The main purpose of this issue is:

  • to analyze the relation between urban planning and cosmology;
  • to understand how this dialogue has helped to build important historical settlements;
  • to see how it is reinterpreted today in terms of landscape cosmology.

The study of ancient urban settlements and sacred sites testifies to important relationships between spirit of place (genius loci) and manifestation of cosmic frame. The choice of location, the spatial-geometric alignments and the relationship with astronomy have helped to draw on the earth truly extraordinary urban settlements. Cosmic geometry has in fact intervened in ordering, orienting and suggesting forms and types of construction that have characterized the cultural landscape from the East to the West. It is also very interesting to observe the multiple layers of methodologies adopted in different cultures that, in different eras, have been confronted or conceived distinctively with this specific theme. Important codes of cultural astronomy have resulted and have been formally translated into the diverse cultural paradigms of both sacred areas and urban settlements.It is still important to note that this design approach has always produced a strong interconnection between the person, the spirit of the place and nature, i.e. a dialogue that goes beyond space and time and that has generated a strong interconnectedness between the laws of the cosmos. All this has generated the study about the geography and cosmic landscape that, with reference to the latest discoveries, deserves to be re-analyzed and re-interpreted within the projects both to enhance understanding urban settlements and landscape principles that today dictate the design and planning of sacred areas.

This Nexus Network Journal issue invites scholars and academics to propose contributions that can help track down those cultural paradigms that have generated important landscape changes, all in close relation to the laws of sacred geometry and therefore to the direct observation of the cosmos.

Researchers in architecture are invited to submit articles, specifically attempting to draw links between original practices and other cross-disciplinary areas of scientific and theoretical discourse.

Guest Editors:

  • Olimpia Niglio (Hokkaido University, Graduate School Humanities, and Human Sciences, Japan)
  • Rana P.B. Singh (formerly Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India)