Julio Bermudez
Professor Julio Bermudez directed the Sacred Space and Cultural Studies graduate concentration at The Catholic University of America School of Architecture and Planning from 2010 to 2023. He holds a Master of Architecture and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Bermudez’s interests focus in the relationship between architecture, culture, and spirituality through the lens of phenomenology and neuroscience. He has widely lectured, led symposia, taught, and published in these areas. Current projects include several neuro-phenomenological studies of sacred vs. secular architecture (funded by the Templeton Religion Trust). He has published three books: “Spirituality in Architectural Education" (CUA Press 2023), "Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality" (Routledge, UK, 2015, co-edited with Thomas Barrie and Phillip Tabb), and "Transcending Architecture. Contemporary Views on Sacred Space” (CUA Press, 2015).
Before this work and at the University of Utah (1993-2010), Bermudez investigated (1) the interaction between design process and computers, and (2) the use of architectural thinking to design data environments. Results of this effort were the award-winning and influential analog-digital design method, a successful information visualization study across multiple domains (attracting over $5M in funding), and a large number of lectures, workshops, patents, and publications in the U.S. and abroad. During this time, he co-created and co-led SiGraDi (Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics, 1997-2005) and an academic exchange program between Santa Fe-Argentina and Utah (1995-2010).
Bermudez has received several national and international recognitions, including the 1998 AIA Education Honors Award, the 2004-05 ACSA Creative Achievement Award, the 2005 Arturo Montagu Creative Career Prize (bestowed by Latin American SiGraDi), the 2006 ACADIA Award for Teaching Excellence, the 2010 Sasada Award for significant record in scholarship and service (conferred by CAADRIA, Asia), and the 2021 ACSA Distinguished Professor Award. In 2007, Bermudez co-founded the Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Forum, a 800+ members (from 64 countries) organization, and has served as its president since 2015.
Address: Mount Hermon, California
Dr. Bermudez’s interests focus in the relationship between architecture, culture, and spirituality through the lens of phenomenology and neuroscience. He has widely lectured, led symposia, taught, and published in these areas. Current projects include several neuro-phenomenological studies of sacred vs. secular architecture (funded by the Templeton Religion Trust). He has published three books: “Spirituality in Architectural Education" (CUA Press 2023), "Architecture, Culture, and Spirituality" (Routledge, UK, 2015, co-edited with Thomas Barrie and Phillip Tabb), and "Transcending Architecture. Contemporary Views on Sacred Space” (CUA Press, 2015).
Before this work and at the University of Utah (1993-2010), Bermudez investigated (1) the interaction between design process and computers, and (2) the use of architectural thinking to design data environments. Results of this effort were the award-winning and influential analog-digital design method, a successful information visualization study across multiple domains (attracting over $5M in funding), and a large number of lectures, workshops, patents, and publications in the U.S. and abroad. During this time, he co-created and co-led SiGraDi (Iberoamerican Society of Digital Graphics, 1997-2005) and an academic exchange program between Santa Fe-Argentina and Utah (1995-2010).
Bermudez has received several national and international recognitions, including the 1998 AIA Education Honors Award, the 2004-05 ACSA Creative Achievement Award, the 2005 Arturo Montagu Creative Career Prize (bestowed by Latin American SiGraDi), the 2006 ACADIA Award for Teaching Excellence, the 2010 Sasada Award for significant record in scholarship and service (conferred by CAADRIA, Asia), and the 2021 ACSA Distinguished Professor Award. In 2007, Bermudez co-founded the Architecture, Culture and Spirituality Forum, a 800+ members (from 64 countries) organization, and has served as its president since 2015.
Address: Mount Hermon, California
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knew the power of their architecture? With funding from Templeton Religion Trust, Julio Bermudez, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America, is leading an interdisciplinary pilot project that begins to investigate such questions. Uniting researchers in architecture, neurology, cognitive psychology, computer science, and religion, the project aims to test hypotheses, develop methodologies, and produce preliminary data that can lead to further studies and a deeper, evidence-based understanding of how architecture affects people’s spiritual experiences and understanding.
Books by Julio Bermudez
“Spirituality in Architectural Education” addresses these and many other important philosophical, disciplinary, pedagogic, and practical questions. Grounded on the twelve-year-old Walton Critic Program at the Catholic University of America School of Architecture and Planning, this book offers solid arguments and insightful reflections on the role that “big questions” and spiritual sensibility ought to play in the architectural academy today. Using 11 design studios as stopping grounds, the volume takes the reader into a journey full of meaningful interrogations, pedagogic techniques, challenging realizations, and beautiful designs. Essays from renowned architects Craig W. Hartman, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Campo Baeza, Claudio Silvestrin, Eliana Bórmida, Michael J. Crosbie, Prem Chandavarkar, Rick Joy, Susan Jones, and Daniel Libeskind open new vistas on the impact of spirituality in architectural education and practice. All this work is contextualized within the ongoing discussion of the role of spirituality and religion in higher education at large. The result is an unprecedented volume that starts a long-awaited conversation that will advance architectural schooling. ACSA Distinguished Professor Julio Bermudez, with recognized expertise on spirituality in architecture, will be the guide in this fascinating and contemplative journey.
