ISBN : 9782296117075
ARCHITECTURE AND THE SHAPING OF THOUGHT
Andrzej Piotrowski1
An examination of two buildings, the Katholikon in the monastery of Hosios Loukas in
Greece and the church at the Abbey of Saint Denis in France, reveals how architecture
has shaped thought. The practice of transmitting well-formed symbolicmessages—the
mode of communication—is juxtaposed here to the less epistemologically accessible
mode of representation. Just as visual forms in the design process reveal conceptual
possibilities reaching beyond conscious intentions of a designer, buildings have frequently
manifested culturally nascent thoughts. Architecture has not only represented
but also negotiated cultural differences before people could fully understand them.
Conversely, the mode of communication in architecture has been symptomatic of how
political forces silenced experiential ambiguities and turned buildings into tools for
disciplining thought.