Limen, liminality: space and ritual

João Paulo Martins

martins@fa.utl.pt Centro de Investigação em Arquitectura, Urbanismo e Design Architecture Faculty, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa

Abstract

In the discourse that we construct around architectural objects and space, we attempt to make the object of our studies intelligible. In order to have a better understanding of the phenomena we study, we observe, analyze and describe it, often resorting to analogies from areas other than our own and particularly from the fields of mechanics, biology and linguistics. In sharp contrast to this, space and its use has acquired a central position in the conceptual frameworks developed by some authors dedicated to the study of social relations. Even before those metaphors with a clearly spatial base acquired an effective theoretical consistency in the social sciences, some architects perceived the potential of these approaches. The subject of the “threshold” was introduced in the debate that shaped contemporary architectural culture in the period following the Second World War by Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson, and developed by Aldo Van Eyck.

Keywords

Space, Ritual, Drama, Threshold, Liminality

Space and spatial metaphors

In the discourse that we construct around architectural objects and space, we attempt to make the object of our studies intelligible, that is, we try to make a rational interpretation of it by putting it into words. In order to have a better understanding of the phenomena we study, we observe, analyze and describe it, often resorting to analogies from areas other than our own and particularly from the fields of mechanics, biology and linguistics (Collins 1965; Barata 1977; Steadman 1979; Forty 2000). Yet all too often we do not realize how our observation skills are conditioned by these analogies.

By constructing an appearance of likelihood, these analogies can conceal the true nature of the phenomena and ultimately raise real obstacles to understanding. In sharp contrast to this, space and its use has acquired a central position in the conceptual frameworks developed by some authors dedicated to the study of social relations. The everyday life of individuals and human groups – in short, of societies – in their material existence, in space and in time, is addressed here through metaphors with a clearly spatial base (Van Gennep 1909; Goffman 1959; Turner 1967, 1969; Giddens 1979). We consider it reasonable to accept that the use of these spatial metaphors can also prove beneficial to the study of space from the architect’s standpoint, both as a conceptual support for analytical work and as a basis for project work. They are methodological instruments that help us overcome the strictly visual dimensions of space and architecture, as well as the pre-eminence of bidimensionality and of the image that have so confined contemporary architectural practice and debate. They are metaphors that adjust themselves in a particular way to the understanding of space, in its transitional essence, based on the practices that are developed there by man over time, on the interactions that take place there, through the definition of boundaries, limits and passages; through the power negotiations that are played here; through the communication that is mediated by them, in the representation and the improvisation, in the codes and the coercion, in the convention and the subversion; in the arbitrary that we are taught – the habitus (Bourdieu 1967, 1972) – and which we transform at the same time as replicate. The observation of these “practices of space” – a notion that includes both the use of the space and its conception – takes us in search of an understanding of the relations between space, culture and history; between conservation and innovation; between teaching and learning, cultural production and reproduction; between the spaces and the identity of the groups that inhabit there.