Far from avoiding the charged issues of subjectivity, culture and intangibility, the book examines phenomenological, symbolic and designerly ways in which the holy gets fixed and experienced through buildings, landscapes, and urban forms, and not just in institutionally defined “religious” or “sacred” places. Acknowledging that no individual voice can exhaust the topic, Transcending Architecture brings together a stellar group of scholars and practitioners to share their insights: architect Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Karsten Harries, comparative religion scholar Lindsay Jones and architectural theoretician Karla Britton, sacred architecture researcher Thomas Barrie and theologian Kevin Seasoltz, landscape architect Rebecca Krinke and Faith & Form magazine editor Michael Crosbie, are among the illustrious contributors.
The result is the most direct, clear, and subtle scholarly text solely focused on the transcendental dimension of architecture available. This book thus provides, on one hand, understanding, relief, and growth to an architectural discipline that usually avoids its ineffable dimension and, on the other hand, a necessary dose of detail and reality to fields such as theological aesthetics, material anthropology, or philosophical phenomenology that too often fall trapped into unproductive generalizations and over-intellectualizations.
Book Chapters by Julio Bermudez
It takes something extraordinary within to accomplish something extraordinary without. We know this to be true in our bones but, somehow, we need to keep reminding ourselves, don’t we? And, if we sense this to be true, if we think, feel, or know that spirituality is at work in our best architecture (even today’s), shouldn’t we reexamine our discipline’s attitude towards it?
For twelve years the Walton Program has been working with the conviction that spirituality is an important part of learning how to profess architecture. Because of its novel and untested nature, this effort started as and continues to be an ongoing experiment in architectural education. For this reason, traditional metrics may not be the best way to evaluate its success — not to mention that experiments may fail. Perhaps, the authenticity of the effort and what it teaches us should be used instead. By documenting eleven experimental trials and as many reflections, this book seeks to raise awareness, spark discussion, and offer a precedent for the role that spirituality can play in training future architects and, transitively, practice. May this work be a contribution, however small, to a world in dire need of spiritual sensibility.
Transcending architecture may refer to a building type whose purpose is to (1) deliver users to a transcendental state (e.g., sacred architecture) or (2) support services, activities and realizations that advance a transcending cause (e.g., human dignity). Transcending architecture may also imply architectural practices and/or results that go well beyond cultural, social, or professional conventions. In this third case, it is architects who are using the making of architecture to enact the transcendence. Fourth, it could also describe a psychological state reached with (or without) architectural assistance but which no longer pays attention nor depends on architecture. Such state may (or may not) be ineffable. Lastly, the term may be pointing at the act of moving past architecture (either as discipline or actual built structure) due to its inability, irrelevance, or being unnecessary to address transcendence — or any other purpose, for that matter.
Having framed the discussion and acknowledged the indeterminate and disputed nature of ʻtranscending architecture,ʼ I go into recognizing the bias underscoring the writing of this book: a belief in the reality and need for an architecture that advances the cause of transcendence. We only have to look at our world obsessed with speed, consumerism, technology, entertainment, and economic growth along its mounting pile of overwhelming negative effects to realize the value and timing of an architecture that transcends. By providing us with a respite, environments intentionally designed to ʻreach beyondʼ afford us the rare opportunity to re-discover our bearings and, in so doing, frame our existential condition within the larger matters of life and the divine. In other words, architects may create the conditions that induce people to, paraphrasing Thoreau, awaken to the divinity of the present moment and, through it, to the deepest and widest meaning of the good, the true and the beautiful. It is this conviction that motivated me to request the help of 17 scholars and professionals with established expertise in the relationship between architecture, culture, and spirituality to collaborate with me in considering the matter of ʻtranscending architecture.ʼ
A number of impulses define contemporary spirituaLiry, including aesthetic, ethical, and ontological emphases.The first conceives of spirituality and spiritual experiences as growing out of the beauty and presence of creation. The second offers sustainable and restorative perspectives and aims to address the grand problems of the age - global climate change, economic and political disparities, warfare and displacement, and other contemporary imperatives that demand holistic solutions. The third seeks psychic reorientations where the world and one's place in it arc revealed, and reverence is paired with inquiry to seek inner development and outer realization regarding the nature of being, purpose, and place in tbe cosmos.
-- what is missing in the contemporary discourse regarding the built environment?
-- are there perspectives from the past that are still relevant?
-- what are new ways to approach and understand what occurs at the intersection between architecture, culture and spirituality? and,
-- in what ways can the practice, design and stewardship of buildings assist in meeting today's challenges?
This chapter offers a thorough phenomenological examination of the event and delivers an array of new insights on the psychological, physical, and spiritual dimensions of the architectural numinous. It also demonstrates the power that such extraordinary moments may have in one’s life, not to mention the importance of this particular one in the architectural disciplines given the stature of Le Corbusier — arguably the most influential architect of 20th Century.
La migración es también un buen paradigma para modelar otros procesos de transformaciones radicales, ya sea en educación (de la ignorancia al saber), ciencia (de la física Newtoniana a la física Cuántica), medicina (de la enfermedad a la salud), etc. Una utilización correcta de esta metáfora nos permite trasladar entendimientos generales a situaciones particulares frente a situaciones de cambio que generalmente evitan nuestro facil entendimiento.
