XIS MUNDI

Sacred architecture,
ancestral technology

Contemporary pyramids to inhabit: living, contemplation, gathering.

Geometry·Art·Mysticism
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The works

Mathematics, harmony and beauty converge in this millennial form.

Dwelling pyramid
Model I

The dwelling pyramid

A complete home within the form. Two levels, a full family program, and a glazed pyramidion that lights the heart of the space from the sky. Geometry organizes the plan; zenithal light organizes the day.

Timber + glass22 m baseTwo levels
Gathering pyramid
Model II

The gathering pyramid

A wide, open volume for coming together: meetings, work, ceremony, wellness. A continuous glazed perimeter at ground level opens the plan to the landscape on all four sides. Stone, water and silence as design materials.

Travertine + glass23.5 m base552 m² floor area
Siting

The place completes the work.

The proportion never changes. What changes are the materials, the light and the landscape that receive it.

Sacred geometry

Years of research before the first line.

What it is

Ordering a building through a system of proportions: every part relating to the whole through a single numerical ratio. It is neither ornament nor style. It is a design method, practiced in architecture since antiquity.

How it is perceived

The human eye recognizes symmetry, repetition and proportion with remarkable speed, before any analysis. A well-proportioned building reads as coherent the moment you enter: order is perceived first and understood later.

How it is applied

A chosen ratio governs the plan, the section and every opening. At Axis Mundi that ratio is the Great Pyramid’s, and every dimension of the work is derived from it by calculation.

The same practice, throughout history
  • Late GothicMilan, 1391–1400: the ad quadratum and ad triangulum schemes, debated and documented in the building records
  • Islamic architecturegeometric tilings and tracings
  • RenaissancePalladio’s systems of proportion
  • 20th centuryLe Corbusier’s Modulor

Axis Mundi studied this tradition —and the geometry of the great pyramids in particular— to design its works.

▲ I

The proportion is exact

The Great Pyramid holds a precise relation between height and base: the height equals half the base multiplied by the square root of the golden ratio. Its face angle follows from this. It is a mathematical consequence, and Axis Mundi reproduces it by calculation in every project.

▲ II

The orientation is astronomical

The Old Kingdom pyramids are aligned to true geographic north within minutes of arc, without a compass. In Mesoamerica, archaeoastronomy documents orientations tied to calendar dates. Every Axis Mundi work is sited with a determined astronomical orientation.

▲ III

The form is a constant

Thousands of pyramids exist across Africa, the Americas and Asia: Egypt, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, China, Nubia, Java. Cultures with no contact arrived at the same solution for building toward the sky. It is a constant of human architecture.

Face angle
51° 50′
Height
half-base × √φ (1.27202)
Slant height
half-base × φ (1.61803)
Orientation
True north
Archaeoastronomy

The astronomical constant.

There is a discipline that studies how ancient cultures built the sky into their architecture: archaeoastronomy. Pyramids are its finest archive. Khufu is aligned to true north within 4 minutes of arc. At Chichén Itzá, the equinoxes cast the serpent of light and shadow down the stairway of El Castillo. At Teotihuacan, the entire urban grid records solar dates 260 days apart — the Mesoamerican ritual cycle.

A well-oriented pyramid does not represent the cosmos: it measures it. That function —the building as instrument— is part of what Axis Mundi designs.

And in a pyramid built today?

The principle is the same as five thousand years ago: the building stands still, the sky moves. Every date of the year has a unique position of light, and the design decides which ones to mark. Alignment to true north can be verified with a compass. At the latitude of the Río de la Plata, the Khufu proportion makes the noon sun graze the north face exactly two days a year, at the equinoxes: the building lights up on a fixed date. And the light entering through the apex can fall on a meridian line set into the floor, marking the seasons as the observatory cathedrals of Bologna and Rome once did.

These devices allow no approximation: one degree of error in orientation or solar calculation shifts the date or cancels the phenomenon. That is why each device is defined in calculation, not in renderings.

The definition of these devices is part of the executive design of each work.

The twofold foundation

Every work rests on two columns that hold each other up.

Axis Mundi works from a verifiable body of knowledge. The references below are public and consultable: peer-reviewed research for what contemporary science documents, and standard academic works for what the building cultures upheld across millennia.

▲ Contemporary science

Muography, archaeoastronomy, metrical analysis of the Great Pyramid, and the psychology of awe. Each reference has a DOI and is one click away.

▲ Millennial tradition

Egyptology, Mesoamerican studies and comparative archaeology. The knowledge humanity accumulated, generation after generation, on how to build toward the sacred.

