MONASTERY Link 1

Monastery: The Organization of the Physical Plant.

"The Monastery" emphasizes the physical structure and organization of the monastery as architecture. One of the important ideas about the monastery is that it shows how groups of people who wish to live together because they share certain ideals will, over time, develop distinctive architectural solutions to the problems that communal living creates. We are used to thinking of such communities as Christian, but of course monasteries are built to serve non-Western, non-Christian religions as well.

To get some idea of the diversity of monasteries, check the entries under Monastery and Byzantine Monasticism in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages.

Then consider ask how the relations between the beliefs of the community and the physical construction and layout of the community's monastic site are discussed. How do Eastern monasteries differ from those in the West? Are all Western monasteries roughly the same in their basic design?

• To what extent is there a necessary correlation between the complexity of a monastic building or group of buildings and the spiritual mission of the monks who lived there? Could the same work--and what kinds of work are we thinking of here--be performed in the monasteries of different design?
• Think about contemporary analogies: is there a necessary relationship between the design of a college campus and the work of the college? How about an army base? What might be other analogies?

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