An Otherworld

It is interesting to note that most architectural spaces are not made with any thing to sit on, where at the same time, they are usually presented unfurnished as the achievement they are. For that matter, architectural spaces generally lack any of the components of living before they are furnished.

The problem I see with this idea occurs when the design of the space ignores the furnishings that will have to follow its completion, in order to actually use the space for something intended. Sometimes the space is too small to be useful. No ordinary array of furniture will fit into such a space. At other times, the empty space is so complete, that it won't support the addition of  useful elements within it.

In residential architecture, the spaces carry titles, which reflect the functions of the spaces in the total scheme of living. If the empty space is active on all sides, before it is furnished to reflect its function, it is very difficult to imagine how to place furnishings in such a way as to engage the space, and live in the space functionally too.

The architectural spaces in non-residential buildings which are imagined without furnishings, often are spaces which don't have functions which require intensive furnishings, and often the scale of such spaces is large enough that the incidental furnishing that may be installed do not compete with the architecture itself.

It seems to me that it would be very useful to develop a system of designing for furniture which is integral to the architectural concept, which allows the empty space to stand on its own while crying out to have people and their furnishings to become a part of it.

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The current strike against the government of this country is putting the basic blessing of our political system at risk. That blessing is the peaceful, periodic transfer of governmental power through representative elections. Withdrawing the consent to be governed by a body which was formed according to those consensual principles will destroy the unique peace our system provides us. This strike is being carried out according to the current rules of our system, and it would be vital to the survival of this system to address the problem and fix the structural weakness that permits it.

The prior attacks against our system of government were not carried out within the forms of our consensual political system, and the failure of the the current government to investigate what crimes were committed, and then prosecuting those crimes in an orderly way is the origin of the current loss of consensuality.

Sadly, the current government is in the process of being dismantled, and when it is replaced, our method of government, the peaceful periodic exchange of power will be replaced with it since it will be proven that that principle is not one that Americans value at any cost. That quality of ours will be replaced by what we do value.

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I was walking back from my morning coffee this morning, and I noticed the parking police writing tickets on Cayuga Street. this caused me to look at the parking meters at other cars to see if that one car getting a ticket was one of many on the street at one time in one place.I was just wondering about behavior. All of the cars on my side of the street did have running meters, except for the city vehicles parked there, and I am aware that those vehicles would not receive a ticket for their violation.

On the one hand, the parking meter money goes to the city, so city personnel feeding the parking meters for city vehicles would be the equivalent of the city paying itself to park the machinery of official business. On the other hand, the act of treating the city's resources  as a commodity to be sold back to the public while the city acts as proprietor establishes a relationship which extremely unhealthy and dangerous. It promotes organizations as individuals which are parallel to human beings.

I think the parking example is a good one to illustrate this, but added to it are other ones: the police and the fire department violate all traffic and parking regulations when on normal business (not responding to an emergency); they do this even in municipalities of which they are not a part; the city demands that homeowners maintain the sidewalks in front of their properties, no matter what their financial position is, while the city fails to maintain the sidewalks it is responsible for because the magnitude of the repairs is daunting.

If the conceptual city, as an individual, parallel to each of the human individuals of the public, owns the city, and markets the resources of the city to the public, then the city is put, by definition, in opposition to the people as their lord (landlord). In a sense it is as medieval overlord, in that the city is so inaccessible, and omnipresent in all the minions who work  for it.

By contrast, if the laws of the city are instituted for the reasons of public good, and are followed by all, except during specific times of emergency, then we have a government which is a principle (not an individual) which gives a public form to us. In the case of parking, parking is metered in the downtown area to keep cars circulating, to allow access to all persons who are stopping briefly to do business in the city. Long term parking is forced into other accommodations. It is not the money that goes into the meter which is  income to the city (although this is an effect), but it is a way of monitoring the usage of the parking spaces. City vehicles do not belong on the street unless they are stopping briefly, and the parking police need to be able to monitor those vehicles in an ordinary way.

Ownership of the city should be understood not to be by the city, but by the public as a whole, by a constitutional construction which is evaluated from time to time for consenuality. Government (or any other legal construction) should never be made into a man equivalent.

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Focusing on warmth rather than heating might alter the discussion of energy useage in buildings in a positive way in the future design of buildings.

Warmth seems to concentrate on the condition of the building environment, while heating seems to be a continuous chore. Warmth comes and goes; warmth can be guided to influence a building environment. Heating refers to an expenditure (usually of fuel) and once spent, seems not to be reclaimable.

I have already written about seeing geothermal energy, not as a resource in itself (like a traditional fuel), but as a solar or seasonal battery. What heat one would exhaust into the Earth in the Summer would be replenished by what one would take in the Winter. The change in the Earth's temperature would not change from year to year because human beings used that warmth.

Seeing seasonal warmth in that way is only a part of the change in mindset that would be useful to make in reimagining our buildings. Shepherding the forces around the whole built environment, moving warmth in the qualities that it will bring true comfort to us individually and as a public would lead to healthier solutions than the ones we are reaching now. Including ourselves in the discussion about the quality of the built environment would lead to a variety of conditions which might be able to be achieved more simply and directly to having a whole world which can sustain itself and which sustains us too.

