Religions Culture Sharps the Space

Religious culture shapes the characters of space and it reflects people’s attitudes towards the relationships between people and gods. Every religious architecture, such as a temple or a church, demonstrates its physical connections with life. This paper focuses on comparing different countries’ religious architectures to better understand the dominant cultural elements which influence design concepts of these architectures. In Western cultures, the religious architecture format is the church. However, Tadao Ando designs the Church of the Light with oriental features. It changes western religious cultures to adapt to local conditions. Ando’s work is just one of many examples in which the local culture can transform religious architecture form with their own characters, and nake it become an iconic mark to represent their country. This paper, analyzing project thinking and development invovling a local citizen, user, artist, and architect, tries to find out how design concepts, decisions on site location, and construction method will be determined. In these case studies on architectural formats from all over the world, this paper uses valuable data to show what elements will be the most critical ones to influence people’s thinking about religious cultures and religious architectural transformation. Furthermore, in this research, it compares religious cultural characters between western and oriental regions. This research also answers questions about how cultures change local people’s behaviors. This is the most valuable point of religious architectures, because they can comfort people and mitigate their sorrow. The research demonstrates how religious cultures and understanding about life can further develop architecture forms. Local materials and conditions are  key factors which greatly influence architectural designs. Moreover, this paper compares the latest technology and development of construction materials to illustrate how technology reshapes religious designs in our age. It links local cultures with contemporary architectures to help local architectures continue to develop with their unique characters instead of being eliminated by globalization.