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Soldier Field sanctuary combines sacred, dramatic By Michelle Martin Think sheer curtains. The back of the sanctuary for the Soldier Field Mass on June 24 will be draped with 13 panels of translucent white fabric. Thirteen more panels will be draped across the ceiling, extending toward the congregation like “the arms of Christ,” said architect Brian Meade. Meade and David Woodhouse of David Woodhouse Architects designed the sanctuary for the Mass, on the vigil of the Feast of Corpus Christi, with a deliberate emphasis on the ethereal and filmy to contrast with the concrete solidity of Soldier Field—which is home to a Sunday ritual for many Chicago Catholics, but none so sublime as what will take place there on June 24. “We weren’t trying to make a church out of a football stadium, because you can’t do it,” said Woodhouse, who also designed the visitor center and chapel for the Divine Word Missionaries in Techny. “The emphasis isn’t on the sanctuary. It’s on the body and blood of Christ. We really had two goals. One was to get the presence of the divine, of the sacred, to be evident. The other was to make people feel like they’re dissolved within the group, like they are there at one with God and the rest of the people.” And to do it all based on a structure made out of the same kind of steel gridwork used to stage rock concerts and with components that can be assembled and taken down in a matter of a few days. “We were playing against the structure of Soldier Field,” Woodhouse said. “It’s this big, competitive amphitheater, kind of modeled on the coliseums where the early Christians were martyred. We opposed that by making the sanctuary platform as diaphanous and as filmy as we could.” The number of translucent fabric panels on the ceiling and behind the sanctuary recalls the 13 people in Leonardo DaVinci’s painting of the Last Supper. To make the congregants on the field feel as connected to the action of the Mass as possible, the altar platform terraces down, bridging the distance between the altar and the congregation. A long ramp will connect the two areas, providing a gesture of invitation and, on a more practical level, making it easier for the processions at the beginning and the end of Mass to get up and down. Underneath the panels will be another canopy, just over the altar area, reminiscent of the baldachins in medieval cathedrals. There’s a technical reason for it—it will help with the lighting—but it will also be shaped to remind people of the doves used in the jubilee logo. The 40-by-50-foot main altar area will feature an altar, cross and ambo fashioned by Daprato Rigali Studios. A larger area behind it will have room for an orchestra, choir and all the priests concelebrating the Mass. The wide terraced area in front of the altar will mostly come into play before the Mass, when eight choirs from around the archdiocese will perform. “All these groups are not the same,” Woodhouse said. “One might be a mariachi choir, another from somewhere else, and you need a setting that will work with all of them, not something from one particular culture. Physically, it has to be adaptable, but also symbolically. The church itself goes beyond cultural.” While Woodhouse’s firm has designed a number of public projects in the Chicago area, this is the first time it has designed anything for a one-day event. It’s also the first time the company has worked with an event production company. JAM Productions is staging the event, and has had input on what can be done and how best to do it. “These are the guys who are usually figuring out how to get Mick Jagger up on the Jumbotron,” Woodhouse said. “But they’ve been great to work with,” Meade said, advising the architects on what will work. For example, the production company required that the stage elements be flexible so that the stage roof could be lowered quickly in the case of sudden bad weather. Using fabric, he said, meets the practical consideration. And by juxtaposing it with the steel stage and the concrete stadium, it also brings a reminder of the spiritual transcending everyday life. “This has elements of the sacred, but also of the theatrical,”
he said. “And it will only be there for one day.”
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