What makes a building sacred?

Ayla Lepine features on Soul Search with Dr Meredith Lake, in a podcast recorded for ABC (Australia’s BBC) about sacred spaces.

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Have you ever found yourself in a place where heaven and earth seem to meet? Sacred architecture and aesthetics can make a person experience the numinous, even in a building not set aside for a religious purpose.

When growing up as an atheist, art historian and Church of England priest Ayla Lepine describes experiencing religious buildings, “The buildings that I was in made me hungry. They really made me hungry spirituality, and they also made me hungry aesthetically – I drank them in.”

Papua New Guinea’s Baha’i community, are about to open a new house of worship in Port Moresby. Meredith Lake speaks with members of the community working on the project, including a Baha’i architect, about what the building means and how it will be used.

Duration: 54min 7sec
Broadcast: Sunday 22 May 2022, 6.05pm