Reference corpus
▲ ARTICLE · 01
Discovery of a big void in Khufu's Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons
Morishima, K., Kuno, M., Nishio, A., et al. (2017). Nature 552, 386–390.
DOI: 10.1038/nature24647 ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 02
Precise characterization of a corridor-shaped structure in Khufu's Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons
Procureur, S., Morishima, K., Kuno, M., et al. (2023). Nature Communications 14, 1144.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-36351-0 · open access ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 03
On the Orientation of Old Kingdom Egyptian Pyramids
Belmonte, J. A. (2001). Archaeoastronomy: Supplement to the Journal for the History of Astronomy, 32(26), S1–S20.
JHA Suppl. 32 (2001) · open access in repositories ↗
▲ BOOK · 04
Architecture, Astronomy and Sacred Landscape in Ancient Egypt
Magli, G. (2013). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Cambridge UP · ISBN 9781107032088 ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 05
The Design of the Great Pyramid of Khufu
Lightbody, D. I. (2014). Nexus Network Journal: Architecture and Mathematics 16, 299–311.
DOI: 10.1007/s00004-014-0193-9 ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 06
Effects of forest bathing (shinrin-yoku) on levels of cortisol as a stress biomarker: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Antonelli, M., Barbieri, G., & Donelli, D. (2019). International Journal of Biometeorology 63(8), 1117–1134.
DOI: 10.1007/s00484-019-01717-x ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 07
Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Cognition and Emotion 17(2), 297–314.
DOI: 10.1080/02699930302297 ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 08
Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior
Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108(6), 883–899.
DOI: 10.1037/pspi0000018 ↗
▲ BOOK · 09
The Complete Pyramids
Lehner, M. (1997). Thames & Hudson, London.
Thames & Hudson · ISBN 9780500050842
▲ BOOK · 10
The Pyramids: The Mystery, Culture and Science of Egypt's Great Monuments
Verner, M. (2001). Grove Press, New York.
Grove Press · ISBN 9780802139351
▲ BOOK · 11
The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited
Romer, J. (2007). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Cambridge UP · ISBN 9780521871662 ↗
▲ BOOK · 12
A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya
Schele, L., & Freidel, D. (1990). William Morrow, New York.
ISBN: 9780688112042
▲ BOOK · 13
Proyecto Templo Mayor · Vida y muerte en el Templo Mayor · Los aztecas
Matos Moctezuma, E. (1978–2021). Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.
Princess of Asturias Award 2022
▲ BOOK · 14
The Art and Architecture of Ancient America
Kubler, G. (1962). Yale University Press / Pelican History of Art.
Yale University · standard reference
▲ PRIMARY SOURCES · 15
The Maya codices
The Dresden, Madrid, Paris and Grolier codices. Original Maya manuscripts, Postclassic period.
Original documents
▲ ARTICLE · 16
La orientación calendárico-astronómica de estructuras arquitectónicas en Mesoamérica
Galindo Trejo, J. (2016). En: El papel de la arqueoastronomía en el Mundo Maya, coord. N. Sanz. UNESCO, Paris, 21–37.
Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas · UNAM
▲ ARTICLE · 17
Alineación calendárico-astronómica vinculada a rituales de fuego en la ciudad maya de Ichmac
Galindo Trejo, J. (2020). Cosmovisiones / Cosmovisões 1(2), 15–34.
Open access ↗
▲ ARTICLE · 18
Un análisis arqueoastronómico del edificio circular Q152 de Mayapán
Galindo Trejo, J. (2007). Estudios de Cultura Maya 29, 63–81.
UNAM
The name
Axis mundi: the axis joining earth and sky.

It is the name the history of religions gave to an idea that reappears in cultures that never met: there is a point where sky, earth and underworld touch, and that point is marked by building.

MayaThe Wakah Chan, the ceiba tree: roots in Xibalba, trunk in the middle world, branches holding up the sky. On accession, the king embodied that axis.
MesopotamiaThe ziggurat. Babylon’s was called Etemenanki: the house of the foundation of heaven and earth.
EgyptThe benben, the primordial mound risen from the waters. The pyramidion crowning every pyramid bears its name.
IndiaMount Meru, center of the cosmos. The temple tower and the stupa are its built image.
ScandinaviaYggdrasil, the ash tree whose roots and branches hold the nine worlds.
GreeceThe omphalos of Delphi: the stone that marked the navel of the world.
Contact

We build the center of a place.

Dwellings, gathering spaces, and art pieces conceived as meditation enclosures.

Design and executive documentation.

XIS MUNDI