THE SACRED SPACE AND “THE AMONGETHER”

“When ambling in the wood youstumble on a mound, two meters byone and pyramid-shaped, you soberup and something in you says thatsomeone is buried here. That isarchitecture!”

AdolfLoos1

“What is the sacred?” Goetheasks himself. And then he promptlyanswers: “That which binds soulstogether.” Setting out from thisdefinition it can be said that thesacred as a purpose of this unionand the union itself represent thefirst contents of independentarchitecture. The most familiarexample /of this type ofarchitecture/ is the legend of theTower of Babel. In the remotevalleys of the Euphrates thepeoples built a huge architecturalwork; the whole of humanity lent ahand and this community was at thesame time the purpose and thecontents of the work.”

G.W.F. Hegel2

1 Quoted by Hollier, Denis, Against Architecture: The writings of Georges Bataille (Cambridge, MA; MIT Press, 1998; 1989, p. XXI.2 G. W. F. Hegel, Arhitectura, in Estetica, Prelegeri asupra artelor frumoase

Sacred space

In a study dealing with the interpretation ofGeorges Battaille’s opinions about architecture,Denis Hollier3 dedicates the first chapter toHegel’s outlook on architecture as primeval art.Following the preoccupation with the relationshipbetween place, the sacred and its public/privateattribute I have deemed necessary to cull thischapter “lost” in Hollier’s book and expand a fewpremises and conclusions that could betterhighlight if not also buttress up my own ideasabout the spatial relationship between the placeconsecrated as sacred and the public one.

The author in question insists on thecommentaries in Hegel’s aesthetics dedicated to“impure” architecture, which is (also) used bypeople, of the house and temple genre. The houseand the temple are means, not goals; namely, meansaimed at purposes outside art – shelter,procreation, prayer – and this first of all becausethey are empty, they have an inner space that asksto be filled up. Hollier observes that, in fact,Hegel has to explain his prime art through asecondary one – sculpture – in order to identify

3 See the bibliographic indication in note 1.

what he actually understands by the primacy of thearchitectural act: a pure symbolical object,sculptural, detached from the “finality” of usage,that brings people together around its symbolism.Hegel identifies the Tower of Babel as being thatmuch sought after primal object of architecture;not the house, not the temple: no matter howprimeval these are they are not yet original. Oraccording to Goethe’s definition of the sacred, theTower of Babel would be such a condenser of thesacred since it brought people together. More, thevery definitions of the sacred place we derivedfrom Jacob’s gesture included such an instance of asacred place that could potentially become public:in a space without a particular geography (thewilderness with Jacob, a plain in this case) (only)a center (the perimeter line of the place ismissing or is not obvious) is created, that is afocus towards which the lines of force of the“existential space” are converging. (Norberg-Schulz)

The event of hierophany, or of the divine signis what actually “takes place”: while it occurs itinvents the place of its unfolding which itwithdraws from the until then indistinct space.Until then nothing seemed to indicate theexceptional character of the place and yet a breakoccurs there, a “catastrophe’ in the terms of thehomonymous physical theory. Such an establishmentof the place – its becoming central – is somewhatenhanced by the lack of attributes of thesurrounding scenery and anyway is opposed to the“clearing” ( Amoroso’s lucus a non lucendo). There, onthe contrary, the selected place is already

suggested, prefigured by the perimetral presence ofthe otherness – the thick forest – while “the core”– the space within the limits – is ambiguous or notat all organized (yet). The place is in the firstcase defined as an aura surrounding thehierophantic event, while in the second case theplace is defined by the obvious limits within whichthe divine sign is contained and stabilized.

