Shree: Of balance and architecture

 

Shree: Of balance and architecture

 

One of my friends who lives in Manitoba indicated that because of severe cold in majority of months with some days of minimum daylight of 3 hours (-40 degrees) architecturally it is necessary to connect everything underground and have a packed social encounters indoors. In the summer, all activities become outdoors for maximizing Sun’s exposure (camping, barbeque, tenting, mountaineering and so on) because the sun is limited and so is the warm weather. Therefore one perceives the weather not as a moment but an inevitable extension (or a connection or a relationship with the harsh winter and loss of social life). So the summer and its related activities and winter is not seen in isolation but as a relation that balances life.

Above was a positive example.

We also have some space of socializing like the bar or discotheque, which comes on popular radar. For years I had an inquiry why should one even conceive a space for boozing when all one requires is a simple street and an open space where there is incidental meeting of people to mentally connect? This goes on to say that the discotheque is a “balancing act” (of letting all your pent up emotions run riot without any barriers of any kind) as compared to the regimental ordering and sterilizing of emotions in the overly surveilled work spaces for five days a week! The discotheque is the antidote to a work space “prison” environment! It is also a sign of the times that unsurveilled open spaces cannot fulfil the need for emotional contentment so one sort of gets into the deterministic act of designing spaces (with a bang on purpose) to give you a Nirvana experience!

Taking things further at a subtle level, I found it funny and mildly irritating to see a college video of “studios” and “corridors” and so on. This may look a very innocently portrayed video, but it seems to also say that all the “explorations and discoveries of architecture” deterministically can (and only) happen in the studio spaces! What sort of stupid message is that? As if all the learning happens at a given instant of capsuled time and capsuled space (coming completely from outside without ever concerning what happens inside!)….

The mistake that we all commit is to expect that the moment holds all the answers of fixing and whatever it reveals. What I “see” as a form (maybe a kid or parent or anyone) is what one is without understanding that the feelings that one generates are coming from interconnections created by consciousness across space and time. So a kid or a parent or anyone has many things to feel or say or do and that contributes into making an action that we see in that moment. Are we to ‘fix’ an action? And if yes, what should fixing mean?

The problem of instantaneous action also means that we do not give ourselves time to pause, reflect, think of connections, priorities and so on. This is outright dangerous and one can see its ripple effects everywhere. Nowadays everyone is concerned about kids being overloaded by information and “not being attentive or listening” to what academicians say and so on. Is the problem so simple or is it far too complex that starts from methods of upbringing and how pause time is seen or what production should mean and livelihood and completion and so on? People talk of earlier generations beng more mature but has anyone analyzed how ‘maturity’ builds up through time, pauses, dreaming, meandering, struggles, explorations, engagements, failures and so on? And if people infer that the current generations are becoming more dumber, does that mean that the environment is NOT being conducive to exploration and the meanderings of the mind and the mind seems to be in passive mode or non cooperation mode or just not willing to budge? That the only way to bring engagement with action is through deperate doses of fear and urgency and stress? Are we constantly living in such an environment?

 

Hari Om.