The first thing that struck me about the University Christian Church was the surprisingly drab exterior architecture.  Compared to the boring modernist architecture of the UTC, I was hard-pressed to choose which building was uglier.  In comparison to the awe-inspiring spirals of St. Marie’s Cathedral and All Saint’s Church, the University Christian Church was an ugly specimen.  Upon entering the church, I immediately sighted redemption.  The stain-glass windows in the building were magnificent!        Stained-glass at the University Christian Church; Stained-glass at All Saints   In the All Saint’s Church, I was troubled by their stained glass because of it’s inclusion of references to donors.  I feared that in this way it slightly deified the people who were able to donate more money, and it seemed counterintuitive to the purposes of supporting the church.  Despite this feature, I wasn’t very impressed by the stained glass.  The colors didn’t please me and the soldering wasn’t sharp and contrasted to the glass itself.  This is where the University Christian Church takes the torch.  The stained-glass was beautiful.  In its less representational formations, it personified simplicity and beauty, and its deifications were few.   The stained-glass itself seemed to be of a modernist influence, and reminded me of the famous painter Piet Mondrian.   Mondrian inspired graphic Mondrian developed his art off the absolute fundamentals of primary colors and straight lines, which influenced the de-stijl art movement.  The movement’s ideals evolved from the teachings of Neo-Plasticism or Neo-Platonism, a Platonian-inspired theory that said there was the existence of a One, and from this absolute One the entire universe emanated.  Many Christians identified God as One, and so the stained-glass at the University Christian Church could be a directly connected to this modernist art movement.  There are several shell likes shapes that are in the stained glass, and this again reminds me of the de-stijl movement.  Many of Mondrian’s paintings were derived from the rules of the Fibonacci code, which provides a recursive formula that can explain the unifying complexity in shells and other natural formations.               A block representation of Fibonacci numbers, which are represented in shell formations This is also closely related to the golden ratio, approximately 1.618, that is said to define a natural beauty in nature.  It is no surprise then, that I found these stained-glass windows extremely beautiful in their simplicity.  In relation to architecture, it is this sort of formulated structures that really sell me on modernist buildings.  However, the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers are probably evidenced in the complexity of gothic architecture.  This would explain why I am also drawn to some aspects of Gothicism, while still being drawn to Modernist buildings.