In his 1998 study of l’Harmattan (recentlyprinted by Paideia Publishers in the series“Imaginary Spaces” ) Radu Dragan tackles veryattentively the flat ground in the founding mythsof the Romanians and, in general, of primitivepeoples. A soil that is devoid of strong geographicattributes, that is “flat and not at all thick”(Dragan, 2000, 16) needs hierophanies or at leastsigns pertaining to the sacred in order to allowfoundations: a burgeoning staff that is thrust intoit (Dragan, 24-26) or any other kind of axis; anicon or a cross fallen from the sky; an arrow thedivine guides through the air to land on theterritory of the future locality or of the futurereligious abode.

In the city, both aspects of the place need tobe marked drastically: the limits (walls and waterditches) as well as the center (the central plazaor acropolis); moreover, the space between them isalso organized both at infra-level (the interiorgeometry of the houses, relations with the streetand with the neighbors) and at urban scale (makingvisible the social hierarchies of the city byestablishing limits of height and scale function ofthe buildings of the central authority).

The Tower of Babel

Let us look at the very Tower of Babel for amoment. It reminds us of Jacob’s ladder and this isexactly what it intends to be: an elevator to thesky (as we are reminded a second before all thelanguages become confounded). But are indeed thetower and its location territories of the sacred aslong as the potential of the place and of the erectobject to become sacred are not “natural”? Nowherein the text are we told about any sign preceding itor any hierophany inviting to build it right there.In the absence of all this, it is difficult to pickup a spot on a plain, if not downright the resultof a haphazard – individual or collective – choice.The sacred does not invade the place and the towerrises – menacingly – to the sky. Hybris? Thepunishment is not late in coming: this manner ofsetting up places or spaces that bring together,just like the bringing together that occursfollowing such compulsions exercised on the placeor space, is mistaken.

In Heidegger’s terms taken from the questionabout technique, the sacred place does not seem tobe the realm of pro-duction (Her-vor-bringen) that isof any action “that brings up, meaning any thingthat get embodied into a presence from what is notat present” nor of the insolent “insistentdelivery claim (Herausfordern)” (Heidegger, 139). Thesacred and the space of its emergence are not aprecise ore that can be localized and which can berevealed with the vehemence with which the goldenload will be drained of gold, at Rosia Montana…The

sacred cannot be pried out like an ore or theimmanent form in Michelangelo’s marble block sinceit does not hide, if by hiding we understand – asEliade seems to, using the term “camouflage” – anactive process of withdrawing from the visiblerange, a reluctance (haughty, perhaps) tocollaborate with the human senses. The sacred doesnot hide deliberately and insistently (from theobserver, situated in the physical space) and doesnot go out of hiding in an act of will that is itsown or the claimant’s, like in a game of hide-and-seek. The attribute of the sacred is that of beinghidden from human experience and this attribute isneuter in relation to the person who wants to gainaccess to the sacred.

That is why if the hiding of the sacred isneutral and not an intentional blocking of humanaccess to it, it follows then that our insistenceto have it delivered to us is not in itselfsufficient. If it fails it does not mean that thesacred is choosy, denying itself to us. Neither isthe presence of the sacred possible to put in analgorithm the unmistaken repetition of which couldguarantee its emergence. The appearance of thesacred – the story of the Tower of Babel seems tobe telling us – cannot constitute the object of aspontaneous/aleatory personal decision, no matterthe person who makes it. The sacred in this neutralsense differs from Heidegger’s aletheic truth forwhich there is a certain modality of making itabandon the status of invisibility – a temple, thestatue of the god, Van Gogh’s painting, that is awork of art in general.