Rites of passage

One of the works that has made the greatest contribution to a spatial reading of society is Les Rites de Passage, published in 1909 by the French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957)¹. The book’s long subtitle sums up an entire working program: "systematic study of the rites of the door and the threshold, of hospitality, of adoption, of pregnancy and delivery, of birth, of childhood, of puberty, initiation, of ordination, of coronation, of betrothal and marriage, of funerals, of seasons” (Van Gennep 1909). For the first time, the rite was the subject of autonomous study. Using examples collected from the most diverse civilizations, Van Gennep clearly presented the profound similarity of the manifestations relating to the individual’s life cycle, to the family cycle, to the passage of time, to the cycle of seasons, of days, of production tasks. According to Van Gennep, the life of individuals in every kind of society “consists of going successively from one age to another and from one occupation to another”, from one state to the other (Van Gennep 1909). The “rites of passage” shape the periods of disruption with the everyday and the transition between these states are “intermediate phases” that signal and give meaning to the transitions between the successive “stages” of an individual’s life. The rites are associated to a “before” and an “after”; they constitute an expression of social dynamics; they assume the condition of “passage” from one culturally determined situation recognized by the society in which they are integrated to another equally determined situation (Van Gennep 1909). These ceremonies operate through comparison, contrast and contradiction to distinguish and separate categories that are of vital importance for the maintenance of the group. A rite of passage is a collective event that involves coercion, and which permits the assessment of the level of integration in the community (Segalen 1998). For both individuals and groups, says Van Gennep, "living is continuously disintegrating and reforming itself, changing state and form, dying and being born again. It is acting and then stopping, waiting and resting, and then acting again albeit in a different way" (Van Gennep 1909). The rites imply a moment of death, conceived as the paralyzation of life, and a subsequent rebirth; they transform renewal into drama, into theatrical staging This is why the rites are endowed with a three-phase sequential structure, exactly like the structure of the classic drama, just like Aristotle stated in Poetics: a beginning, a middle or climax and an end (Douglas, 1966). In other words, the rites are set in a schematic progression in time that confers them with the character of eminently historic events; they are articulated with what preceded them and what it is supposed, or hoped, will succeed them. Van Gennep identified the three stages that compose the typical sequence of the rites of passage by the terms “separation”, “margin” and “aggregation”. In general, throughout a ritual process, the person is separated from the normal course of life and from the group to which he/she belongs; this leads to a marginal existence in which the person is subject to numerous rules and can be submitted to physical or moral lessons or tests. Finally, once the passage is complete, the individual is reintegrated into the normal life of the community and assumes a new status. In most of the examples gathered by Van Gennep, he found that the passages involved in the rites are not simply ideal or metaphoric. These passages imply transformation in the order of the body; they are combined with material and physical passages, with architectural expression, and identify themselves with them: the entry into a settlement or building, the passage from one room to another; a leap or the crossing of a threshold or doorway, a pathway through the streets or the squares. In this way, the ritual reveals the metaphysical importance that the individuals and groups invest in their effective use of the space, at the same time as it transforms this bodily, tangible and localized practice into an experience that can be shared, memorized, reproduced and reproducing. Van Gennep used the equivalence between passages in time and passages in space to conceptualize the social order as a journey in time and in space. Society would be like a spatial unit with a series of divisions within it. Each individual would be "classified in synchronized or successive compartments and, in order to go from one to the other so as to meet up with individuals classified in other compartments", he/she would have to undergo rites of passage throughout his/her life and social trajectory. To specify this reference to spatial transitions, Van Gennep also gave the three stages of the rite the terms “preliminal”, “liminal” and “postliminal”, from limen – the Latin word meaning threshold. In this way, the condition of “liminality” assumes a central position while what goes before and after it are given peripheral positions (pre and post). The rite defines thresholds, or boundaries, in the territory, in relation to which the discrimination between profane and sacred spaces is established. Thus, the pivotal importance of the liminal or margin situation – simultaneously ideal and material - is stressed and defined as a no-man’s land “floating between two worlds”. The phenomenon of the “margin” corresponds to the need for a “neutral position” separating two contrasting movements; the fundamental need for the regeneration of biological or social activities at more or less regular intervals (Van Gennep 1909). Van Gennep collected numerous references to the formalities of a magicalreligious nature associated to physical boundaries (Van Gennep 1909). The appropriation of spaces and the prohibitions associated to it are expressed through clear and recognizable physical signs: the limits being crossed can be defined by natural landmarks (rocks, trees, a river, a lake...) or human constructions specifically placed for that purpose (poles, porticos, stones set vertically, walls, statues...). In traditional cultures, the paths for natural communication often have the value of obstacles to be overcome: the crossing of ravines or of rivers is, very often, accompanied by rites of passage. Similarly, “boarding or disembarking, the act of getting into a carriage or a palanquin, mounting a horse for a journey, etc., are often accompanied by rites of separation on departure and rites of aggregation on the return” (Van Gennep 1909). Van Gennep’s examples relate to space at every scale: the country, a territory, a city or a village, a block, a temple or a house. The border – the no-man’s land that defines the threshold, i.e. the liminal zone – therefore corresponds to the tollgate, the postern of the city walls, the entrance to the walls of the neighborhood, the door of the house, or even to a stone, a beam, a doorstep. But it can also acquire the definition of a porch, a narthex or a vestibule. The door, in particular “is the borderline between the foreign and the domestic world when referring to a common house, and between the profane and the sacred world in the case of a temple”. The sacred character of the door can be recognized by both the whole frame and equally by its individual pieces – the threshold, the lintels or the architrave. Sometimes, “the sacred value of the threshold is found in all the thresholds in the house”, thus making it possible to identify rites of thresholds that cover the various forms of the rites of passage: rites of entry, of waiting and of exit (Van Gennep 1909). In his reflection on the Paris galleries, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) also recognized the spatial autonomy of the liminal places when he noted that “the threshold [die Schwelle] must be sharply differentiated from the border [die Grenze]. The threshold is a zone“². Therefore, “passage and peristyle, pronaos and portal, entry and vestibule, triumphal arch, pro-fane (pro-fanus: in front of the temple) and sacred (fanus): these lines, imaginary and tectonic, do not create boundaries, but the between, a space in the middle. The form of the threshold, as a temporal and spatial figure, is that of the ‘between-the-two’ of the medium that opens between two things or two people” (Teyssot 2000). In turn, Michel De Certeau (1925-1986) clearly demonstrated the ambiguous nature that characterizes the threshold when he established the counterpoint of the “border” – that defines, establishes and legitimates a space, that permits appropriation – and the “bridge” – that makes the connection to the outside and allows mobility, the journey. On the other hand, De Certeau presents the “paradox of the border”, in that "it creates both communication and separation".

