Rich Materiality

A Hermeneutic Approach to Byzantine Architecture

Ana Botez

2011

B.Arch., University of Architecture and Urbanism ―Ion Mincu,‖ Bucharest, Romania, 2000

M.S. Arch., program ―Anthropology of Sacred Space‖, University of Architecture and Urbanism

―Ion Mincu,‖ Bucharest, Romania, 2003

A thesis submitted to the

University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science in Architecture

In the School of Architecture and Interior Design

Of the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning

Committee Chair: John E. Hancock, M.Arch.

Committee Member: Nnamdi Elleh, Ph.D. Abstract

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.

ii iii Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Augustin Ioan for the suggestion of researching materiality as the quality of Byzantine architecture that contemporary church architecture fails to embody, as well as for the suggestion of continuing my studies at the University of Cincinnati.

I would like to thank Professor John E. Hancock for the priceless help and encouragement he has provided along this endeavor, including some of the most important reading recommendations. I would also like to thank Professors Jim Bradford,

David Saile, Nnamdi Elleh, and Patrick Snadon, for their help and suggestions. I would like to thank Ellen Guerrettaz for her invaluable help and for not letting me give up.

I would not be here today without Professor Sanda Voiculescu (may she rest in peace; may her memory be eternal), who first taught me about the beauty of Byzantine architecture, without Professor Mihai Opreanu, under the supervision of whom I worked on several restoration projects of historical churches and a couple of new church designs, and without my teachers and colleagues from the ―Anthropology of Sacred Space‖ master program.

I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues from Cincinnati and Bucharest who have been patient enough to listen to or read my ideas before they were fully organized, as well as those who have been helpful and kind to me when I was in a foreign country.

Last, but not least, I would like to thank my parents, who helped me and supported me in many ways, allowing me to complete my research.

iv List of Illustrations

1. Church of the Martyrs of the Revolution, Bucharest, 1993-2003, architects N.

Diaconu and N. Popescu-Greaca. Image found online at

http://www.bisericaeroilor.ro/biserica.htm accessed on 08/01/2011.

2. Patriarchal Cathedral model, 1st phase competition entry, 2002, architects Augustin

Ioan, Tudor Rebengiuc, Viorica Popescu. Image found online at

http://byzantinearch.blogspot.com/2009/09/peoples-salvation-cathedral-

design_16.html accessed on 08/01/2011.

3. Patriarchal Cathedral virtual model, 2nd phase competition entry, architects Augustin

Ioan, Tudor Rebengiuc, and Viorica Popescu. Image found online at

http://byzantinearch.blogspot.com/2009/09/peoples-salvation-cathedral-

design_16.html accessed on 08/01/2011.

4. Church of Cozia Monastery, 14th century. Image found online at

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2006_0610CoziaExterior20565.JPG

accessed on 08/01/2011.

5. Church of Hurezi Monastery, late 17th century. Author‘s photograph.

6. Church of Voroneţ Monastery, late 15th century, exterior frescoes from mid-16th

century. Image found online at

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voronet_Intrare.JPG accessed on

08/01/2011.

7. St. Spyridon ―New‖, Bucharest, 19th century. Image found online at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sf._Spiridon_cel_Nou.JPG accessed on 08/01/2011.

8. Alba-Iulia Cathedral, 1921-1922. Author‘s photograph.

v 9. Monastery ―Râpa Robilor‖, Aiud, design proposed by architect Radu Mihăilescu,

2010. Image found online at http://www.anualadearhitectura.ro/proiecte/30 accessed

on 08/11/2011.

10. Patriarchal Cathedral, Bucharest, winning entry of the 2009 competition, currently

under construction. Image found online at

http://byzantinearch.blogspot.com/2010/01/catedrala-mantuirii-neamului-

proiectul.html accessed on 08/11/2011.

11. Church of Petru Vodă Monastery, 1991. Author‘s photograph.

12. Arbore Monastery church, 16th century. Detail of Last Judgment on western façade.

Image found online at

http://www.users.cloud9.net/~romania/Churches/arbore/Last_judgment_--detail.html

accessed on 08/11/2011.

13. Theotokos Hodegetria, 16th century, Wallachian workshop, National Art Museum of

Romania. Image found online at http://www.mnar.arts.ro/Arta-veche-romaneasca/s-

1/p-3 accessed on 08/11/2011.

vi Thesis Outline

I. Introduction

1. The fundamental question: how to build Orthodox Christian churches

today?

2. Key concepts

a) Orthodoxy

b) Tradition

c) Byzantine

d) Hermeneutics

i. Gadamer and the cultural horizons

ii. Exegesis in Orthodox Christianity

3. Church architecture in Romania: a brief survey

a) Post-Byzantine

b) Westernization

c) Search for national identity

d) Communist persecution

e) Post-communist searches

i. The ―quarrel‖ of clergy and architects

ii. The functionalist approach

iii. The precedents-based approach

iv. The geometrical-symbolic approach

v. The imitative approach

vii 4. A possible approach in the spirit of Tradition

a) Tradition (with a capital T) and traditions

b) Picking bits of tradition(s) versus immersion in Tradition

c) Appropriating Tradition through conversion and/or the

broadening of cultural horizons (Gadamer)

d) Understanding how the culture of Orthodoxy and the

professional culture of architects may be at variance

5. Why Byzantium?

a) The most consistent cultural expression of the Orthodox

Tradition

b) Survival of Byzantine culture in the Orthodox Christian

countries of Eastern Europe and the Near East

c) The fundamental assumption: we can use Orthodox

Tradition today to interpret Orthodox Christian architecture of the

Byzantine age

6. Why ―rich materiality‖?

a) Introducing late Romanian artist Horia Bernea

b) Introducing Bernea‘s concept of ―materiality‖

c) The growing interest in materiality and related concepts in

architectural theory today

II. The Material Aspects of Architecture in Contemporary Literature

1. Kenneth Frampton and the tectonic

a) Defining the tectonic: Etymology

viii b) Building the place: Topography

c) Building for the body: Corporeal metaphor

d) Building with spiritual meaning: Ethnography

e) Representational versus Ontological

f) Tectonic and atectonic

g) Heidegger‘s phenomenological approach: Technology

h) Tradition and innovation

2. Richard Weston‘s survey of material and form in architecture

a) Materials and form

b) In the nature of materials

c) Place

d) Time

e) Use

f) Junctions

g) Surfaces

h) Meaning

i) Materiality and translucency

j) Conclusion

3. Michael Benedikt and the ―architecture of reality‖

a) Presence

b) Significance

c) Emptiness

d) Materiality

ix 4. A brief conclusion

III. Bernea‘s ―Rich Materiality‖

1. Matter as material symbol of spiritual realities

2. Introducing Roma Caput Mundi

a) The first discussion on materiality in Roma Caput Mundi

b) The second discussion on materiality in Roma Caput Mundi

c) The third discussion on materiality in Roma Caput Mundi

3. A conclusion

IV. The Root of the Issue: An Incompatibility of Worldviews Leading to an

Incompatibility of Architectural Expressions?

x I. Introduction

1. The fundamental question: how to build Orthodox Christian churches

today?

After the fall of its Communist regime in

1989, the newly re-conquered freedom of religion found Romania with an acute shortage of places of worship, since for about forty-five years all new urban developments had been built without the 1. Church of the Martyrs of the slightest concern for this matter, and many existing Revolution, Bucharest, 1993-2003, architects N. Diaconu and N. Popescu-Greaca. churches were demolished. It would soon become obvious that the problem has no easy solution. The architectural elite found out that the realm of Orthodox ecclesiastical architecture is not a welcoming field for innovative experimentation. With architects accusing clients (i.e. usually parochial committees of clerics and laity) of ignorance in matters of architecture and clients accusing architects of ignorance in matters of Orthodox tradition, churches had to be built in a compromising manner, the result being awkward transpositions of clients‘ indications into built form.

This state of affairs triggered a strong research interest among architects such as Augustin

Ioan1 or Florin Biciuşcă,2 manifested in many articles, books and public debates, as well as in the creation of a special master‘s program entitled Anthropology of Sacred Space, of which I am a graduate. Until now, this research has produced interesting, but not widely

1 Radu Drăgan and Augustin Ioan, Fiinţa şi spaţiul. Bucharest: Editura All, 1992. Augustin Ioan, Visul lui Ezechiel: Corp, geometrie şi spaţiu sacru. Bucharest: Anastasia, 1996. Augustin Ioan, Spaţiul Sacru. Cluj: Dacia, 2001. Augustin Ioan, Intoarcerea în spaţiul sacru. Bucharest: Paideia, 2004. Augustin Ioan, Retrofuturism: Spaţiul sacru astăzi. Bucharest: Paideia, 2010. 2 Florin Biciuşcă, Centrul lumii locuite. Bucharest: Paideia, 2000.

1 accepted results. One example is the winning competition entry for a new Patriarchal Cathedral3 by architects Augustin Ioan, Tudor Rebengiuc, Viorica

Popescu and a team of architecture students.

Abandoned due to administrative problems of land

2. Patriarchal Cathedral model, 1st ownership, their design was highly controversial and phase competition entry, 2002, architects Augustin Ioan, Tudor was, quite paradoxically, contested by both architects Rebengiuc, and Viorica Popescu. and clerics.

One of the most difficult obstacles in the way of a new Orthodox architecture is architects‘ obstinate concern with ―contemporary materials‖ and the ―Zeitgeist‖. One has to build with contemporary 3. Patriarchal Cathedral virtual model, 2nd phase competition entry, materials, but following the traditional geometry, architects Augustin Ioan, Tudor Rebengiuc, and Viorica Popescu. which has already been proven to carry symbolic meaning; if this concession has been made, at least the design should follow the Zeitgeist, the argument goes, in proposing pure, minimalist lines and surfaces. At this point, architects are happy with the result which is somewhat related to Italian neo-rationalism in producing geometrically purified versions of traditional typologies, but clients cannot express their discontent other than by asking for some decoration on the blank facades. However, decoration set on a building designed in a different spirit has little chance to be free of Kitsch.

In spite of the apparent lack of universally acceptable solutions to the problem, there is a fresh approach that might help clarify things, that is looking at the materiality

3 Augustin Ioan, Concursuri pentru catedrala patriarhală ortodoxă: 1999-2002. Bucharest: Noi Media Print, 2003.

2 of traditional church architecture, characterized as rich by Romanian artist Horia Bernea.

―Rich‖ refers to textures and colors, to a special tactile quality, and probably to a certain material honesty and sincerity. However, it should be noted that at times this specific sense of material honesty and sincerity allows a veil of fresco or mosaic, or marble cladding, to cover the construction, thus contradicting our modern understanding of the concept. But in all instances, the personal touch of the craftsmen is always perceptible, if not in masonry itself when it is concealed, at least in the outer layer. This creates a break with modern technology, where the building is usually made in an impersonal manner: either assembled from prefabricated elements or cast into moulds.

It is for simplifying my line of discussion that I have chosen to study Byzantine church architecture, since otherwise I would have had to define somehow what traditional

Orthodox architecture is. Expanding the research would require comparing the Byzantine with other kinds of ecclesiastical architecture taken as traditional, such as that of

Romanian wooden churches, which would be beyond the scope of this paper.

2. Key concepts

Before going further, it is necessary to define several key terms that will be used throughout this thesis—Orthodoxy, Tradition (as distinct from traditions), Byzantine

(concerning art and architecture), and hermeneutics—generally as they illuminate deeper treatments of the Orthodox Faith as the appropriate context for church design.

3 a) Orthodoxy4

The term Orthodoxy comes from the Greek Orthodoxia, meaning ―right opinion‖; it means a right opinion or belief about God. The term developed in the early Church in order to distinguish the Faith of the Church from contrary opinions called heresies, from the Greek hairesis, an act of choice. The heretics were defined as those who rejected the divinely inspired teachings of the Church or thought they could bring amendments to them by their own intellectual speculation. Since in their Epistles and in the Book of

Revelation the holy apostles warned the Church against the rise of false prophets and false teachers, from the earliest times the faithful, especially the clergy, watched against any teaching contrary to what they held to. Paradoxically, it was through polemical writing against heresy and through the activity of the Ecumenical Councils where hundreds of bishops discerned between heresy and Orthodoxy that the Orthodox dogmas were formulated explicitly. In other words, Orthodox doctrine was put into explicit writing little by little, as various heterodox (other than Orthodox) teachings came, one after another, to challenge the implicit Orthodoxy. The word dogma, here, is simply a name for a correct doctrine, from the Greek verb dokein, which means ―to think, to seem good,‖ and comes from the formula of the Ecumenical Councils ―it seems good to the

Holy Spirit and to us,‖ which introduces such a doctrine. Therefore, it is not Orthodoxy which stems from dogmas, but dogmas which stem from Orthodoxy, being the description of the Orthodox faith as lived and experienced. The unchangeability of dogmas is understood to have its roots in the unchangeability of God and of divine

4 For a more detailed, systematic approach, see: Peter Bouteneff, Sweeter than Honey: Orthodox Thinking on Dogma and Truth. Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir‘s Seminary Press, 2006.

4 revelation, reflected in the consistency of many testimonies coming from various places and times.

Orthodoxy is the faith of what is usually called the Orthodox Church: the body of believers who understand themselves to have been founded by Jesus Christ through his

Crucifixion, Resurrection, and institution of the sacrament of the Holy Communion.

Orthodox Christians believe, according to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in ―one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,‖ and use the term ―Orthodox‖ to distinguish their

Church from other various congregations which have taken other paths, through various schisms and historical circumstances. These include, most significantly, the Roman

Catholic Church, which of its own accord changed the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in violation of the decrees of the Ecumenical Councils at Nicaea (A.D. 325) and

Constantinople (A.D. 381), leading to the Great Schism of 1054. Other local churches, such as the Armenian Church, had broken communion with the Orthodox Church much earlier, by not accepting the decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451).

With all the subsequent historical fragmentations, including all the various Protestant and

Neo-Protestant reformations which broke off the Roman Catholic Church, and later from each other, or appeared as new independent groups, there is much confusion, obscuring even more and for more people the concept of one Church as defined by the Nicene-

Constantinopolitan Creed. Nevertheless, from an Orthodox Christian standpoint (as well as a Roman Catholic one) there can be only one true Church, and this is the one which has held fast along the centuries to the Orthodox Faith as defined by the Ecumenical

Councils.

5 For a person, being Orthodox means both believing that Orthodoxy is the true

Faith and living a virtuous life in the Church, as much as one can. Faith should come to fruition in one‘s deeds, while in the absence of faith, deeds such as almsgiving make one a valuable and beloved member of society, but fail to heal or improve that person spiritually. While a detailed account of the Orthodox doctrine on why salvation is necessary and how it is worked out is beyond the purpose of this short discussion, a short mention of the opposite concepts of virtue and sin is necessary. Virtue (in Greek arete, meaning ―excellence‖ and originally ―scope‖ or ―target‖) is the true purpose of a man‘s life, while sin (in Greek hamartia, meaning ―fault‖ and originally ―missing the mark‖) is the failure to achieve this true purpose. While virtues (usually in plural form) could mean any form of moral excellence, for an Orthodox Christian, virtue in the highest sense means to be illumined and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. While very few rejoice fully in this blessed state before their death, all the faithful work towards it by adopting a certain discipline of life.

Consequently, a thing or activity may be called Orthodox when it can help a person towards this goal; examples may include Orthodox prayers, Orthodox services and sacraments, and Orthodox art and architecture. The term may be applied as well to anything produced by the Orthodox Church or within the Orthodox Christian culture, but the two senses will not overlap perfectly. Some items created or produced within the

Orthodox Church are not Orthodox in the first sense, which happens occasionally when those who make them fail to grasp the essence that needs to be conveyed through their work. In other words, they are not fully immersed in Tradition and therefore their work fails to reflect fully and faithfully Orthodoxy and the Orthodox Tradition. This helps

6 explain why, from the standpoint of the Orthodox Tradition, it is impossible to accord validity to the kinds of individualistic, irreverent, or innovative creations typical of

Modern art and architecture, or the worldview on which they are based.

b) Tradition5

Tradition, following the Latin etymology, is something ―given across‖—across generations, or ages. This something can be a more or less systematic corpus of precepts, a specific way of life, a code of behavior, a system of customs, or a specific way of thinking and understanding the world. The Greek paradosis (probably the original from which the Latin traditio was translated) means equally, etymologically speaking, a

―giving across‖. The Greek word refers to the handing down or transmission of spoken or written words, as well as of more concrete things. It also names that which is handed down.

It is noteworthy that tradition is understood to be chiefly transmitted orally. This is not by accident, since transmitting a teaching orally usually implies an active involvement of all those who take part in it. On the contrary, once a teaching has been written, much of the transmission process is transferred to books, and may leave ―human carriers‖ relatively uninvolved in it.

A second noteworthy aspect of tradition is that usually its value is connected to its age: the older, the better. However, antiquity is not a value in itself, since at the beginning the Christian tradition was a novelty and even a scandal, a ―stumbling block‖,

5 In the elaboration of this text, I used the resources (various articles, essays, book excerpts and external links, ranging from scholarly papers to texts meant for a wide audience) from the Holy Tradition: The Criterion of Truth section of the Orthodox Christian Information Center, available online at http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/ph_holytrad.aspx and last accessed 08/09/2009.

7 and it proposed a radically unexpected interpretation of prophetical writings from the

Bible—hence called the Old Testament. The perceived antiquity of random things and activities has occasionally tricked the ignorant into imitating them almost mindlessly as valid traditions, which is a common and benign occurrence in many aspects of life.

However, when important matters such as religious and liturgical arts are concerned, rather than invoking simply a tradition‘s antiquity as a sign of value, it is better to confirm its validity by appealing to competent authorities.

A third noteworthy aspect is that the Greek word means not only the transmitted things, but also the process of transmitting in itself. Can the two be separated, or is the process of handing down an inseparable part of the tradition? In traditional societies what is handed down always includes specific ways of handing down, i.e. feasts and rituals include the act of teaching the younger generations. Also, customs, behaviors and ways of life are conveyed by the simple act of practicing them; in fact, teaching customs without practicing them is a very strong obstacle to handing them down successfully.

How could the Orthodox Tradition be defined, circumscribed? Is there something in Orthodoxy that is not tradition? How can we decide what is tradition and what is outside of it? According to Orthodoxy, its Tradition (Capitalized, from here on) is a whole: not only is it fully consistent in itself, but it also covers almost anything connected with man‘s life, without leaving aside the slightest thing that can lead to spiritual healing, illumination, and salvation.

Sometimes, Orthodox thought opens up a distinction between Tradition and traditions, where Tradition is seen as inspired by the Holy Spirit, and traditio ns are seen as human creations, that vary with time, place and so on. Other authors add further

8 nuances, explaining that this distinction is too harsh and it is perhaps more appropriate to speak of the inner core of Tradition, which is equal to itself at all times but receives different formulations in the Holy Scriptures, the preaching of the Holy Apostles, the decrees of the Holy Ecumenical Councils and the writings of the Holy Fathers of the

Church, and in the exterior expression of Tradition in various concrete aspects. These different formulations do not contradict each other at any time, but build on each other to create a fuller and fuller description of a living experience, which lies, at least partly, beyond words. Also, there is no difference in the degree of authority between the

Tradition and the Scriptures, because it is the Church (seen as the mystical body of

Christ, rather than as an institution, in which living and dead, saints and even angels are members) that gives authority to both.

The exterior aspects of Tradition assume an even more diverse expression.

Different cultural environments nurture different expressions of Tradition, including in ecclesiastical architecture. However, this is not simply a cultural diversity, but a unity in diversity, which feeds on the unity of Tradition. In countries where Orthodoxy was the predominant faith for many centuries, even secular culture grew to become an expression of Tradition, e.g. in every aspect of daily life such as dress, food, or codes of behavior; the respective nuances varied from one country to another and from one continent to another. Unfortunately, nowadays a great part of this cultural treasury has been lost because of hostile historical conditions such as Turkish rule and Communist oppression, or insidious ones such as Westernizing Modernity. This has helped create the difficult situation with liturgical arts and architecture, since the best qualified artists and architects tend rather to live and work outside the Orthodox Tradition, and appropriate materials

9 and technologies are not readily available on the market. Building codes also impose design restrictions that may conflict with traditional building and design.

Because of influences alien to Orthodoxy, there are obviously things that have been handed down, but which are not an actual expression of Tradition. These factors did not change the core of Tradition, but have affected its external aspects, such as iconography, liturgical music or architecture. However, for judging what is traditional and what is not for the Orthodox Tradition, one has to be first ―immersed‖ in it, which requires acceptance of what is handed down, with humility and obedience, knowing that outside Tradition there are no valid criteria for judging Tradition. Immersion in Tradition works in this paradoxical way. Also, immersion in Tradition cannot be partial: sprinkling water over a fish cannot help it live, except for a very short time. The word immersion here points at the hidden unity of apparently disparate elements of Tradition. For example, respecting the fasting rule of the Church helps acquiring a state of chastity, which helps acquiring a state of attention in prayer, reading and attending church services

(since they are theology put in a poetical form), which opens the mind to understanding

Tradition, and the whole person to living in Tradition. Thus, little by little, the immersion progresses and things appear clearer and clearer, and the faculty of discriminating between Tradition and its useless or harmful additions becomes sharper.

Another delicate distinction is that between following Tradition canonically and following Tradition by economy. 6 The Greek word kanon named originally a measuring rod, and later the meaning was extended to include the sense of rule or law. The Greek word oikonomia means literally household management and denotes, among other things,

6 Sometimes spelled oeconomy, or replaced with the Greek oikonomia, in order to avoid confusions with the system of activities comprising, for example, production or commerce.

