How Religious Buildings Exploit Sensory Textures

Image Credit: Evie S.

By Augustine Wasef

Ancient civilizations didn’t have an escape from the irresistible gravitational influence of materialism. Everything appeared to have some tangible representation and abstraction was delegated to some Platonic kingdom far above the clouds. Light however is distinctly immaterial. Even from a subatomic basis light is built with an inherently different structure than matter (see boson fermion distinction). Gothic cathedrals are built around this fundamental notion.

By constructing themselves around such an ethereal visual landscape (resulting from the stained glass) they gave medieval Europe a taste of something far more intellectual valuable than the ancient knowledge that was about to spur the renaissance. They gave Europeans a taste of something that transcends the human condition, something that is not intrinsically tied to our world. The human brain struggles to comprehend abstract conceptions, this allowed buildings to use alien visual textures (at least alien for the time) religion.

This wasn’t merely a European phenomenon. Mosques are generally characterized by (with numerous exceptions) a far more restrained color palette. This exemplifies a fundamentally different operating philosophy. In Christianity God is something to be found, something to be experienced. In Islam God is someone to be strived for. Islam’s preception of God far more closely to Judaism than to Christianity (both emphasize God’s ones and his ontological divergence relative to us).

This is reflected in the aesthetic choices of mosques. Instead of going overboard with visual pyrotechnics they resolved to demonstrate the path. A mosque more closely aligns with a fast than a feast.

Hindu and Buddhist temples on the exterior embody an aesthetic lushness, a kind of polyphony. In Christianity and Islam anything that doesn’t lead to God must lead away from Him. Dharmic religions overcome this duality with the conception of having multiple deities and in consequence multiple endpoints. Buddhism strays from this by abandoning the notion of God and by attempting to build a far more secular worldview. This forces temples to be built to rectify our human condition instead of demonstrating a divine one.

Across examples light always has the star role guiding a person’s consciousness to the desired path.

Light was not singular in this role however. Cathedrals similarly utilize sonic landscapes which create a more fleeting and impermanent sensory terrain. 

If religious buildings are expected to symbolize eternity how can sound (which fades within seconds) project holiness? 

The answer lies in how temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues don’t just contain sound but actually sculpt it. The same note will echo back differently in a synagogue compared to a mosque. This acoustic profile allows the character of a building to echo over millennia not seconds. 

Even acoustics isn’t eternal though. As Notre Dam’s sonic profile was changed by the fire anything that is stable must be in motion when viewed relative to it’s environment.  

Across various religions incense also had a designated role. In contrast to light providing a crystalline sharpness scent typically provides a more ambiguous response. Light displays and scent points. This is mirrored in how the majority of religious buildings are tapestried with dense religious imagery while the omnipresent overwhelming incense only serves as a finger pointing one towards the religion. 

In sharp contrast to the other senses religious sites have an apparent disdain for touch. Touch is intimately associated with our immediate surroundings. You can touch your dogs fur. You can’t feel a stranger across the room. It turns out you also can’t touch a deity. The sense of touch tells us what we already know. This goes against the underlying principle of religion, seeking something intangible. 

In the twenty first century this may feel archaic. That is the point.

The unifying theme of houses of worships appears to be tangentially touching the divine. But they serve another purpose. When we reach for the divine we really uncover ourselves. Time is a distinctly human property and dissolves under further examination. Consciously the past is often encapsulated as a fundamentally unstable concept but is subject to the shifting perceptions of the present. 

Religious buildings continue to guard skylines from the abrasive tide of modernity and change. Perceptions vanish in and out of existence. Memory warps under its own weight. It will still be the same spire. 

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