Jelena Bogdanovic

Within the investigations of material and immaterial contexts of architecture, my research examines building techniques and practices in pre-modern (and what some theorists boldly claim to be “pre-architectural”) times and geographies.  Among publications are articles and book chapters on medieval towers; on deciphering “building groups” or “schools” inclusive of their practices and mobility such as in published paper on previously unidentified building school in Skopje; little studied architectural features of the residential palaces in the Ottoman Empire and beyond – the konaks; or forthcoming essay for the Cambridge publication on the religious architecture in the Balkans that highlights the networks of architectural production analyzed through the construction practices. My monograph The Framing of Sacred Space: Canopy and the Byzantine Church (ca. 300-1500) (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers the first topical study of the canopy as an architectural parti.  As architectonic objects of basic structural and design integrity, canopies integrate an archetypical image of architecture and provide means for an innovative understanding of the materialization of the idea of the Byzantine church.  The Framing of Sacred Space further contributes to larger debates about the creation of sacred space and related architectural “taxonomy.  I am also interested in the possibilities of digital technologies not only for the purpose of accurate documentation and historic preservation of medieval buildings but also for better understanding of their design, inclusive of various performative features beyond structural and visual.