Este manuscrito discute como un taller de arquitectura análogo-digital utiliza concientemente el paradigma de la migración para crear un ambiente social abierto de exploración, reflexióny acción frente a las olas migratorias que impactan nuestra humanidad, cultura y arquitectura a principios del milenio. Las ideas de hibridez y simbiosis son estudiadas como respuestas potenciales a la ocupación de nuevos horizontes. Finalmente, cabe repetir que existe una relación importante y directa entre las etapas migratorias y aquellas presentes en el aprendizaje como lo atestiguan los escritos de John Dewey sobre las teorías de aprendizaje por descubrimiento , el movimiento progresista educativo en los EEUU de los años 20’s y 60’s, y las teorías constructivistas de conocimiento contemporaneas.
Papers (English) by Julio Bermudez
1. identify how architectural features encode aesthetic quality and facilitate both aesthetic reaction and spiritual insights;
2. determine how this process occurs both semiotically and phenomenologically;
3. gauge the kinds and levels of cognitive-aesthetic outcomes; and
4. elucidate the special aesthetic/cognitive dimensions of architecture.
architecture’s capacity to produce spiritual cognitive and affective outcomes. The novelty of this interdisciplinary (architecture, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and theology) research is its focus on sacred structures, an area hitherto largely unaddressed by neuroaesthetics and neurotheology.
This long abstract explores these issues in the context of a research project funded by the Templeton Religion Trust that investigates the differential effects of sacred vs. secular architecture on Catholics.
The misgivings that most in the discipline have about spirituality have to do with its dangerous side: a tendency to devolve into an “existentialization” of religion, cultish devotion, misplaced desire, and projections, or other expressions that cheapen or betray its transcendent and all-encompassing nature. As I articulate in the book, these dangers are real but they may and need to be overcome in order to offer a more comprehensive, mature, and compassionate architectural education and practice. Indeed, spirituality is particularly relevant and urgent when we consider the high responsibility associated with the inevitable building boom to occur in the coming decades and that tomorrow’s architects are our students today.
knew the power of their architecture? With funding from Templeton Religion Trust, Julio Bermudez, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Catholic University of America, is leading an interdisciplinary pilot project that begins to investigate such questions. Uniting researchers in architecture, neurology, cognitive psychology, computer science, and religion, the project aims to test hypotheses, develop methodologies, and produce preliminary data that can lead to further studies and a deeper, evidence-based understanding of how architecture affects people’s spiritual experiences and understanding.
“Spirituality in Architectural Education” addresses these and many other important philosophical, disciplinary, pedagogic, and practical questions. Grounded on the twelve-year-old Walton Critic Program at the Catholic University of America School of Architecture and Planning, this book offers solid arguments and insightful reflections on the role that “big questions” and spiritual sensibility ought to play in the architectural academy today. Using 11 design studios as stopping grounds, the volume takes the reader into a journey full of meaningful interrogations, pedagogic techniques, challenging realizations, and beautiful designs. Essays from renowned architects Craig W. Hartman, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Campo Baeza, Claudio Silvestrin, Eliana Bórmida, Michael J. Crosbie, Prem Chandavarkar, Rick Joy, Susan Jones, and Daniel Libeskind open new vistas on the impact of spirituality in architectural education and practice. All this work is contextualized within the ongoing discussion of the role of spirituality and religion in higher education at large. The result is an unprecedented volume that starts a long-awaited conversation that will advance architectural schooling. ACSA Distinguished Professor Julio Bermudez, with recognized expertise on spirituality in architecture, will be the guide in this fascinating and contemplative journey.
Far from avoiding the charged issues of subjectivity, culture and intangibility, the book examines phenomenological, symbolic and designerly ways in which the holy gets fixed and experienced through buildings, landscapes, and urban forms, and not just in institutionally defined “religious” or “sacred” places. Acknowledging that no individual voice can exhaust the topic, Transcending Architecture brings together a stellar group of scholars and practitioners to share their insights: architect Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Karsten Harries, comparative religion scholar Lindsay Jones and architectural theoretician Karla Britton, sacred architecture researcher Thomas Barrie and theologian Kevin Seasoltz, landscape architect Rebecca Krinke and Faith & Form magazine editor Michael Crosbie, are among the illustrious contributors.
The result is the most direct, clear, and subtle scholarly text solely focused on the transcendental dimension of architecture available. This book thus provides, on one hand, understanding, relief, and growth to an architectural discipline that usually avoids its ineffable dimension and, on the other hand, a necessary dose of detail and reality to fields such as theological aesthetics, material anthropology, or philosophical phenomenology that too often fall trapped into unproductive generalizations and over-intellectualizations.
It takes something extraordinary within to accomplish something extraordinary without. We know this to be true in our bones but, somehow, we need to keep reminding ourselves, don’t we? And, if we sense this to be true, if we think, feel, or know that spirituality is at work in our best architecture (even today’s), shouldn’t we reexamine our discipline’s attitude towards it?
For twelve years the Walton Program has been working with the conviction that spirituality is an important part of learning how to profess architecture. Because of its novel and untested nature, this effort started as and continues to be an ongoing experiment in architectural education. For this reason, traditional metrics may not be the best way to evaluate its success — not to mention that experiments may fail. Perhaps, the authenticity of the effort and what it teaches us should be used instead. By documenting eleven experimental trials and as many reflections, this book seeks to raise awareness, spark discussion, and offer a precedent for the role that spirituality can play in training future architects and, transitively, practice. May this work be a contribution, however small, to a world in dire need of spiritual sensibility.
