Architecture's Spiritual Utility in the 21st Century
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Abstract
How does architecture, in the built sense, influence humanity’s desire to connect with
something beyond ourselves? What responsibility does an architect hold in that
condition?
Tracing history through religions, movements of culture and the subsequent architecture
erected, we can see how various built forms simultaneously reflected and influenced
people’s connection to worlds both earthly and celestial. Is there a chance, at this
moment, to build upon our historical accomplishments toward a broader engagement that
stirs the most fundamental longings within us? A chance to resurrect stories and
analogies beyond the frames of traditional religious architecture in a poetic, ecumenical
sense.
This project proposes a solution to define architecture’s spiritual utility as we inevitably
press forward through time, technology and science. It elicits an attempt to distinguish the
nearly imperceivable thread that connects all of us, our poetic imagination, through built
architecture at several locations across the world. Taking intersubjective doctrines, cults,
creeds and ideologies of various cultures and casting them to the cosmos, this project
seeks to question how architecture may continue to inspire our distinguished and
communal desire for interconnection.