ABSTRACT
The mystique of Pueblo architecture lies in its ability to join living inanimate things in the continuing recreation of an authenticity of place, not in terms of architectural monuments but as participatory rites. This chapter emphasizes the importance of rituals in furthering an ethical imagination by considering how the physical setting reinforces communal myths through mimetic enactment. The American adaptation of regionalism eventually leads to the ecology movement. The phenomenology of modernism subscribes to the recovery of immanent experience, which is not subservient to a controlling rationality, and acknowledges the importance of active participation and that object qualities must include the experiential aspects of phenomena. Ancient Egyptians used architectural monuments as the setting for participatory rites to join living and inanimate things. The centrality of ritual in Hopi culture can be seen in the way buildings are used to frame a plaza in which ceremonial dances are performed. Hopi emphasized the dance as the means to a collective ethical imagination.
