The modern Moravians are notable as an independent religious movement that for over two centuries developed a highly interconnected global network of settlements and mission stations. By 1800, three times as many Moravian missionaries were being sent into the world as all other Protestant missionary organizations combined and close to twenty carefully planned Moravian communities had been established on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. A century later, the Moravian world comprised hundreds of settlements in every continent except for Antarctica.
A Complicated Organism examines the role of architecture and spatial thinking in enabling the modern Moravians to perform their unique brand of global organizational governance. It explores the development of their sprawling network of settlements in relation to concepts of religious and social order, practices of archiving, systems of communication and media, discourses of humanitarianism and expertise, and colonial regimes of control and subjugation.
Throughout, this volume argues that architectural production always remained inseparable from these wider strategic objectives, providing the Moravians with a flexible yet coherent model for establishing similar conditions in diverse environments around an increasingly connected world.