The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture ─ A Reader

The two editors started exchanging ideas for this reader about ten years ago until the opportunity arose to bring it to fruition. They invited original contributions as well as suggestions for materials to reprint or excerpt. What they have assembled is a far-reaching anthology composed of 50 essays, poems, and reprinted pieces, accompanied by a section of 16 full-page color plates and numerous b&w images. Writings by Mies van der Rohe and Mircea Eliade are included, and essays address a startling array of topics. A sampling: the dark side of Bauhaus, the Gnostic dimension of abstraction in modern architecture, the spiritual basis of creativity, Louis Kahn and the language of God, and Jewish space 1978-present, among other topics. In fact, the editors had to winnow down the selections from a surplus of good ones, and they envision future volumes to accommodate the surplus and expand the scope even further to include eastern religions and architecture. Hejduk is affiliated with the design department at Arizona State U.; Williamson, with the architecture department at Cornell U. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Renata Hejduk is an Associate Professor in The Design School at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Her research is focused on European and American avant-garde architecture and urbanism from around 1960 to the present and its development relative to the culture and philosophy of that period. Her work was most recently published in the interdisciplinary journal Culture and Religion, the Journal of Architecture, and Transportable Environments 3 (Routledge, 2006).

Jim Williamson is a Visiting Associate Professor in Architecture at Cornell University. He previously taught at Harvard University and the Georgia Institute of Technology and has been a Visiting Professor at numerous other institutions including Columbia University and the Cooper Union. He is co-editor and contributor of the forthcoming The Architecture of Disbelief and his work has been published in numerous books and journals including the recent Surrealism and Architecture (Routledge, 2005).