Noted architectural publication to feature
faculty’s research on sacred architecture

Presentations related to sacred architecture delivered last June by two members of the Texas A&M College of Architecture faculty to the Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality will be featured in the December issue of 2A, an architecture and art magazine published in Dubai.

Phill Tabb, who presented “Place Drawing as a Sacred Practice,” at the organization’s June 17-19 symposium held at Saint John's Abbey and University in Collegeville, Minn., was selected as one of three editors for the upcoming 2A feature. His own work, as well as that of his colleague, Anat Geva, who discussed the original lighting design in Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, will be highlighted in the high-gloss international publication.

The Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality is an international scholarly organization established in 2007 to support architectural and interdisciplinary scholarship, research, practice and education on the significance, experience and meaning of the built environment.

In his presentation, Tabb, a professor of architecture and member of the symposium’s organization committee, discussed how drawing can profoundly connect an artist with a place.

"It has the power to enable one to be awake in a place and to really see what is there, contributing to insights, profound deductions and an eventually enlivened presence," said Tabb.

Quick "in-situ" sketches can develop hand-eye coordination and provide an opportunity for site-specific immersion and multi-sensory experience, he said.

"Then, in the studio environment,” he said, “the drawing can either be reconstructed or enhanced and developed into a more precise work. This process,” he continued, “can be augmented with more controlled rituals and meditation, with focused attention and intense drawing and rendering episodes."

Mythic landscapes, he added, is a drawing category that penetrates into myths of creation, place myths, concepts of wholeness, divisions of unity, heroic tales, animal myths and emplacement drawings.

During his presentation, Tabb showed his own drawings of Pegasus, the Archangel Michael and others to illustrate his point.

"They are explorations that create a sense of wonder and convey important principles, which dwell in the places we visit, live and hold special," he said.

The interactivity of these drawing methods aid in the variety of representational techniques and corresponding sacred practices, he said. "Each individual drawing is not an end in itself, but rather a recursive part of a larger process."

The symposium presentation, "The 'Holy' Light of Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois," by Geva, associate professor of architecture, focused on the unique lighting employed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in what many architectural historians consider the first Modern building. The Unity Temple was designed and built between 1905 and 1908 to replace the Universalist congregation's original Unity Church, which burned in 1905.

"Wright’s sophisticated lighting design in Unity Temple was based on multiple sources of light and a combination of natural and artificial light," said Geva. "The integration of various light sources brings light deeper into the sanctuary and provides a uniform and balanced contrast-free light. This effect introduces a soft distribution of light throughout the interior and creates a natural glow, which enhances the concept of “holy” light in the temple."

Light and shadow, she said, contribute to worshippers’ states of mind as they depart the mundane and enter the spiritual realm of the temple.

"Wright reinforced the light/shadow spiritual effect in Unity Temple,” Geva pointed out, “by washing the pulpit/altar surface with more light relative to the other areas in the temple, which become darker as one moves away from the main floor."

Unity Temple’s drama of light and darkness, she concluded, enhances the notion that light provides premonitions and points of departure for spiritual and mystical transcendence, creating a bridge from the profane to the sacred.

Geva is authoring a book, "Frank Lloyd Wright's Sacred Architecture: Faith, Form and Building Technology," scheduled for publication by Taylor and Francis in April 2011.

Visit the website for The Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality.

Visit the home page for 2A magazine.

 

- Posted: July 8, 2010 -

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Contact:   Phillip Rollfing, prollfing@archone.tamu.edu or 979.458.0442.