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This anthology brings together the best and most interesting papers from the first ten years of The Journal of Architecture, published together for the first time in a single volume. Covering a wide range of topics of central importance to architecture today, the papers also address the related topics to which architecture and architectural studies are inextricably linked. The invited authors draw on sociology, philosophy, cultural studies and the sciences to round out the collection and highlight the breadth and vitality of modern architectural studies, offering perspectives from different disciplines as well as different corners of the globe.
Sacred architecture as reality and metaphor in secularised Western society Christian monasteries and convents, built throughout Europe for the best part of 1,500 years, are now at a crossroads. This study attempts to understand the sacred architecture of monasteries as a process of the tangible and symbolic organisation of space and time for religious communities. Despite the weight of seemingly immutable monastic tradition, architecture has contributed to developing specific religious identities and played a fundamental part in the reformation of different forms of religious life according to the changing needs of society. The cloister is the focal point of this book because it is both architecture, a physically built reality, and a metaphor for the religious life that takes place within it. Life Inside the Cloister also addresses the afterlife and heritagisation of monastic architecture in secularised Western society.
The paradoxical logic of transparency and mediation Transparency is the metaphor of our time. Whether in government or corporate governance, finance, technology, health or the media – it is ubiquitous today, and there is hardly a current debate that does not call for more transparency. But what does this word actually stand for and what are the consequences for the life of individuals? Can knowledge from the arts, and its play of visibility and invisibility, tell us something about the paradoxical logics of transparency and mediation? This Obscure Thing Called Transparency gathers contributions by international experts who critically assess the promises and perils of transparency today.
A series of essays to challenge and stimulate, examining the links between gender, domesticity and architecture from a number of different perspectives and disciplines.
Sacred places are not static entities but reveal a historical dynamic. This volume explores both the cultural developments that have shaped them and their varied multidimensional levels of significance.
What is Architectural History? considers the questions and problems posed by architectural historians since the rise of the discipline in the late nineteenth century. How do historians of architecture organise past time and relate it to the present? How does historical evidence translate into historical narrative? Should architectural history be useful for practicing architects? If so, how? Leach treats the disciplinarity of architectural history as an open question, moving between three key approaches to historical knowledge of architecture: within art history, as an historical specialisation and, most prominently, within architecture. He suggests that the confusions around this question have been productive, ensuring a rich variety of approaches to the project of exploring architecture historically. Read alongside introductory surveys of western and global architectural history, this book will open up questions of perspective, frame, and intent for students of architecture, art history, and history. Graduate students and established architectural historians will find much in this book to fuel discussions over the current state of the field in which they work.
The four prose texts discussed in Literary Rooms position themselves in a literary tradition which highlights the manifold purposes the private room may serve: it is a mirror of the inhabitant, a context in which to position the self, a place of and motor for identity quests, a rich metaphor, and a second skin around the inhabitant’s physical body. Even in times of increasing globalization and urbanization, the room continues to root the inhabitant; it serves as a retreat from the world and as a place in which to (re)negotiate questions of belonging, gender, class, and ethnicity. At the same time, the room is inevitably porous and constantly oscillates between inclusion and exclusion. The literary texts examined in this book are each highly fragmented and gesture towards a fragmentation of the contemporary world out of which they have grown as well as towards an abundance of fragmented self-images. Linking the approaches of narratology, globalization, and spatial criticism, Literary Rooms argues that in order to account for the spatial properties of the room, discourses developed during the spatial turn need to be extended and reevaluated.
Conference proceedings of the First Annual Valletta 2018 Conference held in Malta in 2014, in the build up to Valletta as European Capital of Culture. Contributions by: Jason Micallef, Evarist Bartolo, Owen Bonnici, Mostafa Hassani-Idrissi, Henry Frendo, Khadija El Bennaoui, Lluis Bonet, Christine M. Merkel, Karel Bartak, Carlo Testini, Ferdinand Richard, Nadia von Maltzahn, Enric Olivé Serret, Roger Tropeano, Giacomo Sferlazzo, Hatto Fischer, George Cassar, Anna Steinkamp, France Irmann, Jason Dittmer, Karsten Xuereb.
Holiness on the Move: Mobility and Space in Byzantine Hagiography explores the literary, religious, and social functions of monastic mobility in Byzantine hagiography, touching on aspects of space, narrative, and identity. The ten chapters included in this volume highlight the multifaceted and rich nature of travel narratives, exploring topics such as authorship and audience, narrative structure and function, identity-making and practicalities of and discourse on travel. In terms of geographical span, the case studies cover Constantinople and its hinterland, Asia Minor, mainland Greece, Trebizond, the Balkans, and southern Italy and range chronologically from the end of the sixth to the four...
In Spiritus Loci Bert Daelemans, who graduated as an architect and a theologian, provides an interdisciplinary method for the theological assessment of church architecture. Rather than a theory, this method is based on case studies of contemporary buildings (1995-2015), which are often criticized for lacking theological depth. In a threefold method, the author brings to light the ways in which architecture can be theology – or theotopy – by focusing on topoi (places) rather than logoi (words). Churches reveal our relationship with God by engaging our body, mind, and community. This method proves relevant not only for the way we perceive these buildings, but also for the way we use them, especially in our prophetic engagement for a better world.