Visions of Ultimate Reality: The Intense Safavid Synthesis in Architecture

The lecture will address highlights of the application of his research on transcendent design and the epistemological assumptions behind existence in the philosophic legacy that culminated in the renaissance of 17th century Safavid architecture and thought in Isfahan. It will explore the key concepts of this synthesis that influenced the majestic urban square of the Nagsh I Jahan and its four main building elements as architectural interpretations of those philosophies with particular focus on the Sheikh Lutfullah mosque as the pinnacle achievement of these manifestations. In the process, the lecture will probe why science may explain the phenomenal behavior of light and optics on the one hand: and probe whether it can explain the visceral, mysterious and spiritually transformative experience of the use of light/space, geometry/monumentality, color/materiality, motion/illusion and the hidden/manifest dimension in these masterpieces, where each of its shadowed spaces or reflective glazed surfaces, are contemplative encounters that profoundly interweave emotional subjectivity, logic, theology and the sublime.