10 the flexible application of an otherwise inflexible canon, i.e. its adaptation to a specific exceptional situation. This exception, or even a series of consecutive exceptions, however, will have no influence on the validity of the canon, nor will it be able to modify or abolish it. A good example is how divorce and re-marriage, which are sometimes approved by the local bishop (the appointed authority for judging such issues), can never overthrow the rule of lifetime marriages. This applies both to written and unwritten rules, the latter being only more difficult to discriminate because of the lack of easily available references to the right way of doing things. An overwhelming quantity of exceptions might appear to the unsuspecting observer as the expression of a new rule or as the absence of any rule. To give an example from the field of church architecture, if there are churches (or more likely chapels) that in exceptional situations have been built with a flat ceiling, this does not abolish the traditional preference for domes and vaults, especially vaulting systems specific to the cross-in-square plan and the three-conch plan.

By no means does it give a free hand to architects to design churches completely devoid of curved elements such as arches, vaults and domes.

Tradition is a most complex subject of investigation, especially if this is done from a predominantly intellectual or scholarly point of view. There are many nuances that may escape a superficial survey, as well as many aspects that cannot be approached in a short essay. Of critical importance here is the understanding of the strength and continuity of the Tradition (beliefs, values, practices, and forms) of the Orthodox Church, as a necessary context for taking up questions of church building design, and the extent to which, and the ways in which, they should be ―traditional‖.

11 c) Byzantine7

The term Byzantine is applied to anything pertaining to the Eastern Roman

Empire since the founding of its capital Constantinople in 330 A.D. until the fall of

Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The name comes from Byzantium, an

Ancient Greek city that preceded Constantinople on the same site; the term has been used only from relatively modern times in the Western World, since Byzantines themselves considered themselves Romans. The emperor Constantine the Great, founder of

Constantinople and author of the change of capital from Rome to this new city, also granted Christians full religious freedom and citizenship rights by his Edict of Milan, issued in 313 A.D., which put an end to centuries of on-and-off persecutions. This led to an unprecedented flourishing of Christian art and architecture and to a gradual development of the ancient pagan world into a Christian society and civilization.

Byzantine culture absorbed much of what was valuable from the ancient world: the building and engineering technologies of the Romans, the philosophy of the Greeks, the splendor of the Orient, recasting everything in a distinctly Christian mold.

Byzantine architecture and art cannot be considered independently from Early

Christian architecture and art, which bloomed under the reign of Constantine in the 4th century and continued until the reign of Justinian in the 6th century. (Beyond this moment, in Western Europe, Early Christian art and architecture continued to evolve in parallel with Byzantium until the emergence of the Romanesque, moving slowly from the original cultural unity of East and West towards a distinct divergence between the two

7 Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, fourth edition revised by Richard Krautheimer and Slobodan Ćurčić. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986. Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2008. Cyril Mango, Byzantine Architecture. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1976.

12 trends.) Early Christian and Byzantine art share the same Roman heritage and the same

Christian spirit, as Richard Krautheimer argued in his work, Early Christian and

Byzantine architecture. While Early Christian churches are mostly creative variations of the Roman basilicas (usually covered by timberwork roofs and rarely by Roman concrete vaults) and centrally-planned edifices, Byzantine churches are designed to convey specific geometric and numerical symbolism, made possible by an innovative technology of lightweight brick vaulting, and most notably by the geometrically elegant solution of spanning a square with a circular dome set above four arches and four spherical pendentives.

Two tragic events divide the history of Byzantine architecture and art into three periods. One of them is the controversy of icons, between iconodules (those ―who serve images‖) and iconoclasts (those ―who smash images‖), which took a violent turn under the reign of several iconoclast emperors, in two stages (730-787 AD and 813-843 AD).

The other one is the conquest of Constantinople in 1204 by crusaders, which resulted in much violence, pillage and destruction, followed by the creation of the Latin Empire of

Constantinople, which lasted until 1261.

Beginning with the reign of Justinian (527 – 565 AD) and ending with the controversy of icons (8th – 9th centuries), the Early Byzantine period is a time of fervent search for a more distinctly Christian architecture. The invention of spherical pendentives makes possible the building of domes over square spaces or bays, while the development of lightweight brick vaults allows vaulting, often including a dome, to become the norm in both basilicas and centrally-planned churches. Hagia Sophia (532 –

537 AD), the cathedral of Constantinople and the most well-known example of Byzantine

13 architecture, is also the most illustrative example of the Early Byzantine creative enthusiasm. Although a basilica in plan, divided into a nave and two aisles with galleries, instead of a clerestory, the church features an ample dome resting on two barrel vaults and two arches that form a spatial cross, connected by four pendentives, from which a cascade of smaller vaults seem to flow. Light pours in through a ring of arched windows that penetrate the springing of the dome and through the ample fenestration of the tympana below the dome, only to be reflected by the profusion of gold foil tesserae of the mosaics and by the marble revetments. San Vitale in Ravenna (546-548 AD) features a domed octagonal core, surrounded by an ambulatory and gallery, the eastern bay being enlarged by an apse to accommodate the sanctuary. The number eight symbolizes the post-temporal heavenly kingdom of the ―eighth day‖, as opposed to the seven-day cycles that make up time as we know it. Brightly colored glass paste tesserae and marble revetments reflect the light coming from the altar apse and from the drum of the dome.

Hagia Eirene in Constantinople (begun in 532 AD; rebuilt after an earthquake in 740 AD) is also a basilica with aisles and galleries, albeit much simpler than Hagia Sophia. The main dome, raised on a low drum, rests on four barrel vaults and four pendentives. A smaller, lower dome, elliptical in plan, is squeezed towards the west of the nave, while the east end features an apse. Colonnades divide the aisles from the naves, while the galleries—unlike at Hagia Sophia or San Vitale—are entirely open, being spanned by the wide barrel vaults which support the domes. Hagia Eirene opens up a rich tradition of basilicas or cross-shaped churches which all feature a dome above a spatial cross formed by four barrel vaults.

14 Middle Byzantine architecture is characterized by the invention and perfection of the cross-in-square church and the survival of the central-plan type in new forms. The size of these churches is no longer imperial, but rather modest, and extended iconographic frescoes often replace the rich mosaics and marble revetments that were frequently used in earlier times. Exteriors become more animated by integrating ornamental features such as arcades, pilasters or engaged columns (favored more in the capital city of Constantinople) or by turning the stone-and-brick work—less frequently just one of these materials—of the façades into a decorative tapestry (preferred in the provinces and on the fringes of the empire). A cross-in-square church features a more or less square nave, divided by four columns or piers into nine bays; in the center, a dome, usually raised on a fenestrated drum, rests on four barrel vaults reaching to the sides of the square and four pendentives, while the lower vaults in the corners may have a variety of shapes. The barrel vault on the east side is usually continued with the vaulting of the sanctuary. An example of cross-in-square church is the Church of the Theotokos (10th century) at the Hosios Loukas Monastery in Greece. The Katholikon (main church) of the same monastery (early 11th century) illustrates the other type, less frequent but more spectacular, of the octagon-domed church. The dome of such a church rests on eight arches and four squinches, which connect it either to the four walls of a square nave or to twelve tall piers arranged in a square, allowing for small, lower bays to surround the ample square bay in the center. In spite of the limited number of types, the multiple variations allowed for churches to have their own identity even when built in the same area and time period.

15 Late Byzantine architecture is even less adventurous in its innovations, preferring to work with the previously established cross-in-square type in endless variations, based for example on adding new elements around the cross-in-square core. Exteriors become even more intricate in their composition and ornate stone-and-brick work. The few building works in Constantinople are mostly additions and reconstructions of previous churches and monasteries, such as at the Savior in Chora Monastery, originally built in the 11th century and modified in the 12th and early 14th centuries. The Church of the Holy

Apostles in Salonica (1310-1314) features a fairly typical cross-in-square nave and sanctuary, surrounded on three sides by lower spaces and preceded on the west side by a narthex. While the central dome is raised on a rather tall drum, four lower domes are placed around it, two on the east side of the church, above the sanctuary annexes, and the other two at the corners of the U-shaped ambulatory embracing the nave. The Late

Byzantine period is also the time when Serbian church architecture receives important

Byzantine influences, developing them into a national style before the conquest of the

Serbian kingdom by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th-16th centuries.

The spirit of Byzantium did not die after the fall of Constantinople, but survived for centuries, albeit acquiring national and local developments, in all the countries which, through their Orthodox Christian faith, had had or still maintained ties with

Constantinople, such as Russia or the Romanian principalities, which later became modern Romania. Constantinople has remained the spiritual capital of the Orthodox

Church even until now, as the Ecumenical Patriarch, the ―first among equals‖ among the

Orthodox bishops, still resides there. The ―monastic republic‖ of the Holy Mountain

(Mount Athos in northern Greece) has been for more than a millennium a spiritual and

16 cultural center which in the centuries of Turkish domination acted as a communication hub for all the Orthodox nations, both those who were free and those who were under

Turkish domination, such as the Greeks, the Serbs, or the Bulgarians.

To conclude, Byzantium was the peak of flourishing of an art which did not begin with the founding of Constantinople and did not end with its fall. The great artistic effervescence, the intense spirituality and, last but not least, the magnanimity of the emperors created there the conditions for a magnificent and resplendent art. Recognizing this, today‘s Orthodox artists and architects look back to its chief achievements in order to learn from them.

d) Hermeneutics

i. Gadamer and the cultural horizons8

When researching within the field of an exact science, presumably the method to be followed is as objective and accurate as possible. Can this be so with humanities? Is there a standpoint from where objective study of different cultures is actually possible?

No, explains Hans-Georg Gadamer, in the humanities any discourse cannot be but subjective. Aiming at objectivity as an attainable goal can be surprisingly harmful to honest research, because in this way most of the researcher‘s cultural prejudices and presuppositions remain hidden and undermine the research. This is why the researcher should never lose sight of his own cultural horizon when exploring the cultural horizon of a different culture, be it from the past or not. It goes without saying that if the researcher persists in thinking he represents a superior culture and the peculiarities of the researched are a mark of primitivism, the accuracy of the research is compromised (or perhaps it is

8 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method. London; New-York: Continuum, 2004.

17 better to say: doomed) from the start. After giving up this simplistic belief in progress, the researcher should be on the watch any preconceived idea about cross-cultural things, practices or beliefs. The difficulty stems from the fact that these preconceived ideas show up in unexpected areas and not where the researcher might expect them to. They can also be misleading: for example a different culture might hold seemingly similar beliefs, practices or artifacts, and still assign to these different meanings than the researcher would expect, based on his own cultural experience. As Gadamer shows, what a researcher of the humanities needs is a strong empathy towards the object of his research, a complete openness towards the otherness of the other culture. The broadening of the cultural horizon is this inclusiveness, this successful integration of the other in one‘s own cultural horizon. This is comparable to learning a foreign language in order to translate a text. And then, the research will take the form of interpretation, of an attempted translation of the researched culture/language into the culture/language of the researcher. As with foreign languages and translations, though, there is always an untranslatable remainder. Good research should only try to minimize it, and should strive not to pass misinterpretations and guesses as the true meaning. This inclusive process of interpretation, open to the ―other‖ and leading to the ―fusion of horizons,‖ is the essence of hermeneutics.

Gadamer‘s methodology is especially useful for architects who research traditional church architecture, because architects tend more vulnerable than others to receiving and holding on to preconceived ideas because of the particularities of their professional education. Having talked to architects from Romania, as well as from other countries, it seems that we all had more or less similar experiences. The studio is the

18 place where young students absorb uncritically certain ideas that will shape all their future thinking—following the Zeitgeist, using contemporary materials, using simple geometrical forms, rejecting ornaments, rejecting vaults and arches—but also the feeling of being superior to other people who have not received an architectural education and therefore do not share the same knowledge and values. All this cultural baggage should be carefully deconstructed in order for any approach to traditional church architecture to be successful, and for this purpose Gadamer‘s hermeneutical method can be very useful.

ii. Exegesis in Orthodox Christianity9

Although Byzantine church builders were—obviously—not reading the Fathers of the Church (a widespread practice among laity only since the early twentieth century) and perhaps not even the Holy Bible, they were members of an Orthodox culture and they had a life, modest as it may have been, of prayer and worship in the Church. The latter is particularly important, because all Orthodox services (most of which date back to the early centuries of Christianity) are interspersed with hymns that present to the attentive listener theological ideas in poetic form. Selected fragments of the Scriptures are also

9 This subchapter is based on the following essays: Bishop (now Archbishop) Chrysostomos, ―Reading the Fathers,‖ excerpt from a sermon, available online at http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/readfathers.aspx on the Orthodox Christian Information Center website; last accessed on 08/11/2009. Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili, ―The Study of Holy Scriptures,‖ originally published in Greek in the Greek periodical Hagios Kyprianos (Saint Cyprian), No. 259 (March–April, 1994), pp. 217–218, and in English translation in Orthodox Tradition, Vol. XII, No. 4 (1995), pp. 3-4; available online at http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/scripture_study.aspx on the Orthodox Christian Information Center website; last accessed on 08/11/2009. Bishop Kallistos Ware, ―How to Read the Bible,‖ available online on the Orthodox Christian Information Center website at http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/ware_howto.aspx; last accessed on 08/11/2009. Archimandrite Justin (Popovich) of Chelije, ―How to Read the Bible and Why,‖ The Struggle for Faith, Vol. IV, A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality, Trans. Rt. Rev. Archimandrite Todor Mika, S.T.M and the Very Rev. Dr. Stevan Scott (Grayslake, IL: The Free Serbian Orthodox Diocese of United States of America and Canada, 1989), pp. 74-85; available online on the Orthodox Christian Information Center website at http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/bible_how.aspx; last accessed on 08/11/2009.

19 read, and then interpreted by the priest in his homily. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that understanding the wider context of the ―mind of the Church‖ will shed light on how church builders approached their work.

The ―mind of the Church‖ is a concept closely related to Orthodox Christian exegesis. All comments on the Holy Scriptures are permeated by the care of following closely in the steps of Apostolic Tradition. The Acts of the Apostles relate the encounter of the Apostle Philip with an Ethiopian man who was reading the book of the prophet

Isaiah (Acts 8:26-40). When asked whether he understood what he was reading, the man said: ―How can I, unless someone guides me?‖ (Acts 8:31) St. Philip was able to answer his questions by referring to the teaching on the meaning of biblical prophecies he had received from Jesus Christ Himself (Luke 24:44-47). This apparently insignificant event is for Orthodox Christians a model of approaching the Holy Scriptures and any other text written in the Church, whether liturgical, patristic, or other. It is interesting to observe how the Fathers of the Church, her pillars of authority, have never proposed as a doctrine anything coming from their own speculation, giving any such thought as a personal opinion only. All they have proposed as a doctrine, and that was subsequently validated as such by the Ecumenical Councils, was always built on the heritage they had received from their predecessors, either through their writings or by being their disciples for many years. This ―golden chain‖ of Tradition can be followed back to the Holy Apostles and through them to Jesus Christ Himself, and it has been kept unbroken by what Orthodox believers regard as the inspiration given to the Church Fathers by the Holy Spirit. This unity of mind among all these men from different times and places is called the ―mind of the Church.‖

20 One cannot simply pull out citations from the Holy Fathers and expect these to express an Orthodox Christian opinion. As the Holy Bible can be misinterpreted, so can the Holy Fathers. This places a high value on an ―immersive‖ understanding: the certain way to achieving a thorough understanding of the Fathers is to become oneself of a mind with them; in other words, to acquire the ―mind of the Church.‖ This is not possible, of course, without being a faithful and dedicated member of the Church, determined to live a spiritual life according to one‘s strength. What the Fathers themselves teach, both by exhortation and by their own example, is to proceed in the study of the Scriptures, and in spiritual matters generally speaking, with humility and caution, preparing one‘s spirit properly and thoroughly, and looking with discernment for authoritative opinions among the predecessors. An arrogant or too-eagerly-critical spirit leaves us captive to our own opinions and thus prevents us from understanding the ―mind of the Church.‖

This may be taken as a model for anyone who wishes to research or to design

Orthodox church architecture. Of course, this does not mean there can be no secular approaches in these fields; these can exist and can be successful. For this situation, however, Gadamer‘s hermeneutic ―opening to the other‖, the broadening of cultural horizons, is an appropriate tool.

3. Church architecture in Romania: a brief survey

a) Post-Byzantine10

In the 14th century, Romanian church architecture moved beyond the simpler wood structures and began to use as well more permanent materials such as brick and

10 For a survey of Medieval Romanian architecture, see Grigore Ionescu, Arhitectura pe teritoriul României de-a lungul veacurilor. Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1982, pp. 37-493.

21 stone under the influence of Byzantine architecture, which, after the fall of

Constantinople in the 15th century, carried forward until the 18th century. This occurred slightly differently in the three principalities that were later united to become modern

Romania.

Wallachia was at the beginning strongly influenced by

Serbian architecture, and to a lesser degree by Constantinople and

Mount Athos. The apparent brickwork façades of its early churches were later replaced by

th painted decoration, which at first 4. Church of Cozia Monastery, 14 century. Serbian influence. imitated ornamental brickwork, and then became purely decorative.

These painted façades have only survived in fragments, hidden under subsequent re-plastering. Carved stone, when present, was usually the work of sculptors who came from

th the Eastern Shore of the Black Sea, 5. Church of Hurezi Monastery, late 17 century. most likely from Georgia.

Moldova received Byzantine influences mixed with Gothic ones, especially in the early centuries, when all stone carvings (mostly door and window frames) were done by

22 Hungarian- and German-trained craftsmen from Transylvania, who were using the techniques dominant in western and central Europe at the time. This Gothic influence can also be felt in the svelte silhouette of these churches. They are, however, 6. Church of Voroneţ Monastery, late 15th century, exterior frescoes from mid-16th century. otherwise thoroughly Byzantine in their conception. The best known works of

Moldavian architecture are the ―painted churches‖ of the monasteries in the north of the country, which expanded the standard interior iconography program to include the exterior as well.

In Transylvania, the Byzantine influence was felt less, because of the Hungarian and then Austrian captivity. Early masonry churches are rare and follow Western

European typologies, while adapting them to the Orthodox Christian use by including iconostases and appropriate iconography. A handful of monastery churches founded by

Wallachian or Moldavian princes reflect the more thoroughly Byzantine architecture from their countries. The vast majority of Transylvanian churches were however built of wood. Wooden churches, also common in the other Romanian principalities, were usually very simple buildings, but sometimes followed masonry prototypes very closely.

23 b) Westernization11

In the 19th century the process of

Westernization of the country began and architects started to design or remodel churches following the various Western stylistic fashions such as Classicism, Gothic Revival, Byzantine

Revival, and so on, but the general configurations 7. St. Spyridon “New”, Bucharest, 19th century. of overall form and interior space were preserved.

c) Search for national identity12

Roughly from 1890 to 1940, the search for national identity led to the

Romanian Revival trend in architecture.

This influenced both the architectural restoration of churches and new church design. Towards the end of this period,

Modernism was also arriving and 8. Alba-Iulia Cathedral, 1921-1922. occasionally influenced church design in making ornament discreet.

11 Arhitectura pe teritoriul României de-a lungul veacurilor, pp. 495-546. 12 Arhitectura pe teritoriul României de-a lungul veacurilor, pp. 547-568; Carmen Popescu, Le style national roumain: 'architecture, 1881-1945. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes; Bucharest: Simetria, 2004.

24 d) Communist persecution13

In 1945, the Communist regime was forced on the Romanian nation by the Soviet

Army. Until 1989, when in cloudy conditions this regime was dismembered, virtually no church building occurred. The atheist authorities did everything in their power to destroy as many churches as possible, only reluctantly accepting the idea that they were the cultural heritage of the nation.

e) Post-communist searches14

i. The ―quarrel‖ of clergy and architects

Following the fall of the communist regime in 1989, many new churches became necessary. Neighborhoods built or harshly remodeled during the totalitarian era had no religious buildings at all. The needs were great but wide gaps existed between the knowledge and expectations of the architects, and those of the clergy.

Architectural journals published church design projects; some of these were competition winners, although 9. Monastery “Râpa Robilor”, Aiud, design proposed by architect Radu Mihăilescu, 2010. almost never built. Architects would like to innovate more, and usually deplore the lack

13 Dinu C. Giurescu, The Razing of Romania’s Past: International Preservation Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Committee, International Council on Monuments and Sites, dist. by Preservation Press, 1989. 14 Augustin Ioan, Arhitectura sacră contemporană. Bucharest: Noi Media Print, 2003. Augustin Ioan, Concursuri pentru catedrala patriarhală ortodoxă: 1999-2002. Bucharest: Noi Media Print, 2003. Lucia Stoica et al., Atlas-ghid: Istoria şi arhitectura lăcaşurilor de cult din Bucureşti, vols. 1 and 2. Bucharest: Ergorom ‘79, 2000. Lucia Stoica and Neculai Ionescu-Ghinea, Enciclopedia lăcaşurilor de cult din Bucureşti, vols. 1 and 2. Bucharest: Universalia, 2006.

25 of architectural education among the clergy. What the architects generally miss, however, is that there is more to church architecture than functionalism and geometry.

On the other hand, the clergy and the parish committees have turned to more flexible architects who are willing to produce elaborate and ornate compositions. Unfortunately, on many occasions their professional skills didn‘t match the task. This is a natural consequence of 10. Patriarchal Cathedral, Bucharest, trying to pick up a strand of professional winning entry of the 2009 competition, currently under construction. expertise which had been abandoned for more than four decades, leaving scarcely any chance of discipleship connecting the church architects of the pre-1940s with those of the

1990s and 2000s. In distant locations, where architects were difficult to find and a professional design was not required by the local authorities, small churches have been occasionally built with the know-how of builder teams and the 11. Church of Petru Vodă Monastery, 1991. indications of the clergy. In both these categories there are some interesting designs which deserve further research.

26 This situation has captured the attention of theory-oriented architects, who have become interested in solving this quarrel through appropriate theoretical investigations.

ii. The functionalist approach

The functionalist approach is the most simplistic approach to church design.

Functionalist architects state that the church should accommodate the liturgical function.

