Shree: rest, movement and encounter

Shree: rest, movement and encounter

Studio makes one ponder on some aspects of existence. Public or common spaces in most of the developed regions look probably ‘dead’ in life. That initiates an inquiry what do we mean by life nourishing and is it got to do with actions or form or planning or working together as a process or other things?

The perspective on dead spaces has a very long history. One academic historical dimension comes from ‘The Fall of a Public Space’ which argues how the idea of “publicness” has been overtaken by “individualism” by changes brought forth by various factors of culture, economy, place, time, media, architecture and so on. Lie has a dimension of “connection” and “togetherness” and they enrich the individual as well as the collective. When the effort seems to get geared only on the individual, the collective holds no real significance and such spaces then appear or feel ‘dead’ because our consciousness has a hard time to connect with the idea of a public space. Again, why does that happen is an inquiry. The book argues that such a change was incidental and not deliberately planned and that is the nature of “change” that it is always going to remain - that we do not know the complete picture and we act based on our perceptions, which are nevertheless incomplete so there always remains a voice of critique. This I can ask philosophically is that the reason why we remain ‘worried’ or create ‘worry’ as a vibration?! And what does that indicate about our awareness of existence?!

So if above is an inquiry, then the solution may lie in discovering how connections that are life nourishing can be initiated in contemporary times. This is a personal inquiry, not a system based one.

Another dimension of above development is - have we harboured those tendencies from the beginning that got further consolidated into gigantic scales and hardened systems? So, is it an ahistorical process? One can argue that the entire history of European society and American society is based on tendencies of control, exploitation, surveillance, production, profit, greed, economy, power and so on. Those seem to be the dominant expressions and hence have found reflections in cities or forms of design and relationships in that manner. So, an immigrant going to such places of encounter – what does he/she encounter as an existential experience?

This then initiates even further inquiry on the role of senses and the forms that developed on their active vs passive engagement. Are architectural forms a reflection of the nature of engagement of the senses? I am not really sure. And if that can be found as a case, then we are saying that any space ought to make one “feel” comfortable and secured. Is this feeling dependent on senses and their interaction with the environment? How does one essential make sense of the world of encounter? And does that then refer to rest, movement and encounter? And what do senses “show” – only a physical form or does the “encounter” takes one’s perception to feelings and cosmic dimension? So such terms have sacred dimension and not just physical.

Hari Om.