ANGLIA POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
(now
Anglia Ruskin University )

 BUILT ENVIRONMENT AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

MAKING CONNECTIONS: DISCERNING RELATIONSHIPS

MICHAEL POWELL

 

 Doctor of Philosophy  February 2003

2 - CONCEPTS AND MATERIALS

The beauty of what you create comes if you honour the material for what it really is. Never use it in a subsidiary way so as to make the material wait for the next person to come along and honour its character. (Louis Kahn)

2.1. Purposes

The purposes of this Section are to explain the concepts of `Built Environment' and `Biblical Theology' being used and to describe briefly the materials to be studied, both particular and general.

2.2 Concept of Biblical Theology

The Bible can be seen as both:

1.    A body of literature to be viewed or listened to as a whole and to which a response can be made in terms of such matters as authenticity, reality, relevance, musicality, visual quality, dramatic power and poetic insight.

2.    A set of ancient texts representing more than 2000 years of history, resembling a site ready for archaeological investigation, which is expected to show how various layers were laid down at various times, and how the layers incorporate artefacts, in the form of insights and facts, from various sources.

Viewed simultaneously from both these perspectives, the Bible reveals an approach to life based on a perception of God and of the nature of God's relationship to human beings and to the world in which they presently live. Biblical Theology is, therefore, what this dual-natured text has to say about this perception of life

Note: This general and pragmatic use of the term `Biblical Theology' is distinct from narrower and more technical uses such as that of Childs (1992). For Childs, it is the Christological interpretation of the canonical text, excluding all non-canonical material and all the wider reflections of, for example, systematic or dogmatic theology.  

This all-inclusive life includes all that human beings have made and experienced in relation to built environments, from the barest form of shelter to the most profound of insights into, for example, the meaning of home or the suffering for ever associated with a particular building or location.

 

2.3 Concept of Built Environment

Built Environments can be seen as both:

       1. Work carried out by people at large, public bodies, private organizations, trades, professions and individuals, in relationship with others who may support or oppose it, or regard it neutrally. Such work may be of a green-field nature, in which a

building or whole city is built on virgin ground, or a process of adaptation of something already in existence.

2.   The record of any area, from a densely built city to sparsely built countryside, which incorporates, has incorporated, or is expected to   incorporate buildings and other structures, particularly those for human shelter, occupation or other purpose. Within such areas, any particular building may be regarded as itself a built environment. Such areas and buildings are lived in, worked in or otherwise occupied by some people, while, at the same time, being seen or visited by other people. The interaction between a built environment and human beings can be short-lived or extend over generations and centuries. Built Environments exist in relationship with other areas which, either absolutely or by comparison, are undeveloped and un­built.

Viewed simultaneously from both these perspectives, built environments reveal what human beings at particular times and in particular places have needed, desired, made, valued and, sometimes, destroyed. Built environments are embodiments of ideas and values, and mirrors to human life.

The records of these activities, both already existing and compiled as part of the work for this thesis, are, therefore, texts which both tell a story and convey a meaning.  

While the emphasis is on buildings, associated infrastructure elements are also included.

The term 'architecture' is used where it is natural to do so and not with any particular implied meaning.

 

2.4 Particular materials - Built Environment

From the outset, it was envisaged that Built Environment studies would be focused on Chelmsford ` and Tasmania .

Chelmsford was the county town of Essex and it had an interesting surrounding area. The Borough of Chelmsford was 800 years old and had a rich heritage of buildings, including the Cathedral, prison and the industrial buildings of Marconi. The eighteenth century Hylands House was being restored, relatively high technology buildings were being built for Anglia Polytechnic University and the Essex County Record Office and widespread housing developments were in progress.

It was thought that in Tasmania studies might include those of Aborigine and traditional work, colonial buildings, convict work, the country houses and estates owned by the National Trust of Australia and others, and contemporary work such as housing developments on the northwest coast.

Chelmsford and Tasmania were chosen partly for reasons of accessibility and partly because they were likely to be sufficiently contrasting to be interesting but not so different as to be unrelated to each other

Studies in Chelmsford have in fact related to each of the three components of the present Borough. The first component is the County Town of Chelmsford, situated some thirty miles northeast of London and built along and around three rivers, the Chelmer, from which the name `Chelmsford' comes, and two tributaries, the Can and the Wid. It comprises the historic core and residential areas, which have been, and are being, progressively incorporated into it. The topography is undulating. In the central part of the town, the High Street rises gently from the river crossing to the high point where St Mary's Church, now the Cathedral, stands. Although it has much earlier history, the town of Chelmsford dates formally from the granting of its Charter by King John in 1199.

The second component is a network of historic villages, now mainly residential but set in relatively open countryside, known collectively as `the villages within the Borough'.

The third component is the town of South Woodham Ferrers , southeast of Chelmsford and a planned development from a historic village in the 1970's and 80's.

Of the present total Borough population of 155,000, 70% live in the towns of Chelmsford and South Woodham Ferrers.

In this thesis Chelmsford has been studied primarily by means of a range of published and readily available and accessible materials. These include texts, photographic records and maps produced by agencies such as the Essex Record Office, Essex County Council, Chelmsford Borough Council and the East of England Development Agency, together with work from established and reputable authors who are from the locality or who have special knowledge of it. Because of the particular time at which the research was carried out, materials included some produced to mark the Millennium in 2000.

