The Floating Cathedral in the City of Sleep

The aim of the thesis is to investigate the spatial quality of historic pilgrimage cathedrals, and transforming them to inhabitable floating infrastructure based on analysis of the technological challenges of contemporary precedents within the context of floating architecture. Thus, the thesis will firstly aim to explore the relationship between pilgrimages and their destination cathedral within the historical context of the UK, and secondly the art of technologies concerned with transforming the hidden geometry of cathedrals to inhabitable floating infrastructure will be explored. The thesis will employ an interdisciplinary methodology by exploring historical and contemporary precedents of floating infrastructure to provide an overview of how floating cathedrals with high-technologies have been explored and transformed. Specifically the thesis will research the technical methods of naval architecture, and it also explores the challenges of Kansai Airport and floating houses which have been used to create a sustainable and self-sufficient infrastructure in the middle of the sea as well, so these methods will be adapted and applied to my project in order to contextualise this study. Finally, the thesis will attempt to address how spatial quality and the elements of pilgrimage cathedrals can be applied technologically to a utopic infrastructure proposal – the Floating Cathedral for the Pilgrims in Minehead, UK.