The results are in, and we have the winners! Or at least we have some idea of what the most popular works or sacred art and architecture are. A few months ago, in preparation of the journal’s 50th anniversary issue, we invited our followers to vote on their Top 5 picks. Here’s what the survey […]

In 1990, a dynamic Methodist associate pastor, Adam Hamilton, was appointed to create a new church in Leawood, Kansas. The bishop who arranged the appointment, excited by the young pastor’s vision for the new Church of the Resurrection (then, fittingly, meeting in a funeral home), predicted the congregation would grow quickly—to 500. Today, the 20,000-member […]

Editor’s note: This excerpt is from The Transnational Mosque: Architecture and Historical Memory in the Contemporary Middle East by Kishwar Rizvi, copyright 2015 by the University of North Carolina Press, used by the permission of the publisher (uncpress.unc.edu). The author is an architect and associate professor of the history of art at Yale University. Her […]

Creative architectural renderings for houses of worship tend to excite my visual imagination. I am particularly interested in how architects tackle the challenge of renovating and repurposing an existing space for contemporary uses. Renderings frame possibilities about the spaces we imagine, and draw the connection between public spaces and our interior selves. The most successful […]

In the end, the interlocking corridors, repeating doorways, proliferating walls and fields of columns created an antithetical affect. At once envisioned as a site of dynamism, the plenitude of options created paralysis. It was uncommon to look up at the intricate vaulted ceilings; there were too many thresholds afoot to negotiate and traverse. The ceilings […]