ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the relationship between festivals and their natural and man-made settings, in order to show the synergies between them. It discusses how festal occasions such as coronations, weddings and funerals may contribute to 'sacring' the space in which they're performed, or through which they move. In many facets, architecture may express aesthetic and cultural meaning. The book focuses on the practicalities of ephemeral architecture designed for a specific festival occasion. It provides to mentions the 1389 Parisian reception for Isabelle of Bavaria, with its notorious discomforts of sweltering heat, disorder and robust solutions, including the un-festival-like smashing of a window to let coolness in. Architecture and festival have much in common. In the early modern period both speak an international language of symbol and allusion rooted in the classics or the Bible.
