this passage really sums up the reason I started the degree project by looking into religious architecture:
“My interest is not so much in the organised religion, but in the way in which religion uses architecture subliminally, to reinforce the order and certainty it offers. Here the cathedral sends its axis of certainty out into the irregular surroundings, through a sequence of transitions, to draw one in to its order and discipline. There are doorways in the hierarchy through which all may pass; there are others, further up the hierarchy, through which only the elite priests may pass. The architectural stages on passes through on the way to salvation are clear: from the maze and moral uncertainty of life in the irregular town one finds and is welcomed into the ordered certainty of the cathedral and religion…” Simon Unwin
