Architect’s Design Updates Traditional Cathedral Plan

Tucked into a barren room in the archdiocese’s temporary offices on Wilshire Boulevard, the latest model for the new $50-million Roman Catholic cathedral proposed for downtown Los Angeles gives the first clear image of what Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo’s design will look like.

Although plans for the new cathedral will not be final until early fall, this second preliminary model for Our Lady of the Angels revealed Tuesday shows a scheme that is both old and new, combining a historical regional mission influence with a radically modern reconfiguration of the traditional cathedral plan. Construction is scheduled to begin in September on a former county-owned parking lot that is bounded by the Hollywood Freeway, Grand Avenue and Temple and Hill streets.

Unlike the earthquake-damaged St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, the former archdiocesan seat that now sits abandoned half a mile away, the new scheme is less an urban church than a rethinking of a Spanish mission complex: The block-long scheme is cut in two by a three-acre, semipublic plaza. On Grand Avenue, a massive 43,000-square-foot concrete cathedral will dominate, standing diagonally across from the Music Center. At the same end of the site, a 120-foot bell tower and meditation garden will overlook the nearby 101 and 110 freeways.

Across the plaza, the cardinal’s residence, offices and a meeting center will form a tight urban edge around twin courtyards. Covered arcades will run along the edges of the site, from Hill Street to Grand Avenue, completing the quadrangle. The architect’s goal is to create an aura of monastic seclusion, a spiritual fortress amid the urban chaos.

But despite its mission references, the complex is a response to its freeway-bound context. Prodded by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Moneo conceived the bell tower as a spiritual beacon. Visitors will park in a multilevel, underground garage. From there they will walk up a grand stair--still undesigned--to the enclosed plaza.

Blank facades of the cardinal’s residence and the rectory will orient visitors toward the first real view of the cathedral’s architecture. Long, low steps lead gently up the slope toward the building.

Rather than immediately leading the visitor into the church, Moneo’s design is reversed, with the altar end serving as the building’s principal facade. To enter, one has to move along the side of the building to reach what would normally be the entrance. Above the altar stands a giant cross-shaped window marking the importance of the location.

By turning the church around, Moneo is reinventing traditional church layout. In his most striking invention, Moneo’s cathedral draws its congregation slowly into the building.

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Visitors approach the cathedral along the south arcade, entering the main ambulatory and passing by the side chapels before doubling back to finally face the altar. Once inside, only the baptistery, nave and altar are on axis. The rest of the design is slightly asymmetrical, as if the space was held delicately off-balance.

By deciding to move circulation outside the main space, creating a system of parallel walls, Moneo is able to nearly completely reinvent the conventional liturgical organization of the church. Chapels that line the main worship space face outward, toward the ambulatory, instead of encroaching on the main nave and concentrating the focus on the altar. Openings between the chapels allow visitors to glimpse the main cathedral space as they enter. Each chapel becomes a private meditation sanctuary and the central worship space is undisturbed.

Along the northern flank, a secondary ambulatory gives access to the chapels on the other side of the nave. There, the exterior of the church is glass and the outward-facing chapels overlook the meditation garden and the bell tower. By visually connecting them to the landscape, they become wonderfully contemplative.

Above the chapels, Moneo uses his double-wall system to filter light into the various spaces. The exterior wall will become an enormous stained-glass plane. Inside, the interior wall is split horizontally: Light will filter into the chapels from below and into the main worship space from a dramatic clerestory above. The church itself will become a series of filters for light, people and the spirit.

The references to the Spanish Mission style may seem an apt choice for the Spanish-born Moneo, who is known for a conservative brand of Modernism that often looks to the past for inspiration. But Moneo’s new cathedral design is relentlessly modern.

Some questions still remain--most having to do with the complex’s connection to the urban context. So far the principal entry to the site is via the garage--an apt plan for a city that is dominated by freeways, but one that also exaggerates the sense of an island floating aloof from the life of the city. The fault may lie with the choice of site, which was made by both the architect and Mahony after an extensive search.

But many of these issues can be solved during the fine-tuning of the design. Their success will depend on how open the arcade is to the street, how accessible the plaza is to the public. Moneo is also contemplating a secondary entry into the cathedral from Grand Avenue. Both would make the site more permeable, and more embracing of the public without threatening its sense of sanctuary.