Could then the sacred space be – the other wayround than in the case of the Tower of Babel – thesign in the physical space of a concession, of awell-disposition by the numinous to acquirespatiality? In other words, is it possible that ourinsistent effort to show a place as sacred (bysuccessively building cult abodes on the samelocation, for instance) to take the sacred out ofneutrality and make it turn its face to therelevant spot? Consecration would then inevitablybe secondary to the establishment of the sacred ina spot and not at all the guarantee of theemergence or stability of this qua sacred place. Ifthings are like this then the precaution we tooksomewhere else when discussing the definitions ofthe sacred and the exaggerated stress laid onconsecration, seems the more necessary. Intuitingthe potential of a place to become sacred andpreparing it with a view to taking the sacred outof hiding in the respective place seems the most wecan do down here to prepare the place for itssacralization. But not even then do we have theguarantee of an inexorable emergence into space ofthe sacred other than the hope that, well-disposedtowards our endeavors it should go out of itsneutrality. What can be more revealing in thisrespect than the moment of suspense at the hour ofthe consecration of Solomon’s Temple until the hazysign of God’s disposition to take possession of it?The temple had been, actually, built according tothe maximum “guarantees” the revelation of its planwould have offered. Some of those providingreconstructions of the Temple according to OldTestament indications speak – just like Juan

Bautista Villalpando in Ezechielem explanationaes, quotedby Alberto Perez-Gomez4 – about the plans of thetemple as being analogue in status with the wordsGod revealed to Moses. Provoking the emergence ofthe sacred in a place chosen by us and not by “him”does not seem the best way, as the Tower of Babelstory suggests.

Archives and genealogies

The spatial invisibility of the sacred isequally a given characteristic of the way we usespace and perhaps a consequence of the neutralityof the sacred itself in relation with the places ofits emergence in space, which to us seems adeliberate choice of the very sacred not to showup here but, on the contrary, to emerge there. Wecan almost talk about a choreography of the two“actors”: the place prepared for the sacred and thesacred itself that shows up (or not) in therespective spot. Between neutrality (which excludespassiveness) and violent action (which isillustrated by the Tower of Babel) the road seemsto be one of successive mutual “probing” of thelayers of folds and preparations which getdeposited (and even aggregated as built-up matter)like in a story with a happy ending, that of theJerusalem temple, for instance. This is above all apalimpsest: a) a nomad space incorporated in thetabernacle and its journey into the desert,4 A. P. Gomez “Juan Bautista Villalpando’s Divine Model in Architectural Theory” in Alberto Perez-Gomez, ed. 1999,, III, pp. 125-56.

laid/incorporated then as a particular case in theHoliest of the Holy; and also b) a fixed spot,consecrated as a destination of the exodus. c)House of the Name of the Lord (erected, quitesignificantly, only after the beginning of the royalpalace. d) A plan revealed under the divine threatof not changing anything in the form and mutualproportions of the sacred space (modified thoughnot only in absolute size but also in proportionsalong the various instances of the revelations:mobile shrine or resting in the tent of Moses,pulsating temple, cycles of construction andviolent de-construction with David, Solomon,Ezekiel and the other prophets until after thecrucifixion). Ambiguities, second thoughts (David),oppositions (Nehemiah), departures from it (theBabylonian bondage, the Diaspora) and comingtogether, all contribute to the archive character ofthe Temple.

It is not an archive exclusively made up ofvictories: how could it, since the layers of thearchives are interspersed with breaks, more oftenthan not violent; or it is these which by fracture,create layers. The vertical section of Troy is thetoken of successive deposits of cities interruptedby tragedies that de-constructed them to make roomfor a new foundation. The same with Jerusalem and,within it, the temple. In the long run, the historyof the temple is violence (mutual) of thesuccessive layers of time but also theirtenderness. The temple is forgotten under historyand then excavated, brought back to the surface/tothe present. If the sacred is what brings peopletogether, the Temple of Jerusalem fully fulfills

this conditions. Moreover to this we can add thepattern of the heavenly Jerusalem and in it theTemple itself. The ideal plan5, never carried out,over-sees the archive of partial successes andfailures.

