Designing Transcendence: Light in Islamic Architecture

presents

Nasser Rabbat
Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT

Designing Transcendence: Light in Islamic Architecture
Light has often been deployed as a transcendental element in Islamic architecture. For more than fifteen centuries, architects all over the Islamic World have developed design strategies to radiate, filter, refract, magnify, focus, conceal, and altogether mystify light. The impressive array of light architecture they have left still astonishes, stirs, and elates today. This talk will present some of the most outstanding examples of light architecture in Islamic history and examine their aesthetic, spatial, and environmental qualities as well as their symbolic and metaphysical connotations. Avoiding any essentialist standpoint, the talk will argue instead that light transcendence was designed for a variety of purposes ranging from the purely functional to the emotive, spiritual, and awe-inspiring depending on the context.