The dialogue between human and Sacred Places; An inquiry on the role of user in understanding sacredness of places

Temples and sacred spaces are one of the most important structures which their existence date back to the appearance of religions; however in recent years, the role of Architecture in transmitting the conception of sacredness has been interrupted. This paper aims to analyze this interruption, and answer how meanings are created in a sacred space. In order to achieve this goal, sacred spaces are divided into two categories of “exalted” sacred spaces (which get their sanctity from the God), and “promoted” sacred spaces (which get their sanctity from the human need to worship). Afterwards, different definitions of the word “tradition” were discussed and the relation between tradition, architecture, and the cognition and conception of people from the sacred space was analyzed. It was found that regardless of the differences in the definitions of tradition, the concept of ‘transmittance’ exists in all of them. This analysis gives way to define “hermeneutical cognition of place”, based on the dialogues between human and sacred space. The research method was based on the modern hermeneutics which emphasizes on the role of user in understanding and creation of meanings. As the concept of “Dialogue” is one of the main topics of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, this topic was used in the analyzing process. It seems that this ‘Dialogue’ can be used as a considerable concept in interpretation of place. In other words, the sacred space can be seen as an open ‘text’, which lets the reader/user to have his own interpretation from it. This interpretation is obtained from the declared dialogue between the human and the sacred space. The role of “artistic traditions” and the procedure of their interpretation was discussed as a fundamental concept in understanding the work of architecture. The important thing in this research, is its own “exegetist-based” approach, which refuses total independence of the exegetist, while emphasizing the complementary role of the text and the reader (architecture and its user). The results indicated that the ‘understanding’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘acceptance’ of a meaningful work of Art (especially sacred space) is happening in a dualistic mood according to traditions which is the dialectic of “throwback and oncoming”. This means that in the cognition process of the sacred space, the role of users are fundamental in creation of meanings. Despite the fact that this creation is dependent to the people’s historic conceptions. The interpreter’s conception results from the especial social conditions, and includes the traditions which form these conceptions. From the meaningful point of view, the sacred spaces are the most widespread type of buildings and call every people from all religions for interpretation. It was concluded that interaction process of people and place is happening in a three-staging procedure which are confronting to the space, dialogue with the space, and sensing the space. Between these three stages, expressing the concept of tradition and its role in designing and cognition of architecture is crucial. Also the importance of reading architecture history as the foundation for preconceptions (and not just for understanding the architecture events) was emphasized.