Creed

Not being religious myself, but able to identify with how Kwame Appiah has grown up (mixed nationality and race shaped by his family and having lived in different cultures and countries), this lecture on identities – and religions – echoed my own perspectives. 

Identity – as with religions, Appiah notes – are not static but rather dynamic formations.

I appreciate his interpretation that, rather than exclusively appreciating religion as a fixed entity, a ‘noun’, it is rather a set of immutable beliefs. The activity, rather than exclusively the body of beliefs, are at the core of religious experience. Religions, much as identities, are transformable and have transformed through history. 

This understanding and standpoint has been a foundation of my work and see this as incredibly important when shaping the curriculum for my Year 3 Interior Design students.

If the premise is that culture is dynamic – rather than static, in the way we design spaces to accommodate and facilitate human interactions and social practices, architecture and space programming must be reflexive and responsive, avoid relying on established ‘norms’ to allow it to be relevant to concurrent developments sharing our social and cultural practices.