Rethinking Spatiality: Towards a Topological Cosmology

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of RSaP—Rethinking Space and Place (September 2015–September 2025) — I offer a brief reflection on this journey through the study of spatiality so far and on the road ahead.

For at least a century the classical meanings of the paired terms space and place have been under sustained scrutiny across many fields: from physics and philosophy to the social sciences, architecture, and the arts. What began for me as an intuitive attempt to reconceive place in processual and systemic terms — a reformulation aimed primarily at architectural thought and practice (see From Space to Place: A Necessary Paradigm Shift in Architecture) — has gradually matured. Over the past decade that initial proposal has opened onto a much broader, transdisciplinary horizon: a cosmology of place or what might be called a Topological Cosmology. This is a domain of inquiry that invites contributions from many perspectives, architecture included.

The notes that follow are both a synthesis of ten years of activity at RSaP and a provisional forecast of where the concept of place as a system of processes may fruitfully lead us. My aim is both practical and conceptual: to deepen our understanding of environmental phenomena and humanity’s place within nature, while providing conceptual tools that can be applied across disciplines to think and act in the Anthropocene—ultimately with the goal of overcoming the causes that gave rise to it.

Headline: Despite significant progress in understanding nature’s dynamics, our disconnection from nature has grown wider; to achieve a more harmonious relationship with it, we need innovative conceptual tools, beginning with a revised understanding of spatiality that focuses on a systemic and processual understanding of place as the source of all existence.

A more-than-human ethics: The proposed spatial framework rests on a systemic, process-oriented understanding of reality as place: the matrix in which physicochemical, biological, socio-cultural, and symbolic or intellectual processes unfold. When such processes become actualized, they manifest as things, life, societies, and thoughts—the fundamental categories of existence (see On the Structure of Reality). Yet processes may also remain latent, suspended in potentiality, awaiting the conditions for their realization. Reality is therefore at once the place of actuality and of potentiality, of being and becoming, of matter and mind—things and thoughts.

This systemic understanding of reality as a place of processes resists dualisms, for all categories of existence share the same essence: place—the nurturer and sustainer of processes. If we accept that place is the unifying and generative matrix of all existence, then everything in nature, from the smallest element to the expanse of the cosmos—including plants, animals, human beings, and their creations—may be understood as places of processes. We are, each of us, places; the world we inhabit is itself an environmental place.

From this perspective, the concept of place as a system of processes not only highlights the fundamental unity and interconnectedness of all that exists, but also lays the foundation for a new, more-than-human ethics—an ethics that acknowledges the intrinsic value of every aspect of creation, beyond instrumental or anthropocentric measure.

Towards A Topological Cosmology

We are living in an era of profound transformation. The discovery of new physical laws and concepts in the past century has reshaped our conception of nature. A new cosmology, rooted in contemporary physics and philosophical thinking, presents a universe that is systemic, organic, holistic, and probabilistic—embracing complexity and complementarity—contrasting sharply with the older mechanical, reductionist, deterministic, and dualistic model. Systems science and cybernetics have opened new domains of knowledge, enabling us to grasp the dynamic interconnections between natural and human worlds, once treated as separate. That separation has produced environmental, economic, and social crises, exposing the unsustainability of the modern development model, now under public scrutiny. The symbolic entry into a new epoch, the Anthropocene, the passage into the new information age, and the shift from material to immaterial technologies complete this picture, marking a reality vastly different from the past. These conditions demand a renewed relationship between humanity and nature, and the search for new ethics capable of reversing unsustainability. The question arises: how can spatial practices and practitioners—who directly shape cities and architectures—contribute to a new development model that reconciles human activity with nature?

I propose rethinking the traditional model of spatiality, particularly the concepts of space and place, since these are central to how humanity understands, inhabits, and transforms the environment—the unitary reality composed of rocks, rivers, stars, trees, butterflies, humans, schools, fairytales, algorithms, values, aspirations… Current spatial practices too often rely on notions inherited from classical physics or shaped by scientific materialism and reductionist perspectives. The alternative I discuss at RSaP conceives reality as a systemic place of interconnected processes: place as a system of processes encompassing physicochemical, biological, ecological, sociocultural, and symbolic dynamics. Within this framework, material and immaterial, being and becoming, actuality and potentiality, physical and ideal, facts and values, nature and culture are granted equal importance and mutual consideration—one building on the other.

The concept of place as system of processes subsumes space as abstract notion of dimensional origin, time as the duration of processes, and matter as their actualization (as Heidegger noted in the essay ‘Art and Space’: ‘things are themselves places’). It revives the original physical and metaphysical significance of place in antiquity, with Archytas (who considered place ‘the first of all things’), Aristotle (topos), and Plato (chōra). This vision of place is at the same time specific and broad enough to incorporate recent philosophical and physical theories, including those of Alfred N. Whitehead (organic philosophy and cosmology), Joseph Grange (environmental cosmology), Martin Heidegger, Kitarō Nishida’s basho (place), and contemporary physics. Within this vision, the field concept of physics can be understood as a physical state of place, the first stage in the concrescent chain of processes (physicochemical → biological → ecological → sociocultural → symbolic) that structure environmental reality into a place-based, processual and systemic unity. The ontological and epistemological implications of place as system point to a new cosmological horizon: a Topological Cosmology, where the cosmos itself is progressively structured through places (places within places, within places, within places…). Ultimately, all entities—natural and cultural—are places of process: We Are All Places. This provides the foundation for a new ethics that recognizes the intrinsic, unitary value of all creation.

By uniting nature and culture within a single placial framework, the concept of place as system of processes affirms the fundamental unity of existence. Nature and culture are both places (of processes); so too are cities and buildings, as subsets of culture. The relevance of this model to spatial practices is twofold. First, it has immediate and concrete implications: for instance, architects must shift from thinking in terms of abstract space to conceiving cities and buildings as comprehensive places—environments shaped by the interplay of physicochemical, biological, ecological, sociocultural, and symbolic dimensions, long overlooked or fragmented in practice (for a practical application of the concept of place as a system of processes in architecture, see The Place of Architecture The Architecture of Place – Part III: A Case Study). Second, its impact remains open-ended: because place, as the basic element of reality, is inherently novel and creative, its manifestations cannot be fully predicted. Place as system of processes is thus both concrete enough to guide practice and open enough to accommodate the unforeseen, since each place represents the convergence of past, present, and future, the known and the unknown.