Visiting Nervi's Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption.

Embedded in a typically windy San Franciscan hill, the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption materializes a particularly important event in the Roman Catholic history. The Assumption of the Virgen Mary marks the moment in which Mary's physical body meets god in the heavens. The symbolic and architectural challenge required a sort of timeless but also visually unearthly solution: a godly idea of harmonious eternal life in the heavens. A plaque at the front entrance of the structure reads "Saint Mary Cathedral Dedicated to the Glory of God, in Honor of Mary, Our Lady of Assumption." written also on this plaque, the names of the architects Pietro Belluschi and William Schuppel, as well as celebrated Italian building engineer Pier Luigi Nervi.

The neighboring panoramic landscape is framed by more than a dozen vertical structures, including modern commercial and residential buildings, a number of apartment complexes, parking lots, busy streets filled with pedestrians walking near Japantown San Francisco, as well as other visible worship buildings; all these elements describe the relevance of the location in which the sanctuary shares the urban backdrop of a sophisticated metropolis.

As you approach the Building from the corner of Geary and Gough you cannot help but notice the monumentality of the building. This feeling is expressed in the structure at multiple formal levels. First of all, to access the cathedral the visitor is forced to cross a piazza, focusing all visual clues to the transition of scale on the exterior spaces, by placing the volumes of building off the street the cathedral gains magnificence because the structure becomes perceptually massive. Another feature of the symbolic monumentality is the soft but visible distinction of the two main volumes in the structure. As the viewer faces the building, the first volume can be described as a rectangular prism in which the walls are a juxtaposition of glass panels and concrete walls flanked with thin marvel veneers. Both sides of the corners including the entrance of the cathedral are dark tinted glass panels that go from bottom to top of the wall. It is a very solemn and calmed image. 

The front entrance of the church is protected by a bronze bas-relief of Jesus in the Cross. Growing from within the first volume the roof is projected to the sky, implying a sharp sense of vertical movement. This second volume is a talll structure that references the merging of a cross and a cone. Due to the nature of the roof's curvilinear shape there is constant play of contrast, blending and shaping light and shadow in different "S" directions.

Once inside the building the space becomes visually complex, some elements of space resemble wall structures of cellular organisms. As any other catholic church a large octagonal holy water fountain receives the visitor bouncing off the view to the vibrant (neon like) stained glass panels running along the vertical structure. Almost imperceptible from the street, the graduations of warm and cool colors of the stained glass become active inside the building, highlighting not only the height of the but also the shape of a large glass cross. Next to the stained glass panels, on the roof, arrays of triangular modules of architectonics mix with the curved lines of the ceiling. 
On each corner, the Cathedral reveals the ground structure that sustains the roof. This structure, however, feels different. The perceptual sense of lightness in the Cathedral is sharply contrasted by the structural base of four heavy, low, and wide arches. Nevertheless, as the eye scans the assumption the heaviness becomes eternal with the roof's light conical shape elevating to the magnificent sky.