Light and Essence

Light, the immaterial building tool plays a dominant role in sacral architecture. Since the appearance of Cistercian architecture, the symbolism of natural light is determinant in Christian church architecture. Light helps to understand mystery. As a transmitter medium, light plays a significant role in discovering a communal experience. Compared to previous times, modern architecture has put much bigger emphasis on the appearance of light – the puritan formation and the creation of flowing spaces strengthened the dominance of light. In general, the clear spaces being created in this way were typical of their monochromy. At the turn of the millennium, contemporary architecture tries to get adjusted to the spatial demands and to the needs of visual appeareance and for this reason it marks out new spatial roles for natural light. On one hand, the turn up of medial culture can be observed; which trend – as a general architectural course – is usually adapted in church architecture too with the purpose of emphasizing the spatial effects. But at the same time, one can see a significant simplification – deriving from the liturgical interpretation of space. Spaces (close to the approach of early modern) concentrate on essential elements again: placing great emphasis on the marked appearance of natural light and on its role in the representation of the ethereal. Either monochrome, dichorme or polichrome spaces help to personally experience space itself. Our interpretation – along the most prominent international and Hungarian examples – evaluates this special tendency and discovers the sacral understanding of space in terms of the use of light