Abstract

Context

Throughout the Anthropocene, ritual & architecture have been linked. In our contemporary age, however, this link has largely been lost. This is unfortunate, especially in an era where we are increasingly disconnected from each other & from the planet. This is particularly relevant in architecture, as it is both highly significant in terms of material waste & greenhouse gas emissions as well as its role as a mediator of human behavior. There are many ways that ritual can be seamlessly incorporated into the process of building. Ritual & architecture are both processes with progressive stages in which elements come together. Ritual involves a sequence of events to achieve an outcome. Architecture involves a sequence of building elements coming together in a specific order. Some cultures in the past & today synthesize building & ritual. One example is the Gurunsi tribe of West Africa, who construct adobe houses using ritual. After examining a variety of ritual practices, involving building or otherwise, an archetype can be found & utilized to incorporate ritual back into our modern lives.

Situation

In our contemporary society, the processes of building & ritual are almost entirely separated. Architecture culture today is highly reflective of our individualistic capitalist lives. To incorporate ritual into this culture could be radical. We sought to imagine the answers to the following questions: “How would a ritual building look in the context of a contemporary architecture school?” &, “What does a ritual facilitated through building look like?” Using Sacrality as a material, we begin to intuitively generate an achievable ritual process. This way, we could begin to examine these questions from firsthand experience. What form does the ritual space take? What role do permanence & impermanence take? Are the ritual performers designated roles? How does this involve the community & culture of an architecture school?

Contribution

We analyzed various rituals from various cultures & extracted elements common to most ritual formats. We used these elements to envision an archetypal ritual, informed by the various cultural rituals we studied as well as our own logic & intuition. These elements come together symphonically, moving across time like notes in music. Sometimes the elements would occur simultaneously, like a harmonious musical chord. We specifically analyzed Gurunsi tribal building using this system, & allowed this precedent to inform our own ritual. We then drafted, performed, & recorded two instances of our own ritual building. We designed a simple structure that could be built & rebuilt as many times as necessary. We used found materials from past student works. In our first iteration, we focused on presenting the archetypal ritual itself, in a simplified way. Though this was largely successful, we found that it lacked intentionality. Thus, in our second iteration, we created a manifested purpose for the ritual. This purpose was essentially to manifest a future for the Stuckeman School that is in harmony with Gaia, the personification of the Earth. We can create images & models that reflect the future we manifested in the ritual, the final form of the Stuckeman community in harmony with the Earth. We find that ritual building is a method that synthesizes our modern world & the lost spiritualism of past humanity.