Found my scribble after visiting Hagia Sophia. I have no idea what I was thinking. Hagia Sophia is all Volume. Maybe even all volume and no space. Its a Christian universe that aims to envelop and contain as much of the world as possible. The outward trappings of this volume world is modest - brutal almost modernist. The architecture is all structure. No wonder the young Corbusier loved it. Inside ornament and embellishment is impossible - even though there is much of it attempted. But the volume allows no distraction by surface. No flight of fancy is possible in this massive structural feat that wants to be the world. Yet this is precisely what the thin pointy minarets - added later when it was converted to a mosque - does. They relieve it of the grim sobriety, the burden of grandeur Hagia Sophia is weighed down with. The pointy minarets....what would Hagia Sophia be without them.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 15:31:20 +0000
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