Introduction

In the abstract, architecture is an insuperable task. Faced with multiple possibilities, the architect has no ground for the delimitation of his or her many options to the ultimate one.1 Broadly, the functions of an edice suggest no one form and much less a direction. In deference to biological needs, function is nebulous and multi-directional. However, function assumes a trajectory and becomes highly prescriptive once it is appropriated by culture and transformed into a ritual. Sleeping for instance suggests little by way of an appropriate setting. Appropriated, however, as an instrument for the communication and enforcement of, for instance, a culture’s sexual mores and taboos, and transformed into a ritual, it becomes highly prescriptive. Though by no means singular, a ritual is distinct and unidirectional. It has unique spatial requirements. It demands a specic setting. It is this and similar prescriptive cultural appropriations that make architecture possible.