You are to all eternity the evil, the horrible, the covetous, the insatiate, the godless; eternally also shall you be the unblessed, the cursed, the damned! [1] And you will be damned and condemned if you confess, and damned and condemned if you do not confess, because you will be punished as a perjurer! [2]
This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs [3]. It is the basis on which is constructed the power (…) to define and regulate all matters (…) on all the aspects of the life of those who consider themselves members. As a consequence, it is expected that the behavior of the members will conform to the tradition and the doctrine diffused by the institution and presented as (…) being the same for everyone everywhere [4]. Religions have established themselves on dogmas, the dogmas do not change [5]. They leave no room for discussion, everything is already defined. You either follow the rules or you are damned.
In the Freihaus, the statement that everything has already been solved and that there is a ready-made answer to every question is no longer accepted [6]. There is no longer a matter of reflection, of probing (…) for right or wrong, but an uncertain project in abundance of potentials, a dance with analytic paradoxes [7]. In the Freihaus, the simple dichotomies are refuted [8]. It is a place where one can express uncertainty; an asylum for the doubt. It is a refuge for discussing sin without fear of being judged; a Sanctuary for the Damned.
Observe, question and discuss; these are the rules of the Freihaus. In this Sanctuary, words still have power, they are the only remaining support, the last social reality [9]. These words speak of destabilization, deconstruction, dehiscence and, first of all, dissociation, disjunction, disruption, difference [10]. They question the spontaneous everyday "naive" notion of objective reality [11] and might well be injurious to religion and dangerously subversive [12], but they are necessary. The Sanctuary mediates thoughts and allows their expression. It is the boudoir of religion [13].
Glazed surfaces extend between the curved and sculptural ribs of the Sanctuary [14] and lead the Damned to its inner chambers. It is so constructed that when the visitor approaching along the axis of the nave reaches the central vanishing point under the center of the dome, the perspectives "make sense" as a sort of triptych whose three distinct chambers form one coherent space [15]. Each chamber differ in their essence and character when experienced individually but when looked at as a whole, they find themselves reconciled into a single narrative or perspective [16].
Walking through the Sanctuary, one must be careful not to destroy freedom [17], for freedom here is presented in such a way that, by definition, God cannot impose any restriction upon it. The Freihaus calls for a freedom capable of triumphantly overcoming (…) mere humanity, one capable of transhumanizing [18]. Observe freedom, question religion, discuss sin; these are the rules of the Freihaus. If one follows these rules, he who thought himself eternally damned finds himself ecstatically involved in his own resurrection [19].
Sensuality is condemned; it is considered the root of sin [20]. Yet, the everyday world is sensual [21]. The first chamber confronts the Damned to their sensual nature. The body to the body. The experience of the chamber is sensual, yet what is remarkable is how the experience challenges habits and suggests new ways of engaging the world [22]. It offers a new appreciation of sensuality, comfort, and the body—almost a hedonism, which challenges the mundane, the prosaic, the matter of fact rationality of religion [23].
The chamber is a bath, presented as a dematerialization of architecture in its ontological form and of a sensual experience [24]. The bath becomes a sort of cathedral of pleasure at the heart of the city, where the Damned can go as often as they want, where they walk about, pick each other up, meet each other, take their pleasure, eat, drink, discuss [25]. In a complex ritual, after wrapping themselves in golden towels, they ascend a staircase to an upper level where they enter a holy bath [26].
Its interior of enormous embossed marble columns appear (…) as the interior of a catafalque, embroidered with black, with pink and silver [27]. The bath itself is built of ivory, its inaccessible purity is still more emphasized [28]. The luxuriousness, the rich yet unified variety of surfaces and the effeminate sensuality of this architecture [29] interact with the Damned. The impressive visual and sensual effects of the sound, water, and light displays are the most effective demonstration of the chamber's intent [30]; to question why they are here in the first place.
In this chamber, it is possible for the soul to escape from its sensual bonds and from its awareness of itself and to sink for a moment, motionless and unconscious, into the bath [31]. Surrender to sensual impulse is here represented as necessary to prove the freedom and inwardness of the mind [32]. Along with the spatial praxis (…), the sensual architectural reality is not experienced as an abstract object already transformed by consciousness but as an immediate and concrete human activity [33]. For it is only by recognizing the architectural rule that the subject of space will reach the depth of experience and its sensuality [34]. The damned are thus bathed in another light [35].
Idolatry is condemned; it is considered the most heinous sin (…), the beginning and end of all evil [36]. The second chamber confronts the Damned to their idolatrous nature. The mind to the body and the body to the mind. Religion forbids imagery, it condemns idolatry, it silences the mind. Proscription of images was not only designed to strengthen religion externally, but also internally, since it was aimed at those (…) who found in the images and in their cult the most powerful sanction for their acts [37]. The Freihaus does not forbid, just as it doesn’t condemn, just as it doesn’t silence. Instead, in the chamber of Idolatry, it presents imagery and iconography as the infinite source of all things and analyses the necessary processions within this maximum [38].
The subject, as each picture makes plain, is the ultimate idolatry: a false image (…) surrounded by visible evidence of the debauched sensuality into which men and women fell as a result of their adoration of the artistic, manmade, golden substitute for the God they could never see [39]. Instead of coming from man, the chamber of Idolatry generates images on its own. The accused is not guilty [40], he is only the observer. Indeed, the chamber becomes a kind of reflecting mirror of the observer's soul, delineating the viewer exactly and leaving the viewed object obscured [41].