The border is "one ‘space between two' [...]. A third place, a game of interactions and inter-views [...], a narrative symbol of exchanges and meetings". On the other hand, he shows us the ambiguity of the bridge which "welds together and opposes insularities. It distinguishes them and threatens them. It frees from closure and destroys autonomy. [...] Everything happens as if the actual boundary was the bridge that opens up the inside to its other" (De Certeau 1980).

Liminality, ambiguity and hybridization

The systematic study of rites was taken up again and considerably developed by the ethnologist Victor Turner (1920-1983) during the 1960s (Turner 1967, 1969). Turner focused his attention on the study of the “liminality” stage, valorizing the fact that this is achieved in “units of space and time in which behavior and symbolism are momentarily enfranchised from the norms and values” in force in the group (Turner 1969). According to Turner, the person undergoing a rite of passage is a traditional being who lives in the “confusion of all the habitual categories” because he/she is no longer classified and at the same time has not yet been classified (Turner 1967). This ambiguity of classification results from a state of social ambiguity - a situation that Turner designates as being “betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial” (Turner 1969). The individuals in this situation experience a condition of social invisibility and are frequently associated to negative states. Supported in part by the book Purity and Danger (Douglas 1966), Turner underlined the state of impurity of the individuals in a liminal situation and the resulting danger for themselves and for the society to which they belong. An individual in transition is in danger and the danger emanates from that very person himself. The performance of the "ritual exorcizes the danger in that it separates the individual from his former state [...] and then places him, politically, in his new condition" (Douglas 1966). Roberto Da Matta (1936-) meanwhile has revealed the positive side of liminality to us, justifying the revalorization of the intermediate states of all kinds, all mixed breeds, creoles and hybrids (Da Matta 1981, 2000). Da Matta pointed out “the positivity of the liminal states and [...] their importance as the essential component in the constitution of sociability itself”, notably in Brazil, his predominant area of study, where the “institutionalization of the intermediary” constitutes a mundane social fact and is a “fundamental form” of sociability (Da Matta 2000).

Drama and settings of everyday life

The sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982) also systematizes his vision of social life using a spatial analogy with a theatrical base and it converges in part with the ritual model. Goffman used the notion of “role setting”, suggesting a stage where everyday social life is acted out. By analyzing the function held by a specific place during a concrete performance, he was able to develop the distinction between ”front regions” and ”back regions” and recognized that there are non-verbal forms of communication set on what he called scenic parts of the expressive equipment (Goffman 1959). This conceptualization was taken up again by the architect Amos Rapoport (1936-) who applied it to the systematic study of phenomena of architectural and urban space and its use by mankind (Rapoport 1977). Rapoport developed the notion of “setting”, which he recognized as existing at all scales of space, constituting “systems of settings” that the social actors use to engage in “systems of activities” (Rapoport 1990). Building from Goffman, he explained the use of elements of the interaction setting as non-verbal cues that contribute to bringing about human behaviors. We can consider that these approaches converge to some extent (Martins 2006) with the conceptual frameworks formulated by Edward T. Hall, culminating in the concept of “proxemics” (Hall 1966); the “theory of practice” and the notion of “habitus”, theorized by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1967, 1972); the works of the geographer Torsten Hägerstrand (1916-2004) on the idea of “time-geography” (Hägerstrand 1970, 1973, 1975); as well as Anthony Giddens’ “theory of structuration” (Giddens 1979).

