Several years ago, a young friend of mine was a student at the Qld Conservatorium of Music, and I went one afternoon to the nearby St Andrew’s Anglican Church in South Brisbane, to hear a concert recital in which she played viola with her string quartet.
It was a typically hot sub-tropical Queensland summer’s day, and as the performance progressed inside this Victorian colonial mock-gothic church, it was becoming increasingly stifling for both the musicians and the audience. At some point in the recital a verger emerged from the sacristy and went round the church doing something I had never seen done before in any similar church, anywhere in the world.
He opened the stained glass windows.
All of the lancet windows on both sides of the church had panels that pivoted from a central point, some vertically, some horizontally, so that whatever breeze was around could be deflected into the interior of the church on hot days. A uniquely Australian solution for a problem generally not faced by gothic church builders in more temperate Europe.
A pivoting stained glass window from St Andrew’s Aglican Church, South Brisbane, Australia.
A pivoting stained glass window from St Andrew’s Aglican Church, South Brisbane, Australia.
A pivoting stained glass window from St Andrew’s Aglican Church, South Brisbane, Australia.
How ‘cool’ is that?
