A man who built his own cathedral | Hacker News Reader

A man who built his own cathedral

theguardian.com

123 pointsCaptainZapp54 comments

Ferdinand Cheval comes to mind who build a palace using pebbles while delivering mail. Astonishing. https://mymodernmet.com/ferdinand-cheval-palais-ideal/

Thanks a lot for bringing it in. Fascinating story.

Also a little bit of this one: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_Castle

I see steel reinforced concrete with the steel exposed in overhead beams. This thing is gonna have to come down.

Good steel reinforced concrete starts deteriorating before a hundred years. It's no material for a cathedral.

> Good steel reinforced concrete starts deteriorating before a hundred years. It's no material for a cathedral.

La Sagrada Familiar uses steel reinforced concrete (though technically it's a minor basilica, not a cathedral)

https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/en/divulgation/construction-...

> technically it's a minor basilica, not a cathedral)

This is a category mistake, no? A cathedral isn't an architectural term, but a designation granted to the central church of a diocese (i.e., the seat of a bishop, hence "cathedra" which means "seat" in Latin). A basilica is both an architectural term and a designation.

I was using both Cathedral and Basilica in the religious designation sense - I was unaware that either word had purely architectural meanings.

The self-correction was somewhat tongue in cheek, as the real mistake would be from the article, calling a homemade Church a cathedral.

Basilica was a Roman public building with a specific shape - a rectangular building with several parallel arcades. Classic Christianity took the shape for their early churches, and later cathedrals and larger churches were built over them maintaining the basic shape (and extending it in the shape of a cross, for symbolism).

But they are true architects and know what are doing, totally different leagues.

The place has a touristic appeal and will be probably exploited for Mensajeros de la Paz (the quickest to see its potential, appear with some money and take the keys), as another similar Christneylands are, but the fact is that no sane architect wanted to be responsible of it.

Everything has to come down eventually, but all else being equal, exposed steel is better for ease of access and maintenance than steel buried in concrete.

Exposed steel connected to the steel in concrete is a recipe for disaster.

Why would you want access to steel that's supposed to be reinforcing concrete? What kind of maintenance do you think is occurring? It's great for water infiltration.

In central america most things are built with cheap cinderblock and concrete and the vast majority of them leave rebar exposed and coming out of the top floor/roof.

I've been told its for tax reasons, something about not needing to pay taxes on a building that is still "under construction"

> (...) but all else being equal, exposed steel is better (...)

No, it's way worse. The outermost concrete layer serves multiple purposes, including corrosion protection and fire resistance.

Exposed rebar can and will start corroding immediately if not covered or treated, and in turn it loses grip and resistance.

It’s even worse than that…

> He piled empty paint cans on top of one another and filled them with concrete to make columns. He bent corrugated iron rods and fed them through slinky-like springs to create the structure for arches. When the columns he built were too short, he filled the gaps with clumps of iron, piling them up like mismatched books to the height of the support beams. He’d then solder them together.

The article states that architects have reviewed and found it to be surprisingly well built. They made some reinforcements. Definitely not a “have to come down” situation according to experts

This reminds me of Jaimie Mantzel, a skilled engineer and builder who is clearly a nonconformist, and sometimes I feel like I'm detecting hints of madness (or enlightenment that I am unable to grasp) in his videos. The man has built remarkable structures, like his Adventure Builder Cathedral, using ingenuity and the most basic of tools:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgt0UFJA6PU

I love his homemade fiberglass solar powered boats! He is definitely very quirky

Fun fact: The definition of a cathedral includes hosting or being associated with a particular bishop. So if it hasn’t done that I don’t think it’s really “cathedral”.

I guess saying cathedral is more impressive than saying a guy built a church, albeit big or fancy.

Same with the also mentioned Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. I've often seen it referred to as a cathedral but it is just a large church. The actual cathedral in Barcelona is elsewhere. Although now it is deemed a basilica, which I understand is generally just a very special and honored church.

Well, he’s Catholic and I think the Catholic Church has specific rites that must be performed even to call a building a church. So really he just built a really cool building inspired by his faith.

3d cathedral fan art?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consecration#Churches,_altars,...

From the article, he built a house of worship which he intended to offer for consecration. If that had happened, it would have been an oratory, probably, since a church has a resident priest.

The intention is important, I'm not sure what to call it but "chapel" as distinct from oratory is probably closest. To a Catholic these are the same thing, but: any Christian would recognize this as a chapel, just not a Catholic one, and we have the precise term "oratory" to cover that.

Surely there are other definitions listed for informal use? One can often see for example race tracks like Monza in Italy referred to as "the Cathedral of speed" when clearly no bishop lives there.

"Cathedral of speed" is just an analogy. If I say that a book contains a tonne of information then it's clear I don't mean 1000kg (but I'm still referring to that definition). If I say my builder delivered a tonne of bricks, but really I just mean quite a lot, then that's confusing.

(I do disagree with the GP comment though as maybe this guy was trying to build an actual cathedral. But there's no quote in the article that really indicates either way.)

I understand analogies.

I just contest that there is only one understanding of what cathedral is.

If I build a waterpark, but it's not yet opened and I haven't yet hooked it up to any actual water, I've still built a water park.

If you're desperate to be pedantic about it, you could say this guy tried to build a cathedral. But I think the headline is close enough to being true.

If you build a waterpark and call it "bishop's waterpark" without a bishop in it, I think the same thing still applies. It is just a waterpark.

