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Sacred Space and the Mediating Roles of Architecture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Thomas Barrie
Thomas Barrie*
Affiliation:
NC State University, College of Design, Campus Box 7701, Raleigh, NC 27695-7701, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The creation, roles, and experience of meaningful places in contemporary urban environments can be effectively informed through understandings of pertinent aspects of sacred architecture. To do so, this paper will discuss the mediating roles traditionally performed by sacred architecture and, in particular, its traditional role as an in-between place believed by its creators to establish connections to the understandings they sought or the gods they worshipped. Enduring themes of sacred places will be presented in the context of their communicative capacity and ritual uses, as a means to offer interpretations appropriate to today. The case study of the recently completed Oakland (CA) Cathedral will serve to illustrate contemporary positions and iterations. The conclusion suggests that the sacred place was (and still is), an intermediate zone created in the belief that it had the ability to engage, elucidate and transform, and that a re-introduction and repositioning of the mediating roles performed by the built environment can inform the creation of engaging and meaningful places today.

Type
Focus: Religiosity and Public Spaces
Information
European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 04 January 2012 , pp. 79 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2012

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References

Notes and References

1.Perez-Gomez, A. (2006) Built Upon Love, Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), p. 6.Google Scholar
2. For example, adherents of traditional Hinduism view the ordinary world as maya, a scrim of illusion withdrawn only through the perspectives that religion provides. The term yoga means to ‘yoke’ or ‘bind together,’ and yogic practices served to join the separate individual with the universal ‘self’.Google Scholar
3.Barrie, T. (2010) The Sacred In-between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture (London: Routledge), p. 3.Google Scholar
4.Barrie, T. (2010) The Sacred In-between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture (London: Routledge), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar
5. The marking of a center has been much discussed by Mircea Eliade and others.Google Scholar
6. The spatial sequences and symbolic narratives of the entry paths of sacred places often symbolized shared beliefs and facilitated communal rituals. In particular, as I argue in Spiritual Path, Sacred Place: Myth, Ritual and Meaning in Sacred Architecture (Boston and London: Shambhala Publications, 1996), it replicated the path of the hero-redeemer figure that appears in the mythology of many religions and cultures.Google Scholar
7. Traditionally, Hindu temples were proscriptively proportioned as required by the deity they were built to house.Google Scholar
8.Jones, L. (2000) The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture, Vol. 1. (Cambridge: The Harvard University Press), pp. 29–41.Google Scholar
9. Among the primary motivations for ritual is its role in allying anxiety, from annual rituals associated with the harvest, to daily religious observances. Because anxiety is part of the ‘human condition’ we need rituals to bridge our separateness, to feel connected to something beyond ourselves, to establish a sense of purpose to our lives. According to Spiro Kostof, ‘Public architecture at its best [is] … a setting for ritual that makes each user, for a brief moment, a larger person that he or she is in daily life, filling each one with the pride of belonging. Kostof, S. (1985) A History of Architecture, Settings and Rituals (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 41.Google Scholar
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14. William Coldrake argues, ‘the relationship between architecture and authority, therefore, goes beyond signs and symbols. In manifesting authority, architecture can serve as a potent tool for political and social engineering or for profoundly affecting religious belief.’ See Coldrake, W. (1996) Architecture and Authority in Japan (London: Routledge), p. 3.Google Scholar
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