ABSTRACT
What is festival architecture? Reflecting on the origins of architecture, we may think of the Egyptian pyramids, the palaces of Babylonia or the temples of ancient Greece. But equally ancient, and equally significant to the history of architecture, were the temporary structures erected for religious rites in the ancient world. The tabernacle of the Jews, for example, was a portable enclosure of wooden posts and fabric, a place of sacrifice and worship that was carried through the wilderness during the Exodus, and that influenced the form of the temple in the tenth century BCE and all synagogues to follow. Like Abel to Cain, or the nomad to the farmer, ephemeral architecture offers another face to the history of architecture. If one were to map this “other” history in parallel to the more familiar chronicle of monuments and ruins, the relationship between these two kinds of architecture would be informative and at times surprising, in the way each has influenced the other-that Greek temples, for example, are stone versions of their wooden predecessors is just one instance among many.
