Investigating The Sacreo In Architecture (Page 7)

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Thus, in tradition, not only was architecture sacred, so Was its Creation and most sacred of all Was the reason of its Creation - the personified powers Of existence that Were Worshipped Within.
The new form of the sacred:
Is sacred a word that cannot be used any more - given its strong traditional Connotations? By convention, 'sacred" suggests religion. while the debate here is not about whether religion is necessary or whether one philosophy of life is better or more relevant than another, it necessarily has to address the meaning of the term sacred at possibly two levels- that of the designer and the user or the interpreter.

At the place of worship, the devotee will continue to interact with the space and its architecture, seeing in it the representation of the sacred, possibly even as a high pundit denounces the structure as a profanity. Thus, it is the adaptation of space and its interpretation by its users that will also qualify an architectural event as sacred or secular more so when associated with the religious.

However, while the conventional connotation of the term will always imply the holy, the sacrosanct, the divine and the religious, it is imagined that its nuances of purity, faith, honesty and truth may have a greater relevance for the architect today.

Equating the sacred with the secular is not about lowering the high even powerful connotations of the term but raising the standard of the routine.

It is about taking architecture beyond the mundane to levels at Which integrity in design is staunchly concerned with the thwarting of wastefulness, inappropriate use of material and method, exploitation of natural resources and non-sustainable practices.

It is possibly also about equating sanctity with Sanity. It is certainly about "reflection in action". It is about adopting a cause, a faith, a 'higher reference' that will "Confer upon the architect a human dignity and a responsibility" such that S/he will not be "merely a doer or merely Contemplative, but a doer by contemplation and contemplative in act"."

This is the new work ethic. This is the new religion or less dramatically a new set of rules and values that need to be d most adopted for the good of our I was the planet let alone our souls and needs to be fervently followed. This is one religion, which may actually be in need of practicing fanatics!

(Continues…)

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