The Sacred and the Mundane

The 21st century, an age of digital interfacing and global connectivity where a few clicks puts the majority of human knowledge at our fingertips. America’s youth have grown up in a world which has conditioned them to be distractible. A culture of instant gratification and nearly constant connectivity has bred shortened attention spans, leading to a citizenry that is psychologically programmed to experience the world differently than it did in most of the 1900s.

The pace of life in this digital age has reached staggering speeds, as science and technology constantly push the boundaries of our world bringing ever-more information crashing in on our collective consciousness. If you do not work yourself into an early grave, you are not achieving your potential as an employee or a provider for your family, and those who are unfamiliar with the latest viral video or are without knowledge of the news on a minute by minute basis are woefully lacking the ages’ ever-changing cultural hierarchy.

In the midst of an overwhelming expectation to use up every single minute of the day, we have lost contact with our inner selves. The quiet moments during which contemplation occurs to its fullest degree are buried under all of the complications of being a human in the 21st century American social landscape.

Architecture has the unique ability to shape the modern world, but the American idea of space is the unfortunate byproduct of our current culture of distraction. This thesis will explore American culture and its relationship to sacrality found in mundane spaces.