The votive plaques in churches often trace backin time the archive of their foundation site – realor mythical/imaginary. The present church must havebeen erected in the place of another, in a (more)perishable material perhaps which burnt up, wasdestroyed or decomposed because of a forceddereliction or the knavery of man; or the previouswill have replaced another and so on and so forth,with no end or beginning. This beginning seems tolie in a mythical time and a chosen geography:there must have been here, perhaps, “a proud place”or the place of a revelation. Anyway, sediments onthe same place invoke the sacred. At times theysummon it back – via a new consecration – afterhaving been relegated. Other times this dedicationto a place has the meaning and intensity of prayingbefore an icon. Empress Helen’s pilgrimage toJerusalem and its neighborhoods to locate and bringto light original hidden layers of the Christianstory account for this dual nature – stability andpilgrimage/exodus to or from – of the sacredplace/space. All these “genealogies”, interrupted

5 Another example, obviously “inferior” to that of the Temple ofheavenly Jerusalem, but just as “unreal” is the Library in UmbertoEcco’s Il nome della rosa. The plan of the tower/libraryy represents (also)an imago mundi. The library thus organized is not merely an archive butalso a project of (ideal) (re) organization of the world. Far from beingneutral, Eco’s archive is an active one, even dangerous as it willfinally prove. Thus, the final fire consuming it means not only theloss of irreplaceable books but also the implosion of a real project.

by sudden adverse episodes, established between thelayers of the archive remind us of Nietzsche’sgenealogies revisited by Foucault in Nietzsche,Genealogy, History. They speak not so much about theindividual/subject as an instance but about thenetwork of complex ties and “historical conditionsleading to the production of the constitutiveself”; genealogies investigate “the foundations ofthis concrete, subjective world of the individualand the conditions that make this individual,possible” as Mark Rozahegy puts it (in Perez-Gomez,ed. 1999, 191) In an analogue manner, in the caseof the church, the archive of the place where it iserected and its genealogies sheltered by the placeweaken the interest for the present instance andinscribe it in a process of becoming in which allthe past instances, the model in the votive picturethat the founder dedicates to a saint or to theLord Himself, the golden scale model serving astabernacle, as well as the variants of the churchnow only virtual (for example, the designs enteringa major competition for the building of acathedral) participate jointly in the insertioninto the real. On such a site, the church lies onsediments; these have not only “made room” for itto emerge but also explain it. On such a site, thepresent church is “just” a part of a process ofbecoming: a proud presence today, in it one canalready perceive the flowing archive layer awaitingsomewhere deep.

I am obsessed with the words of patriarchIustin who allowed for the Vacaresti Monastery6 to6 For details and the whole terrible story see the book of confessionsand documents by Gheorghe Leahu, Demolarea Manastirii Vacaresti. As to the

be demolished because anyway it had no longer beena sacred place but a prison for such a long time.Will the archive of the sacred ever be resumed inthat place? Is this possible any more?7 Therebuilding of the Vacaresti Monastery as “anopposition” could have thus solved both thisproblem and the more pressing concern over aCathedral of the nation. Moreover, the authoritiesof the clergy owe us at least such a gesture.Admitting one’s guilt and erecting other abodesdoes not extinguish the continuous present of thedrama. 8 In the logic of this text the preferenceis obvious for a reconstruction on the location ofthe Vacaresti Monastery (of the old abode as suchor of a hybrid formula mingling the new and theold) versus a cynical pandering over the locationof the Cathedral of the nation, at long lastresolved by political legerdemain. There is not

manner in which the monastery was used as a prison we have the testimonyof Slavici in Inchisorile mele, republished not long ago.7 After serving as prison – a destination from which monasteries havenot been alien along history given their isolated nature – the placewas not consecrated again but erased and its entrails raked out. (Inother words, the cross buried under the altar must have been removed )and the consecrated soil re-placed with a foundation of reinforcedconcrete.8 That place – about which we could have hoped if not known for surethat by repentance of the ones guilty and the humble toil of thepresent generation could have become again sacred – stays empty. Inexchange, another one has been consecrated – without the certitude of apotential to shelter te sacred – not at all “stately” (Alberti) situatedsoemewhere else. Despite futile disputes – exclusively “professional” –at the beginning of the century, organized by the Union of RomanianArchitects, not even the officials of historical monuments, historiansor the church authorities have made public any plan regarding theVacaresti Monastery. The intention of the Ministry of Culture to cedethe huge concrete foundation covering the monastery site for a compoundto include a contemporary Romanian art gallery seems to suggest ashameful dereliction of any plans in this sense.

