------------------------------------------------------- MAY 23, 2004 ------------------------------------------------------- Source: Assist News Service http://assistnews.net/Stories/s04050106.htm Roger Dean's New Dream -- To Design a Church or Cathedral By Dan Wooding Roger Dean, who was born in Kent, England in 1944 into an army family with whom he traveled the world, is now an internationally recognized artist and designer whose evocative and visionary images with associated graphics, logos, and lettering, created a new genre of work. Made popular through the medium of album covers and posters his work, including, posters, cards, books and album covers etc. have sold in excess of sixty million copies world-wide. He has set up and successfully run his own publishing company that published his books "Views" and "Magnetic Storm" and the very successful series on album cover design ACA volumes one through six. "Views" went straight to number one in the best seller lists going on to sell over a million copies. His work was first brought to the public attention in the late 1960s, but he became widely known in the 1970s, due to his relationship with the phenomenal British rock group, YES. Roger created the extraordinary album cover images for YES, including the classic logo now in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He designed the original Virgin logo and when Rolling Stone Magazine readers were asked to vote for the best album covers of all time he had five in the top twenty including the first ASIA album that was 2nd after Sergeant Pepper. He also pioneered a unique form of curvilinear architecture and is currently involved in the design and execution of several large-scale architectural projects. Now, in an exclusive interview from his farmhouse home in Lewes, England, Dean has revealed his passion for religious architecture and his dream to one day design a church or cathedral. It all began, he said, when he studied industrial design at Canterbury College of Art (1961-64). "I was literally on the doorstep of the cathedral and I guess I've looked at a lot of religious buildings from the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to the La Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona, the awe-inspiring project Antoni Gaudi dedicated much of his life to which I think is absolutely fabulous," he said. "But the earliest and most inspiring for me was Canterbury Cathedral. I just loved the gothic design. I found it to be both tranquil as well as incredibly inspiring and thinking about when it was done makes it more so. "A Cathedral is unlike a pyramid which though it might be an amazing feat of engineering because of its sheer size, is pretty much solid. You can place one block upon another and it's going to stay there. The old cathedrals are the most amazing examples of intuitive engineering that there is. However, they didn't all stay up; some fell down, but the whole thing of the flying buttresses and making space between them for windows to me, was incredible. "The inspiration for the cathedrals came from an Abbot Suger, who had seen stained glass and wanted to build a Palace of Light and his architect said that they were going to build something 'so audacious that men would think they we are mad' (St Daneis Paris). It was a switch from what was up until then, a monastic and very dungeon like style of building, the monasteries and churches were without much light. "That they ever existed is incredible, that these beautiful, awe inspiring, huge but delicate laceworks of stone, holding and framing the breathtaking radiant windows still exist after 6 and 700 years beggars belief. "I have visited many cathedrals while traveling, but I have to say that many of my favorite buildings are often small parish churches, particularly of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. But I do like quite a lot of Victorian gothic buildings too." Not A Fan Of Modern Churches Dean said that he is not a big fan of modern churches. "I just thought it should be possible, without making copies, to build something that is inspiring". For example the Coventry Cathedral, that was built after the original one was bombed and destroyed in World War II, I think is very disappointing. a real failure of imagination. He said that he never thought the opportunity to design a church would ever arise, until a recent conversation with Rick Wakeman, the legendary keyboardist with YES. "When I was an art student, a lot of my friends who were doing ecclesiastic silver-smithing," he said. "Obviously, with a cathedral right there, there was a lot of scope for it. But it didn't seem possible, that there was much scope to design churches. Over the years, I have designed a number of holiday villages still in development and I had always hoped that it would be possible to include a small church or chapel. "I don't know if I think of myself as being worthy of doing it. It didn't seem likely, but it is something I would love to do. I was half joking with Rick, thinking it would it would be good to work on a project with him and he said, Ah, I know just the man you should just talk to (Rick then asked me to meet with Roger Dean for breakfast and that is when we began to discuss this story.) If I did design a church, maybe Rick could compose some music for it," he laughed. When asked what his religious beliefs were, Dean replied, "I think philosophically that I am a Christian. I was in the choir when I was child but if I take a very pragmatic view of it, it fits my image of how the world should be. I have a political view that says we are free people taking responsibility for our lives on this earth in a religious framework that essentially is one of love thy neighbor; suffer little children to come onto me; that kind of compassionate God." Dean said that he would like to hear from people who would be interested in talking with him about designing a church, whatever size. "I haven't bought into the modern architectural movement," he stated. "I think my architecture reflects how I understand people to be, rather than an incredible enthusiasm for utilitarian or science fiction images of the future. "A lot of people," he stated, "call my work futuristic, because it doesn't look like the architecture that is around at the moment, but rather than design something that is 'futuristic', my motivation is to understand how the human being works inside interior spaces from a psychological and spiritual perspective. What sort of space makes them feel good, makes them feel inspired and tranquil and I believe you can actually work at this rather than just leave it to chance. This was the subject of my master's dissertation and years of study since. "Insight and understanding flows directly and most effectively, by primarily, actually, studying the way people work emotionally, before, but in addition, to the study of technology, materials and the economics of building. Modern architecture is essentially an esthetic based on a very simple view of technology, materials and economics and I think those things should be taken for granted. The driving motivation should be the understanding of the human psyche rather than an understanding of the technology. You can't build if you don't understand how things are built, but I don't see how you can build if you don't understand how humans work. You need both and I think that the training of architects for to long has largely neglected the human element. "The belief that we are made in the image of God has been the basis of much Sacred Geometry." If you would like to contact Roger Dean about a possible design for a church of cathedral, please send the message to me initially at danjuma1@aol.com and I will forward it to him. Close Window YesInThePress.com For site comments, inquiries, corrections, or additions, contact yitp@yesservices.com