However, this rationalist vision also assumes that the liturgical function refers only to clergy and parishioners moving about and ignores the symbolism of the liturgy and of church architecture. This reductivist view of liturgical function leaves architects believing that ―sacred space‖ is a field suitable for the highest degree of freedom in experimenting with architectural design. This could not be further from the truth in the

Orthodox Church context, where church design is prescribed by Tradition and each thing has symbolic meaning.

iii. The precedents-based approach

The approach based on precedents is slightly more accommodating to traditional values. Architects think they should look at traditional church designs, pick what they like and design a church ―in the spirit of our age‖. In doing so, they implicitly assume that the perception of space and especially the methodology of design have remained the same throughout history. They are also guided by the assumption that architecture progresses (or should progress) from complex to simple and from ornamented to bare, and consequently feel that in our age we should build churches that are simple and bare.

Another assumption they make is that in our age we should necessarily build with

27 contemporary materials, a choice which informs design decisions. The main problem of this approach is that architects try to approach Tradition without an immersive understanding of the spirit of Tradition, but instead with a superficial idea of the ―spirit of our age.‖

iv. The geometrical-symbolic approach

The approach based on geometrical symbols is a variant of the approach based on precedents. It concedes that the geometric configuration of Orthodox church architecture has symbolic meaning, confirmed both by theological literature and by modern research on symbols. It obviously represents a major break with the modernist mindset.

However, this approach cannot be much more fruitful while the architects still believe firmly in designing ―in the spirit of our times.‖

v. The imitative approach

The imitative approach based on tradition says architects should follow Tradition in everything. But what to do when traditional materials and technologies are not available? And to be sure, the rule is that they are not available, and their availability is the exception. The implicit assumption is that not only Tradition is beyond time, but also the means through which it is expressed in architecture throughout history. Everyday life has repeatedly proven this to be an unrealistic assumption.

28 4. A possible approach in the spirit of Tradition

Having set up the frame of key concepts and the background of issues pertaining to Romanian church architecture, it is the moment to present the stepping stones of an appropriate approach to the question of researching traditional church architecture with the purpose of designing new church architecture.

a) Tradition (with a capital T) and traditions

One cannot attempt an immersion into the spirit of Tradition without having a clear idea of what is Tradition and what is not. As noted above, we can distinguish between Tradition (inspired, according to Orthodox belief, by the Holy Spirit and therefore considered unchangeable) and traditions (made by men and therefore subject to change and variation according to time and place). Unchanging Tradition may be referred to as the inner core of Tradition, and traditions as outer expressions of Tradition.

Also, sometimes elements and practices foreign to Tradition may be adopted and used for several generations, becoming ―traditions‖ according to the dictionary; these should not be confused with those traditions that are genuine expressions of Tradition.

By nature, church architecture belongs to the area of exterior aspects of Tradition, which is subject to change and variation. Let us consider the late blooming of church architecture, nearly three centuries after the Christian faith started to spread across the world, or the even later creation of Hagia Sophia, two more centuries later, in order to see that at the beginning of Christianity church architecture was not even necessary as an expression of Tradition. This slow emergence is matched only by the steadiness and persistence of Middle and Late Byzantine architecture. It is as if Christian architects,

29 taken collectively, pondered for hundreds of years before making any radical innovation and then held on to those preferred types for even longer periods of time. However, the earlier, more innovative times and the later, more conservative times are marked by the same unity in diversity.

It is only natural that different cultural environments, such as the various provinces of the Roman Empire or of the later Byzantine Empire, Russia, Serbia, or the

Romanian principalities that would later form modern Romania, allow for a variety of architectural expressions of Tradition. This cultural diversity is actually a unity in diversity that draws from the unity of Tradition, which allowed builders separated by great distances in space and time to be animated by the same spirit. To find a suggestive illustration, if Tradition is a continuous thread or chain always equal to itself, linking together all Christian generations, the thread of architectural traditions is a bundle of smaller threads, bound together tightly in certain points and loosely in others. There are certain features, such as ending the sanctuary with an apse, that appear early on and then become the norm; there are features that become the norm later, such as the dome on pendentives; and there are features that were frequent in earlier times but became obsolete later, such as spanning the space of an important basilica with wood trusses.

However, what I have called the norm is not normative; a variety of situations allowed for differing solutions. For example, in the absence of generous donors, poor communities could only afford very simple churches. Also, in Greece, Bulgaria or

Serbia, while under Turkish occupation, new churches had to have a very low cornice and no domes or vaults protruding from the roof, which led to the re-use of the basilica with wood trusses. As mentioned above, one can follow Tradition canonically, to the letter, or

30 by economy, flexibly, allowing for variations and exceptions in special cases.

Architecture, however, is not regulated by any written canons, being left to the best judgment of the founders, architects, and builders. The consequence is a greater freedom of creation, but also a difficulty for those seeking rules in a history filled with exceptions.

Too many exceptions may obscure the rules, possibly leaving the impression that there is no rule or that a new rule is in place. One should not design a new church, built without any constraints, based upon a rule (for example, using a flat ceiling instead of vaulting) derived from repeated exceptions, originally justified by constraining circumstances.

Besides the variety of legitimate architectural expressions of Tradition, there are also elements that have been picked up along the way from alien influences. Some of these have been adopted and included in the local traditions, an example being the Gothic stone profiles that frame the windows and doors of Moldavian churches in eastern and north-eastern Romania. Other elements have been adopted and then abandoned, such as those pertaining to the Classicist and Romanticist (especially the Gothic Revival variety) influences in Romanian church architecture of the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. However, these have left a mark that is difficult to erase by first breaking the continuity of local traditions, broken once more by the Westernized education of architects, bringing also a change of scale, materials, and technology, and again more recently by the anti-religious policies of the communist regime. Looking at churches built in the 19th century or in the first half of the 20th century, it is fairly difficult to assess what is traditional, what is not traditional but could be a valuable innovation, and what is not traditional and should be avoided at all costs in the future.

31 Even when looking at less controversial examples, the fine distinction between the proper architectural expressions of Tradition, exceptional but acceptable expressions of Tradition, untraditional but acceptable interpolations, and improper interpolations, is not easy to make. One can perhaps analyze churches by region and time period, searching for similarities and dissimilarities or for how often certain elements are used, but, as stated above, this cannot show what is traditional and what is not. Outside

Tradition, there are no valid criteria for judging what is traditional and what is not; one has to be immersed into Tradition in order to make this call.

b) Picking bits of tradition(s) versus immersion in Tradition

All four research and design approaches mentioned above (the functionalist, the precedents-based, the geometric-symbolic-based, and the imitative) presuppose that

Tradition is a still pool, or a sample catalogue, out of which we fish or pick whatever we think we need: liturgical functionality, formal configuration, symbolic geometry, or

―everything‖; we are always competent to choose and never affected by this gesture. By contrast, in the Orthodox Church the proper authentic approach to Tradition is rather a sort of spiritual immersion, which does not leave the person unaffected. Tradition is rather like a stream, which although it ―flows‖ remains always essentially constant and equal to itself. Tradition as the Faith of the Church represents the teaching revealed to the Apostles, transmitted from place to place, and from generation to generation, always the same. Cultural Tradition (liturgical arts, architecture, or iconography) admits of some variation, but it is largely transmitted unchanged.

32 As stated above, one cannot make any sound judgment concerning what is traditional or not without being immersed into Tradition first. Paradoxically, at first one needs to accept humbly and obediently all that has been handed down, and only then discernment between true Tradition and interpolation is possible. Most importantly, although the purpose is narrow (researching or designing church architecture), immersion should be complete, because even the most apparently disconnected aspects of Tradition, pertaining to the spiritual life of the person, participation in the Church life or reading of the Bible and the Fathers of the Church, are actually connected. The mind cannot open up fully to understanding Tradition (often described as ―acquiring the mind of the

Church‖) without the whole person living according to Tradition.

Not only innovation for the sake of innovation, but also taking from Tradition only the bits and pieces of our choice are inappropriate because they distort Tradition to suit our own needs—perhaps a search for originality or for a favorable review in the current issues of architectural journals. St. Irenaeus of Lyon scolded those who cherry- picked verses of the Bible to support their own agenda and compared them to a man who, breaking apart a mosaic of precious stones representing a king, rearranges the stones to represent a dog or a fox and then insists that his work is still a representative portrait of the king.15 Being immersed in Tradition and researching or designing in the spirit of

Tradition is like knowing how to rearrange the stones to form a new portrait of the king without compromising—intentionally or unintentionally—on the resemblance.

15 St. Irenaeus of Lyon, Against Heresies, Book I, chapter 8, paragraph 1, found at http://www.monachos.net/content/patristics/patristictexts/387 and http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103108.htm - accessed on 19/04/2011.

33 c) Appropriating Tradition through conversion and/or the

broadening of cultural horizons (Gadamer)

Appropriating Tradition, seen in this way, requires either conversion (a full personal immersion), or a broadening of the cultural horizon (an intentional intellectual immersion). Conversion plays a rather ineffable role in scholarship, but it affects the person as a whole, in mind, heart, spirit, and body. It is safe to say that it probably helps in acquiring a certain intuition of spiritual origin that would otherwise remain, in a purely intellectual approach, beyond reach.

The broadening of cultural horizons, as laid out by Hans-Georg Gadamer, means first of all to acknowledge the gap between the researched cultural horizon, the cultural horizon of the researcher, and perhaps that of the audience. The second step is to understand how the two (or three) of these are at variance, including different conceptions of ideas bearing the same name: e.g. tradition. The third step is to put together, via ―negotiation‖ (interpreting), these modified concepts, extending thus one‘s cultural horizon to include the other, which becomes also his own. An important aspect to remember is that things are almost always more complex that they seem to be. It would seem these conflicting concepts come in pairs; however, two cultures can be so radically different that to a concept on one side may correspond nothing but its absence on the other side.

34 d) Understanding how the culture of Orthodoxy and the

professional culture of architects may be at variance

We can analyze the problem architects face when asked to design an Orthodox church by looking at the two conflicting cultures: the Byzantine one, saturated with

Orthodoxy, and that of the contemporary architectural profession, with roots in the

Modern Movement and even deeper roots in Western Modernity, taken more broadly.

One reveres Tradition; the other reveres progress and innovation, driven by individualism and the individual‘s absolute freedom of expression. One makes small steps; the other makes radical changes. One seeks a proper insertion into Tradition; the other seeks a unique and glorious insertion into a novelty-driven Zeitgeist. One looks back at centuries-old prototypes, the other is self-referential. One is contemporary to many generations; the other is contemporary to a fleeting, passing moment. One uses what is traditional in terms of architectural elements, composition, and structure; the other programmatically rejects everything traditional. One prefers traditional materials; the other pursues technical innovation. One seeks to integrate when necessary contemporary materials and technologies so as not to contrast with traditional design; the other seeks to invent new designs specifically to glorify the newest materials and technologies. One loves arches, vaults, and domes, respecting them as images of heaven; the other ignores durable meaning and sets up right angles, or even arbitrary angles and forms. One regards ornament as essential; the other declares that ornament is obsolete. One seeks to use the most beautiful and precious materials; the other looks for economical solutions.

One searches for the most skilled craftsmen; the other relies on industry and prefabrication. To introduce Horia Bernea‘s terms, one therefore produces buildings rich

35 in their materiality; the other produces things that are dry in their materiality. Finally, one creates churches as generous offering to God; the other is concerned with utility and formal novelty. Behind these conflicting concepts there is a deeply-rooted conflict of worldviews.

5. Why Byzantium?

a) The most consistent cultural expression of the Orthodox

Tradition

During the research into this predicament of contemporary Orthodox church architecture, one question has constantly arisen: why should one look at Byzantium, and how should Byzantine art be interpreted? The answer is simple: because it was the age and the source of the most consistent and durable cultural expression of the Orthodox

Tradition.

For centuries, Byzantine art has been misunderstood, misinterpreted and understated by Western scholars. It was seen as belonging to the ―dark ages,‖ when the classical ideal of beauty was forgotten. With the rise of Modernist art and architecture, the classical ideal was forgotten again, but the Byzantine did not come out of the shadows, as its character was in many respects completely opposed to the Modernist.

Understanding Byzantine art and especially architecture is a matter not only of scholarly accuracy, in the context of the present dilemmas, but also of practical application. Byzantine ecclesiastical arts are bound very tightly to the Orthodox

Christian Tradition. In spite of national and/or local or temporal variations, any new

Orthodox church has to express her profound connection to this Tradition. Problems

36 arise when architects are disconnected from the Tradition, and when trying to reconnect with it, they filter their vision through Modernist Western pre-suppositions.

b) Survival of Byzantine culture in the Orthodox Christian

countries of Eastern Europe and the Near East

In spite of any possible misconceptions, Byzantine culture is not dead. The simple fact that Byzantine buildings are still standing makes them contemporary with us.

Byzantine churches in Greece still retain their original use. Churches of the Post-

Byzantine tradition in Serbia, Bulgaria, or Romania, as well as more distant countries such as Russia or Georgia, are still in use. But even those Byzantine churches which, after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, were converted to mosques, still witness to us silently by their mere presence. The fact that Constantinople has remained without change the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, the ―first among equals‖ among the bishops of the Orthodox Church, allowed for continuity. The Holy Mount Athos, a

―monastic republic‖ inhabited only by monks for over a millennium, has maintained a spiritual and cultural communion between generations after generations of Orthodox

Christians from all the traditionally Orthodox countries (and more recently from all over the world) who have gone there either as pilgrims or as monks. In spite of the national and local flavor acquired by the Post-Byzantine Tradition in the various Orthodox

Christian countries, the variety of these local traditions manifests an unbreakable unity in diversity. Not even the temporary westernizing experiments attempted in Russia beginning with the reign of Peter the Great (1682-1725) and in Romania or Greece since the 19th century could break the line of the Byzantine Orthodox Tradition; through the

37 efforts of pious, dedicated artists and scholars, truly traditional art has always bounced back.

c) The fundamental assumption: we can use Orthodox

Tradition today to interpret Orthodox Christian architecture of the

Byzantine age

There is one important assumption one can make in the study of Byzantine church architecture: that Orthodox Tradition in its unchangeable dimension is one and the same today as in the Byzantine culture, so that we can use Orthodox Tradition as known today to interpret Byzantine architecture, and we can apply the findings to problems of church architecture design of today.

Research, as any rational discourse, has to be founded upon certain assumptions, certain ideas that are taken for granted and which will serve as a foundation for the argument, and which can be implicit or explicit. It is a difficult task to spell out all assumptions, but a necessary one, because otherwise the readers will bring their own understanding of these things and will misinterpret the argument. The reason assumptions are sometimes not presented in an explicit way is that the researcher thinks they are shared by all or he cannot even think of an alternative. A specific understanding of architecture, of space, of history or of tradition can be such examples, whether explicit or not. For example, nowadays, many think of space in mathematical and scientific terms, as an infinite, homogenous expanse that contains all things. The space we, as human beings, experience is however very different, and to start with it is not homogenous, but rather a ―patchwork‖ of places of various contrasting characters.

38 Many modern historians have been looking at the Byzantine culture as if it is completely extinct. They look at certain aspects of it as puzzling and impossible to solve without speculation, in the absence of evidence coming from precisely the same epoch as the one investigated. This assumption, although of course required by the rigor of the scientific discipline, misses important insights because it chooses to stand outside of the

Orthodox Christian assumption that the same tradition which created Byzantine architecture and art has in fact survived since the fall of Constantinople, as the Orthodox

Church, even though its external cultural expression has changed.

It is difficult, if not perhaps impossible, to prove this instance of cultural survival in a scientific way, beyond any doubt. However, for the benefit of this research, I will emphasize this shared, more-or-less continuous horizon of tradition, and the subsequent translation of this tradition along the centuries, as understood within the Orthodox

Church. Only in this way will it be possible to make sense of the churches built many centuries ago, even if written evidence from the same epoch is incomplete. From within this Orthodox horizon, a hermeneutics of Byzantine architecture is energized by new questions and informed by new possibilities.

6. Why ―rich materiality‖?

a) Introducing late Romanian artist Horia Bernea

Horia Bernea (1938-2000) was a renowned and respected Romanian artist, who in his mature years (starting with the early 1970‘s) began to abandon abstract painting in favor of revisiting and re-interpreting more traditional forms of expression, such as the landscape or still nature painting. It is most likely not a coincidence that this change

39 happened after his self-confessed discovery of Orthodoxy in 1969. 16 However, the influence of his faith on his art was neither programmatic nor obvious, while sacred art was his much needed spiritual refuge after attuning himself to the latest trends:

At almost sixty, I am still very much at ease with the idea of latest minute art. I have the feeling that I have always practiced a very up-to- date art and that I have remained aware of everything new in the field of artistic phenomena, from photography to jazz… Because of these frantic assimilations, I need to quiet myself by going to church, where everything is old. However, I suddenly feel an unbearable anxiety when I find in church the novelties present in my studio. When I see in a church something of the forms or spirit of the Venice Biennale, I feel uncomfortable, alarmed… In the worship place there is a need of icons, not of modern art: the problem is that there you find less and less iconic truth; everything is either stiff or inadequate. 17

Bernea‘s unique mindset made him the ideal director of the newly re-founded

Museum of the Romanian Peasant in 1990, after the fall of the Communist regime. This was a reparatory act in reaction to the closing of the old Ethnographic Museum (founded as an institution in 1906) by the defunct regime in 1953 and the use of the building

(founded in 1912) as a museum of the Romanian Communist Party. Bernea‘s vision integrated the old ethnographic collections and newly acquired items into a holistic concept which is meant to let the visitor—contemporary, westernized, secular—explore the world as seen by Romanian peasants, members of a traditional, religion-based society. The new museum won the European Museum of the Year Award in 1996. 18

Bernea‘s background, a modern artist who discovered Orthodoxy and Orthodox

Christian art in his mature years, also makes his insights very intriguing and useful for the purposes of my research, which ultimately aims at explaining the tradition of Orthodox

16 Horia Bernea and Teodor Baconsky, Roma caput mundi: un ghid subiectiv al Cetăţii Eterne. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2000, p. 110. 17 Roma caput mundi, p. 178, my translation. 18 Data from the website of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant, http://www.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/ accessed 07/25/2008.

40 Christian ecclesiastical architecture to contemporary architects. His unique experience of being equally familiar with contemporary art and with the timeless traditions of the

Church helps him discern and articulate points of difference between the two that may not be apparent to those with a unilateral background. Some of his affirmations, however, overstep his competence as an artist and should be taken with a grain of salt.

b) Introducing Bernea‘s concept of ―materiality‖

My research intentions are to investigate the ―rich materiality‖ of Byzantine church architecture as defined by Horia Bernea. The concept is too subtle to lend itself easily to systematic research. Simple construction, elaborate construction, decorated construction, or various revetments hiding construction completely: all of these can share this mysterious attribute which he called ―rich materiality‖. Materials are exalted, construction is exalted (although in a quite different way than in Gothic architecture), geometry is exalted (although, quite surprisingly, precision and exactness are not); materials are used in construction to generate surfaces that, on one hand, are the background of iconography, and on the other hand, encompass space. All these elements carry together the meaning of the church as a church. In this respect, materiality probably does little more than emphasize that the church is a material object with a spiritual meaning and mission. This is probably why the progressive withdrawal of materiality from Orthodox church architecture went unnoticed. Still, the meaning and mission of the church as an architectural object are conveyed through its material appearance and thus are better conveyed when this matter ―feeds the eye and rejoices the spirit‖ as in Bernea‘s words.

41 Moreover, leaving aside certain aspects strictly connected to church architecture and iconography, ―rich materiality‖ is a feature of environments where man – as a creature of mixed spiritual and material nature – feels at home. This feeling, which accompanies us along old walls on old streets, appears to be lacking from new walls on new streets; a good proof of this is the flourishing of tourism in places with rich, historical and tactile ambience. A number of questions arise: how did materiality get

―exorcised‖ from architecture, and why? Is it possible to retrieve it today? Is it possible to do this without expensive natural or traditional materials or without handicrafts?

The expression ―rich materiality‖, coined by Bernea, refers to an ineffable quality of Byzantine art and architecture that today‘s architects are likely to ignore. It is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to give definitive answers to all the questions connected to it.

Bernea himself avoided a rigid conceptual framing and defined his idea intuitively, through examples. This intuitive approach is perhaps more fertile because it leaves open many directions of investigation. More important than a definitive treatise on the materiality of church architecture is circumscribing the concept and asking the relevant questions, so that interested readers could then deepen it in their own research or apply it in their own designs.

c) The growing interest in materiality and related concepts in

architectural theory today

There is also a growing interest in materiality in international architectural theory since the 1980s, although fundamental texts thoroughly investigating this phenomenon are not yet available. An early example is Michael Benedikt‘s book For an Architecture

42 of Reality,19 which refers to materiality as one of the necessary qualities of a new ‗real architecture‘, free of the past failures of modernist and postmodernist design. More recently, Richard Weston‘s book, Materials, Form and Architecture,20 touches on materiality and investigates related aspects of architecture. Architects such as Juhani

Pallasmaa21 and Peter Zumthor22 have written about experiencing architecture through the senses. Kenneth Frampton explored the importance of the related concept of the

―tectonic‖ in architecture and, although he does not mention materiality per se, his approach is worth considering because it may clarify the place materiality plays in architecture.

There are undoubtedly differences between how these architects and theorists of architecture define materiality and how Bernea does. This is partly because of Bernea‘s artistic background, partly because of his strong interest in traditional forms of art and architecture, and especially because he assigns a certain spiritual meaning to this concept.

For the purpose of this research centered on Orthodox church architecture, the nuances of

Bernea‘s outlook are especially relevant. But before looking closer at Bernea‘s thinking, it is important to see how architects and theorists of architecture have approached the material aspects of architecture.

19 Michael Benedikt, For an Architecture of Reality. New York: Lumen Books, 1987. 20 Richard Weston, Materials, Form and Architecture. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003. 21 Juhani Pallas maa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. London: Academy Editions, 1996. 22 Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2006. Peter Zumthor, Atmospheres. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2006.

