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Originally Posted by mcgrath618
That's just plain wrong. These renderings were posted first by the church and then by the ARCHITECT desiging it, meaning that this is what they have in mind.
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I don't have any inside info about whatever might have happened between the church and the architect to date, but normally the client, the church, for whatever reasons wants to rethink their use of their property with the idea of maximizing it's value/worth/use/etc. In this case there's every reason to believe the church was only thinking of working with a outside developer and never being the developer themselves. Who knows the entire reasoning behind the church making this move, but to increase income is one stated reason.
The client comes up with a list of uses they have or want to have: certain amount of office space, home for a priest or two, a garden, a certain amount of space as a buffer around the cathedral, a certain style of building perhaps, etc. The architect checks out the zoning and other possible limiting or desired features of the property, then goes to work trying to come up with various plans to show the client what is possible within the various assumptions that were given. There might be one set of plans showing what could be built within the existing zoning and another set showing what might be possible if a variance was granted. Depending on how much money the client is willing to spend this process might be very short and sweet or could go on for many months. The end result is rarely just one particularly vision although what is released to the public, if anything, is often just a very sexy and jazzed up look (as a example check out the plans for the 30th St. Station District, that show what might be the City's tallest building! or 40 years worth of dreams for Penn's Landing)
Hopefully the architect has some experience with the possible scale of the project and doesn't come up with anything that is really out of the scope of what might some day get built, or is way too costly to build, but the architect is just going through a process of educated dreams, not trying to come up with anything that's intended to get built. And the client often likes the idea of a sexy looking project, it might generate a lot of internal excitement and energy. At this stage no one wants boring (except PMC!)
Personally I'm impressed by these drawings, but even if everything flows just as smoothly as possible and there is no economic downturn, demand for CC housing stays high, and Amazon comes to town, I would be extremely surprised if anything even close to these curved beauties get built. There are some real world reasons why you don't see that many curves in buildings.