Spiritual Path, Sacred Place

By Thomas Barrie

Book Overview

Examines the architecture of religious buildings around the world, analyzing how design features represent spiritual concepts and drawing parallels to contemporary structures. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570620059
• ISBN13: 9781570620058
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Shambhala
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 0.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Great Price for this Out of Print Book

I ordered this book for my college age daughter for her architecture class. It is an out of print book. When my package came a cookbook was in it. I called the company and they tracked my book and found that my book and the cook book had been sent to the wrong people. They had me package up the cookbook and send it to the correct recepient and the lady that received my book sent it to me. This did take an extra week, but the company rembursed me for the postage and the entire cost of the book. So technically the book was free, minus the time it took to mail the cookbook. Luckily I didn't need the book until November so all is well.

Incedible buy!

This book is incredible if you have any interest in architecture or art. The author's style of writing is clear, concise, and captivating!

A thought-provoking discussion of architectural meaning.

I would certainly recommend this work highly to architectural scholars, and, if for no other reason but to create an open dialogue about more meaningful built environments, to the broader general audience. While a superficial(--or perhaps "shortsighted") reading of Barrie's thesis could potentially drain one's interest from the discussion of a sacred architecture, "Spiritual Path, Sacred Place" addresses the topic in a manner that provoked further discussion with colleagues and greater self-reflection upon the existence and significance of sacred architecuture throughout the world. What I loved about this book was its supposition that human faith and conviction have the profound ability to recompose the meaning of an otherwise mundane edifice into the divine(further evidencing that the meaning of architecture isn't static and is uniquely individual in its univserality). I found this book immensely insightful with its Campbellian discussion of the interplay of spiritual and metaphorical meaning and the articulation of architectural form. The number of case studies(while perhaps not as comprehensive in scope or diversity as one might hope) was sufficient to address the premise of Barrie's work. For the diligent reader who does take the book's mental challenge to further pursue not only the discussion of sacred architecture but also further researches the case studies, Barrie's work is quite evidently brilliant.