Abstract:
Religious architecture including buildings such as churches, chapels, mosques and many more examples have been a huge part of people’s lives throughout history and therefore very important to design for architecturally. However, through the course of this research it has become evident that in our contemporary age, institutionalised religion does not always serve peoples spiritual needs anymore. Therefore, other means of finding spirituality are sought out through more secular situations that allow us to connect with transcendent questions and relationships between ourselves, nature and the divine. The necessity for the presence of natural and sensorial elements in the seeking of spirituality is affirmed by researchers exploring movements and progression of spirituality that has emerged throughout the last century, and also reiterated in my discussions with friends and family, who refer to the beach, the wind, the sand, the weta, the grass, the sunset. Eyes closed, seeking solace, we seek an unrestricted place within whenua. The essence of us, as occupants of Aotearoa New Zealand, lies in our connection between body, Whenua and wairua/spirit. This thesis therefore aims to provide an insight and investigation into such connections in order to propose a series of secular spiritual spaces sited on Auckland’s Muriwai beach. Challenging the colonising concept of ‘scenery’ as picturesque representation, my project approaches landscape through an immersive experience that encourages people to belong to the land, which will never, belong to us. Defining spatialities of what I call the ‘secular-sacred’, this study considers landscape as an ecosystem; combining the varying intersecting ecologies between the land, elements, cosmos, humans and non-humans, in order to break down the separation between us and nature. Architectural design serves to heighten ecological perception through spatial experiences where people can get in touch with their self-spirituality. The space which facilitates and emphasises this connection between person and the land and therefor person and their inherent spirituality is what I define as secular sacred space.