Transcending architecture may refer to a building type whose purpose is to (1) deliver users to a transcendental state (e.g., sacred architecture) or (2) support services, activities and realizations that advance a transcending cause (e.g., human dignity). Transcending architecture may also imply architectural practices and/or results that go well beyond cultural, social, or professional conventions. In this third case, it is architects who are using the making of architecture to enact the transcendence. Fourth, it could also describe a psychological state reached with (or without) architectural assistance but which no longer pays attention nor depends on architecture. Such state may (or may not) be ineffable. Lastly, the term may be pointing at the act of moving past architecture (either as discipline or actual built structure) due to its inability, irrelevance, or being unnecessary to address transcendence — or any other purpose, for that matter.
Having framed the discussion and acknowledged the indeterminate and disputed nature of ʻtranscending architecture,ʼ I go into recognizing the bias underscoring the writing of this book: a belief in the reality and need for an architecture that advances the cause of transcendence. We only have to look at our world obsessed with speed, consumerism, technology, entertainment, and economic growth along its mounting pile of overwhelming negative effects to realize the value and timing of an architecture that transcends. By providing us with a respite, environments intentionally designed to ʻreach beyondʼ afford us the rare opportunity to re-discover our bearings and, in so doing, frame our existential condition within the larger matters of life and the divine. In other words, architects may create the conditions that induce people to, paraphrasing Thoreau, awaken to the divinity of the present moment and, through it, to the deepest and widest meaning of the good, the true and the beautiful. It is this conviction that motivated me to request the help of 17 scholars and professionals with established expertise in the relationship between architecture, culture, and spirituality to collaborate with me in considering the matter of ʻtranscending architecture.ʼ
A number of impulses define contemporary spirituaLiry, including aesthetic, ethical, and ontological emphases.The first conceives of spirituality and spiritual experiences as growing out of the beauty and presence of creation. The second offers sustainable and restorative perspectives and aims to address the grand problems of the age - global climate change, economic and political disparities, warfare and displacement, and other contemporary imperatives that demand holistic solutions. The third seeks psychic reorientations where the world and one's place in it arc revealed, and reverence is paired with inquiry to seek inner development and outer realization regarding the nature of being, purpose, and place in tbe cosmos.
-- what is missing in the contemporary discourse regarding the built environment?
-- are there perspectives from the past that are still relevant?
-- what are new ways to approach and understand what occurs at the intersection between architecture, culture and spirituality? and,
-- in what ways can the practice, design and stewardship of buildings assist in meeting today's challenges?
This chapter offers a thorough phenomenological examination of the event and delivers an array of new insights on the psychological, physical, and spiritual dimensions of the architectural numinous. It also demonstrates the power that such extraordinary moments may have in one’s life, not to mention the importance of this particular one in the architectural disciplines given the stature of Le Corbusier — arguably the most influential architect of 20th Century.
La migración es también un buen paradigma para modelar otros procesos de transformaciones radicales, ya sea en educación (de la ignorancia al saber), ciencia (de la física Newtoniana a la física Cuántica), medicina (de la enfermedad a la salud), etc. Una utilización correcta de esta metáfora nos permite trasladar entendimientos generales a situaciones particulares frente a situaciones de cambio que generalmente evitan nuestro facil entendimiento.
Este manuscrito discute como un taller de arquitectura análogo-digital utiliza concientemente el paradigma de la migración para crear un ambiente social abierto de exploración, reflexióny acción frente a las olas migratorias que impactan nuestra humanidad, cultura y arquitectura a principios del milenio. Las ideas de hibridez y simbiosis son estudiadas como respuestas potenciales a la ocupación de nuevos horizontes. Finalmente, cabe repetir que existe una relación importante y directa entre las etapas migratorias y aquellas presentes en el aprendizaje como lo atestiguan los escritos de John Dewey sobre las teorías de aprendizaje por descubrimiento , el movimiento progresista educativo en los EEUU de los años 20’s y 60’s, y las teorías constructivistas de conocimiento contemporaneas.
1. identify how architectural features encode aesthetic quality and facilitate both aesthetic reaction and spiritual insights;
2. determine how this process occurs both semiotically and phenomenologically;
3. gauge the kinds and levels of cognitive-aesthetic outcomes; and
4. elucidate the special aesthetic/cognitive dimensions of architecture.
architecture’s capacity to produce spiritual cognitive and affective outcomes. The novelty of this interdisciplinary (architecture, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and theology) research is its focus on sacred structures, an area hitherto largely unaddressed by neuroaesthetics and neurotheology.
This long abstract explores these issues in the context of a research project funded by the Templeton Religion Trust that investigates the differential effects of sacred vs. secular architecture on Catholics.
The misgivings that most in the discipline have about spirituality have to do with its dangerous side: a tendency to devolve into an “existentialization” of religion, cultish devotion, misplaced desire, and projections, or other expressions that cheapen or betray its transcendent and all-encompassing nature. As I articulate in the book, these dangers are real but they may and need to be overcome in order to offer a more comprehensive, mature, and compassionate architectural education and practice. Indeed, spirituality is particularly relevant and urgent when we consider the high responsibility associated with the inevitable building boom to occur in the coming decades and that tomorrow’s architects are our students today.
This essay contributes to these possibilities by examining the nature of exceptional aesthetic experiences of the built environment. I begin with five exhibits offering a representative survey of what I call “non-dualist experiences.” Each exhibit includes a statement summarizing the main point of the italicized quotation that follows. I have attempted to include just enough commentary to provide context for the particular citation.