even hint here of the least simulation to identifythe place with the sacred. The demolished siteboasts at least the archive of the place, ravishedas it is. The insistence, the stubbornness torebuild on the same spot (once identified assacred) without providing a guarantee as to thesacredness of the resulting space is anyhow to bepreferred to the happenstance,9 violent10

establishment of places for churches whose raisond’etre is, after all, external to the primary goalsof a sacred space.

The socialization of the sacred and the role of art

I will revert now to the central topic of thistext: the origin – invoked by Hegel – ofarchitecture and its relation with the sacred asthe latter was defined by Goethe. The house and thetemple are “contaminated” by their extra-artistic9 None of the churches that I have designed has a location chosen otherthan by negotiation with the local town halls. Within these, the switchor the turning of the object itself was quite frequent, function ofplanning options or quirks of the sponsors. This accounts for the factthat at least in one of the cases (Urziceni) the hallowed cross thatshould have consecrated the place of the alter stayed completely outsidethe final abode!10 The structure of Pope John Paul II’s visit in such a manner that HisHoliness was compelled to kiss the road altar marking the place destinedto shelter a cathedral of the nation points to such a violence ofconsecration, in quest of a legitimacy that nobody feels too sure about.The more uncertain the more violent the action. Ciorbea, Diaconescu, N.Noica (and the respective secretaries of state), Lis they were all readyone moment or another to interpret or forcefully condense the steps aproject of such scope should feature, at the cost of eliminating allhindrances, intimidating assessment commissions (cult abodes, historicmonuments, etc.) Finally, president Constantinescu conducted theconsecration of the place, sanctioning this guide about how NOT to goabout the matter of sacred places.

role, the philosopher tells us. On the other handthe role of the sacred according to Goethe is thatof bringing people together. And keeping themtogether, we should perhaps add. Moreover, weshould say in connection with the sacred placeturned public place and city that it up-liftspeople to the eyes of the divine. This is exactlythe role of the temple, to contain the ecclesia, themeeting of the faithful on a sacred territory.Hence it cannot be the outcome of an impure art, asHegel perceived it, as long as it is not – not evenin the first place – art. The acme of the temple isnot the masterpiece but the position – risky – ofHouse of the Name of the Lord. The risk resides inthe fact that although all the rules have beenobeyed the resulting space is not sacred in theend.

The opposite is not valid though: the temple isnot “impure” because of the presence of art, on thecontrary. Art intensifies the sacred effect of therespective space. In saying this I do not want tobring to mind the theatricalness of the Baroque northe establishment through arts and architecture ofa stage on which the meeting of the faithful shouldbehave ‘as if” in the presence of the sacred. Theexcess of theatricalness, the over-aestheticism ofthe sacred space are likely to pervert and finallycloud the action of the sacred space, sacred qua.But being amongst/together (or amongether) withone’s fellow-beings in the vicinity or within thesacred space, the human being is under the priorinfluence of the sacred art that beckons it nearer;or is on the territory of the otherness: beyond.That is why the establishment, be it minimal, of

otherness is one of the first conditions of thesacred space.

In this context we remember the space of theLast Supper: the guest room of an unknown person inJerusalem. The guest room is ready for the other:(more) decorated, utterly clean, less used and whenit is used a place rather public in a privateterritory or anyway in a relation of proximity withthe street/yard. We should perhaps add here thatsome versions of the Bible speak of an “upperroom”, somehow detached from the ground. Thisobservation ought to be interpreted only if thislocation “above” of the guest room were true inrelation to the other rooms of the house. But ifthe whole house is higher than the ground thespecification no longer holds good only for theguest room and is, therefore, irrelevant. On thecontrary a “levitating” position of the guest roomis proper only to the tower houses of Yemen andless to the rest of the Mediterranean architecture,to my knowledge. Starting from a house or locatedin another one but also situated at the core of asettlement, the sacred space is, must be differentfrom the rest of the spaces and this differencemust be marked by its architecture. In saying thisI must draw attention that on the other hand therelation between a cult abode and its own traditionhas to be one of similarity, of kindredness, if notof identity.

