Toronto Star

From the beginning, architecture has been embarked on a journey to the light. That we have arrived is something we now take for granted. But it wasn't always thus. Indeed, of all the elements that comprise architecture, light was historically the most elusive. For millennia, we lived in shadow. Anyone who has wandered through those 1,000-year-old Romanesque churches around Barcelona in northern Spain has experienced the power of darkness; it is cold, scary, mysterious yet strangely affecting. It makes perfect sense that these sacred fortresses should be bathed in black. The god being worshipped there was frightening, forbidding and ultimately unknowable. This was a god to be feared. Unforgiving and unrelenting, he didn't offer happiness so much as he threatened eternal damnation. Gradually, however, as God's image grew closer to that of man's, He became more approachable. At the same time, technical innovation allowed for a new style of construction.