WITH ARCHITECTURE:

We make a common mistake when we consider ourselves here, inside of our bodies, and our environments over there, separate and distinct from those experiences occurring to us in here, within the bounds of our bodies. This type of duality places us slightly outside of our own experience. As if we were on the edge of the natural world looking in. But really, we are not un-natural. We are not in here seeing the world as it is out there. We know this but we tend to think of ourselves as separate, existing from the inside out at some distance from the world. Yet, our bodies are made of the same component bits as that which surrounds us. We are fully organic, we degrade, we shed and recombine ourselves in the same unfathomably complex ways that plants and other organism do. We inhale and fill ourselves with the atmosphere, blending its contents into our blood. We are a kind of living chemistry made directly from the world around us.

Likewise, architecture is not un-natural. A home is not made of inanimate objects and surfaces dead to the world. It’s not something to consider abstractly as a set of components within a certain style at some distance to one’s self. It is rather a living play of materials that resonate with the natural rhythms of the world; with the daylight, the breeze, the sounds and scents of the environment. This is all completely natural and enlivening. This is what creates an atmosphere.

Rather than being inert, architecture has the capacity to enchant if we can simply be with it. It operates on us directly. Not at arms-length but from zero-distance.

When we recognize this, we gain much as it places us in relationship to the world again. It brings us down-to-earth. And settling such, we are able sense beauty in a deeper way, a more attentive way which grounds us in the present moment.

As Rilke says, “To be in circumstances that are working upon us, that from time to time place us in front of great natural Things—that is all we need.”