Cathedral effect

Mount St. Bernard Abbey

Something about how the building shapes the way a space is used has always fascinated me. Take books out of a library, and suddenly there is an invitation for noise. Malls and airports feel less frantic because of their high ceilings. Log cabins are cosy because of their small rooms and low ceilings.

I was thinking of all this during Mass last Sunday. I've been attending the services at Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, a Cistercian Monastery. The church is massive, not in its footprint, but in its height. Looking up from the pews it's about 12 metres (or 40 feet) of space. This space inspires spirituality in a way that I've not known for years.

The church of my childhood, Christ the King in Pretoria, is enormous in my memory and dominated by gigantic stain-glass windows. In my early teens, we moved to a much smaller church, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, and then to St Judes in Vredenburg in my late teens. St Judes was uninspiring in its architecture and what I came to see as typical of churches in the South African Cape. Low ceiling entrances and floors sloped down as the ceiling sloped up, creating an enormous space at the altar and many daydreams of running marbles under the pews.

Serendipitously, I stumbled across the term that explains this: the cathedral effect. The effect was first noted by Edward T. Hall in the 1960s (source), but it was only named as such in the early 2000s by J. Butler, W. Lidwell, and K. Holden. The cathedral effect explains the observed phenomenon that high ceilings inspire creativity and abstract thinking while low ceilings are great for problem-solving and practical thinking.

My mental space of late has been towards the abstract, the creativity. The cathedral effect offers a plausible explanation for why I feel so spiritually at home at Mount Saint Bernard Abbey. I am thrilled to have found it.

Of course, not joining a traditional parish comes with its own set of challenges, such as catechism instruction for the kids. But that's the topic of another post.