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The Housing of the World: The Significance of Cosmographic Concepts for Habitation

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  • Published: 19 September 2013
  • volume 15, pages 387–422 (2013)
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The Housing of the World: The Significance of Cosmographic Concepts for Habitation
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  • Michael A. Rappenglück1 

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Abstract

A specific mode of human existence shows up in modelling the structures and processes of the world onto the living space, consisting of certain landscapes, locations, and habitations. Concepts of housing the world are implemented in the lodgings, cultic buildings, settlements, territories, and the artificial shaping of the landscape. These structures offered humans a ‘domestic’ sphere within a realm of wild nature, ensuring stability, centricity, meaning, security, familiarities, knowledge of controlling, social and power classifications. Cosmovisions of early cultures and indigenous people often address the idea of the housing as the world in miniature. Structures worked as a lively microcosm figuring the macrocosm and allowing interacting with the world by using a symbolic and ritual approach. The study points out basic principles and categories. It queries whether elements of archaic cosmovisions related architecture, ecosystems, and the mindset have survived until today and if so, why.

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    Michael A. Rappenglück

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Rappenglück, M.A. The Housing of the World: The Significance of Cosmographic Concepts for Habitation. Nexus Netw J 15, 387–422 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-013-0162-8

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  • Published: 19 September 2013

  • Issue Date: December 2013

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00004-013-0162-8

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Keywords

  • Housing
  • cosmography
  • cosmovision
  • power place
  • fireplace
  • hearth
  • membrane
  • partitioning
  • light
  • access
  • circumambulation
  • living entity
  • transfiguration
  • sacred landscape
  • asterisms
  • symbolism
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