Decoding Sacred Landscapes: The Interplay of Spirituality and Vernacular Built Forms in Riverine Settlements in Asia

Sacred landscapes along riverine settlements represent dynamic intersections of geography, spiritual practice, and vernacular urban form.Many such landscapes exist in Asia and they play a significant role in the upliftment of spirituality among the communities inhabiting the settlements around them.However, there is inadequate knowledge about the interplay of spirituality and builtform.In this context, this study examines how spiritual belief systems materialize within built environments and how memories, rituals, and everyday religious practices shape spatial organizations.Therefore, it investigates the material, social, and sensory dimensions of sacred landscape formations in Asia.The research adopts a qualitative comparative case-study methodology integrating spatial mapping, phenomenological observations, interviews and interpretive analysis.Three case studies are examined in historic Asian river cities: Varanasi in India, Hoi An in Vietnam, and Ayutthaya in Thailand.The findings demonstrate that spiritual landscapes are not static heritage constructs but adaptive cultural systems sustained through continuous ritual use, embodied memory, and vernacular spatial practices.Across the three case studies, sacred urbanity emerges through recurrent typologies of processional routes, waterbased ritual zones, thresholds between sacred and secular domains, and atmospheres generated by multisensory engagement.The paper contributes to a memory-based analytical framework for understanding how sacred meaning is embedded in everyday urban environments and argues that planning and conservation approaches must prioritize ritual continuity, community participation, and sensory authenticity alongside physical preservation.By reframing sacred landscapes as living vernacular systems, the study advances culturally responsive strategies for managing heritage riverfront settlements in rapidly transforming Asian cities.