The act of profane is to make away the God, made the thing which was once sacred, available to a common man, it is to make things which are once untouchable into something ordinary. In fact, many things in society are the results of a some kind of profanity, most games that we played derived from old rituals which was once sacred but people had stopped believing in them and thus they manifested into something else, that are available to everyone.
Profanity can also be describe as such perception of a particular subject, takes Andy Warhol, the father of pop art for example, he was the one who profane idealistic perception of art in the old days and through pop art, gave birth to what we defined as art today. Warhol brought art down to the ordinary, the old perception of art being sophisticated and high-class is disrupted by the use of the ordinary subjects in his painting such as the Campbell soup can and the Barbie dolls. Hence, ordinary people can now relate to art and thus, the perception of art is now changed and touchable by the ordinary. Moreover Warhol does not challenge the old sacred perception of art through the art but also the way he produces art, he erased the old concept of art being time consuming, precious and valuable into mass-produced and fast through screen printing, thus, now anyone can own an art piece. Today, we see many similar things in the art world which was the result from the first movement that Warhol did years ago, sculptures today are no longer carefully carved marble with incredible details but comes in a wider range of everyday material from bottles to vacuum cleaners. However, it is interesting to mention that even though the modern subjects of art is now more ordinary, art itself is still held high, a piece of sculpture today can be nothing more than a rusty vacuum cleaner and still sells at a price that would be out of reach for ordinary, working citizens.
However, when it comes to Architecture it can be different, the question of whether sacred architecture should be "play" with or should we "profane" the sacred architecture can be quite hard to answer. I believed that everything have two sides and to have one answer for this is unfair. Firstly, yes, architecture could be profane, and we see many successful examples in Western society. Rem Koolhas was one architect who played with sacred Architecture, for instance, his building teases the nearby Mies' building with the similar idea of glass facade only to pissed Mies off when it is bright orange. Also his addition to the old architecture building was also a kind of profane, where he took the traditional European style building and flipped it, turn it inside out to achieve a totally new creation when a dome is only seen from in the inside and the exterior is super modern. Thus, in this case, Koolhas played with the idea of the sacred classical dome, where traditionally, no one's would came nearby to it, and brought it down so close to the inhabitant s of his new building and thought this, he had achieved newness, a new form, which was derived from the old. Hence, as we can see, playing with the idea of the profane can actually be helpful in helping to create newness and uniqueness , this seem like a good thing, but is there a boundary to this, to how far you can profane architecture? One such example of profaned architecture is the Mandarin Oriental Chiangmai, where the hotel was designed to look like a temple or a palace. Even though this can be counted as playing with the sacred architecture, the form generated is pretty much the same, thus, there's not really any newness being created, while at the same time, it received many critiques, mostly about the appropriateness of using the form of a temple for a hotel. Hence, my honest opinion about playing with the sacred architecture, profaning it can be successful, if you go beyond just using the physical form to create the new architecture, Koolhas shown a great deal of thinking, playing with the existing context to create newness, unlike what we can see in the Mandarin Oriental Chiangmai, where the form of the temple has just been taken but replaced with a new function, in a way, there was actually nothing "new" being created here, the temple has no connection to the hotel, instead they remained two separated elements, the form and the function.
Another question is that should be play with this idea of the profane, my answer is that it depends on the context, in Thailand, people feel strongly about religions, thus, you shouldn't really touch that if you want to stay out of trouble, however, in many cases, it is worthy to try playing with this idea, only that the outcome should contained a certain depth that it creates "newness" that is worthy of that profaned sacred architecture.
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| touching the untouchable god of modern architecture, Mies van der Rohe, Rem Koolhas playfully plays with the context and teases Mies by taking his famous steel and glass structure and painted them bright orange. Mies face screened on to the glass facade of the restroom was a nice touch, all together, even if Koolhas had taken Mies' as an influence, he had made the final result "new"and "unique" yet playful. |
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| The Mandarin Oriental Chiang mai also sort of play with the the idea of the profane, by taking the sacred form of a Lanna temple and turned it into a hotel. With many negative critiques about the appropriateness, the final outcome is not "newness" in any means, the two elements, despite being mixed together into one building remianed separated, one as a external form and one as the function. |
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