Water and Sacred Architecture
This edited book examines architectural representations that tie water as a physical and symbolic property with the sacred. The discussion centers on two levels of this relationship: how water influenced the sacredness of buildings across history and different religions; and how sacred architecture expressed the spiritual meaning of water. The volume deliberately offers original material on various unique contextual and design aspects of water and sacred architecture rather than an attempt to produce a historic chronological analysis on the topic or focusing on a specific geographical region. As such this unique volume adds a new dimension to the study of sacred architecture. The book’s chapters are compiled by a stellar group of scholars and practitioners from the US Canada Europe Asia and Africa. It addresses major aspects of water in religious buildings such as rituals pilgrimage water as a cultural material and place-making hydro systems modern practices environmental considerations the contribution of water to transforming secular into sacred and future digital/cyber context of water and sacredness. All chapters are based on original archival studies historical documents and field visits to the sites and buildings. These examinations show water as an expression of architectural design its materiality and its spiritual values. The book will be of interest to architects historians environmentalists archaeologists religious scholars and preservationists.
