Abstract
ARCHITECTURE AND CULTURE Tianyin Xia School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, UK T.Xia5@liverpool.ac.uk Terry Biddington University of Winchester, Winchester, UK Andrew Crompton School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, UK crompton@liverpool.ac.uk Tianyin Xia, Terry Biddington and KEYWORDS: Multifaith space, China, quasi-object, Andrew Crompton Structuralism, Daoism, Confucianism ABSTRACT During the twenty-first century multifaith spaces (MFS) have spread across the Western world. They represent a new type of sacred space, where events belonging to different faiths, or no faith, pp. 1–17 share space. One of the strange things about them is that they appear DOI:10.1080/20507828.2023. to be a spontaneous phenomenon with no organization promoting or No potential conflict of setting standards for them. This deserves an explanation. We observe interest was reported that shared spaces hosting Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, by the author. such as Three Sages Shrines, have a long history in China, and that © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK multifaith spaces do not seem so incongruous there as they do in the Limited, trading as Taylor & West where syncretism is problematic. In a culture that values Francis Group. This is an Open Access article balance over truth and mixes humanism and religion, multifaith distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons seems normal. Seeing Chinese sacred space and MFS as following Attribution License (http:// convergent paths might suggest new ways of understanding and creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits designing what are usually banal spaces. unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original Introduction work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has For more than ten years we have been interested in multifaith spaces, been published allow the posting of the Accepted between us we have visited hundreds of examples as well as Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their occasionally designing, running, and writing about them. We would consent. like to be able to say that we know what they are, but are not sure that we do. They resist description. Indeed, from a Western point of view they are alien to our preference for well-defined functional spaces. 2 Are they, for instance, sacred or secular? If sacred space is taken to be as described by Mircea Eliade, as a space set apart, a model of the Tianyin Xia et al. world, a navel of the world, and so on, then they are ambiguously sacred. They are open to people of all faiths, and to people of no faith and also to those simply wanting quiet, or to recharge their batteries, or even to charge their iPhone. They are designed so as not to privilege any particular group. This contrived ambiguity is usually banal. Their furnishings, often self-assembly furniture, are conspicuously secular. Are they for iconoclasts or iconophiles? Both are accommodated. Sacred artifacts are often available for temporary use, on open access shelves or kept hidden in cupboards. The room itself is generally empty, and must be reset between users. Usually sited in out of the way places, often near the lavatories, many look like offices. Some people look down on them or find them comical. Alternatively they can be seen, positively, as regenerative spaces, pregnant with possibility; places of new birth and novelty. Many people do find them meaningful and say as much in visitors books. Here is a floating signifier if ever there was one. How can all these descriptions be true? Should we worry if they are not? We distinguish two types of MFS. First there are those that follow what we call the positive model, based on an established sacred space made open to others in a spirit of hospitality. Such places are often full of stuff such as artworks, plants, water fountains, books, and notices. Inclusivity is valued over attempted neutrality. The most successful, in our experience, are those where a lack of resources forces sharing and compromise, such as happens in some hospital chaplaincies. The second type, which we call the negative, is an attempt to create a neutral space. This is the more common sort of MFS and can be found in airports and other globalized spaces in Europe and the US. It is this negative type we are interested in. It appears to be a religious innovation. Many are ephemeral. Most of them are plain and architecturally blank. The MFS at the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London, is typical. It is a windowless plasterboard box (Figure 1). To reach it you must pass through a frameless door that leads to the service zone of the gallery, back-stage as it were, where round a corner you find a room that is not quite either public or private. Why, one might wonder, does an art gallery need a sacred space? This is all the more strange when one considers that there is no legal responsibility to provide such a thing, or any organization behind multifaith, or any design or management standards associated with them. One would like to know, what are these things, where do they come from, and who is supposed to use them? Methodology To answer these questions our method was to enquire where else do we find