In other words, the church must differ, nomatter how little, from the house and the rest ofthe buildings. At the same time though it must notbe entirely different from the abodes of the samecult that precede it. Thus the church should be

recognized as qua church, both synchronically (asto the rest of the building) and diachronically(within the becoming of the own type of space).This balance excludes two types of excesses: theradical otherness and radical identity. The church-houses, the church-halls are not adequateexpressions of the sacred (also) because they donot identity the respective place/space asdifferent. The repetition without any difference ofthe existing abodes is just as bad because it isnot likely to institute a new level of the archive(of the tradition, in this case), limiting itselfto the plain repetition of what already exists, theway Pierre Menard who, according to Borges, wantedto become without ever being able to, the author ofDon Quixote. In the absence of the difference(which exists anyway, be it only by the embodimentin contexts, materials and at different scales ofthe “replicas”) the archive turns tautological,bent upon itself (i.e. in one of its privilegedlayers for motifs generally exterior to the ruleafter which this archive is set up) and ceases tooperate as a fertile soil for the new layers, thatis for the virtual archive.

To replicate today only the Byzantine sub-stratum of the Orthodox architecture on theterritory of Romania means to repudiate to thesubtext all the other participating in the creationof differences of nuance and even class between theChristian Orthodox churches on the territory ofthe historical provinces making up the modernRomanian state. On the contrary, to limitinfluences on the architecture of the ChristianOrthodox cult only to those exercised within the

local political and administrative frontiers meansto apply to the archive a criterion of internalreorganization exterior to it and to which itresponds distortedly or remains mute. Cast inrepetition without a difference, the architectureof replicas is not fertile in what regards theacknowledgement of the sacred space; in the depositof layers it needs further freshness in order tostick to the territory of such an “archive” whichis the place of a cult abode.

Camouflaged under the identity with the rest ofthe “lay” architecture (house, hangar, reunionhall, etc.) the reformed church for instance wantsto be different from “the other” accursed (in thiscase the Catholic cult abode) but manages just todissolve itself in the absence of its own identityas related to its location in the community.Goethe’s bringing together no longer operates thendifferently from the bringing together for anyother community purpose (negotiation, exchange,decision making, confrontation, etc.). Such abringing together does not guarantee stayingamongether.

The socializing role of the sacred incarnateGoethe was talking about proves to be threefold. Itis the one that a) establishes a destination forpilgrimages (sacred places, sanctuaries); b) bythese destinations it stabilizes and centershearths of the future settlement, becoming supportand foundation of the public places and of theprivate ones at the same time; c) it creates – bythe family and community performance of the ritual– the premises of a constant maintenance of thepublic place as qua public place. If the sacred is

origin and foundation to the citadel, as well as toall the houses in it, then Goethe’s definition ofthe sacred ought to be rounded off. It means thenbringing together and maintaining amongether; notanyplace but in a marked place (by hierophany, signand/or special geography) and a hallowed space;this uplifting is then maintained in perpetuitythrough the celebration of the ritual – that is byreminding and taking into consideration. Community& communion, naturally; at the same time alsospecial space and feast repeated in time, too.Neither of the terms can be discarded. An emptysacred space? A community constantly inventingdiscourses instead of prayers? Outside, anywhere?Here are questions to which – strictly from withinthe area of European Judeo-Christian culture – I donot think an answer can be provided if the removalof any of the terms of the equation proposed aboveis attempted.

