I like to see it as redefining what a church represents and feels like. The Catholic Church is sometimes said to be too dated with tradition, I think this is something that disagrees with that.

God is infinite so why can’t the expression of His house on Earth be as diverse… just saying :)

#2
Personally, I would have preferred more color. It seems to me that the classic division between Catholic and Protestant churches was expressed by the presence or absence of interior color. A Catholic church build in a Roman suburb in today’s era of sectarian (if fraternal)assertiveness, would have benefited from incorporating one of the classic visual signals that one was entering Catholic sacred ground.

#3 The backs of these shells and the white pipes are natural collectors of dirt and grime. Already one can see the collection of grit forming behind the shells in picture 34, and “white self-cleaning cement” isn’t the phrase that comes to mind. I’ve seen what these white pipes look like after 20-30 years. It ain’t pretty.

#4 One of the chronic aesthetic failures of modern architecture is that it fails to acknowledge that the human eye is drawn to the variation from the background. All this white, and all these flat spaces guarantees that over time, the wear and tear, of the building- the cracks and/or dirt and/or irregular spots that occur with the passage of time and regular use, will jump out from all this background and the eye will be drawn to it in a way that does not occur when there is more visual content for the eye to take in.
In this regard,Opium’s wisecrack about the travertine is well stated. There’s a material that rarely ages well.
Furthermore, the glass roof is structured in a way that doesn’t appear to have considered the impact of rain and leaves and frost along the edge where the glass meets the concrete. I’d bet heavily that they church has already had to deal with leaks and they are going to stand out against all that white blank space..

I like the concept of using these shell structures as stand-ins for the arch, which is another of those visual signals of the classic European cathedral. However, the first impression is that the architect liked the Sydney Opera House a little too much.