Profane rituals. Contemproary rituals

Meanwhile, the analysis of the rite has started to be extended to its most profane and least collective forms. It is accepted today that profane rites have always existed in the form of rites of feeding, of work, sport, war, justice or school (Rivière 1997). Nowadays, just as always, the rite marks “disruptions and discontinuities, critical moments (passage) both at individual and at social times; [...] it orders disorder, gives meaning to the accidental or the incomprehensible, gives social actors the means to control wrong-doing, time and social relations" (Segalen 1998). The commercial flight has already been presented as an example of a typical contemporary rite of passage³³. It is easy to identify the phases of separation, margin and reintegration here, throughout a sequence of operations in which the definition and the use of space are determinant. There are countless procedures in which the main objective is to separate the passenger from the profane world so as to give him access to the “sacred” of air space. The airport is dedicated to promoting a transformation in the status of its users: "it is a building that converts citizens into airline passengers"⁴. The rituality of the operation is confirmed by all the means involved therein: the uniforms, gestures and discourse of the crew; the in-flight services; the flight cabin, assumed as the “supreme sacred place”; the countless prohibitions and obligations; the system for transmitting messages that can be considered "laden with mystic effectiveness" (Rivière 1997). Today, there is no canonic and consensual definition of rite. However, it is significant that the rite is characterized universally by "a specific space-time configuration, by the use of a series of objects, specific behavior and language systems and by emblematic signals whose codified meaning constitutes a common asset of the group" (Segalen 1998). The essence of the spatial and above all corporal dimension of the ritual practices has already been sufficiently stressed (Parkin 1992). Thus, the “ritual is fundamentally made up of physical action” and composed of “bodily movements towards or positioning with respect to other bodily movements and positions”. All the rituals are inscribed in space, ordered in phases and sequences; they involve movement, directionality (spatial orientation) and positioning; they involve a pathway of the passage undertaken and/or marked by the participants, arranged in the space in relation to each other. The ritual acquires the ”capacity to create and act”, through ideas of space (passage, movement, exchange, journey, axis, concentricism, and up- and-down); the spatial orientation and position, the movements between points and places are the means that constitute the actual ritual (and it is only through them that the rituals can be described) (Parkin 1992).

Ritual behavior and the architectural project

If it seems correct that the rites are essentially expressed through bodily practices of space, reciprocally, the whole bodily practice of space implies dimensions that exceed its mere physical description and is part of a system of classification and symbolization of which the ritual practices are a fundamental part. The spatial contexts destined for the performance of rituals in traditional societies have been given as examples of what can be considered “a minimal condition for architecture: just enough spatial definition to allow the shared choreography to be carried out” (Jones 1990). Often, the materiality of this intervention is so discrete that it goes unnoticed by people from outside of the group and is so fragile that it has to be recreated every time the ritual is performed. The process is similar to the way children transform the street into a place to play football. There is simply a fundamental architectural gesture, ”the artifice that declares human presence”. This is what ensures the structure of the event in time, that gives expression to the relations between the actors and establishes the link among the whole sequence. In this example, we find complete harmony between the setting of the performance and the set of implicit rules through which it is used. We can therefore talk of there being a ”sustaining ritual”, in the form of ”some socially acknowledged activity repeated regularly which affirms and reaffirms the value and meaning of the space”