The walls are constituted of 26’983 screens displaying ever-changing icons. There is no order, no control over what is shown, they are procedurally generated and influence one another. It starts as the image instructs, by opening a window through which to display (…) bedsheet after bedsheet, a cracked mirror in a gilt frame, or an overstuffed chair waiting to meet its embroidered twin down below [42]. The chamber becomes a symbolic crystallization of the polarity between holy image and mundane [43]. The virgin and the tree [44], the tree and the light [45].
The chamber becomes so mechanistic, so overloaded with information, that it reaches a point at which it fails to excite comprehension or spiritual purpose within its recipient [46]. Overload has become a potential means of destroying monopoly [47]. The strange associations between these icons enable a discussion. It is the starting point for a new way of thinking about living presence [48]. Speech remains a paradoxical image which sublates itself as image and thus avoids the trap of idolatry [49].
Denial is condemned; it is considered the greatest sin (…), there is no such thing really and truly as unrighteous [50]. The third chamber confronts the Damned to their Denying nature. The mind to the mind. What starts as a seed of doubt transforms into denial, which in its turn blooms into argument. The incertitude of radical doubt turns into the certitude of cogito ergo sum [51] and becomes an argument from the self and for the self. The chamber reinforces the denial of the real givenness of other minds, and of any knowledge of an external world. (…) In this chamber, the Damned experiences his own existence, his own inert given character, and thus relates to himself as passive, as affected. [52]
The space itself is evidently that of a church, and its stylistic affiliations are clearly classical, but it has about it the feel of industrial plant [53]. The Damned battles with the madness of its architecture: step, threshold, staircase labyrinth, (…) wall, enclosure, edges, room, the inhabitation of the uninhabitable [54]. The chamber of Denial is without finality, aesthetic aura, fundamentals, hierarchical principles or symbolic signification, in short, in a prose made of abstract, neutral, inhuman, useless (…) and meaningless [55].
However lost they might feel, the Damned must remember the rules of the Freihaus; observe, question and discuss. They must be convinced that this chaos contains an unexplored richness, unlimited utilizable possibilities [56]. Denial will only condemn them further into perdition. The orders, then, are nothing more than the organizational work of the spirit, which introduced an ordering division into this chaos [57]. By studying the structure of the chamber, one could discover the vestiges of mankind's initial steps toward rational thinking [58].
Each individual element constituting the chamber has to be reasoned and put together through rational argumentation. All of these pieces of the puzzle deserve to be seen together, so that greater sense can be made of their complex interplay [59]. It is a floating part of space, a placeless place, that lives by itself, closed in on itself [60]. This means, though, that whatever meaning or significance the Damned find in the chamber will have to come from their own collective efforts at giving them meaning [61].
[1] Etlin_In Defense of Humanism [2] Eco_The Name of the Rose [3] Hugo_Les Miserables [4] Coomans_Loci Sacri [5] Schumacher_The Autopoiesis of Architecture [6] Coomans_Loci Sacri [7] Hovestadt, Buehlmann_Printed Physics [8] Coomans_Loci Sacri [9] Lefebvre_Critique of Everyday Life [10] Hays_Architecture Theory since 1968 [11] Zizek_Less Than Nothing [12] Levy_Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque [13] Payne_Renaissance and Baroque Architecture [14] Leatherbarrow, Eisenschmidt_Twentieth Century Architecture [15] Tronzo_St Peter’s in the Vatican [16] Cole, Zorach_The Idol in the Age of Art [17] Schmitt_The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy [18] Cacciari_The Withholding Power [19] Girard_Violence and the Sacred [20] Warner_Alone of All Her Sex [21] Sykes_Constructing A New Agenda [22] Leatherbarrow, Eisenschmidt_Twentieth Century Architecture [23_25] Hays_Architecture Theory since 1968 [26] Belting_Likeness and Presence [27] Payne_Renaissance and Baroque Architecture [28] Hirn_The Sacred Shrine [29] Payne_Renaissance and Baroque Architecture [30] Bonnemaison, Macy_Festival Architecture [31] Cohn_The Pursuit of the Millennium [32] Zizek_Less Than Nothing [33_34] Hays_Architecture Theory since 1968 [35] Belting_Likeness and Presence [36] Levy_Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque [37] Adams_Empire and Communications [38] Schmitt_The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy [39] Levy_Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque [40] Hovestadt, Buehlmann Quantum City [41] Adams_Empire and Communications [42] Naginski_Sculpture and Enlightenment [43] Freedberg_The Power of Images[44] Coomans_Loci Sacri [45] Mandel_Sixtus V and the Lateran Palace [46] Whitehead_Castles of the Mind [47] Adams_Empire and Communications [48] Van Eck_Art Agency and Living Presence [49] Zizek_Less Than Nothing [50] Cohn_The Pursuit of the Millennium [51_52] Zizek_Less Than Nothing [53] Cruickshank_A History of Architecture in 100 Buildings [54_56] Hays_Architecture Theory since 1968 [57] Semper_Practical Aesthetics [58] Stafford_Symbol and Myth [59] Bork_Late Gothic Architecture [60] Hays_Architecture Theory since 1968 [61] Houlgate_Hegel and the Arts
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