Renowned Architect Praises Rohn & Associates’ Liturgical Design for New Houston Co-Cathedral

We were thrilled to learn that our liturgical design work at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, TX, caught the attention of renowned architecture professor Dr. Nikos Salingaros, who praised our innovation in an Italian architecture magazine. We have worked with many talented artisans from Italy on countless projects over the years and are pleased to see their craftsmanship in the United States now recognized and celebrated back in Italy. As Dr. Salingaros wrote in Chiesa Oggi (Issue 87):

"An intelligent and sensitive architect can use them in a contemporary context with great success, and that is what has been achieved here. Tried-and-true methods are used to design a building that is solid on tradition, reassuring in presenting the Church of tradition to the faithful.

The Houston Cathedral has an unexpectedly non-traditional aspect when examined more closely. It feels like a building from the Vienna Secession: rich materials, yes, but also planes that are not filled in, and abstraction in its volumes. This is not a traditional building by far. It is not a Cathedral that any of my friends who design traditional churches would have built. They would have stuck to more of a traditional style in all the details (with magnificent results by the way). Here, instead the architects have achieved a harmonious result by pushing traditional typologies and ornamentation as far toward modernism as is possible to go without losing everything. We are reminded of the Vienna Secession and Art Deco, that glorious flowering of innovative architecture just before architects eliminated every vestige of tradition (and most of the architectural rules that touch us in a healing manner). I am forced to revise my initial hasty opinion and declare this building highly innovative. The innovation is employed to give a very positive impression: this is the reason the building looks comfortable; it looks traditional even when it is actually not. I am impressed by the result and warn other observers not to be taken in by a superficial judgment. 

Harmonious ornamentation achieved through multiple symmetries nourishes our senses and creates in us a healing state. As human beings, we always anthropomorphize our gods, and expect that they share our own higher pleasures. For this reason, our love of God moves us to ornament the place where we worship, and to do so in a totally selfless manner. We wish to create an environment of maximal transcendent pleasure using an understanding that arises from our own physical experience.

Most important, I see a fundamental humility in the Houston Cathedral, quite a feat expressed in such a large and imposing building, and in my mind, this modesty is closer to the early Church doctrine." 

We’re honored by this thoughtful recognition and grateful for the opportunity to continue contributing to the living tradition of sacred architecture.

Photos by Aker/Zvonkovic Photography. All rights reserved.