Faith!, the latest ideas-based challenge organised by Combo Competitions, asked participants to design a place of worship in London. In spite of the beguiling simplicity of the title, coupled with a typically open brief, the placed winners and three honourable mentions exhibit a diverse, exciting collection of conceptual drawings and visuals. With an interesting balance of playful interpretations and more grounded proposals, all start to address relevant socio-political issues - such as the mutual acceptance and peaceful co-existence of different religions - in some way. The competition asked participants first and foremost to seek to merge two concepts: religion and knowledge.
Faith is a powerful word, with different meaning to us all. It can provide hope and security, trust and confidence. It helps numerous people through the day, every day. With faith comes conviction. However, with conviction sometimes follows conflict. And conflicts often stem from a lack of understanding. In a perfect world we would all have a mutual acceptance towards each other, regardless of what we know about someone else’s beliefs and opinions. In the meantime, a way to help people embracing a different faith than their own could be to try and educate them.
The challenge consisted of two parts: to design a place of worship alongside a place of information. Alongside examples such as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or any of the other world religions, the brief also encouraged an architectural investigation of an indigenous religion, or a belief associated with a New Religious Movement. In addition to presenting a design of the actual place of worship, the proposal had to include a component dedicated to informing and educating people who are interested in knowing more about the specific religion that they explored. Whether this component was integrated into the overall structure, a freestanding object, or simply a concept was at the participants' discretion.
