The Church of the Risen Lord is a

Protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

church located in the

University of the Philippines The University of the Philippines (UP; fil, Pamantasan ng Pilipinas Unibersidad ng Pilipinas) is a state university system in the Philippines. It is the country's national university, as mandated by Republic Act No. 9500 (UP Charter of 200 ...

campus in

Diliman Quezon City (, ; fil, Lungsod Quezon ), also known as the City of Quezon and Q.C. (read in Filipino as Kyusi), is the List of cities in the Philippines, most populous city in the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a populatio ...

Quezon City Quezon City (, ; fil, Lungsod Quezon ), also known as the City of Quezon and Q.C. (read in Filipino as Kyusi), is the List of cities in the Philippines, most populous city in the Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a populatio ...

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. It was constructed in the 1950s through the Christian Youth Movement (CYM), a student youth group.

Architecture

The Church of the Risen Lord was designed by Filipino architect

Cesar Concio Cesar Homero Rosales Concio Sr. (1907 – 2003) was an architect who as the first University Architect of the University of the Philippines designed many buildings in the University of the Philippines Diliman campus. He was also one of the arch ...

. The building is located nearby another landmark chapel in the campus, the

Parish of the Holy Sacrifice The Parish of the Holy Sacrifice, also known as the Church of the Holy Sacrifice, is a landmark Catholic chapel on the University of the Philippines Diliman campus. It belongs to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cubao and its present parish priest ...

, designed by

Leandro Locsin Leandro V. Locsin (August 15, 1928 – November 15, 1994) was a Filipino architect, artist, and interior designer known for his use of concrete, floating volume and simplistic design in his various projects. An avid collector, he was fond of m ...

. The structure was proclaimed in the 1950's as "an engineering masterpiece with its double parabola". The chapel is saddle-shaped – a hyperbolic paraboloid with flat ends. The lower slopes of the vaulted wall were punctured by windows and vertical louvers at both sides of the longitudinal elevation. The glass-clad façade has an opening defined by a smaller arch that supported a cantilevered porte-cochere. This entrance directly led to the processional nave, terminating the vision at the altar. Just above the entrance, a choir loft could be ascended via a circular winding stair. It is one of the few churches that is modernly designed and lacks iconographic religious references.

Criticism

In a 1957 article of the

Sunday Times Magazine ''The Sunday Times Magazine'' is a magazine included with ''The Sunday Times''. In 1962 it became the first colour supplement to be published as a supplement to a UK newspaper, and its arrival "broke the mould of weekend newspaper publishing". ...

entitled “The Ugly City”, architectural critic I.V. Mallari identified and lambasted specimens of modern architecture in Manila as miniaturized facsimiles of modern architecture abroad. His enumeration included Concio's chapel in Diliman which he claimed to have been drawn from a chapel in

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had ...

. Filipino architectural historian Gerard Lico deemed the claim "too hasty and lacked the value of historical explication to be the sole basis of disputing the church's conceptual originality".

References

* {{commonscat-inline Churches in Quezon City