North Saskatchewan Spiritual: Reconnecting with Nature in the Edmonton River Valley

Abstract

A strong connection to nature, wilderness, and landscape provides the foundation onto which life is constructed. But forces of industrialization and globalization have brought us to a time in which our built environments and culture have become disconnected from the natural environment and as a result we have lost our understanding of nature as the source of everything, physical and spiritual. This thesis explores how architecture situates us physically and spiritually in the natural world enabling us to set down roots in a place. A design method that draws on environmental tectonics, ecology, and phenomenology is used to study the genius loci as a grammar of place and develops interventions at three scales of experience from the individual to the community—chapel to church.