different world views sharing space, to see what light they could throw on Western MFS. For example, shared religious space has existed 3 Figure 1 Tate Modern Gallery Multifaith Room, Herzog & de Meuron Architects (2016). Photograph by Andrew Crompton. in India for a very long time. A modern example is the Auroville settlement in Tamil Nadu, which incorporates the well-being dimension and religious tourism that we see elsewhere in multifaith. In general, Indian examples match the positive sort of MFS such as those in the West made by opening Christian spaces to all faiths. They deserve more study from an MFS point of view. It is, however, in China that we see examples of shared sacred spaces that are the equivalent of the negative forms of MFS. China has a long history of religious coexistence and many examples of religions sharing space, most famously the Hanging Temple of 491 CE. Other examples are given below. This is not to say that MFS are Chinese. The origins of multifaith spaces, such as we have been able to discover, 4 are entirely Western and lie in organizations wanting to include religions on an equal basis in a non-religious context. The oldest, which go back to Tianyin Xia et al. about 1950, include the Meditation Room at the United Nations building in New York and shared faith spaces in United States Marine Corps bases. If Chinese examples and multifaith are ways of solving the same problem of religious co-habitation, convergent evolution seems the best explanation especially if, as we claim, that the way they are understood in China is different to how we theorize MFS in the West. The dialectic philosophy of I-Ching, has had a profound influence on Chinese religion and philosophy. The theory of the balance of Yin and Yang helps eliminate conflict with a settlement based on a novel philosophical understanding of what the differences between religions mean. Yin and Yang were not to be seen in terms of opposition, in the sense of friend and enemy, or true and false, but in terms of complementarity, such as male and female. Thus religions make each other visible in patterns of similarity and difference. One way to express this is to say that religions cleave together. Cleave is an auto-antonym, a word that means the same as its opposite. Thus things cleave together, that is, are joined together, or else are cleft apart and divided. Recognizing that religions in some way create each other makes relations between them a question of balance. If this cannot be achieved naturally it can be imposed, as it famously was in China at the command of the Emperor Ming Tai-tsu who, in pursuit of Confucian balance, observed that the sages of the “Three Teachings Space”– Lao Zi, Sakyamuni and Confucius, were, despite their differences, equally “heroes of the earth” and had each “reached heaven.” Clearly then there was no space for disagreement between them. Parallels between Chinese Shared Spaces and MFS Multifaith spaces of the modern Western type have not spread to China except at Hong Kong Airport where they are seen as being for the use of foreigners. We have rarely observed Chinese users in MFS, even though, Daoism, Buddhism and the humanistic tradition of Confucianism, are supposedly included. Let us look at three examples of Chinese shared sacred spaces that seem to make the idea of MFS redundant and that suggest perhaps, that all of China is a sort of multifaith space. First overlapping sacred and profane spaces, analogous to multifaith, are created by ordinary families involved in ancestor worship. This was originally a folk festival that has today become a ceremony known as the “Ghost Festival.” The ceremony, held in the open air in front of the family home, involves burning paper money, incense and candles. Some participants look at pictures of their ancestors and deceased relatives, others keep their thoughts to themselves. No clergy are involved. Figure 2 shows four piles of ashes left after four families had performed their rituals. Even as they share space on the pavement they are worshiping different things, for each family regards their own 5 Figure 2 Ancestor Worship on the pavement at the Ghost Festival. Photograph by Tianyin Xia. ancestors as the “holy spirits” or “family guardian angels,” (which are sacred), while ancestors belonging to other families are regarded as merely “ghosts,” (which are profane). Despite knowing that this public sacred space is full of profane ghostly disturbances people maintain basic social etiquette, worshiping independently without disturbing each other. When the festival is over the ashes are removed by street cleaners or the rain, leaving little trace on the pavement (Figure 3). Second, in addition to ancestor worship, family shrines in Chinese homes can be seen as analogous to multifaith constructions. The variation in traditional family shrine designs across China is very considerable, a prototypical example is hardly possible. One source of variation is that it is common for family members not to have the same faith. For example, the grandfather might be a Confucian, the mother a Buddhist and the uncle a Daoist. In traditional dwellings shrines like these are located in the central hall of the house, a space equivalent to the living room in a modern house. Figure 4 shows an example