near
to us
It’s obvious to say that our felt-sense is intimate. It’s for us and our experience only. But our personal experience of the world is so personal and ever-present that it often falls back to a default position at some distance from our awareness. Somehow we tend to forget that it feels like something to be somewhere. We forget that this being is specific to this context—that the sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts of our actual experience are in relationship with the environment, unfolding with that which is near to us.
This is architectural as it implicates our built environments with our felt-sense.
At some level, we all know this. We’ve all had the experience of being moved emotionally by the effects of a certain space. The grandest cathedrals to the simplest homes hold the same capacity to blend with us in such a way as to touch us.
The true force of architecture lies in its capacity for this emotive
touch. It is, then, a design task to shape the conditions for that touch with intention. Through simple, grounding gestures, architecture draws us into deeper contact with the present.
.
These gestures don’t need to be grand, simple moves suffice so long as they orient one toward the activities and experiences which reliably enrich one’s life. For a cook—the accompanying rhythm of early light in an east-facing kitchen. For deep work—the soft, consistent luminance of a north-facing opening. For a cultivator—the deep contrast of a long, low overhang opening onto a garden, providing shade under the hush of a quiet afternoon—these are not just details, but invitations. Architecture orients us toward experiences that nourish us. Though we don’t often name it, architecture mediates between our inner life and the world around us through a subtle reciprocal play.
It is in this way that we’re entangled within our settings, so why not prepare our environments in such a way as to benefit ourselves of this entanglement. Why not attempt to orient our experience toward enriching relationships with our everyday environments, toward actions in the world and modes of being in concert with our values?
Why not plan and shape our spaces in such a way as to place
ourselves in a more virtuous relationship with that which is near to us? This is a gift we give to our future selves.