Building Faith'. Though, perhaps encouraged by Edwin Heathcote's notes on Ronchamp, who described it as 'a virtual disaster for ecclesiastical design from the liturgical point of view', Catherine Slessor continues this attack by accusing Le Corbusier of being '[h]appily oblivious to the demands of liturgical functionalism'.

I feel duty bound to remind Catherine Slessor of those comments made by Peter Hammond in his well-known publication Liturgy and Architecture. As those who are already familiar with Hammond's writing will be aware, much of his book is focused on the way in which a church building can best serve the Liturgy. In the case of Le Corbusier's Ronchamp, Hammond argues that it 'is probably the most completely satisfying modern church which has been built in any country' (p80). Although some would argue that Ronchamp is a folly, out of touch with reality, there is little doubt in my mind that the chapel interior retains a purely functional layout, much the same as one might find at Rudolf Schwarz's 'Corpus Christi' Roman Catholic Church at Aachen 1928-30.

When designing Ronchamp, Le Corbusier worked closely with the clergy to devise a chapel that would best serve the Church. I believe by taking this approach he was far from happily oblivious to the demands of liturgical functionalism. Ronchamp, as suggested by Hammond, 'is striking proof of the possibilities of collaboration between an enlightened ecclesiastical client and an artist of great personal vision and integrity' (p159).

Functionalism is not a style but an approach.

Yours etc

MICHAELA GUIDON 

By email

US, UK NON ECO 

SIR: I came across AR February including Charles Jencks' latest article. I am surprised how British and American architectural critics always manage to write about contemporary architecture and about ecological architecture without mentioning Germany.

Germany is certainly years, if not decades, ahead of the UK and the US in terms of ecological green architecture. Low-energy houses and even 'passive houses' are pretty much the standard now. Even most of the older buildings are fitted with double glazing and the latest heating technology while at the same time single glazing and old-fashioned electrical (!!!) heating is still very common in the UK.

These ecological houses do not necessarily look spectacular. There is no need to build low-energy houses as 'blobs' or giant cucumbers. Therefore, it seems to me, that this kind of architecture does not find its way into journals very often. Nonetheless, for me there is no doubt that ordinary, low-tech green architecture is much more important for the future of the planet than any spectacular high-tech structures.

For example, last year I found a project in my home town (Dresden) consisting of terraced houses and semis, which uses solar energy, recyclable and non-toxic materials, rain water, a state-of-the-art heat pump and even the heat of the earth/soil for heating and cooling. And there are hundreds of similar projects in Germany. When will there be something similar in the UK? In twenty years?

Yous etc

MATTHIAS BAUER

Dresden, Germany

LET RUBBISH HANG OUT

SIR: The big names like Norman Foster do work of a consistently high standard. So they are frequently published, and get favourable reviews. Now and again, however, they do rubbish (or at least ordinary) buildings. Are those buildings quietly overlooked by the architectural press, to keep the architect's reputation intact? Shouldn't there be some evenhandedness, with bad buildings by good architects also receiving a public airing?

Foster did the Faculty of Social Studies for Oxford University (1996-99). It is beautifully detailed. But its facade, a random pattern of panels in a boring grid, is as visually disturbing as a demented barcode. And its main internal feature, a grand processional staircase, makes no sense at all: it is spectacularly oversized for the small population of the building; it arrives with a great sense of anticlimax at, well, nothing; it deposits you at the wrong end of the building if your office is on the top floor above the entrance; and is as sterile a space as can be imagined.

An analysis of bad buildings by good architects, with a discovery of how and why things went wrong, would be helpful for the rest of us, and would give a fairer impression of a man corpus of work.

Yours etc

BRUCE JENKINS

Caversham, England

THE STUFF OF LIFE

SIR: This year's January issue was excellently prepared as ever. However, I was surprised to learn that Venice is on water 'Venice owes its very existence to water ...' (p54). Coming from Split, a Mediterranean city that was part of Venice (Republic) for almost 500 years, I find this statement most unusual. Yet if I am wrong why then on p69 do you present a house 'A cut above--On a rocky site over the Pacific Ocean'?

Further, all but one building shown in the issue is on the sea, while the editorial article 'The stuff of life' talks about fresh water with totally different implications.

Yours etc

VISNJA KUKOC

Split, Croatia

BETTER BALKAN INSIGHT NEEDED

SIR: Your March Editorial, on 'Building Faith', was wrong to refer to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia as 'a modern holy war, conducted along the fault lines of competing tribal religions'.

The centrepiece of that conflict, the Bosnian War, was fought between competing ideologies. While the Serbs' ideology was certainly that of religious tribalism, their opponents' was not. The Bosnian government of Prime Minister Hans Silajdzic, led by the majority Muslim population but supported by the (Catholic, Christian) Bosnian Croats, fought for the ideal of the secular state that shelters, without discrimination, all faiths and minorities.

In doing so they fought for one of the cornerstones of what we consider to be Western civilization, against the indifference of us to their West. (Should any of us find this paradoxical we should remember that much of what we consider to be our 'Western' enlightenment is the gift of the Islamic civilizations of the Middle Ages; and, besides, Islam is, in its essence, a more modern, reformed faith -- no saints, cults, miracles, divine beings, virgin births and the like.)

That they should have fought so hard, and suffered so much, for such an ideal. This is not a small thing. Nor is it a small thing that we failed to understand that there was a right and wrong in that conflict, and so abandoned them to their fate -- there, in Bosnia, was our moral and proper war, not now, in Iraq.

And it would not be a small thing should we swallow whole the great lie told by our political masters: that Islam is a single mass of backward, fundamentalist 'other': a competing tribal religion.

Yours etc

MALCOLM FRASER

Edinburgh, Scotland