VORKURS: rituals examines the repetitive processes that shape our worldly experience in the past, present, and future state. Ritualistic operations like layering, erasure, collage and rewriting have the potential to reveal traces of memory that exploit sacred intersections within the larger context of architectural discourse.

We define rituals as repetitive actions performed that serve to define and measure our close interaction with our environment. These actions can be intentional or subconscious, observed or occupied, individual or en masse, occurring over seven minutes or seven millennia. The goal is to investigate these operations that have defined our architectural domain and how they will continue to do so in the future.

VORKURS: rituals explores the relationship of how rituals, as a collection of sacred moments or memories, shape and inform the architectural pedagogy. The process of layering, erasure, collage and rewriting create an architectural palimpsest that allows us to to recognize themes of memory versus transformation, repetition versus progression, and tradition versus innovation. This publication is a ritual. A collection of work, compiled annually, with the intent of investigating a specific topic within the larger discourse of architecture.

Our individualistic, and perhaps ritualistic, perspectives create a unique and personal intersection between the built and unbuilt; we acknowledge this interstitial relationship is dependent upon rituals over time. As a result of the remaining traces evoked by rituals, our subsequent memories become a ritual within themselves.

We hope that this collection of rituals will lead you to embark on one of your own.

-Breanna McGrath

Executive Editor

“We all have rituals in our day, whether we’re aware of them or not.”

-Twyla Tharp

The Creative Habit. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2003. Pg15.

WHAT'S INSIDE:

TITLE

AUTHOR

VORKURS: AN ORIGIN STORY

MARTIN GUNDERSEN

ELEVEN ELEVEN ELEVEN

MARK MCGLOTHLIN

CEREMONIAL FORM & MEMORY

AMIE EDWARDS

TOPOGRAPHIC SPACE & THE TEXTURE OF LIGHT

ROBERT MCCARTER

PLACE, RITUAL, AND THE PERFECT BREAKFAST SANDWICH

JOHN MAZE

MAPLE ST.CONSTRUCTS

MIKE NESBIT

CAPRICCIO

EVERYDAY RITUALS

CHARLIE HAILEY

JENNI REUTER