And let's not even get into all the bishop-free houses with cathedral ceilings. People have no respect these days.

I think a better analogy would not be a waterpark but a „city hall”.

So if I build a city hall in a city, then probably someone might have a problem with that. Because for something to be a city hall it must be built by the municipality or local people or something along those lines. Same with a cathedral - it’s not just a very big church, it actually has a function in the bigger organization etc.

That being said I definitely would not have even clicked the link, read the article, or commented here if it was titled “guy built church” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This why St Peter’s Basilica, though a very very large church, is not the world’s largest cathedral, because the cathedral of Rome is St John Lateran.

Cathedral comes from cathedra meaning chair.

This Told In Stone episode "The Roman Toilet That Became a Papal Throne" is relevant here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZbzCp8HtRQ

Yeah same thought here. Cathedrals were built by the Church and the community of a city, usually over multiple generations. They’re meant to be overwhelming and humbling to an individual, reminding you that you’re only a small part of a bigger whole.

Cathedrals are also usually “alive”, constantly renovated, modified, expanded etc.

Also, smaller, older and in another style: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval

Many of these cases around. Here's a story of Ed Thrall who constructed a dance hall constructed on his own haphazard techniques. He had visions of a community center of some kind. No one knows what to do with it.

https://www.ctpublic.org/business/2014-09-30/ed-thrall-and-t...

It's easier to build your own bazaar.

I see what you did there.

The article says the guy isn’t crazy… but the rest of the article does not paint the picture of a particularly sane man.

But, a man who is successful in some acceptable way, is considered eccentric rather than nuts. :)

Terms like "nut" or "crazy" are antiquated. They don't have very precise meanings. Is anyone truly crazy in the sense they are out of their wits all the time?

Thank you for your comment. My words were very imprecise. I'll try to break down what I'm seeing.

I'll start with my perspective as a (painted) dog on the internet. :)

I have a fair amount of personal experience with insanity and with religion and with art. (Not all at the same time.) I'm by no means an expert in psychology, but I have spend a lifetime studying people. I'd like to think I have a pretty good eye for understanding the motivations for most people in various cultural settings.

I have no academic credentials. For the most part, I'm speculating with more or less the same amount of expertise as everyone else here. We all have our pet topics we like to think we know more about than average.

So, what I do see? (I'll stick to one aspect so I'm not writing a novel here.)

I see is a man who is outside baseline behavior in several ways, the most prominent being his religious zealotry.

Reading the lines as written, there are all the parts of a "normal" "obsessive" person.

But!

When I try to piece those together, something doesn't match up. Specifically his mission and goal doesn't quite make sense from a religious or artistic perspective. It's tilted a few degrees in a way I don't quite follow.

To use a writing analogy, it feels like I'm beta reading a story and the author made an incorrect assumption somewhere. It's not in the words themselves, but the choice of the words the incorrect assumption causes.

Once I realized that, I reread the article looking for what could be missing from the picture. His childhood is the biggest red flag for me. The zealotry described seems excessive to the point it's controlling him. This detail points to the missing piece. (Ignoring that this is a classic sign of early mental illness or poor childhood which causes one.)

It's not the obsession, but the shape of the obsession. It doesn't feel "normal". It feels like there's a lack of grounding to reality happening at a deep level. This is the clearest explanation from what I'm seeing.

This wasn't the first conclusion I came to. I was genuinely curious about the story and was hoping to find something interesting about human nature I haven't seen before or adding a perspective like who Steve Jobs was. (He was a fucking asshole, but I do like my phone.) I didn't get that feeling here.

I hope I'm missing something, but I have the sinking feeling I'm correct.

I suspect you probably are as well. Extended isolation can do that to a person. It's like he needed a mission, but was too deeply frustrated in himself. So, he assigned himself an objective. The refusal to give up was the only thing that defined him.

Reminds me of Bishop Castle in Colorado. Just an insanely ambitious, never-ending passion project. We visited last time I was there; highly recommend if you find yourself driving through the area

https://www.bishopcastle.org/

it's known as the cathedral made of rubbish too... visited a decade years ago and it was in a much more primitive state, amazing how much they managed to build meanwhile

But did he get buried there?

Cant help contrasting it with the man who built a forest in 50 years.

>A longer version of this article first appeared in the online magazine Hazlitt.

Jesus how I hate this. "We just wasted your time making you read an abridged version of a topic that is of your interest"

I totally thought this would be about Temple OS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

That was my first thought too.

Sometimes I fear falling into a similar manic rabbit hole, wheels within wheels spinning.

If it's any consolation, full-blown manic episodes like that are generally uncommon for people who aren't schizophrenic or bipolar.

Even then, TempleOS was really off the deep end of that.

It isn't a rabbit hole you just accidentally fall into. :)

Hopefully a little self-awareness should be all you need to keep you grounded.

Oh, it's not a rational fear, by far.

Same sort of thing as the fear of being mugged by a Spanish dwarf or being eaten by an Orca.

Jaimie Mantzel is working on his cathedral.

Here's the 2005 Coca-Cola ad filmed there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNimfH3sNaY

For anyone who may be confused, it's and ad from "Coca-Cola" the company, not for "Coca-Cola" the product. It was an ad for Aquarius, one of their brands which is quite popular in Spain as a pseudo-sports drink. This advertisement really made Justo Gallego's project much more well-known in Spain when it aired.

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