By bringing together students’ outer and inner lives, this educational effort advances an ‘integral education’ that seeks to heal what Palmer and Zajonc in their 2010 book “The Heart of Higher Education. A Call to Renewal” refer to as the great divide that undermines higher education today: the schism between learners’ inner and outer worlds. For too long an instrumentalist, rationalist, object-focused, and spirituality voided curriculum and pedagogy have dominated architectural education. It’s time to balance, complement, and/or enrich it through alternative learning experiences such as the one shared in this paper. Perhaps it’s time to turn the light inward!
Yet holy places are not objective constructs existing on their own “out there.” Quite the contrary, the power of such environments lies in how they shape experience. It is their eventfulness in our consciousness that makes them unforgettable, profound, ineffable. Their value comes from how they change us. However, the subjective phenomenology of sacred places makes it hard, if not impossible to observe, study, and understand them. Our methods to circumvent such a problem include personal testimonies from impeccable sources. If we go through the published record, we can find a good (but not very large) number of such reports (e.g., Frederick Franks, Steven Holl, Robert Ivy, Le Corbusier, Juhani Pallasmaa). However, this approach and its results always remain subject to scientific dismissal and rational skepticism; personal accounts cannot be generalized (and thus become knowledge) because they lack statistical significance and repeatability. Lacking a good understanding of the psychology behind the phenomenology of sacred spaces means to see only one side of the relationship between spirituality and architecture.
This article presents results of research designed to address this incomplete knowledge. While the investigation was not originally intended to focus on the experience of places of faith, the findings are heavily weighted toward them. The study walks a fine line between collecting a very large number of experiential accounts using a rigorous methodology (to gain scientific validation) and retaining the freshness and “thickness” of the reported experiences.
But what our 'classical' philosophy (whether Platonic, Aristotelian, Thomist, or Cartesian) and Abrahamic religions present as incommensurable ontologies are not so in the eyes of alternative philosophies (e.g., Deweyian pragmatism, Merleau-Pontyan phenomenology, Whitehead's process philosophy) and theologies (e.g., Buddhism, Taoism). From these perspectives spirituality and embodiment are not mutually exclusive or loosely 'linked' but an indivisible whole. This is not far fetched. Developments in neuroscience, psychoanalysis, psychology, and medicine tend to support non-dualist interpretations of the binary matter-consciousness. Needless to say that this non-dual perspective is not how we consider, discuss, or engage architecture today.
In this paper, we explore the relationship between architectural materiality and spirituality using this alternative viewpoint and refer to Brutalism, undoubtedly the most tectonic of the architectural languages of Modernity, to illuminate the close bond between spirituality and materiality.
What would happen if we accepted that utopia as the fabrication of some perfect social order is impossible and incapable of responding to our true longing but that the experience of utopia – the fulfillment of all desire/dissatisfaction, however momentary – might be attainable not in some future time and place but right here and now? After all, if utopia is to happen and be experienced, it will have to take place in the present.
This paper advances the hypothesis/argument that architecture may be able to facilitate this utopia-in-the-now state through its remarkable power of shaping reality and nudging us into experiential states nothing short of extraordinary.
En otras palabras, (1) ¿cómo el pasado (in) (de) (re) forma el presente? y (2) ¿cómo las percepciones de otra disciplina (in) (de) (re) forman el proceso de ideación de nuestra disciplina? Teniendo en cuenta estos pensamientos, se desarrolló una pedagogía para permirir que estudiantes en el comienzo de la carrera de arquitectura se den cuenta de que (1) la arquitectura trata temas e ideas que trascienden lo puramente programático (es decir, 'funcional') y lo estereotípicamente formal; (2) las nuevas ideas arquitectónicas pueden provenir de fuentes no arquitectónicas del pasado; (3) las ideas se descubren y evolucionan a través de un proceso crítico por etapas, en oposición a un acto singular de explicación; y (4) el papel del arquitecto/diseñador es interpretar, en lugar de imitar, el entorno, la cultura, la tradición, etc.
El producto de este trabajo empírico permite definir la naturaleza, características y efectos de las EAEs a un nivel de detalle sin precedentes. Se comparten además varios testimonios reales de EAEs, una lista de los 12 lugares más citados por inducir EAEs en el mundo y dos nuevos estudios hechos con pertinencia al tema. Se concluye que (1) los espacios sagrados contienen una gran sabiduría arquitectónica que, si extraída correctamente, nos puede ayudar a crear lugares y obras contemporáneas extraordinarias; (2) el estado psicosomático y la forma en que un individuo encuentre a una obra tienen mucha importancia en cómo la experiencia arquitectónica se desenvuelve; (3) la fenomenología nos provee con herramientas adecuadas para avanzar en nuestra comprensión de la interacción entre sujeto y objeto si estamos dispuestos a extender su alcance mediante un uso juicioso del método científico; y (4) la vivencia arquitectónica puede darnos acceso a los niveles de conciencia más profundos, incluyendo la experiencia de lo divino.
Debe añadirse que junto con esta encuesta en castellano, realicé otra igual pero en Inglés que obtuvo 1.890 respuestas. Los resultados y análisis pertinentes han sido publicadas en revistas científicas y capítulos de libros en español e inglés.
