The Actual Proposal

It is amazing how many drafts one can go through, how many ideas circling around the same gut feeling can emerge… thankfully  deadlines exist to cull and quell.  Let me know what you think.

Research Question: 

An Architecture of Reciprocity:  How Can Architecture Mediate Our Relationship with the Land to Mutual Benefit?

Motivations/Rationale:

How can design, informed through a philosophical and holistic motivation, emphasize those qualitative aspects of specific geography, climate, and cultural influences to result in a beneficial effect upon the land as well as enhance or expand one’s understanding of and relationship to a specific environment?

This synoptic background indicates interests previously explored through literature and writing yet not through physical investigation.  While these opinions and judgments are not the focus of the data collection, they may be useful as a datum by which to compare and contrast the results.

Sustainability:  In contemporary conversation the title ‘architect’ rarely stands alone.  Words such as sustainable, green, or high performance usually accompany it. However, sustainable design, while logical, does not address the causes of the detrimental ecological changes on which global societies now focus; it attempts to slow the resulting symptoms.

At the core of this ecological dismay is a profound discrimination[i], defined and expanded over thousands of years[ii] as societies shifted away from direct dependence and interaction with the land to urban areas pursuing wealth, social contact, and even happiness.[iii]  The process of dramatically changing purposes for, interactions with, and thereby perceptions of the land, despite its validity or logic, has shifted an ancient equilibrium and taken something from daily life.  To truly pursue a sustainable course in architecture one must investigate man’s changed relationship to the land.

Urbanism:  Ironically, despite concern regarding a perceived discrimination[iv] from the land, as the population increases[v] thoughtfully planned urbanism stands to reason as a vibrant, productive psychological and ecological choice for humanity[vi].  With the trend of encouraged urban density[vii]^,[viii] and controlled sprawl, one would hope continued availability of wild and undeveloped lands results in spite of our growth.  While these intentions may preserve open land, and carry many benefits, urban living none the less filters our relationship to the land, altering perceptions regarding the character and nuances contained in geography, biology, climate, and cultural history.

Globalism:  While often a motivating and sustaining factor of urbanism, globalism may play a more influential role than urbanism in altering perceptions of the land. In contrast to often hidden environmental damage[ix], positive perceptions of globalization focus on mobility[x], physically and intellectually, that generates immeasurable wealth and benefits in technology, health care, nutrition, education etc.  This results in world wise, multi-cultural, fully mapped societies where individuals can be anywhere at almost anytime (physically or virtually) with questions and desires satisfied at the drag and tap of a fingertip. But ironically, through exposure to so much information, far off landscapes and different cultures, individuals begin to lose grip on their identities[xi]; the constant physical and mental shifting comes easily, encourages little commitment, affords no meaningful long-term connections, and dilutes cultural definitions of the land.

What Ingredients Are in Your Stew?

I consider the word ‘imprint’ and the possibility distant places of my life have established a criteria [expectations] for me now.  Do we carry with us impressions of place?  And do we hold these impressions of place as infallible memories of perfection, or perhaps beauty – even if from momentary experiences [plazas, cathedrals, seaside cliffs]?  Architects identify and name qualities of place like ingredients in a stew – density, volume, flow, verticality, topography, and spice it with the movement of light and shadow, smells of  wet clay, and and the echoes from a playground.

An imprint is firmly fixed, and that of an animal is the result of trust and habit.  What are the spatial habits of my past, the reoccurring qualities I have come to trust?   Can I know this in my soul like an elephant knows the way to an ancestral watering hole to which it has never traveled before?

So now we travel, wander, shift – living where environments are new to our bodies and minds.   Ian McHarg, a Scottish landscape architect,  speaks about his heritage and the land: “One cannot understand the pattern of settlement of Scots in North America, for instance, unless one understands the masochism that is part of the Scottish character…The Scots have always had an unerring ability to be able to find thin, poor soils to perpetuate that poverty to which they were so long accustomed.  It is no surprise to find that they occupy Labrador or Nova Scotia, eastern Canada or northern Ontario…Here people who were able to find thin, poor soils and unproductive agriculture, were able to maintain that masochism and poverty for which they were particularly well suited.  The German immigrants, of course, were very different.  They knew about deep, rich, limestone soils.  They knew that the black walnut tree was an indicator of these soils…So we begin the exercise of being able to understand people and their proclivities, their attitudes toward the land, their adaptive skills.  We see why they selected the environments they selected.”  Ian McHarg Conversations with Students, Dwelling in Nature pgs 36-37″

So in light of our mobility and the likelihood we are not living in the land of our forefathers – do we treat our new environment as an extension of our character?  Can we connect to new environments in such a way as to rely on them, pull definition from them?  I used to identify with the term ‘steward of the land’.  Now I realize use of this language perpetuates distance, a hierarchy of elitism if you will.  We are not stewards, we are not responsible for ‘taking care’ of the land; we are responsible for being a reciprocal part of the land.   So an attitude of belonging, being a living organism of the city, or region,  neighborhood or community is key to regaining our ecological sanity.

