Harbourfront Church

ARCH 3017
Critic: David Lieberman

This modern Anglican Church acts as a vehicle for transformation and transcendence. The traditional Anglican liturgy combines common and precious materials: bread and wine to symbolize Christ’s sacrifice, immersion in water to signify death and rebirth, ashes to symbolize mortality and rings of precious metal as signs of marital fidelity. This building uses both the form and the tectonics of wood clinker built ships to recall and reinforce the ancient image of the Church as a ship, dating back to the Old Testament story of Noah; a vessel that both shelters the faithful and delivers them to new life. In Anglican theology one enters the church through the waters of baptism; one enters this church by descending a flight of stairs, leading below the surface of Lake Ontario into a subterranean space (the church hall but also a metaphorical “crypt”). We then ascend into a warm, light-filled sanctuary.