ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between nature and architecture from the Benedictine perspective. Benedictine monasticism is specifically a practical theology of space – a space which includes nature, landscape, air, earth and the rhythms of the sun and moon. A few monastic communities have constructed new monasteries where the monastic tradition is read in a new, practical and frugal key. Monastic ecology may be considered as naturally embedded in the so-called ‘sapiential’ tradition of monastic theology. In four passages of a new expression of this theology, Bruno Barnhart emphasises the importance of its contemplative, uniting and symbolical quality. Monastic sensibility for nature made it implicitly ecologic from the very beginning. The monastery of Clerlande was founded in 1970 as a daughter house of the Flemish abbey of Zevenkerken, with the intention of creating a base of pastoral care for the newly founded University of Louvain-la-Neuve.
