Meditation Room Windows, Dallas, TX
Owner:
Learning & Cultural Arts Center/C.C. Young, Dallas, TX
Architect:
Carlo Salvador, AIA/Perkins Eastman Architects PC, Chicago
Main Window: 10’-5” w by 15’-2” ht
Narrow Windows: 1’-2” w by 15’-2” ht
Entry Door Windows: 1’-1” w by 4’-11” ht
German and French mouthblown glass, domestic rolled glass, German hand-pressed lenses, lead and solder.
OVERVIEW: As a non-denominational Chapel, the design of its stained glass is based on the universal symbolism of light and enlightenment while acknowledging the Learning and Cultural Arts Center’s Body-Mind-Spirit theme. The glass palette is primarily German and French mouthblown glass with their watercolor-like gradations from variations of thickness within each sheet of glass. The lighter colors also exhibit a crystalline transparency allowing views out to the sculpture, landscape and sky. The darker, more saturated color in the lower areas create a sense of privacy. The more saturated color represents the corporal world while the more achromatic areas symbolize a higher spiritual plane.
The small lenses punctuating the stained glass are clear German lenses. These hand-pressed, fire-polished lenses add interest and sparkle and contain tiny, inverted versions of the view outside.
ENTRY DOORS: As visitors approach, the Entry Door windows announce the Chapel within this otherwise secular building. These two windows anticipate the stained glass in the Chapel beyond. The three Narrow Windows can be seen through the door lites creating an interesting 3-dimensional effect. The doors contain a more literal expression of the subtle “drapery” imagery in the other stained glass beyond. Transparent glasses in the door allow visitors to see each other while entering and exiting.
NARROW WINDOWS: The three Narrow Windows are seen directly opposite of the Entry Doors and colorfully greet visitors to the Chapel as well as direct one’s gaze to the Main Window. The physical world of the body is represented by saturated color. The animated, wafting, drapery-like ribbons symbolize our striving and the struggle of life in general as Body and Spirit overlap in Mind. Brighter glasses in the upper part of each window anticipate the Christ’s resurrection in the Main Window.
MAIN WINDOW: In the lower sections of this window warm saturated color symbolizes our corporal lives while cool greens and blue greens echo the landscape in the courtyard beyond. As in the Narrow Windows, wafting, scrolling ribbons weave into and out of sight representing Mind as our worldly Bodies strive toward Spirit and Light. As one’s gaze moves upward toward enlightenment, the glass palette quickly shifts to bright, colorless German and French antique glasses as well as clear plate glass thereby affording a view to the reassuring Corpus of Christ seen rising outside in Jim Cinquemani’s powerful steel sculpture. Ripples emanating from the Body of Christ enframe the Corpus with a feeling of resurrection and ascension as they radiate outward back into the three Narrow Windows. Clear German lenses sparkle downward as God’s gifts rain down among us. In the window’s upper left corner where direct sun enters the window only during summer months, a single beveled lead crystal projects tiny spectra into the chapel during midsummer.
