Salvation to go
the development of spiritual spaces within infrastructures of traveling
L.V. Gies (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
D. Yerli – Mentor (TU Delft - Teachers of Practice / A)
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Abstract
On a journey, most functions of daily life have to be paused or improvised. A few
items used for the most essential of all the various activities that are normally taking place in one’s home environment are condensed in the traveller’s luggage. These items are the only available material for improvisation in addition to the spatial possibilities in the traveler’s immediate, unfamiliar surrounding. This also applies to religious and spiritual practice. The traveller who seeks a moment of reflection has to either engage in an act of space-making and
establish the sacred within the ordinary, or use sacred wayside spaces.
A visual analysis of different kinds of such sacred spaces embedded in travel infrastructures shows how old traditions found their way into modern times and which transformations they underwent on this way. As a marginal and low-key form of sacred space, the typology has adapted flexibly to the new conditions of modern travel environments. This thesis is a study of the typological evolution of sacred spaces in travel environments and of the connection between spirituality and travelling from an architectural point of view.