The Square and the Rectangle: Design Transformations and Architectural Renovation between the 14th–16th Centuries in Vijayanagara

18 December 2020

How did architectural geometries change as temples were incrementally expanded, renovated, or altered? This lecture is an inquiry into specific temples and their long histories of structural, sacral, material and experiential transformation.

While some of these transformations are easily discernible and their impact is more easily understood, others are more elusive and require acts of imagination to help us make meaning of them. Therefore, this lecture is also propositional and makes an inquiry into how sacred spaces built centuries ago can help us imagine community and individual experiences of devotees, gurus, kings, subjects, merchants, good wives and sons etc., in a dynamic and highly mobile society.