THE ROLE OF MYTHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS IN POPULAR ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

As a result for the recent tide of Globalization, a countervailing need to emphasize national and regional identities aroused in almost every traditional community, The aim of this thesis is to stress on the need for national and regional identity through exploring the meaning of popular architecture and investigating its origins, formations and mechanism.

Through many observations in the field of vernacular and popular architecture it was noticed that there is a certain number of similarities in the mythological concepts among different communities. It is a number of mytho -religious concepts that repeats itself constantly almost in every cultural activity. These concepts is considered to be - according to Eliade, I 957- the paradigmatic patterns for all human activities and it carry with them the power of transport the individual into the timeless realm of primordial, on order to participate in the original act of creation.

In this study, an attempt will be made to analyze popular architecture in the light of psychological theories developed by Carl Gustav Jung (I 875- I 96 I) specially the theory of (Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious) in order to interpret the past mentioned mythological themes in relation to popular architecture.

To understand this relation we must analyze it through a certain scope, from its development stage in the human mind to its application in traditional and popular architecture in general and on Egyptian popular architecture as a case study.