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Before yesterday, when I listened to a refutation of current public education practice on UTube, I had not associated aesthetic and anaesthetic as a pair of words associated as the opposites of one idea. Of course, this is because they are not direct opposites in our language, at least in how they came to us as words; but now being proposed as opposites, there is something to consider.

The definition I found in my dictionary for "aesthetics" is: The science of deducing from nature and taste the rules and priciples of art; the theory of the fine arts;the science or that branch of philosophy which deals with the beautiful; doctrines of taste. "Anaesthetic" is: Pertaining to, characterized by, or producing, anaesthesia. "Anaesthesia" is: A condition of partial or total insensibility, especially to touch, produced commonly by anaesthetics, though sometimes due to to disease.

If one focuses on the level of sensibility in the definition, and the perception of art represents a higher sensibility, then the two words are genuine opposites. The perception  of art, beauty and taste are the result of higher levels of sensibility. In the education discussion, higher levels of sensibility represented more engagement with living and Life.

I think this explanation might help to understand disturbing changes I have been perceiving in the cultural world. The cultural world doesn't seem to be operating under the same rules it seemed to "before"; yet analyzing it, it works just as it always has.

Using the aesthetic/anaesthetic model to see our culture, perhaps the explanation is that the ordinary of us have been jogged into a semi-consciousness of aesthetic existence. Some live in those places already, experience them consciously, and even sense higher levels of existence. The difference is that many of those people are still living in the lower worlds among those who previously did not perceive the higher worlds at all. The effect is that the workings of ordinary culture are now less grounded in the physical than we previously saw.

Linguistic and idea associations used to be tools for the aesthete to make sense of the common world around us all. Magick was something imposed on the ordinary world by those who left the ordinary world behind.

Today, the world seems different in that the associations we used to identify and cause (in fiction) have come alive (in the ordinary world). The messages of word associations travel as freely and surely as the truth of the eyes in former days. That was called magick previously, and was previously difficult to make real in the ordinary world.

What seems to be a complex world, which is difficult to navigate because of the unreliability of the signs which surround us, is perhaps a world in which the reality of art causes a resculpting of the place in which we reside as a culture together. Learn to read the signs and the causes and effects will be predictable again.

I have spent much of the last nine years angry at the lack will that our culture, as a whole, has demonstrated to perpetuate its understood form. I never felt at home with its form, but it did propose an ideal, and I appreciated the ability to see and react to it in a logical way. Cultural behavior over that time seemed hypocritical (and it was), however, the hypocrisy might simply be the cultural stumble into an unconscious, different level of understanding. My discomfort with it might be not yet understanding how it works.

I imagine that this new phase of existence is directly parallel to the understandings held by older cultures than ours, whose methods were seen as dishonest by us before this change of ours. Taking a fresh look at those cultures and how they operate would serve as a start to bringing that change into our consciousness.

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The use of turkey is such an odd core component of Thanksgiving, given the nature of the people who celebrate that holiday.

At what other time in the year do Americans process and use almost every part of any resource they have ever been given. The skin, the dark and white meat are all held in high esteem during the initial meal. The left-over meat is wanted for sandwiches the next day, and even the carcass is boiled down for turkey soup to finish off the holiday.

It would interest me to think of the whole holiday in that multi-dimensional way.

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The Holidays are always difficult. They are the time when we get to spend a little concentrated time with our relatives. More specifically, a time to spend a little concentrated time with the issues of our past. We embrace the relatives, and we get the issues all over us.

Of course, we normally do this unconsciously, but it might be better (and cleaner) if we used this special time to explore and understand ourselves, them and the interconnections we have with them better.

My family runs from such possibilities, as if there is something really horrible to find out (if only we were that interesting). Playing games and acting busy are among the mechanisms they use to to avoid looking at that terrible thing (I really wonder what it could be).

The possibility of finding out a little more about myself and my background is always a hope of the Holidays, and the added stress of navigating them to fulfill my hope that exhausts me to the point of wishing that they just wouldn't happen at all.

As our family gets older, and it is easy to see a time when our parents won't be around to cause us to come to one place to spend our holidays, it seems like a last chance to reinforce our family connection by coming to understand and accept each other through those conversations which could happen in holiday settings; sharing memories, listening to other perspectives of shared experiences, seeking to see a way to validate the choices and challenges of family members whom one has hurt in the process of becoming an individual, distinct from one's family.

There was a variety of that happening this Thanksgiving. It was mixed with alot of convenient remaking of perception to fit an easy explanation of us, but at least it started. I have to say that I am exhausted as usual after the get-together, but I my hope for my family was allowed to breathe a little this time.

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The process of renovating the kitchen cabinets has led me to think about the meaning of our home to me. What have we been creating over the eight years we have been here, and how am I reflected in it as an individual?

Someone remarked the other day that it was funny that the house of an architect would not be finished after eight years. I was surprised by that comment, since I have seen our house as finished a little over a year after we moved in, when we completed the alterations to put all the rooms and the plumbing in the final order. To me, we had established the house to a functional state that established our image of it in its life context. We began living our complete home life in our century old house at that time.

