257Through ceremonial or ritual actions, social relationships
are endowed with expression. The barriers of a courtroom,
for example, display the battle lines of > confrontation, the
seating arrangement in a parliament building mirrors the dis-
tribution of power, while a ‘round table’, in contrast, reflects
attempts to reach agreement. Options for making entrances
or for self-presentation are formed through raised stages, al-
tars or staircases. Such arrangements imply hierarchy, with
the most important actors or objects – i.e. cult image or ac-
tion, or ruler – being presented above, while the process of
approach is enacted via > ascent, together with the deliberate-
ness and effort associated with it. Through the sequence of
rooms, the enfilade of a princely residence indicates the degree
of > accessibility for individuals of various ranking during re-
ceptions.
To begin with, religious worship calls for an architec-
ture that evokes the kind of sacred atmosphere and numinous
mood that are suggestive of reverential or respectful forms
of movement and speech. Against this background, the other
ceremonial components, including > sound (music), > odour
(incense) and ritual movement appear to be integrated into a
specifically sacral spectacle. The spatial structure of church
architecture sketches out liturgical movement sequences, sol-
emn entry through the main portal during special occasions
and via the central axis of the middle nave towards the choir,
as well as via the steps leading to the altar. This movement is
often contained by > centring or by a concave spatial termi-
nus; the celebrant circles the altar and turns towards the con-
gregation, which stands across from or has gathered around
him or her.
Nearly every activity can be celebrated when time is de-
voted to it and it is endowed with a certain form, to which the
spatial furnishings also contribute, whether it is a question
of the lever du roi as enacted around the royal bed of state
with grand displays of splendour, or the individual process
of bathing in the more recent reductive aesthetic of the ritual