At its zenith, church archi­tec­ture inspired awe, wonder, and fear.  Europe’s great cathe­drals of cen­turies ago sent shiv­ers down parishioners’ spines.  They made church­go­ers feel small, humble, and blessed to coex­ist with such mas­sive structures.  And cathe­drals not-so-subtly implied that these feats would be impos­si­ble with­out divine sanction.

Although many con­tem­po­rary reli­gious build­ings pro­vide beau­ti­ful exam­ples of modern archi­tec­ture, few trig­ger quite the same emo­tive shock that the cathe­drals once did.  Nonethe­less, recent devel­op­ments in archi­tec­ture–most notably the cre­ative use of glass–may present an oppor­tu­nity for a new twist on an old idea.

With this in mind–and with the caveat that I am not an archi­tect–I offer up the fol­low­ing con­cept: A church built on the edge of a steep moun­tain slope with a can­tilevered over­hang and glass floors, walls, and ceil­ings through which con­gre­gants could stare up at the clouds or gaze down into the depths to con­tem­plate awe and fear, Heaven and Hell, and belief and disbelief.  With a tingle in their toes, they would have to trust in God (and/or the archi­tects) to ensure that the translu­cent glass floor would pre­vent them from falling to their deaths: Faith made visceral.

To better illus­trate the idea, here are some rel­e­vant prece­dents: Begin­ning with inspi­ra­tion from the Grand Canyon Skywalk,

using recent inno­va­tions in the archi­tec­tural prop­er­ties of glass,

with orig­i­nal credit to the climb­ing bivouac,

and set in nature like the Thorn­crown Chapel,

a glass-​floored moun­tain over­hang church might look some­thing like this:

(with apolo­gies for the crude­ness of my pho­to­shop­ping and with due credit to the Sal­bu­rua Nature Inter­pre­ta­tion Centre for their build­ing which I’ve pasted into a mod­i­fied Geor­gian landscape).

So what do you think?  Would this be inspir­ing or terrifying?  A sanc­tu­ary of intro­spec­tion or a cham­ber of distraction?  Worthy of weekly atten­dance or only worth a one-​time visit?

If DE read­ers are aware of any other churches like this, please post links below.  If a sim­i­lar struc­ture already exists, it will fur­ther prove that there’s rarely any­thing new under the sun.  On the other hand, if I’ve stum­bled onto some­thing novel, per­haps the con­cept will spark fur­ther ideas from the archi­tec­turally inclined among you.