A building of living stones : a community service centre for Mamelodi East

Abstract

This thesis aims to, from the perspective of architecture and urban place making, examine the potential of a church as a catalytic nodal public building and its corresponding potential to serve and uplift its community through both secular and religious functions. The church itself is nothing other than ‘the gathered congregation’ in a particular place at a particular time. (Moltman 1999:201) It is following this statement that the validity of merely embracing the typology of a building designed for given liturgy is questioned. This thesis hypothesises that all spaces that foster community meeting and ritual have the potential to become ‘church’, additionally that: in a Christian based spatial confi guration, spaces that facilitate this ‘church’ to occur are also sacred spaces.