Heidegger presented his concept of being-in-the-world implying a man-made environment. He presented the concept that man lives in a fourfold environment consisting of the earth, the sky, the divinities which are the gods and mortals which are men who dwell in this earth. The passage in his essay "The origin of the work of art" strongly suggests that a building, in his case, a temple, a holy place, portrays absolutely nothing. It merely stands there in the 'rock-cleft valley'. The temple encloses the figure of a god, and by concealing, it allows the temple to stand out. The presence of the god is in itself 'the extension and delimitation of a precinct as a holy precinct'. Heidegger strongly believed that places of worship such as temples are built in specific places where the chosen place has a hidden meaning revealed by the temple itself. A building according to Heidegger is a work of art and as a work of art, the building "preserves truth". Hence the temple does not add to the landscape that is already there, but instead brings out the land and causes it to emerge as what it truly is. Simply put, Heidegger believed that a land in itself is unable to present itself as a work of art. However, if a building is built on that piece of land, it does not add to the landscape but causes the land to show its true form as a work of art.
In his later writings Heidegger offers interpretation of a fourfold of earth, sky, mortals and divinity. We may feel bewilderment as we're used to thinking of the world in terms of physical, social or cultural structures. Heidegger speaks of these fourfold to remind us that our world consists of concretized objects or things, rather than the abstraction of science. Heidegger describes the earth as the building bearer, the sky as the sun's path and seasons of the year as well as where clouds drift about, the divinities as the beckoning messengers of the gods and the mortals as human beings. He adds that each of these four is what it is because it mirrors the others. Heidegger constantly talks about this fourfold existance, talking about man's stay between earth and sky. He understood that "things" are manifestation of the fourfold, saying 'things visit mortals with a world'. This simply means that every 'thing' has a world of its own to bring to us, something for us to study and learn about. One of the meaningful lines Heidegger wrote about is how a bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream, where it does not simply connect, but it makes a place come into presence, where the banks appear only when the bridge crosses the stream. Simply put, we won't see the stream banks as they are until the bridge comes into play. There is truth in Heidegger's writing, where we will not be able to see a place for what it truly is until some a built form appears.
Heidegger also spoke about language as the original art. This was before he arrived at the concept of fourfold existence. However the concept was already there. Nature itself also gathers the fourfold, and asks for interpretations. This happens in poetry, language. Language plays an artistic role in the naming of things. By naming things, it brings beings to word and to appearance. Things are recognized for what they are when they are named. He states that the names "keep" them, and a world is opened up. Language keeps the world, but is also used to say a world. Language is defined as the "House of Being".
Put simply, Heidegger believed that every "thing" has its "thingness" or rather, a kind of soul to the said object, and that the same thing can be applied to the landscape and architecture. In this sense, we are more familiar with the term "genius loci" which is the "soul" of a place where Heidegger used the Greek temple as the example.
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