“Man as a wanderer goes his own way, with the task of penetrating the world and putting meaning to work” The origin of architecture is thus the natural place seen as the point of departure from which man has developed a synthesis which has led him to settle in a specific environment. The villages of Karelia show this putting of meaning to work in the wooden architecture which, interpreted, leads one back to the phenomenology of a type of architecture which addresses the place in which artificial and natural elements form a synthesis. The landscape of Karelia appears inevitably bound up with the human activities of daily life in a much more determinant manner than other European landscapes; it’s important to emphasise the role of the landscape as a regulating element of life, the study of which may prove useful in determining analytic criteria for the analysis of specific architectural and urban contexts.