“Bless me, father, for I have sinned; this is my first confession” by Frank O’Connor.
During our lengthy architectural education, often we were taught that the fundamental role of an architect is to help shaping our city and to build shelter for the public. They are the guardians to safeguard the equilibrium between public space and private development to maintain social harmony.
In reality, most architectural graduates are working for established firms, and in our monotonous commercial driven society, the choice of project nature is often narrow. Therefore as an employee, they are being assigned with projects that are in contradiction to the ideology they have learned at school, such as “designing wall effect buildings”, “developing small and dense living units” or even “demolishing historical buildings with a lower grading”. These tasks require architects to act against their own conscience and violate their principle, in the long run, sins will be accumulated. In order to survive as a sinner, they need to hide their moral as described in Stratagem 27, ‘Play Dumb While Remaining Smart’, because opportunity will eventually come and rescue their soul.
One way to get rid of our sin is the ‘Sacrament of Penance’, also commonly known as ‘Confession’. By means of Confession, it is where individual men or women may confess sins committed after baptism and have them absolved by a priest within the Confession Box, the ‘Confessional’.
The ‘First Confession’ is a Confessional that is formed by layers of metal bunk beds as to mimic the extracted facade of a small and dense residential tower. The layout of our Confessional is a simplified version of a cathedral with a ‘Porch’, a ‘Nave’ and a ‘Chapel’ at the end. Architects are encouraged to confess their sins toward the sky alone within the uncovered Chapel.
「請神父祝福，我罪人願在教會內悔改，這是我第一次 懺悔。」弗蘭克．奧康納《初告解》
建築師相信自己的使命，是塑造我城和為大眾構建適合的棲身之所，可惜多數人往往被派往負責違背良心和原則的工程，因而積下罪咎感。他們唯有參考第27計「假癡不癲」，暫時忘卻自己的道德底?，並希望透過「告解」承認罪孽而得到寬恕。
「初告解」以金屬碌架床製成，模仿密集的住宅大廈。佈局成簡化的大教堂，配有門廊、殿堂、教堂，鼓勵建築師向教堂的上空告解、懺悔，得以釋懷。