from Hunan Province, in southern China. It has an idol of an indigenous religion, a Daoist deity, a Buddhist bodhisattva, a plaque with named nature deities espoused by Confucians, alongside photographs of deceased relatives next to a wooden tablet with the names of earlier family ancestors. The order in which these sacred objects are placed is not meaningful other than that they are all at the same level. On traditional and religious festivals in China, families may hold prayers at the family shrine, where family members of different faiths, celebrating different festivals, find themselves a prayer object but do not 6 Tianyin Xia et al. Figure 3 Worship space after clean up. Photograph by Tianyin Xia. Figure 4 Family Shrine in Southern China. Family of grandfather of Tianyin Xia, taken 2020. remove the non-prayer objects. The similarities with multifaith, especially their ubiquitous storage shelves, are hard to deny. The three faiths or doctrines of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism did not co-exist in harmony to begin with. During China’s feudal period, they often attacked and denigrated each other for being unorthodox, disagreements that even developed into fierce political struggles. These three faiths, after a long period of struggle and 7 infiltration, gradually integrated, thus constituting a major feature of traditional Chinese culture, but the undeniable fact is that they still maintain their own distinctiveness and independence. Perhaps tired of the mutual attacks between Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, Chinese thinkers and even emperors promoted a syncretic accommodation that can be traced back to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, syncretism became a topic of public discussion; the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, even proposed the fusion of the three faiths. The syncretism of the three faiths in the Ming dynasty became popular not only among the upper classes and monks, but also spread among the people. During this period, a kind of officially recognized religious space called ‘Three Sages Shrine’ emerged which fused Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. In a similar way the members of a family use their shrine to find a balanced relationship between their different beliefs, not profane or heretical, but in terms of free innovation. The members of the family do not betray their own beliefs, but rather achieve a pluralistic coexistence within one family that could be a model for multi-faith harmony in the West. A third Chinese example similar to multifaith spaces are the sacred spaces, administered by the government called Ritual Architecture (礼制建). These temples have no fixed clergy, scriptures, doctrine or rituals. They hold festivals dedicated to natural deities, ancestors and saints, alongside prayers for blessings such as rain or to mobilize for national events such as wars, and for family events such as weddings and funerals. Natural deity temples (see Figure 5) come in two parts; the Hall (寝殿) where wooden tablets (木主) with the names of the deities are kept, and the Altar (坛) where they are placed for worship. At the end of the ritual, the tablet is moved back to the Hall where it is not displayed Figure 5 The Temple of Heaven, Beijing 1420, an example of a natural deity temple (1898 Postcard, public domain). 8 or worshiped. Each deity commands a separate ritual and there is no hierarchy between them. Ritual architecture also has a humanistic form Tianyin Xia et al. in the “ancestors or sage temple” where a real person is worshipped. In Temples of Confucius, idols or pictures are displayed. In contemporary China, the expression of respect for the sages is no longer limited to indigenous elements in the context of the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures. For example, Figure 6 shows Aristotle and Confucius smiling at each other with a glass of wine in their hands. We note in the working arrangements, two key parallels with MFS. First with the introduction of objects from a storage area to the otherwise empty worship space and, second, the availability of the space for both religious and humanistic use. Unlike most MFS, however, these temples are ornate. Figure 6 Aristotle (left) and Confucius (right) have a drink. “Dialogue East-West” designed by 吴信坤 (Kuan Wu), in Yang-Hu National Wet Land Park in Changsha. 9 The Chinese View of Shared Religious Space That religions borrow from each other seems indisputable, but in the West syncretism is associated with heresy, and both Orthodox Christianity and conservative Protestantism are strongly anti-syncretistic. Consequently, the term pluralism is generally the preferred value-free description of how religions live together in the West. Yet, in their sharing of ritual and space, MFS could be seen as agents of syncretism, as for example in introducing the use of prayer trees and candles to Muslims. This sort of religious borrowing has been practiced in China for centuries reaching full-blown syncretism in the Three Teachings cults and Three Teachings halls between the Sung (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties. In China it is possible to join more than one religion, in most cases without any condemnation. Hence, syncretism is not