From Houses of Worship to Worship in Houses
Promotion: Space Production of Dwelling Worship Place in China
Projektbezeichnung From Houses of Worship to Worship in Houses
Akronym
Projektinhalt Space cannot be considered neither absolute nor neutral as it would seem to be at first sight; rather, it is susceptible to manipulations caused by human actions. Now what happens, if space is manipulated to house not merely a different function, but tran- scendence? As Henri Lefebvre‘s argues in The Production of Space (in English, 1991), space is not only a social product, but also a complex social construction – based on values, and the social production of meanings – which affects spatial practices and perceptions.
An existing space, he says, may outlive its original purpose and the raison d‘étre which originally determined its forms, functions, and structures; it may thus in a sense become vacant, and susceptible of being diverted, rea-ppropriated and put to a use quite different from its initial one. While the concept of the informal church space can be traced back to the Christian house church in Dura Europos between 233 and 256 AD during the Roman Empire, after the foundation of the People‘s Republic of China in 1949, these kind of church spaces began to appear all across the country.
Characterized by the absence of a formal iconic church building or interior, existing types of secular architectural spaces such as commodity apartments were rented by the Christian community and converted into sacred spaces.
With the analysis of the dwelling worship space in contemporary China from the perspective of social context and architectural space, the research will show how religious metaphors make everyday potentially sacred and function as the productive medi- ators in the process of knowledge transfer between architectural and other professional discourses by bringing back social imagination to the politically neutral spaces of the everyday; de facto reconstructing the social through transduction of the metaphor of religious spaces.
Beteiligte
  • M.Sc. Yi Zhang

Fachgebiet Entwerfen und Baugestaltung
Construction and Experimental Design
Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Lorch, M.Sc. Yi Zhang
Laufzeit bis 2023
Förderung
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