43 II. The Material Aspects of Architecture in Contemporary Literature

One cannot speak about materiality without defining it first, and cannot define it without looking at how it has been defined before. Unfortunately, although the word is used more and more in conversation and in writing, the definitive treatise on materiality has not been written yet. This is why this bibliographic survey will look at fundamental works concerning the material aspects of architecture that may use the word materiality in passing only, if at all, the texts which actually use the term being an exception.

1. Kenneth Frampton and the tectonic

Perhaps the most important of the works cited here, Kenneth Frampton‘s book

Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth

Century Architecture23 presents several architects and their works in a compelling story of architecture seen as the art of construction. Going more or less against the preoccupations of mainstream architecture, these architects, who include Frank Lloyd

Wright, Louis Kahn or Carlo Scarpa, created buildings which draw their beauty from how they are built. They do not fit easily into the mainstream surveys of architectural history, and yet their work has value both in itself and as a source of inspiration for refreshing the wilting spirit of contemporary architecture. They are the representatives of a “tectonic culture” that opposed quietly the culture of abstract geometry and uniformity that dominated architecture for most of the 20th century, and, before that, opposed the culture of disconnection between ornament and structure pertaining to the historicism and

23 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995.

44 eclecticism of the 19th century. The aesthetic principles of architecture as the art of construction are appropriately called the “poetics of construction”.

As a theoretical foundation of his study, Frampton proposes the essay

―Introduction: Reflections on the Scope of the Tectonic‖,24 in which he explores the meaning and ramifications of this term. His purpose is to find an alternative to the familiar view of architecture as the art of space and a conceptual framing for the works of those atypical architects who put construction before space.

One of the most important aspects of this study is Frampton‘s brief analysis of the origin of the definition of architecture as an art of space and its impact on 20th century architecture. The first to ever propose such an idea was August Schmarsow, in his work

Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung (The Essence of Architectural Creation), published in 1894.25 He looked with fresh eyes at the primitive hut—a long-time favorite among theorists as the almost mythical origin of architecture—and, unlike his predecessors, defined it as the Raumgestalterin, the one who forms space. He stated that man‘s Raumgefühl (feeling for space) unfolds progressively through history in the evolution of architecture. This novel definition of architecture found subsequent support in the new developments of mathematics and physics, as well as in the theory that accompanied avant-garde art. Later on, it was adopted by the historians and theorists of the Modern Movement, beginning in 1941 with Siegfried Giedion‘s Space, Time and

24 Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 1-27 25 August Schmarsow, Das Wesen der architektonischen Schöpfung. Leipzig: K.W. Hiersemann, 1984, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 1.

45 Architecture,26 and has since become an ingrained, deeply seated and seldom questioned presupposition of any discourse about architecture.

Without denying the spatiality of architecture, Frampton seeks to question the absolute priority given to space and to draw attention to the means through which spatiality is achieved. By this, he understands not the actual technologies, but the manner in which they are used for architectural expression. For Frampton, the “unavoidably earthbound nature of building is as tectonic and tactile as it is scenographic and visual”27, so that, in the dispute between the ―art of space‖ and the ―art of construction‖, the concrete nature of architecture makes the latter impossible to rule out. Also, the concreteness of architecture makes it necessarily a construction first and only then a geometric abstraction.

a) Defining the tectonic: Etymology

The word tectonic comes from the Greek tekton, that named originally a carpenter, and later any kind of builder. A master builder was an architekton, meaning

―first among builders,‖ a word borrowed in Latin as architectus, from where it spread in several modern languages. An important distinction is that even when not working wood, a tekton was always making things by joining solid pieces and not by molding a malleable material, such as clay or metal. Also, originally the term had a technical sense,

26 Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1941, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 1. 27 Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 2.

46 pertaining to how things were made, and only recently acquired an aesthetic sense in the field of art history, as noted by Adolf Heinrich Borbein in 1982. 28

The term tectonic (tektonische) was used by Karl Otfried Müller in his Handbuch der Archäologie der Kunst (Handbook of the Archaeology of Art) in 183029 to denote things that range from utensils and vases to buildings, which are on one hand shaped by their practical purpose and on the other by artistic sentiment. In Die Tektonik der

Hellenen (The Tectonics of the Greeks), first published as a complete edition in 1852,30

Karl Bötticher used the term tectonic to denote the unified system that joined together all the parts of a Greek temple, including the structural elements as well as the sculptural.

Bötticher also made a distinction between the Kernform (core form) and the Kunstform

(art form) of a Greek temple, where for example the wooden rafters of the roof are the

Kernform and their representation as triglyphs in the stone entablature of the temple is the

Kunstform.

This distinction made by Bötticher for the architecture of Ancient Greeks is also relevant for the Byzantine architecture built by Medieval Greeks. For example, especially in the Middle and Late Byzantine churches, the exterior features highly decorative brick-and-stone patterns, sometimes including also other elements such as ceramic ornaments, which create a visually attractive representation of the less ornamental masonry found in the depth of the wall. They are neither entirely ornamental, because they are integrated in load-bearing walls, nor entirely structural, because simpler,

28 Adolf Heinrich Borbein, ‖Tektonik, zur Geschichte eines Begriffs der Archäologie,‖ (―Tectonics, towards the History of an Archaeological Concept‖), Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 26, no. 1 (1982), cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 4. 29 Karl Otfried Müller, Ancient Art and its Remains, or a Manual of the Archaeology of Art, trans. J. Leitch. London, 1847, p.7, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 4. 30 Karl Bötticher, Die Tektonik der Hellenen, 2 vols. Potsdam, 1852, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 4.

47 more regular bonding patterns would be better suited to bear loads; this is why

Bötticher‗s Kunstform concept describes well their tectonic quality. Other examples include the correspondence between ornate blind arches on the façades and structural arches and vaults encased into the interior side of the wall (entirely unnecessary from a structural standpoint) or the curved roofs made of lead sheets or of corrugated ceramic tiles which follow closely and therefore reveal, instead of hiding, the curves of the vaulting beneath.

Another important contribution is that of Gottfried Semper, who in 1851 published Die Vier Elemente der Baukunst (The Four Elements of Architecture)31. His view of architecture as composed of four elements breaks with the widely accepted

Vitruvian theory of the three attributes of architecture: firmitas (structural soundness), utilitas (functionality), and venustas (beauty). Semper states that the origin of architecture and of its four elements lies in the primordial hut, but unlike his predecessors

(such as the Abbé Laugier, who, a century earlier, had imagined a primordial hut as the origin of classical architecture), 32 he works with an actual primitive hut from the

Carribean that was on display at the Great Exhibition held in London in 1851 (best known for the construction of the Crystal Palace). The four elements he derives from the primordial hut are:

The earthwork: load-bearing, solid; in the hut, this is a platform of compacted

earth; related to it are any substructure works or any heavy, load-bearing walls.

31 Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture, in Harry Mallgrave and Wolfgang Hermann, The Four Elements of Architecture and other writings by Gottfried Semper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 4-5. 32 Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture. Paris, 1753, English translation as Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essay on Architecture. Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1977, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 5.

48 The hearth: non-load-bearing, has a functional and symbolic role.

The framework and roof: load-bearing, made from posts and beams.

The enclosing membrane: non-load-bearing, lightweight; in the hut, woven from

vegetal materials; other examples include woven mats, wattle-and-daub infill

walls, or brickwork infill panels in the half-timbered construction technique.

This scheme works very well for many types of traditional architecture, but not for all. Load-bearing masonry walls are related to the earthwork in their solidity and structural purpose, and yet related to the woven membrane if they are made from the

―weaving‖ of bricks or stones. In certain forms of architecture, not even the roof is made from slender members, but from the same continuous, earthwork-like materials as the walls. Frampton discusses further Semper‘s thinking in another chapter of his book,

―The Rise of the Tectonic: Core Form and Art Form in the German Enlightenment, 1750-

1870.‖33

b) Building the place: Topography

In this brief chapter, Frampton refers to the character and identity of the place and how this can be built or modified by human intervention. He first cites Vittorio Gregotti, who argued against the uniformity of architecture built without any concern for the site and for letting the site influence the making of architecture. Also, Gregotti emphasizes the primordial gesture of marking a place with a stone, in which he sees a precursor of architecture.34

33 Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 84-88. 34 Vittorio Gregotti, address to the New York Architectural League, October 1982, published in Section A 1, no. 1 (February/March 1983), p.8, c ited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 8.

49 Another architect, Dimitris Pikionis, is cited here both with his topographic landscaping of the Philopappou Hill (1951-1957), near the Acropolis of Athens, and his text entitled ―A Sentimental Topography‖ (1933). 35 His landscaping design works with—not against—the original configuration of the site, building upon it, as well as with the history of the site, making it visible to the attentive walker as a metaphor of the past.

The citation refers to the joy of walking across the diverse surface of the earth, with its variations in geography and geology. The texture of the ground, the configuration of cliffs and plains, the unseen presence of the sea are felt in the body through the senses and gladden the spirit. This allows Frampton to meditate more on the sensorial value of places.

c) Building for the body: Corporeal metaphor

We experience our environment through our body, through our senses—touching the ground with our feet, feeling the motion in our muscles—as shown poetically by

Pikionis in the previous section; moreover, our understanding of our environment is mediated by this corporeal experience. Frampton turns to a citation from Adrian

Stokes—a British writer, painter and art critic—who argues for touch as a means of exploring the subtleties of sculpture, superior to sight. Stokes writes that the hand can feel in the stone not only the eroding traces left by the passing of time and the succession of seasons, but also the softening traces left by the touch of other hands. 36

35 Dimitris Pikionis, ―A Sentimental Topography‖, The Third Eye (Athens, November-December 1933), pp. 13-17, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 9. 36 Adrian Stokes, ―The Stones of Rimini‖, in The Critical Writings of Adrian Stokes, vol. 1. London: Thames & Hudson, 1978, p. 183, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 10.

50 On the contrary, as noted by the architect Scott Gartner, 37 architectural theory today is centered on the visual and the conceptual, a consequence of the estrangement of the mind and the body at a philosophical level. Experiencing architecture has been reduced to the visual reception of signs and their subsequent decoding, so that, insofar as these theories are concerned, there is no difference between experiencing the actual building and experiencing images of the building printed on paper. The body makes only the object of ergonomic and psychological studies, but not of theoretical thinking concerned with the meaning of architecture.

Tadao Ando, with the concept of Shintai (body; human being experiencing the world through the body), brings an entirely different perspective on the perception and understanding of our surroundings. For Ando, man is a being in which body and mind are united in an inseparable whole, and who exists in the world in a concrete manner. As a consequence, there is always a ―here‖ where the body exists and a ―there‖, which are the first step in the understanding of space. Also, the dissymmetry of the body is reflected in the non-isotropic manner in which man perceives space, distinguishing between up and down, left and right, front and back. The body articulates the world in making it a lived space; the world articulates the body by making man aware of the distinction between the qualities of the body and the qualities of its surroundings. For example, feeling the hardness and coldness of concrete makes the self aware of the softness and warmth of the body. This interdependence between the body and the world

37 Scott Gartner, unpublished manuscript of the lecture presented at the conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, Washington, 1990, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 10-11.

51 makes the body become shintai, a being that interacts with the world and therefore is able to build or to understand architecture. 38

Ando‘s concept is paralleled in the arguments of other authors, most notably

August Schmarsow, who based his definition of architecture as the art of space on the presupposition that our understanding of space is determined by our manner of moving through space forward, in the same direction that our eyes are looking. As other examples of theories of the relationship between body, movement, and space, Frampton mentions Maurice Merleau-Ponty‘s Phenomenology of Perception and Adolphe Appia‘s theoretical approach to stage design.

To support his assertion that non-visual sensations enhance our experience of architecture, Frampton brings to our attention one of Alvar Aalto‘s designs, the

Säynätsalo Town Hall (1952). A relatively dark and confined staircase leads to the bright and lofty council chamber. The character of the staircase is emphasized by the use of brickwork for the walls, floors and stairs, which is a solid, heavy load-bearing material

(which brings to mind Semper‘s earthwork) and has a certain tactile ruggedness. The openness of the council chamber is expressed also through the use of wood, a lightweight load-bearing material (reminiscent of Semper‘s framework) for the structure of the roof trusses, but also for the ceiling and for the floors, where the flexible quality of wood can be felt when the floor responds to one‘s weight at every step. Moving from the rugged brick floor to the polished wood floor, one gains a feeling of slight instability and has to adapt the sense of balance and the gait. Last but not least, the smell of the wood completes the experience.

38 Tadao Ando, ―Shintai and Space‖, in Architecture and Body. New York: Rizzoli, 1988, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 11.

52 In Byzantine church architecture, the multisensory perception of the built environment is best experienced at the time of the liturgy, when all senses are truly involved. The sight is filled with the beauty of the holy icons and of the liturgical choreography, the hearing opens up to sacred music and chanting, as well as edifying words, the sense of smell receives the fragrance of incense and the gentle scent of beeswax from the burning candles, the sense of balance and posture maintains the body in prescribed positions (standing or kneeling) or moves it in ritual gestures (making the sign of the cross, bows, or prostrations). Hands rarely touch anything, but lips kiss the hand of the priest or the icons presented for veneration. The mouth tastes the bread and the wine of the Holy Communion.

Between services, the scent of incense and beeswax may linger, but what is striking is the quietness of a highly reverberating space which, in different circumstances, would be extremely noisy. This contrasts in the extreme with the agitation of city life, making churches havens of peace in the midst of urban trepidation. In the summer, the shade and coolness of Byzantine interiors provide brief moments of relief from the sun and the heat; the massive walls and floors absorb excess heat from the body in a more natural and pleasant way than typical air conditioning. Sadly, the contemplative quietness and the discreet but persistent ritual scent, not to mention the sensory richness of the liturgy, are lacking in those churches that have been turned into museums, making the experience of their architecture a truncated one.

53 d) Building with spiritual meaning: Ethnography

Frampton looks at two different examples of traditional architecture from around the world, coming from the Berber and from the Japanese culture. What they have in common is not only that they reflect the worldview of their builders, but they are in themselves images of the cosmos. The act of building is not utilitarian, but a ritual re- enactment of the cosmogony—the house or shrine is built in the manner in which the world was built.

The same is true of Orthodox Christian church building. A church as a building has a depth of symbolic meaning, including as an image of the cosmos. The act of building is blessed by the local bishop in three moments: before any work has begun, at the laying of the first stone (which should happen ideally after all the necessary materials have been gathered) and after all works are finished, in the ritual of consecration.

e) Representational versus Ontological

This section of Frampton‘s text is based on Semper‘s distinction between the technical and the symbolical aspects of construction. Two of his elements of architecture

(the earthwork and the framework / roof) are technical, pertaining to the structure of the building; the other two (the hearth and the enclosing membrane or cladding) are symbolic, the enclosing membrane being a symbolic expression of the structure and the hearth carrying a rich constellation of meaning, from the spiritual and religious symbolism of fire to the symbolism of dwelling as gathering and living around the fire.

Frampton redefines these two categories as the ontological (pertaining to the actual being of the building and related to Bötticher‘s Kernform or core form) and the

54 representational (a representation either of the core form or, in the case of the hearth, of something other; related to Bötticher‘s Kunstform or art form).

There is an interesting nuance that Frampton finds in Harry Mallgrave‘s comments on Semper. In Mallgrave‘s opinion, Semper oscillated to a degree between defining cladding as the symbolic expression of structure or as a symbolic element entirely independent of the structure. In the first situation, cladding is subordinated to the underlying structure, its aesthetic value springing from the designer‘s ability to reconcile the requirements of constructive logic and beauty; in the second situation, cladding overrides and conceals the underlying structure, its aesthetic and symbolic value being disconnected from the structure and from the requirements of constructive logic.

Frampton turns to Mallgrave for his description of reactions to the cladding theory.39 Thus, in 1878, Konrad Fiedler, a German theorist of art, suggested stripping the walls of modern buildings of the ornamental cladding typical of ancient classical architecture in order to maximize their spatial expressivity. In 1893, August Schmarsow adopted and developed this suggestion, dismissing Semper‘s definition of architecture as

Bekleidungkunst (art of cladding or, more literally, of dressing) and proposing instead the definition of architecture as Raumgestalterin (creatress of space or, more literally, the one who shapes space). In Schmarsow‘s view, the history of architecture traces back (or should trace back) the expression of the Raumgefühl (sense of space) in its historical evolution. In a 1904 lecture that would make history, the Dutch architect Hendrik

Berlage appropriated this definition of architecture as the ―art of spatial enclosure.‖ He also argued that the flatness of walls, which is their true nature, should be emphasized by

39 Harry Mallgrave, introduction to The Four Elements of Architecture and other writings by Gottfried Semper, p. 42, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 16 and 18.

55 removing anything superfluous and by not allowing other constructive elements such as pillars, columns, or capitals to protrude from the wall surface. In his conception, applied at his design of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (1898-1903), the geometric purity of the walls is preserved by cutting all typically protruding elements of construction (including, for example, capitals) flush with the wall surface, which becomes in this way a two- dimensional representation of all structural and ornamental elements, made from a variety of materials and therefore a decorative ―cladding‖ of the wall. This is how Berlage managed to reconcile the two apparently conflicting definitions of architecture as

Raumgestalterin and as Bekleidungkunst.

In contrast with Berlage‘s tectonic approach, Adolf Loos‘ argument for the cladding40 removes him from Semper‘s theory. The marble claddings that Loos uses show no preoccupation for representing in any way the underlying structure. His

Raumplan (spatial design) is always realized in an atectonic manner, the building materials and load-bearing elements remaining always concealed behind claddings or renderings. Loos‘ atectonic approach to design significantly influenced subsequent architects, especially the modernists.

In the Byzantine church architecture, the hearth is replaced by the altar as the purely symbolic / representational element, with the richest religious and spiritual symbolism. Usually, there is no framework or roof structure, unless we take into consideration the reinforcing beams hidden inside the walls, typically at the level o f vault spring points so that they can make a unitary system together with the tie beams. The earthwork is represented by the underground substructure, but also by the massive load-

40 Adolf Loos, ―The Principle of Cladding‖ in Adolf Loos, Spoken into the Void: Collected Essays 1897- 1900. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1982, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 18.

56 bearing masonry walls; the vaulting, although relatively lightweight, is still a massive load-bearing element and not a lightweight screen-like element.

The most screen-like element is the iconostasis or icon stand, a non-load-bearing, non-constructive, but highly symbolic screen of icons that separates the sanctuary from the nave, its purpose being to make visible to the faithful the invisible spiritual reality at work. However, as noted above, the outer face of the walls is also a cladding-like element, with the role of making visible the structure of the church (the exterior walls and, to a degree, also the arches and vaults resting on these walls), in a clear, meaningful, and visually attractive manner quite similar to Berlage‘s decorative wall surface, albeit with a less rigid propensity towards extreme flatness. However, there is also another layer of meaning to be detected in those New Testament texts which compare the faithful to spiritual stones built together in a mystical edifice—the Church. The roofing is also a cladding-like element, typically following closely the curves of the vaulting, concealing them and being at the same time a representation of their configuration.

Inside, the veil-like layer of frescoed plaster or the tapestry-like mosaics used in conjunction with polychrome marble revetments belong also to the category of claddings, but of the sort which conceal the structure, from which they are almost entirely but not completely disconnected, and bring higher symbolic meaning and artistic value to the church interior. Unlike Loos‘ marble claddings, those designed by the Byzantines have a strong symbolic logic behind them; their archetype is the Jerusalem Temple, clad by

Solomon in stones of many colors. They therefore prophesize in stony silence the arrival of the Heavenly Jerusalem, the abode of the faithful after the end of this world, described in the Book of Revelation as being built over twelve foundation stones made from vividly

57 colored gems. As for the iconographic frescoes or mosaics, although they conceal the actual masonry of the vaulting and walls, their composition is not indifferent to and cannot conceal the configuration of the structure, from which the structural design and the structural response to loads may be inferred.

f) Tectonic and atectonic

In this section, Frampton looks at two contrasting but related concepts, the tectonic and the atectonic, as they have been defined by Eduard Sekler, an American architect and theorist. In his essay ―Structure, Construction, and Tectonics‖ (1973),

Sekler defined the tectonic as the expressivity resulting from the adequacy of form to load-bearing requirements in a manner that goes beyond the purely structural and constructive.41 Constructive solutions with similar requirements may receive a variety of formal expressions, as seen for example in Ludwig Mies van der Rohe‘s work, where the corner details receive a similar but different treatment in various buildings. An example of tectonic architecture is Joseph Paxton‘s Crystal Palace, built in London in 1851.

Later, in order to describe Josef Hoffmann‘s Stoclet House, built in 1911 in

Brussels, Sekler defined the opposed concept of ―atectonic,‖ which describes ―a manner in which the expressive interaction of load and support in architecture is visually neglected or obscured.‖ The cable moldings running along all edges seem to frame the stone-clad walls, giving them structure, as if they were made only of thin sheets of material, a feeling exacerbated by the placing of windows flush with the façade. On the contrary, disproportionately heavy piers carry thin, light roofs both at the entrance and at

41 Eduard Sekler, ―Structure, Construction, and Tectonics,‖ in Connection: Visual Arts at Harvard, March 1965, pp. 3-11, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 19-20.

58 the loggia on the terrace. This visual inadequacy (the massive elements carry a light load, while the apparently slender and thin elements carry a heavy load) makes the

Stoclet House “atectonic in the extreme.”42

An example provided by Frampton is the AEG turbine factory designed by Peter

Behrens and built in Berlin in 1909. Although otherwise tectonic in its design and configuration, the main façade features an overhanging segmented pediment

(representing the shape of the steel frame behind) above two concrete piers in the corners and a protruding glazed steel frame in the center. The massive pediment seems to be carried by (or rather to float above) the lightweight steel and glass, making the receding corner piers appear redundant.

