For centuries, faith has been a source of immeasurable blessings as well as uncountable catastrophes. People, no matter how different, have always felt protected under the aegis of a common belief and united to accomplish the unthinkable. But its fruitful potentials are only equal to its destructive dangers. Faith can be the most untameable of fires, and with the promise for righteousness or virtue it can tear families apart, close down borders, promote genocide, foster war.
In an architectural context, faith has always entailed spiritual as well as secular notions of moral belief. Beyond the architectural legacy of eminent temples left behind by the Greeks and Romans, and beyond the iconic Gothic and Baroque cathedrals that stand proudly in so many cities today, we can also look back on Albert Speer's Totalitarian architecture of the Third Reich to begin to place 'faith' in a wider social, political and spatial context. Similarly, Modernism was grounded on the conviction that architecture should be faithful to its time and that buildings must ultimately convey honesty and openness, while the International Style dictated that form must follow function. Therefore, faith, in architecture, implies historical and temporal shifts in conviction regarding ethics, aesthetics, collective acceptance and ultimately operative legitimisation.
