Europe Update

Since prehistoric times, the flows of human populations traversing the surface of the earth like the arteries of a giant body, create the voltage that produces the necessary energy for cultural “updates”. Different causes have always urged voluntary or involuntary migrations. Just like pollen travels with the wind to pollinate nature, population flows inseminate and enrich civilizations.
During the last decades, in the European region, transitory waves of a touristic nature from the cold North to the warm Mediterranean South create the conditions for a cultural update of both sides: people from northern Europe experience and enjoy the outdoors interaction as part of everyday life, whereas the people of the Mediterranean draw elements of a stable behavior and adopt the accuracy of the North as a social value.
Nowadays, due to the war in the Middle East region, a new, irreversible and one-way flow, from Asia to Europe, is being added to the transitory touristic bidirectional flow between northern and southern Europe. This new flow of people, based on a forced migration, carries –among other things– the culture of the places of origin, including the dominant element of the Islamic faith. Consequently, population movements from the East, which will increase enormously in the following years, will inevitably transform Europe in a land of coexistence of Christians and Muslims. The present religious minorities of the European region will gradually mutate into strong social bodies and the interracial relationships will trace out a common future pathway. In light of the above, European intellectuals have to determine whether the present religious differences will be spatially integrated in the European field –with the necessary aid– so that they can be transformed from a reason of conflict to a factor of cultural evolution.
People’s relationship with the element of sacred places the ideas and transcendent truths against the world of the senses, of phenomenology and dialectical materialism. As religious faith is closely linked to mechanisms of security, balance and self-orientation, it is installed in the deeper layers of human psychology. At the same time, it constitutes a main element of collective processes as it is a dynamic component that forms society and, therefore, ethnicity. Participating in a common faith allows and guarantees the development of collective actions, common goals and uniform reactions to external stimuli. The power of religious unity becomes a fundamental pillar, the basis of a feeling of singularity against other social groups. From the comparative use of this singularity, issues of coexistence or of intense conflict arise.
History is more than full of wars dressed in a religious cloak. Some of them are characteristic examples of violence aiming at imposing a religious dogma over that of the opponent. However, and although battle cries are louder than the rustle of peace, the non-manipulated social reality is formed at its basis by coexistence models of different religious beliefs that act in parallel without causing hostility or conflict. This can be achieved –despite the rigidity of religious dogmas– within a socio-economic structure that considers prosperity and growth to be more important than crisis.
It has also been historically proven that architecture is one of the main servants of religion, responsible for the symbolic morphology in the specific consecrated places of worship.
The main question that we are now facing is whether architectural standards of sanctity that serve different religions at the same time are feasible. The answer is obviously no, at least at the moment, given that worshiping rites, processes and all other means focus on the “one, absolute and unique truth” that each religion embraces. Consequently, the idea of an architectural proposition that will incorporate eclectic religious ideologies in its planning seems untimely, stillborn and even possibly dangerous.
However, the upcoming admixure of the two major religious bodies will form new visual perceptions of space and time and nothing prohibits the architects to project to the future a new ideological utopia and plan, with a creative cultural attitude, the spatial and temporal outset of a new universal religious consciousness. Such a proposition, enriched with the honesty of its intention and fuelled by the utopian visions of architecture, constitutes a revolutionary process, not so much because of the coexistence of different religions, but mainly due to the genesis of a new architectural typology. Jointly and cooperatively, under the shell and protection of architectural thought as a whole, and making the most of guaranteeing the functional autonomy and special symbolic parameters of each religion, architects can face a problem that has not yet been introduced, but is invented by themselves: in this way, they confirm that they are active artistic subjects and do not just project the needs of their era, but create its conditions.
Thus, the present refugee crisis can be transformed in an opportunity to highlight a new way of coexistence based on mutual respect of the ideological-religious choice. The openness and creation of common places of worship, where sacred symbols can coexist, will enable a spiritual exaltation of Europe, in contrast to the introversion and fear spread by closed borders and fences. The form-plastic result of a possible proposition of a mixed place of worship is unknown, since the relevant concerns have not yet been analyzed. However, the clear and universal language of geometry and mathematics may function, similarly to the examples of Alberti in Santa Maria Novella, San Sebastiano or San Brancazio, as a foundation for the emergence of new standards of contact and cooperation among incongruous systems.
At the beginning of this effort made through architecture, a prayer unit with common religious symbols for moments of sanctity and self-reflection is introduced. It will serve as the first sample of tolerance and peaceful coexistence of different cultures and religions, pushing back the fear of the unknown. The positioning of the Christian and Muslim symbol in a structure with a double orientation [towards the East for Christians and towards Mecca for Muslims] is not just a new small and temporary home for the need of faith, but mainly a new way of perceiving the other, a new dwelling. According to Levinas, the “dwelling is a way of staying” and it is this perception that we want to make accessible and intimate.
Europe’s cultural update will be achieved only through solidarity and compassion, when coexistence will alter the way of inhabiting. Heidegger points out to the architects that, “The real dwelling plight lies in this, that mortals even search anew for the essence of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell”. Architects are not capable of changing the world even though they think that they have the privilege to design it altered before it even changes. But, as mortals themselves, they search for the truth and maintain the inalienable right to eternally searching for wisdom, since they do not possess it as gods do. Once they will have “learned to dwell”, they will certainly have to learn something more…