Defining a sense of place we are passionate about seems to be the logical first step in establishing a relationship. Perhaps defining a sense of place,  the character of our environment, creates a sense of belonging and a willingness to participate.  Are you home, do you belong to a place?  Can you begin to define the characteristics of that place in spatial terms, ecological terms?  Perhaps you still wander – if so, can you remember the places of your past, their qualities?

In finding our niche within the land we can not help but transition from consumer to citizen.

Standing Still

Of course our mobility, physically and intellectually, has gleaned immeasurable wealth and benefits for us. We are a world wise, multi-cultural, fully mapped society. But we are bored [even though we can’t admit it]; nothing is hidden, it’s all so easy. We can be anywhere anytime [worthy of its own blog entry]. So I have to wonder about standing still.

“My grandfather, on the contrary, and despite his life’s persistent theme of hardship, took a great and present delight in the modest good that was at hand: in his place and his affection for it, in its pastures, animals, and crops, in favorable weather.

He did not participate in the least in what we call “mobility.” He died, after eighty-two years, in the same spot he was born in. He was probably in his sixties when he made the one longish trip of his life. He went with my father southward across Kentucky and into Tennessee. On their return, my father asked him what he thought of their journey. He replied: “Well, sir, I’ve looked with all the eyes I’ve got, and I wouldn’t trade the field behind my barn for every inch I’ve seen.”

 In such modest joy in a modest holding is the promise of a stable, democratic society, a promise not to be found in “mobility”: our forlorn modern progress toward something indefinitely, and often unrealizably, better. A principled dissatisfaction with whatever one has promises nothing or worse.”  Wendell E. Berry

Part of me envies this connection and believes the loss of this intimacy with the land, and loss of value seen in localness has ruined us – but wasn’t it inevitable that we explored, then wandered until it became common to never dwell anywhere fully?    So now we question; in the midst of unhappiness, war, and climate change we wonder about the price of mobility, and accessibility.

Simply put, if we don’t stop moving we can’t see the immensities involved in locality.  If we can not make this connection how can we connect to each other?

I was born in Pennsylvania.  My parents took me to Wisconsin as a baby, then Kentucky as a young child.  In the aftermath of divorce a smaller ‘we’ moved to Michigan, then Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia. I continued the trend, and moved on my own back to Georgia and Florida,  then left the country for 18 months in Italy, Germany, and even Israel.  When I returned it was  New York, Rhode Island, and finally west to Colorado and Utah, then Arizona.  By the time I had reached my twenties I had easily shifted landscapes as many times as the candles on the chocolate cake.  My example may be extreme but not unusual.

My history includes me with the group of wanderers trying to place themselves.   Now I am in New Zealand, the last land to be settled by man, wanting to stand still.  So appropriately I ask, can a built work facilitate the reciprocity necessary for a life long dialogue with a single place?  Can architecture beget belonging?

Architecture for the Lost: Provocation for Master of Architecture Thesis

We all have a homeland, a place bred into our bones; some know they stand on that ground, some leave it but tell the stories, others wander, forget, and grow empty. Then wanderers beget wanderers who are truly the lost.

The lost have no connection to the land, and seek to fill an emptiness with everything and everything and more…

This PROJECT investigates man’s relationship with and response to the land. My project considers historic precedents [to be determined as a combination of architecture, art, and/or writing], and a literature review as examples of man’s expression of a fluctuating relationship with his environment influenced by an a priori knowledge of beauty, driven by an evolutionary history of familiarity with the land [nature], and broken down by globalization.

My investigation contrasts and compares the precedent study, and the literature review with current examples of a globalized world: we have adapted behaviorally at the cost of our social and physical wellbeing; we have lost touch with what it means to be part of the land, and part of a whole. These issues are far beyond our attempts at sustainability. We must look to anthropology, sociology, evolutionary biology and psychology, and perhaps to the arts to reconstruct our connection to the land, and to repair our ability to connect with one another.

A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole [of] nature in its beauty.
~Albert Einstein, 1950


This project, in essence, seeks physical design solutions by interpreting ‘answers’ established through current scientific and academic theory, and to express these thoughts poetically as a symbiotic relationship between our built environment and our place in the world.

I intend my research to influence the design of two Department of Conservation Huts [or two groups of huts] constructed as a response to two very different environs found in New Zealand [to be determined]. I assume at this point [dependant on literature review], these designs should demonstrate a deep response to the land as architecture, and begin to investigate the properties of such a response as one ingredient of many necessary in reconnecting humanity physically and socially through the land.

beauty escapes. . .

The beholder’s patience defines him, crouching within the concealment of the Mai Mai.  He waits for her, to claim beauty; instead he receives a shock of grace and symmetry as she startles and lifts at once above him.  She pushes the air past his cheek to say she knew he was there.  She flies as truth, to a place where the hunter will not hide…

The Land

Comfort exists in places we feel oriented, and we settle where we find meaning.  We never stray so far from the familiar as to not feel connected; or if we do, there is an acknowledged or perhaps unrecognized, constant desire for a distinct character of place – a unique physical reality that at some time, embedded itself in our identity.

