21 Feb 2019
Faculty coordinator: Prof. Shubhi Sonal, Prof. Neeraja Jayan
Course: History of Architecture
Resource Person: Ar. Iliona Outram Khalili
Attended by:
School of Architecture, REVA University organized a guest lecture on ‘Byzantine Architecture’ by Ar.Iliona Outram Khalili, on 21st February, 2019 at AV Room 103, Vivekananda Block. This talk was organized mainly for the 2nd semester students, as part of their curriculum, where they have to be introduced to the Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture.
Iliona Outram is a founding member of New Earth UK, and a directing board member. She is an architect and member of RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects). She was raised in London, amid the works of her renowned architect father, John Outram and her mother Rima’s extended family. From 1991-2008 she worked with humanitarian architect Nader Khalili to establish Cal-Earth Institute in California, where in 2003 he conferred on her the status of “Master Builder in Earth Architecture”. Their work was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004 for “Emergency Sandbag Shelter”, for which she was the project manager. In 2012 she co-founded New Earth UK. She has conducted many workshops and university conferences around the world, in Bangladesh, India, Tanzania, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, and UK. In 2015 she led the New Earth team for the Emergency Transitional Shelter Project in Nepal for Earthquake Survivors.
Ar.Iliona started her lecture by explaining how spiritual symbolism influences the ideas in architecture. Some of the important facts of her presentation are mentioned below.
Since Christianity was an illegal religion for a 300years, old temples and structures of Roman Empire were used to construct churches. These ideas had influences from Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt etc. All the churches were planned from West to East or vice versa with central crossing with an elliptical or semi-circular dome at the centre. All ceremonies was conducted in the central part(crossing) were the horizontal axis meets the vertical axis. Oculus is one of the common features of Byzantine Architecture, which allows the light inside the church, which symbolically relates to the light falling into the cave during the birth of Jesus. The masonry of Byzantine arches also explains its importance, were the Christians and non-Christians are welcomed to church. The masonry of byzantine churches showcases materials used from the ruins of Roman temples. They are held together in position with the help of earth mortar, lime mortar and surkhi- to express the unity in diversity. All structures represented stability with respect to gravity. The windows in domes in Byzantine building allowed light as well air movement inside the building, since these areas had hot and dry climate throughout the year.
She concluded her lecture by the question and answer session and expressing her interest to conduct a hands-on workshop for students to construct different types of domes and arches.
The online video of this lecture can be viewed at Impartus Lecture Capture- a leading video platform for education and corporate training.(a.impartus.com)
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