Monasteries – The layered capture of rhythm in space and time through rituals by ‘moulage’

Abstract

Monasteries have represented a unique quest to balance daily life and sacredness for more than 1,500 years. The subject of this paper is their community life through rituals, and rhythm in time and space. We start with Philip Gröning’s movie, ‘Die Große Stille’ (2005), a poetical and intimate portrait of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks in Grande Chartreuse, high up in the French Alps. The movie shows great respect for rituals in prayer, but equally in the monks’ dealings with space and ritual objects. Monks live ‘together alone’ following traditions that are over one thousand years’ old, concerning identity and spiritual regeneration in a collective site.

We then look at a twentieth century Benedictine monk, the architect and theorist Dom Hans van der Laan. He fostered a link between space and clothing as a progressive separation between individual and infinite nature. He defines our personal atmosphere as part of a larger whole, a relationship which is strengthened by rituals. We examine his designs of liturgical clothing as metaphoric of this relationship.

To conclude we introduce the concept of ‘moulage’ as a potential architectural tool in the discourse of the adaptive reuse of monasteries.

Keywords:

• Dom Hans van der Laan
• moulage
• religious heritage
• rituals
• rhythm

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Lens

Karen Lens holds a Masters in Architecture and Architecture Sciences from Sint-Lucas (Brussels, 2001) and KU Leuven (Leuven, 2003), both in Belgium. She worked for 10 years as an architect specializing in reinterpretation or adaptive reuse, energy efficiency and Design for All. In 2012, Karen had the opportunity to start a Ph.D. on the reinterpretation of underused monastic sites in Limburg (Belgium) and Western Europe in general.

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Koenraad Van Cleempoel

Koenraad Van Cleempoel is Professor in Art History at Hasselt University (Belgium). He established a research unit on aspects of adaptive reuse and is currently working on a Bilderatlas of representations of interiors. [email protected]