One has to go back to the late 1970s to find a megachurch with architectural ambitions. The Rev. Robert Schuller, a popular televangelist (The Hour of Power) who had already built a Richard Neutra-designed drive-in church for his Garden Grove, Calif., congregation, commissioned Philip Johnson to build what would become known as Crystal Cathedral. Johnson, always knowledgeable about architectural history, although not yet embarked on the postmodern phase of his career, sought inspiration in Bruno Taut and Paul Scheerbart's visionary Glasarchitektur of the early 1900s. The religious function of the building is signaled by a stalagmitelike spire (the inelegant rectangular steeple of Neutra's adjacent church is visible in the image on the right), although there is nothing specifically ecclesiastical in the prismatic glass forms. From certain angles, the building actually recalls Mies van der Rohe's famous Friedrichstrasse glass tower project.