Cathedral of Christ the Light

Like any normal person, I google map every place I go in advance; this week I was in Oakland to visit clients and I saw this weird thing on satellite view:

It turns out to be the Cathedral of Christ the Light, and it is stunning inside.

The exterior is nice; but as soon as you open the main doors you find that the interior is JAW-DROPPING. Really, this is so beautiful - the spaces are soaring but have a distinctly human feel to them, the material choices are just lovely, and every visible detail is designed.

I wandered for a long time and could have taken much longer. Besides the main worship space, there is a mausoleum below that is also breathtaking; you leave the warm wooden lightfilled space, descend some concrete stairs, pass thru a slate-gray circular portal antechamber, and then there is a long descending ramp that traverses the length of the chapel above. Just moving thru this space is… moving.

Connected with the below-ground mausoleum are secondary spaces- offices, meeting rooms, restrooms etc, that we didn’t explore much but look modern and nice enough. But really, I cannot recommend this more highly.

My parting thoughts about this were simply: I am so glad we are still capable of this - building a big, grand church.