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NATURAL ARCHITECTURE DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

ARCHITECTURE BEGINS AND ENDS WITHIN THE HUMAN BEING

Like a travelling milestone track ing a growing biographical timeline, a design manifesto characterises the leading edge of our progress. It transforms, ripens and

bears fruit as we do. It qualifies our values and actions in relation to our inner and outer worlds at a particular moment, an ever changing moment, and an ever

changing relationship.

FORMING AND BEING FORMED: Inspired

architecture is characterised by the subtle

relationship between individual expressions being

guided by the universal.

My individual creations

continually evolve, whereas

universal archetypes are

eternal. As the way I see,

experience and respond to the

world matures, so I revise how

and what I design. This

individual growth occurs within

the influence of invisible yet

ubiquitous universal laws. One

example is; what’s within me

is mirrored externally in the

world around me. And as a designer, my inner world becomes the outer world of others.

My human warmth, clarity, inner mobility, originality and liveliness will potentially become someone else’s habitat. Similarly, my lack of insight and imagination,

stereotyped thoughts, environmental ignorance, and emotional somnambulism also become another person’s environment. In this sense architecture is an external

reflection of our inner condition. Our built environment is the externalised physiognomy of the designer’s inner reality.

This creative influence implicit in the design continues long after the building is completed. Once constructed, our buildings start shaping us from within. Unlike

permitted colouring E122, unfortunate music and the heeby-jeebys, we cannot avoid our built environment. Architecture both mirrors and influences our mental,

emotional and physical state of being.

For example, a six year research project in Germany showed with infra-red photography that our body temperatures increase in building environments that please us

and decrease in ones that offend us. This research also revealed that our heart pulse rate, breathing and the size of our eye pupils are also immediately affected by

the aesthetic quality of our architectural surroundings.

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Buildings affect our health and sense of wellbeing whenever we are near them. They also

affect cultural development through stimulating our imagination and artistic responsiveness.

This enduring influence originates in whatever - intentionally and unconsciously - inspires

the owners, architects and builders; and is embodied in the very fabric and forms of the

buildings. When seen in this way, architecture begins and ends within the human being.

THE FINISHED AND ONGOING ARTWORK:

Completing the building ends one creative process and starts another. The

first process reshapes physical substance into something fixed and visible

- the building- and the second nurtures the development of something

living and invisible - our inner life.

Through qualities implicit in the building, not as symbols or metaphors for

something else, but as direct and immediate perceptual experiences, insights and feelings can be intuited and surface to consciousness. This

potential awakening and transforming of our awareness as evolving human beings, nourishes and supports personal growth.

In this sense a building can be seen as both an outer and an inner work of art. Something finished stimulating an ongoing inner process. The

finished work of art is the physical structure acting as medium for transforming our consciousness. Our enduring relationship with the buildings

kindles the ongoing inner art work. I think of it as the symbiosis of physical and human sustainability. Without the one the other is incomplete.

THE INNER PATH:

When realising that our designs express our conscious and unconscious worlds, we inevitably feel the need to initiate dialogue between these two states of being.

And conversely, when I become sensitive to how buildings support self development I begin grasping how healthy self reflection and inner work are vital to

architectural and cultural progress. Understood in this context architectural practice will include cultivating introspective self-development in tandem with design

sk ills and technical understanding.

With architectural progress and personal growth being reciprocally allied we need to nurture both. This leaves us to the

question of how can we foster inner development. This is a vast subject, however one, of many ways, is by recognising the

need for femininity in architecture.

THE NEED FOR FEMININITY IN ARCHITECTURE:

Let’s start by observing how our masculinity and femininity are expressed, and not expressed, in architecture today. Men

and women obviously embody both masculine and feminine tendencies in varying degrees and strengths; nevertheless

there are innate gender differences.

It’s primarily my femininity which gives me access to my feelings, to the matters of my heart, to that which helps me

integrate my inner and outer life. Our femininity nurtures human intimacy, togetherness and mutual support. Its awareness

is inwardly focussed and outwardly more dispersed, so outer spatial orientation is more challenging than locating intuitions

and feelings. This strengthens our conviction that personal intuitions and feelings are a reliable measure of reality. Our

femininity gives us courage to speak our inner truth, to face the reality of emotional difficulties and pain.