The absence of the exemplary model

The insistence on the materials out of whichthe tower is made seems likely to suggest a newreason to doubt people’s capacity of setting upsacred spaces by their own decision, in the absenceof a vision (hierophany or sign). The textindicates here that in the absence of an exemplarymodel, in the genre of the one to uplift the Templesubsequently, the Tower of Babel seems doomed to beunder its own intention. This “instead of” thatfollows any material used indicates the absence ofthe model, the aleatory/aberrant character of alay move of the decision to erect. The walls of

heavenly Jerusalem and of the temple at its coreare described by the prophets as consisting ofgems, while down there the construction was made ofstone, brick and wood. The model has thisblinding, super-real character that nonethelessmakes the real evince durability. If the ideal of astone building is the gem, we can observe byanalogy that the ideal of a building in unburnedclay would have been brick at least if not stone.In the absence of any model/ideal – of the project– the builders alone can construct only poorly andfrom meager, unrelated materials.

The sense of this specification in the textseems to “discharge’ the divine of any possiblereproach made at its “egotism” and at the same timeto release the builders of the Tower of Babel fromany trace of tragic heroism: after all, they werejust some mighty proud creatures who, with no signand no plan, with sparse materials, desired toerect an object unseen before to put them on anequal footing with the gods or even make them livetogether with them in heavens. If, according toHegel, it is not the temple but the Tower of Babelthat represents primeval architecture, it followsthat architecture is not only built on a foundingfailure but also on an unforgivable hybris.

The one who prays alone

The Loos passage quoted by Hollier creates azero degree of architecture at the level of a“house for nobody” (Hollier, 1992, XXI) of “a

habitation that has no address” (ibid.). Holliersees in this definition provided by Loos also hisattempt to define its origin. This I do not findobvious. It is rather an indication of an instancewhere architecture stands out from/as to the groundwith its field of strong meanings and all. Whatare, in fact, the elements of the definition? a)The soil of the wood; b) the pyramidal form of thetomb and the dimensions that suggests it covers ahuman body; c) the presence of the “spectator” who“reads” the significance of the form as being thatof a tomb, and even “translates” it in logical-discursive language; d) finally, Loos’sexclamation” “That is architecture!” which is notsure whom it addresses: the tomb as an artificialform cut out from nature or the grave “interpreted”–sadly as a fatality – as a place for a humanbeing11 to rest eternally?

Neither of the components of the definitionsuggests that we are confronted with an origin ofarchitecture. More readily we found ourselves infront of an attempt to signal the radical11 Although it may seem minor to me it appears important to sort outthis confusion. If architecture “is” the tomb as such, with its geometryand scale, the stress lies on the making process of the instanceidentified as pertaining to architecture and on its creator. Ifarchitecture means the ‘decoded” tomb, if I may say so, in itsdenotative and connotative significance, then the accent obviously fallson the repetion of architecture and “the reader” as an agent of thisreception. We can note here the contrast between two tendencies ofliterary theory, recovered subsequently in the theory of art, ingeneral. In the last decades the accent shifted from the creator to theaddresee of the message, at the same time with the theories ofreception. In the relevant case, the tomb is an obvious example ofobject where “the function” and the “aesthetic” meanings have utterlydifferent addressees. “The user” is a corpse, that “nobody” “living”there lying buried. “The receiver” of the meanings added is the travelerwho meets the tomb and ponders upon it.

