Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Light, silence, and spirituality in architecture and art / Juhani Pallasmaa -- The domestic and the numinous in sacred architecture / Thomas Barrie -- Nature, healing, and the numinous / Rebecca Krinke -- From bioregional to reverential urbanism / Maged Senbel -- The risk of the ineffable / Karla Cavarra Britton -- Le Corbusier at the Parthenon / Julio Bermudez -- The Christian church building / Kevin Seasoltz -- Ecclesial architecture and image in a postmodern age / Mark E. Wedig -- Spirituality, social justice, and the built environment / Micheal J. Sheridan -- Ritual, belief, and meaning in the production of sacred space / Sue Ann Taylor -- Architectural catalysts to contemplation / Lindsay Jones -- Transcending aesthetics / Karsten Harries -- Calling forth the numinous in architecture / Michael J. Crosbie -- Elemental simplicity / Suzane Reatig -- Transcendence, where hast thou gone? / Duncan G. Stroik -- Architectural quests into the numinous / Travis Price -- Reaching for the numinous / Richard S. Vosko -- Exploring transcendence / Thomas Walton.

"How should we construct sacred spaces, the places where we worship? Transcending Architecture considers the mysterious, profound, and real power of designed environments to address the spiritual dimension of our humanity. By incorporating perspectives from within and without architecture, the book offers a wide, critical, and nuanced understanding of the lived relationship between the built and the numinous worlds. Far from avoiding the charged issues of subjectivity, culture and intangibility, the book examines phenomenological, symbolic and designerly ways in which the holy gets fixed and experienced through buildings, landscapes, and urban forms, and not just in institutionally defined religious or sacred places. Acknowledging that no individual voice can exhaust the topic, Transcending Architecture brings together a stellar group of scholars and practitioners to share their insights: architect Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Karsten Harries, comparative religion scholar Lindsay Jones and architectural theoretician Karla Britton, sacred architecture researcher Thomas Barrie and theologian Kevin Seasoltz, landscape architect Rebecca Krinke and Faith & Form magazine editor Michael Crosbie, are among the illustrious contributors. The result is the most direct, clear, and subtle scholarly text solely focused on the transcendental dimension of architecture available. This book thus provides, on one hand, understanding, relief, and growth to an architectural discipline that usually avoids its ineffable dimension and, on the other hand, a necessary dose of detail and reality to fields such as theological aesthetics, material anthropology, or philosophical phenomenology that too often fall trapped into unproductive generalizations and over-intellectualizations."--Publisher website