Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmidt-Lux

The project aims to research the role of architecture in the process of differentiation and constitution of secular spheres and societies. The research-guiding assumption is that social relations between the secular and the religious find their expression also in a material way and are established and stabilized through architecture. Thus architecture can give symbolic expression to the secular or it can claim space for the secular by drawing boundaries between the secular and the religious. In fact, secular actors, institutions and societies – not only in the 20th century – positioned themselves in the construction of genuinely secular buildings or through the displacement of religious buildings (for example through the demolition of churches).

Using three case studies as examples (Soviet Union, Turkey, India), the project thus follows the KFG's interest in “the materiality of the religious and the secular and markers of secularity”. Additionally, it contributes to the growing sociological interest in categories such as space, body and material artefacts.