The Architecture of Solitude

Environment, Space, Place 1 (1):53-72 (2009)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

As a spiritual or meditative practice solitude implies more than mere silence or being alone. While these are perhaps indispensablecomponents, it is possible to be alone or to live in silence and nevertheless be unable to reconfigure these into genuine solitude. Solitude is also more than being in some remote or inaccessible place. Even though geographical isolation might be conducive to solitude, with rare exceptions human beings have seldom sought solitude in complete seclusion in the wilderness. The places where human beings have sought solitude have in the end been human places, human-built places. It should come as no surprise then that through architecture humans beings have sought to build solitude, to construct, through stone and glass and wooden structures, placesthat are conducive to and encourage solitude. Such structures include individual hermitages, monasteries, temples, and even cathedrals. In each case the purpose is to translate or reconfigure a natural geographical place into a space, a human space, where solitude as a spiritual or meditative practice becomes possible. What the individual sojourner brings to the experience is an inner openness to the architecture, to the natural environment and to the spiritual realm which interweave to create solitude. This paper examines (1) the spiritual need to experience solitude, (2) what it is that solitude requires, and (3) the endeavor to create solitudethrough architecture and the challenges it poses to both architecture and spiritual practice. In particular the paper explores and compares solitude’s architectural expression in three Medieval Christian monastic orders—the Camaldolese Order, the Carthusian Order, and the Cistercian Order. Despite their common heritage these orders realize solitude, as an essential spiritual value, through unique architectural expressions.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Solitude and society.Nikolaĭ Berdi︠a︡ev - 1938 - Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Edited by George Reavey.
A philosophy of solitude.John Cowper Powys - 1933 - London: Village Press.
Finding the inner you: how well do you know yourself?Karen Sullivan - 2003 - Hauppauge, N.Y.: Barrons Educational Series.
The Primacy of Disruption in Levinas Account of Transcendence.Kris Sealey - 2010 - Research in Phenomenology 40 (3):363-377.
The seventh solitude.Ralph Harper - 1965 - Baltimore,: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-01-09

Downloads
416 (#43,139)

6 months
19 (#103,566)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Mark H. Dixon
Ohio Northern University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Existentialism and human emotions.Jean-Paul Sartre - 1967 - New York,: Philosophical Library.
Selections ; Introductions to Aristotle. Aristotle - 1973 - New York,: The Modern library. Edited by Richard McKeon.

Add more references