necessarily a betrayal of belief. Projecting Western value judgements about syncretism onto Chinese religions is generally inappropriate. Indeed, there is, additionally, a view that syncretists are the creators of peace, using pragmatism as well as wishful thinking to promote doctrinal reconciliation. In China this is achieved through the preaching of generalized religious slogans, aimed at hearts and not minds, principles and not doctrines. Syncretists are uneasy about religious competition and dogmatism and work for mutual understanding, tolerance and solidarity. Indeed, these general, almost ambiguous, slogans are often presented as a paradigm of religious integration. For instance: “The teachings are three, but the Way is one. Confucianism is the sun; Buddhism is the moon; Daoism is the stars. Confucianism governs the state; Daoism governs the body; Buddhism governs the mind.” For Confucianism, syncretism is more than a simple slogan. The Sung neo-Confucian scholar Cheng Yi (1033–1107) proposed that “There is but one Universal Principle which exists in diverse forms.” The Universal Principle, as the Supreme Truth, exists in different things or takes different forms. Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism, are then simply different ways of interpreting Truth. The truths, claimed by each of them, are merely “relative absolutes,” or “necessary but inadequate.” The distinctive features of Chinese religious practice lie in the ideas of Confucius and Lao-Zi, which see the world as growing from a primary distinction between the namable and unnamable Dao. Things both create each other and can cancel each other out. Such ideas are in contrast to a worldview that sees the world made of substances and primordial atomic objects. During the twentieth century this position has loosened and ideas of creation akin to the Chinese view have emerged in the West, most famously in quantum mechanics where particle and anti-particle create each other. Seeing this as Daoist has been popularized in works such as Fritjof Capra’s 1975 book The Tao of Physics. Similarly the idea of a marked and unmarked state analogous to the namable and unnamable Dao are found in the work of the mathematical philosopher G. Spencer-Brown. 10 More significant for this study is the influence of structuralism which looks at structures as systems of transformations as the basis of Tianyin Xia et al. meaning, rather than atomism. Piaget describes the influence of this method, across a wide range of disciplines including logic, mathematics, psychology, language, social structures. In his view, structures are self- regulating and objects are established by their relation to the whole, not as independent atoms, but meaningful only in relation to other objects. With the exception of Spencer-Brown, where the Chinese influence is explicit, none of these are obviously Daoist; rather they seem to have reached the same point following different paths. The middle way allows for ambiguities such as Confucianism occupying an intermediate position between religion and humanism, as depicted by Guoxiang Peng and by Charles Taylor who called it a “Religion of Humanity” or a “Quasi-Religion.” The middle way allows the unity of heaven and man leading to the worship of nature deities and ancestors on the same level. Respect for the order of heaven and ancestral decrees has become the most fundamental belief of the Chinese people: Confucianism understands a network of relationships that keep temper, emotions, and bias within acceptable limits. Truth is less important than balance. And this could also be the motto and function of MFS. They are a middle way between religions that, in other circumstances, might be antagonistic. The Western View of Shared Religious Space Multifaith is not associated with any particular religious or philosophical movement, nor is there any famous person associated with it. Little has been written about it. It is a fringe phenomenon. There is no theory of multifaith. It needs one. Let us sketch a few ways of understanding it. We do not pretend that these remarks are complete or rigorous. In his work A Secular Age philosopher Charles Taylor defines a space of fashion as a place where there is a horizontal, simultaneous mutual presence, which is not that of a common action, but rather of mutual display. It matters to each one of us, as we act, that others are there to witness what we are doing and thus co-determine the meaning of what we do.” In a space of fashion individuals do their own thing, and each finds what Taylor calls an authentic path. It is not hard to see Chinese examples of shared space as spaces of fashion in this sense, and also MFS, even if they are hidden in out of the way places, as accommodating activities that might be unwelcome if performed in public. This leads to the idea of MFS being event spaces. When a religious adherent enters their home sacred space, be it mosque, church, synagogue, gurdwara, temple, stupa or other sanctuary, they rightly expect to be embraced by a recognizable religious geography in built form. The nature of this encounter will range from the very intimate to the broadly familiar and welcome: depending on the shape and the material 11 contents of the space. Once the adherent leaves the room both aspects of the