ON THE CLASSICAL SANCTUARY SPACE AND ITS NATURAL CONTEXT: NATURE AS EXTENSION OR CONTAINER?

Abstract

Even though nature is accepted to be an integral part of classical architecture, there is limited academic literature on this aspect. This paper aims to contribute to this literature with a focus on the transformation of attitudes towards nature in classical culture and the influence of this transformation on sanctuary planning. The first part, titled “Nature as Extension,” examines the integration of nature with the humanmade in the seemingly haphazard planning of the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. In this sanctuary, myth, nature, and the human-made merge through a phenomenological logic that employs movement and gaze as its major constituents. The second part, titled “Nature as Container,” compares Delphi to the sanctuaries of Athena at Lindos and Fortuna at Praeneste. Perspectival concepts developed in the Hellenistic period could be thought of as instrumental in these sanctuaries, in the creation of an axial and symmetrical space focused on the ascend to the temple. Ultimately, this paper argues that the rupture from nature in the Hellenistic and Roman sanctuaries was a result of the demise of the Archaic mythological tradition and the institution of the philosophical tradition in the democratic polis, humans questioned the dependence of their fate on the almighty gods and defined themselves as the constructor of their own order. Uncontrolled nature became the container of the chaos of the mythical, separate from the controlled human-made realm. The use of perspectival concepts to create introverted spaces preoccupied with their own grandeur rather than the natural context around them could have occurred only in such a cultural context