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Circus Lumens

Part 2 Project 2009
Tarek Shamma
 Architectural Association London | UK
Circus Lumens approaches the design of an iconic space through an architecture which does not use images. Rather it creates an architecture that engages with the visitors’ senses, and elicits a visual pilgrimage, through impressions of light, and texture. Situated in the heart of Cairo, this church simultaneously ties into the modern city. Through its position on the Nile and its massive construction of the pharaonic material alabaster, it forms a lineage with the ancient places of worship along the length of the river.
The circle is the geometrical element underlying all of the church’s spaces and is used to formally recompose the traditional 14 point pilgrimage of the Way of The Cross. The vehicle for reconstitution is a three point circle, connecting three specific points, and creating a series of seven visual pilgrimage arcs.
These seven ambits create a space that follows a medieval theological hierarchy defined by texture and the quality of light they emit. The alabaster blocks retain at a large scale both compressive qualities (for construction), and translucent qualities (for effect), which are accentuated when thinned, and hide the building’s structural cable when thickened. The circle also defines the shaping of the alabaster, which when milled, allows for a texture that charts the path of, and responds to, different types of light.
The top of the space is defined by the three Divine Arcs (Main, Cross, Virgin) which allow for the only direct light into the space, and pull the pilgrims’ eyes to the heavens. The middle is constructed by the two Corporeal Arcs (People, Women), creating a glowing refracted light through the articulated texture. The polished base is created by two Base Arcs (Falls, Humiliation) that reflect light, taking the pilgrims into Church’s depth, and then from the darkness re-ascend into the light.
Circus Lumens highlights the polemic of Church building in Egypt. It proposes an iconic approach to the design of divine space, an approach that no longer focuses on symbols to convey holy allegory, but rather subsumes the task of figuration into the disposition of the structure, and the architecture, itself.
Tarek Shamma

THE CHURCH
This project is an incredibly rigorous and serious study of form, space and program. Circus Lumens, as the project is titled, takes as its point of departure the traditional conditions of pilgrimage, ie the reading of a pictorial narrative along a traveled route, and turns it into something both more abstract and strangely intimate. The pictorial narrative is translated into sweeping material textures carved into the surface of the church (in this case a marble onyx) illuminated only by the light entering through cuts in the surface and the translucent parts of the marble; creating an ethereal space.

MATERIAL & FABRICATION
Alongside the formal proposal, the student produced an exemplary technical study exploring the various potentials and complications inherent in using marble as a construction material for a project this large and formally complex. The models and drawings were used to work through the series of challenges posed by the form and the material – constraints of material size and milling, fastening, thickness, load distribution and illumination. The collection of models eventually became design projects in themselves as each aspect of the church was developed. The seemingly smooth and continuous surface belies the structural gymnastics needed to support such a complex geometry.

SPATIALITY & IMAGE
As tutors, one of our key interests in seeing this work unfold was how the story of such precise material, formal and technical explorations could be told through a compelling project narrative. The selective use of images highlight the important moments and spatial qualities of the church while conveying aspects of its use and inhabitation. The images communicate the interchange of darkness and light throughout the interior alongside the varying marble articulation across the space – some of them so accurately represented, one wants to reach out and touch these surfaces.

Tutor(s)
Ms Natasha Sandmeier
Ms Monia De Marchi
2009
The icon and iconic are inherent to the church which is ritualistic and symbolic. Circus Lumens tells the Christian story through a series pilgrimage routs by relying on light and texture, in essence creating an iconic reading of a space without image.
It was essential to explore the formal aspects of the project through models. Rapid Prototyping was important as well as poignant in testing the overall form, material as well as the different types of light that could be attained.
Cairo is an old and important city in the history of Christianity. Circus Lumens is situated on the East bank of the River Nile in the heart of Cairo. The Church has absorbed a lot of the Pharaonic rights into its mystery, and the site references that.
Many religious monuments were built on the banks of the Nile because the stone used to construct them was quarried from the south of Egypt and floated up the Nile on barges much like the Alabaster that would be used to construct Circus Lumens
This Church of visual pilgrimage conveys the sense of the sublime through a visual pilgrimage. A series of seven pilgrimage routs which connect three of the traditional 14 stations to create short thematic trajectories told through light and texture.
The separate elements that define the space would be built separately on half frames and brought together on site. Three half frames define a ‘shell’ which is comprised of milled blocks of Alabaster held in place by a series of post tensioned cables.
The arc that defines the visual trajectory also defines the texture on the profile of one edge of a ‘shell’. The directionality of the mesh becomes used for the purpose of allowing the light and texture defined by the story arch to flow along.
The Circle defines the plan and space at every scale from the varying topography, to the steps as well as the texture of the detail. The 14 stations that define the periphery become obfuscated by the rotation and orbit of the pilgrimage arcs.
It is left to the pilgrim, be he initiated into the Christian faith or not to discover the space for himself. No matter how the building is read, it will be read through light and texture as they are what punctuate the space.
The unrolled drawing charts the relationships between the shells, their texture and orientation. The texture of the stone always defines the story arc. It connects the three points and teats the light type of each very specifically.
The pilgrim would experience the church through light and texture, with which he would be able to trace the charted trajectories. From the top down, the light is most intense under the domed area and filters down until it gets dark at the lower level.
Upon entering the Church, the pilgrim is faced with the Eastern wall which attracts him to it. Because of the scale, the texture is invisible but the diffused light through the translucent alabaster beckons.
The lower plane is defined by the two low arcs, those of falls and humiliation and they are the beginning and end of every ceremony. The Priests would proceed out of the vestry which is below ground and thus dark and ascend into the light.
To reach the eastern wall another flight of steps is encountered. This one hides the confessional within the pochée of the wall much like baroque and rococo churches would create on the periphery of the main space through the materiality of the wall.
Circus Lumens is a church designed entirely by the circle. The simply intricate space is defined by a series of pilgrimage routs that evoke the most prominent stories of Christ’s passion, through the invocation of the senses via form, light and texture.
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