Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture : Monumental Occasions: Reflections on the Eventfulness of Religious Architecture

by
Format: Hardcover
Pub. Date: 2000-09-15
Publisher(s): Harvard Univ Pr
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Summary

The two volumes of this investigation into how we perceive sacred architecture propose an original interpretation of built environments as ritual-architectural events. Exploring the worldUs cultures and religious traditions, Volume One maps out patterned responses to sacred architecture according to the human experience, mechanism, interpretation, and comparison of architecture. Volume Two, an exercise in comparative morphology, offers a comprehensive framework of ritual-architectural priorities by looking at architecture as orientation, as commemoration, and as ritual context.

Table of Contents

Foreword. Monumental Works and Eventful Occasions xi
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction. The Foundations and Architecture of the Work xxiii
Part I The Experience of Architecture 1(58)
Lineages and Legacies: The Universality of Hermeneutical Reflection
4(17)
From Texts to Life: The Widening Scope of Hermeneutics
5(2)
Heidegger's Postmodernity: Beyond Objectivity and Methodology
7(2)
Gadamer's Contribution: Hermeneutics as Ontological and Universal
9(2)
Gadamer's Reception: Indifference, Enthusiasm, and Antagonism
11(5)
Gadamerian Hermeneutics and the Politics of Difference
16(5)
Dancing Menhirs: The Superabundance and Autonomy of Architecture
21(17)
Revealment and Concealment: The Otherness and Autonomy of Architecture
22(4)
Problematizing Architecture: The Transcendence of Design
26(3)
Superabundance and the Indigenous Experience of Architecture
29(5)
Superabundance and the Academic Interpretation of Architecture
34(4)
Conversation and Play: The Eventfulness of Architecture
38(21)
Events Not Buildings: The Occasionality of Architecture
39(2)
Unaccepted Challenges: Buildings and Beholders Redefined
41(3)
Seeing versus Playing: Alternative Metaphors for Understanding
44(4)
The Architectural Situation: Buildings, People, and Ritual Occasions
48(2)
The Play of Architecture: Interactivity, Seriousness, and Transformation
50(6)
The Layering of Hermeneutical Situations: Architectural Experience and Interpretation
56(3)
Part II The Mechanism of Architecture 59(46)
Order and Variation: The Twofold Pattern of Ritual-Architectural Events
62(12)
The Concept of Decoration: Architecture's ``Double Mediation''
62(3)
A Twofold Pattern: Reassurance and Disruption
65(4)
Conventionality and Innovation: The Front and Back Halves of the Architectural Situation
69(5)
Allurement and Coercion: The Front Half of the Ritual-Architectural Situation
74(12)
Identificatory Allurement: Leaving and Coming Home
75(2)
Invitations to Participate: The Instigation of Architectural Events
77(1)
The Continuity of Tradition and the Indispensability of Allurement
78(3)
The Specificity of Allurement and Its Coercive Potential
81(5)
Transformation and Productivity: The Back Half of the Ritual-Architectural Situation
86(19)
Stifled Expectations, Planned Uncertainty, and Intended Irregularity
87(2)
Hermeneutical Productivity: The Information and Content of Architecture
89(2)
Perilous Productivity: The Boundaries of Architectural Innovation
91(2)
The Architectural Mechanism: Clarifications and Recommendations
93(12)
Part III The Interpretation of Architecture 105(44)
Use and Uselessness: The Special Case of Architecture
108(13)
Architecture's Dual Fraternity: Tools and Art
110(3)
Architectural Allusions: Thinking with, about, and as Building
113(2)
The Two Faces of Architecture: Intimacy and Transcendence
115(2)
Architecture as Utilitarian and Transutilitarian
117(1)
A Fourth Dimension: Looking at, Being in, and Moving around Architecture
118(3)
Architecture as ``Mute Text''? Literary and Nonliterary Vehicles of Intelligibility
121(13)
The Privilege of Texts: Reading Architecture and Everything
122(2)
Reading Ritual: Meaningful Action Considered as Text
124(3)
Textual Tyranny and Alternative Vehicles of Intelligibility
127(4)
Books and Meanings: Will Any Hermeneutics Do?
131(3)
Studying Buildings by Decision or Default: Architecture's Evidential Promise
134(15)
Architecture's (Supposed) Virtues as Religiohistorical Data
135(4)
Architecture's (Supposed) Limitations as Religiohistorical Data
139(4)
More Serious Interpretive Challenges: Worse and Better Prospects for Understanding
143(1)
Losing and Reclaiming the Past: The Newness of Old Architecture
143(3)
The Greatest Obstacle: Impoverished Understandings of Architecture
146(3)
Part IV The Comparison of Architecture 149(60)
Insignificant Organization: Comparative Orderings of Architecture
153(17)
Cross-Cultural Classifications: Illusions of Neutrality and Comprehensiveness
154(2)
The Unnaturalness of Organization: Discovering or Imposing Order?
156(1)
The Feel of Classificatory Significance and Legitimacy
157(2)
Hermeneutics and Classification: The Relativity of Significance
159(1)
Competing Organizations: Relatively Insignificant Options
160(7)
Comparative Distortions: Classificatory Complaints and Prospects
167(3)
Significant Alternatives: Modes, Contexts, and Sequences of Architectural Comparison
170(17)
The Indigenous Experience of Architecture as a Comparative Act
171(4)
The Interpretation of Individual Architectures as a Comparative Act
175(3)
Synchronic Comparisons of Architecture: Similarity, Preparation, and Morphology
178(3)
Diachronic Comparisons of Architecture: Difference, Specificity, and Reception History
181(2)
Comparing Comparisons: Sequential Negotiations of Similarity and Difference
183(4)
Multifarious Revalorization: The Composition of Ritual-Architectural Reception Histories
187(22)
Why and How Reception Theory: Meanings, Contexts, and Historiography
188(2)
Architectural Reception Histories: Contextualization, Specificity, and Description
190(2)
Revalorization and Empirical Veracity: Respecting the Particular, Irregular, and Unforeseen
192(3)
Aspirations to Inclusiveness: Fully Democratic, Wildly Heterogeneous Reception Histories
195(3)
The Selectivity of Reception Histories: Protocols of Architectural Apprehension
198(11)
Notes 209(82)
Select Bibliography 291(18)
Index to Volume One 309

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