Architecture and Ritual How Buildings Shape Society

Architecture and Ritual explores how the varied rituals of everyday life are framed and defined in space by the buildings which we inhabit. It penetrates beyond traditional assumptions about architectural style, aesthetics and utility to deal with something more implicit: how buildings shape and reflect our experience in ways of which we remain unconscious.

Whether designed to house a grand ceremony or provide shelter for a daily meal, all buildings coordinate and consolidate social relations by giving orientation and focus to the spatial practices of those who use them. Peter Blundell Jones investigates these connections between the social and the spatial, providing critical insights into the capacity for architecture to structure human ritual, from the grand and formal to the mundane. This is achieved through deep readings of individual pieces of architecture, each with a detailed description of its particular social setting and use. The case studies are drawn from throughout architectural history and from around the globe, each enabling a distinct theoretical theme to emerge, and showing how social conventions vary with time and place, as well as what they have in common. Case studies range from the Nuremberg Rally to the Centre Pompidou, and from the Palace of Westminster to Dogon dwellings in Africa and a Modernist hospital.

In considering how all architecture has to mesh with the habits, beliefs, rituals and expectations of the society that created it, the book presents deep implications for our understanding of architectural history and theory. It also highlights the importance for architects of understanding how buildings frame social space before they prescribe new architectural designs of their own. The book ends with a recent example of user participation, showing how contemporary user interest and commitment to a building can be as strong as ever.

Chapter 1 Introduction

Part 1: Power and Politics

Chapter 2 Black Rod and the Three Knocks on the Door
Chapter 3 The Lord Mayor's Banquet
Chapter 4 The Imperial Chinese Magistrate and his Yamen
Chapter 5 The Nuremberg Rally of 1934

Part 2: People and their Territories

Chapter 6 Hunter-Gatherer Architecture: The Australian Aborigines
Chapter 7 The Oglala Sioux and the Four Directions
Chapter 8 The Tukanoan Maloca
Chapter 9 The Dogon of Mali
Chapter 10 The Dong, Building Types and Building Rituals

Part 3: Modernities

Chapter 11 The European Farmstead
Chapter 12 The Hospital
Chapter 13 The Opera and the Concert Hall
Chapter 14 The Fun Palace Project, Centre Pompidou and Paradoxical Ideas of Freedom

Chapter 15 Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

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