ritual space will be folded away until the next user arrives. The space itself will return to rest in its pre-articulate state. In this sense the MFS is an event that happens (in and out of space-time) which can be conjured up, or activated by the user entering the space. Thus the threshold, represents a totem, barrier, risk, challenge, to be crossed. For the user who simply wants to be away from their work, or think great thoughts, the MFS embraces a different agenda of human wellbeing, fulfillment, and flourishing. This is augmented and enabled by a range of of spiritually performative materials, colors, light levels, and other stimulants that carry meaning. When it happens that users of different faiths or no-faith inhabit the same space-time, as for example when Christian worship overlaps with Muslim prayer, secular mindfulness practice, or a lunch break, the space accommodates different religious-non-religious multiverses, different chronotypes, there are anachronisms, archaisms. Hybrid mixtures of social and religious things like this are difficult to understand from a strictly sociological or theological viewpoint. These mixtures falling between traditional categories of thought are similar to the hybrid things that mix social and natural elements studied by Bruno Latour. He was a historian of technology looking at chimera such as frozen embryos, expert systems, digital machines, gene synthesizers and much else, all things in which nature and culture are mingled. The modern point of view is to separate nature and culture with the result that these sort of things appear self-contradictory, or odd or threatening, or as things with a life of their own to the extent that they seem to proliferate without being planned. These, of course are all qualities associated with MFS. Latour says we should accept the hybrids, it is the categories of thought forced on us by modernism that are the issue, in other words we should take a non-modern position to understand them. He claims that the polarities ‘nature’ and ‘society’ are better explained as aspects of the hybrids, not the other way round. It is in this reversal of the usual order of explanation that we see a similarity with Daoism. Curiously, Latour actually compares hybrids to China itself, saying “that the field of nonmodern worlds. It is the Middle Kingdom, as vast as China and as little known.” To be clear; there is no reason to think he was thinking of Daoism when he wrote this, but the idea that that life creates things in the middle which we only later categorize as belonging to nature or culture, seems Daoist. Latour compares his hybrids to quasi-objects, a term coined by philosopher Michel Serres who used the example of a football. A player, a quasi-subject, who has the ball is said to be in possession, but is also possessed by the ball, to the extent that they move in unison, and both seem to share a purpose. During a game the distinction between the ball and player is incomplete, the better the player the closer the bond between them. The mingling between object and person is similar to 12 the mingling we see between the natural and cultural aspects of Latour’s hybrids. Thus MFS, as things that become meaningful in use, are Tianyin Xia et al. examples of quasi-objects. In them the relationship between worshiper and space is reciprocal, the space is what the user makes it and vice- versa. Discussion The difference between a Western and Chinese approach can be illustrated by how we understand sets of objects that do not share an essence. An example of such a set is a collection of letters from different fonts. Figure 7 shows a collection of letter “O’s.” There is no single feature they all share except being black. There is a family resemblance between them and that is all. Fonts are radically different to each other, they cannot be morphed one into another without many letters passing through some primitive shapeless form that is no longer a letter. This surprising fact is explained in detail by Hofstadter. In a similar way the cultures that meet in non-spaces such as airports share features but do not share an essence that could unite them. Globalized spaces can be understood as representing what John Rawls describes as an “overlapping consensus” world, a phrase very similar to Wittgenstein’s illustration of family resemblance being like the overlapping threads of a rope. If we force a consensus between cultures and say we must find something to hold in common, then we are reduced to something basic and biological, equivalent to the black blob between morphed letters. We all eat, breathe, live in enclosed spaces, and so on. Thus a shared space based on an idea of shared humanity is a cell near the lavatories, as it is in many airports; or perhaps like an office with a Figure 7 Different forms of letter “O” have nothing in common. Drawn by Andrew Crompton. 