On the Instability of Objects in the Sacred-Profane Spectrum

A cartoon depiction of the god Thoth

“Blasphemy does not out survive religion. If one is in doubt, try blaspheme against Odin”
Throughout history, gods, objects, or even animals have shifted along the range of the sacred-profane spectrum. But first of all, what is profanity? Profanity is the act of taking away God, and changing perception, thereof, and putting objects or figures to man’s common use. However, it is notable that such status is extremely contingent as, have said by an anonymous author “The god of one religion is a joke to another”.



Take the highly fanciful and chimeric Egyptian Gods for example, their visually playful nature have now manifested into many forms of parody including cartoon, dolls and other media that might be deemed an act of extreme blasphemy by the Egyptian thousand of years ago. Architecture also does not survive this, as can be seen by the many photos of the Great Sphinx  the tourists take today.

A blaspheme acts towards the Great Sphinx

The Mokele-Mbembe

Mushhushshu Dragon of the Ishtar Gate

Another factor which contributes to the instability of something in the sacred-profane spectrum is anonymity and mystery. One of the field which heavily deals with such adjectives is cryptozoology - cripto, meaning hidden and zoology, meaning the study of  animals. It is a branch of pseudo-science which tries to look for living example of animals that are considered to be extinct and animals whose lack of physical evidence but which appear frequently in myths. Back in the ancient past, and even to today, Mokele Mbembe of the Congo forests have long beeb a subject of cryptozoology, often described by the tribesmen as a long-necked gigantic creature. Such sighting identifies closely with a Sumerian texts which documented a visit to African and how they had captured a ‘dragon’ from the forest. Described in the ancient Babylonian text as a “behemoth... which feeds on grass like an ox... his tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron... Under the lotus plants he lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh”, the description are very similar, if not identical to that of the Congo tribesmen and several cryptozoologists, including Mackal, Willy Ley, and Bernard Heuvelmans, believed that the ancient Babylonian may have heard stories of, sighted, or even captured a specimen or two of Mokele-Mbembe, the Congo "dragon. Evidence of this can be found all over the kingdom, but most notably on the wall of the Ishtar Gate. Because the animals were a mystery to the King and its people, the ‘dragon’ were idolized as being a sacred creature and to be an animal of herald. However, if they knew of the animal before, it would not be treated as ‘sacred’. This is another example of how mystery can create ‘sacredness’.



One last thing that contributes to this shifts in the spectrum is the creation, and thus, the decline of ‘play’. One should remember whenever playing profane rubber-ball games that its predecessor is of sacred status. Pelota was the Meso-american forerunner of all present-day games of this kind. It was played on a large, H-shaped court. The ball was extremely hard, so hard that the players had to wear padded clothing for protection. They were allowed to hit the ball only with their elbows, hips, and knees. The object of the game was to knock the ball through a stone ring at either end of the court. The team of the first person to succeed in doing this win the game and those that are lost are sacrificed, thus, the game acts as a mediator between profane activity and the reach for the gods (sacrifice). In today’s world, the game manifests itself in the most profane ways, being played as football, volleyball, basketball, and many others by every people of every status across the world.

The Dangers of Parametricism

Wealthy Chinese Family with 'bounded feet'

Zaha Hadid's Istanbul city plan

It is said that parametricism has emerged, after the era of modernism and its many successive waves, as a new form of erotic ornamentation, one that have grasped upon the world as the new trend, the contemporary style. However, such overpowering aesthetics acts as a double-edged sword to its user, as the rigidity of such system meant that people are controlled unwillingly and unknowingly. The affect of the power of aesthetic of ornamentation can be seen in the ancient Chinese era, most notably in the Song dynasty, where middle to high-class citizen adopted a trend of feet binding as a mean of displaying status. The action results in a lifelong disability for its subjects, and yet, everything is done in the name of aesthetics.


Coming back to architecture, parametricism have been taking upon the world with the same level of forcefulness of foot binding to the ancient Chinese. The style is all encompassing, as have been said by Patrick Schumacher in his manifesto: “We pursue the parametric design paradigm all the way, penetrating into all corners of the discipline.
Systematic, adaptive variation, continuous differentiation (rather than mere variety), and dynamic, parametric figuration concerns all design tasks from urbanism to the level of tectonic detail, interior furnishings and the world of products.”

Computer-generated shortest tree diagram

One of the most well-know field that applies parametricism to its design is Zaha Hadid’s city planning. Adopting the aesthetics of a heavily controlled parametric spatial distribution and organisation, the plans are generated by computers using the most advanced computation technology to build cities that, for example, have its main nodes connected to each other by the shortest-path tree algorithm. Such system ensures the most efficient urban planning theoretically through the use of form-finding programs such as Galapagos which uses gene theory to calculate a certain set of statistics based on numerical inputs. Such system, however, ignores the human side of architecture, for example, Martin Heidegger’s Four Fold theory of Earth, Sky, Divine and Mortal. This means that residents in such city would be consumed by the dictatorial synchronisity of their environment while having their basic human qualities and needs ignored. Also, one should question whether the mimicry of natural system is an authentic one. The architect mimic nature as he/she understands it (with robotics and computational technology in its construct), therefore, the architect’s mimicry is taken as is of nature, and therefore, the architecture have the right to impose upon nature as much as the nature have the right to impose upon itself. One must be aware of such claims and to be cautious of believing it as the truth. Whatever it will be, if such system persists in the current fashion, it might collapse upon itself in a way similar to the destruction of modernism’s Pruitt-Igoe.

The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe representing the fall of modernism