DRS 1/19/24

Design Research Summary Theological Architecture

Josh Eckert B.S. Arch 2024, University of Virginia

TABLE OF CONTENTS Chronological Organization

ARCH 4100 Preliminary Research

1

Initial Thoughts

1

Topic Taxonomy

3

Previous Work

5

Generative Exercises

7

Precedent Analysis

9

Artifacts of Assembly

11

Module 1: System Boundaries & Territories of Influence Further Research

13 13

Module 2: Constructs

1

Heading 02 Subtext

1

Module 3: Assembly

1

Heading 02 Subtext

1

Module 4: Material Matters Heading 02 Subtext

1 1

1

100// In order to create architecture that is meaningful for all parties involved for the entire length of its life, I will create a framework of design based in an explicitly Christian worldview.

This will take several stages. First, the construction of a matrix framework at the intersection of Christian theology as it applies to design and the material and climatic conditions of a range of types of sites. Then I will fill this matrix with design decisions that correspond to each condition. Finally, I will display several examples of their application in real sites, displaying the effectiveness of my framework.

25// I propose a Christian framework for design, at the intersection of theology and site conditions, creating an inventory of decisions, then showing examples in application.

6// Christian design framework, catalog, and application.

Thesis Statements

1. What is the Christian stance on Schaeffer’s “trth through the lens of evidence”?

2. How does a Christian theology of stewardship inform an environmental approach to built interventions, especially in light of contemporary climate concerns?

3. How can we learn to partner with God and his plans through our design of the built environment?

4. How can we change our design ideology to better reflect sustainable material sourcing?

5. Where does the built environment act as a form of theological expression? And what can we learn from these examples?

Research Questions

Initial Thoughts

2

CONTEXT The context for the specific structure is the least specific part of this project at this point. Broadly, I want to investigate the health field to select a specific program and typology in which to design. Necessarily, the context for a specific site comes last in the sequence of the framework my thesis constructs, for the development of a design theology is intended to be applicable to the entire body of my future design work. The narrowing of this focus to the health field is intended to take advantage of the expertise of Prof. Somers in that area. The rest of the semester will entail the further narrowing of this focus to something specific.

SUBJECT The focus of this thesis is more about the formulation of a working framework of design borne out of a Christian worldview and theology. This framework will then be applied to a project. The framework I create will pull directly from the scripture of the Bible, with support from other historical and contemporary authors. In so doing, this thesis will seek to understand both the “why” and the “how” one should design from such a worldview.

CLAIM FOR SIGNIFICANCE There is much written about theological architecture in terms of the way architects have used form, sculpture, space, light, or materials to shape the perception of a space by congregants. That is not the goal of this project.

This project seeks to move deeper than the physical manifestation, but to the spiritual motivation behind design choices.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK As briefly outlined in Topic Taxonomy, the goal of the framework I will seek to create is that it is built upon scripture. The major themes I have identified that are markers of the biblical narrative are those of humans as stewards of creation, humans as created for the glory of God, the community of dwelling with God, our agency to co-create beauty with God, and the goal of God’s people to be a blessing to those around them. These themes I have drawn mainly out of Genesis and Exodus, the first two books of the Torah, where the authors lay out the biblical worldview and the place of humanity within creationand in relation to God. There are further, more specific aspects to this framework as you explore the rest of the Bible, which can be more directly applied to the specifics of the built environment. These more specific concepts will continue to be informed by further research this semester and over the course of the project development next semester.

ARGUMENT As mentioned earlier, the current state of religious architecture focuses on the physical environment and its impact on the spiritual life of those who encounter it. The argument I am making is to flip that relationship, and define a spiritually-based framework from which choices are made in the physical realm. Of course, all architects in varying degrees of subconsciousness make choices based on their worldview, but the goal here is to make that relationship apparent and important.

PROOFS I intend to demonstrate through the development of a specific health-related design project the ways a design framework based on a Christian theological worldview is beneficial to the health of those for whom it is designed.

I intend that specific choices made in the project will be explicitly tied back to that framework.

Project Preamble

3

STEWARDSHIP GENESIS 1:28

GLORY OF GOD I CORINTHIANS 10:31

CHRISTIAN DESIGN ETHIC

CIRCUMSTANCE

BEAUTY EXODUS 26

BE A BLESSING GENESIS 12:2-3

DWELLING EXODUS 25:8-9

PROGRAM

HEALTH

ISAIAH 57:18-19

CHURCH 1 PETER 4:2-7

ASSEMBLIES

ON-SITE OFF-SITE LOCAL SOURCING

MATERIAL USE

SITE

DISTANT SOURCING RURAL

Topic Taxonomy Initial Themes Identified

Topic Taxonomy

4

MERCY ROLE OF WORK EDEN IMAGERY ANIMALS/CREATION LOVE OTHERS COMMUNITY W/ GOD CO-CREATE NEW CREATION HELP POOR

These themes I have extracted from my Christian worldview are themes I want to explore even deeper. They are also so interconnected as you can see, making them all relevant to my work. I want to find ways to explicitly use these themes in my design process and be able to point to them in the finished product.

