The Sacred and the Secular: Exploring Contemporary Meanings and Values for Religious Buildings in Singapore

• Main Author: Kong, Lily
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 1992
• Subjects: Religious buildings; Singapore; human experiences; Asian Studies; Religion; Urban Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1817; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3074/viewcontent/Kong_1992_SacredSecular_af.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The study of human environmental experiences has engaged a range of disciplinary attention, with work deriving chiefly from environmental psychologists and geographers. However, most research has focused on the sensory aspects of environmental experience, while the intangible, immeasurable experiences of environments have been somewhat neglected. Certainly, the meanings and values that are invested in places, which form part of the interaction between humans and environments, have not been sufficiently researched. My intention in this paper is to address one aspect of this silence, namely the ways in which humans experience their religious environments, and more particularly, the symbolic meanings and values that individuals invest in their religious buildings. I will use Singapore as a case study to explore these issues because Singapore's colourful multi-religious setting provides abundant interesting material for comparative analysis.