Primero, que las estéticas excepcionales son experiencias inusuales porque operan como fenomenologías en primera-persona, o sea, son no-duales. Segundo, las experiencias extraordinarias de lugar causan una disrupción fundamental en lo cognitivo que tiene mucho en común con la reducción fenomenológica de Husserl. Tercero, la arquitectura es un potencial ingreso a discernimientos trascendentales. Cuarto, las estéticas excepcionales revelan una inclinación dualista en la fenomenología contemporánea que necesita ser revisada."
Este manuscrito explora el potencial de diseño de una de las habilidades únicas del medio digital: la simulación de la experiencia arquitectónica. El software existente en el mercado de hoy (ej., de modelación tridimensional, animación, multimedia) nos permiten por primera vez en la historia representar y por lo tanto diseñar y criticar la arquitectura desde un punto experiencial. Lo que es importante acerca de este nuevo poder descriptivo es que nos ofrece la posibilidad de reemplazar nuestra preocupación por el objeto por una preocupación por la experiencia del objeto. Esto nos puede llevar a reconceptualizar el diseño arquitectónico como el diseño de experiencias arquitectónicas.
Para operar con tal proposición fenomenológica se requiere saber (1) como trabajar con sistemas representacionales no tradicionales y 'casi-inmersivos' (o centrados en el sujeto); y (2) como construir asemblajes temporales de eventos experienciales que se despliegan como 'historias arquitectónicas'. Debido a que nuestra disciplina no cuenta con suficiente conocimiento en esta área, es necesario importar modelos de otros campos de actividades. En este sentido, las artes narrativas (especialmente aquellas envueltas en la representación temporal de narrativas audiovisuales) nos ofrecen buenos ejemplos. Los principios del cine y de las narrativas orales (cuentos) son una excelente guía para diseñar experiencias arquitectónicas que tienen una temática estructurante (partido), un argumento (orden), episodios (ritmo), y eventos especiales (detalles).
Concebir la arquitectura como una narrativa temporal de tres dimensiones transforma el proceso de diseño y, consecuentemente, sus resultados. Por ejemplo, (1) los aspectos fenomenológicos entran en la toma de decisiones arquitectónicas en un mismo plano que los aspectos funcionales, tecnológicos, o composicionales; (2) las descripciones convencionales (planta, fachada, axonometría) toman una posición menos preponderante en el proceso de diseño; y (3) aspectos sensoriales mas allá de los visuales son considerados seriamente durante el diseño (particularmente el sonido, la textura, y lo kinestético)."
(1) el uso del diseño arquitectónico como metodología de trabajo para responder a las demandas funcionales, tecnológicas y estéticas de la información;
(2) la utilización de ideas, principios y conocimiento arquitectónicos para manifestar información espacial y formalmente;
(3) el desarrollo de estrategias específicas para diseñar en y con un hyper-medio electrónico;
(4) el uso del medio digital y la información como tecnología y material arquitectónicos;
(5) las implicaciones teóricas y prácticas de la virtualidad en la disciplina arquitectónica;
En este contexto se presentarán argumentos que demuestran la imperiosa necesidad de lanzar un programa de investigación que estudie la arquitectura del ambiente digital del futuro. "
La ponencia presenta la implementación de la cyberPRINT durante un espectáculo tecno-mediático en el Rose Wagner Performing Art Center en Salt Lake City, EEUU en mayo de 2000. Este trabajo es el primero de su tipo en el mundo. La cyberPRINT establece una nueva area de investigación arquitectónica en colaboración con las Artes y las Ciencias.
This is the portfolio-dossier submitted with the successful nomination.
In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Walton Critic program, the CUA School of Architecture and Planning is hosting a special event October 24-27, 2018. During four intense days, 6 of the past/present 10 Walton Critics will engage our CUArch community through public lectures, design reviews, conversations, and a panel discussion. They are: Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Campo Baeza, Eliana Bormida, Michale Crosbie, Prem Chandavarkar, and Susan Jones. The intention of this high-profile reunion is not only to assess the work produced over the past 10 years but also to consider future directions and opportunities. We will do this in the context of our contemporary world vis-à-vis architectural practice, education, and the objectives of the Walton program.
Architectural immateriality may be engaged from distinct discursive directions. Historical and theoretical studies have long considered the ineffable nature of architecture. Design-based inquiries, pedagogic strategies, and representational methods have their own histories of examining the relation of the material and ethereal nature of constructing place. Phenomenological, semiotic, hermeneutical, post-structural, and post-critical methodologies have offered experimental, comparative, and analytical tools to interpret the sensual, existential, symbolic, and spiritual dimensions of this complex condition. This issue of the JAE offers an opportunity for contributors to reflect on these varied practices and to project new trajectories.
What constitutes a qualitative experience of place? Can today’s representational media emulate the ineffable? How can we distinguish between the numinous and the merely luminous? Will new developments in the sciences, psychology, and philosophy bring new insights to the question of the immaterial in our increasingly material culture? This special issue of JAE seeks critical responses to the difficult task of working materially with artifacts and places that are also tangibly immaterial.
One exception is a neuroscience based pilot-study I am currently completing in association with an interdisciplinary team at the University of Utah Brain Institute. This study lends empirical support that contemplative architectures designed to induce phenomenological states receptive to metaphysical events and insights. Although this study considered individual buildings and not urban settings, it does suggest the possibility that the design of urban environments may support if not advance spiritual susceptibility and human welfare at a large scale. This is significant because much urban and architectural development is to occur in the next decades as a result of the rapid population growth and urbanization underway. The importance of addressing urban design and planning is that human density will either exacerbate the already dangerous negative trends of today or, by the same token, help combat them if appropriate action is taken. In other words, if there is a solution to our crisis, it will have to be found, tried, and successfully replicated in our present and future cities.""
