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St. Mary's Catholic Church
St. Mary’s Catholic Church (the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary) was designed by Indigenous architect Douglas Cardinal. The Parish is located in Red Deer, Alberta and seats 650 individuals. Built in 1968, the building’s design contains large curvilinear red brick walls and light wells, creating diverse lighting conditions within the interior spaces.

Parish History
Prior to the design and construction of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, the congregation gathered at St. Thomas School to attend masses. The land, located at 6 McMillan Avenue in Red Deer, Alberta, was gifted to the Parish by Mr. James T. Morrisroe. The complete name of the Parish is the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and in 1964 planning for the new building began.

Douglas Cardinal
Douglas Cardinal was born on March 7, 1935 in Calgary, Alberta and is the oldest of eight children. Douglas often participated in hunting and trapping alongside his father, a provincial forest ranger from the Blackfoot nation. His mother, who was part Métis and part German, worked as a nurse and supervisor at a mental hospital. From a young age, Douglas Cardinal’s mother encouraged him to pursue a career in architecture. When his mother became sick, Douglas was sent to St. Joseph’s Convent Residential School. While studying at the convent, he found his passion for arts and music. In 1952, he attended the University of British Columbia’s school of architecture and later traveled to the United States to attend the University of Texas. During a trip to Texas, Arizona and Mexico in 1957, Douglas Cardinal found inspiration in Frank Lloyd Wright’s building designs and their relationship to the landscapes they are situated upon. Cardinal also took interest in Baroque style buildings containing arches and rippling facades located in Mexico. After graduating in 1963 from the University of Texas with a degree in architecture, he traveled back to Alberta where he met Father Werner Merx who was the priest of St. Mary’s Parish at the time. While another architect was previously chosen to design the new St. Mary’s Church building, Father Werner Merx was determined to have Douglas Cardinal hired in their place. This request was later approved by the archbishop and Douglas Cardinal began designing the church, working closely with Father Werner Merx.

St. Mary's Church Design Influences
Many of Douglas Cardinal’s experiences influenced the design of St. Mary’s Church including his childhood years attending residential school. Cardinal states, “I saw in the Church the role that architecture played: these overwhelmingly powerful architectural statements that create a sense of awe as soon as you walk into these spaces.” While designing St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Douglas Cardinal utilized inspiration from Baroque period building design by aiming to create “a feeling of active loving and caring in the architecture” of the Church. The design of the Church also focuses on encouraging community and gathering of the congregation. In many ways, Douglas Cardinal’s design moves away from conventional church design methods. The organic curvilinear forms emanate as a result of Douglas Cardinal’s experiences, including his time spent traveling and studying churches, and his family’s cultural values and beliefs. Working alongside Father Merx, Douglas Cardinal employed the Sacrosanctum Concilium, Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in order to “invent a church based on liturgy.” In the beginning stages of design, Cardinal and Father Merx questioned the intention of the Church and concluded that the alter was the most prominent aspect of the spaces.

St. Mary's Church Building Design
On June 26, 1966, construction of St. Mary’s Church began. Completed in 1968 and costing about $360 000, the building’s completed form resembles a seashell, allowing for amplified sound within the spaces. The building’s walls are made from red brick, exposed on the interior and exterior, reminding the congregation of the land surrounding the Parish. The colours of prairie sunsets in Red Deer, Alberta are represented by the red brick used throughout the building. Many curvilinear walls and pews, seating 650, act to support the communal congregation and encourage involvement as opposed to division. A baptismal font is visible through arched windows from the exterior and located at the front entrance. At the center of the gathering space is a Manitoba Tyndall limestone alter, weighing six tons. The design of this space allows for a direct view of the alter when entering into the cathedral. The confessionals are contained within many brick arches, where the larger structures provide spaces for the priests, and the smaller ones are occupied by the confessors. Located over the alter, lecterns, and confessionals are large skylights that direct natural light into the spaces. The skylight located over the alter symbolizes Christ’s emanating light, reflecting the beliefs of the Parish. Two-hundred-fifty tons of concrete on a web-meshed surface of intersecting cables compose the building’s roof structure. With the building’s complex structural system, Douglas Cardinal’s firm utilized computer aided design in order to resolve the 82 000 equations necessary to design the roof structure. The completion of the building would have been unfeasible in the absence of the computer technology available in 1967. Since the building’s completion in November of 1968, necessary changes have been made in order to follow updated health and safety guidelines, such as the replacement of the roof and parapets. Douglas Cardinal’s design of St. Mary’s Catholic Church brought publicity towards his firm and evokes his signature curvilinear forms and heavy materials.

Resistance to the Design
Following the departure of Father Merx to an alternative parish, Douglas Cardinal’s unconventional design for the St. Mary’s Church was not entirely accepted. Many parishioners and priests viewed the design as “too austere and too far off the beaten path of regular Church architecture.” Due to this resistance, proposals for changes were made in contempt of Douglas Cardinal’s original design decisions. The removal of the baptistry from the entrance of the building, despite it symbolizing initiation into the Parish, was eventually executed by an alternative architect.