Architecture and architechnē: building and revealing in high-caste Nepalese houses

Abstract

In this paper I identify the doubleness of domestic space—not just as architecture, that is, the production of houses that expresses social reality, cultural meanings and/or cosmology, but also as architechnē, that is, as the embodied experience, tacit knowledge and revelation produced by everyday living in domestic space. This distinction provides the framework for analysing Nepali houses as domestic mandalas. I argue that in the taken-for-granted, everyday use of domestic space as architechnē, Nepalis engage in an embodied bringing forth of their houses as an enframing whole, as a structure of revealing of the cosmos and the nature of their lifeworld as Householders.