Tasmania is an island of area 68.1 thousand sq km lying off the south-east tip of the Australian mainland, from which it is separated by the Bass Strait . The strait is of 240 Km average width. The island is heart-shaped. Its maximum north-south and east-west dimensions are 296 and 315 km respectively.

Aboriginal people first settled in Tasmania when it was connected to the mainland by a land bridge some 35000 years ago.

i n 1642 the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman landed on the east coast, naming his discovery Van Diemen's Land . Bass and Flinders circumnavigated the island in 1798. I n 1804 Collins settled at Sullivan's Cove in the present Hobart and in 1806 settlers moved north to the Launceston area. Counties and parishes were created in 1835. The name was changed to Tasmania in 1856. The population in June 2000 was 470,400, a 0.1 % drop on the previous year. Over the same 12 months the median age rose by 0.5 years to 36.5 years.

Studies in Tasmania have, in fact, related to the North West Coast and, in particular, to 'he area of ` Devon ', major features of which are `The Four Western Rivers', their associated townships and the City of Devonport . While for practical reasons this is more localised than was originally foreseen, it has proved to be a rich quarry.

The Four Western Rivers lie to the west of the Tamar and Launceston, from where they were explored. The rivers run approximately north south. From east to west, they are -e Rubicon, the Mersey , the Don and the Forth . The area includes the townships of Port Sorrell, Don, Forth and Latrobe, and the City of Devonport . While the focus in this thesis is mainly on the coastal areas, some consideration is given to upland areas. The area studied is approximately that of the present municipalities of Devonport, Latrobe and Kentish, which have populations of 24,400; 8100 and 5500 respectively, together with a small part of Cradle Coast municipality.

European settlement and development is considered mainly in relation to this locality but in the case of the Aboriginal dimension, a wider view is taken.

Flanagan (1997) captures the pathos of Tasmania 's story in this way:

Once this weary pastoral land had been open forest through which blackfellas hunted and camped and of a night filled with their stories of which one had no end: that of their fierce war against the invading whitefellas. Then the surveyors came with their barefooted convict track cutters and they gave the land strange new names and by their naming and by their describing they announced the coming of a terrible revolution. Where their indian-inked maps cut the new country into neat counties with quaint reassuring English names such as Cumberland and Bothwell, the surveyors' successors, the hydro-electricity engineers, made their straight lines reality in the form of the wires along which the new energy, electricity - the new god - hummed its song of promise, its seductive false prophecies that Tasmania would one day be Australia's Ruhr Valley.

(Flanagan 1997:21)

This area of Tasmania has been studied by means of the wide range of locally produced publications that is available, some of them generated to mark the Centenary of Australian Federation in 2001. The texts were supplemented by personal visits undertaken over a six-month period.

An important feature of Chelmsford and the part of Tasmania chosen is that, although each is unique, both are 'ordinary'. Neither is `special' or themed in the way that, for example, the City of Cambridge or the Tasmanian Heritage Highway from Launceston to Hobart would have been. They can be taken as examples of `any place' and be viewed as typical of a range of built environments.

 

2.5 Particular materials - Biblical Theology

At the outset it was envisaged that the work would include the study of a number of biblical texts and commentaries on them. Those selected were:

Genesis chapters 1-11 

Nehemiah

Psalms 8,19 and 48

John's Gospel chapters 1, 8-9 and 14-16

Ephesians 1:1-14, Philippians 1:5-11, Colossians 1:15-20 Revelation chapters 20-22

 

The reasons for making this selection were:

Genesis 1-11 is about creation in the sense of both beginnings and the whole global picture; built environments are creations.

 

Nehemiah is about a major and significant building project to enclose both Jerusalem and its people.

 

The selected Psalms reflect on creation in ways similar to Genesis and on relationships.

John 1, 8-9 and 14-16 are, respectively, about the creative and redemptive Word - the personified activity of God -, sight and light, and relationships.

The hymnic materials from the Epistles emphasise the cosmic and inclusive nature of creative and redemptive perceptions of the work of God

 

Revelation, in contrast to Nehemiah, depicts a new Jerusalem.

 

This selection has been found to be an appropriate one. There has been no need to modify it.

It has been found appropriate to include the prologue to John's Gospel (Jn 1:1-18) with Genesis 1-11 because of its subject matter. Partly because of their limited relevance to this thesis and partly to facilitate its structure, materials from the Epistles have been combined with the consideration of Revelation.

While it is important to read the texts as they stand, a full understanding can only be obtained from the study of a range of commentaries of various kinds, some giving deep scholarly insights and some drawing out interpretations significant for present-day readers and situations.

 

2.6 Adding general materials to the particular  

While the kind of specificity considered above in relation to both the biblical and built environment materials is vitally important, it provides little in the way of context or of opening out to a wider significance. From the beginning of work on the detail, there was -;zrong pressure to bring in materials that would have a widening effect.

A small corpus has been built up consisting, in the main, of contemporary and readily -3ccessible texts. In the case of Biblical Theology, these have been mainly practical in nature. while in the case of Built Environment, they have been mainly philosophical.

 

2.7 Sources of texts

In the case of both Built Environment and Biblical Theology, almost all texts used or consulted, whether particular or general, are from Australian, UK or US sources.

 

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