13 suspended ceiling, the most common type of interior across the world. It is less than any of the things it serves. Now let us look at the question from a different direction. The letter “O’s” shown above do all share something, namely that they are tokens of that letter. It is just that what “O” is, remains impossible to say. Its identity is not given by the shape in itself but by the other letters around it. An isolated circular shape might be like a letter, or it might be a drawing of an orange, it only becomes a letter in a word. If a letter is omitted from a line of t[]xt, like so, then it is easy to reconstruct provided we can spell. This is a holistic description of a letter, in which its meaning given by the whole of which it is a part. This is also like the Dao, in which things are defined by their companions with which co-exist in a whole. As Lao Zi wrote “Dao gives birth to one, one to two, two to three, and three to all things.” In the East, the middle way is the primordial thing, it is just a matter of finding it. The middle way of multifaith treats each faith as meaningful in relation to the others, like letters in words or words in sentences. This leads us to see the architectural question in a new way. We think that a satisfactory architectural solution for MFS is yet to be found. The usual method of writing a brief based on expressing a function does not work. Just as the meaning of a letter is given by the word of which it is a part, so an MFS is created by those who use it, so in that case half of what makes an MFS work is out of the designer’s control. We have seen so many banal spaces that we ought to consider the possibility that multifaith is a problem without an architectural answer, even if Chinese temples suggest otherwise. There are a however a few exceptions, such as the as unbuilt House of One in Berlin, by architects Kuhn € Malvezzi, or the unbuilt Friday Saturday Sunday project, by Dan Leon of Square Feet Architects, London. Most MFS are built without an architect. Where architects have been involved they often try to impose an order based on something vaguely spiritual and personal that seems inappropriate. People involved in the management of multifaith often know more, seeking balance, they follow a via negativa, managing and resetting the room before things can go wrong. To express the problem dramatically, just as a hole can move from one medium to another and still be the same hole, are not MFS like holes in reality as they transferrred between cultures and occupied in different ways? What might such a thing look like? Concluding Remarks The Chinese examples given here show that different faiths can be put into one space and still retain their identity if they are thought of as having the same origin, formed simultaneously from the mutual agitation of Yin and Yang. Can we make sense of an idea like this in the West? Cultures can consciously copy each other’s technology and fashion, but a paradigm or theory is not something that can be defined in a way that allows for simple transfer. Instead a theory might travel 14 because it shows data in a new light. The multifaith spaces being built in the West are not Chinese, but they are places where a Chinese way of Tianyin Xia et al. looking at the matter is illuminating. Thus they are a potential channel introducing Confucianism to the West. From a Western point of view whether religions form a whole is arguable and there is no reason to suppose a middle way exists. On the other hand if we believe that religions all spring from one source, as Confucius seems to have done, then it is only a matter of finding it. Even if we are agnostic about the two positions it seems clear that the Confucian approach is more likely to find a middle way if only because it knows what it is looking for. Of course the discovery of a middle way does not refute the Western viewpoint, and one could follow the Confucian path because it is politically expedient, but what does that matter? If it can be found, the whole will become a new order, like the organs in a body combining to make a person. In this sense multifaith offers the potential for transcendence, a going beyond current tropes. Multifaith suggests new ways of creating spaces that embrace difference without negation. MFS are liberative events that go beyond stereotypes or aggressive dualisms. That might be enough for many, it would be easy to get carried away by an experience of participatory wholeness or of a reformed holiness beyond dogmatism. But why not get carried away? MFS are conduits of deep ideas. Nobody really knows what to put in them, and that might not matter, it is what comes out of them that will be more important. Tianyin Xia is an architect and doctoral student at the University of Liverpool studying multifaith in China. Terry Biddington is a practical theologian and Dean of Spiritual Life at the University of Winchester. He has written, to date, the only full-length monograph exploring multifaith spaces. Andrew Crompton is an architect and researcher at the University of Liverpool with an interest in multifaith. His other research interests are the work of G. Spencer-Brown and the design of interfaces. Notes 1. MFS is often referred to as interfaith in the 3. Terry Biddington, “Towards a Theological US. Terry Biddington, Multifaith Spaces: Reading of Multifaith Spaces,” History, Development, Design and Practice International Journal of Public Theology 7, (London: Jessica Kingsley, T., 2020), 76. no. 3 (2013): 315–328. 