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Vicens + Ramos clad the Parish Church of Santa Monica in corten steel at a moment when the material was still provocative for a building with religious ambitions — its surface a deliberate evocation of oxidation and age, of something that has been exposed to time and is not trying to hide it. Here the building's angular volumes collide at close range: a protruding box steps forward from the main facade, its panel seams crisp and precise against the mottled, variegated rust of the cladding behind. What arrests the eye is the shadow — a near-perfect elliptical arc cast by an adjacent form and draped across the upper facade, dividing the field into a deep burnt sienna in shade and a vivid amber-orange where the sun catches the iron oxide directly. A church that chose to rust is making a theological argument as much as an architectural one; Vicens + Ramos trusted that the congregation would understand the difference between decay and patina.
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