Testing in readiness for Stations2017
St Stephen Walbrook, designed by
Christopher Wren in 1672, accommodates the first classical dome to have been built in England and was his prototype for the dome of
St Paul’s Cathedral. Wren designed his churches to be ‘auditories’ in which everyone present could see, hear and feel themselves part of the congregation. For
Stations2017 this architectural relationship provides a physical and interpretive context for the premiere of new work by
Mark Dean and
Lizzi Kew Ross & Co, curated by
Lucy Newman Cleeve.
Professor Kerry Downes wrote:
"In 1672 St. Paul’s
had occupied Wren’s mind for nine years, first
as a matter of restoration and modernisation,
and later as one of totally replacing the old
cathedral. The first design he presented four
years after the Fire, in 1670, was for no more
than a large parish church with a nave and
side galleries, attached to a large domed
vestibule which had as much to do with his
enthusiasm for domes as with the needs of ceremonial assembly. The domed churches
he had seen in France had excited him – for
there were none in England at this time – and
must have engaged his emotions as well as
appealing to his intellectual appreciation of
the geometry of solids and voids. But at this
stage he had not yet come to imagine the
Cathedral as a building which would differ
from parish churches, not merely in size
and scale, but also essentially in kind. This
realisation came to him in 1672, when he
began working on a sequence of designs
that culminated in the ‘Great Model’ still
preserved at St. Paul’s. These were designs
more radical, more European, and more
unified than the ultimate one, in which he
was made to compromise by incorporating
the nave and transepts of a traditional Latin
cross plan. Even so, what we see today inside
St. Paul’s centres round a large dome carried
on eight piers. Both the Great Model and the
final solution show a quality of mind, of
feeling as well as of intellect, for which
St. Stephen’s provided a kind of dress
rehearsal in visual terms. The structural
problems between the two buildings were
quite different, for the dome and vaults of
the Cathedral are all of masonry, whereas
those of St. Stephen’s are, as in all the
parish churches, lath and plaster facings on
elaborate carpentry frames. Wren could
therefore design the Church with much
smaller supports, giving an unparalleled
feeling of lightness of weight and brightness
of illumination. He was able to make the eight
arches equal in span and to introduce light
through all of them, whereas in St. Paul’s the
requirements of supporting the enormously
tall and heavy landmark of the dome meant
that the diagonal arches had to be smaller
and windowless. Even so, at St. Paul’s a ring
of eight equal semicircular arches, coming
down to acute points, is marked on the
masonry by moulding; it is both a survival and
a reminder of the conception Wren had tried
out at Walbrook."
Please book free tickets in advance from:
www.stationsofthecross2017.eventbrite.co.uk and
www.stationsoftheresurrection2017.eventbrite.co.uk.
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Laban Theatre & Lizzi Kew-Ross -
Without Warning.
