The Return of Sacred Architecture

This book explains how modern architecture is emblematic of our current estrangement from the spiritual principles that shaped humanity's greatest civilisations. The ugly buildings that characterise the modern landscape are inferior, not only to the great cathedrals of mediaeval Europe and the templ [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

This book explains how modern architecture is emblematic of our current estrangement from the spiritual principles that shaped humanity's greatest civilisations. The ugly buildings that characterise the modern landscape are inferior, not only to the great cathedrals of mediaeval Europe and the temples of ancient Egypt and Greece, but even to lesser buildings of the more recent past. The great masterworks of our ancestors spoke to humanity's higher nature. Architect, Herbert Bangs, reveals how today's dysfunctional buildings bring out the worst in humanity, reinforcing that which is most base within us. He shows how, through the ancient laws of proportion and number, architecture once expressed the sacred relationship between man and the cosmos. In early times, the architect worked within a sacred and esoteric tradition of creating structures through which human beings could gain insight into the nature of the divine reality. Today, that tradition has been abandoned in favour of narrowly defined utilitarian principles of efficiency and economy.In "The Return of Sacred Architecture", Bangs provides the key to freeing architecture from the crude functionality of the twentieth century: the architects of the modern human landscape must find the deep-felt connection to the cosmos that guided the inner lives of those who built the temples of the past. The form of their buildings will then reflect the sacred patterns of geometry and proportion and bring forth greater harmony in the world.