"Architecture and Ritual explores how the rituals of life-- from the grand and formal to the mundane and everyday-- 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. This is achieved through deep readings of individual pieces of architecture, each with a detailed description of its particular social setting and use. From the Paris Opera to modernist hospitals, and from seventeenth-century Chinese yamen to Sioux lamentation ceremonies, each case study enables a distinct theme to emerge, showing how social conventions relate to spatial practice. In considering how all architecture meshes 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 highlights for architects the continued importance of understanding how their building designs will frame social space."--Page four of cover