Shree: On architecture

 

Shree: On architecture

Shree, I was reading an article on authenticity or the feeling of being authentic. the search for this inquiry itself indicates a disconnect with the process of making and conceiving existence. and this has happened by a variety of reasons - from pace of time to processes of doing, industrialization, modernism and so on. each movement seems to have fractured us more in the mindscape and the communication itself has become complex enough to initiate any action. well, the truth is that thought, communication and action should be aligned towards a common goal of delight and existence. and even if this goal is stated, any action seems like a patch work of recreating a lost meaning or a lost experience. past is past and this means that the present has its specific issues which cannot be addressed by "copying" any product or process of the past since the conception, process and product are closely linked to one another and is highly contextual in terms of space and time. we may duplicate a product but that does not ensure duplication of feelings.  as much as we experience disconnect - our products also come from that stand point. philosophically therefore it is said that vibrations make a reality and not the other way round. so if vibrations change, perceptions change, meanings change and therefore responses and space-time-architecture changes. all architecture or anything of manifestation is a product of existence or of the mindscape.

therefore the inquiry is what sort of mindscape may become beneficial or appropriate to be considered? the answer is not static again as a product. the answer needs discovery of values. values again is a loaded term and probably at a fundamental core, value may mean universality; connect; empathy; love; longer good and somewhere in between those lines. what we say too, we generate a value. we are always doing it.

and therefore, formal approach to architecture (and being deterministic) does not work and even damages the environment. one visualizes architecture through forms, but i would consider visualizing values or experiences and how they lead to an idea of movement in space and time and therefore architecture subsequently that play out this visualization. when people say and talk and instantaneously conceive some sort of a space or a box or double heights or steps or anything, i am almost taken aback since it bespeaks the superficial manner in which designers seem to assume certain effects of their compositions on human behaviour. is human behaviour so predictable by formal analysis and its conceptions? or how does this process actually take place? do scale and proportion have static spatial identities or are they constructed notions in the mind and hence relative? is space geometrical out there or is it experiential in the mind - the region where it first gets constructed?

if i ask this question very sincerely to me, then i realize that the entire mindscape of existence comes into play to decide on an experience (fundamentally existing at the subconscious layers of mankind) and the design may begin to respond to these tendencies - then i see movement happening and then forms. it is a difficult process but it leads perhaps to a fresh manifestation and not a dated one or a copied one. and if this process were to be followed, then how should the other even evaluate it? then the question is - should this process even be evaluated?!

Hari Om.