> Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city. > > Lebbeus Woods Space is measured in metric units by most[^1], distributed along three cartesian axes x, y, and z. This is a useful tool, but there is much more to space than this. I could say that I am standing in a 8 by 12 by 4 meter hollow brick volume, observing a vertical two-dimensional matrix of dark brown colours, 4,572 by 2,667 meters in size. But that would be a poor description of my experience, while at the Tate Modern Gallery in London, enjoying Mark Rothko's "*Black on Maroon*" painting. It would not capture the visceral tension the painting evokes. The subtle warping of space and time that engulfs the canvas and the observer. This has something to do with the situated cognition we discussed on the [[Space|previous page]], but there is more to it. Just as metric space can be warped by gravity, subjective space can be distorted by phenomenology. That is because our surroundings mediate our relationship with the world. By draping a layer of experience over metric space, we form a connection with reality. The space we inhabit is both, objective and subjective, metric and experienced, sacred and profane. Architects know well that space is not the collection of vertical and horizontal slabs of matter. They know the intimate bond between us and the spacial volumes we inhabit. Cultures across the globe erect their dwellings to represent the cosmos they inhabit. Their homes, cities, and sacred structures were and are the mirror of their respective personal, social, and mythological spaces. In other words, civilisations constructed their cities as a mirror of the heavens, designing not just for the present but for eternity itself. For the ancient Egyptians, architecture was more than a matter of stone and mortar; it was an articulation of cosmic order. A means of inscribing the logic of the divine upon the chaos of the terrestrial. Their pyramids and urban planning were not just exercises in state grandeur. They were the physical embodiment of an unshakable belief system - one that bound the pharaoh to the stars, the people to the land, and death to a meticulously managed eternity. The pyramid was more than an elaborate burial site. It was a **metaphysical engine**, an attempt to solve the most pressing problem of any god-king: how does one make the transition from mortal to celestial being without the indignities of putrefaction? The answer lay in geometry. The sharply rising form of the pyramid echoed the *Benben*, the primordial mound that, in Egyptian mythology, first emerged from the chaotic waters of *Nun* at the dawn of creation. To build upwards, therefore, was to reenact creation itself, a sort of architectural resurrection. Yet the pharaoh was not simply ascending for his own sake. His cosmic trajectory was carefully plotted. The alignment of the Great Pyramid was dictated by a celestial logic. The northern and southern shafts of the King’s Chamber were aimed at the star *Thuban*, the former pole star, and Orion’s Belt, sacred to Osiris, the god of resurrection. This was a passage, a direct route for the soul of the pharaoh to join the divine constellations above. The ruler, having governed Egypt’s affairs in life, would now take up an administrative role in the afterlife, presumably with a celestial bureaucracy more efficient than its earthly counterpart. The placement of the pyramids, too, had a deeper logic. They were always built on the west bank of the Nile, the land of the setting sun - the realm of the dead. Life was lived in the east, where the sun rose each morning, and death was stationed in the west, where *Ra* dipped below the horizon, only to be reborn the next day. The Nile was more than a river; it was the **axis mundi**, dividing existence into a delicate balance of *Ma’at* (order) and *Isfet* (chaos). The dead were laid to rest on the western shore, not to decay into obscurity, but to participate in a process of cosmic renewal. If the pyramids were engineered to propel kings toward their celestial destiny, the cities of Egypt were designed to mirror the hierarchical harmony of the divine realm. Egyptian urban planning was not merely practical; it was theological. The Nile dictated not just economic prosperity but the very organisation of life and death. It is no coincidence that Egyptian cities placed their temples at the center of civic life. In Thebes, for example, the temples of Karnak and Luxor dominated the landscape, vast and sprawling, aligned with celestial cycles and the rhythms of divine favour. The temple was not simply a house for the gods—it was an axis around which reality itself revolved. The grand avenues that connected these structures were more than roads; they were **processional ways**, channels for the movement of priests, pharaohs, and deities in a carefully choreographed dance between the human and divine realms. Similarly, in the 