The Return of Sacred Architecture: The Golden Ratio and the End of Modernism

by Herbert Bangs M.Arch.

An inspirational call for a return to the tenets of traditional architecture as a remedy for the dehumanizing standards of modern architecture

• Explains how modern architecture is emblematic of our current estrangement from the spiritual principles that shaped humanity’s greatest civilizations

• Reveals how the ancient laws of sacred proportion and harmony can be restored

The ugly buildings that characterize the modern landscape are inferior not only to the great cathedrals of medieval 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 harmonious 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 favor 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 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.

Genres: Architecture, Art

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2006

Reviews

[eliza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bangs is sometimes unintentionally hilarious in his bitchy rebuttal to modernist architecture and positivism as a whole, but I ended up respecting his conviction. And I do agree that aesthetics is not a science in the materialist way we like science to be, so it shouldn't be treated as such -- design should be more about beauty, and beauty should be more about intuition rather than ideology.

[Quentin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like one of those books that you have to sift through all of the authors personal bitterness to get to the good stuff. It was worth it to me to stick with it.

[Lisa]

had to return this one to the library before I finished it. I'll check it out and finish it when I can.