Utopian Architecture Beyond the Concrete: The Transcendental and the Political Dimension of Laboratories and Religious Spaces

When the Bell Telephone Company built their new research facility in 1957, they did not opt for a functional box but for a cathedral of glass, steel, and concrete, set in a meticulously landscaped park. What can we learn from this striking corporate architecture through which architect Eero Saarinen expressed that man had mastered nature and would solve all future problems? What can churches learn, which have also built striking concrete structures throughout the 1960s - buildings whose roofs are now leaking and whose heating systems are no longer operational? Christian Preidel argues that building today is not a symphony in glass and concrete but a social endeavour where people (and material) come together.

Christian Preidel, born in 1985, is a professor for pastoral theology at Universität Luzern. He did his doctorate in social ethics at Universität Münster, Germany, before writing his habilitation thesis in pastoral theology at Universität Innsbruck, Austria. Before his professorship in Lucerne, he has worked as an academic advisor for digitalisation and as managing director of the institute of ecumenical and interreligious studies in Tübingen. His research focuses on the intersection between architecture, the social and the religious.