With Jørn Utzon: Approaching and Preaching Architectural Texts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15695/hmltc.v45i2.5000Abstract
Architecture is communication. It conveys human stories, feelings, philosophies, and cultural histories and interacts through them with viewers, occupants, artists, and surrounding communities. Architecture, whether explicitly religious or not, is spiritual, too. Embodying and manifesting spatial spirituality, it invokes in the mind of the appreciator awe, wonder, and contact with the transcendent. All this is possible because architecture is, to borrow Paul Tillich’s language, an art form carrying the ultimate concerns of human life. Recognizing the communicative, spiritual, and existential nature of architecture exemplified in Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, this article meets a need and demonstrates the potential for architectural preaching. Preaching can serve biblical texts efficiently—particularly architectural ones (e.g., Exodus 26 and Revelation 21)—by approaching them through an architectural hermeneutic and creatively presenting them with architectural imagination.
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