Christ J. Kamages
A sense of mission has guided Christ J. Kamages, M.Arch. ’72, through his 30-year career designing everything from city halls to residences. (“Christ” is pronounced “Kris,” with the “t” barely audible.) “What’s lacking in society is a sense of community, faith and spirituality,” he asserts. “All the great buildings manifest some kind of community purpose.” His Pasadena Police Building and Jail in Pasadena, California, is a striking achievement of this goal, as is a police station in northern California pictured below. In 2002, the building won an Architecture in Justice Award from the American Institute of Architects at the national level. The Pasadena building promotes effective law enforcement, while inviting community participation and harmonizing with its historic location.
Kamages began his UB master’s degree work in 1971, two years after the program’s establishment. The visionary design methods group that focused on user needs influenced him, as did John Paul Eberhard, first dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, who held architects accountable for failing civilization by not doing hands-on work with clients. He participated in the “Buffalo Experiment,” a group of user-centered community projects, and continued this work while a UB assistant professor of architecture from 1973 to 1977. These experiences reinforced values he had developed much earlier, during the summers he spent working both at an architectural firm and the family’s diner on Long Island. “It was all about customer service,” Kamages says, a view that matured into his view of the architect as a “servant leader.”
Kamages stepped fully into that role in 1984, when he moved to San Francisco and acquired his own practice, establishing a design niche in faith-based structures. He has designed more than 100 churches and community complexes. In 2003, he changed the firm’s name from EKONA to CJK Design Group to better reflect its unique service: “a comprehensive process of problem solving in collaboration with the people who will own the space, rather than handing it to them as an architect-as-high-priest.” He is currently at work on a master plan for a parish in Valparaiso, California. The village, planned for future growth, will include facilities for early learning, education and worship, a church, recreational facilities for all ages, a retirement home and a cemetery.
Raised in a faithful Greek Orthodox family, Kamages brings a keen awareness of spiritual heritage to his designs for Orthodox communities. He builds dialogue between contemporary needs and Byzantine cathedrals. The Monastery of the Theotokos in Dunlap, California, won the 2002 Concrete Masonry Design Award for its historic use of rockface. The Cathedral of Panagia, dedicated in 2002 in Toronto, Ontario, features an enormous dome that shapes an expansive, open worship space. There, Kamages explains, the congregation experiences their “union as a community and with the body of Christ.”
He uses this sixth-century form to revitalize the democratic values of early Orthodox religion, where the congregation participated equally in worship with the choir and clergy. Kamages worked with the community to create a complete worship experience, designing a sacred space with light, vivid icons and interior fittings. His practice offers artifact design services, as well as architectural design and planning, training and strategic development for parishes.
According to Kamages, “architecture is a verb, not a noun,” aimed at involving people in transformative space. He admits his vision is a product of the idealistic 1960s, citing the provocative question of that time, “Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?” Kamages answers the contemporary problem of alienation and waning spirituality with “holistic architecture,” melding creativity, strategic thinking and research to make a difference for communities. When it works, Kamages says, “It’s a very humbling experience.”
Originally appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue of UB Today as part of the article Creating Innovative Environments: Inside and Out by Tacey A. Roslowski, Ph.D. '91.
