The forms of built environment are not always and everywhere determined by commodity, firmness and delight but are also regulated by meaning: in many traditions symbolism dictates architectures composition, sitting, orientation, geometry, proportion and ornament. In such traditions the built form is an imago mundi; it expresses a world view and embodies a teleogy; it models the manner in which existences derive from their Ultimate Principle, how the manifold is manifested in the One.

The Nepalese Caitya: 1500 Years of Buddhist Votive Architecture in the Kathmandu Valley, Vajra Publications,

Niels Gutschow started his long journey into Asia as a Buddhist monk in Burma in 1962. He studied architecture in Darmstadt, Germany, and wrote his dissertation about Japanese castle towns. Since 1971 he worked in Nepal and India as a conservation architect and as a researcher, inquiring into the relationship of urban space and ritual. In Germany he works as an expert in war-time and postwar architecture and planning.