(Jones 1990). Simultaneously, such a practice is a factor of the group’s aggregation, of the sustaining of a certain way of life and the basis of the definition and use of space and of architecture. This example also makes it clear that in the situation of use and social interaction, the physical boundaries are combined with other kinds of limits that can be defined as “symbolic markers”, “judicial borders” or “administrative limits” (Lawrence 1990). Appropriation practices interpret and implement the interaction between these different kinds of boundary. In these situations, the behavior of the different users is regulated as much by “implicit codes and conventions” as by “explicit norms and rules” (Lawrence 1990). In the contemporary world, just as in traditional cultures, the need to attribute places to specific activities in which they can be settled and favorably developed, emerges only in as much as these activities gain definition and stability and are endowed with a collective script. It can be shown that there is a close relation between the sociopolitical and cultural organization of a group and the segmentation that it establishes in its living space (Kent 1990). This segmentation is materialized in the compartmentalization of architecture, in the separation of objects, in the definition of settings of specialized interaction that are distinct from each other, destined for specific situations and activities. Thus, it is understandable that in contemporary urban and industrialized societies, the fragmentation of social life in diverse fields (religious, school, professional, sport, civic) implies a mismatch of spaces and times destined for the performance of the corresponding rituals. Called upon to intervene, the architect strives to find the “right match“ for these needs, establishing a deep bond between architecture and the social rules associated to the needs. Whenever a group confers a recurring, stable and shared expression – in other words, ritual – on a specific activity, it will also be implicitly defining the architecture corresponding to it. Reciprocally, “all true architecture generates a ritualization of our acts” (Arís 1993). From this standpoint, the rite is "the uniting or tangent point between the world of shape and activity: the only point through which architecture can be drawn". Hence, architecture will only be a “procedure capable of giving shape to activity and that imposes rules on it which, albeit particular to the shape, find an analogical correspondence in the activity” (Arís 1993).

The end result of this process – the use of buildings – will always evade any intention to draw a direct, mandatory and exclusive relationship of cause and effect. It is true that architecture allows some behavior and introduces constraints that make others impossible. Nevertheless, there will always be room for the impromptu and for the performativity that rebel against conventions and impositions. The actual behavior of users will never be entirely predictable.

La plus grande réalité du seuil

Even before ritual analysis and spatial metaphors acquired an effective theoretical consistency in the social sciences, some architects perceived the potential of these approaches. In the period following the Second World War, the subject of the “threshold” was introduced in the debate that shaped contemporary architectural culture as early as 1953 by the English couple Alison Smithson (n. 1927) and Peter Smithson (n. 1923) in the ninth edition of Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM 9, Aix-en-Provence). The Smithsons presented their ideas on the “doorstep”, referring to the extension of the house into the street, the transition between the domestic interior and the immediate public space. To a great extent, their observations came from research undertaken at the time by the photographer, Nigel Henderson, and the sociologist, Judith Stephen, on the daily association patterns within the population of Bethnal Green, a working class neighborhood in London’s East End. They adopted the viewpoint of children, for whom learning the realm of the doorstep represents the beginning of the extension of the family space to the social sphere (Kozlovsky, 2004). And unlike what the orthodoxy in Charte d’Athènes intended to establish, they conclude the street was much more than a simple channel of circulation. The street was like a stage of social expression in which identity, social ties, the feeling of security and wellbeing were generated (Smithson and Smithson 1962). Not long after, at CIAM 10 (Dubrovnik, 1956), the Dutchman Aldo Van Eyck (1918-1999) presented “La plus grande réalité du seuil” as the symbol of the essence of architecture. Aldo Van Eyck went back to the concept of the threshold and extended the meaning, feeding his reflection with contributions from a wide range of sources (from the artistic vanguards of the early 20th century to philosophy, from the exact sciences to anthropology). He adopted liminality as the fundamental principle of a theoretical and poetic construction of architecture and of place: in the threshold idea, he recognized the capacity to reestablish the link between all the polarities of reality, between all the ambivalent and complementary aspects that the cultural arbitrary turns into antinomies (Strauven 1994). Taking the literal meaning of threshold, Van Eyck underlined the human and relational character of the doorway as being the place of a "wonderful human gesture: the conscious entry and exit”. He affirmed that the doorway "frames us on arrival and departure, it is a vital experience not only for those who go through it but also for those we encounter or leave behind. The doorway is a place made for an occasion. The doorway is a place made for an act that is repeated millions of times in a life, from the first entry to the last exit." (Van Eyck 1962a). He defended that the doorway should not be an abrupt boundary, simply a surface dividing two domains. Nor should it be just a spatial continuum where the articulation of one reality and the other is diluted; where the interior gradually and insensitively fades into the exterior. The doorway, he said, should be an articulated place that belongs as much to the interior as to the exterior, a place where the meaningful aspects of both sides are simultaneously present. The doorway should expand itself and adopt a shape capable of expressing a welcome, of being an invitation to pause, to stay. From his perspective, thresholds of every kind and of every scale should constitute articulated intermediary places – what he termed as in-betweens – in which the spatial polarities could meet and be reconciled in a fundamental binary compound. These "clearly defined intermediate places" would be responsible for articulating the transitions so as to induce "the simultaneous knowledge of what is meaningful on the other side". With this proposal, Van Eyck positioned himself clearly in opposition to some of the fundamental values of contemporary architectural production: the search for spatial continuity, total transparency, the lack of articulation between spaces, between the exterior and the interior. Van Eyck recommended that the “basic principle” for the project in both architecture and urbanism should always be to reestablish the balance of each concept present through the introduction of an opposing pole (such as interior/exterior, small/large, part/whole, simple/complex, unity/diversity, open/closed, many/few, movement/rest, near/far, order/chaos, straightforward/complicated, mass/space, past/future, organic/non-organic, light/dark, individual/collective, architectural/urbanism, house/city, old/new. In this way, the two poles in tension would be recognized, giving rise to a “dual phenomenon” or “twin phenomenon”: "the best way to provide a basic reality is to provide the twin reality from which it was arbitrarily divided" (Van Eyck 1961). For Van Eyck, this “twin phenomenon” notion does not correspond to a “synthesis of opposites” in the Hegelian tradition, in which the conflict between a thesis and an antithesis is resolved by generating a superior category. In a twin phenomenon, the opposite poles confront each other in a non-hierarchical relationship, and keep themselves recognizably opposite and mutually enrich each other; their meaning is reinforced when observed from the opposite extreme (Strauven 1994). The examples he used to illustrate this idea are revealing. He stated that it involved creating "a place where the two poles are simultaneously present and where their opposing tendencies mutually activate each other as if they were complementary colors ". Or, in an image taken from Heraclitus, finding the right tension, like in a lyre, joining the bow and the string, and transforming the opposing forces into harmonious unity (Van Eyck 1962b). In this way, Van Eyck was proclaiming the positive value of the tensions, the oppositions, the frontiers, strengthened by confrontation, harmonized and integrated in complementarity. Even if he did not express it in this way, Van Eyck affirmed the ritual meaning of the practices of space. Against set hierarchies and rigid borders, against simplistic dualisms, against neutrality and absolute continuity without articulation, all the spaces, at every moment, should be destined for passages and encounters. They should be intermediate and intermediary spaces, articulated and articulating. They will be open, available to receive this and that, us and others, each one and his opposite. They should be this and that, always “betwixt and between”. More than fifty years later, his intuition emerges again as a fundamental pretext for us to reflect and is the source of much inspiration for the architectural project.