Since then, we have made repairs, embellished and accommodated our home to reflect ourselves more, but we have defended the essential character of the original house. We have merged with our home, having been peacefully changed by it as we change it peacefully.

My relationship to this place is particularly tied to its age and continuity. I am grounded by a place which is sheltered, but not disengaged from the elements. I am strengthened by an indoor environment which shows a direct connection to the unsheltered out of doors. I find the building assemblies, even the ones which were not very good ideas, with their reproducibility and repairability a strength in the conduct and construction of my personal life. It is important to me that our home looks like it has been in successful, hard service for one hundred and twenty years now.

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I have been transforming some antique beaded board into kitchen cabinet fronts for the past few days. I am impressed by the sheer magic in repetition and the overlay of one system of measurements over another, unrelated one. I adjusted our cabinets to a system of 3 - 3,4,3, and the beaded board works on a system of 13 (12,1 ) / 26  plus the imperfection of every tongue and groove joint.

The finding of multiple intersections and the application of the same element to multiple purposes and the actual ability to make adjustments away from numeric exactness makes for a richer perfection in a meaningful way.

The effect of my project is an even surface of repetative vertical lines with the surprise of different articulations emerging from the surface. The articulations appear symmetrical and the repetition even, although adjustments occur all through it. At a large scale, the adjustments are invisible. A richness is revealed in the uniformity of the system at a small scale.

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Every so often I come across another proposal for sustainability in architecture which claims to minimize energy usage, and focused in that narrow way, has lost the larger understanding of the requirements of living architecture, reducing both the architecture and the potential of life inside it to a deathlike state.

The goal is avaricious. Every resource that one puts into the building should remain there indefinitely. There is no sense of the vibrant give and take that is an absolute component of Life, and anything that resembles or supports the living.

Usually, these proposals rely on overbuilding in order to "save" that last little bit of energy that travels out of the building. this focuses only on the energy used to operate the building and not the total life-cycle cost of the building. The structure seen as such would need to be immortal, not subject to degradation and change in order to be truly economical. Structures, and the materials that comprise them are never immortal. Stopping the flow of energy may have seemed useful in the primitive 1970s, but, in the 21st century, most of us have had the opportunity to talk about and experience the sense of life as an interdependent energy flow, and it is ignorant to propose that our buildings do not need to live as we do in order to support us in a healthy way. The concept that the beautiful and vibrant complexity of architecture is manifested best in its ultimate simplicity is lost on those who can only focus on self-sufficiency in their constructions.

I would propose a different kind of sustainability in architecture. The first quality of such an architecture would be conscious flexibility to build an intentional, long-lasting world fabric which would support many generations of a healthy culture. I have written about this in other postings here. I want to focus this posting on the other quality of a living architecture.

The second quality would be multi-dimensional simplicity in construction. This would combine the use planning of buildings with the natural flow of the resources of life. A building which would be planned this way would function in the flexible way I have described, and would be organized and constructed to permit natural breathing of fresh air, the easy flow of heat to provide comfort, and a healthy delivery and disposal of water which would be protected by the innermost core of the building from hostile elements. This is not news if you read this in its most mundane sense. All buildings need to do this. The news is in the simple, healthy integration of these needs into the functional design.

Air: If the planning of the building provides for fresh and healthy air through a natural breathing through the building envelope, there is no added energy needed to keep the air quality in the building at an acceptable level. The volatile materials within us and in the surfaces and objects around us can be exhausted in a routine way without relying on systems which need energy input or features which require special service. Our buildings could work as our bodies do. With care, our constructions can lose only the amount of heat to the outside world that would be acceptable to the use (Think of clothing on people of different metabolisms).

Heat: Thinking of the building with regard to heat management rather than as a quantity of trapped heat would yield easier comfort. Heat radiated from the mass of the objects around one is partly independent of air temperature in feeling comfort in one's environment. If a heating and cooling system were to be thought of as a circulation system rather than a simple heating and cooling delivery system, one could simply move the heat one has to place where it is needed, add some when needed, and remove some when that is needed. Heat is produced in most of life's activities, and accounting for it in a circulation system would economize on the new heat which would be thought to be required. Additionally, sharing heat with the earth mass around us would provide an even source of the solar and earth heat sources that come to us naturally.

Water: Independent of the comfort which one wants to provide within a structure (traditionally using energy), many buildings need energy to protect the services which are installed within them. A minimal heat source to keep pipes from freezing in Winter is one such case. Planning services to be protected by the mass of earth and building could make services within buildings relying on the shelter afforded by the earth and the building for its protection. Water from the environment could be taken into the building for useful purpose, and water used in the building could be sent out of the building for further useful purpose and useful reintegration into the world.

All of the mechanisms stated in this proposal have been talked about and used extensively. It is not these that is my focus. My interest is in thinking and talking about building planning in a multidimensional way in order to attain simplicity in creating a built environment with the richness of the natural world. That simplicity, buildings without apparent systems, which live and breathe, are a real solution to the problem of creating mainainable and healthy places to be.

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