Althouse: Exterior.

April 18, 2018

Exterior.

The interior view, with more explanation is here.

46 comments:

tcrosse said...: Karlsplatz Metro; 4/18/18, 5:49 PM
buwaya said...: I've seen uglier churches. Much uglier. Less obviously "designed" to display cleverness.

A typically shabby little chapel in a provincial town.
There are hundreds or thousands like this.

Shabby Chapel

But none without a cross somewhere on top. Or inside.

Again, I wonder.; 4/18/18, 5:51 PM
MayBee said...: I can't decide if I really like it, or if I really do not. But I like where his heart is (was).; 4/18/18, 5:53 PM
FleetUSA said...: Reminds me of the Corbusier chapel in Ronchamp, France

http://www.collinenotredameduhaut.com/; 4/18/18, 5:54 PM
Michael K said...: It resembles the chapel at Hougoumont chapel at Waterloo. Somewhere I have a photo of the interior.

That was a walled farm that was the focus of Napoleon's attack on Wellington. Napoleon's brother Joseph commanded his left and 12,000 French soldiers died there in the battle.

The chapel survived.; 4/18/18, 5:56 PM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/18/18, 5:56 PM
buwaya said...: Hogoumont Chapel

Its got a cross on it.; 4/18/18, 6:02 PM
Rabel said...: Lawn needs work.; 4/18/18, 6:16 PM
n.n said...: It resembles a silo. The culmination of decades of Planning. Where is the ingress and egress?; 4/18/18, 6:20 PM
Fabi said...: Love it.; 4/18/18, 6:26 PM
Ralph L said...: What a strikingly beautiful lamppost!; 4/18/18, 6:35 PM
Ralph L said...: Karlsplatz Metro

It's the box that came in.; 4/18/18, 6:38 PM
D. said...: concrete mailboxes; 4/18/18, 6:44 PM
Bill Peschel said...: It's a beautiful bomb shelter. I'd like to criticize it, but I've seen uglier churches. Especially those that look like u-store-it warehouses.

Simplicity does have its virtues.; 4/18/18, 6:50 PM
Rabel said...: It's inspirational.; 4/18/18, 6:54 PM
Aggie said...: What the hell is a cruciform dimensional igloo doing in Texas? Is this a McIgloo? A Cartesian Mailbox? I note the very stylish rainbow theme to the stained glass, how very metro-omni-sexually inclusive. Fits right in at UT. I'll take the Rothko chapel any day of the week and give this a pass for BBQ instead.; 4/18/18, 7:14 PM
Emil Blatz said...: The nicest public restrooms in Austin!; 4/18/18, 7:15 PM
Christopher said...: Part waste recycling facility, part reactor containment vessel.

It all depends what you're going for.; 4/18/18, 7:31 PM
D. said...: a lawsuit is needed. this guy put a cross on public property!; 4/18/18, 7:36 PM
Anonymous said...: Really nice pre-fab building.; 4/18/18, 8:07 PM
john said...: Why do I see Woody Allen, a much younger Woody Allen, dressed as a squash and running out of that building flapping his arms?; 4/18/18, 8:10 PM
wildswan said...: "Inspired" by Lego - though Lego is much better.; 4/18/18, 8:17 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: I like it. I'm an atheist, but I like it.; 4/18/18, 8:21 PM
chickelit said...: Reminds me of a Fun Factory. What do they extrude?; 4/18/18, 8:42 PM
rhhardin said...: Top Japanese official steps down after accusations of making suggestive sexual remarks to female reporters, reports Radio Japan.

#WatashiMo; 4/18/18, 8:52 PM
wwww said...: Nice windows, but it's not a church. A church isn't a building.; 4/18/18, 8:57 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: I think it sucks; 4/18/18, 9:08 PM
grackle said...: I rarely go to church but if I did I would never pick something like this, which seems boring, artificial and sterile to my eyes.

I’m guessing Althouse didn’t make it to San Antonio. If not, too bad, because San Antonio is both more interesting and more fun than Austin, which is a phoney, SJW yuppie-filled, auto traffic nightmare. When I was young, Austin was a quaint and quiet hippie-haven where you could easily score a lid of weed on a Sunday afternoon.

And don’t bother with Houston, which is inextinguishable from any other big city, where traffic is even more brutal than Austin and is even more hot and humid.

And it must have been tough going in Texas in April with all those shorts-wearing adult males casually causing Althouse maximum irritation.

People living where Althouse lives, with an average high temp in July of 82F, have no idea of what it’s like to live under an average temp of 95F in July. Add to that the high humidity and usually NO breeze to speak of and you have a land of willing and eager shorts-wearing adult males in the summers. Northern state residents are clueless pussies when it comes to living amid really hot summers.; 4/18/18, 9:28 PM
YoungHegelian said...: "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Church
A Bulwark Never Fah-ah-ah-ling."; 4/18/18, 9:28 PM
Ken B said...: David Hogg has a book deal. Wasn’t he outraged when a sister of one of the victims accused him of exploiting the tragedy?; 4/18/18, 10:01 PM
Ken B said...: It looks precisely nothing like the Hougomont chapel.; 4/18/18, 10:03 PM
D. said...: Yo the dude put a cross on the "public square"! (good for him to eff the sjw). Look from "above" clowns!!11!!; 4/18/18, 10:13 PM
David said...: Part mailbox, part silo, part church. Cool.; 4/19/18, 12:09 AM
Bob said...: Thought that it might be an officially-sanctioned prefab safe space.; 4/19/18, 1:16 AM
the 4chan Guy who reads Althouse said...: I don't know, I'm not like an architect dude or nothing, but the church building in the pictures makes me think of something from a Seventies science-fiction movie, like this is the Hall of State Belief that dudes in silver body suits walk in and out of in the background as, like, John Saxon talks with a chick in a silver mini-skirt.

