About

WHAT IS LONGHAUS

The word “Longhaus” is built from the Chinese word for dragon 龍 (“Lóng”) and the German word for house (“Haus”). It recalls the “Bauhaus” school founded by Walter Gropius yet incorporates at its head not the action of fabrication (“Bau”) but the emblem of the Dragon, which in Chinese and other iconographic traditions represents the creative dynamic energy that brings one to enlightenment. The name suggests at once a synthesis of Western and Eastern traditions and a moving beyond modernist functionalism to a model of creativity in touch with the storytelling power of ornament, the resonance of an enchanted cosmos, and the deepest of human cultural roots.

The word is also meant to recall the “Longhouse,” a communal dwelling and gathering place that emerged in pre-modern societies around the world, from the Vikings to the Iroquois (whose name means “People of the Longhouse”). It names the place where a people comes together, the locus of collective life. 

We can also hear in the English word “long” a sense of duration. The Longhaus is meant to help us take the long view, to think about long-term sustainability, to reconnect with long lost traditions, to work towards that which takes a long time. And these tasks are meant to speak to our longing—for something more than what capitalist modernity has offered us.

Longhaus names a collective of people that longs to become a movement. Our goals for the movement are to address the wounds of modernity by harmonizing consciousness and reseeding the cosmos. “Reseeding cosmos” means bringing people back in touch with traditions and narratives that allow them to live playfully with one another and in sacred relation to the earth. “Harmonizing consciousness” means bringing people back into the right relationship with themselves and their environment. 

In the years to come, Longhaus will involve the establishment of urban centers for practice, education, arts, and community. But before we launch these centers, we wish to introduce our movement to a wider public by launching the Phenomenal Museum together with The Muse and the Mountain.