Urban Sanctuary at Helsinki Design Week 2016

Veronika Hlinicanova (University of the Arts London) hosts a talk at Helsinki Design Week 2016 on new ways of looking at public sacred space in contemporary cities in relation to art and the notion of body. This talk will present the outcomes of her two years research. For the discussion on the project, Veronika Hlinicanova will be joined by architects Anna Csefalvay and Veronika Trnovska from WO|V|EN studio who collaborate with her on this project. WO|V|EN is a shared platform for spatial ideas of four women architects, who plan installations, create design interiors, and organize workshops together.

Please send RSVP to v.hlinicanova1@arts.ac.uk if you consider coming to this event.

More info about the research:

Design of cities is becoming a most critical issue of our time with 3 million new arrivals to cities every week, and it is now as much a spiritual issue as it is economic and architectural. With cities emerging as new hubs for innovation and technologies, there has been a gradual transformation of them into hybrids of physical and digital environment. We need to think about ways that will safeguard us from loosing connection to our physical bodies. The concept of smart cities is being established in megacities; such as London, where people are becoming ‘digital subjects’ that can be monitored, tracked, controlled, and commodified. Therefore it has become necessary to talk about relationships between the sacred and the embodied.

'Urban Sanctuary' is a research project, based at University of the Arts London, that is interested in creating a new architectural typology for a public sacred space based upon sauna ritual through aiming at the augmenting, triggering, or intensifying of the sacred experience in human beings and enhancing people’s embodied thoughts as well as feelings and habits. It focuses on filling the gap in architectural terminology in incorporating both ‘religious’ architecture and ‘secular’ public baths, creating a new urban sensibility that encourages creative devotional experiences and promoting activities such as sauna and swimming in natural water sources in big cities.