sent from a phone > On 16. Dec 2017, at 09:39, Marc Gemis <marc.ge...@gmail.com> wrote: > > The building page on the wiki [1] lists e.g a church, cathedral and chapel. > But what is the structural difference between a church and a cathedral > ? I always thought a cathedral is where a bishop leads the messes (or > something like that).
yes, AFAIK a cathedral is the main church of a diocese in certain denominations like roman-catholic, it is the church where the bishop or archbishop has his seat, and it is therefore also typically the biggest and most important church of the area. Structurally you will find cathedrals in general to be bigger than other churches, although there can be pretty big churches as well. Technically, "cathedral" is more a title than a certain type, while there are specific sub-types, in particular "gothic cathedrals" (mainly in France). > The wiki page on cathedral tries to avoid this by saying some > buildings are build as cathedral but without a bishop, without saying > how one can see the difference between a cathedral and a church. I would leave this decision to the church. If they call it a cathedral it is one. > I understand that chapels can be attached to other buildings, but they > can also be free standing. But how different are the bigs ones then > from a small church ? chapels might be there for a certain purpose, e.g. on cemeteries or in baptisteries, or part of a bigger structure (even a train station, an airport, a hotel, a convent, a hospital or palace). Again, I'd go here by what it is called by the church. > I see similar problems with rectangular buildings with one or two > entrances a couple of floors, a flat roof and a lot of windows. They > can be schools, commercial, apartments, civic buildings. I guess one > has to take the interior division into account as well to determine > the type, not ? residential buildings are typically different from administrative buildings regarding the unit size and inner organization, entrances, corridors, stairs, sanitary blocks, etc.. You won't typically have difficulties telling which kind it is, if you enter. Of course, very neutral "architecture" like containers might be usable as (construction site) offices and also as tempory emergency residence. > So can a commercial building change to a school when the interior wall > are changed? And if so, why is a church not changed into an apartment > building when the interior changes ? > > Or are we just wishing that building refers to the structure and not > the function ? > Or am I overthinking the whole topic ? yes, convertions are generally possible, it depends on economic and cultural factors if they are done. Some structures are clearly more universally usable and easier to convert into a different usage then what they were built for, compared to others. It also depends on the amount of compromise, an inhabitant is willing to accept, on the individual lifestyle (some people like living in industrial buildings), etc. > Those questions came up after I tried to answer a question on a barn > used as church and community centre on the help website. as you say it is a barn used as a church, I'd say building=barn If you had said: a barn converted to a church, building=church you should have considered building=church. ;-) Cheers, Martin _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list Tagging@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
