Theoretical House in Byzantine Sacred Architecture

Please join us for the second event of the 2022-2023 Stanford Global Studies Research Workshop "Global Approaches to Sacred Space" on Monday, October 31st at 5:30 pm on Zoom for a presentation by Jelena Bogdanović (Vanderbilt University) titled "Theoretical House in Byzantine Sacred Architecture." 

Register for the webinar here 

About the Talk

Jelena Bogdanović: Theoretical House in Byzantine Sacred Architecture 

This talk builds upon the forthcoming study on the Type and Archetype in Late Antique and Byzantine Architecture and highlights the relevance of the theoretical house in sacred architecture. In architectural discourse, a theoretical house may be presented through the lenses of the ‘primitive hut’— the essential architectural unit and the ideal principle for architecture—first outlined by Vitruvius in the 1st century BCE. I advocate for a canopy—an architectonic object of basic structural and design integrity, most often comprising four columns and a roof—as the theoretical house in Byzantine sacred architecture. Invested with its own material-immaterial complexity, canopy as a theoretical house of the Byzantine-rite churches is accentuated within the performative contexts of the religious practices. The canopy of the Byzantine-rite church, this presentation posits, can and should be understood as an intellectual exercise, an aesthetic concept, and a design principle in Byzantine sacred architecture. 

Jelena Bogdanović is Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Vanderbilt University. 

Global Approaches to Sacred Space is generously funded as part of the SGS Global Research Workshop series with further support from the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of Art and Art History, the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis.

For further information, please visit our website: https://globalsacredspace.su.domains/