In his book Master Builders of Byzantium,43 an analysis of the Byzantine building technologies during the Middle and Late periods, Robert Ousterhout makes a case for the tectonic character of Byzantine architecture, or, in his words, ―structural clarity‖. He argues that a concern for structural clarity may be discerned in Byzantine architecture slightly before the emergence of Romanesque and Gothic architecture in Western

Europe.44

His favorite example of Byzantine structural clarity is the 11th century katholikon

(main church) of the Hosios Loukas monastery in Greece. Here, the dome of the nave is supported by eight arches and eight piers; four squinches span the triangles between the octagon of arches and the corners of the square nave, where four additional piers rise to

42 Eduard Sekler, ―The Stoclet House by Josef Hoffmann,‖ in Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower. London: Phaidon Press, 1967, pp. 230-231, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, pp. 20-21. 43 Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2008. 44 Master Builders of Byzantium, pp. 202-206.

59 support them. This tall space is surrounded on three sides by two levels of subordinated spaces, while on the east side there are the sanctuary and its annex spaces. The surrounding smaller spaces have the structural purpose of countering the thrust of the dome and of bracing the tall, slender piers that surround it. The groin vaults of these small bays allow for the loads to be concentrated in the corners, allowing the façade walls to be reduced to piers and arches, with windows and non-load-bearing stone slabs under the arches and between the piers. 45

An earlier example is the 10th century Myrelaion Church of Constantinople, which is at the same time a very early and atypical example of a cross-in-square church.

All eight outer bays feature groin vaults, allowing for the concentration of loads on the corners, which are marked on the brickwork façade with engaged columns. This arrangement allows also for a type of façade composition inspired from the triumphal arches of Roman architecture, which comprises a larger arch flanked by two smaller arches. Ousterhout shows that originally the arches were almost entirely glazed, just as at

Hosios Loukas, but later alterations significantly reduced the size of windows, so that something of the original aesthetic effect was lost. 46

However, in Late Byzantine architecture a contrary trend existed as well, which

Ousterhout suggestively calls ―manneristic subversion of the structural clarity‖. 47 The term ―manneristic‖ is not chosen randomly, but as a reference to the sophisticated play of

Mannerist architects with the rules of classical composition that had been carefully instituted during the Renaissance. Similarly, at times Byzantine architects sought to achieve aesthetic effects by breaking the rules creatively, but not by abolishing them.

45 Master Builders of Byzantium, pp. 203-204. 46 Master Builders of Byzantium, p. 206. 47 Master Builders of Byzantium, p. 206.

60 Ousterhout emphasizes that the rule of structural clarity continues to exist, 48 which is also apparent from the fact that any ―manneristic subversion‖ of it is an exception, and not the institution of a new rule.

The most striking of Ousterhout‘s examples is that of the south façade of the parekklesion of the Savior in Chora monastery from Constantinople (14th century). This façade is divided into three tiers: a plinth, a row of engaged columns flanked by responds, and a row of arches corresponding to the interior vaulting structure. A discreet cornice of protruding stone slabs separates the arch tier from the column tier. Most columns stand below the springing of the arches, suggesting visually that these are the points where loads concentrate. Two of the arches are much wider, which required the builders to quicken the rhythm of the façade with two additional columns, identical with the others in all details, but which seem to support windows instead of arches—an atectonic feature.49

Another example of a façade featuring an atectonic composition is that of the

Pantokrator church from Nesebar, Bulgaria (14th century). Here, the façade is divided into tiers of decorative arches, each row having its own rhythm, so that arches from different tiers superpose randomly, in an atectonic manner. Ousterhout compares this type of composition to a Roman aqueduct.50

However, in the Late Byzantine period, church architecture does not switch from tectonic to atectonic or, in Ousterhout‘s terms, from structural clarity to its subversion.

As mentioned before, the atectonic aspects are only exceptions to the rule of structural clarity; had they not been exceptions, they would have been the beginning of new rules

48 Master Builders of Byzantium, p. 207. 49 Master Builders of Byzantium, pp. 206-207. 50 Master Builders of Byzantium, p. 207.

61 and not intentional deviations from the old rules of composition. This is why these churches, rather than being purely atectonic, oscillate gracefully between the tectonic character of the rule and the atectonic character of the exception, in a similar manner to the AEG building presented above.

The issue of Byzantine church interiors and their supposedly atectonic character should be addressed as well. Much has been written, for example, on the spectacular visual effect of mosaics with gold background, drawing perhaps too hastily the conclusion that the intention of Byzantine artists was to dematerialize the structural elements of church buildings, dissolving them into light. However, this is a conclusion of the 20th century modernist authors, such as Bruno Zevi;51 in the 19th century, John Ruskin felt that the gilding of architectural elements could not possibly deceive anybody as to the nature of those gilded elements.52 What the Byzantines wished was to create an unearthly, heavenly atmosphere, filled with the golden light that is a symbol of the light and grace of the Holy Spirit, light that will make the sun useless in the Heavenly

Jerusalem.53 They did not intend the dematerialization, but the transfiguration of matter through light, which corresponds better to the Orthodox Christian conception of the relationship between matter and spirit. 54

The same conclusion was reached independently by American architect Andrew

Gould, a faithful Orthodox Christian and the author of several Orthodox church designs in the US. His text, ―On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Form and Meaning in Orthodox

51 Bruno Zevi, Architecture as Space: How to Look at architecture. New York: Horizon Press, 1974, p. 87. 52 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. London: John Wiley & Sons, 1885, p. 29, found online at www.archive.org. 53 Revelation 21:18; 21:23; 22:5. 54 I wrote about the quality and meaning of light in church interiors in „Relaţia dintre lumină, material şi formă în arhitectura bisericilor răsăritene‖, paper presented at the local conference Oraşul, clădirea, spaţiul şi tehnologiile corespunzătoare (Bucharest 2010), published in Analele Arhitecturii, year 4 – nr. 1/2010, pp. 55-56.

62 Architecture,‖55 is a meditation on traditional Orthodox church architecture, scholarly as much as personal, based on his liturgical experience as an Orthodox Christian, on his travels and pilgrimages, and on his professional experience as a designing architect. He first describes how Gothic architecture tends towards dematerialization:

―A Gothic church is a monument offered up to God… an attempt by man to order and beautify all that exists in creation. It points upward to God the Father who is outside of it, and prayers are directed likewise… Light pours into a Gothic church through great decorated windows. Broken into dazzling colors, it overwhelms the materiality of the walls. The stonework itself magnifies the effect, as it is thin and delicate, and carven56 with most delicate tracery. The weight of the stone is denied. The worshipper is at once conscious of the awesome radiance and power of the light without and the tenuous structure of the material within. The light beautifies the structure by dematerializing it, even until the stone itself looks like rays of light.‖ (My emphasis)57

He then goes on to explain how Byzantine and post-Byzantine architecture tends towards the transfiguration of matter:

―…an Orthodox church is introverted. The interior represents heaven, and to enter it is to step into the New Jerusalem. God dwells there among men, and they have no need of the sun, neither of the moon, for the Glory of God illumines it (cf. Revelation 21:23)… The light is seen reflected off the thickness of the wall, rather than directly from the windows… Gold mosaics or bright frescoes play the light from many surfaces. Polished lamps and inlaid furniture reflect highlights from every direction. Deep aisles or side chapels behind arches appear as mysterious shadows in the distance, which make the church look brighter by the rich contrast. This is mass transfigured by light. It is the same light as in the icons, holy and all-pervading, the Uncreated Light which emanates from God to His creation. The stone and plaster glow from within. They do not seem transitory, but more real. Walls and piers seem as silent and as still as ancient mountains. They are bathed with the Light of Christ, and are sustained and strengthened by it as we are.‖ (My emphasis)58

55 Andrew Gould, ―On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Form and Meaning in Orthodox Architecture‖, available online at http://andrewgoulddesign.com/ accessed on 05/07/2011. 56 Carven—an archaic form of carved. 57 ―On Earth as It Is in Heaven‖, p. 2. 58 ―On Earth as It Is in Heaven‖, pp. 2-3.

63 As mentioned above, the ―tapestry‖ of mosaics and marbles and the ―veil‖ of frescoes hide the make-up of structural elements without hiding their geometric configuration, from which the logic of the structural system can be inferred. Although this layer, especially in the case of mosaics, changes radically the materiality of the masonry behind it, the intention is not to dematerialize the construction or to deny its configuration and structural logic, but to symbolize the transfigured matter of the

Heavenly Jerusalem. If we consider as well the fact that exteriors have a markedly tectonic character, the idea of atectonic interiors becomes difficult to sustain. Of course, there are also exceptions, cases when the architects used artifices to visually lighten the construction, such as the well-known piers supporting the dome of Hagia Sophia (6th century), the massive section of which cannot be evaluated easily, especially when looking from the nave, and the equally well-known windows that pierce the base of the dome, making it look much lighter than it actually is. As with façade treatments, although in this case the masonry itself is never visible, the conception of Byzantine church interiors is primarily tectonic, and its atectonic aspects are secondary. The latter derive from two sources: either from the architects‘ intention to visually lighten a massive structure (especially in the case of the great churches in the Early Byzantine period, which needed strong structural members), or from the intention of connecting the iconographic concept with the natural lighting concept for a common symbolism (with strong atectonic effects especially in the case of interiors featuring mosaics).

64 g) Heidegger‘s phenomenological approach: Technology

In the section entitled ―Technology‖, Frampton refers to those ideas of Martin

Heidegger investigating the interaction between technology and modern society. The first of these ideas is the relationship between space and place. Our modern presupposition is that places are included in an infinite, homogenous space, the same with the space of geometry and physics. Frampton argues that this is the source of today‘s uniformity and monotony in architecture and urban planning, but also of a certain propensity of technology to see all things, including in the natural territory, as a resource to be exploited. On the contrary, for Heidegger the places are those that we perceive and understand first, more fundamentally, after which we fashion our abstract concept of space starting from the concrete characteristics of places: nearness and remoteness; height, breadth, and depth.59 Undoubtedly, these paragraphs are an additional argument in favor of a sort of architecture that, instead of being implanted randomly in a homogenous space (or falsely assumed to be homogenous, in which case the destructions to the urban or natural landscape can be catastrophic), is conceived with the intention of bringing a positive contribution to a place with a clearly defined identity, or even to institute a new place, with an equally well-defined identity, in an unstructured or destructured area.

Frampton mentions also Heidegger‘s arguments for the return to the Greek origin of philosophical terms, erasing the errors of the forced translations that occurred when

Greek philosophical works were translated into Latin, a more primitive language than the

Greek, which lacked the nuances and sophistication necessary to a philosophical text. In

59 Martin Heidegger, ―Building, Dwelling, Thinking‖, in Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper & Row, 1971, pp. 154-155, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 22.

65 Heidegger‘s view, this linguistic and cultural barrier led to the degradation of the original, concrete meaning of these words, based on the lived experience of reality, and to the development of artificial, abstract concepts, detached from reality.60 As Frampton shows, following Heidegger, this led to the development of a whole philosophical discipline estranged from the experience of things in themselves, which still influences us today through the development of the modern Western worldview, with all its negative consequences: extreme positivist rationalism; utilitarianism oriented toward economic efficiency above the good of society and individuals; technological progress pursued as a goal in itself, without preoccupation for the social, psychological or ecological repercussions.

Perhaps even more important is Martin Heidegger‘s thinking on the work of art.

First of all, he makes a distinction between using up the raw material in utensils, in the case of which the material has to disappear from the user‘s attention to make room for functionality (since a good tool is the one which we use so efficiently that we never notice its characteristics), and the use of materials in works of art, in which the material‘s natural qualities are emphasized and take part in the artistic expression. 61 From this,

Frampton concludes that the parts of a building that have a different status (most likely, some being more utilitarian than others) may be justifiably treated differently— something that often happens.

Secondly, for Heidegger the work of art is a means of expressing the truth about the represented object in particular and about the world in general, without necessarily doing this through a realistic representation. From this standpoint, many works found in

60 Martin Heidegger, „On the Origin of the Work of Art‖, in Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 26, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 23. 61 „On the Origin of the Work of Art‖, p. 46, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 23.

66 museums and art galleries cannot be art, and those belonging to lost civilizations or epochs have lost much of the original artistic character through the fact that we, today, have a different worldview than those who created them. 62

Thirdly, Heidegger sees in the work of art the interaction between earth (the one which supports us and our architecture, feeds us, and is the source of all raw materials) and world (made by man both in the physical sense of the built environment and in the conceptual sense of cosmos as experienced, perceived and understood by man). This idea from ―On the Origin of the Work of Art‖ is further developed in ―Building,

Dwelling, Thinking‖, where dwelling is defined in terms of protection and acceptance; the quantitative home / lodging crisis is preceded by a qualitative crisis of dwelling, caused by the technological over-development, alienating to man and destructive to nature. However, it is important to note that Heidegger is not an opponent of technology in general, but only of its negative aspects, and his criticism is not intended to make us renounce technology, but to understand what the problems are so that we could solve them.

Heidegger‘s thinking has certain aspects that may be useful for the understanding of traditional architecture, including that of the Byzantine churches. Especially interesting is the relationship between earth, world and the work of art, with all its aspects: emphasizing the earth through the raw materials taken from it; ―building‖ the world by expressing through architecture the worldview of the community; expressing truth through the work of architecture.

62 „On the Origin of the Work of Art‖, p. 41, cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 23.

67 h) Tradition and innovation

The last section refers to the relationship between tradition and innovation in architecture. Innovation for the sake of innovation, once a guiding principle of the avant- garde, has lost its appeal, among other reasons because it cannot solve the problems specific to our times, such as unchecked urban expansion and consumerism. As Alvaro

Siza once said, “architects don’t invent anything, they transform reality.” 63 As opposed to the fine arts, where creation and innovation meet no constraints, architectural creation has to relate to what has already been built or, in other words, to the built heritage as an expression of tradition and as the environment for the social and cultural life of a community.

The reclaiming of tradition may be done through the hermeneutic method of the fusion of cultural horizons, proposed by Hans-Georg Gadamer as a research methodology for the humanities. In his view, the researcher should become aware of his own cultural horizon and to broaden it until incorporating the cultural horizon of the culture or epoch he is studying. A research based on Gadamer‘s methodology is superior to a falsely objective research that is unconsciously influenced by the researcher‘s unquestioned assumptions. Frampton mentions here the fusion of cultural horizons because it can be used in architecture to overcome the prevalent prejudice that studying the architecture of the past could not bring any positive contribution to the architecture of the present.

Frampton ends his study with a meditation on architecture as a field for the meeting between nature and culture, between space and time. Architecture transforms and builds places, is subject to aging and weathering, and at the same time creates a

63 Cited in Studies in Tectonic Culture, p. 25, without a bibliographic reference.

68 setting necessary for man, society, and culture. This is why architecture should be designed and built not for a passing moment in time, but in order to last.

This is especially important in church architecture, where belonging to tradition is more important than belonging to the passing characteristics of a period of time, also known as the Zeitgeist. Rejuvenating tradition by building new churches should be oriented towards how we should actualize tradition today, using the available materials and technologies, be they old or new, and not towards adjusting tradition to fit the latest trends as they are documented in architectural journals.

Although Orthodox Christianity has well-established methods of appropriating tradition, this is a difficult thing for architects to do because of the lack of written sources and because of the untraditional influences received by church architecture in the past two hundred years. In this context, Gadamer‘s hermeneutic methodology becomes an extremely precious instrument for the church architects of today. Especially fundamental is Gadamer‘s emphasis on being aware of received ideas, because architects are strongly inclined to use such ideas in their reasoning, which they have assimilated from their professional education (to build according to the Zeitgeist, to adapt forms to contemporary materials, to avoid ornaments, and so forth) and which they consider now to be absolute truths. Being aware of these received ideas is the first step towards an honest approach to traditional architecture and towards a new architecture in the spirit of tradition.

69 2. Richard Weston‘s survey of material and form in architecture

Richard Weston, a British architect, theorist, and professor of architecture, published a remarkable book investigating the elusive relationship between form and material in architecture, called Material, Form and Architecture.64 In his ―Introduction,‖

Weston even uses the word ―materiality,‖ if only to decry that architecture students have a tendency to use it indiscriminately when all they wish to refer to are simply the

―materials.‖65 Every chapter of the book is an insightful essay on a particular aspect of the uses of materials in architecture.

a) Materials and form

The chapter ―Materials and Form‖66 investigates the relationship between form and matter in architecture. Form is dependent of the materials and the technologies used to create it, but also on the concept proposed by the artist or designer, who can choose to work with the material or to try to defeat its limits. Weston comments on how this plays out in the eminently tectonic Ancient Greek architecture, in the gravity-defying Gothic churches, or in the spiritually oriented composition of geometry, material, and light in the design of Byzantine churches. He turns to John Ruskin and his inspired comments on St.

Mark‘s church in Venice as a proper illustration for the interplay of materials and forms in the Byzantine tradition. Still following Ruskin, he also looks at the Doge‘s palace, which belongs to the local variety of the Gothic found in Venice, permeated by the

64 Richard Weston, Materials, Form and Architecture. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2003. 65 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 9. 66 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 36-67.

70 Byzantine love of beautiful materials. Then he investigates the Rococo dissolution of form and the Modernist dematerialization of construction by transparency.

Most importantly, Weston draws attention to the strict subordination of materials and colors to formal composition in the Western theory of architecture, starting with the

Renaissance. He astutely notes:

―From Alberti to our latter-day minimalists,‖ ―belief in the pre- eminence of the values of design and purity of form has been frequently been asserted through buildings of deliberate austerity, for which ‗white‘ could be said to be the ideal ‗material‘.‘‘67

He cites Plato, Pliny, Seneca, and Winckelmann as despising color. Interestingly enough,

Renaissance architecture did not follow in practice the purism of the theory, allowing for colorful marble floors and wall revetments, as well as mosaics. Weston also mentions the controversy (rage on one side, nostalgia on the other) caused by the archeological discovery that Ancient Greek temples, instead of pristinely white as previously thought, had been vividly painted.

The author also refers to Gottfried Semper‘s theory of architecture, based on the concept of the tectonic and the four elements of construction. He contrasts this with

August Schmarsow‘s theory of architecture, based on the concept of space, which ―might almost have been a programme for the Modernists‘ all-embracing vision of a new worldview for the Machine Age, with space as its universal material and rational construction as its means.‖68

67 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 56. 68 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 67.

71 b) In the nature of materials

The chapter ―In the Nature of Materials‖69 reviews, from a historical perspective, a variety of standpoints on this controversial issue, coming from both practitioners and theorists of architecture. Viollet-le-Duc is mentioned for his admiration for the Gothic, which led him to formulate the principle of using each material to build forms appropriate to its nature; this means new materials should be also used in new forms, according to their specific properties.70 Among the most important architects influenced by Viollet-le-

Duc, Weston mentions Frank Lloyd Wright71 and Hendrik Berlage.72 If Viollet-le-Duc based his approach on reason, John Ruskin based his argument for honesty in architecture on moral grounds.73 He also argued against the use of industrially produced materials and ornaments, which are repetitive, lack the expressivity of handmade items, and are deceitful by trying to imitate what they are not. In the end, Viollet-le-Duc‘s ideas prevailed and iron was accepted as a new building material and generator of new architectural forms.74

The perceived advantages of industrial materials led to a scorn of natural materials and their treacherous knots and cracks, as expressed by Le Corbusier in Vers une architecture. He argued that modern, industrially produced materials such as steel and concrete are superior to wood and stone by their homogeneity and controlled properties.75

69 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 68-97. 70 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 71-72. 71 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 72. 72 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 72. 73 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 73-74. 74 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 74. 75 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 81.

72 The rest of the chapter consists of representative examples of the built and written work of great architects and how they approached glass, concrete, or brick. It is most moving to read Louis Kahn‘s imaginary conversation with brick: the architect wishes to use concrete across openings; the brick acknowledges this as a rational solution, but also says that it likes an arch.76 On the other hand, Alvar Aalto delighted in the texture of brickwork, even to the point of including misshapen bricks in his buildings in order to produce a richer texture.77

c) Place

The chapter ―Place‖78 looks at the relationship between the materials and forms on one side and the sense of place on the other. Using locally quarried stone and bricks and tiles baked from the local clay emphasizes the local identity of a place and creates a sense of kinship between all the buildings that use those materials. Another expression of local identity is color, chosen in connection with the local quality of light and the appearance of sky and earth: Greek villages are brilliantly white, Italy is colored in earthy reds, and Northern Europe is equally colorful but with discreet pastel-like nuances.

Ruskin, with his Venetian insights, is again one of Weston‘s references; he likens the play of reflections in the canals to the tessellation of Venetian mosaic floors. 79 Carlo

Scarpa, one of the most sensitive architects of the 20th century in his inspired use of materials, chose equally expressive materials such as terrazzo and stucco veneziano for

76 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 93. 77 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 94. 78 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 98-115. 79 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 106.

73 the Olivetti shop in Piazza San Marco and for the Querini Stampalia Foundation, also found in Venice.80

The controversy between Alvaro Siza and Dutch modernists is especially edifying. Invited to design a building for The Hague in 1985, Siza expressed his preference for the locally specific material, brick. This was seen as ―reactionary‖ by certain local architects, who thought modernist architecture should use white stucco. 81

Generally speaking, the use of local materials contradicts the universal ambitions of modernism (called not by accident the International Style) and the globalization of building technologies and materials. Representative for the modernist approach are

Richard Neutra‘s works in the desert, 82 while Frank Lloyd Wright‘s works (Taliesin,

Fallingwater, the prairie houses) show sensitivity to their surroundings by using local materials and adapting the composition to the landscape. 83 The same principles can be identified in Jørn Utzon‘s house in Majorca, Can Lis.84

d) Time

The chapter ―Time‖85 investigates the aging of architecture, and especially the difference between architecture which ages gracefully and architecture which ages ungracefully, because it is conceived as an idealized, timeless artifact. Early Modernist works of architecture, such as Le Corbusier‘s Villa Savoye, were poor examples from this standpoint.86 The ideal of overcoming the passage of time is still present in the

80 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 106 and 108. 81 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 109. 82 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 110. 83 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 110-111. 84 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 111-113. 85 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 116-131. 86 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 118.

