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Working Programme "Places of Worship"
covers the issues dealing with human spirituality in architecture. The
traditional location for spiritual spaces are religious buildings - places
of worship. In these buildings the spiritual aspect of design has always
found the fullest expression. Throughout different cultures and different
religions, sacral architecture shows the skill of its builders in getting
to heart of mystery remaining the true expression of highest aspirations
of different civilizations. Buildings and spaces that move the spirit
in contemporary world can have the broader definition though. Places of
remebrance, monuments devoted to memory of heroes or events important
to different societies or whole humanity also have the sense of greatness.
Rituals connected with the deepest aspects of human existence like birth
and death ,codified by different religions - in architecture solved as
burial grounds, cemeteries, belong to the realm of spirituality at its
hightest. XX century civilization made travelling easy. Development of
media, especially Internet has not diminished the basic human need for
emotional contact possible to acchieve while visiting a shrine, both
historical and modern places of worship. This also forms new kind of spaces
and building types - dedicated to religious tourism. For the Congress
in Berlin we want to focus upon the theme of changing functions of once
religious buildings and turning them into spaces housing different events.
We want to make architects reflect what is in the sacral spaces which
makes them sacral and what happens to it when the temple or burial ground
turns to be something completely different.
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