Title: Sacred Geometry
Keywords: massiveness, inner workings, sacred geometry
In this book, Christoph Leonard Sturm presents a small number of different churches from the 16th century. He mainly focuses on the old protestant and roman catholic churches. With the help of texts and illustrations, the reader not only receives a detailed overview of the inner life of these buildings but also a deeper understanding about its construction and meaning.
The book is split into two parts. The first half consists of long texts filled with lots of information on the creation of the roman catholic- and the protestant churches. At first glance, you can detect the massiveness of the text. Not only does it fill every page from top to bottom but it is also written in a very small font. Therefore, to navigate through the book, you need to pay attention to the change of thickness in the fonts. When listing examples or starting a new theme, there is a small space at the beginning of the sentence to help with orientation. Sometimes the texts feature little sketches or drawings to help understand and visualize them better.
The second half is heavily built around detailed images of the church models that were mentioned in the first half of the book. The illustrations mostly consist of floor plans, facades, elevations, and sections. However, they do not contain any additional information such as measurements or materials. Thanks to the shown proportions though, it is easy to see how massive these buildings are. All the floor plans are labelled with different letters, each of which explain the basic functions of the rooms in the church. Every church being presented shows a facade along with its corresponding floorplan or a section, where the inner workings of the church are nicely illustrated.
The concept of geometry is especially significant in this book since it symbolizes sacredness. It is often called “sacred architecture” or “sacred geometry” because it underlies everything and is woven into the fabric of all creation. While browsing through the book the reader will be confronted with this concept over and over again. Not only does this apply to the floorplans but also to the construction of the domes, which also play a rather big part in the book. Especially noticeable are the even proportions and symmetry of the domes.