74 contemporary research on materials. On the contrary, architects such as Alvar Aalto worked with the materials‘ natural weathering and aging characteristics.

e) Use

The chapter ―Use‖87 looks at the intimate relationship which forms between the building and the user when the latter walks over the floors, touches the door handles, or climbs the stairs, holding on to the handrail. Again, Aalto‘s works are cited as a positive example.88

f) Junctions

The chapter ―Junctions‖89 looks at the detailing of architectural joints as an expressive feature of architecture. Architects should be aware of the qualities of different materials and how they respond to loads and to environmental factors, and design the delicate spots where different materials and constructive elements meet accordingly.

Carlo Scarpa is one of the architects whose works are cited extensively for the sensitivity of joint design.90

g) Surfaces

The chapter ―Surfaces‖91 investigates briefly the variety of surface treatments, from the white, geometrically exact planes of Modernism to the textured façades made of brickwork or repetitive elements. Modernists such as Le Corbusier used extensively on

87 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 132-145. 88 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 134-138. 89 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 146-157. 90 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 155-156. 91 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 158-169.

75 their façades white stucco or thin sheets of stone, and band windows, which they set with the exterior surface of the wall. 92 Jørn Utzon used a play of glazed and matte ceramic tiles, all white, for the shells of the Sidney Opera House, creating a surface highly receptive to changes in light, as well as the position of the viewer. 93 In some of his works, Alvar Aalto used glazed tiles as well, of a convexly curved variety, which makes

Weston compare the resulting surface to corduroy. 94 But perhaps the most versatile surfaces are those made of brick, where the color, size and proportion of the bricks and the thickness and color of the mortar may be used to create a variety of textures.

h) Meaning

The chapter ―Meaning‖95 is a brief survey of the symbolic meaning a material may carry or may add to a building when used in its structure. Weston makes a series of considerations on the preciousness of materials (rare or difficult to quarry stones, gold, ultramarine pigment), on color (which may be, for example, warm or cold), on concrete, on glass. The transparency and brilliance of glass, as well as its industrial origin, made of it a preferred material for modernists. Bruno Taut, looking at a thick piece of colored glass, saw how it reacted to light and said that “The vessel of the new spirit we are preparing will be like this;”96 the optic qualities of glass made it the suitable medium for conveying a utopian ideal.

The 19th century marked the search for materials that would be the symbols of national architectures: granite in Finland and Norway, as well as Prussia, but brick in the

92 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 161-164. 93 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 164-165. 94 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 165. 95 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 170-183. 96 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 172.

76 rest of Germany, Denmark and Sweden. Aalto softened the modernism of his works with allusions to the Finnish culture. Some of the material symbolism he used is however more personal, and so is that of Jože Plečnik. The latter dressed the façade of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Prague with a richly textured ―ermine robe‖ of clinker brick and projecting stone blocks, set vertically—just as the longer tufts specific to ermine fur. 97

i) Materiality and translucency

The chapter ―Materiality and Translucency‖98 investigates the material qualities of contemporary architecture through a series of carefully chosen examples. Weston mentions the illusory and scenographic quality of Post-Modernist architecture and the reactions to it: Frampton‘s argument for critical regionalism and for tectonics, Michael

Benedikt‘s manifesto, For an Architecture of Reality, and the theoretical interest in place and the phenomenology of architecture.99 Weston chooses Tadao Ando and his exposed concrete houses to illustrate the post-Postmodern interest in re-establishing architecture as the art of actual construction and materials. 100

If Ando worked almost exclusively with concrete, Rafael Moneo‘s National

Museum of Roman Art in Mérida, Spain, used brick as the material of choice. The walls and arches, reminiscent of Roman architecture, are however built of (or perhaps faced with) bricks laid without mortar, giving their brickwork a markedly modern appearance.

Moneo explains his design choice as the intention of using the brick in a manner that

97 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 183-184. 98 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 184-227. 99 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 186-190. 100 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 190-193.

77 would not overwhelm this material‘s identity. 101 In Weston‘s view, this emphasis on the identity of materials, on what materials are, is the definition of the much used and abused term ―materiality‖, a different approach than the older approach ―in the nature of materials‖, which emphasized what materials can do, in terms of structural properties.102

The Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, in his work The Eyes of the Skin:

Architecture and the Senses,103 argued that much of what is built today is not built to be perceived with all senses, but for visual appearance only, mediated through the photographs printed in architectural journals. In his view, the most common contemporary materials (glass, metal, and synthetic materials) deny to the viewer the understanding of their nature and age; he supports the use of natural materials, which allow this kind of empathetic perception of the story behind them.104

Of the architects who emphasized the materiality of architecture, Weston prefers to speak more about the Swiss, such as Herzog and de Meuron or Peter Zumthor. Herzog and de Meuron chose to simplify volumes as much as possible, cladding them in opaque or partly transparent screens of wood or metal, fixed or opening up to reveal windows and balconies according to the function of the buildings. 105 They also used, in an innovative manner, translucent building envelopes of silkscreened glass.106

Peter Zumthor is particularly interesting for this theme because of his practical training that preceded his formal architectural education, which allows him to approach architecture in a more concrete and tactile manner. His best known works are the stone-

101 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 193. 102 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 193-194. 103 Juhani Pallas maa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. London: Academy Editions, 1996, cited in Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 194. 104 Juhani Pallasmaa, ―An Architecture of the Seven Senses‖, in Questions of Perception, special issue of Architecture and Urbanism, July 1994, pp. 27-37, cited in Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 194. 105 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 199-203. 106 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 222.

78 clad thermal baths at Vals and St. Benedict‘s chapel at Sumvitg, Switzerland. 107 All wood but for a glazed strip below the roof, the gracefully curved chapel is clad in round- shaped larch-wood shingles overlapped to create a fish scale pattern. The shingles turn gradually from their original reddish hue to the silvery grey of weathered wood. The smallness of the interior space determined the architect to use an echo chamber housed in the tall base of the building, which makes the space sound larger by prolonging the reverberation time. We can also assume that the resinous wood gives an olfactory identity to the space.

Quite different is Zumthor‘s design for an art gallery in Bregenz, Austria, which he clad with translucent panes of etched glass in order to bring diffused natural light into the building. The glass panes are fixed in points without any caulking or gaskets and overlap slightly, creating a seemingly floating, diaphanous skin that envelops gracefully the actual building envelope behind. Needless to mention, the translucency of glass makes it respond closely to any changes in the quality of light and the appearance of sky.108

Other experiments by other architects with transparency, translucency, reflectivity or various plainly opaque materials are also worth noting, but presenting them in detail is beyond the scope of this paper. Weston concludes the chapter by mentioning the trend towards intelligent building envelopes, carefully engineered to respond to changes in the natural environment and to allow in the right amounts of natural light and fresh air while protecting the interior from extreme temperatures and excess solar radiation.

107 Materials, Form and Architecture, pp. 205-206. 108 Materials, Form and Architecture, p. 208.

79 j) Conclusion

Weston ends his survey with a housing complex designed by Jørn Utzon at

Fredensborg, Denmark, in 1963. The composition is discreet and unassuming, resulting from repeating identical or highly similar house modules over the gently sloped terrain, in a carpet-like grid. The bricks and tiles chosen by the architect have weathered gracefully.

Everything has been designed not for the sake of pretty pictures, but for people, for the landscape, for the weather, for the passage of time. The chosen example speaks for itself.

On the other hand, Weston expresses his concern that the current interest in unusual materials and rich textures, while making architecture more colorful and superficially appealing, may be yet another shot that misses the mark. Just like Utzon‘s houses, the architecture worthy of its name should not be shaped by frivolous aesthetic decisions, but should embody through construction a vision of how people should live.

And this vision, if I may add to Weston‘s words, should resonate deeply with the people who need to use and find meaning in the buildings, and not merely with the architects.

3. Michael Benedikt and the ―architecture of reality‖

An American architect, theorist, and professor of architecture, Michael Benedikt wrote in 1987 For an Architecture of Reality,109 an essay-manifesto for the re-discovery of architecture as an art of concreteness, against the Postmodernist inclination towards scenography and illusion. The booklet attracts the reader with the rough texture of its unassuming grey cover, so different from other book covers, which try too hard to be colorful and shiny attention-grabbers. Inside, the pages of text are matched by pages of carefully chosen illustrations, all black and white; the paper is thick, heavy and glossy, in

109 Michael Benedikt, For an Architecture of Reality. New York: Lumen Books, 1987.

80 a delightful contrast with the rough exterior. The design of the book matches its meaning.

There are four qualities Benedikt thinks architecture should have in order to be real: presence, significance, materiality and emptiness, the latter with two possible meanings. I will leave materiality last in order to comment on it a little more.

a) Presence

Presence is perhaps the most obvious: architecture needs to be here right now, not to camouflage itself behind mirror-like façades, not to try to deceive the viewer in any way. A building that is present can be recognized, Benedikt says, by the fact that it seems to be aware of itself, and of the presence of people. It seems to me that he refers to the presence of buildings that almost seem alive, like gentle, giant, quiet animals, ready to serve us like a faithful horse or dog and waiting patiently for our care. This is how traditional architecture usually is, while much of what is built today feels as alive and present as a shopping cart.

b) Significance

Significance refers to being meaningful and important to people. A building with significance, says Benedikt, is not necessarily one with symbolic meaning, one symbolic of something, but one that has the qualities to acquire meaning for someone, for a person.

These qualities come from the care and craftsmanship designers and builders have put into a building. Buildings designed and built carelessly, with indifference, cannot move the people who see them beyond indifference.

81

c) Emptiness

Emptiness may have negative connotations, but the two meanings presented by

Benedikt are both positive. The first meaning of emptiness is that of a lack of intention and organization that is proper to natural things. Buildings that are empty in this manner are those that, instead of offering us a strictly organized and functional interior, have also features that are free of a determined purpose and therefore lend themselves to be used and inhabited by us in a more personal and imaginative way. The second meaning of emptiness is that of the interval, of the silence, of the unfinished. Architecture needs to be empty, to make room for things to happen. The buildings of our times—especially those of 1987—are often too complete in their complexity, leaving no room for people and life; they are not empty, but too full of over-designed features and ―too full of themselves‖, too smug in the superiority of their design.

d) Materiality

Materiality is, first of all, the quality of things material, perceptible by senses. It means weight, but not necessarily heaviness. It also means inertia and strength, which measure, so to speak, how these things react to our actions. Secondly, materiality tells the story of a thing‘s origin and making; this is why natural or traditional materials are delightful in their materiality, while synthetic, highly processed ones are not.

How to avoid the pitfalls of a fake materiality, while also, realistically, not using all-natural materials? The first solution Benedikt gives is to use moderation. Perhaps we can no longer build solid masonry walls, but we can, for example, clad our buildings in

82 massive stone slabs, as found at the Grand Central Terminal in New York, instead of the flimsy sheets of granite that are currently used.

The second solution is to use materials in non-deceptive ways, framing and showing the true thickness of veneers or the true hollowness of drywall structures. This design strategy can create authenticity out of even the most fake-looking materials.

The third solution is to use materials that, although perhaps not as natural and authentic as the solid stone, brick or wood of old, have certain qualities that save them from fakery. There are four rules to follow in order to successfully apply this strategy.

Firstly, materials that show a discrepancy between what they are, what they look like and how they behave should be avoided. Secondly, materials should show interesting visual and tactile qualities. Thirdly, materials should be used under structural stress, so that not only their appearance, but also their behavior is understood, leading to a deeper understanding of their nature. And lastly, materials of undefined appearance and tactile qualities should be avoided as well; although not blatantly fake, they refuse us just as much the story of their origin and making.

4. A brief conclusion

All three authors—Kenneth Frampton, Richard Weston, and Michael Benedikt— present us with thought-provoking texts on materiality and the material aspects of architecture. The other two, Juhani Pallasmaa and Peter Zumthor, would have deserved more than a brief mention. The concepts presented by them can be used to investigate

Byzantine architecture, and to a certain degree I have already done this. However,

83 Bernea brings quite a different perspective on things, one highly marked by his spirituality, as will become clear in the next section.

84 III. Bernea‘s ―Rich Materiality‖

When architects write about materiality—which rarely happens, although many websites of various schools of architecture mention the word in their syllabi—they think usually about an honest or vividly poetic use of materials. These have to be recognizable, to give hints on their true massiveness (e.g. blocks, slabs, veneers) and perhaps to offer a pleasant or especially sensuous texture and appearance to sight and touch. 110 Materiality might also be taken as a logical consequence of structural honesty, i.e. of the load-bearing structure being visible and its materials both recognizable and ―present‖ to perception. 111

However, when Horia Bernea speaks about “rich” and “dry” materiality in his apophthegms, scattered throughout his book of dialogues on Rome,112 these concepts fade into a blur. Materiality should be able to “feed the eye” and “rejoice the spirit”.

No reference to structural honesty is made, but authenticity in a wider and less rigid sense is implied. For Bernea, materiality is a direct consequence of a culture‘s worldview. A careful or on the contrary careless attitude to materiality betrays a culture‘s attitude to spirituality, regardless of the official standpoint on the spiritual issues. It is not a surprise, then, that for Bernea, from this standpoint, contemporary Western civilization is at an all time low. However, no definition of materiality is provided; eloquent examples, most of all available to the two dialogists on the spot as they explore Rome, and then to the readers through the wonderful illustrations of the book, provide an intuitive approach to positive and negative examples of materiality.

110 Michael Benedikt, For an Architecture of Reality. New York: Lumen Books, 1987. 111 Kenneth Frampton, Studies in tectonic culture: the poetics of construction in nineteenth and twentieth century architecture, ed. John Cava. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995. 112 Horia Bernea and Teodor Baconsky, Roma caput mundi: un ghid subiectiv al Cetăţii Eterne. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2000.

85 These descriptions help illuminate how Byzantine architecture and art, when experienced on site, if possible also during services, unfold both their symbolic meanings and their “rich materiality” as captured by Bernea in his dialogues. Then, it is of interest to see how the two work together, and how the Byzantine materiality is the honest expression not as much of structure as of a deeply spiritualized worldview.

1. Matter as material symbol of spiritual realities

Before proceeding with presenting Roma Caput Mundi and Bernea‘s take on materiality, I would like to comment on one of his brief notes written while wo rking on the concept and realization of the Museum of the Romanian Peasant.

“Matter is the one to which the spirit clings.” 113 Out of its context, this striking sentence of Horia Bernea could be easily misinterpreted. One could infer, for example, that it states the weakness of spirit as compared to matter, because it needs to cling to it.

The context, however, may give us some hints. In the context of his work on the museum, the spiritual values of these people, the Romanian peasants, are presupposed by

Bernea‘s sentence and they overwhelm their material values. Paradoxically, the museum‘s exhibits, which are obviously various material objects, suggest in their materiality the spiritually oriented life of their makers.

Matter, under the form of materials used in icons and liturgical arts (but not exclusively) appears now as an indispensable stepping stone in the spiritual growth of human beings. In any manmade objects, especially art works and, most of all, liturgical

113 Horia Bernea, Câteva gânduri despre muzeu, cantitate, materialitate şi încrucişare; Irina Nicolau, Carmen Huluţă, Dosar sentimental. Bucharest: Ars Docendi, 2001, p. 15, now available online at http://editura.liternet.ro/carte/48/Luiza -Barcan-Vali-Florescu/Cateva-ganduri-despre-muzeu-cantitati- materialitate-si-incrucisare-Dosar-sentimental.html accessed 07/25/2008

86 art works, matter is shaped by the human spirit, and the final product bears its mark.

Materiality, the word preferred by Bernea, refers therefore to more than just the visible properties of objects.

Another important thing is that matter has a spiritual purpose: the salvation of men and women is worked through it. If their spirit clings to this matter (i.e. icons) in an appropriate way, without despising it and without worshiping it, they will be saved. This is how St. John of Damascus presented matter in his three treatises united under the title

On the Holy Images114, one of the better known works written in opposition to iconoclasm: ―Do not despise matter, for it is not despicable. God has made nothing despicable. To think such things is Manichaeism.‖ An opposition between spirit and matter making spirit ―good‖ and matter ―bad‖ is misleading. Material things can cause the spiritually immature soul to crave for them and thus be separated from God, but when matter is used in icons, crucifixes and liturgical objects (St. John does not address the issue of architecture), it works contrariwise, in helping the soul on its spiritual ascent to

God. On the other hand, the ―spiritual realm‖ is full of dangerous surprises for the spiritually immature persons who think they should see angels or have ―spiritual experiences‖, for satan can easily appear to them as an angel of light (2 Corinthians

11:14), in order to mislead them.

In referring to materials used for painting icons, St. John wrote:

I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God.

114 St. John of Damascus, Apologia against those who decry holy images. Found online at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/johndamascus-images.asp .

87 If in the other sentence he warned against despising matter, here he warns against the opposite, but equally dangerous error of over-valuing matter. If living today, the saint might have said: ―to think such things is materialism‖.

This interplay of matter and spirit that we normally overlook today should be taken into account when considering Bernea‘s thoughts on materiality. In his view, materiality is shaped by spirituality.

2. Introducing Roma Caput Mundi

Bernea first used the word materiality in his already mentioned notes for the

Museum of the Romanian Peasant project. However, it is during his stay in Rome in the late 1990‘s that he developed all the nuances of the concept, subsequently presented in the volume Roma Caput Mundi. This exquisite book was born spontaneously from a series of conversations between Bernea, who at the time (1998-1999) had a creation grant at the Accademia di Romania in Rome, and Teodor Baconsky (b. 1963), the ambassador of Romania to the Holy See from 1997 to 2001 and Minister of External Affairs since

2009,115 and who, besides his diplomatic career, is a theologian and essayist. Their walks through Rome and the conversations that accompanied them proved to be rich and heavy with multiple levels of interpretation of the Eternal City, branching out in multiple directions. They soon made the decision to record the conversations, which in turn led to the creation of the book Roma Caput Mundi. The book, as well as each individual conversation, is introduced by a short text by Baconsky, amply illustrated with photographs and art created by Bernea, and supplemented by encyclopedic notes

115 He has changed the spelling of his name from Baconsky to Baconschi, retaining the former as a pen name only.

88 compiled by Baconsky. The illustrations capture the Roman environment that the two interlocutors had in front of their eyes, as well as certain other images that they were referring to in their peripatetic conversations.

In one of his introductory essays, Baconsky brings to our attention two important ideas, which I am presenting here because they introduce us to Bernea‘s concept of ―rich materiality.‖ One of them is that in our contemporary multi-mediated experience, the authentic experience of actual cultural objects tends to be obscured by many layers of information and convention, until they seem nothing more than magnified versions of their own representations. Only by unmediated contact can this illusion be overcome, aided by a certain sort of humility and perhaps by the exercise of conversation. He writes:

In our multimedial epoch, the reality of culture becomes transparent. You have the feeling that the image of the seen object is a window on a computer screen. Such a feeling becomes even more poignant in Rome, where the monuments of the first circle (such as the Pantheon or the Colosseum) seem hyper-signs or postcards. I believe that the dialogue on site, conceived as play in motion, can remedy this de- actualization of the visual field. All intercalated elements—didactic information, the repetitive memory of the conventional signal, in short, the obnubilating116 cultural reflexes which mystify the purity of sight—can be transfigured through the magnifying effect of total contiguity. In order to believe again, in order to respect the fact, you need the empirical experience of contact, the immersion in the pores of materials, the physical contingence from which springs the simple certainty of mass.117

Inspired by Bernea‘s vision, Baconsky pleads for a direct, multi-sensorial contact with actual objects (in this case the city of Rome and her buildings) for overcoming the mediated, chiefly visual experience that tends to alienate us from reality nowadays. In this, he is in agreement with architects such as Zumthor and Pallasmaa.

116 To obnubilate—to cloud over; to make unclear or difficult to understand. 117 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 13, my translation.

89 The point that Baconsky is making and which is relevant for our topic is that the particular hermeneutic directions followed by both authors in their Roman conversation were influenced by their Orthodox Christian background. He writes:

It is often said that the point of view creates the object. The ―object‖ Rome can be looked at in a variety of ways: archaeological, historical, aesthetical, theological, and metaphysical. We preferred to look at her from the perspective of our own faith. However, in the book that we present now to the Romanian public, neither of us makes from his denominational membership an active matrix. There has not been, obviously, any explicit agreement on this, but, rereading our conversations, I realize we do not perceive our Orthodox identity as an absorbent accumulation, but rather as an imponderable instrument. 118

Although Bernea and Baconsky are both Orthodox Christians and this is noticeable in their hermeneutic approach to Rome, this is not made from a unilateral standpoint. In their multidisciplinary interpretations, they take advantage of the depth and complexity of their respective intellectual and artistic backgrounds in order to productively explore such a vast subject. The Orthodox component of their backgrounds serves the important role of illuminating and discerning subtle issues which, in a purely secular approach, would go either unnoticed or unexplained.

On page 26, Baconsky brings up the question of how a devout Orthodox believer such as Bernea feels in Rome. Is he in any way made uncomfortable by being in the capital of the Roman Catholic Church, which broke off with the Orthodox Church in

1054 in the Great Schism, and then indirectly caused the warriors of the Fourth Crusade to destroy and pillage the Orthodox capital of Constantinople in 1204? Bernea is not, however, as much concerned with this tragedy as with what is fundamentally Christian in pre-Schism Rome, and even in pre-Christian Rome, as paradoxical as this may seem.

Bernea summarizes his answer this way:

118 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 16, my translation.

90 How does an Orthodox feel in Rome? How should feel here a man who completely appropriated the ―responsibility‖ of an Orthodox Christian, after many efforts, ordeals, and tortuous ways…? How would feel on the streets of Rome an intellectual who has a strong, but unconscious Orthodox background? I believe that precisely the obvious fact of my Orthodox Christianity—clear and free of complexes, full of joy and self-evident—, precisely this fact made me feel at home in Rome! Right from the first moment! My ―Orthodoxy‖ felt that natural and hardly noticeable insertion in the Roman cityscape. This makes me say that something very important in Rome is ―Orthodox;‖ beyond and above all things, histories, and contexts. With a metaphor completely devoid of Protochronistic119 pretensions, I would say we [Romanians] were in Rome before ―proceeding‖ from her. In the sense that we participate in the Christianity in the catacombs, in that atmosphere, age, state of spirit, especially, which embraced the forms of the Christian experience; but, this primordial state continues to subsist—and is subsisting in Rome—even when we think than the destinies of the two Christianities are divided.120

Bernea‘s presence in Rome is not polemical; he embraces the city wholeheartedly. As he will explain in more detail later, he recognizes in Rome something ineffably familiar.

