Paliou, E. and Knight, D.J. 2013. Mapping the Senses: Perceptual and Social Aspects of Late Antique Liturgy in San Vitale, Ravenna. (original) (raw)
The experience of the sacred through places of ritual in architecture
ANUARI d’Arquitectura i Societat, 2021
Les estructures socials i espacials, així com els llenguatges reconeguts i creats pels mestres del passat ja no són adequats en la nostra època actual. La pertinença a aquestes estructures hui ja no s’associa a la comunitat sinó a la xarxa.
Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2024
In this research, we propose to see the incidence of sensory architecture in public spaces in the Peruvian high Andean zone of the district of Pucara, an environment where the ancestral dance known as Huaylarsh is practiced, which has a background with agriculture and pastoral love. From a diagnosis, we will detect the considerations of the relations of the sensorial characters in the urban environment, opening a set of questions in relation to the cultural development in the towns that need diffusion and support in the expression of their most representative customs. The information on local public spaces was collected by means of an observation sheet, in which several general characteristics were recorded, such as typology, state of conservation and use of equipment, in addition to focusing on sensory criteria such as accessibility, visual language, fluidity in the environment, harmony of materials and comfortable acoustics. This information is complemented by surveys of residents who use public spaces to understand and contextualize their perception of urban space. It was determined that the level of influence of sensory architecture in various public spaces of the Huaylarsh event is moderately favorable, due to multiple deficiencies in the areas analyzed that prevent the spectator and dancer from fully enjoying the event.
Interactive Bodily Experiences of architectural History and its perceptual implications
SPATIAL PHRASES, 2009
Defining historical architecture through dance, a field not normally and necessarily perceived to be related to it allows us to engage in a dialogue with architecture, which would otherwise have not been possible. Movement/dance is not a part of architectural history education, or vice versa yet both disciplines can borrow from each other, in their process of creation; ideas about experiencing space and the visualization of space are just two examples. On the whole, architectural researchers have few methodologies for assessing the impact of movement on the perception and cognition of architecture. When re-interpreting an existing building, it is important to be as creative as when designing a new building. The idea that aesthetic perception and creation of architecture cannot be achieved without the inclusion and application of digital interactive technology forms the basis of this paper. The perception of spatial volume, which is the essence of architecture, is dependent on the viewer obtaining as many different perspectives through bodily movement as possible. Architecture, unlike sculpture or painting, incorporates the possibility of action, which naturally is tied to a bodily reaction. Any architecture that aims to be evocative should go beyond being a series of retinal images. This paper, and the project it refers to are about deconstructing space such that it is experienced differently. Through the use of the graphic programming environment Isadora, the structure provides a reassessment of itself. The architectural experience of a space can thus be extended from just being a dwelling to a more aggressive, seeking approach to architectural forms with the use of new psychophysical coordinates. This can then be linked to the design problematics in architecture, or to different analyses of theories of architectural history.
SACRED SPACES: HOW DOES CHURCH ARCHITECTURE COMMUNICATE THE SACRED?
Paper: Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology, 2022
Styles of churches through the centuries reflect that particular culture’s artistic skills, available materials, and its theological expression of Christ manifesting himself in the world. Roman, Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles of architecture all express the ecclesiastical piety of Christians from that time and place. A particularly “Catholic architecture” does not exist per se since the Church as its transcendent reality is not confined to any particular time and place. Church architecture’s departure in the last several decades from providing witness to the sacred is rooted in a post-Enlightenment materialist, reductionist, socialistic anthropology. This philosophical spirit was marked by a general turn toward the subjective–toward a focus on the “inner man” and the respective interpretations of his place within the cosmic order through a hermeneutic that apodictically repudiated the Gospel’s supernatural elements. This embrace of nihilism can be overcome by an architectural return to a consciousness of what Heidegger called a sense of dwelling.
