Ritual void in the sacred architecture of Montenegro

Abstract

Sacral architecture has always aimed at the ritualization of space, which gained its spatial form by making the void. Common to all religions is the need to create a grandiose space with a "sacred void", which achieves mystification, sublimity, as a special experience of the religious space. Historical examples show that religion has demonstrated its power precisely through volumetrics that exceeded expected proportions. However, contemporary realizations of sacral architecture point to the need for a redefinition of the "sacred void". In this sense, the goal of this work is analysis the smaller scale of the sacral void, which is present in numerous examples of sacral architecture in the Balkans. In this paper, several relevant examples in the territory of Montenegro will be processed, whose idea of emptiness remains as a consequence of religious, cultural, but also contextual conditions, where the wall - the beginning, as a building element of emptiness, plays an important role.