difference between nature and the very fact of thebuilding (here of the excavation). In the city,among the other related buildings, it is difficultto explain which are the proximate genre and thespecific difference of architecture. On thecontrary, in the desert, just like in the wood, anyevent running against them becomes vehementlyvisible by the contrast outlining it in relation tothe wilderness. If I want to give a definition onlyto the object of architecture, Loos seems to besaying, then I choose the loneliest, isolated onethat can be opposed to nature, and not the urban,socialized one, accompanied by associated arts,etc. as in happens with that situated in a city. Inthis modeling operation we should not see adiscovery of the origin of architecture where thereis nothing but one of its special instances. Thebuilding presupposes the need for dwelling closeby. Architecture stays different from any othertype of construction and not (only) to nature. Theproximate genre of architecture is not nature, butbuilding with a view to providing habitation, asthis dilemma could be put in Heidegger’s idiom (R.Rorty), while the specific difference is thatoperation of decoration with symbols (i.e. ex-position and communication that Venturi added tothe shelter in his own definition of architecture.Thus the tomb becomes a radical form of “shelter”(frequent analogies, including funeraryarchitecture, with the house suggest the proximategenre) and not in the least an origin ofarchitecture, as Hollier suspects Loos would havewanted to put it.

But let us go back to he who prays alone andhis space. In the extreme, he is a hermit, a monkwithdrawn from the world. He holds in possessionone of those natural shelters that are provided bycaves ( Hegel excludes cavities from architecturalspaces) when he does not choose nomadism, non-settlement or forms of extreme penitence. RaduDragan (2000, 55-6) speaks of Saint Simon theStylite. He fasted at the top of his pillarsituated on a mountain; stasis “was a form ofextremely difficult asceticism” (56) which thesaint practiced subsequently in a narrow cell. Itis a form of penitence to be found in Asia Minorand in Muntenia (Romania) too. “The ascetic is avoluntary victim who supports the world in aspiritual sense and cleans it of sins by hisfasting" (56) just as Saint Odran voluntarilysupports the Monastery of Iona, Ireland by his bodyburied standing up (49-50).

Obviously, irrespective of the position ofprayer or of individual, isolated penitence, it isnot likely to set up a public place which wedefined somewhere else as being the embodiment inspace of the event of looking at and being lookedat by the other. A place, because we are dealingwith an expanse, and the other who is looking at usis not the instance of radical otherness – the god.In the definition I give to the public place, thedivine, vertical look (i.e. the huge eye who seesonly planes in architecture, with no perspectivedistortions that might be induced by the rays oflight meeting in a poor human eye, as Juan BautistaVillalpando believed) for the very reason of beingomnipresent, passes into the background. Likewise,

the diffused looks that we exchange with the otherbeings and even things are not present. Theexchanges of glances occur horizontally, betweenfellow beings.

The hermit, from the vantage of these initialpremises does not “live”, does not set up placesfor its prayer. “Here” and “there” are not“addresses” to be located by he who prays alone.Deliberately, as part of the penitence, most oftenthan not he does not scoop his own domestic spaceout of spatium. Somehow “drifting”, horizontally,his vectors of orientation in space and ofcommunication – of stability, that is – areexclusively vertical. “The shadow” in a (single)place of the sacred is of no interest to thehermit. Location, stabilization and embodiment inspace of the sacred do not make the object of hisasceticism. The hermit recalls the wilderness, thespace where the eye glides, slides, not fixed onanything and where there is nobody else. Wildernessis a terrible place of ordeal by this verycontinuous, treacherous sliding of its space thatdoes not allow itself to be localized andstabilized, therefore inhabited. From this vantagethe forest is just as efficient a wilderness as thedesert because both stay mute to the question:Where? Only the clearing, or the oasis respectivelyoffer a location in them, but this is ratherrelated to the wilderness than a stable locality initself.

It is only after the physical disappearance ofthe hermit that the place of his ordeal appears tothe other as sacred, a destination of pilgrimage,perhaps. Finally, the space where he waited – the

cell carved in the rock, the sparsely arrangedcave or any other form of compulsorily rudimentaryspace from the point of view of domesticity –accepts “to remain in place”, revealing itself as asacred space to be inspected by the faithful (ifnot downright by tourists, like the cell of Daniilthe Hermit or the wall churches in the chalk ofMurfatlar) and thus becomes a public place at longlast. It is an easy form of public place though:one from where the other, the one looking at us justas he used to look to the sky, has just left.