Transcending Architecture: Contemporary Views on Sacred Space

How should we construct sacred spaces, the places where we worship? Transcending Architecture considers the mysterious, profound, and real power of designed environments to address the spiritual dimension of our humanity. By incorporating perspectives from within and with- out architecture, the book offers a wide, critical, and nuanced under- standing of the lived relationship between the built and the numinous worlds. Far from avoiding the charged issues of subjectivity, culture and intangibility, the book examines phenomenological, symbolic and de- signerly ways in which the holy gets xed and experienced through buildings, landscapes, and urban forms, and not just in institutionally de ned religious or sacred places. Acknowledging that no individual voice can exhaust the topic, Transcending Architecture brings together a stellar group of scholars and practitioners to share their insights: ar- chitect Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Karsten Harries, comparative religion scholar Lindsay Jones and architectural theoretician Karla Brit- ton, sacred architecture researcher Thomas Barrie and theologian Kevin Seasoltz, landscape architect Rebecca Krinke and Faith & Form maga- zine editor Michael Crosbie, are among the illustrious contributors. The result is the most direct, clear, and subtle scholarly text solely focused on the transcendental dimension of architecture available. This book thus provides, on one hand, understanding, relief, and growth to an architectural discipline that usually avoids its ineffable dimension and, on the other hand, a necessary dose of detail and reality to elds such as theological aesthetics, material anthropology, or philosophical phenomenology that too often fall trapped into unproductive generalizations and over-intellectualizations.