Sacred Makes a Church

My friend was telling me about his philosophy in design in architecture. Our conversation was very interesting. One topic in particular is about his definition of buildings and we concentrated on defining a church building.

After much argument we both agreed that each building type has an essence that must be present. Without this "essence" the building could very well be mistaken for a factory, a commercial building, and so on. In the case of a church building the essence is its "sacredness".

We first talked about Catholic churches. The layout of Catholic churches have changed in the course of history, from theocentric to anthropocentric. In the search for openness and "oneness" the altar had been moved from the back to the center, the sanctuary is now at the same level as the populo, the communion rails removed, and so on. Despite the changes the church retains its sacredness. But precisely what is it that is sacred in a church?

To answer this we discussed different sacred structures outside of the Catholic churches. We tackled eastern churches like Angkor Wat, or modern places of worship like the ones designed by Tadao Ando. In the end we realized that the thing which is sacred is not a physical object but something intangible, in fact, it is the idea of achieving the presence of God, or Allah, or the supreme or Holy Being.

We can use pictures to remind us of who we worship. We can use objects like crucifixes and other symbols. It could also be our interpretation of the teachings which we try to reflect in architecture. It is so varied. Each one has his own sense of what is sacred. But being a social being, this sense of what is sacred can be shared and can be common to a group of men or community, bounded by culture or other values. Thus a native tribe can create a worship space which they see as sacred but the modern man might never understand.

With this in mind it would be easy for any architect, regardless of religion, to design a worship area to anyone. There must be a research involved to determine the client's idea of what is sacred. The client here is not necessarily a single person, in fact, it should be the worshippers of a particular area. Even among Catholics the idea of what is sacred can differ.

Architecture students should be trained early on in becoming sensitive to these matters. The church is just one building type that we considered in our discussion. It would be interesting to tackle a school, a home, and other building types as well.

Contemplating Murphy at 2AM

"If anything can go wrong, they will". This is the Murphy's Law as my friends told me a long time ago.

My boss before told me and the rest of his staff about this. He wanted us to make strategies that work, but assume that everything will go wrong. So we had to be prepared for the plan Bs and Cs and all the other letters in the alphabet. Doing this was very exhausting. You have to visualize the scenarios in your mind which means you have to lock yourself in a room and remove all distractions. I guess my habit of working at 2am is a result of this. By 2am, most people are already tired and asleep.

Thank God I don't do that anymore, but other than the 2am work hours the practice also influenced my general attitude towards problems. I have developed the habit of anticipating things that can go wrong, but more importantly I have developed the ability to suppress any useless reactions when confronted with an unexpected problem.

The friend I hang around with lately, for example, easily gets disturbed when something he planned does not go as expected. As a result, he spends a lot of time analyzing who to blame, and brooding over the situation. It takes him a long time to settle down and collect his thoughts. Sometimes it takes him days. I even believe that he keeps a grudge over these petty things. My friend is a genius, but I pity him. He stresses out so easily.

The term "damage control" is not new to me. I tried to train my mind to immediately shift to this mode when something goes wrong. I guess this is why I can still manage to smile in those situations. It is something that many people misinterpret for lack of seriousness or lack of care. Anyway, these thoughts came up precisely because of the friend I mentioned. Since we're always together, I get "affected" by his reactions. The worst part of it is that things go wrong because of me.

The past two months had been like hell for me. On my own, I would have faced all my problems calmly as I try to solve them. My friend simply made it all complicated for me, just as I complicated his life. It seems like the only solution here is that I spend time alone to sort things out before I associate or mingle with other people. I could really use the silence. Lately I don't get the isolation I needed, even at 2am.

Airhead Encounters

I just finished presenting a project proposal to a client. Although everything went well, I was very tired when we ended. I had worked on the materials for the last few days and I haven't had a decent sleep. Anyway, on my way home I decided to do two things: first, follow up my Sun cellular re-connection, and second to watch Transformers 2.

My Sun was blocked several days ago because I missed out on my payments. I finally paid last Friday but my Sun still didn't work. I followed up on a Sunday and was told to wait for 24 hours for reconnection. I still couldn't text or call. So I followed up again on a Tuesday. This time I really probed to make sure I get reconnected. To my surprise, the only reason I wasn't reconnected is because my payment lacks 50 cents! wtf!

These people from Sun are stupid! The cashier who received my payment rounded off the payment to a lower figure and even gave me loose change. Why did she do that if it meant I won't get reconnected if I lack even one cent? The guy I approached last Sunday didn't advise me about the problem. Plainly he didn't now his job well. My friend keeps telling me that Sun services is the worst he encountered. I thought he was only referring to the signal, it seems like it also applies to the people working for the company.

The movie ended past 9:00pm. I was in Ayala Center Cebu and the theaters were on the fourth floor. I naturally went to the ground floor and planned to exit through the Terraces where it is nearer the jeepney stop. To my surprise the automatic doors no longer function. A note beside it says that beyond 9pm everyone should take the exit at the third floor. A family also wanted to exit there. They came from TGIF. A girl from TGIF went out to tell them that they can pass through TGIF to go to the Terraces. I decided to do the same. I was taken aback when the girl stopped me and asked me to take the longer route... simply because I was not a TGIF customer! wtf!!!

I appealed to her sense of reason. It is not a busy night. What harm can one person passing through do to them. I was tired and hungry. Passing through their store might even entice me to buy. I felt very tired thinking that I need to retrace my steps to the third floor to exit, when there's an exit just in front of me which is only a few meters away. The girl insists that it is the rule their managers made. I asked the girl if it doesn't make her feel stupid saying these things. She said no, she's only following orders. I told her that it was a stupid rule and following it makes her stupid as well.

I realized that right in front of me was a girl with a very low level of intelligence. I also realized that the manager who made the rule was at the same level as her. I have often heard of jokes about people who would eat dog shit if their managers ask them too. Well, here is someone who would do it, and also a manager who could make such rules. I know the rule was made to protect TGIF from hordes of people passing through and disturbing their clients, but it was a Monday evening - the least busiest night - and I was the only one passing through!... and I was very tired, and very hungry!

Like Sun, TGIF sucks in customer service. I wonder if they ever bother to train their staff on customer service.

Well, I wanted to rest after that presentation, instead I got more stressed out when these two establishments pissed me off.