The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the church ruin of the abandoned settlement of Övraby in Halmstad, Sweden. This is done from a modern church archaeological point of view based on Jes Wienbergs discussion on how to analyse a church as a part of a society rather than as an entity of its own. As an effect of this the thesis also discuss the settlement history of Övraby. The delimitation of the thesis is Övraby and its closest surroundings. Three issues are raised 1. Is there is a continuity of cult or place of cult from the pre-Christian era. 2. Of what type of character was the settlement? 3. How did the church architecture reflect societal change? The results in this thesis states that there are no concrete findings of cult places from the pre-Christian era which could be said to be connected to Övraby, though there are some aspects of the interior of the church building that might be considered as having been connected to a pre-Christian aristocratic cult. The thesis also states that Övraby was an aristocratic village which with time developed into a city, this aristocratic character of the early settlement is reflected both in profane buildings and on the architecture of the church. The development from village to town the thesis states, can be seen on the church architecture since the church lost many of its aristocratic features of architecture as the settlement developed.

The aim of the thesis is a research of the oldest sacral architecture on the example of one region - West Bohemia. While historical research has suggested that the oldest churches were built at administrative castles and formed the basis of a great-parish system, archaeological sources show a different image. Already during the 11th century, we have documented a number of churches in the landscape. Their relationship to older burial grounds is being explored. Compared to the supposed discontinuity between older row burial sites and church cemeteries, it appears that in many cases there was a direct spatial connection. The churches were founded in places of older settlement, as well as in places of older cemeteries. Archaeological research has documented wooden buildings and stone architecture too. In several cases, spatial and functional links to residences have been explored. In many cases, a greater age of churches was proved. Some churches were preceded by an older sacral building. The position of some churches on important roads and borders indicates their symbolic role. The results of archaeological research formulated to questions who were the builders of these churches and what was their role in medieval society. Thus, the view of the early Christianization of the early medieval population...

During the twentieth century, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints altered its policy of gathering converts to “Zion,” a centralized location in the western United States, instead encouraging permanent Mormon settlement throughout the world. In order to achieve a dispersed global membership, the Church constructed regional buildings necessary to facilitate the fundamental socioreligious aspects of the faith. Temples provided exclusive ritual space, helping preserve a distinctive form of worship among diverse religious populations. Meetinghouses furnished community space for weekly spiritual worship, religious instruction, ecclesiastical administration, and social activities, enabling connection among other believers as well as non-Mormon visitors. Chapter 1 focuses on the central role of temple-building in Mormon Zion-building; without a regional temple, a Mormon landscape was incomplete and therefore perpetually transient. The second and third chapters explore the under-scrutinized role of meetinghouses in Mormon Zion-building. Chapter 2 examines the form and function of meetinghouses, giving attention to stylistic modernization and the evolving multiuse social hall turned basketball gymnasium. Chapter 3 chronicles the evolution of the Church architecture program, which relied heavily upon standardization and branding during the final half of the twentieth century. Chapter 4 observes the construction of the Mormon cultural landscape in Washington D.C. that helped mend the contentious past between the Church and the federal government. Chapter 5 studies the construction of meetinghouses and a temple in Greater Boston, which afforded access to the intellectual and economic opportunities of the Eastern Establishment. Chapter 6 serves as a concentrated lens into Mormon landscapes of training and education in Provo, Utah. Together, these six chapters reveal the modern Mormon landscape as one that achieves relative uniformity across a worldwide Church membership and hard-won acceptance within the American religious landscape. The basic programs for modern temples and meetinghouses demonstrate their unique roles in the balancing act of belonging to larger communities as a religious minority while retaining a discernible identity. This dissertation argues that the Church adopted a corporate strategy to efficiently expand into non-Mormon landscapes, maintain control over religious programming, and preserve a resilient yet adaptable socioreligious identity among its membership.

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This dissertation considers sites of religious broadcast designed for and used by Protestant television evangelists in the postwar United States. It interrogates both the transformation of ritual space as it relates to and is infused by broadcast media, and the architectural and infrastructural adaptations that conditioned such spaces as a result of this mediation. These ritual sites, either retrofitted to accommodate television or designed explicitly for its technology between the late 1950s and the early 1980s, emerged in a period marked both by the ascendance of television broadcasting and by the increasing cultural and political visibility of conservative Protestantism in the United States. While the architecture of television evangelistic practice has also evolved in ways that parallel, and often complicate, changes in mainstream ecclesiastical architecture in the twentieth century, the protagonists of this narrative do not fall into two better-documented genealogies—neither the history of denominationally specific church consulting and the practical guidance penned in its support, nor accounts of high architectural, often academic, reflection on sacred space. Instead, the architecture of these often culturally marginal practices has been critically segregated from much other religious and spiritual construction, despite its effective proliferation across the American landscape to this very day. The wake of this bias leaves resultant lacunae in scholarly and critical attention, which this dissertation works in part to fill. In beginning to account for this history, I examine a variety of evangelical spaces—mostly worship spaces, but also broadcast stations, hospitals, and university campuses—and draw upon their archival and textual traces. Primary case studies in California, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Virginia are framed by questions of style and typology, examined alongside contemporary theories and criticisms of mass mediation, and located in relation to histories of mediated healing practices and apocalyptic thinking. This specific ritual architecture, which the dissertation terms televangelical space, not only negotiated between received ideas of the sacred and newer discourses around twentieth-century media, building practices, and community structures, but also raised the issue of conservative Christianity’s fundamental relationship to the modern world. It traced a basic ambivalence about the relationship between the contemporary and the sacred, and about the relationship between religious practice and the technological realities and cultural habits of an increasingly mediated and increasingly atomized present. I suggest that the historical materialization of this negotiation generated both new kinds of ecclesiastical architecture and spatial effects that transcended its walls. Rather than insist on the relevance of the spaces of broadcast religion according to a rubric of aesthetic value, this project examines them for what they can reveal both about architecture for and with media and about the transformation of spirituality and community under new forms of mediation.

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The renovation of existing buiIdings is an alternative to new construction in urban renewal. The members of First Baptist Church of Roanoke, Virginia made the decision to utilize their existing structure after their new church facilities have been built. They believe that their building is an established landmark in the community, and that a reuse of this building would benefit the community. They feel that this building could become a vehicle to extend its ministry to the community. A workshop, with Halprin scoring, role playing, and brainstorming, was used to establish the buiIding program. The program established the foundation for the design of the renovation of the church building. A description of the workshop and results, the design process and final design are included. / Master of Architecture

<i>It is very important for human kind that architecture should move by its beauty; if there are many equally valid technical solutions to a problem, the one which offers the users a message of beauty and emotion, that one is architecture.</i> - Barragan - A simple shelter can fulfill the needs of the body, and the placement of the elements of construction in their relative positions can provide for the needs of the mind, but only the profound interrelationship of the elements of construction and the elements of experience can touch the spirit and move us deep within. Le Corbusier stated that: <i>the purpose of construction is to hold things together and of architecture to move us</i>. I hope that by applying these thoughts to my architecture, I may discover the point of intersection where the eternal and the finite meet, where the forming of finite elements awakens the spirit within man and causes him to dwell on the eternal. I hope to use the creation as a source of information to transform a material reality into a spiritual experience. / Master of Architecture