Esta conferencia ofrece reflexiones basadas en una larga búsqueda personal de la belleza en la arquitectura así como también en estudios empíricos de experiencias estéticas extraordinarias hechos a traves de una encuesta masiva y de trabajos en neurociencia. Como conclusion, lo bello es reconocido como uno de los caminos fundamentales para resensibilizarnos con el mundo y la vida. Buscar, disfrutar y trabajar por la belleza son así vistos como practicas radicales de cambio interior y exterior del ser individual, social, y colectivo
This lecture offers reflections based on one person’s long search for beauty in buildings as well as on a massive survey of extraordinary phenomenologies of architecture and recent results of a fMRI study of architecturally induced contemplative states. In the end, the beautiful will be recognized as one of the essential paths to resensitize ourselves with the world and life. Seeking, enjoying, and working for beauty will be therefore reframed as a radical practice geared to change the interior and exterior of our individual, social, and collective beings.
The cyberPRINT explores the ancient fascination with the depiction of the self and the body. From philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and sociology to the visual arts and architecture we look at ourselves in search of who or what, why and how we are. The cyberPRINT attempts to look at the humanistic and artistic traditions associated with the self and the body in the light of new technologies, mediums, cultures, and worlds. In this sense, the cyberPRINT contributes to the ongoing aesthetic experimentation with digital environments by investigating the expressive making, communicating, and sustenance of virtual, yet life-based, ontologies. The cyberPRINT recognizes and celebrates reality as the source of life, for the fluid life of cyberPRINT is completely dependent on a real individual's physiological state. Biofeedback informs and sustains the virtual environment.
This virtual reality (desktop and/or immersive) based "architecture of being" creates a self-atmosphere, giving form to a language previously only perceived by the medical profession. As such, cyberPRINT calls for (1) a new set of conventions, rules, and techniques for expressing life, the body, and the self in cyberspace (i.e., syntax and vocabulary); (2) defining the relationship between design intentions, data content, and the expectations of the audience (i.e., the world of meaning: semantics); and 3) looking at the aesthetic responses it elicits (i.e., pragmatics).
de la encarnación, que es fundamental en el cristianismo: si Dios se ha hecho hombre, también nuestro cuerpo puede ser usado para llegar a Él.
“Artists and architects have always known that the way we gain access to God, and the teaching of God, is most often through art,” Bermudez says. “It was a way we could access spirituality before most people were able to read and write.”
Bermudez and a team of interdisciplinary scholars will use a combination of measures to study how two buildings — one sacred, one secular, but similar in scale and by other measures — affect Catholic believers in Washington, D.C. The buildings he has chosen are the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and Union Station.
I have been involved with the President Lincoln’s Cottage for many years now helping them with some research work but also out of sheer joy of being part of supporting such an important legacy. Early this year, they contacted me for a podcast program investigating the ‘cost’ or ‘value’ of this historical property. It was a very touching discussion that was preserve in this episode of Q&ABE “What’s the Cottage Worth” (02-21-2020). My contribution starts at 20:30 minutes and finishes almost at the end of the program (31:30 minutes). If you have the time, listen to it but, maybe more importantly, make your pilgrimage to President Lincoln’s Cottage whenever you get to Washington DC. You won’t regret it. You will feel something quite extraordinary there.
In the podcast, CTI Joshua Mauldin interviews Murray Rae (University of Otago, New Zealand), Thomas Barrie (North Carolina State University), and Julio Bermudez (Catholic University of America) about the vision, nature, and potential of such an inquiry :
https://soundcloud.com/8ltxez6g7yqq/religion-the-built-environment
The discussion, entitled “Journey to the Forbidden Zone: Spirituality and Culture in Architectural Education,” was the kick-off event for a four-day lecture series marking the 10th anniversary of the school’s Walton Critics program, a program which brings accomplished architects from around the world to campus for a year of lectures, design studios, and face-to-face interactions with students.
Although the reverie lasted only minutes, it imparted a craving for another. Bermudez sought it overseas. Over a period of 16 years, he was successful in such buildings as the Pantheon in Rome and La Alhambra in Granada. However, he soon learned that “if you are too expectant, it doesn’t work. Once you have had the experience, the intellect gets in the way,” he explained. His expectations for the Sistine Chapel, Blue Mosque and Stonehenge went unrealized. “You have to be ready: heart open, senses fully on, awareness high, thinking no thought, intuition unfolding.”
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, the following exhibit presents the goals, ideals, pedagogy, and most representative student works of each one of the 10 studios impacted by Antoine Predock (2009, USA), Craig W. Hartman (2010, USA), Juhani Pallasmaa (2011, Finland), Alberto Campo Baeza (2012, Spain), Claudio Silvestrin (2013, UK/Italy), Eliana Bormida (2014, Argentina), Michael J. Crosbie (2015, USA), Prem Chandavarkar (2016, India), Rick Joy (2017, USA), and Susan Jones (2018, USA). The intention of this exhibit is not only to appreciate the work produced over the past 10 years but also to consider future directions and opportunities.
