Eloquent Spaces: Meaning and Community in Early Indian Architecture

Synopsis

Eloquent Spaces adopts the twin analytic of meaning and community to write a fresh history of building in early India. It presents a new perspective on the principles and practices of early Indian architecture. Defining it broadly over a range of space uses, the book argues for architecture as a form of cultural production as well as public consumption. Ten chapters by leading archaeologists, architects, historians and philosophers, examining different architectural sites and landscapes, including Sanchi, Moodabidri, Srinagar, Chidambaram, Patan, Konark, Basgo and Puri, demonstrate the need to look beyond the built form to its spirit, beyond aesthetics to cognition, and thereby to integrating architecture with its myriad living contexts. The volume captures some of the semantic diversity inherent in premodern Indian traditions of civic building, both sacred and secular, which were, however, unified in their insistence on enacting meaning and a transcendent validity over and above utility and beauty of form. The book is a quest for a culturally rooted architecture as an alternative to the growing crisis of disembededness that informs modern praxis. This volume will be of interest to scholars and practitioners of architecture, ancient Indian history, philosophy, art history and cultural studies.

Copyright:

2019

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781000007206

Related ISBNs:

9780367225988, 9780367225964, 9780367225964, 9780815382096, 9780815382096

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

05/13/19

Copyrighted By:

Shonaleeka Kaul

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.