Cornell in Rome: Sacred Spaces

A common characteristic of all things sacred is that it often appears as a quality; a quality of place (e.g., a holy place [as a temple] or a natural sanctuary) or a place where something significant or meaningful once happened that is distinguished from the profane place from which it is often delimited; a quality of action (e.g., the rite); a quality of texts either spoken, narrated, or written (as in rituals, myths, or scriptures); a quality of individuals (fe.g., the divine king, certain types of priests, monks, etc.); or a quality of objects (fetishes, ritual instruments, iconography, etc.). In each case, the quality of sacred has the effect of requiring a particular human behavior that is somehow distinct from behavior when not experiencing sacredness. In a sacred place, one often enters under certain conditions (e.g., a certain orientation, barefoot, bareheaded, in silence, singing, etc.). Over sacred time, secular activities are often suspended (e.g., work, cleaning, eating, etc.). A sacred tale (a myth, or a ritual formula) might be told on certain occasions (e.g., at night, before the harvest, etc.). And in the presence of what might be considered a sacred person or a sacred space, certain behaviors are mandatory (e.g., prostration) while others are prohibited (e.g., touching, speaking, etc.).

This work was the outcome of AAP's Cornell in Rome architecture studio class in the fall of 2022. Students generated sacred spaces by analyzing precedents of sacred space, then by abstracting the sacred aspects of this precedent, and finally applying these abstractions to their choice out of nine sites throughout Rome.

Student Curators (all B.Arch. '24):

Marina Bernardi Peschard
Maresa Amador
Garnet Bernier
Alexa Delott
Gloria Shi
Eva Stanford
Madeline Esquivel
Abdulrazaq Alkhaled
David Ni

Semester Faculty:

Andrea Simitch, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Professor, Architecture
Maria Claudia Clemente, Visiting Critic, Architecture
Heike Hanada, Visiting Critic, Architecture
Francesco Isidori, Visiting Critic, Architecture

Student Contributors (all B.Arch. '24):

Abdulrazaq Alkhaled
Alexa Delott 
Ann Pakhayev 
Arvin Xu 
Carolina Parekh
Christine Zhou 
David Ni
Eva Stanford 
Fangfang Zhang 
Francheska Reed 
Gabriella Kim 
Garnet Bernier 
Gloria Shi 
Hannah Lin 
Jessica Hu 
Kwan Asadathorn 
Madeline Esquivel 
Maresa Amador 
Marina Bernardi Peschard 
Melo Chen 
Miriam Gitelman
Muskaan Chugh 
Rachel Lee 
Rae Chen 
Rainey Oldfield 
Robin He 
Sebastian Contreras 
Tan Halacoglu 
Thomas Hart 
Yan Sotolongo 
Yolande Wen