The Walton Critic Program was created and has been sponsored by the Clarence Walton Fund for Catholic Architecture, in honor and remembrance of the late Clarence C. Walton who served as The Catholic University of America’s first lay president from 1969 to 1978. The Walton Family also includes his son, Thomas Walton who is a former CUA architecture faculty member whose expertise is Catholic architecture. Since its beginning this program has been a central part of the Sacred Space and Cultural Studies graduate concentration offered at the CUA School of Architecture and Planning. Directed by Professor Julio Bermudez since 2010, this graduate concentration is one of very few programs in the world where architecture graduate students, faculty, and professionals can reflect, learn, research, and profess the deepest spiritual and cultural roots of place-making. This pursuit is engaged through an inspiring conversation between the physical and the metaphysical, matter and spirit, reason and faith, life and intention, through the eyes of architecture.
The studio explored advanced ideas of architectural design as related to the SSCS concentration using three projects, including a National Immigration Museum on the Mall, a Homeless Shelter in Chinatown, and a Nursery/Kindergarten in Downtown, as pedagogical vehicles to study the spiritual, cultural, and embodied dimensions of architecture.
In particular, the premise for a National Immigration Museum project was to explore both a compelling American story and the architectural implications of a building or structure with conceptual, experiential, and symbolic dimensions in a space considered sacred like the National Mall. The Homeless Shelter project aimed to respond with uplifting and spiritual solutions to a building typology that supports the multifunctional needs of the homeless and other at-risk persons. The idea of the Nursery/Kindergarten project was to address the educational needs of young learners in the most comprehensive way through enlightened and thoughtful design strategies.
About the Studio
In general, the Sacred Space and Cultural Studies (SSCS) Studio introduces or advances the fundamental knowledge, skills and attitudes of students to build disciplinary expertise on how architecture, culture, and spirituality interact and affect one another. In this particular studio, the renowned Italian-born, London-based architect Claudio Silvestrin guided the studio’s pedagogic and ideological path by focusing on design processes that encourage contemplative, intuitive, and non-egotist methods of inquiry, criticism, and architectural propositioning.
For more information, please visit: http://faculty.cua.edu/bermudez/courses/bermudez-silvestrin/.
Credits
Organized and made possible by the Catholic University of America School of Architecture and Planning in cooperation with the Washington Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Additional support generously provided by ABC Imaging.
With these ideas at heart, CUA architecture faculty Julio Bermudez and Luis Boza and visiting professor Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza (the 2012 Walton Critic) directed a group of graduate and undergraduate students to imagine what a 21st Century Catholic Convent could be like. The site chosen for this inquiry was next by the Potomac River, within the C&O Canal National Park (Northwest Washington DC). The building program called for a facility supporting the monastic life and practice of 12 monks.
This exhibit shows selected works from this studio."
Croquizar nos enseña a habitar concientemente en la perfección del momento. Un momento que no es sólo objetivo sino también irremediablemente subjetivo. Y cuando nos entregamos completamente, esta práctica nos abre a discernimientos profundos, sublimes, y trascendentales. Dibujar plenamente es meditación. Ejercitar Usus in Praesens a través del croquis arquitectónico tiene efectos poderosos porque los edificios y lugares son el ambiente donde se desenvuelven nuestras vidas. Al concentrarnos en ellos, intuímos nuestra naturaleza de ser-en-el-mundo. Y cuanto más lo hacemos, más nos despertamos al misterio de “lo-que-es” como un obsequio (¡un presente!) de belleza y gracia.
Aplico dos reglas simples cuando voy a dibujar. Primero, no llevo cámaras. A diferencia de la fotografía o el video, croquizar demanda tiempo, compromiso, y aceptar riesgos: tenemos que dedicar esfuerzo a una tarea que puede concluir en un (aparente) fracaso. Sin embargo, debemos recordar que sentarse a dibujar es ya una victoria sobre las fuerzas que tratan constantemente de anestesiar nuestras vidas. Segundo, dibujo una sóla vez y en tinta. Esto me obliga a estar presente y abandonar toda idea u objetivo de perfección. Aceptar las cosas tal como son aún a pesar de nuestro mejor esfuerzo o intención es una excelente práctica de rendirme y confiar en el presente.
Durante los últimos 4 años emprendí tres viajes sucesivos al exterior para profundizar mi Usus in Praesens. He tenido así la suerte de caminar por las tierras de Europa (2004-2005), Asia (2005), y el Medio Oriente (2007). El espíritu increible de los lugares, gente, y circunstancias encontradas forjaron presentes extraordinarios que a veces encontraron apoyo y expresión en mis dibujos. Compartirlos con Uds. es mi humilde (e insuficiente) intento de devolver al universo los momentos de gracia brindados. ¡Que estos dibujos de alguna forma comuniquen la esencia mágica de los momentos vividos!"
This widely interdisciplinary project was the result of collaboration among Julio Bermudez, Jim Agutter, Brent Lilly, Noah Syroid, Debra Gondeck-Becker, Dwayne Westenskow, Stefano Foresti, and performed by Yacov Sharir. It was premiered in Salt Lake City and then taken on the road to Connecticut, Texas, Brazil and versions showed elsewhere.
This video shows the very first performance of the cyberPRINT within the show "Body Automatic - Body Resistant" that was directed by Yacov Sharir (UofTexas) and included the work of the Utah RDT Dance Company, Tom Lopez (electronic music composer), Anita Pantin (multimedia artist), and Amante Lucero (Lighting designer). "