Almost ten thousand years ago man spread over a great part of the world.  Anthropologists refer to this time as the beginning of a revolution, when we transitioned from a wandering, temporary existence of hunting and gathering to an agrarian, sedentary life of settlement.  We shifted from small nomadic hunting bands to form denser, more permanent villages, and began to reveal our presence in the world. Nature once had the ability to constantly direct the hunter-gatherers’ patterns and behavior; but now the settled man manipulated nature to dramatically reduce this effect. This revolution initiated man’s profoundly different relationship with the land.

Beauty: Introduction

There is something archaic and deeply human in experiencing beauty, as though we know beauty existed before us. In experiencing beauty, we glimpse for an exhilarated moment the possibility of the familiar, as if our capacity to take in beauty makes it ours alone, exactly crafted for us to enjoy. We yield to the moment; hoping beauty is ‘no creature of reason’. Just as Plato searched for beauty that interacted with the soul, we desire the experience of beauty to remain ours, to be emotional, unbounded by a formula or rationale; yet it is in our nature to question and reduce our environment and our experiences just as we question love, prejudice, freedom, and immortality.

Beauty unites with all the authority of scientific law; there is the underlying structure and form of the rational, but even now, we know this only on an intuitive level. More than two thousand years after Plato, Aristotle, and Vitruvius questioned and defined beauty, we still hover on the edge of understanding its duplicitous nature. So we discuss common properties, investigate, and form opinions about the universality of beauty, our evolutionary disposition towards beauty, cultures’ influence on perceiving or creating beauty, and beauty as a critical commodity.

Beauty: Universality

Some of the pleasure of beauty arises from an exhilarating sense the environment conforms to our physical and intellectual abilities; that we are safe in this world because we find beauty. We must acknowledge however, when we agree something is beautiful, we share a connection; we enter into a community of like-minded individuals.  ‘Beauty is something that pleases everyone regardless of their opinions.’  This existence of a shared ability to recognize and appreciate the beautiful brings us together through the reciprocity of knowing, initially transcending cultural affects.  We become equals in the a priori of beauty.

One must ask then if this could lead to a palatable grasp of Kant’s noumenal argument: does beauty exist in an object independent of our phenomenal interpretation?  If we agree on beauty in the face of intellectual and cultural differences, is this an empirical beauty processed in the brain and not altered by the mind?  If so, we should consider what is beautiful not in its final form but as it is created through processes like growth, division, fabrication, or selection that produce pattern, proportion, and symmetry.

Perhaps our recognition of this beauty is the result of evolution, our capacity to make meaning of the environment through cognition.  Humans process complex environmental stimuli gained through sensation. We analyze and expose relationships within the complexities.  This analysis has to be quick to be species beneficial; and so our brains compare, categorize, find patterns, and make connections instantly so we can respond and adapt.  This process is instinctive and the basis of our intuitive, pleasurable responses to pattern and proportions.

Beauty: Symmetry

“Beauty is bound up with symmetry.” ~Whewell

The beginning musings of a post…

Considering the mathematical nature behind proportion and pattern and our evolutionary propensity towards these processes – perhaps beauty exists in a formula.  Richard Feyman states, “You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity.”   Whewell most famously stated, “My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.”  Mrs. Heisenberg writes of her husband, “…He talked about the miracle of symmetry as the original archetype of creation, about harmony, about the beauty of simplicity, and its inner truth.”  In letters to his sister, Heisenberg goes on to say of the interrelationships in atomic theory, “Not even Plato could have believed them to be so beautiful.  For these interrelationships cannot be invented; they have been there since the creation of the world.”

Is our certainty of a given truth the result of our own efforts, a confirmed discovery, and therefore pleasing [beautiful]?  With truth, we can find language to comprehend it.  Beauty leaves the impression of a gift, independent of intellect and conquest.  Language is not always available to communicate beauty.  Technique cannot hide a lack of inspiration – just as much as educating or analyzing cannot always result in revealing beauty where we did not see it before.  This does not presuppose beauty and truth cannot coexist or in fact inform one another, as is often the case in science, in nature, and specifically in architecture.

Some question symmetry as nature’s fallback and not a source of organization – that when not enough information is available to complete a system, symmetry is substituted in at that point of weakness.

Beauty: Proportion

Vitruvius equated beauty with grace, and believed we could achieve proportion through grace. His 10 Books on Architecture describes proportionality based upon musical harmonies and the human ideal proportions as a basis for the architect, “Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members as in the case of those of a well shaped man.”

The Golden Section or Divine Proportion was not developed but rather discovered already existing in the natural world.  The proportions found in the Golden Section [~1.618] appear throughout our universe.  There are shared proportional relationships between the ideal shape of galaxies and tornadoes, in the tails of a seahorses, the unfurling end of a fern, the center of a rose, and even the proportions of our bodies. As with pattern, familiar, predictable proportions exist all around us and are a part of us.  Despite phenomenal differences, we consistently agree certain objects, buildings, and even landscapes are beautiful as they display pleasing predictable proportions we acknowledge on an intuitive, a priori level.

It is through an understanding of the whole we comprehend proportion.

More on this soon…