#6 Put faith in

What can the sacred offer us as a framing device? A space, an object, a building, a landscape or an ecosystem is made sacred through common agreement about its shared value: a value that transcends individual self-interest and immediate gain. The sacred sits outside financial quantifications because its value cannot be reduced to a current selling price but is measured as inherent to the well-being of all who maintain its sacredness, past, present and future.
In a time of accelerating and multiple crises, a shared and spatially defined understanding of the value of the sacred, may offer the potential to reorient our collective priorities. Designating and constructing the sacred provides an opportunity to examine what we hold dear and define spatial forms where the rituals and acts of faith required for us to live and thrive together in contemporary society may be upheld, particularly as faith-based communities find themselves increasingly called upon to offer support to vulnerable populations, and with this, a renewed mandate to redefine urban space.
The sacred and the taboo - the sacred’s estranged cousin - may be used as a framework to evaluate the value of many aspects of urban space beyond financial considerations.
Some first thoughts:
Fluvius Vivens / The River and the Pond
Esch on Alzette, genesis of an industrial city, the topographical fact of water flowing in proximity to rich iron ore deposits. The city grew inwards along the river, between isolated steel mills cooled by its stream, converging in a town centre. The Alzette was quickly contained within a concrete colvert, engineered to drain the Brill, a swamp that gives the neighbourhood its name. The river is a ghost commemorated in Esch’s coat of arms, its lamp posts, its street names, in the enduring Sur Alzette… but it is still present, flowing invisible through the city centre. What sacred right does a river have to find its course, unhindered, through the city? What if citizens are given rights and responsibilities as its guardians?
As the river leaves the city centre, it passes a pond between the Enovos car park, Batiment 4, the Enovos offices and the Arcelor Mittal building, hidden behind a fringe of trees. It is fed by rain water absorbed on the plateau of the ore-rich hills high above the city, which filters through mineral layers, before emerging, purified, in the pond. From there it overflows into the Alzette as it runs alongside. On hot days in the past, temporary residents of the homeless shelter next door would bathe in the pond’s cool water, but the view of their nakedness offended the Enovos employees as they walked from car to desk alongside the pond, and the practice was outlawed. What if access to precious natural resources was democratised, managed collectively and according to need rather than economic and political clout?
Lucus / The Cemetery and The Forest
The city cemetery is depopulating. New plots are no longer allocated and, following a respectful delay after the death of the last member of the family line, the tomb is cleared and the plot held empty. The graveyard itself is open and its paths link the four quadrants of the city: it is well integrated, but the land is worth more as parcels for development than as rented plots for family tombs. What time might this slow, respectful process of emptying afford for considering the land’s reintegration into the city?
The dead are increasingly banished to the forest outside the city. The memorial forest offers a more sustainable and perhaps more spiritual form of memorial: the deceased’s ashes are placed at the roots of a tree with a small plaque to mark the spot, each tree shared by several memorials, the dead encouraging the growth of new life and providing the forest with a new layer of protection. But what space in the city should be set aside for the dead? What is lost when we no longer share it with them?
Terra Venenata / The Dragon and The Poisoned Earth
Brown swathes of scar tissue encircle the town, the infected wound of industrial amputation, home to one remaining dragon that spews anguished flame throughout the night. Belval offers one course of treatment: see no evil. Concrete arc for a deadly covenant, foundation for a new city of knowledge, decorated with the skeletons of slain mythical beasts.
What is the sacred cost/benefit analysis of encapsulating centuries of accumulated industrial toxicity below a concrete slab, never to be touched or viewed, and integrating it within the city’s fabric?
As with the pure imaginative vision of “Venice sur Alzette”, what alternative futures could be imagined by the creation of new fairy tales, temporary occupations and the slow and careful rehabilitation of the taboo, rather than its burial as a poisoned gift to the future, gift wrapped in selective memory?