RT Article
T1 Campus as Sacred Ground: Laying the Foundation for Well-Being
JF Religions
VO 13
IS 11
A1 Clausén, Marie
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/182218875X
AB There are accounts of increasing anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues among students and staff at many universities, including the University of Ottawa—accounts borne out by official numbers of referrals to mental health practitioners. The causes of these issues are frequently sought within individuals themselves; the solutions are assumed to lie in therapy, counseling, or medication. In cases where the reasons are sought externally, they are attributed to workloads, interpersonal conflicts, racism, sexism, or financial difficulties. These are all, without a doubt, valid causes for ill health. Could another reason for the seemingly general failure to thrive among staff, faculty, and students on the University of Ottawa campus, however, be connected to the campus itself? It is, after all, a known fact that we are all dependent upon and deeply reactive to our environments. From Vitruvius to Ruskin to Pallasmaa, theorists have made the link between the built environment—architecture—and wellness. Architecture has the power to make us feel anxious, alienated, and unseen, or to increase our sense of belonging, collective and individual identity, sense of place, security, and tranquillity. Sacred architecture appears to play a particularly pivotal role in this—to people of all faiths and none. This paper seeks to explore whether the University of Ottawa could potentially reverse the upwardly trending numbers of poor mental health by creating a sacred-architecture-centric campus that meaningfully and materially honours not only the school’s history and motto, but also its location in the Ottawa valley, on the unceded land of the Algonquin, as well as the current religious and cultural diversity of its students.
K1 post-secularity
K1 Mental Health
K1 university architecture
K1 Campus
K1 Sacred Space
DO 10.3390/rel13111089