I don’t want to design an explicitly religious space, rather, I want to design a place relating to some facet of the health industry. I believe these themes are applicable to a whole practice of work, not just churches, and I want to prove that with this project.

LIFE-GIVING BRICK WOOD CONCRETE

I want to explore the use of low-embodied carbon materials in my project, a goal that will be especially difficult in the healthcare field which often requires finely conditioned spaces.

GLASS STEEL LABOR FARMING VERNACULAR MONUMENTAL

I want to explore labor sources as an in vestment in the local community of which my building will be a part. I’m not sure how much this will influence the design, but it will influence its community impact.

I want to pick a rural site, though in which country or context I am not yet sure. I think this will allow for more use of local materials. I also want to investigate the local vernacular of that area to see if there are any lessons I can learn from those traditions.

“Breathing Room” was designed during an 8-week summer design-build studio program I took part in. The client for the project was the firm itself. Our goal was to create an area on the small lakeshore property the firm owns for its future use by employees, families, guests, and future summer studios. Our guiding principles were those of connection: between God, others, and nature. We drew inspiration from the rhythm of the water on the rocks, the wind in the trees, and the mountains across the lake to while simultaneously meditating on John 3:8 as we planned.

5

The intersection of our visions during the planning phase and constraints of the tangible construction phase resulted in the Breathing Room as it exists now. A 16-foot-long cedar fence whose visibility changes based on viewing angle with a built-in bench facing the lake. A smaller partner fence serves to frame the entrance.

A retaining wall creates walking room in front of the bench, mediates the grade change, allows informal seating, and contains a built-in serving table and firewood storage area. A collection of cubic wooden stools use the same material language as the long bench and can be employed throughout the area.

The title Wrapping describes both of the major tect spaces wraps its way through the towers of units with a serie the project with its vertical panels. The facade is operable. Us program consists of two working spaces that can function fo events, and a craft brewery to integrate the project in its R the middle, creating private spaces for retreat and public s aggregation. The aggregation in the towers also allows light t parking garage only allows for one vehicle per unit, but a

“Wrapping” Spring 2022 Studio Project

“Breathing Room”

“Environmental Horizons Middle School”

Summer 2022 Design-Build Project

Spring 2023 Studio Project

Previous Work

6

tonic intentions of the project. A band of circulation and public secondary use es of bridges. The facade also wraps around the exteriors of the towers, uniting sers to slide the panels, allowing or restricting light into the units. The secondary r several means and methods of working, a rentable community space to foster Richmond site. Units are designed so as to divide the public and private down paces for hosting. Wet walls in each unit also align with other units within the o enter the unit from three sides and provide cross-ventilation. The underground mple and accessible bike parking on the ground floor encourages bike use.

A joint venture magnet school between the Charlottesville and Albemarle school systems, the Environmental Horizons Middle School will serve as a place of supplementary education for middle-school students. Students will spend half of a day one semester during their middle school years at the school, with opportunities to meet and interact with other students from across the city and county. The goal of the curriculum is to expand students’ horizons, especially environmentally, with a focus on both familiarity with the native environment of the Piedmont region of Virginia in which students live and with an emphasis on shaping the next generation of environmental thinkers in an age when the impacts of our changing climate with have devastating effects on the world at large.

7

Previous Body of Work

Generative Exercises

Word Ladder

Experimental Phrases

Provocative Phrases

8

How can we create spaces that allow one to actively and easily engage with the natural world?

How can we be reflect on nature and incorporate nature inspired elements into our formal design decisions?

How can we be conscious of our natural environment and built with materials and methods that do not harm the natural order?

How can we learn to partner with God and his plans through our design of the built environment?

How does the built environment influence our view of God, and how does our view of God influence our attitude towards the design of the built envoronment?

IT TAKES INTENTION FOR US TO REFLECT ON NATURE AND DESIGN IN SUCH A WAY THAT IS RESPECTFUL, RESPONSIVE, AND IMPACTFUL FOR BOTH OF US.

IF I AM TO DESIGN WITH GOD, THE GREAT DESIGNER, AND BE A BLESSING AS HE DESIRES, I MUST KNOW HIM AND HIS GOOD WILL.

How can our relationship influence the methods by which we design?

How can we sustainably and responsibly source building materials for our projects?

How can our structures give back to the ground, even as they take from it?

How can we change our design ideology to better reflect sustainable material sourcing?

