Transitioning Natures: Robert Schuller’s Garden Grove Experiment

Antonio Petrov

doi:10.6092/issn.2036-1602/6310

Autori

Antonio Petrov University of Texas San Antonio
Received his doctoral degree in the history and theory of architecture, urbanism, and cultural studies from Harvard University. He is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Texas San Antonio. He is co-founder of the Harvard GSD publication New Geographies, founder and editor-in-chief of DOMA. In the past two years he also served as co-program director of the Expander at Archeworks in Chicago and Caudill visiting critic at Rice University. He recently published in MONU, Manifest, MAS-Context, edited New Geographies Volume 5 “The Mediterranean: Worlds, Regions, Cities, and Architectures,” and a new volume of Archeworks Papers. He taught at Rice University, Harvard University, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Iowa State University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036-1602/6310

Parole chiave:

Territorialità umana, Geografie sacre, Terza natura, Superordinario, Chiesa drive-in, Religione al dettaglio, Robert Schuller, Richard Neutra

Abstract

Attraverso la visione del Garden Grove drive-in walk-in church, del reverendo evangelico Robert H. di Schuller, questo articolo si propone di esemplificare come la sua architettura abbia trasceso le aree geografiche esistenti, a lungo ancorate all’epistemologia di ciò che può essere definito come tradizionale architettura“religiosa”. Questo articolo esamina come Schuller strumentalizzi i più ampi grovigli di contesti politici per modificare o manipolare il soggetto religioso tradizionale. Esso presenta anche come l’esperimento del Garden Grove di Robert Schuller riconcettualizzi il “territorio” come dimensione ideologica in evoluzione; non come una traiettoria o spazio transitorio, ma come terza natura abitabile. La mia sfida analitica stabilisce letture dell’architettura religiosa come manifestazioni interiorizzate. Per fare ciò, pone le seguenti domande: in che modo questa dimensione meta-geografica getti nuova luce su questioni di estetica architettonica (tradizionale) nell’architettura protestante? Quali spazi e quale politica produce? La terza natura ha una sua storia?

Riferimenti bibliografici

Sloterdijk, Peter, and Wieland Hoban. In the World Interior of Capital : For a Philosophical Theory of Globalization. English edition. ed. 2014.

Plato, and C. J. Rowe. Phaedo. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge England ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Sack, Robert David. Human Territoriality : Its Theory and History. Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography. Cambridge Cambridgeshire ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Brenner, Neil. Implosions/Explosions : Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization. Berlin: JOVIS, 2014

Petrov, Antonio. Superordinary! Aesthetic and Material Transformations of Megachurch Architecture in the United States. Cambridge, MA: My Doctoral Dissertation at Harvard University, 2011.

Baudrillard, Jean. America. London ; New York: Verso, 1988.

Petrov, Antonio. “Superordinary: On the Problematique of the Ordinary “. MAS-Context Fall 2014, no. 23 (2014): 8-15.

Latour, Bruno. Politics of Nature : How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, Mass. ; London: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Pinchbeck, Daniel. “Embracing the Archaic: Postmodern Culture and Psychedelic Initiation.” In Psychedelic : Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s, edited by David S. Rubin, 139 p. San Antonio, TX. Cambridge, Mass.: San Antonio Museum of Art ; In association with the MIT Press, 2010.

Hollein, Hans. “Everything Is Architecture.” Discourse on Practice in Architecture Reader (1968): 459461.

Schuller, Robert Harold. Your Church Has Real Possibilities. Glendale, Calif.: G/L Regal Books, 1974.

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic : The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Lavin, Sylvia. “Drive-through Window.” In Form Follows Libido : Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture, 119-30. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004.

Glickman, Lawrence B. Consumer Society in American History: A Reader. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Time-Magazine (1975) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,913788,00.html.]

Jarzombek, Mark. “The Cunning of Architecture’s Reason.” Footprint Autumn 2007 (2007): 31-46.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Aesthetics : Lectures on Fine Art. 2 vols. Oxford ; New York: Clarendon Press, 1998.

Steiner, Uwe. Walter Benjamin : An Introduction to His Work and Thought. Chicago ; London: the University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Smith, James K. A. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? : Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church. Church and Postmodern Culture. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006.

Smith, Matthew Wilson. The Total Work of Art : From Bayreuth to Cyberspace. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Snodgrass, Klyne. Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2008.

Leach, William. Land of Desire : Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993.

May, Elaine Tyler. “The Commodity Gap: Consumerism and the Modern Home.” In Consumer Society in American History : : A Reader, edited by Lawrence B. Glickman, 298-315. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford, OX, UK ; Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell, 1991.