Architecture—medium—sacrum. The Higher Theological Seminary of the Resurrectionist in Krakow in the perspective of Marshall McLuhan’s media theory
Autor
Wesołowska-Starzec, Hanna
Opublikowane w
Technical Transactions
Numeracja
Vol. 122, iss. 1
Data wydania
2025
Miejsce wydania
Warsaw
Wydawca
Sciendo
Sekcja czasopisma
Architecture and Urban Planning
Język
angielski
eISSN
2353-737X
DOI
https://doi.org/10.37705/TechTrans/e2025030
Słowa kluczowe
architecture as medium, cultural communication, media theory, spatial experience, mediology
Abstrakt
Architecture, especially sacred architecture, is one of the most complex media of culture. It not only shapes space, but also generates experience, structures ritual, organizes perception, and initiates processes of interpretation. In this sense, it can be read as a structural and symbolic message, which simultaneously reveals its medial character. This article examines this mediality through the lens of Marshall McLuhan’s theory, which understands media—including art and architecture—as systems that organize sensory and cognitive experience. McLuhan’s concept makes it possible to interpret architecture as a dynamic and creative communicative process. The study focuses on the Higher Seminary of the Resurrectionist Fathers in Kraków, one of the most fully realised examples of Polish postmodernism, analysed not through formal categories but within a mediological perspective. The aim of the article is to demonstrate how McLuhan’s categories—such as the extension of the senses, the organization of perception, and the structure of the message—are genuinely present and justified in the experience of architecture. The article presents the theoretical foundations for understanding architecture as a medium, a brief reflection on postmodernism, an analysis of the Resurrectionist Seminary using the conceptual tools mentioned above, and final conclusions. The applied methodology includes analytical interpretation of the seminary’s spatial structure, examination of available statements by the architect, and the use of McLuhan’s theoretical framework (media studies analysis), which together make it possible to read the building as a dynamic narrative in which material function and form co-create meaning, experience, and ritual.
