An Architecture Of Immanence

Torgerson begins by discussing God's transcendence and immanence and showing how church architecture has traditionally interpreted these key concepts. He then traces the theological roots of immanence's priority from liberal theology and liturgical innovation to modern architecture. Next, Torgerson illustrates this new architecture of immanence through particular practitioners, focusing especially on the work of theologically savvy architect Edward Anders Sövik. Finally, he addresses the future of church architecture as congregations are buffeted by the twin forces of liturgical change and postmodernism.

In Spiritus Loci Bert Daelemans, architect and theologian, provides a threefold method for the theological assessment of church architecture, based on contemporary case studies (1995-2015).

A contribution to the field of theological aesthetics, this book explores the arts in and around the Pentecostal and charismatic renewal movements. It proposes a pneumatological model for creativity and the arts, and discusses different art forms from the perspective of that model. Pentecostals and other charismatic Christians have not sufficiently worked out matters of aesthetics, or teased out the great religious possibilities of engaging with the arts. With the flourishing of Pentecostal culture comes the potential for an equally flourishing artistic life. As this book demonstrates, renewal movements have participated in the arts but have not systematized their findings in ways that express their theological commitments—until now. The book examines how to approach art in ways that are communal, dialogical, and theologically cultivating.

The role of architecture within the French Reformed tradition has been of recent scholarly interest, seen in the work of Helene Guicharnaud, Catharine Randall, Andrew Spicer, and others. Few, however, have investigated in depth the relationship between Reformed theology and architectural forms. In The Visual Theology of the Huguenots, Randal Carter Working explores the roots of Reformed aesthetics, set against the background of late medieval church architecture. Indicating how demonstrably important the work of Serlio is in the spreading of the ideas of Vitruvius, Working explains the influence of classical Roman building on French Reformed architecture. He follows this with an examination of five important Huguenot architects: Philibert de l'Orme, Bernard Palissy, Jacques-Androuet du Cerceau, Salomon de Brosse, and Jacques Perret. The distinct language of Huguenot architecture is revealed by his comparative analysis of three churches: St Pierre in Geneva, a medieval church overhauledby the Reformers; St Gervais-St Protais, a Parisian Catholic church whose facade was completed by the French Reformed architect Salomon de Brosse; and the temple at Charenton, a structure also designed and built by de Brosse. These three buildings demonstrate how the contribution of Huguenot architecture gave expression to Reformed theological ideas and helped bring about the renewal of classicism in France.

This book proposes a new critical relationship between computation and architecture, developing a history and theory of representation in architecture to understand and unleash potential means to open up creativity in the field. Historically, architecture has led to spatial representation. Today, computation has established new representational paradigms that can be compared to spatial representations, such as the revolution of perspective in the Renaissance. Architects now use software, robotics, and fabrication tools with very little understanding and participation in how these tools influence, revolutionize, and determine both architecture and its construction today. Why does the discipline of architecture not have a higher degree of authorship in the conception and development of computational technologies that define spatial representation? This book critically explores the relationship between history, theory, and cultural criticism. Lorenzo-Eiroa positions new understandings through parallel historical sections and theories of many revolutionary representational architecture canons displaced by conventional spatial projection. He identifies the architects, artists, mathematicians, and philosophers that were able to revolutionize their disciplines through the development of new technologies, new systems of representation, and new lenses to understand reality. This book frames the discussion by addressing new means to understand and expand architecture authorship in relation to the survey, information, representation, higher dimensional space, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence – in the pursuit of activating an architecture of information. This will be important reading for upper-level students and researchers of architecture and architectural theory, especially those with a keen interest in computational design and robotic fabrication.

Mid-20th century sacred architecture in America sought to bridge modernism with religion by abstracting cultural and faith traditions and pushing the envelope in the design of houses of worship. Modern architects embraced the challenges of creating sacred spaces that incorporated liturgical changes, evolving congregations, modern architecture, and innovations in building technology. The book describes the unique context and design aspects of the departure from historicism, and the renewal of heritage and traditions with ground-breaking structural features, deliberate optical effects and modern aesthetics. The contributions, from a pre-eminent group of scholars and practitioners from the US, Australia, and Europe are based on original archival research, historical documents, and field visits to the buildings discussed. Investigating how the authority of the divine was communicated through new forms of architectural design, these examinations map the materiality of liturgical change and communal worship during the mid-20th century.

An important resource for scholars of contemporary art and architecture, this volume considers contemporary art that takes architecture as its subject. Concentrated on works made since 1990, Contemporary Art About Architecture: A Strange Utility is the first to take up this topic in a sustained and explicit manner and the first to advance the idea that contemporary art functions as a form of architectural history, theory, and analysis. Over the course of fourteen essays by both emerging and established scholars, this volume examines a diverse group of artists in conjunction with the vernacular, canonical, and fantastical structures engaged by their work. I? Manglano-Ovalle, Matthew Barney, Monika Sosnowska, Pipo Nguyen-duy, and Paul Pfeiffer are among those considered, as are the compelling questions of architecture's relationship to photography, the evolving legacy of Mies van der Rohe, the notion of an architectural unconscious, and the provocative concepts of the unbuilt and the unbuildable. Through a rigorous investigation of these issues, Contemporary Art About Architecture calls attention to the fact that art is now a vital form of architectural discourse. Indeed, this phenomenon is both pervasive and, in its individual incarnations, compelling - a reason to think again about the entangled histories of architecture and art.

Both architecture and anthropology emerged as autonomous theoretical disciplines in the 18th-century enlightenment. Throughout the 19th century, the fields shared a common icon—the primitive hut—and a common concern with both routine needs and ceremonial behaviours. Both could lay strong claims to a special knowledge of the everyday. And yet, in the 20th century, notwithstanding genre classics such as Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects or Paul Oliver’s Shelter, and various attempts to make architecture anthropocentric (such as Corbusier’s Modulor), disciplinary exchanges between architecture and anthropology were often disappointingly slight. This book attempts to locate the various points of departure that might be taken in a contemporary discussion between architecture and anthropology. The results are radical: post-colonial theory is here counterpoised to 19th-century theories of primitivism, archaeology is set against dentistry, fieldwork is juxtaposed against indigenous critique, and climate science is applied to questions of shelter. This publication will be of interest to both architects and anthropologists. The chapters in this book were originally published within two special issues of Architectural Theory Review.