It serves as an important place of pilgrimage and is deeply woven with the Balinese mythology. One result of the mission civilisatrice was that Favier’s designs consciously represented an overall French caractère, or innate “Frenchness” in Catholic church design, in the intellectual vein of the Beaux Arts tradition. Sacred Architecture explores the manipulation of holy space by architects and artisans. Anthony E. Clark and Amanda C. Roth Clark. Photo: Anthony & Amanda Clark Collection, Spokane, Washington. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989), 111–12. Another example of a post-Maoist church reconstruction in Shanxi is the pilgrimage Portiuncula Church at Bansishan, north of the provincial capital city of Taiyuan, demolished in 1966 by the Red Guards. Using brick shipped to China from France, construction for Tianjin’s Romanesque Revival building was begun in 1913, and by 1917 the French Lazarist, Bishop Paul-Marie Dumond, C.M. Pura Tanah Lot sits upon a rock offshore of Bali, as part of a chain of seven sea temples established along the southwestern coast. Photo: Anthony & Amanda Clark Collection, Spokane, Washington. Photo: Anthony & Amanda Clark Collection, Spokane, Washington. 580–662) said of church architecture, “it reestablishes what had been in paradise and what will be in the Kingdom of God.”31. It remains his most famous work in China today. When most people think of British churches, the iconic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral or the soaring arches of Westminster Abbey probably come to mind. 1 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Getty Images. A problem that Western architects confronted in China’s early tradition of church architecture was the question of cultural style. In a series of photographs taken during the attack, Red Guards are seen destroying the high altar, which had been removed to the main steps of the church, and the three green domes were demolished. The new structure had to accommodate three thousand people in attendance at each of the three Sunday Masses, it had to somehow reflect the Catholic connection to the Pope in Rome, and it had to satisfy the local expectation of what a “Catholic church should look like.” The outcome of these requirements is what Denis McNamara calls a massive “Eclectic Revival” church with an unusually long nave; the façade is Gothic Revival while the sanctuary is crowned with an enormous Baroque dome modeled after the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.19. The outcome of this ideal was his North Church, built in Gothic Revival style and boasting an elaborate façade and a richly ornamented Gothic interior.9 One notable characteristic of Favier’s design, however, was that he supplemented the church grounds with the placement of two Chinese-style pavilions (tingzi 停子) that flank the façade. Copyright © 2021 Sacred Architecture Journal. In the footsteps of missionary architects such as Moerloose and Favier, other Western architects designed churches in China after the ideals of Augustus Pugin, John Ruskin, and the exponent of French Gothic Revival, Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879). With funds provided by Napoleon III (1808–1873), the cathedral church was designed by Léon Vautrin (1820–1884) with a monumental façade modeled after Paris’s famous Basilique Sainte-Clotilde. type of architecture that incorporates classic architectural elements of a ‘mother country’ in buildings or structures in territories overseas People . With the exception of this one example, all church buildings discussed here were envisioned and designed in China, then constructed by local laborers. 5 Moerloose’s church commissions in China favored a Gothic style for its organic appropriateness with Catholic … It was reopened as a Catholic church in 1979, and the spires were rebuilt according to Dowdall’s original vision in 1980. Should Christian churches in China recall the Western tastes of the European missionaries, or should church structures follow purely Chinese forms of sacred architecture, forms that were already represented in Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist shrines and temples? 6 Coomans and Luo, 239. From a Thai Buddhist temple with Hello Kitty engravings to a Finnish church carved out of granite, here are thirteen of the most amazing religious buildings around the world. The site is sacred to both Judaism and Islam; in Jewish tradition it is said to be the spot where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac,and in Islamic tradition it is held to be the site of Muhammad’s ascent to heaven. David Macaulay’s writing and videos Cathedral and Mosque, while written for children, can be wonderful tools for self-study or to share with students. Carving a place of quietude and magnificence out of a cityscape, the Rock Church in Helsinki was built by two brothers in 1969. At present the Portiuncula Church at Bansishan hosts annual pilgrimages each August, with approximately twelve thousand Catholic pilgrims visiting the church for Mass and Confessions per day; new guesthouses are being built to accommodate the rising number of visitors.