Adriana Sarbova is an architect with a Ph.D. in the theory and history of architecture, and assistant professor at the Institute of Balkan Studies and Center of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. Her research interests comprise Thracian cult architecture and contemporary sacred spaces. Her book (in press) Architectural Dialogues: Thracian Cult Buildings in the Context of Contemporary Sacred Spaces explores two main questions: the reliance of contemporary sacred space design on models found in ancient cult buildings and communication with nature as achieved through the building’s architectural conception. Her project at Yale, The New Sacred Space: Architectural Features of a ‘Contemporary Solar Cult’ is a next step in this research. She introduces a new term, contemporary solar cult, which refers to the deployment of different artistic and architectural forms to transform the observation of the sun into a process of reflection, meditation, and even a kind of sacred experience, like for example the works of James Turrell and Not Vital. During her short-term fellowship she will focus on the work of architects Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn represented in the holdings of the Yale University Art Gallery and Yale University Library, and in particular these architects’ sacred buildings and the inspiration they found in the architecture of ancient Egypt and Greece.