2022
The first conference of the series “Experiencing the Sacred”, established by the SenSArt ERC project, aims to develop this topic further by triangulating the liturgy (broadly intended), the experience of the faithful (understood both as an individual and as social groups) and the sensoria (i.e. the diverse sensory systems that existed in the Middle Ages). In so doing, it aims at showing that the experience of the sacred was not homogeneous and static. On the contrary, it was a multimodal and multisensorial activity, one that bore complex and overlapping layers of meaning, and which was perceived in different ways by the diverse groups and individuals involved. The meeting will bring together a multi- and interdisciplinary community of scholars with a broad interest in the religious rituals of the late Middle Ages (ca. 1200 to ca. 1500), with particular respect to Art History, History, Musicology and Liturgy, in order to cross-fertilise these perspectives.
Mapping the tangible and intangible elements of the historical buildings and spaces
CNR-IRCrES Working Paper 2/2020, 2020
The void is the key element of the urban configuration: an empty space identified by the work of man or nature, which is defined and transformed by civic, religious, and social events. It is the people moving, talking, living in the streets and squares, and identifying with the landscape which actually transforms geometrically or naturally defined spaces into cultural spaces. It is from here that we would move towards the proposal of an integrated approach to the study of cultural heritage in its substance, made of elements that are both tangible and intangible such as the spirit of places, celebrations, traditional skills, and the social memory of the urban spaces, which have been shaped by humanity through time. Today, a crucial and innovative contribution to the approach sharped above is the practical possibility of direct involvement of the community, using innovative technologies, to map all the aspects and elements of their cultural heritage: as flexible, interactive maps (GIS-based) for the organization of different types of data about historic urban buildings and spaces, with specific reference to the strong links between tangible and intangible heritage.
Placing social interaction: an integrative approach to analyzing past built environments
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 2009
A growing recognition of the vital role that built space plays in social reproduction has created a need for analytical methods and interpretive frameworks with which to investigate this relationship in archaeological datasets. I address this by developing an integrative approach that emphasizes the role of the built environment as the context for interactions through which social structures are created, transformed and reproduced. This approach uses access analysis to examine how buildings structure patterns of movement and encounter that allow social actors to engage in or avoid particular forms of interaction. With its focus on the topological properties of built space, however, access analysis does not take adequate account of a building’s symbolic aspects, especially architectural characteristics and furnishings that social actors mobilize in the creation of meaningful contexts for interaction. I therefore integrate access analysis with an examination of how built environments encode meanings and nonverbally communicate them to inhabitants and visitors, potentially influencing their actions and interactions. The integrative approach allows determination of probable contexts for various types of social interactions during which social identities could be displayed, negotiated and reified. I conclude by demonstrating the potential of this approach with an analysis of the monumental Ashlar Building from the Late Bronze Age (c. 1650-1100 BC) site of Enkomi, Cyprus.
The question of how religious buildings should be appropriately reused has sparked a good deal of public discussion (particularly with regard to recent sales of churches to Muslim immigrants) but relatively little scholarly attention. In my view, however, the "serial use of religious space" provides a useful lens through which we can test and critique our theoretical understandings of religious spaces across traditions and time periods. Focusing on the temporal realities and transformations of religious space draws attention to a number of "problems" with our approaches, including 1.) underlying binaries of possession/non-possession and occupation/exile that inform much critical-spatial theory, 2.) the related assumption of power as power over rather than power to create in discussions of space as an authorizing agent, and 3.) the hegemony of internally-focused synchronic approaches that have the effect of essentializing religious space. This paper examines these and other problems and develops some suggestions toward addressing the "afterlives" of religious spaces by bringing into focus diachronic analyses, the palimpsest character of many religious sites, and their witness to relationships among multiple groups. The Polish Pavilion at the 11th Biennale of Architecture in Venice (2008) featured the collaborative photographic work of Nicolas Grospierre and Kobas Laksa, who examined the theme "The Afterlife of Buildings" in a series of photographs of recently erected buildings paired with photographic collages imagining their eventual reuse-that is, their afterlives. Among the several buildings the artists burlesqued was Polish architect Barbara Bielecka's Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, a massive Roman Catholic church near Konin, Poland, completed in 2004. The afterlife conceived for this church depicted its reuse as-you guessed it-a water park. Grospierre and Laksa won the prestigious Golden Lion award for their entry in the Biennale, and the various pairings,