Back to Basilica: A Triptych of Church Unbuilding

Abstract

Christian churches have accumulated disproportionate real and symbolic capital in America. A result of an outdated truce between Church and State, Christian monuments, however underused, are a protected discourse—too sacred to be touched and too private to be entered. Paralyzed in inertia, the implied homogeneity perpetuates a skewed system, urging the churches into private development or petrifying them into a slow public death.

How do we re-form the church to retain it within the civic realm? How can we productively deconstruct the notion of sacredness to accommodate non-discriminatory public use?

Imagining an afterlife for churches in the United States, this thesis points back to the beginning of the symbolic contest between Church and State. The medieval Church borrowed legitimacy from the Roman State in the architectural typology of the Basilica, a judicial and civic building. In this typological appropriation, the Church rotated the axis ninety degrees to accentuate the ritualistic single path, undermining the inherent ambiguity of the many in the original Basilica.

This thesis proposes a triptych of church unbuilding as an act of reclamation. The publicness is reasserted with the program of USPS post offices, a pervasive State network fixture, serving a non-discriminatory, secular public. Through the architectural and programmatic re-formation, the project prompts the typological deconstruction of the sacred and the social construction of the secular public.