Angels in the Architecture

By Micah Hogan, Seminarian at Nashotah House 

House VI in Cornwall, CN by Peter Eisenman (Wikimedia Commons)

“I’ve always wanted to be a Christian.”

This remark by the Harvard architect Peter Eisenman, uttered casually in his famous debate with the Berkeley architect Christopher Alexander, is telling. In the course of the debate, Eisenman argues for a deconstructionist architecture as an expression of modern culture’s fundamental anxiety:

I am not preaching disharmony. I am suggesting that disharmony might be part of the cosmology that we exist in. I am not saying right or wrong. My children live with an unconscious fear that they may not live out their natural lives. I am not saying that fear is good. I am trying to find a way to deal with that anxiety . . . I do not believe that the way to go, as you suggest, is to put up structures to make people feel comfortable, to preclude that anxiety. What is a person to do if he cannot react against anxiety or see it pictured in his life? . . . What I'm suggesting is that if we make people so comfortable in these nice little structures of yours, that we might lull them into thinking that everything's all right, Jack, which it isn't. And so the role of art or architecture might be just to remind people that everything wasn't all right. And I'm not convinced, by the way, that it is all right.

There is something, it seems, deeply Christian about Eisenman’s concerns. The cross, after all, exposes the principalities and powers for what they are: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame [ἐδειγμάτισεν; to exhibit] by triumphing over them in him [ἐν αὐτῷ or “by it (the cross)”] (Col. 2:15). It was on the cross that the centurion saw the Son of God for what he was (Mk. 15:39). One might say that Eisenman’s architecture aids in just this exposing, that his architecture is “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” by continuing and extending Christ’s exposé of the demonic powers through space and time (Col. 1:24). 

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe by Peter Eisenman (Wikimedia Commons)

We could thus describe Eisenman’s as an architecture of Lent. Eisenman’s architecture represents the figurative sign of the cross which adorns the prayers of the faithful, the repetition of the once-for-all exposure for the principalities and powers. Everything indeed is not all right, and Eisenman forces us to confront this, which is why he was the ideal architect to design the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe.

It is in just this sense that Eisenman’s interlocutor, Christopher Alexander, misreads Eisenman’s work. “Don't you think there is enough anxiety at present?” Alexander asks, “Do you really think we need to manufacture more anxiety in the form of buildings?” For, contrary to Alexander’s accusation, the animation of Eisenman’s architecture is not addition but adumbration. Eisenman’s architecture does not add to but instead exposes anxiety. In this sense Eisenman’s aims, then, are deeply prophetic and deeply Christian.

Yet while Eisenman’s aims are properly Christian, his architecture is only almost Christian. Like Peter Eisenman the person, Peter Eisenman’s architecture betrays the deep human longing of the cross for the empty tomb. Eisenman, after all, claims that his architecture is a figure of anxiety for the sake of the anxious, an act, if not of atonement (at-one-ment), then at least of  deep sympathy between the anxious person and ultimate reality. Eisenman’s architecture, we might say, functions as a scapegoat of anxiety. Yet, like the scapegoat, Eisenman’s architecture must be let go. It must be walked past. It must be released far from the people on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, to find its home with Azazel, the angel of death (Lev. 16). 

The cross is not a static terminus. The moment of Christ’s incarnate horror cannot be read in abstraction from its purpose, destination, and defining principle of resurrection. It is resurrection, not the cross, which is, in T.S. Eliot’s phrase, “the still point of the turning world.” The manner of the exposure of the principalities and powers, after all, occurs in Christ’s act of triumphing (θριαμβεύσας), through his victorious and resurrected procession through the heavens, leading captivity captive (Eph. 4:8). While the centurion recognizes Christ on the cross, it is not until Christ has ascended and sent the Spirit that Cornelius the centurion receives the “good news of peace through Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:36). 

And in this still moment of resurrection we find the angelic hosts divided, awaiting judgment by the saints in glory (1 Cor. 6:3). There are those that are exposed and those that witness to the exposure. The message of Christ’s peace is attested to by angels, both by those in the empty tomb (Mk 16:5), and by the one which tells Cornelius to expect Peter (Acts 10:3). The angel thus functions as a protevangelium, as forerunners to the Gospel, the unconditional promise.  Indeed, it is because these certain elemental spirits prepare for witness to God’s unconditional promise in Christ Jesus that they are called angels (ἄγγελοι), messengers. 

It is just this angelic ministry, the proclamation of the empty tomb and the promise of further tidings of peace, that architecture might have the audacity to join. Architecture cannot preach the gospel necessarily, but it can prepare for peace, adumbrating the dwelling place of God with man (Rev. 21:3). Christopher Alexander, Eisenman’s interlocutor, shows that large windows can sing with the voice of the angels, pitched roofs can cause our souls to leap with joy. In the face of the anxiety of the world it can proclaim a peace beyond understanding, a peace which exposes the logic of the demonic, a peace on earth and a goodwill toward men. 

The Sala House by Christopher Alexander (Wikimedia Commons)

While Alexander may think that his understanding of architecture cancels Eisenman’s (“Don't you think there is enough anxiety at present?”) it is in fact its crescendo, its telos which proleptically grants it legitimacy. Eisenman’s architecture is simply demonic without the promise of Alexander, and Alexander’s architecture has no narrative context without Eisenman’s. And it is just here that we find for architecture its divided vocation. Eisenman’s architecture is a necessary sign-post on our journey, the old haunted house we must daily pass, but it is by no means where we can live. We cannot dwell in the exposure of demons without the angelic proclamation of peace. That is our proper home. Let Eisenman build our memorials; that is his glory. Let him remind us that death is ugly and demonic. But by all means, let Alexander build our homes. Let him tell us with the angels that life and love are real and that Christ is Lord of all.

St. Michael and all angels, pray for us. 

Micah Hogan is a residential Middler and sacristan at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, pursuing his MDiv as a postulant for holy orders in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Micah fell in love with the “elvishness” of the Anglican tradition during his first Mass his freshman year of college and has never looked back. He was confirmed a year later and began to discern a call to Holy Orders. He is a perpetual member of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University (Class of 2019), where he studied Theology and Great Books, in addition to spending a semester abroad studying philosophical theology at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Micah is primarily interested in the doctrines of creation and sexuality, the practices of hospitality, and the writing of poetry. His accomplishments include serving as theology editor for The PQ Review and co-hosting the infamous Polycarp Pajama Party of 2016.