| In my thesis, I will look at Byzantine architecture in order to throw light on the issue of building new Orthodox Christian churches. I will introduce specific terms such as Orthodoxy, Tradition, Byzantine (the place of Byzantine art and architecture in Orthodox Christianity), hermeneutics, as well as the reasons why a fresh approach to Orthodox Christian church design is necessary. Romanian artist Horia Bernea proposed "rich materiality" as a quality of Byzantine architecture that architects of our time would tend to overlook, and contrasted it with the "dry materiality" of most of the contemporary built environment. Bernea's use of the term materiality for describing architecture meets, without matching completely, the preoccupations of contemporary architects and theorists such as Kenneth Frampton, Richard Weston, or Michael Benedikt. For Weston, materiality is an emphasis on what materials are, as opposed to what they can do, structurally. For Benedikt, materiality is the quality of things material, perceptible by senses, but also the ability of natural materials to tell the story of their origin and making. Frampton is primarily concerned with tectonics as the poetics of construction, but some of the concepts he explores (tectonic and atectonic, core form and art form, experiencing architecture with the whole body as opposed to a merely visual experience) are useful for understanding Byzantine architecture and its materiality. Specific to Bernea's approach is his emphasis on the spirituality and worldview that shapes any particular architecture, making its materiality rich or dry. Therefore, the incompatibility between traditional church architecture and the professional culture of contemporary architects is based on the incompatibility of two conflicting worldviews; the conflict cannot be surpassed without a thoughtful hermeneutic approach. |
