City of Angels: Rafael Moneo's new cathedral for Los Angeles affirms and reinterprets the Catholic balancing act between the physical and the divine

Architectural Review, The, March, 2003 by Barbara Lamprecht

Though the walled complex is permeable, it firmly defines the visitor's scope. From the street, you move through a long, broad opening in the carillon wall with its 36 bells. Behind a fountain rise two swathes of steps. They are oriented either to the cathedral and the sharply angled, gorgeously finished campanile or to the plaza with olive trees and other symbolic plants. To the east are a conference/meeting/gift shop centre and a clergy residence. These two casualties of reduced budgets are inferior in both appearance and finish to the cathedral, but they do create a strong civic edge along busy Hill Street.

Parishioners walk west through Robert Graham's 25-ton bronze doors crowned by a gigantic figure of the Madonna surrounded by a huge halo of gold gilt. The doors include images ranging from Native American to Tai Chi; the Madonna's 'eyes, lips and nose convey Asian, African and Caucasian features' and her long hair is braided in rural Latina tradition, all to androgynous effect. In a pre-literate society, the narratives enshrining doors, openings and columns were rich, clear messages laced with nuance and humour. (Moneo has quoted Victor Hugo as saying that books killed cathedral architecture.) Here, the messages are blurred and then reduced to cartoons of political correctness, perhaps addressing another order of cultural illiteracy. In any case, they undermine the strength of the architects' vision. As does the cathedra [the bishop's chair]. With its multiple woods and craftsman aesthetic, it does not set up a dialectic between forms but rather feels alien. In contrast, the cherry pews, designed by the Moneo /Daly team, resonate quietly with the design intent.

Beyond the doors, there is not the expected narthex but a broad, gently rising ambulatory that flanks the nave. Because of the angled walls, as you move toward the back there are sudden vertical glimpses of the nave and even of the north ambulatory beyond, similar to walking through a medieval town and seeing slices of a cathedral through narrow streets. In the ambulatory, as the word suggests, it's all about moving. But it is the nave that matters, and it is Moneo's master stroke. The nave is about being. By reversing the orientation of the chapels to face the ambulatory, where noise is more frequent, he allows the worshipper to focus on the altar. The change, somewhat like exposing part of the belly of the nave -- a spatial move -- conspires to order temporally and ennoble the procession of both laity and clergy as each chapel, daylit from mysterious sources above, invites repose. The frequent openings to the nave also address the human condition of being a tourist, tending a baby, or making your way in and out of the church, both physically and spiritually. An asymmetrically placed seventeenth-century reredos terminating the ambulatory signals a reverse in direction and you turn to face the airy largesse of the 333ft (101 m) long nave. The path to the open altar area, well below the floor levels of the side ambulatories, leads downward, so that pews around the altar are higher, subverting the convention of an elevated chancel segregated from the laity.