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Modern Architecture and the Sacred: Religious Legacies and Spiritual Renewal

Publisher:
, 2020
ISBN: 9781350098725
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Overview

This edited volume, Modern Architecture and the Sacred, presents a timely reappraisal of the manifold engagements that modern architecture has had with ’the sacred’.

It comprises fourteen individual chapters arranged in three thematic sections – Beginnings and Transformations of the Modern Sacred; Buildings for Modern Worship; and Semi-Sacred Settings in the Cultural Topography of Modernity. The first interprets the intellectual and artistic roots of modern ideas of the sacred in the post-Enlightenment period and tracks the transformation of these in architecture over time. The second studies the ways in which organized religion responded to the challenges of the new modern self-understanding, and then the third investigates the ways that abstract modern notions of the sacred have been embodied in the ersatz sacred contexts of theatres, galleries, memorials and museums.

While centring on Western architecture during the decisive period of the first half of the 20th century – a time that takes in the early musings on spirituality by some of the avant-garde in defiance of Sachlichkeit and the machine aesthetic – the volume also considers the many-varied appropriations of sacrality that architects have made up to the present day, and also in social and cultural contexts beyond the West.

Expanding the notion of the sacred in modern architecture.

There are no recent scholarly edited books that address the theme of sacrality in both religious and secular architecture in the modern period.
This book assembles leading architectural humanities research on the topic of modern architecture and issues of the sacred in the Western context, providing a critical scholarly overview of the current state of the field.
This book makes a significant contribution to the current revaluation of long-marginalised aspects of modern architecture, illuminating the often unspoken or underplayed spiritual motivations of architects designing ostensibly secular buildings that on close reading in fact reveal sacred aspirations.
This book comprises scholarly and accessible writings by an international group of academics at various stages of their careers: well-established authorities in the field, midcareer researchers, and advanced doctoral candidates who will shape the field into the future.

List of figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction, Ross Anderson (University of Sydney, Australia) and Maximilian Sternberg (University of Cambridge, UK)

Part One Beginnings and transformations of the modern sacred

1. Architecture and the question of ‘the’ sacred, Peter Carl (University of Cambridge, UK)

2 Romantic Kunstreligion and the search for the sacred in modern architecture: From Schinkel’s Altes Museum as ‘aesthetic church’ to Zumthor’s Bruder Klaus Field Chapel as Gesamtkunstwerk and ‘heavenly cave’, Gabriele Bryant (Independent Scholar)

3. The Ordinary as the extraordinary: Modern sacred architecture in Germany, the United States and Japan, Kathleen James-Chakraborty (University College Dublin, Ireland)

4. Città dei Morti: Alvar Aalto’s funerary architecture, Sofia Singler (University of Cambridge, UK)

Part Two Buildings for modern worship

5. Light, form and formación: Daylighting, church building and the work of the Valparaíso School, Mary Ann Steane (University of Cambridge, UK)

6. Reading, storing and parading the book: Between tradition and modernity in the synagogue, Gerald Adler (University of Kent, UK)

7. Compacting civic and sacred: Goodhue’s University of Chicago Chapeland the modern metropolis, Stephen Gage (University of Reading, UK)

8. A diaspora of modern sacred form: Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier and Paul Valéry, Karla Cavarra Britton (Diné College, Navajo Nation)

9. Structure for spirit in The Architectural Review and The Architects’ Journal, 1945–70, Sam Samarghandi (Independent Scholar, Australia)

Part Three Semi-sacred settings in the cultural topography of modernity

10. Revelatory earth: Adolphe Appia and the prospect of a modern sacred, Ross Anderson (University of Sydney, Australia)

11. Anagogical themes in Schwitters’ Kathedrale des erotischen Elends, Matthew Mindrup (University of Sydney, Australia)

12. Modern medievalisms: Curating the sacred at the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne (1932–9), Maximilian Sternberg (University of Cambridge, UK)

13. Architecture, politics and the sacred in military monuments of Fascist Italy, Hannah Malone (Max Planck Institute, Germany)

14. Atmosphere of the sacred: The awry in music, cinema, architecture, Michael Tawa (University of Sydney, Australia)

Bibliography
Index

As religiosity declined in the West, architecture became the bearer of a powerful secular spirituality, widely ignored in the standard histories. In its broad and inclusive approach, this volume argues persuasively that the pursuit of the sacred was a key constituent of 20th-century architectural design and theory: a revision long overdue.

Ross Anderson is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney.

Maximilian Sternberg is a University Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Fellow of Pembroke College at Cambridge University.

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