HAGIA SOPHIA

This has to be one of the most compelling buildings in the world.  My first impression was that it looked almost like a ruin, given the multitude of elements that have been constructed around the base.  The building communicates a long and slow sense of time.  And all of the structural buttressing and Islamic additions combine to create something that is timeless.  As you look at it, you see the the march of history.

You can also sense how gravity and seismic forces have worked on the building for the past 1500 years.  Many of the interior columns are not vertical.  The stone second floor has a significant sag in the middle.  The dome has collapsed a couple of times.

Yet the interior space is astounding.  And you cannot resist gazing at the exterior as you walk around it.  It is constantly revealing itself given the enormous complexity of the lower portion.  And above it all, the simple dome and elegantly beautiful minarets continually shift in the light and play above the massive walls and buttressing.

My principal goal in these two drawings was to understand the structural logic of the building.  The Ottomans inherited the Byzantine architecture, and they pronounced it to be so beautiful that they used it for their dedicated Mosques from then on.  The Blue Mosque, for example,  was modeled on Hagia Sophia.

The drawing above was done to simply celebrate the basic box surrounding the central space. They built four massive arches which support the dome.  This is the basic parti of how the building works and what contributes to how it feels.

The drawing below pays specific attention to how the structural arches and domes were configured for the corners of the building.  This is a space at each corner that is outside of the central dome.  Because of the nesting and harmonic expansion of the structure, while these spaces feel removed, they are still part of the central space.  While I am not sure that I drew the structure in this corner with 100% accuracy, I do believe that I have essentially captured the essence of how the corner spaces were formed.

I made these two drawings from photos that I took with my phone.  So while I did these drawings a day or two after being inside Hagia Sophia, I continue to have distinct sensory memory of being inside the building.  While I would have loved to be able to spend time drawing in the Mosque, I feel that what I produced gave me a far more fundamental understanding of the building parti.  I also feel that there is some of the energy of the building that is captured in these drawings.