Subsequent Questions

IT IS IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY TO INVESTIGATE NEW METHODS OF SUSTAINABLY AND RESPONSIBLY SOURCING BUILDING MATERIALS AND DESIGNING STRUCTURES IN A MORE MATERIALLY CONSCIOUS WAY. 25-Word Statements

AI-Generated Images

9

Designed by 100 Fold Studio beginning in 2015, the University of the Nations Cambodia is a campus project in Batambang, Cambodia. It was designed for Youth With A Mission (YWAM), a Christian missionary organization that teaches courses on biblical theology and runs youth sports programs. The campus has been constructed in different phases, with construction continuing to the present day.

I love this project for how it reflects a Christian woldview. In the deeply ingrained class heirarchy of Buddhist Cambodia that does not afford dignity to the lower classes, this YWAM campus is different. The level of architecture and craftmanship is up to par with that enjoyed only by elite Cambodians, but it is open to all, giving an equal level of dignity to even the most lowly.

University of the Nations, Cambodia

Precedent Analysis

The program of the campus is also just up my alley for my research: a campus where people can be equipped spiritually, learn trade skills, play sports, eat, and live. The dorm buildings cluster around open courtyards shaded by trees and have top floors open to the breeze as is common in the vernacular. The bathroom building is a rare sight in Cambodia, well-lit and including covered seating, making it welcoming. Prayer huts dot the campus, small areas to reflect, talk, and pray. A large pavillion cooled by Cambodia’s first BigAss fan serves as the gathering place. Just finished this year, another building can serve as an indoor gymnasium but also open up to serve as a pavillion as well. Soccer fields and green lawns allow for recreation and sports programs.

Laurie Baker was a British-born architect who in 1945 moved to India and eventually gained citizenship in 1988. Throughout the second half of the 20th-century Baker was prolific in his work across the Pithoragarh and Kerala regions of India. His Quaker beliefs informed his architectural work, emphasising simplicity and frugality.

A major characteristic of Baker’s work was his material use. He opposed the placelesness and emptiness of modernest architecture and embraced site-focused disgns. This was also manifest in his use of the traditional materials of southern Indian construction, namely brick and terracotta.

Famously, he was also influenced by his friendship with Gandhi that buildings could and should be constructed with materials found within a five-mile radius of the site.

Laurie Baker’s Body of Work

Baker’s frugality suited his to work to be primarily with lower and middle class clients. His methods of cost-saving were often due to his material assemblies. He often emplyed rat-trap bond in walls, essentially Flemish bond laid with rowlocks and shiners, using less bricks and creating a cavity in the wall. He also, as seen in the pictures, used brick patterns to serve as ornamentation and allow light and air into structures instead of windows. He also often used curved forms as a way to enclose more area with less wall. Plus, curves are fun.

I really want to learn from how Baker kept his materials so simple and vernacular, yet assembled them in was that are so inspiring and creative.

The “shotgun house” is a type of domestic dwelling that was commonly built in the southern United States especially during the mid to late 1800s.

Their name (probably) comes from the arrangement of their rooms in a line wth each other perpendicular to the street, such that it was said you could shoot a shotgun straight through the house. This alignment also allowed for natural ventilation to comfortably cool the house in the climate’s heat. They are often associated with the lower class. It is theorised that the shotgun house design, very popular in New Orleans landed there from Black immigrants from Haiti. They, historians believe, brought it from the room arrangement of houses built in West Africa.

Shotgun House Vernacular Typology

I have in interest in vernacular architecture and designing in a way that can help people. I really like the shotgun house as an example of vernacular architecture because its arrangement is economical without the wasted space of hallways and allows for natural ventilation of the spaces.

Often the porch is also the depth of a room in itself, which mediates the inside from the outside. They are also normally built above the ground on footings rather than pouring a slab, reducing construction cost and site disturbance. The ways lower class builders navigated constructing dwellings with their material and economic limitations is important to how I want to consider my project.

The Wall House was designed

by Anupama Kundoo and built in 2000 in Auroville, India.

The architecture of the project is also an inspiration for my research. It was built specifically using materials manufactured locally with local labor, including the bricks for the walls and the teracotta shingles for the roofs.

The formal moves of the building are interesting as well. The main thick ‘wall’ holds the main interior spaces and is made of sterotomic brick.

The rest of the house is more open, permeable, tentlike. It allows airflow through the structure for natural ventilation. It also allows the building to almost blend from interior to exterior seamlessly. THis flow is also achieved by the varied use of floor treatments, from concrete to bricks to pavers. The landscaping and surrounding plants make the building seem perfectly situated in nature.

Wall House, India

All of these characteristicas are also seen in Kundoo’s drawings of the project. The plans and sections put a great deal of care into representation of the surrounding vegetation, stressing their importance to the site, how the building is nestled in the trees. The flor materials are also empasized in plan, showing the differing areas and ways of habitation. The building materials are also seen in section, showing the heavier and lighter parts of the building.

