The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison: Monumental Occasions: Reflections on the Eventfulness of Religious ... Volume I.1: The Experience of Architecture

This seven-volume work has the twofold goal of helping religious studies scholars better capitalize on architecture as a resource for the study of religion and helping architectural designers appreciate more fully the exciting diversity of ways that built forms can enhance religious lives and practices. The first four volumes under the rubric of Monumental Occasions: The Eventfulness of Religious Architecture present a set of very basic propositions about what architecture is and how it works: Volume I.1, The Experience of Architecture, surveys the fundamentals of hermeneutics as a basis for the work s guiding concept of a ritual-architectural event, which shifts attention from the formal attributes of religious buildings to the experiential engagement of such constructions. Volume I.2, The Mechanism of Architecture, introduces the notion of allurement as a means of explaining why experiences of architecture only sometimes succeed in conveying meanings and facilitating significant transformations of both people and buildings. Volume, I.3, The Interpretation of Architecture, concentrates on the distinctive problems and frequently underappreciated evidential promise of non-literary, particularly architectural, resources for studying religion. And volume I.4, The Comparison of Architecture, advocates for comparing religious architectures both synchronically, especially across different cultural contexts, and diachronically, specifically by composing architectural receptions histories that chronicle the diverse and unpredictable sequence of usages or revalorizations in which any enduring edifice invariably participates. The last three volumes under the rubric of Hermeneutical Calisthenics: A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities build upon that theoretical foundation to provide more practical guidance and demonstration as to how one might undertake the hermeneutics of sacred architecture : Volume II.1, Architecture as Orientation: The Instigation of Ritual-Architectural Events, focuses on alternative strategies of architectural allurement, that is, various means of inviting, and sometimes coercing, people into committed involvement in specific ritual-architectural events. Volume II.2, Architecture as Commemoration: The Context of Ritual-Architectural Events, explores the range of topics, meanings, and information from conceptions of divinity, sacred history, and politics to remembrances of the dead that are broached and transacted in architectural events once such interactive occasions are underway. And volume II.3, Architecture as Ritual Context: The Presentation of Ritual-Architectural Events, organizes and addresses alternate strategies for the variously theatrical, contemplative, and/or propitiatory choreography of particular ritual-architectural events. While the entire set is conceived as a sustained methodological argument concerning how to study and appreciate sacred architecture, and thus might be read from beginning to end, it is likewise plausible to read individual volumes. In short, inspired by the hermeneutical principle that it is creative reinterpretation rather than the intrinsic quality of a building that makes long-standing religious structures perpetually interesting, relevant and new, the author invites both scholars and designers to engage these books in whatever ways serve their academic and/or architectural purposes. Build from them what you can! Read more