Therein lies one of the origin points of Christianity, and more specifically, the origin point of how Christianity manifested itself in art and architecture. Much of the heritage of the Early Christian era is still present in the city, integrated organically rather than preserved as in a museum. This happens also because, as Bernea will further explain,

Early Christian and Byzantine art and architecture evolved naturally from their Ancient

Roman counterparts: ―Only a true Orthodox feels well and at home in Rome, because he can discern a thing which in my opinion is essential: the pre-Christian, the Republican and especially the Imperial Rome contains all the data for receiving the Christian revelation.‖121 This reminds Baconsky of the Early Christian authors who argued that,

119 Protochronism is a specific aspect of Romanian nationalism which flourished especially under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Protochronists made untenable claims about Romanians and their ancestors, the Dacians, which they attempted to support by selecting and distorting historical facts. For example, one of their favorite claims is that writing was first invented on what is now Romanian territory. Obviously, Bernea did not wish to be associated with this trend. 120 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 27, my translation. 121 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 27.

91 just as the Law taught by Moses prepared the Jewish nation to receive Jesus Christ, the

Greek philosophy had the same role for the pagan Greco-Roman world.122

a) The first discussion on materiality in Roma Caput Mundi

In explaining how Rome was prepared to receive the Christian faith, Bernea argues that, in his view, it was the materiality of Roman art that was the key quality that informed the transition to Early Christian art. He uses the concept without defining it, but the examples and illustrations he provides are more than enough for circumscribing what he means by materiality. He starts making his point this way:

Let us take, for instance, the example of Roman painting, largely contemporary with the beginnings of Christianity: inspecting it, I notice immediately that, in the intrinsic aspect of its materiality—therefore not at the exterior level of its imagery, but at that of its type of plastic ―flesh‖—, it ―prepares‖ the icon. It is hard to believe, but this is the truth. If you follow the development of the Roman painting, you realize that it becomes less and less abstract. The degree of convention increases, because, as I have said before, convention creates, supports, perpetuates a civilization. The Roman panels are full of citations, of collages of mythological themes with unanimously known symbolism. And, at the same time, the painting becomes heavier and heavier with matter; it is more organic, more substantial. This is composed I‘m referring especially to the period of the so-called medallions: areas of 4 by 6 meters of dense monochromatic background, vibrating with the density of color, on which is placed a medallion of 8 by 14 centimeters where are exquisitely painted two tiny birds eating a nut, for example. Those people had the science, the refinement of the breathing space, of the immense intermission, of the void, but a void very concretely represented, ―made sensible.‖ The type of materiality of the icon, its massive, unctuous, full, deep paste is related, in my opinion, with the quality of pictorial substance specific to the third Roman period, during Nero‘s reign.123

Bernea draws an interesting parallel between the late Roman painting and the art of Early

Christian and Byzantine iconography. They are both highly conventional or

122 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 29. 123 Roma Caput Mundi, pp. 29-30, my translation.

92 standardized, so that anybody familiar with the respective culture could identify the subject matter at a glance, as well as the connected symbolism. Such an art where there is little formal innovation would be flat and un-engaging without the plastic quality that

―incarnates‖ the conventional images, making them concrete. This important quality is materiality, briefly defined by Bernea here as the ―plastic flesh‖ of an art work. While it is obvious that generally speaking materiality is the quality of a thing of being material, concrete, palpable, the concept has, at least in Romanian and French, another less known meaning confined to the visual arts. In this context, materiality is a manner of representation that depicts more of the material appearance of a thing than its mere form and color. One of the possible techniques is, for example, to take advantage of the consistency of paint and of the texture created by brushstrokes. However, Bernea forces the limits of the concept to include non-figurative elements such as the monochromatic background, and later on he will refer to architecture as well. It is important to note that he describes the materiality of this type of Roman painting with attributes that emphasize concreteness: ―heavier and heavier with matter,‖ ―substantial,‖ ―dense,‖ ―made sensible;‖

―flesh‖ and ―organic‖ go further to suggest the concreteness of life. There is also a synaesthetic reference in the words ―vibrating with the density of color.‖ The materiality of icons is described as based on a ―massive, unctuous, full, deep paste,‖ which alludes to the egg-yolk-based tempera technique and to the final appearance achieved after varnishing.

Bernea goes on to investigate what happened with the materiality of art in

Western Europe. He can identify a slowly emerging process that ―started immediately after Giotto,‖ which he describes as ―[a] sort of loss, of anaemia of the pictorial

93 matter.‖124 His words express the exact opposite of the concreteness of life seen above in the materiality of Roman painting. He attributes this deterioration of materiality to a seemingly subtle but radical change in the Western worldview:

I once read—I am not at all cultivated in this respect—a text about Petrarch and his work which stated that, according to the great poet, the essence of humanism focuses on the concern for man. But who is the Man par excellence? Jesus Christ. I can note an enormous difference between this type of syllogism and the stage at which the secular ―humanism‖ of the last centuries arrived. 125

Bernea seems to argue here that the Italian poet, who was one of the earliest humanists of the Renaissance, still had a theocentric worldview, in spite of the apparent anthropocentrism of the humanistic movement. This will change in the following centuries as the minor premise of the syllogism (Jesus Christ is the Man par excellence) will slowly be erased from the Western consciousness, leaving the humanistic anthropocentrism entirely disconnected from the Christian God. This, in Bernea‘s view, is the theological and philosophical counterpart of the ―anaemia of pictorial matter‖ in the arts.

Prompted by Baconsky to exemplify, he refers to Michelangelo as the one who first made radical changes in the way Western European artists painted:

A tumultuous ―demiurge‖ had to come in order to destroy the parsimonious rigor so specific to the pictorial space of the Middle Ages. One like Michelangelo had to be born in order to break with tradition. I look at the saints painted from Michelangelo and Caravaggio onwards: you don‘t see, as a matter of fact, human beings anymore. They are gigantic muscular constructions that mask the spiritual dimension, tormented behind the surface forms. Representations of matter, expressed through a precarious materiality.126

124 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 32. 125 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 33, my translation. 126 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 34, my translation.

94 Michelangelo brought into the art of painting not only his genius, but also his experience and talent in three-dimensional sculpture. Instead of capitalizing on the forms of expression specific to painting, he moulds the bodies and faces of his characters as if they are preliminary sketches for sculptural compositions: contours and shading define three- dimensional volumes. Color is an afterthought, and materiality not a concern.

Michelangelo‘s characters adopt dramatic facial expressions and body postures, which are made even more dramatic by the artist‘s use of extremely muscular models. This, as

Bernea notes, is very far from the previously well-established manner of depicting human characters: in medieval painting, human bodies were to a degree represented in a schematic manner. Moreover, the saintly characters were usually depicted calm and composed, while the others (for example Judas in the Last Supper) exhibited contorted bodies and faces reflecting their tormented psyche. By contrast, in Michelangelo‘s work

(for example his Last Judgment) all characters, no matter if angels, saints, or damned sinners, seem at first glance equally contorted and tormented. This makes Bernea doubt this art‘s capacity to express what he calls ―the spiritual dimension.‖127

Of course, Bernea will return to qualify his critical comments on the Renaissance and Baroque, which could be misunderstood as entirely negative or as more general than he intended. He dismisses this impression that his words may have left in the listener or reader:

Culturally speaking, it seems an aberration to me to condemn certain epochs and to exalt others. But in my inner forum I can make

127 I tried here to explain Bernea‘s cryptic statements, relying on the lectures Sorin Dumitrescu held in 2001-2002 at the ―Sacred Space‖ graduate program I attended in Bucharest. Sorin Dumitrescu (born 1946) is a Romanian artist. Following his discovery of Orthodoxy in the 1980‘s, his art will receive influences from the art of the icon and the symbolism present in the liturgical arts. Since 1990, he became a more public figure with the management of the art gallery Catacomba and the publishing house Anastasia. He also wrote a book of interviews with the renowned theologian Dumitru Stăniloaie, 7 mornings with Father Stăniloaie, published at Anastasia in 1992, as well as several collections of essays.

95 options, I can have preferences due to an affinity with a certain stylistic order, with a certain sort of balance and artistic expression. 128

Bernea‘s comments are not intended to be an attack on the Renaissance and Baroque, but an explanation for his preferences, for the reasons why he is more attracted to a different type of religious art, characteristic for the entire Early Christianity but then abandoned in

Western Europe. This does not mean that the Renaissance and Baroque do not have their own merits, for which they are quite universally acclaimed.

I have also included another citation from Bernea, which is not related to materiality as such, but helps illuminate the spatial and spiritual conceptions of Byzantine church architecture, as distinct from Catholic Baroque:

Why does sculpture in churches disturb me? The reason is its formal inadequacy. If a volume protrudes from the plane of a wall, this results in something misshapen, like a club hitting you in the head. Byzantine sculpture limits itself to being a column, a capital—it is justified in any case by an obvious functionality. The sculpted columns in a Byzantine church murmur a sort of melody which potentiates the usual quietness of the holy place. All forms are subsumed by a dominating order.129

Bernea expresses his uneasiness with the presence of three-dimensional sculpture in churches, a feature used so enthusiastically in Baroque architecture for its dramatic, emotionally stirring effect. By contrast, Byzantine churches do not have such elements, which would contradict the strong formal hierarchies of their architecture and would conflict with the design intention of creating an atmosphere of spiritual contemplation.

The rhythm of columns and capitals, alike but not identical, emphasize this ineffable quality of Byzantine church interiors.

128 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 36, my translation. 129 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 40, my translation.

96 b) The second discussion on materiality in Roma Caput Mundi

Another of Bernea‘s comments not strictly related to materiality concerns the colors of Rome. Asked by Baconski what he thinks about the “colors of the City,”

Bernea replies:

There is a cataclysm of earths… Think about the commonplace forms that live through this pale plum color130 or this earthy brown,131 through the burnt clay colors impregnated in the plaster of all ancient buildings. Compared to the pompous formal complication of the Baroque, these enormous brick-red façades express an almost frightening simplicity. The telluric color palette of the great walls around the Vatican is also present on a multitude of façades in all Italy… But there is also a palette of brown-red tones, akin with flesh, of a ―heavy,‖ dense materiality, associable with Rembrandt‘s paste. I would say there is no fracture, from the standpoint of materiality and color, between the sarcophagi at Santa Cecilia, the paintings at Pompeii, and the urban landscape of today‘s Rome.132

This passage opens the second interesting discussion about materiality in the book.

Bernea starts speaking about the richness of Roman colors, but imperceptibly transitions towards speaking about the richness of Roman materiality. An architect would most likely consider these façade treatments quite immaterial and would be surprised that

Bernea refers to their materiality. But while the façade plasters and paints are flimsy in their two-dimensionality, they have a materiality of their own, akin with that of Roman frescos. And indeed, as suggested by Bernea, they share the same technique—applying the water-based pigment on the lime-based plaster while it is still fresh—and the same pigments—mostly earth colors based on the local types of clay, rich in various metallic oxides and used raw or burnt.

130 I could not find an accurate translation of the rather ambiguous Romanian word Bernea used (“vineţiu”). Based on photographs, I assumed it refers to a palette of rather undefined pale colors in the beige-grey area, with a purplish tinge. 131 This is most likely a shade of yellowish-brown ochre. The Romanian word used by Bernea (“pământiu”) means ―earth-colored,‖ but also ―sallow.‖ 132 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 72, my translation.

97 […] beyond my problem as a painter, we cannot deny that form, color, and materiality are three essential things in architecture. Painters will speak about form and color, and architects, usually, only about form. But the true key of interpretation of a work of art is offered by its materiality. The fact that an object is made of clay, of reinforced concrete, of plastic or of steel influences fundamentally the form, the meaning, the context, the finality, the possibilities of reading, the direction of measurements… I am certain that ten meters of clay are not equal to ten meters of steel!133

Bernea refers to an important trend in the recent history of art and architecture, which is the preference for the abstract and for the purity of geometry. One has only to think about Le Corbusier‘s many pages on form and geometry, while on materials he wrote rather briefly that industrially produced ones were more reliable than the more traditional ones. He was envisaging architecture breaking free from material constraints such as the thickness of walls or the limited span of windows, not to mention the limited possibilities of expression. For Bernea, however, this utopian freedom is pointless, if not even misguided. In his opinion, creating a specific form with a specific function, and ultimately a meaning, is impossible without creating a specific materiality, which means materials, with their strengths and weaknesses, should be considered in the creative process from the very beginning. Looking at materiality will reveal more about the creative process and even about the artist‘s worldview than looking at the mere form of an art work.

[…] what ensures the originality of Roman painting from its first phase until today is precisely the fact that it represents exactly the same world. There are the same houses, there is the same type of materiality, and therefore there is unity of substance, almost consubstantiality. This is how I explain the fact that in Rome, in a frequently contrasting universe of forms which otherwise would be upsetting, harmony is saved by this unity of materials… Surfaces are nurtured here under the same sky… 134

133 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 72, my translation. 134 Roma Caput Mundi, pp. 72-73, my translation.

98 Bernea continues by giving Rome as an example for his theory on materials and materiality. It seems that by a slip of the tongue the artist mentioned painting instead of architecture, which in Rome creates a unitary urban environment spanning over several millennia and civilizations. This architectural and urban unity is what Bernea calls ―the same world,‖ and which has occurred not without a certain unity of worldview. Roman builders have always worked with the same materials and have followed the local tradition at least in this respect, even when they were being otherwise innovative. The same kinds of stones and bricks, the same kinds of plasters and of earth-based paints generate a unity not only of materials but also of materiality when their colors and textures are quickened by the Mediterranean sun, softening thus any harsh contrast that may appear at the geometrical level of architectural composition.

The problem of materiality is an older obsession of mine; I have never thought it would attain the generalizing and widely encompassing aspect that I experience today. I believe the moment when this ripening of the problem occurred derives precisely from my Roman sojourns. Roman painting, especially certain examples of the periods III and IV, overlapped to the ancient and unexplainable quality of the Egyptian post-Ptolemaic portrait, has dwelled in me, awakening the awareness of the importance of materiality in painting and sculpture, in architecture and, most likely, in music and literature also. I have come, consequently, to define in the ultimate analysis culture as a just rapport to matter… Art—as a judicious and adequate rapport to the proposed aim by the means of matter. No complete period in the history of spirit was ever possible without a just expression in the material plane. A poor rapport to matter usually represents decadence, superficiality, dryness… Superficial means, after all, a look that does not go into the material depth of the problems— material in the most proper sense. The genius of Christianity is precisely this: it does not forget that the spirit, in order to be able to work in the world, needs to become embodied! The body that gets saturated with spirit, on which the spirit sits, to which the spirit can cling! This is the human condition full and clear—which was forever marked by the coming of the Savior.135

135 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 73, my translation.

99 In this paragraph, Bernea explains how his vivid interest in the question of materiality expanded over the years from a rather narrow question concerning Roman and late

Egyptian painting to a much wider scope. The time he spent in Rome acted as a catalyst in this respect. In Rome he noticed that the concept of materiality can be expanded from painting to sculpture and architecture, leaving open the possibility of including the other arts as well. Pondering on the issue led him to conclude that materiality as an artistic quality is the result of a more or less conscious approach to matter. He comes to define culture as ―a just rapport to matter‖, an approach to matter which is right in the sense of assigning neither too much or too little importance to it, but also right in the sense of coming from the correct standpoint. He also comes to define art as ―a judicious and adequate rapport to the proposed aim by the means of matter‖, a creative approach which does not neglect or misuse the fabric of the work of art in the process leading from concept to object.

These definitions may seem too narrow or too strange, but Bernea argues that no cultural epoch has been able to reach fruition without this particular sort of discernment in relating to matter and in using matter for artistic purposes. Lack of discernment has led, on the contrary, to decadence when materials were unduly glorified and to superficiality when the material aspect was neglected. According to Bernea, this superficiality of material expression in art is a sign that in a specific culture another sort of superficiality is also present, one which avoids the “material depth of the problems‖.

By contrast, he refers then to Christianity and its twofold concern for spirit and matter.

His words may seem rather cryptic here, given that his dialogue companion was an Orthodox Christian theologian and did not need a detailed account, but they refer to

100 some of the basic tenets of Orthodox Christianity on human nature and salvation. Man has a twofold nature, spiritual as well as material, which are closely interconnected. For the sake of man, who was in a fallen state, the Son of God assumed human nature and became man. His death and resurrection opened the way to a renewed, immortal life for all those who come in communion with Him in the Church. This sanctification of the members of the Church takes place through the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which acts secretly and invisibly, but through material symbols: the water of Baptism, the oil of

Chrism, the Bread and Wine of the Holy Communion. The same is true in art: icons are visible depictions of spiritual realities, and church architecture carries multiple symbolic meanings, from cosmology (an image of the created Cosmos) to theology (an image of the Church as a mystical body, but also of the Heavenly Jerusalem). All these material symbols address themselves to the senses of the body, but through them the human soul is lifted to higher spiritual realities; without material symbols, the spiritual realm would remain inaccessible.

To what degree this thing [materiality] is important, vital? If we follow the ―matter‖ of Roman painting generally speaking, we are surprised by the degree of saturation of surfaces—especially those without place or dimension, of ―backgrounds‖, which later were replaced by gold. Let us compare it with the late post-Renaissance fresco painting, or with Tiepolo. What empty carcass that contains nothing—from a material standpoint—we can find in all the Baroque painting and after it! Until the Impressionists, save for entirely exceptional cases (Velázquez, Goya, Rembrandt, Chardin or Courbet), the problem of ―matter‖ is treated in an entirely subsidiary manner and according to the artist‘s vocation. The English landscape painters, especially Turner and Constable, or Corot in France, and, in the fullest, the Impressionist moment with all the brilliant team which follows (Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Seurat—as strange as it may seem!) rehabilitate, even if not programmatically, the matter and the materiality into which the image imprints itself, unto which it clings. The question concerns a kind of matter with which the artist lives, a matter which is the key of the whole pictorial gesture. This kind of matter is ubiquitous in Roman art, in the late Egyptian portrait and in

101 icons. We can see in late examples, such as the paintings at the Arbore Monastery, what degree of importance was attached to matter. 136

This paragraph focuses on painting and not on architecture, but in it Bernea has some rather important points to make, and he refers to painting in order to illustrate them. He admires the Roman painters, who in their art used not only the beauty of formal composition, but also the formless beauty of richly colored backgrounds and surfaces.

The Baroque, on the contrary, concentrates on formal composition, in which artists invest all their talent and imagination, while materiality falls out of focus. Giambattista Tiepolo

(1696-1770)137 was an artist of Venetian origin and European fame, who adorned with

Rococo frescoes churches and palaces in Italy, Germany, and Spain. His compositions, especially the very impressive ceiling frescoes he created (such as The Apotheosis of

Spain in the Royal Palace of Madrid or The Allegory of the Planets and Continents in the

Würzburg Rezidenz), are staggering in their formal sophistication, but feel dull and empty in their color palette and materiality.

By contrast, how lively in their concreteness are Las Meninas by Diego

Velázquez (1599-1660), or his Old Woman Frying Eggs; how tangibly tragic are The

Charge of the Mamelukes and The Third of May 1808 by Francisco Goya (1746-1828); how vivid and expressive in their materiality are Rembrandt‘s (1606-1669) portraits and self-portraits; how richly textured are Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin‘s (1699-1779) still life paintings; how strikingly fresh are Gustave Courbet‘s (1819-1877) landscapes.

Equally vivid are the landscapes painted by John Constable (1776-1837) and Camille

Corot (1796-1875), while Turner (1775-1851) goes a step further. His landscapes are

136 Roma Caput Mundi, pp. 73-74, my translation. 137 All information on Tiepolo and the other artists mentioned by Bernea in this paragraph, as well as the consulted exampled of their work, come from Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, found on the Internet at http://www.wikipedia.org/ .

102 first of all landscapes of light, which receives an expression on the canvas through form

(composition) and matter (brushstrokes of paint). In roughly the second half of the 19th century, Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet (1840-1926), Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(1841-1919), or Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) were using these means, form as well as the texture and mixture of colors and brush strokes, in order to capture an impression of the fleeting plays of light and color in everyday scenes, landscapes, or portraits. In the following decades, the Post-Impressionists continued this work in their own manner.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) is famous for his brushstroke work into the thickness of the paint in his Sunflowers, as well as in the lesser known Flowering Orchards or the Old

Mill. Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) used gentler, flatter brushstrokes and a vivid color palette to create simpler forms and smoother textures. Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) moved towards using even flatter, clearly delineated surfaces of thick, uniformly colored paint.

Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891), a Neo-Impressionist, used carefully laid dots of pure, but contrasting colors, which blend optically in the eye of the viewer. This is the rehabilitation of matter that Bernea speaks of: to be mindful of the material means one, whether painter or architect, uses in order to bring into reality one‘s concept of a formal composition. In order to become real, form needs matter in which to “imprint” itself; the artist needs to be familiar with this matter, to “live” with it, before using it successfully in his efforts.

After supporting his point with so many modern examples, Bernea refers again to the areas of traditional art where he can notice the same relationship between artist and matter: Rome, late Egypt, and the Byzantine art of the icon. He mentions the

103 iconography at Arbore (built in 1503, painted in 1541),138 one of the ―painted monasteries‖ of Northern Moldavia,139 as a late example of late post-Byzantine art of the same material intensity. He draws the conclusion in the next paragraph, turning from painting to 12. Arbore Monastery church, 16th century. architecture: Detail of Last Judgment on western façade.

