The Sacred Abyss: absence as operative structure in sacred architecture

Architectural voids and absence are not mere negatives but active spatial operators that structure sacred experience. The concept of the 'Sacred Abyss' reframes emptiness, concealment, and openness as generative conditions that organize orientation, mediate access, and sustain interpretive openness in sacred architecture. Through a comparative analysis of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Jameh Mosque of Isfahan, and Great Synagogue of Budapest, the study identifies three regimes of architectural withdrawal—vertical transcendent absence, diffuse cosmological absence, and withheld interior absence—that modulate perception and meaning without reducing absence to mere lack or affective tone. This framework advances phenomenological and atmospheric approaches by theorizing absence as a multilayered condition across spatial, perceptual, and symbolic dimensions.

Mehdilou, S., & Yaghoobi, M. (2026). The Sacred Abyss: absence as operative structure in sacred architecture. Cogent Arts & Humanities, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2026.2687978