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TURNER, V. (1969) The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago: Aldine.

VAN EYCK, A. (1961) "Is Architecture Going to Reconcile Basic Values?" in O. Newman, CIAM '59 in Otterlo. Documente der Modernen Architektur Stuttgard: Karl Kramer Verlag, pp. 26-35, 216-217.

VAN EYCK, A. (1962a) "Doorstep", in Alison Smithson (Ed.) Team 10 Primer, Architectural Design (December).

VAN EYCK, A. (1962b) “The Child, the City and the Artist”, apud. Francis Strauven (1994) Aldo Van Eyck: Relativiteit en Verbeelding, Amsterdam: Meulenhof.

VAN GENNEP, A. (1909) Les Rites de Passage. Étude Systématique des Rites de la Porte et du Seuil, de l'Hospitalité, de l'Adoption, de la Grossesse et de l'Acouchement, de la Naissance, de l'Enfance, de la Puberté, de l'Initiation, de l'Ordination, du Couronnement, des Fiançailles et du Mariage, des Funérailles, des Saisons, Paris: Émile Nourry.

1 An early example of where the relevance of Van Gennep and his work for the theory, practice and teaching of Architecture was specifically noted can be found in the dissertation by Frederico George (1915-1994) in his application to the category of Aggregate Professor at Lisbon’s Escola Superior de Belas-Artes (George 1964).

2 Walter Benjamin, Passagen-Werk, vol. 1, Konvolut O2a, 1, p. 618 (Teyssot 2000).

3 The example was presented by Julian Pitt-Rivers, in 1986, and submitted to a systematic analysis grid by Claude Rivière (Rivière 1997).

4 Cf. Maurício de Vasconcelos (1925-1998) and Daciano da Costa (1930-2005), on their project for the Air Terminal building for Lisbon Airport (1980-1982); cited from memory.