In contrast, the archetypal masculine tendency is to change the external world. To think clearly and act with resolve,

producing tangible results. Our masculinity competes socially and strives for independence and self sufficiency. Its awareness is outwardly focussed and inwardly

less so, consequently physical spatial orientation is less challenging than issues like ‘listening to my intuitions and what I must change to feel right’. It leads us with

our single-minded thinking and consequent actions. This separates us from ourselves, hereby helping us to connect objectively to the outer world. It gives us

courage to take risks, to conquer worldly difficulties and challenges.

We currently live in masculine dominated surroundings. Industrialisation is primarily a masculine directed activity; machinery, assembly lines, emotionally sterile

production methods. The founders of modern architecture, all men, envisaged their functional buildings as the standard global uniform of the future. Their influence

has been widespread; rectilinear forms, utilitarian materials, straight roads lined with regimented apartment blocks and steely cold offices. Their dictum was:

designs should be logical, rational and pragmatic. No sentimentality or whimsical romanticism here.

On the upside, this attitude has brought a crisp cleanliness to architecture, an awakening clear headed quality, and a sharpened sense of self-determination. The

price tag for acquiring these qualities includes experiencing buildings which are disconnected from past value systems as well as their surroundings; these houses

are conceived of as functional concrete, steel and glass machines for living in.

The result is no gentleness, no homeliness, no warmth and no perky frivolity please. This is serious men’s business. Sadly most female architects and planners

emulate their male counterparts, adding little of their feminine uniqueness to the design and building process.

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So what is an example of a feminine quality, accessible to both men and women, which if initiated into architectural practice would

fundamentally change our built environment? This is more than a question of what women can do in architecture that men cannot, it’s also the

issue of what men can do that they have never done before.

THE DYNAMIC BALANCE:

Integrating our feelings into the design process will radically change how and what we design. Feelings touch us when our rational thoughts are

back-grounded. Equally, rational thinking is only effective when feelings are marginalised. Despite thinking and feeling being different in nature

they both have their own implicit consistency and ordered coherence. However they have not enjoyed equal respect in the world of science and

architecture despite being present in differing ways.

To grasp the world objectively the classical scientists strive to eliminate any subjective influences arising from their feelings. In a similar way the modern architect

also strives for a measure of logical objectivity. The success of this rational methodology is only partially achieved in

educational institutes because it is at variance with human nature.

A rational imperative does not consciously precede our normal way of living. Falling in love for instance, lacks

‘intentional design considerations’. John Lennon described it as ‘Life happens to us while we are making plans.’

When students and architects are asked to explain the reasons for their designs it’s often a case of post-analyses

posing as prior insight. To imagine only our conscious mind is active while living and designing is naïve. The many-

sided nature of our being, constituting our more complete humanness, is neither nourished nor expressed through this

one-sided rational methodology, and will at some point seek expression.

Living reality cannot be expressed through thoughts alone. The opposite tendency in isolation is also problematic.

Unbridled spontaneity and emotional expressiveness lacks inherent cohesion, and can veer off into an isolated world

of eccentric personal idiosyncrasies with little relevance to cultural development as a whole.

AESTHETIC PERCEPTION:

Ideally when designing, if my creativity is sourced from a dynamic relationship between my thinking and feeling this integration will, via the building as medium, be

stimulated in the occupants. Here thinking and feeling don’t function in parallel but enhance each other to form a completely independent faculty for perceiving and

creating. Expressed differently, when my enlivened thinking functions in concert with my most delicately nuanced and refined feelings the result will be a vibrant and

integrated aesthetic capacity.

In everyday design practice, when we have understood the design requirements of a project there arises through our femininity the intuitive need to discontinue just

forming thoughts, and to move on to artistic creativity. To allow ideas to progress to a certain point and then to follow with a purely artistic sensibility, before

returning to practical construction considerations. This process is cyclic, becoming ever refined as the design progresses.

This involves transfiguring reality into something beautiful as different to manifesting a concept. When matter is simply used to embody a concept, we produce

abstractions or kitsch. Here rational thinking suppresses the possible emergence of artistic imagination. When the initial design process terminates with thinking,

the warmth, astuteness and inspiration of the heart is foregone. Through our femininity the scope of our artistic expression can be expanded beyond what’s possible

with our intellect alone.

Architecture is not only a science, it’s also an

art; with the science of aesthetics as the higher

synthesis of these apparently irreconcilable

disciplines.

The fundamental question here is; how do we

objectify our subjective experiences so that they do not lose their inner vitality and individuality yet become a reliable source of insight and creativity? This requires

transforming our intimate personal experiences into an empirical instrument; that is,

Animating our creative think ing

To become a purifying agent,

Which refines our feelings

Our most subjective inner sensibilities

Into an organ of aesthetic perception