Ash back to earth Temple being part of the circular economy

Abstract

Typically most temples in Taiwan will be expanded and rebuilt every few years Each time of these expansion and rebuilding they not only extract information regarding the historical evolution and developmental trajectories of the temples themselves but also reflect contemporary social economic political cultural and urban rise and fall In other words the reasons why Taiwan's temple monuments are valuable are that they can provide a snapshot of the corresponding time and let a certain record of history faithfully expressed The temple ritual culture is integrated into the life of Taiwanese However with rise of environmental protection awareness emissions from burning incense and gold paper are regarded as the source of air pollution To this end people even shout the slogan of not burning incense However when these behaviors are stopped the temples lose the purpose and then the connection among urban memories and traditional cultures is subsequently broken Worse the self-identification of Taiwanese land may begin to retreat The concept of circular economy began in Taiwan and the acquisition of materials in the past became a rethinking category Though originally just buried the waste from temple ritual culture should also follow the same route being recycled Therefore this thesis aims to use temple waste as the main material to pave the way for the unique sacrificial culture in Taiwan developing With a temple in Tainan as a base of operations I build a circular system from temple waste to architecture realizing the ambition Introduction Picking up a bunch of incense and praying for good luck people use the scent as a symbol to communicate with gods Traditional temples in Taiwan provide people with so many different activities from resting to paying homage to gods Humans and gods coexist in the land It reflects the daily appearance of a city and in the space study of traditional folk beliefs the concept of "sacrificial circle" is often used to refer to the space field formed by the temple Among them the folk belief temples in Tainan are characterized by the "Jing" or "Temple area" as the essence of the sacrificial circle and are an important spatial component of the urban structure Incineration of incense and gold paper is a long-standing ritual among Taiwanese but there are a lot of harmful gases behind these movements such as carbon monoxide (CO) carbon dioxide (CO2) granular pollutants nitrogen oxides (NOx) acid gases benzene toluene polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) to name just a few According to statistics (Environmental Information Center TEIA) an average of burning one kilogram of gold joss paper will produce 1 5 kilograms of carbon dioxide Worse if the manufacturing process is considered the actual amount of carbon dioxide produced is much more In addition the waste generated by these temples is a highly alkaline substance which can cause land burden and even accelerate soil aging if discarded at wild With the rise of environmental awareness environmentalists have begun to advocate reducing or even forbidding to burn incense However without this action people enter the temple like visiting an empty shell museum That may accelerate the disappearance of the sacrificial culture Temples communicate the memories of many cities and residents but become the culprit of pollution Based on the above background this thesis intends to establish a circulation system on the basis of incineration and rethink about that ash could be a material to reverse the stigma of temples Process The process of the circular system is divided into two section The first part is the study of materials and the second part is the design In the part of the material research a new recycled material is made by temple waste thorough alkali excitation principle – adjusting the different composition of cementitious materials and alkali substance Then a digital manufacturing manner to design the bricks was developed Later the results of the material research were involved in the ceremony of the temple redefining the temple's visitation path and its boundary with the ordinary people This thesis intends to make a porous material resulting from a series of chemical reactions during manufacturing process; the materials can absorb the suspended particles from burning incense and gold joss paper and neutralize the acid and alkali to make these materials return to the soil in a neutral state The follow-up design proposal is based on the continuation of temple culture as the main concept Conclusion There are two important conclusions in this thesis: 1 The material After physical properties (compressive strength test) and chemical properties testing this recycled material with temple waste as the main material provides flexibility and periodicity allowing time to join the conditions of architectural design and to become a new category of thinking 2 The temple Analyzing the elements of a series of temples and Tainan it is found that the temple itself is a flexible organism Exploring the emergence of its publicity requires constant reconstruction Therefore the accession path that is both the starting point and the end point is the experimental field of design

Date of Award	2019
Original language	English
Supervisor	Shuenn-Ren Liou (Supervisor)