Design Research · Wearable Design System
The Sublime and Awe
Translating Sacred Experience into Contemporary Wearable Design
A research-driven design investigation exploring how the spatial and emotional qualities of sacred space — the sense of the sublime and of awe — can be translated into a contemporary wearable design system. Beginning from the concept of the Modern Sacred Space (מרחב קודש מודרני), the project moves from architectural and cultural research into a system of jewelry, storytelling, and interactive, wearable technology that lets the wearer carry a fragment of sacred experience.
Project Overview
Sacred experience is usually architectural — it asks for a building, a journey, a body moving through space. This project asks whether that experience can be distilled and made personal: a private sanctuary worn on the body. It traces a deliberate arc from cultural and architectural research into a resolved wearable system, integrating jewelry, storytelling, interaction, and wearable technology.
- Origin
- Modern Sacred Space — מרחב קודש מודרני
- Themes
- The Sublime (הנשגב) · Awe (יראה)
- Disciplines
- Cultural research · Architecture · Jewelry · Interaction
- Outcome
- Contemporary wearable design system
Research Question
How can the intangible experience of the sublime and awe — traditionally produced by sacred architecture — be re-encoded into an intimate, wearable, contemporary object?
Research Process
The research began in space before it moved to the body. By documenting how sanctuaries across traditions stage emotion — through light, proportion, and threshold — the project built a vocabulary of the devices that reliably produce awe, then asked which of them could survive translation to an object only centimetres wide.
- 01Studied sacred spaces across traditions — reading light, proportion, threshold, silence, and verticality.
- 02Mapped the spatial devices that produce awe: scale, compression and release, filtered light, material weight.
- 03Conducted cultural and textual research into the sublime (הנשגב) and awe (יראה) as emotional and philosophical categories.
- 04Translated spatial findings into a design language of form, material, light, and ritual gesture.
Concept Development
The concept shifted from a space you enter to an object you wear. The sacred threshold becomes a clasp; the filtered light of a sanctuary becomes a refractive surface; the verticality of a nave becomes the silhouette of a pendant. Iterative models tested how a small object could still summon a large, transcendent feeling — refining proportion, weight, and gesture until the piece read as a fragment of something greater than itself.
Story Behind the Concept
We rarely choose when awe arrives — it is usually given to us by a place. The story behind this project is the desire to make that moment portable: to carry a quiet threshold into ordinary days, so that a glance at the object, or the gesture of putting it on, can re-open a small interval of stillness and elevation. The wearable becomes less an ornament than a personal ritual — a way of keeping the sacred close.
“A private sanctuary, worn on the body — activating a moment of pause and elevation in everyday life.”
Design Translation
Each spatial quality from the research was translated into a concrete design decision — proportions drawn from sacred geometry, surfaces that catch and filter light, and weight that grounds the body. The result is a modular jewelry system where each piece corresponds to a spatial experience.
The sacred passage becomes the act of putting the piece on.
Sanctuary light becomes a material that catches and bends it.
The rising nave becomes the line and posture of the form.
Interactive Experience
Wearable technology adds a temporal, responsive layer — subtle light, haptic, and reactive elements that activate the sense of awe through interaction, turning the object into a small ritual rather than static decoration. Storytelling travels with each piece, linking the wearer back to the architectural and cultural source so the experience is felt and understood.
Final Outcome
The outcome is a contemporary wearable design system that integrates jewelry, storytelling, interaction, and wearable technology — translating sacred architectural experience into an intimate object. As a body of work it demonstrates a full arc: from abstract cultural research, through concept development, to a resolved, emotionally resonant design system.