The art of the possible: a new visitors' centre for the Crystal Cathedral complex not only unifies a set of disparate buildings, but also uses light to evoke a powerful sense of the numinous.

Orange County is a featureless suburban wasteland that occupies much of the arid plain between Los Angeles and San Diego. Everything there is themed, from Disneyland to the meanest mall, and developers have fought, with striking success, to make this an architecture-free zone. And yet, as everywhere in southern California, surprises lurk, and one of the more remarkable is a Modernist oasis in Garden Grove, an hour's drive south of LA. Evangelist Robert H. Schuller launched his ministry in a drive-in theatre, but his architectural ambition matched that of a Renaissance Pope. In 1962 he turned to Richard Neutra to create a structurally daring church that opened down one side, and Neutra later added the 15-storey Tower of Hope. In 1980, he commissioned Philip Johnson and John Burgee to design the Crystal Cathedral (AR January 1981), a soaring, starshaped glass shed, with a rollaway wall that unites the congregation of walk-in and drive-up parishioners. Johnson returned in 1990 to do a shiny, shard-like campanile.

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Each of these structures has a strong presence, but they didn't relate well to each other, and the complex--which draws thousands of worshippers and tourists every week--lacked a core. Schuller took his problem to Richard Meier and his partner, Michael Palladino, who were then polishing their design for the Getty Center (AR February 1998). The preacher spoke, the architects sketched, and they quickly agreed on a cylindrical visitors' centre that would open up in every direction, play off the sharp angles of the existing buildings, and engage them in a dialogue. The rotunda was to be clad in anodized aluminium and clear glass to contrast with Neutra's concrete and Johnson's reflective surfaces, but the client was persuaded to raise additional funds for embossed stainless steel, a more handsome and more durable facing material. This is a first for Meier, whose signature has long been white-enamelled steel panels, and it achieves its goal of absorbing and softening the harsh glare of the Californian sun. Polished, integral-coloured concrete floors and an exposed aggregate piazza unify the indoor and outdoor spaces and create a visual link to the existing Neutra buildings.

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The programme, which evolved in discussion, is remarkably similar to that of the Stadthaus in Ulm (AR June 1995). There, too, Meier was asked to create a civic hub that would energize vacant space and focus attention on a cathedral. In Garden Grove, a 300-seat auditorium and a cafe open into a sunken piazza at the lower level. An information desk and a gift shop on the entrance level lead out of a lofty skylit atrium. Two storeys of galleries containing exhibits on the history of the ministry and an upper-level library, wrap around this central void. An open staircase, which evokes the projecting escape stairs on the Tower of Hope, is backed by an arc of glass that feels as though it is suspended in light. As in the cathedral, the emphasis is on natural ventilation to minimize the use of air conditioning through the hot summers. The north wall opens up to the sunken courtyard to draw in cool air, and the tapered lanterns serve as thermal chimneys, with openable louvres to evacuate hot air.

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Here, as in all of Meier's best buildings, sheer planes are cut away to layer the space and diffuse the light, achieving depth and complexity with minimal means. The cool white interior walls are a foil to the stainless baffles that shade expanses of glass. Three lanterns over the atrium frame pieces of sky like a James Turrell light sculpture. Bars of sunlight move around the straight and canted sides of these deep white boxes, drawing your eyes upwards and achieving a sense of spirituality. Gazing up to heaven was not part of the mandate, but this central space is more numinous than Neutra's church or Johnson's cathedral--which, for all its transparency and drama, resembles a convention centre in its relentless symmetry.

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As in Moneo's Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels in downtown LA (AR March 2003), the architecture is compromised by the client's urge to clutter noble spaces with pious kitsch. The lobby furnishings are suffocatingly genteel, and as pedestrian in their arrangement as those in a Marriott hotel lobby. Evelyn Waugh would have great sport with the 'International Center for Possibility Thinking' (as the building has been named), and would revel in the oversized garden gnomes masquerading as inspirational 'artworks', which line the surrounding walkways. By contrast, the grounds of Forest Lawn seem tasteful and restrained.

Architect

Richard Meier & Partners, Los Angeles

Photographs

John E. Linden/Arcaid