2. One of the modes of failure for an MFS 4. Homerton Hospital MFS in East London is to be comic, see Andrew Crompton, was a lively crowded chaplaincy space “The Architecture of Multifaith Spaces: when we visited. Elaborate buildings that God Leaves the Building,” The Journal of cater for all faiths separately seem less Architecture, 18, no. 4 (2013): 474–496. used as we observed in 2012 at Coventry Hospital (UK) and Toronto University Renmin Chuban She, 1992) 15 (Canada) and in many other places. 福建人民出版社, 37, 56. 5. Andrew Crompton “A Non-Modern 13. Three Sages Shrines are dedicated to Confucius, Sakyamuni and Lao Zi. They Space,” in Interior Futures, ed. Brooker, emerged in large numbers during the Harriss, H. and Walker, K. (Yountville CA: Ming dynasty. Ibid., 56. Crucible Press for the RCA, 2019), 74–89. 14. Dazhang Sun 孙大章. Zhongguo Gu 6. On the legal position of MFS in the UK, Jianzhu Daxi 9 Lizhi Jianzhu: Tanmiao see: Andrew Crompton, and Chris Jisi 中国古建筑大系 9 礼制建筑: 坛庙祭祀 Hewson “Designing equality,” in Religion, [Chinese Ancient Architecture 9 Ritual Equalities and Inequalities, ed. Dawn Architecture: Altars and Temples and Llewellen, and Sonya Sharma (London: Sacrifice] (Beijing: Zhongguo Jianzhu Routledge, 2016), 77–88. Gongye Chuban She, 1993) 7. See Terry Biddington, “Multifaith Space: 中国建筑工业出版社, 117. Religious Accommodation in Postcolonial 15. The natural type: natural deities Public Space?” in Living Together After temples are used to worship Heaven, Empire, ed. R. Patta, J. Dunn, and H. Earth, Sun, Moon, Mountains, Rivers, Joziasse (London: Palgrave Macmillan, Wind, Clouds, Thunder, Rain, Agriculture 2019). See also, Biddington 2020,24–5. and Grains. Each nature deity has their 8. “To understand the nature and function own temple. Dazhang Sun (1993), 117, of syncretism in religious interaction and 127. The humanistic type: ancestors’ change, there is no better place to look temples of worship include sage than China.” Judith Berling, The Syncretic temples in public areas, such as temple Religion of Lin Chao-en (New York: of Confucius, Guan Yu, the emperors, Columbia University Press, 1980), xv. and national and ethnic heroes, etc. And 9. Of spaces actually named as multifaith there are also clan temples and family only a few date from before the shrines in private areas. Ibid, 130–136. millennium. See https://en.jinzhao.wiki/wiki/Temple_ 10. In the Ming dynasty, Lin Chao-en of_Confucius Accessed 22 December integrated the Three Teachings into a single religious practice while retaining 16. “To understand the nature and function their identities. The command of Ming of syncretism in religious interaction Tai-tsu meant that this “Syncretic and change, there is no better place to Religion” became orthodox resulting in a look than China.” Judith Berling, The dramatic change in Chinese folk religion. Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en (New Berling (1980), 60–61, 49–52. Three York: Columbia University Press, 1980), Teachings’ refer to Confucianism, xv. The term syncretism itself comes Daoism and Buddhism. Since from the Greek “synkretismos,” the Confucianism cannot be understood as historic union of communities on Crete a religion ‘teachings’ is used instead. to combine against a common enemy. Guoxiang Peng 彭国翔. Rujia Chuantong: 17. Biddington 2013, 164. Zongjiao Yu Renwen Zhuyi Zhijian 18. Berling, 1980. 4, 14. (Zengding Ban) 19. Ibid., 6. 儒家传统：宗教与人文主义之间 20. Being a supreme domain in terms of [Confucian Tradition: Between the principle, Li (理) exists in different things Religion and Humanism]. 2nd ed. and manifests itself in different forms. (Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chuban She, “There is but one Li, which exists in 2019) 北京大学出版社,9–12. diverse forms.” This is an important way 11. See https://www.hongkongairport.com/ in which the Song-and Ming-dynasty en/passenger-guide/airport-facilities- thinkers viewed the forms in services/prayer-rooms Accessed 21 which Li exists. As Li has different December 2021. meanings, its one-and-diverse 12. Guoping Lin 林国平. Lin-Zhaoen Yu composition is also interpreted in Sanyi Jiao 林兆恩与三一教 [Lin-Zhaoen different ways. First, as the origin of and syncretic religion]. (Fuzhou: Fujian universe in an ontological sense, Li runs 16 through all things. The Li of each thing is MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), not a part of Li, rather, it is endowed with 69–71. the full meaning of Li.Second, 30. Latour 1993, 51. See also the Tianyin Xia et al. representing the universal law governing description of nonhuman entities with a all things, the universal Li expresses itself life of their own. Latour Bruno, On the in the form of different guiding principles Modern Cult of the Factish Gods trans. Porter, Catherine, and Maclean, Heather in specific things. The Li of each thing or being is a concrete expression of the (London and Durham, NC: Duke universal Li. The concept of Li being one University Press, 2010), 42, 62. and same ensures unity of the world, 31. Latour 1993, 95, 48. whereas its diversity provides the basis 32. Michel Serres, The Parasite tr. Lawrence for multifarious things and hierarchical R. Schehr (Minneapolis: University of order. See https://www.chinesethought. Minnesota Press, 2007), 225–6. cn/EN/shuyu_show.aspx?shuyu_id=3476 33. Compare this with human faces: Accessed 13 December 2021. computers can morph images of human 21. Guoxiang Peng 彭国翔 (2019, 188). faces one into another using fixed 22. G. Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form (London: points such as the corners of the mouth George Allen and Unwin, 1969). See also or eye, tip of the chin or nose. The John R. Williams, “The Yin and Yang of G. intermediate stages of the deformation are all realistic faces. This is possible Spencer-Brown’sLawsof Form” in because all faces share a basic Alphabetum III (Den Haag: West, 2019). 23. Jean Piaget, Structuralism, tr and ed. structure. Letters do not share fixed Chaninah Maschler (London: Routledge points in anything like this manner. and Kegan Paul 1973), 5. 34. By comparing many different versions of 24. Guoxiang Peng 彭国翔 (2019, 10). the letter ‘A’ Hofstadter concluded that 25. Charles Taylor, ASecular Age (Cambridge, nobody could possess the secret recipe MA: Belknap Press 2007), 390. from which they could all be generated. 26. Ye Xiaowen, Pluralism and Harmony in He called letterforms open sets. On the the Religions of China (Beijing: Foreign impossibility of interpolation between Languages Press, 2018), 6–9. two fonts see, Douglas Hofstadter, 27. Taylor 2007, 481. Metamagical Themas (London: Penguin, 28. Terry Biddington, Multifaith Spaces: 1986), 260–296. History, Development, Design and Practice, 35. Taylor 2007, 532. 176. See also the depiction of spiritual 36. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical space as something enacted in, Jonathan, Investigations, Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe Z. Smith, To Take Place (Chicago: (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968), Art 67, University of Chicago Press, 1987), 83. p. 32. 29. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been 37. Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power Modern, tr. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1934), 195. References – Berling, Judith. 1980. The Syncretic – Biddington, Terry. 2019. “Multifaith Space: Religion of Lin Chao-en. New York: Religious Accommodation in Postcolonial Columbia University Press. Public Space?” In Living together after – Biddington, Terry. 1987. Multifaith Spaces: Empire, edited by R. Patta, J. Dunn, and H. History, Development, Design and Practice. Joziasse. London: Palgrave Macmillan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 24–25. – Biddington, Terry. 2013. “Towards a – Biddington, Terry. 2020. Multifaith Spaces: Theological Reading of Multifaith Spaces.” History, Development, Design and Practice. International Journal of Public Theology 7, London: Jessica Kingsley, T. no. 3: 315–328. doi:10.1163/15697320- – Capra, Fritjof. 1975. The Tao of Physics. 12341293 Boulder CO: Shambhala Publications. – Crompton, Andrew. 2013. “The and Maclean, Heather. London and 17 Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Architecture of Multifaith Spaces: God – Lin, Guoping, Lin-Zhaoen Yu, Sanyi Jiao Leaves The Building.” The Journal of 1992. Lin-Zhaoen and Syncretic Architecture, 18, no. 4: 474–496. doi:10. Religion. Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin 1080/13602365.2013.821149 Chuban She. – Crompton, Andrew. 2019. “A Non-Modern – Piaget, Jean. 1973. Structuralism, tr and Space.” In Interior Futures, edited by ed. Chaninah Maschler. London: Routledge Brooker, Harriss H., and K. Walker, 74–89. and Kegan Paul. Yountville, CA: Crucible Press for the RCA. – Serres, Michel. 2007. The Parasite tr. – Crompton, Andrew, and Chris Hewson. Lawrence R. Schehr. Minneapolis: 2016. “Designing equality.” In Religion, University of Minnesota Press. Equalities and Inequalities, edited by Dawn – Spencer-Brown, G. 1969. Laws of Form. Llewellen, and Sonya Sharma, 77–88. London: George Allen and Unwin. London: Routledge. – Sun, Dazhang. 1993. Zhongguo Gu Jianzhu – Guoping, Lin, Lin-Zhaoen Yu, Sanyi Jiao. Daxi 9 Lizhi Jianzhu: Tanmiao Jisi 1992. Lin-Zhaoen and Syncretic Religion. 中国古建筑大系 9 礼制建筑: 坛庙祭祀 [Chinese Ancient Architecture 9 Ritual Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chuban She. Architecture: Altars and Temples and – Guoxiang Peng. 2019. Rujia Chuantong: Sacrifice]. Beijing: Zhongguo Jianzhu Zongjiao Yu Renwen Zhuyi Zhijian (Zengding Gongye Chuban She. Ban) 儒家传统：宗教与人文主义之间 – Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. [Confucian Tradition: Between the Religion Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. and Humanism], 2nd ed. Beijing: Beijing – Waley, Arthur. 1934. The Way and Its Daxue Chuban She. Power. London: Allen & Unwin. – Hofstadter, Douglas. 1986. Metamagical – Williams, John R. 2019. “The Yin and Yang Themas. London: Penguin. of G. Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form.” In – Jonathan, Z. Smith. 1987. To Take Place. Alphabetum III. Den Haag: West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. – Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1968. Philosophical – Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Modern, tr. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. MA: Harvard University Press. – Ye, Xiaowen. 2018. Pluralism and Harmony – Latour, Bruno. 2010. On the Modern Cult of in the Religions of China. Beijing: Foreign the Factish Gods trans. Porter, Catherine, Languages Press.
Journal
Architecture and Culture
– Taylor & Francis
Published: May 9, 2023
Keywords: Multifaith space; China; quasi-object; Structuralism; Daoism; Confucianism