I want to learn from the detail and handmade quality of these drawings, especially as they relate to the environmental and material concerns with which the project deals as I think about representation for my own project with similar goals.

10

11

This represents the framework I want to design, called a Design Structure Matrix (DSM). This broad scope will be a large part of my thesis, where theological, architectural, and site concerns will be used to create a framework for designing. I may need to narrow the focus specifically to buildings in the arena of healthcare. THis framework will then be filled with the matrix of architectural elements. But this framework itself is important to my thesis and holds the biggest theological bent.

Large

Artifacts of Assembly

12

These series of options represent the concerns that will be mapped out in within the matrix. Each will require research to determine how and where to apply the use of form, material, technique, spatial approach, etc within the matrix framework.

This will take a large chunk of research to flesh out in an appropriate manner.

Medium

This collage, created using Adobe Photoshop’s Generative AI tool, represents the final portion of my thesis project. After creating and filling my matrix, I want to create two to four example projects across diffent contexts applying the matrix to each.

These examples will show the use of the framework in practice.

Small

13

In this project I will seek to desmonstrate the spiritual dimension of the built environment.

How does an ideology based in a Christian theological worldview impact design in the built environment?

Defining place (architecture) is the means by which humans relate to the world and orient themselves to its given order.

How does the Bible inform a Christian design ethic such that theology is concerned with participation in a narrative (from creation to eschatology) rather than ideas that are ‘self-evident’ in a vacuum (such as Modernism supposes)?

There is a value judgement inherent in every design choice.

So there is no sacred/profane divide as we may be inclined to suppose.

How does a Christian theology of stewardship inform an environmental approach to built interventions, especially in light of contemporary climate concerns?

God is not confined to the boundaries of the church building.

Thus, the Design Matrix.

Where does the built environment act as a form of theological expression? And what can we learn from these examples?

How do we as material beings participate in theology in built environments? And what can we learn from these examples?

What design interventions can I create that reflect my theology in the environment and how do I take a critical approach towards analysis?

How have strains of Christian thought been misapplied in a harmful manner, and how can errancy be prevented?

Just as we influence the built environment through design intervention, the built environment influences how we act and think.

Project Objectives

Art + Faith: A Theology of Making Makoto Fujimura

Architecture and Theology: The Art of Place Murray Rae

Timothy Gorringe

Stewards of Eden: ...

Theology in Built Environments: ...

Till We Have Built Jerusalem: ...

Sandra Richter

Sigurd Bergmann

Philip Bess

Further Research

A Theology of the Built Environment: ...

Building Faith: A Sociology of Religious Structures Rob Brenneman & Brian Miller

Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives Past and Present R.J. Berry

...and more!

14

d Go h t wi g llin e Dw

Design Exercise: Church

Case Study: Plan Voisin

od G o yt r o Gl

ga n i Be

ing s s Ble

an m Hu

Case Study: Cabrini-Green Case Study: Medieval Hospitals Design Exercise: Appalachian vernacular domestic

y nit g i D

Design Exercise: Prison Cell

Design Exercise: Material Re-Use

e ag s s Me l ica g o tol a ch Es

Case Study: Church of the Good Shepherd Design Exercise: Suburban development

ts ac p m eI v i at m r Fo

Case Study: Laurie Baker’s work

The Sacred

Case Study: Raumplan

Ma ter ial

The Profane

Project Objective: Design Matrix Perpetually Unfinished

Ch oic e

Po liti ca l

Ra mi fic ati on s

He alt hI mp ac ts

Fu Ae nc sth tio eti na cP lity ref ere nc e

En vir on me nta l

Im pa ct

15

Components of a Christian Design Ethic

Topic Taxonomy

Stewardship of Creation

“Dominion” in Gen. 1:26, 28 Representation in Gen. 12:8

Co-Creation with God

Adam in Gen. 2:15, 19 Oholiab & Bezalel in Exodus 31:2-7 Dwelling with God in Gen. 3:8, 1 Kings 8

Freedom and Rule

The core of the Law in Matt. 22:37-40 Grace and Law in Gal. 3:17 Freedom is not in a Vacuum in John 3:16

Community and Worship

Peace in Psalm 147 A Public Matter in Jer. 29:4-7

Human Flourishing

“Good” in Gen. 1 Be a Blessing in Gen. 12:2-3, 22:18, 1 Peter 3:9, Rom. 12:13, Heb. 13:16

Eschatology of Renewal

Rainbow in Gen. 9:11 & Rev. 4:3 Reconcile all things in Col. 1:20 & Eph. 1:10

Spiritual Formation

Pattern of the world in Romans 12:2

16

Josh Eckert B.S. Arch 2024, University of Virginia Prof. Scheaffer Somers This Design Research Summary is a collection of my work from the Spring 2024 semester in the ARCH 4020 Independent Design Research Studio.