"Facing the faraway".
4th International Study Day ‘The spaces of the Sacred’,
17 January 2025, Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette

The spaces of the Sacred offers a space for reflection and debate for anyone who understands sacred spaces as laboratories for architectural, urban and landscape research. This definition includes places of worship, funerary and memorial spaces, as well as the urban spaces and landscapes that surround them. Defining sacred spaces as a laboratory means considering both their design and their potential transformation.

The ambition is to study contexts as well as project experiences, theories as well as practices, legacies, and mutations as well as orientations and prospects. In a few words, to build knowledge and culture, to learn, experiment, and develop operational tools to understand the present and enrich contemporary practices. As a complement to the historical and social studies developed around these issues, this study day places the architectural, urban, and landscape project at the heart of its concerns.

The spaces of the Sacred provides an opportunity to share ongoing or completed research projects and to bring together researchers working on these issues. The event is open to students, doctoral candidates, teachers, researchers, practitioners, and anyone interested in developing interdisciplinary exchanges across institutions and borders.

Call for papers
For this fourth edition, the day will focus on the questioning of programs and architectural renewal through the specific case of Islamic sacred spaces. We will be looking at the evolution of programs, morphologies and the relationship with the urban and landscaped environment, with a view to the physical and symbolic place of these buildings. Several lines of thought are envisaged:
1) ‘Wherever you find yourself at prayer time, that place is a masjid’. Beyond social acceptance, how can we redesign these spaces when mosque and public space merge?
2) The qibla wall is an immutable feature of the mosque; how can it guide architectural design?
3) From Andalusian cathedrals to Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, many pre-existing buildings have been transformed and redeveloped for Islamic worship. To what extent, in what way and with what constraints can the mosque be seen as a conversion program, and what impact will this have on architecture?
4) From its very beginnings, Islam has been practised by nomadic peoples who have had to delimit a prayer space with what the landscape offered them; what relationship can the mosque have with its environment?
5) Can the archetypal figures of the dome and minaret be renewed, at the risk of losing their urban bearings?
6) Geometry is predominant in the architecture of sacred places, with strong symbolic significance. Given that figurative representation in Islamic art is outlawed, and in light of contemporary tools and technologies, to what extent can new forms be devised?

Submission procedures
The official language of the conference is French, but proposals and papers may also be submitted in English. Results of the selection process will be announced by email in December 2024.
Researchers wishing to contribute to this day can send their proposal, including a title, an abstract (approximately 200 words) and a short biography, to sacreslyon.archi.fr before 16 December 2024. The study day will be held exclusively in person, at the Sainte-Marie de la Tourette convent (Eveux), on Friday 17 January 2025.

Scientific direction
Benjamin Chavardès, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon
Bastien Couturier, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon

Scientific committee
Benjamin Chavardès, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon
Julien Correia, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon
Bastien Couturier, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon
Charles Desjobert, Couvent Sainte-Marie de la Tourette
Philippe Dufieux, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon
Ricardo Gomez Val, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
William Hayet, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Montpellier
Kevin Jacquot, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon
Aïcha Sariane, École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Lyon

Information
Venue: Sainte-Marie de la Tourette Convent (Eveux)
Dates: 17 January 2025
Languages accepted: French and English

Organised by
SACRES Chair

Contacts
sacreslyon.archi.fr

Partners
École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Lyon
EVS-LAURe
Sainte-Marie de la Tourette Convent