Matei Eugen Stoean // The shape and measure of space. New applied methods of representing the ecclesiastical space through drawings and models
The concept of form is commonly used as that of physical, material, concrete shape, a volume that determines a palpable contour of the space - both the exterior in which it is located and the interior it generates. In a two-dimensional field (like a flat composition - painting, fresco, pavement, plans or elevations of a building), the form is a linear outline that delimits, separates or compartmentalises surfaces.1 In the three-dimensional field (in a physical, real space), the form (in its original meaning) is actually the covering of volumes or spaces, the separating surface between full and void, which delimits the solid from the vacuum - a mathematical abstraction lacking materiality. It constitutes the pattern, the mould in which the solid matter (with its textures, colours and reflections) is poured, generating volumes, and the air (with its brightness, transparency and humidity), generating spaces.2
This project, unique in its scope and applicability, whose theoretical basis was elaborated in the spring of 2023 in Rome, there is a chance of continuing the extensive analysis of the architecture of small churches of rural communities in borderlands. By bringing together all the findings of the original research carried out over the last eleven years through a synthesis and materialisation of the observations on the interior spatiality of churches built by communities located in the Southern Carpathians, as well as some in Tyrol, built in the period 1700-1850, this new study can provide a series of conclusions necessary for an even deeper understanding of the architecture of the liturgical space. The research will interpret and develop lessons from the German studies focused on the shape and analysis of the interior space (Kunstwissenschaft) together with those of the Italian theory of art and architecture, specifically the Rome School of Architecture.
The study will have two main directions: a theoretical and a practical part. The main objectives would be:
- conducting a first applied research on the formal and detailed connections of liturgical interior spaces of churches in the borderlands;
- the production of the negative models of the spaces, partially initiated in Rome, but which will be extended and developed in multiple forms and materialities - new scale models would be made and exhibited at the Institutes in Munich and, afterwards, in Bucharest, to facilitate conclusions relevant to all the research so far;
- the new scale models and drawings would help to better understand the typological connections of the generative patterns of interior spaces that are similar, despite the exterior forms that determine such architecturally different silhouettes;
- this method of analysis and representation in architecture, with sources both in the German theory as well as the Italian architecture school, is intended to be the basis from which to develop new methodologies of study applicable to interior space of churches.
1 Pierre von Meiss: Elements of architecture: from form to place; forewords by Kenneth Frampton and Franz Oswald., Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1990, pp. 22-25.
2 Ibidem.
[Caption: Matei Eugen Stoean: image from „the Shape and Measure of Space” exhibition, part of the Spazi Aperti – Mostra collettiva degli artisti in residenza presso gli Istituti e le Accademie straniere di Roma, 2023.]