Spiritual Transformation and Inculturation as a Key to the Understanding of Sacred Architecture: Case Study of Wooden Church Heritages in the Northeast of Thailand
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Abstract
This paper is an exploration of key concepts to understanding sacred architecture. The first part of this article is divided into three topics; the first studies the meaning and anatomy of the sacred. The second topic is the concept of spiritual transformation as a key to understanding what sacred architecture represents. The third topic discusses the concept of inculturation as another key concept to understand how the sacred is manifested in the world.
In the second part of the article there are analyses of wooden churches that belong to the decades-old Christian community in northeast Thailand and their heritages. The analysis of both cases will show how spiritual transformation occurs from an urban scale to a building scale, and how the cultural context can solidify the form of architecture and what it meant to the communities.
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