Book: “De sacris aedificiis a Constantino magno constructis’’
The book talks about churches that were made by Constantine the Great during his time. That is why I decided to take Constantine the great & Constantine church as my main keywords to explore for the search engine.
I then chose architecture for the topic of conversation and Xenotheka Library for Alice’s brain.
There were 3276 results/ books which contained the word, Constantine. The first book to show up was Modern Architectural Theory by Mallgrave. I continued to read the context to find connections and turns out the book mentions the history of the disposition and the different forms that the Christians have given their temples since the reign of Constantine the great to our time. His most famous building the arch of Constantine is one of the examples mentioned in the book. It is the largest surviving Roman triumphal arch. The book doesn’t really go in-depth regarding Constantine, but it discusses other topics since it’s about modern architectural theory in general. But I still chose this book because it shows and summarizes how the architecture of Constantine has influenced the architecture to this day and how meaningful his contributions are.
For my second finding, I chose the keyword Constantine church to explore. Elements of architecture by Koolhaas was the book that caught my eye since it was also one of the top results for the last search.
The book talks about the Dome of the Rock which was constructed over the Holy Sepulchre in connection with Constantine. The Holy Sepulchre was built on the behalf of Constantine the Great and served as a memorial tomb for Christ. The dome was replaced with a similar wooden structure after being burned in the 11th century and it is one of the oldest timber constructions. It is said that the dome was inspired by other temples in the region and the dome-shaped burial tomb by the Romans. Thus, the Dome of the Rock was liked by both Romans and Arabs and became the inspiration/ template for future constructions.
It shows again how much impact Constantine has over architecture in the past and the future.