If I resume, I will say that a great part of culture is a good dosage of different sorts of materiality or the finding of the happy (expressive) rapport between them. In this regard, Rome and Venice become the ―cities,‖ emblematic cities: Rome, with its solidity and diversity, Venice, with its light, elegant matter, as that of a marine animal. 140

Bernea concludes that in art and architecture it is of chief importance to know how to work in different manners, as appropriate, with one‘s material means of expression. In my interpretation, he refers to using various textures, from smooth to rough, and various materials with their natural or manmade texture, such as brick, stone (which can be cut, carved, polished, or left raw), plaster, paint, wood, metal, and glass. Rome, the long- enduring capital of a long-enduring empire, had its massive geometry built of stone and brick, and painted in natural, earthy tones. Venice, the capital of a maritime republic, built literally and figuratively on the waters, is more delicate in its geometry and more flamboyant in its materiality. Buildings ―float‖ over the blue-green canals, their bodies painted in rich reds, browns, or yellows, or even clad in white and colored marble, and decorated with delicate, lace-like arcades. It is remarkable that Byzantium inherited from

138 Vasile Drăguţ, Dicţionar enciclopedic de artă medievală românească. Bucharest: Editura Vremea, 2000, pp. 30-31. 139 For more information, see: Alan Ogden, Revelations of Byzantium: the monasteries and painted churches of Northern Moldavia. Iaşi; Oxford; Portland, Oregon: Center for Romanian Studies, 2002. 140 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 74, my translation.

104 Rome the taste for earthy solidity, while Venice inherited from Byzantium the taste for resplendent marble claddings and ornaments (many of which were actually spoiled from

Constantinople in the year of dark memory 1204).

c) The third discussion on materiality in Roma Caput Mundi

This discussion followed a visit at the church of Santa Prassede and involved new comparisons between Byzantine art and post-medieval Western art from the standpoint of materiality. Bernea expressed the following opinion:

Roughly after the 13th century, Western Christian art loses its materiality… without which the sacred is dead. Instead of the thick tapestry of mosaic from St. Zenon‘s chapel, you have in front of your eyes a sort of naked thing, about which you read it is St. John the Baptist. To your surprise, you see a youthful ephebe… 141

Bernea reasserts more clearly here something already suggested earlier: sacred art is a material symbol of spiritual reality, and as such needs an appropriate material expression, an example of which is the mosaic of Byzantine tradition in St. Zeno‘s chapel at the church of Santa Prassede (9th century). He compares the art of mosaic with the art of weaving, to be more precise with the art of Oriental rugs, which also consists of placing together small pieces of colored matter, threads in one case and glass paste tesserae in the other. He argues, probably having fresh in his memory a recently viewed example, against the art which relies too much on drawing and formal composition, neglecting the material aspect of artistic expression. In addition, apparently this poor example also relies too much on imitating the art of Antiquity (a naked ephebe) and too little on the consecrated tradition of depicting a saint. In the Byzantine tradition, St. John the Baptist is represented as a mature man, emaciated because of his fasting in the desert, and

141 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 124, my translation.

105 clothed in animal skins. Bernea‘s reactions to Renaissance art are caused as well by such departures from established convention.

The Byzantine icon from its age of glory and even from later times (the Theotokos at the Bistriţa monastery, for example, or that much more recent at the now gone church of St. Paraskevi, then the icons of St. Nicholas from various epochs generally speaking or the Military Saints from the 14th-17th centuries) presents emaciated, schematic, abstracted, hieratic, incorporeal figures, which are however expressed through a resplendent and full matter, through the juxtaposition of surface qualities which ―sound‖ fully and feed masterly the eye. On the other side, a painting more or less religious, from Cinquecento to Ottocento: carnal, strong, muscular characters, set in work through a dry, abstract matter, which is in most cases drained of what would be appropriate to the subject matter and to a superior rejoicing of the spirit. 142

Bernea compares the art of the icon in the

Byzantine and post-Byzantine era with that of the secularized Occident, from the 16th to the 19th century. My assumption is that he refers here to

Romanian icons and frescoes that he was familiar with, either from churches or from museums. I am not aware of which Theotokos icon he speaks of, considering there are two monasteries called

Bistriţa in Romania, one founded at the beginning of the 15th century, the main church of which was 13. Theotokos Hodegetria, 16th century, Wallachian workshop, National Art rebuilt in 1554, and another founded at the end of Museum of Romania. the 15th century, and whose main church suffered various reconstructions, the present one dating from the mid-19th century.143 The icon Bernea refers to may belong to either of these and may be found either on site or in a museum, such as the National Museum of

142 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 124, my translation. 143 Dicţionar enciclopedic de artă medievală românească, pp. 80-83.

106 Art in Bucharest. The church of St. Paraskevi (called popularly in Romania Sfânta

Vineri, literally St. Friday, because this is the meaning of the Greek name of this saint), was built in 1839 on the site of an earlier one, and was repaired and expanded in 1896 and 1913. Much beloved by the people of Bucharest, the church was destroyed on

Friday, the 20th of June 1987, during an urban planning campaign undertaken by the anti- traditional and anti-Christian Communist regime.144 I am not aware of what happened to the Theotokos icon (most likely a part of the iconostasis) mentioned by Bernea. In many late Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches, the images of Military Saints compose the lowest iconographic register of the nave, surrounding the faithful. They are represented fully armed and armored, according to their situation in earthly life, but symbolizing also the spiritual armor that St. Paul, in his epistles, advises his disciples to wear at all times.145 It is likely that these representations of armor, more or less fantastic in their forms and colors after centuries of reinterpretation, are one of the reasons why Bernea mentions the Military Saints here.

Regardless of his preferred examples, Bernea pinpoints a fundamental aspect of

Orthodox iconography. The geometry of bodies is elongated and, to a degree, conventional, while hands and faces, and especially eyes, are very expressive. The manner of representing bodies owes undoubtedly much to the ascetical practices that

144 Lucia Stoica et al., Atlas-ghid: Istoria şi arhitectura lăcaşurilor de cult din Bucureşti, vol. 2. Bucharest: Ergorom ‘79, 2000, pp. 495-497. 145 ―The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the work of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.‖ (Romans 13:12) ―Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.‖ (Ephesians 6:10) ―Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and havin g done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the Gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God [...]‖ (Ephesians 6:13-17) ―But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.‖ (I Thessalonians 5:8)

107 most of the saints subjected themselves to, as well as to the particular physical appearance of the holy relics. Certain saints have received the charisma of having incorruptible bodies: after decades in the graves, their bodies were retrieved whole, dry, having a golden-yellow hue, and exuding a pleasant, myrrh-like scent, and sometimes even highly fragrant myrrh-like droplets of liquid. This is understood as a foretasting and anticipation of the glorification of the bodies of the righteous at their resurrection in the heavenly kingdom which will come after the end of this world. They will have a subtle, luminous, but nevertheless material nature. The future glorification of all the righteous, announced by the present glorification of the saints, is symbolized by depicting golden halos around the heads of the saints and by the virtual absence of all shadows in their icons. Therefore, these holy images represent something beyond our usual understanding, which is limited to the experience of our material world, which is why it is considered inappropriate for them to be drawn according to models belonging to it.

This is why muscular bodies, although they may look more realistic, and precisely because they are too realistic, do not find their place in traditional Orthodox icons.

Bernea also touches upon another aspect. The art he criticizes for muscularity is also an art which focuses on form and on emotional identification, while neglecting the material and reducing to a minimum color and texture. It tends towards idealizing the form and abstracting the matter, leaving it dry and inexpressive. On the other hand, the art of icons never forgets it is, first and foremost, a material expression of spiritual realities, which would otherwise be inaccessible. The icon enters the mind, heart, and spirit of the beholder through his senses, most notably the eyes; therefore it must be a feast for the eyes and a joy for the spirit. Colors are employed joyously and freely,

108 adorning for example the armors of military saints with fantastic coloring, subdued only by the taste of the artist; masterly brushstrokes suggest the texture of skin, hair, vestments, or precious objects with a remarkably expressive simplicity; and the gold of the halos, sometimes of the whole background, shimmers as a vivid reminder of the uncreated light of God, which He imparts to His faithful.

The following paragraphs depart from the issue of Byzantine iconography, and yet they are important because they clarify Bernea‘s position on artistic vocation. He asks rhetorically:

[…] Why do I feel that Van Gogh is impregnated with sacredness, while nobody treats him as a religious painter? Because he lives completely in the truth of art, in the truth of the artistic gesture, and his motivations are, ultimately, of a mystical order. He had in him something of a monk, his working style was ascetical, not to mention his way of manifesting his extraordinary dedication, although he had been condemned to marginality…146

Bernea is able to discern in Van Gogh‘s work his fervent faith, which could not be fulfilled in a life of religious mission, but which shaped his artistic vocation. He aspired to create art works that would lead the viewer to God. 147 This purpose inspired him to disregard all the little joys of life and to dedicate himself fully to his art, in what Bernea calls an ascetical manner. Van Gogh‘s life was not properly ascetic, as he did not follow any specific ascetic discipline to contain his passions, but he poured his soul and life into his work with great generosity, for God‘s glory, and this marked his art in the manner mentioned by Bernea.

Van Gogh and Cézanne wished passionately for the liberation of art, for its release from the blackness and darkness of the studio. They felt that the ultimate vocation of an authentic artist is that of glorifying something. They still fought for the freedom to praise, not for the right to

146 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 125, my translation. 147 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh accessed 07/20/2011.

109 destroy… Few interpreters followed the lead of this psychological structure. From Van Gogh they have retained his expressionist side, from Cézanne, only the passion for the analysis of forms, which would eventually generate cubism…148

Now Bernea also mentions Cézanne, another groundbreaking artist who had a hidden religious motivation. Van Gogh and Cézanne, like other painters of the time, abandoned studio work in favor of painting directly from nature. This impacted profoundly their choice of subjects and how they treated them—the colors, the light, and, last but not least, the materiality. In Bernea‘s view, the motivation of this gesture, at least in the case of Van Gogh and Cézanne, was to glorify God‘s Creation through their work.

This is why, although they felt constrained in the studio and in the classical tradition, they did not channel this feeling into destruction; they simply left the studio and started over, seeking peacefully what they felt was an appropriate way to praise God and His Creation.

A few pages below, Bernea revisits once more the theme of materiality. This final mention of the term compares and contrasts what he has defined as the traditional materiality of Rome, the unifying element of thousands of years of architecture from

Antiquity to Baroque, with the superficial gloss of contemporary materiality:

Certain thoughts, which seem very pregnant to me now, would not have been formulated if we had come to Rome a hundred years earlier. I‘m referring to the materiality of the city—to the consistency proper to Italy and especially to Rome: I believe we wouldn‘t have been able to discern it so well at the half of the 19th century, when any void was filled with the same type of matter: on the street, there were people dressed differently, there were the carts, the cattle, there were no shiny pavements, no luxury shops on the ground floors—that is, all those elements that almost antinomically emphasize the other type of matter… Compared to the gloss of a car like a piece of hard candy that‘s been partly sucked, these old walls appear into a completely different light than if we had seen them next to a cart covered with a canopy of sunburned hemp… 149

148 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 126, my translation. 149 Roma Caput Mundi, p. 130, my translation.

110 Contemporary Rome has intruding elements of a contrasting materiality—brightly lit shop windows, polished pavements, glossy cars—that seem to emphasize the earthy materiality of old Rome in a manner that would have been impossible a century ago.

This is, perhaps, because the intrusive elements are the fruits of a different worldview.

What was the fabric of life one or two hundred years ago has become today a precious relic; what is impressive in Rome is undoubtedly the fact that, in spite of the tireless advance of the new materiality, the old materiality is still overwhelmingly present.

3. A conclusion

In spite of their apparent vagueness, Bernea‘s words touch upon some key issues that concern, among others, the architects of new Orthodox churches. First, it is important to note that materiality may be rich or dry; rich materiality is characteristic to traditional architectures, while dry materiality is the privilege of modernity. Ascribing the richness of materiality to specific features such as structural expression, honest use of materials or sensuousness of textures may be useful to a degree, but also misleading. In

Bernea‘s view, it is spirituality and/or ideology at work behind the materiality that makes it either dry—not able to provide the human spirit with what it thirsts for—or rich—a feast for the eyes and a joy for the spirit. It is not a surprise, then, that our times produce the driest materiality of all: the technologies we use to produce our materials (even the most ―natural‖ ones) and to build our buildings are rooted in the most godless worldview in history. From the standpoint of quantity, it seems to work: we build more, faster, higher, and so forth. From the standpoint of quality, something seems to be lacking,

111 something that we seek as tourists or scholars in the welcoming presence of the buildings of old.

112 IV. The Root of the Issue: An Incompatibility of Worldviews Leading to

an Incompatibility of Architectural Expressions?

Architects who try to design Orthodox churches today have to mediate between two conflicting cultures: the Byzantine one, saturated with Orthodoxy, and that of the contemporary architectural profession, with roots in the Modern Movement and even deeper roots in Western modernity. They cannot simply make churches ―in the spirit of our times,‖ because churches have to be built in a different spirit in order to be churches.

It is equally impossible to go to the other extreme and build churches like those of old, because the materials, the technologies, and the professional competences of those times are for the most part inaccessible. But before getting there, there is a conflict of intentions, of key concepts and attitudes that are more or less radically opposed:

Tradition Progress

Constant reinterpretation of tradition Innovation and originality

Freedom of expression within the Individualism and absolute freedom of canonic limits of tradition expression

Changes in small steps Radical changes

Insertion in tradition Insertion in Zeitgeist

Reference to centuries-old prototypes Reference to recent works & self- reference

Contemporary to many generations Fleeting contemporaneity

Using traditional elements and Rejecting non-modern elements and composition composition

No strict position on contemporary Requiring contemporary materials and technologies technologies

Traditional structure and composition Programmatically anti-traditional using traditional materials and crafts, or structure, composition, materials, and

113 else not contrasting with traditional technologies composition

Arches, vaults and domes Right angles and trabeation preferred

Ornament is essential Ornament is obsolete

Most beautiful and precious materials Economic solutions

Most skilled craftsmen Prefabrication

Rich materiality Dry materiality

Generous offering to God Utilitarianism

Behind this quarrel there is a conflict of worldviews that would be fascinating to uncover. Its roots are remarkably deep, going as far as tradition versus progress.

Although the traditional world(s) accept(s) changes, there is no constant quest for progress, evolution, innovation, originality etc., but rather a constant reinterpretation of tradition. The freedom of expression is limited by the canon of tradition, and individualism is discouraged. The reinterpretation of tradition allows for changes to occur, but these changes typically occur in small steps and represent a small quantity compared to what is kept unchanged. This is because the focus is not on the changes themselves, but on what is preserved and passed on. Moreover, it is most natural, at times, to go back to centuries-old prototypes, but this is neither pastiche, nor historicism, nor revivalism, because ―copies‖ are not done following precise treatises and surveys, and a fake re-insertion in past ages is not required. There has to be, however, a true and strong insertion in tradition, which was natural in previous centuries and requires an effort today, as conflicting worldviews and mentalities interfere. No matter how old the prototype, it is still standing, still used in its original purpose (with some sad exceptions),

114 still part of the living tradition and thus perpetually contemporary to countless generations.

The modern worldview that is behind the formation of architects in schools of architecture—and I testify that this happens in Bucharest—conflicts drastically with this traditional worldview and its way of dealing with architecture and art. Thus, opposed to the respect of tradition stands a restless quest for originality. Behind it there is a belief in progress, which is so strong that it is supposed that any innovation contributes to progress simply because it represents the Zeitgeist of a later moment in history. This is probably why other references than the Zeitgeist, e.g. to genius loci or to any centuries-old traditions is seen as strange and almost blasphemous by mainstream architects, in

Romania150 as well as in other places. Changes, then, are supposed to be as radical as possible; the motor of change, innovation, and originality is individualism. The individual‘s absolute freedom of expression resents the limits of traditional architectures and any references to traditional canons, unless for the purpose of breaking them.

However, references to recent works, which supposedly embody the same Zeitgeist, are allowed. Star architects, after being radical, usually become predictable by self- referencing their own previous works. It is striking that reference to early works of the

Modern Movement and related phenomena is admitted and considered refined; this points at a parallel tradition, opposed to any previous tradition but perhaps more dogmatic than any of them, and this in spite of being driven by individualism and by a relentless quest for innovation and originality. The insertion in this parallel tradition is done in schools of

150 There is probably a provincialist complex behind the desire to reject local tradition in the race for worldwide recognition; glamorous names of the international star system who make the glamorous pages of international journals of architecture are more likely to be imitated by local names making the ambitious pages of local journals of architecture, than thoughtful figures who might provide an alternative ideology.

115 architecture especially by rejecting non-modern features in student designs,151 and is very efficient: by the time they become architects, most students will not remember they have accepted certain things, perhaps against their own intuition, as being true beyond any doubt. Unfortunately, in many cases, after the brief moment of glory in the journals of the month or the longer moment of glory in histories of recent architecture, too often comes the re-evaluation, if not from the profession, then from the public.

Groundbreaking innovations are proclaimed as the latest embodiment of the Zeitgeist, get imitated by admirers, and then become obsolete, leaving the spotlight to yet other innovation for the sake of innovation. The faithful compliance to the Zeitgeist can only guarantee a fleeting contemporaneity: any building that tries too hard to be fashionable will fall out of fashion before needing any major repair works.

Why, then, is it necessary to theorize this quarrel, instead of letting things go their own way? Because, in the first place, Orthodox Christians have to realize the beauty, the richness and the importance of their tradition, which nowadays survives at the price of compromise. Theory cannot save it, but may open some eyes to beauties that go unnoticed today. A similar thing happened to the art of iconography, soon after the turn of the century, when Russian aristocrats fled to Paris because of the Bolshevik revolution.

In the Russian Diaspora, several authors started to deplore the decadence of iconography after Peter the Great, who imposed Western models for Russian art, decadence that then spread to all Orthodox countries, and to exalt the beauty and the subtlety of traditional

151 This observation based on my personal experience has been confirmed by the experience of architects with a variety of backgrounds, of different ages, coming from several different countries.

116 Russian and Byzantine icons.152 After that, gradually a practical interest in the subject grew out of the theoretical one. Nowadays, although there are still Kitsch icons showing corny Madonna‘s with blond curls and pink cheeks, and there are also pure pastiches that follow tradition in form but not in spirit, the iconographic art has recovered much of its lost vigor. This could and should also happen to church architecture. If aware of the extraordinary beauty of their authentic tradition, Orthodox Christians will not accept so easily cheap replicas adorned with mawkish cement moldings. Moreover, architects will not have to be ashamed at being associated with traditional church architecture and more of them will be open to it.153

Certain specific issues should be noted. Because of their commitment to the

Zeitgeist and the idea of progress, modern-mindset architects strongly adhere to contemporary materials and technologies, while traditional-mindset architects154 do not have a dogmatic position about them. ―Modernists‖ would like to express an honest contemporary structure and/or a minimalist/purist geometrical composition, while

―traditionalists‖ would be able to express a traditional structure and composition, using traditional materials and crafts, if easily available and affordable. However, in the real life they have to use contemporary materials and technologies in a manner not contrasting with traditional composition. While ―modernists‖ favor right angles and trabeation— although conceding to a dome on the naos and a conch on the altar apse—,

―traditionalists‖ use fully formed (i.e. not segmental) arches, vaults and domes. And,

152 I have recently read a highly plausible hypothesis: as Russians had many of their icons painted at Mount Athos, and this trade was (and still is) an important one for the Greek monastic republic, the Westernizing taste of the 18th century Russian nobility imposed itself over the Byzantine iconographic tradition. 153 Should it be an architecture without architects? Unfortunately, the mere absence of an architect does not guarantee success. In the Byzantine world, architect-less architecture developed after the 8th-9th century; before the iconoclastic crisis, designs were normally created by trained professionals. A well-known example is Hagia Sophia, designed by Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus. 154 Now I refer to authors of designs built during the recent years.

117 what is most important, ―modernists‖, because of their peculiar worldview based and progress and evolution, think ornament is obsolete; while ―traditionalists‖, regardless of their own competence in it, believe ornament is essential to church architecture. They know that no Zeitgeist, ever, will be able determine the disappearance of ornament from church architecture, a venerable tradition with its roots in the careful embellishments provided by King Solomon for the Temple in Jerusalem.

Also, King Solomon and, before him, his father David, took great care in selecting the best, the most beautiful and the most precious materials, as well as the best and most skilled craftsmen for carrying the great construction to its completion.

The traditional rich materiality, then, is merely the natural consequence of a worldview that ascribes to the place of worship the most beautiful natural materials (i.e. to God are offered the best gifts, chosen from the generous gifts that He has offered to humans in His Creation) and the careful and dedicated work of the best craftsmen. The more recent dry materiality is, by contrast, the result of a different worldview, which through a combination of utilitarianism, individualistic expressionism (in the best examples) and plain indifference (in the worst examples) ascribes to architecture of any kind only rational, efficient, and expedient construction technologies that remove any trace of craftsmanship from the process of building.

After writing the previous paragraph, a conclusion is imposing by itself; a conclusion formulated by Father Metodij Zaltanov155 in the summer of 2004, during the

Orthodox youth summer camp St. Andrew. When asked about the importance of materials in church architecture, he said the traditional ones are more beautiful, but the

155 Father Metodij Zaltanov is a hieromonk (a monastic priest) in Skopje, Macedonia (FYROM). Before his late conversion to Orthodox Christianity, he was a well-known Macedonian artist.

118 quality of church architecture does not stand as much in materials, or other easily quantifiable features, as in the faith of those who create it: architects (clients if they have a strong influence on the design), craftsmen, artists. Otherwise, in spite of the use of traditional materials and forms, the result lacks the spirit of tradition and fully deserves the labels: pastiche, historicism, and/or revivalism. Conversely, new materials should not be necessarily rejected, but used wisely and carefully when traditional materials are not available, because ―we are not Amish‖; that is, Orthodoxy does not reject technology or anything that can be used for a good purpose, but uses it discerningly. It is faith, i.e. spiritual maturity in the Church, the one that allows architects and others to discern what to do and what to avoid when designing a new church in order to make an architectural

―best offering‖ to God.

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