The Chapel of St. Ignatius Book

Seattle is widely seen as a hip, cutting-edge city, yet--the Space Needle aside--its architecture has tended toward the conservative. That could be changing, with several promising projects currently under way, including a music museum designed by Frank Gehry and one completed building of considerable poetry. The latter, Steven Holl's St. Ignatius Chapel at Seattle University, is the subject of a monograph that emphasizes its mystical aspects, which Holl links to the life of Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order. This complex little building is a glowing meditation on mysteries of light and color, and the book deepens those mysteries more than it clarifies them. The color photos are gorgeous but usually abstract and unidentified, and Holl's text is short and metaphorical. The chapel bears strong influences of such early modern architects as R.M. Schindler, Alvar Aalto, and especially of Le Corbusier, in the form of his pilgrimage Chapel at Ronchamp. Yet it is also Holl's personal creation, marrying awkwardness and grace in a memorable manner. At some point, a third-party book will examine these influences and the complex history of how this building, which involved great collaboration and compromise that goes unmentioned here, came into being. Until then, this visually evocative package will give a taste of the subtle pleasures that can only be fully experienced by visiting the building. The softly reproduced photos are artful, but the text is arguably set too small to read comfortably, and the scarce captions are smaller still. --John Pastier Read More