8th century, **Kyoto** was designed as more than a collection of streets and buildings. It was a philosophy made tangible, a set of beliefs poured into stone, timber, and space. In Kyoto, that ancient heart of Japan, urban planning was not so much an act of civil engineering as it was a carefully calibrated metaphysical ritual. The city - once called Heian-kyō, the “Capital of Peace and Tranquility” - was not designed in the haphazard manner of lesser settlements, where streets emerge from accidents of trade and conquest. Heian-kyō was conceived with Feng Shui and Buddhist cosmology at its core, structured in obedience to **celestial patterns** and **geomantic forces**, its every axis whispering the secret name of order. To build Kyoto was to harmonise the terrestrial with the celestial, to weave streets and temples into the great cosmic lattice. This was not merely a matter of aesthetics but of survival: to govern a realm properly, one must first position oneself within the fabric of the universe. To rule without an ordered city was to invite chaos, and chaos, as every emperor knew, was an existential threat far greater than any invading army. To the untrained eye, the city’s strict grid layout might appear a simple exercise in practicality, a kind of bureaucratic tidiness imposed upon unruly landscapes. In truth, it was an act of **cosmological engineering**. The blueprint for Kyoto was lifted directly from the grand Tang Dynasty capital of Chang’an. This was no accident. The Heian court, ever eager to align itself with the divine favour of the Middle Kingdom, understood that power was not merely held—it was structured, oriented, and positioned within the great forces that governed both heaven and earth. The imperial palace, that seat of ultimate authority, was not simply placed at random but positioned with surgical precision at the city’s northern center. In accordance with Confucian cosmology, it faced south—always south—toward the warmth of the sun, toward life itself. This was a statement of power as much as it was an act of devotion; the emperor, seated at the very fulcrum of cosmic order, governed not merely by decree but by the very geometry of the universe itself. Even today, one cannot walk the streets of Kyoto without feeling that the city is something more than mere infrastructure. The way the light falls upon the temple eaves, the particular hush that settles over the Kamo River at dusk. The city breathes in alignment with something ancient, something older than the stones upon which it was built. The original architects, those 8th-century visionaries who mapped Kyoto onto the celestial grid, understood that a city was not merely a place to live but a place to exist within a larger cosmic flow. To strip space of its **metaphysical architecture** is to render it **meaningless**—an indifferent void rather than a structured reality, a stage without a script. When we cease to inscribe our surroundings with purpose, with celestial alignment, with sacred orientation, we abandon the very act that made space intelligible to us in the first place. The ancients, whether carving pyramids into the horizon or aligning imperial capitals with the cardinal forces, understood that to dwell is not merely to occupy but to **belong**—to be situated within a cosmos that speaks, however softly, of our place in it. Remove this dialogue, this layered understanding of where we stand in relation to the heavens, and we are left adrift in an architecture that does not care for us. Cities, once temples of meaning, dissolve into mere logistics, their streets dictated by convenience rather than significance. The result is an **existential vertigo**, an uncanny detachment from the spaces we inhabit—not unlike standing in a vast, windowless corridor where every door leads nowhere in particular. This is the great **uncertainty of modern space**: the loss of orientation, not just in the practical sense, but in the metaphysical. We still navigate streets, follow maps, move between buildings, but we no longer feel them as extensions of a grander order, as vessels of something larger than ourselves. A room is just a room, a street just a street. The sky, once a celestial blueprint, has been reduced to an atmospheric afterthought, observed through glass and steel that cut us off rather than connect us. This is not intended as nostalgia for the sacred; it is the realisation that without a structured universe, we are left only with an accidental one—a reality that no longer speaks our language, no longer echoes back our place within it. And so, we stumble forward, disoriented, unsure whether we walk through a city or a labyrinth, whether the world was built for us or merely happened to include us. [[Past|Next page]] ___ Footnotes: [^1]: 95% of the world population uses the metric system. https://www.statista.com/chart/18300/countries-using-the-metric-or-the-imperial-system/