Numinous Edifices
Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift April 7, 2023 Ola Sigurdson 2 citations
The experience of the sacred in buildings is an aesthetic one, given through the senses. Classic phenomenologists of religion such as Mircea Eliade and Rudolf Otto emphasize the sacred's power and verticality, while critics like Jonathan Z. Smith and Erika Fischer-Lichte stress its performance and horizontality. Neither approach alone is sufficient. The sacred is both construed through repeated performances and manifests as a surplus of power within those performances. A more concrete phenomenology of numinous buildings is needed, one that attends to the actual materiality of buildings and the nuances of multisensory experience.