Reframing the Sacred: A Phenomenological and Interpretive Study of Spatial Experience

Abstract

he present study considers sacredness to be a lived experience of the space that is interpreted differently in the religious sphere than in the secular one. The study is based on the phenomenological idea and particularly the ideas of Mircea Eliade, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and modern day philosophers and it looks into how sanctity is revealed through human consciousness, memory, and sensory contact with the surrounding space. The aura is no longer seen as a static or built-in quality but rather as a phenomenon that appears under specific circumstances of space and time, and through experiential activities. The emphasis is laid not only on singular individual subjective accounts but mainly on the spatial and architectural conditions which make and influence the experiences to happen. One of the important features of the study is the concept of sacredness as a social phenomenon that is produced by the interplay of human perception and the place's material and sensory attributes. The researchers show that people's experiences of the sacred can occur in many different contexts such as memorials, streets, and homes, relying on such things as material transitions, spatial thresholds, sound, and light as the elements of the process. By using the interpretive phenomenological research method, the study investigates how people meet, conceive of, and get physically engaged with space.  Critical literature review and thematic analysis are applied in the identification of the main characteristics of sacred space including liminality, sensory intensity, and shifts in temporal perception. The results not only draw the attention of the academic community but also give the needed insights for the architects, urban planners, and scholars who would like to design modern spaces that are rich in meaning, emotions, and experiences.