Jormakka's understanding of ritual distinguishes between representation and re-enactment. While a representation refers to an event that is absent, a ritual brings that event into the present through performance. Jormakka borrows this idea from the historian of religions Mircea Eliade, who argued that rituals allow participants to symbolically return to in illo tempore, the mythical "first time" when gods or ancestors established the order of the world. A ritual is therefore not simply a reminder of an original event but a repetition that renews its significance. A wedding ceremony, does not merely symbolize marriage but constitutes it. This performative quality is essential to the understanding of ritual in architectural form. Buildings such as churches, courthouses, universities, or parliamentary halls are not merely symbols of religion, justice, education, or democracy. They provide the setting in which these institutions are continually enacted and reaffirmed through ritualized practices. Architecture therefore becomes part of the creation of social reality rather than simply its representation.

Jormakka rejects the idea that ritual meaning is either entirely objective or purely subjective. It does not exist independently within the building itself, nor is it simply created by the personal interpretations of individuals. Instead, meaning emerges through the interaction between what he calls the "ritualized body" and the "social body". The ritualized body refers to the individual who performs the learned actions--while the social body represents the shared customs, traditions, and institutions that organize collective life. Meaning is produced when bodily practices conform to these socially established conventions.

This argument is extended to architecture as a whole by rejecting the notion that buildings function primarily as linguistic systems of signs. Architectural meaning cannot be fully explained by identifying symbolic references, stylistic quotations, or formal compositions. Although architecture can certainly contain symbolic elements, its deeper significance lies in the way it is physically experienced. As individuals move through a building, they encounter variations in light, scale, texture, sound, material, and spatial sequence that shape their understanding long before they consciously interpret any symbolic meaning. Entering a Gothic cathedral, for instance, one first experiences the vast vertical space, the echoing acoustics, the dim lighting, and the cool stone surfaces. These sensory experiences produce feelings of awe, solemnity, or transcendence before any conscious recognition that the height of the nave may symbolize heaven. The building communicates not only through visual symbols but through the body's direct engagement with space. This interaction being behind the inspiration of the title of the book:

[Heimlich Manoeuvre] refers to a technique of relieving a choking person of his lethal distress by squeezing the rib cage. Analogously, even if clandestinely, architectural structures also act on the bodies of those within them; the consequences of that embrace may likewise be of vital importance.

The book reads more like a work of philosophy or history than a conventional architectural text. Jormakka frequently turns to Roman life, fascism, pedagogy, or industrialization to illustrate how rituals become embedded in architecture. Although the book is relatively short, it is very dense. Here's a couple of points I found interesting.

While the religious significance of the ancient sacred marriage disappeared alongside Roman paganism, the ritual of carrying the bride home through the doorway has stayed. Jormakka argues that the act is not merely symbolic, rather, through the ritual, the bride enters a new social order in which the house itself reinforces her subjugation. The doorway is therefore more than a physical boundary; it becomes an architectural instrument that participates in establishing social relationships and power structures.

Jormakka suggests that the modern expectation of private bedrooms may be connected to the rise of capitalism and the conception of the individual as an autonomous owner of private property. During sleep, the body is vulnerable and largely passive, assuming qualities closer to an object than an active social subject. The architectural separation of bedrooms thus protects not only the individual but also the modern notion of the self as something private, bounded, and owned.

The primary function of windows, was not simply to illuminate interior spaces, since light could be easily provided through fireplaces, candles, or skylights. Instead, windows expanded the domestic sphere by extending the visual authority of the household into the surrounding environment. They allowed the master of the house to observe the yard and its activities without physically leaving the home, effectively enlarging the domain over which the household exercised control.