Transcending Architecture: Contemporary Views on Sacred Space

Transcending Architecture considers the mysterious, profound, and real power of designed environments to address the spiritual dimension of our humanity. The book offers a wide, critical, and nuanced understanding of the lived relationship between the built and the numinous worlds.It examines phenomenological, symbolic and designerly ways in which the holy gets fixed and experienced through buildings, landscapes, and urban forms, and not just in institutionally defined religious or sacred places. Transcending Architecture brings together a stellar group of scholars and practitioners to share their insights: architect Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Karsten Harries, comparative religion scholar Lindsay Jones and architectural theoretician Karla Britton, sacred architecture researcher Thomas Barrie and theologian Kevin Seasoltz, landscape architect Rebecca Krinke and Faith & Form magazine 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.The book is pubished by The Catholic University of America Press."An important and timely contribution to the study of sacred architecture and its relation to the numinous." (Anat Geva, associate professor of architecture at Texas A&M University) Read more