Monasteries – The layered capture of rhythm in space and time through rituals by ‘moulage’

Abstract

Monasteries have represented a unique quest to balance daily life and sacredness for more than 1,500 years. The subject of this paper is their community life through rituals, and rhythm in time and space. We start with Philip Gröning's movie, 'Die Große Stille' (2005), a poetical and intimate portrait of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks in Grande Chartreuse, high up in the French Alps. The movie shows great respect for rituals in prayer, but equally in the monks' dealings with space and ritual objects. Monks live 'together alone' following traditions that are over one thousand years' old, concerning identity and spiritual regeneration in a collective site.We then look at a twentieth century Benedictine monk, the architect and theorist Dom Hans van der Laan. He fostered a link between space and clothing as a

Investigating the Domestic Layers Adaptation During Pandemic

“…During the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on contact with the outer world have forced the layers of the domestic environment to adapt and take measures necessary to increase domestic resilience towards virus transmission. This paper proposes to re-read the understanding of layers using an interiority perspective that emphasises the formation of layers and the connections between, which construct the domestic environment's spatiality (Lens & Van Cleempoel, 2015;Weinthal, 2011). This focus on performance and interaction between layers will potentially expand on Brand's shearing layers framework, creating a more holistic understanding of change in a domestic context.…”