Floor plan Studentenkerk Maranatha

Academic and ritual context

Of the various methods used in my doctoral research, participant observation was perhaps not the most productive, but certainly the most enjoyable. It led me to attend a number of marriage rituals, including a fairly rich one in Studentenkerk Maranatha.

The floor plan shows the constellation during the blessing of the marriage. Directly in front of the bride and groom, facing them, is the church representative, in this case a Roman Catholic priest. Standing behind them, in every sense of the word, are four witnesses.

The blessing of a marriage in Studentenkerk Maranatha

Floor plan of Studentenkerk Maranatha

Source

This floor plan first appeared in print at page 107 of my doctoral dissertation, the last of five such plans. That print was in grey tones, and the colors were selected with that in mind. Still, they are more or less accurate. For instance, the bride really did wear a khaki-greenish dress and blouse.

Code

I coded this plot in C, on top of g2, an open source graphics library. The original PDF output, available here, was produced by Ghostscript. It was converted to SVG using pdf2svg.