ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an example of how spaces in buildings mesh with rules about use, to set the plan of Rievaulx Abbey alongside selected extracts from The Rule of St Benedict concerned with architecture and place. It considers the Japanese tea house, as described by Lucy Block. The tea ritual is highly prescribed, intricate and dependent on consistently polite and correct behaviour by all. The setting receives great aesthetic attention, as do the taste and smell of the tea and the character and quality of implements used in its preparation. The book explores the gardens of the exiled Polish king at Luneville in France, in which nothing was quite what it seemed, nature gave way to layers of artifice, and roles were reversed in a highly theatrical manner. It explains the story of Ann Griffin's dialogue with the staff and pupils.