And there is probably a powerful computer in there that runs things, because God is a computer in a lot of Seventies science-fiction movies, when the computer isn't raping and impregnating a chick and shit like in 'Demon Seed'.

I mean, in 'Logan's Run' a computer runs the city, and gets people to kill other people when they turn thirty, but most people are okay with that because until they are thirty they get to fuck a lot of chicks, it's the future and chicks are pretty loose and like sex and shit.

Back then there was always a Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, and the Wizard was a super-computer that probably couldn't do half the stuff an iPhone does now, so we already are kind of in the future, really. And it looks like we might be getting sex robots, so the silver body suits are getting closer.

Of course, the whole 'Wizard of Oz' thing was pointed out in another Seventies' science-fiction film, 'Zardoz.' Because Zardoz is a giant angry stone head that floats around and spits out guns to the Exterminators so that they can kill the Brutals, and Sean Connery is wearing a red diaper and gun belts, so yeah it's fucked up but still pretty fucking cool.

Anyway, Zardoz is run by an Eternal, which are people who don't die so they get real bored and lose interest in sex and shit, and of course these people's lives are run by a super-computer named the Tabernacle, so maybe the computer is, like, Mormon maybe, which I don't quite get.

Anyway, the dude who runs Zardoz got the name from the book 'The wiZARD of OZ', which is kinda freaky if you're stoned. And this ZARD OZ shit pisses Sean Connery off, so shit gets real. Because Sean Connery hasn't lost interest in sex and shit, Sean Connery's got a gun.

So the whole Eternals/Brutals thing sets up a kind of Pajama Boys/Deplorables Morlocks/Eloi thing, I think Marx called this a dialectic but I'm not sure if I'm using the word right, but it sounds cool if I am.

Anyway, in the Seventies future you don't really need a religion because you got computers and shit, which I guess is kinda the future now, and the commandments keep changing because they aren't written in stone anymore, you read them on an iPad tablet. But the Deplorables still got guns, so fuck you Zardoz.

I post my shit here.; 4/19/18, 4:06 AM
Molly said...: I associate myself with MayBee at 5:53 pm, except I do know: I don't like it. Does anyone else see the similarity to WWII surplus airplane hangers? http://www.black-knight-studios.co.uk/mall/blackknightstudioscouk/customerimages/products/l_MMWWAI003.jpg

I lived in Madison, WI in the 1980s and (can anyone confirm or correct?) there was a movie theater in Middleton inside one of these surplus buildings, which was okay (and showed $1 movies?) except really cold in the winter.; 4/19/18, 5:46 AM
Ron said...: If there were a Downfall video of the Nietzschean Death Of God, this would be the Lord's Fuhrerbunker right here....; 4/19/18, 6:24 AM
Paco Wové said...: What Bill P. said. Our Lady of the Bomb Shelter.; 4/19/18, 6:29 AM
Shawn Levasseur said...: the different window arrangements made me think that they were based on ages telephones.

The entry side with the nine rectangle windows it what brought this to mind as it made me think of the touch-tone buttons.

From there, the diamonds arranged in a circle would represent the rotary dial phone, and the circular arrangement of lines looks like a symbol for powering up, or one for trying to get a connection on a smart phone.

The blank wall could represent early phones, phones without visial interfaces, or just a fourth wall where they didn't want windows.; 4/19/18, 6:30 AM
rhhardin said...: If it gets bombed in some future WWII, they won't rebuild it.; 4/19/18, 6:33 AM
William said...: If you want to name your baby Minty or Blue Ivy, this would be the ideal church for the christening. It would also be good for the next Kardashian wedding. It would probably be a little discordant to hold the funeral services for Barbara Bush there though.; 4/19/18, 7:09 AM
Anonymous said...: Eh, I've seen worse. Looks like a mailbox.

There's always something oddly juvenile about these riffs on traditional forms. "Colored blocks romper-room", for example, was not my first reaction to the light effects in Chartres. The effect of the Austin interior might be more interesting, less romper-roomish if experienced in the flesh, though.

The question I always ask of a structure purpose-built for religion is, "Did the people who built you (or re-purposed you, in some cases) believe in God, truly believe in a transcendent reality?" Modern Christian churches, for the most part, say "No". (Or rather, "Don't be silly. Of course not.") There are pre-19th/20th century churches that say "no" - to my hearing, even some 17th-century ones. On the other hand, I've been in small, rather ramshackle structures remodeled into churches at the end of the 20th century, that offer a resounding "yes, absolutely!" to the question.; 4/19/18, 7:37 AM
Fernandinande said...: The "Temple" in the Tokyo sewer system is much spiffier. One can easily imagine the various gods flushing into it.; 4/19/18, 8:41 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Eh, I've seen worse. Looks like a mailbox.

My first thought too.

OR

A fancy German Crematorium; 4/19/18, 9:36 AM
Michael said...: Why does this not have a red metal flag you can flip up, like other mailboxes?; 4/19/18, 9:46 AM
rhhardin said...: Why does this not have a red metal flag you can flip up, like other mailboxes?

The Lake House (2006), but messages to god.; 4/19/18, 11:03 AM