Living Tombs: Toward a Fluid Understanding of Architectural Space

2025 Harvard Horizons Scholar Sergio Alarcón Robledo explores ancient Egyptian architecture through an interdisciplinary approach that sits at the crossroads of archaeology, Egyptology, and architecture. By inquiring about the sensorial experiences of the past, the PhD student in Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences seeks to understand why ancient funerary structures changed and evolved into monumental buildings. Collaborating with experts from Stanford University, Alarcón Robledo employed acoustic analysis to unravel how these ancient spaces would have shaped sound and, consequently, the human interactions that took place within them.