| Integral building The Soul of Building |
The Soul of Building
This is the realm, that in some ways is the least honored and acknowledged of the four in
modern western culture, but it is also the most intimate and accessible. For it is the realm
of direct experience. We feel more alive in some places. You feel this in your body, it is
an immediate response to your experience and place. This realm does not have simple
location in space or time.
Energy is an enormously useful concept used in physics and later extended to chemistry,
biology and other sciences. Just so, the concept of life can serve to empower and make our
exploration of this realm effective. This life is the soul of a building or place. It is this life
that we sense and which, when we are sensitive to it, can shift our state.
Another way of saying that this realm is direct experience is to say that it is heart-
centered. Shifting our state from a mental and concept focused state to the more whole
and grounded heart centered state is necessary in order to most clearly feel the life in a
place.
The development in the realm of the Soul of Building can be seen in the upper left
quadrant of figure 1. Here I place tract housing and Architecture-as-concept-art at the
bleak soulless nadir of development. Vernacular building span a wide range of aliveness.
At the center and most highly evolved are the places that lift your spirit and support
Presence. In my own experience, some of the best exemplars of this have been the Ducal
Palace at Urbino, many places in the small town of Assisi, Italy, and sacred spaces in
many locations. Really this same life and beauty is found in a single curling life or in the
“tiniest house of time”
Figure 1
Practices have been developed that support intuitive heart centered decisions for designing
and building. Historically Fengshui and Vastu living seem to have many features and
insights that support the construction of buildings that are deeply alive. But this
information is mixed in with myth and complicated theory.
My own experience in deepening discernment in this area has been aided by the study of
the work Christopher Alexander. In the Nature of Order Vol. 1, he develops a theory of
the life in buildings and other spaces, viewing a place as a field of centers, weak or strong,
and perceives the presence of some 15 fundamental properties of the field e.g. the levels of
scale found in the building element, the presence of good shape, positive space, or the deep
interlock and ambiguity of the patterns of centers. For each of these properties he
provides examples from the built environment as well as nature.
But the life in a place (and thus the effectiveness of using any of these theories) comes from
the depth of intuition or heart centeredness present when making decisions, whether
during design or while building. In this respect, modern building is singularly blind.
I have found great help for heart centered decision making from the practice of Aikido, a
martial art developed in the 20th century, and from Heartmath, a heart-centered self help
method. Among the tools developed by Heartmath are biofeedback devices that
continuously sense the pulse, analyse the frequency content of the signal and give
feedback on its “coherence”.
An Experiment
Since this is the realm of direct experience, you can try an experiment. Recall a favorite
place. It could be a forest path or a café or your favorite spot at home, but make it
specific. Recall the light and how it falls and is reflected, recall the colors, sounds and
smells, the feeling of the air and the textures of what you touch and sense kinesthetically.
If you give your full attention to this, and there is little attention on the mental voices that
so often occupy us, then there can be a shift in state from the mentally focused state of
reading this page to the heart focused state of aliveness in this imagined place.
This is the realm, that in some ways is the least honored and acknowledged of the four in
modern western culture, but it is also the most intimate and accessible. For it is the realm
of direct experience. We feel more alive in some places. You feel this in your body, it is
an immediate response to your experience and place. This realm does not have simple
location in space or time.
Energy is an enormously useful concept used in physics and later extended to chemistry,
biology and other sciences. Just so, the concept of life can serve to empower and make our
exploration of this realm effective. This life is the soul of a building or place. It is this life
that we sense and which, when we are sensitive to it, can shift our state.
Another way of saying that this realm is direct experience is to say that it is heart-
centered. Shifting our state from a mental and concept focused state to the more whole
and grounded heart centered state is necessary in order to most clearly feel the life in a
place.
The development in the realm of the Soul of Building can be seen in the upper left
quadrant of figure 1. Here I place tract housing and Architecture-as-concept-art at the
bleak soulless nadir of development. Vernacular building span a wide range of aliveness.
At the center and most highly evolved are the places that lift your spirit and support
Presence. In my own experience, some of the best exemplars of this have been the Ducal
Palace at Urbino, many places in the small town of Assisi, Italy, and sacred spaces in
many locations. Really this same life and beauty is found in a single curling life or in the
“tiniest house of time”
Figure 1
Practices have been developed that support intuitive heart centered decisions for designing
and building. Historically Fengshui and Vastu living seem to have many features and
insights that support the construction of buildings that are deeply alive. But this
information is mixed in with myth and complicated theory.
My own experience in deepening discernment in this area has been aided by the study of
the work Christopher Alexander. In the Nature of Order Vol. 1, he develops a theory of
the life in buildings and other spaces, viewing a place as a field of centers, weak or strong,
and perceives the presence of some 15 fundamental properties of the field e.g. the levels of
scale found in the building element, the presence of good shape, positive space, or the deep
interlock and ambiguity of the patterns of centers. For each of these properties he
provides examples from the built environment as well as nature.
But the life in a place (and thus the effectiveness of using any of these theories) comes from
the depth of intuition or heart centeredness present when making decisions, whether
during design or while building. In this respect, modern building is singularly blind.
I have found great help for heart centered decision making from the practice of Aikido, a
martial art developed in the 20th century, and from Heartmath, a heart-centered self help
method. Among the tools developed by Heartmath are biofeedback devices that
continuously sense the pulse, analyse the frequency content of the signal and give
feedback on its “coherence”.
An Experiment
Since this is the realm of direct experience, you can try an experiment. Recall a favorite
place. It could be a forest path or a café or your favorite spot at home, but make it
specific. Recall the light and how it falls and is reflected, recall the colors, sounds and
smells, the feeling of the air and the textures of what you touch and sense kinesthetically.
If you give your full attention to this, and there is little attention on the mental voices that
so often occupy us, then there can be a shift in state from the mentally focused state of
reading this page to the heart focused state of aliveness in this imagined place.
