1^st Architecture Lesson: Object or Relationship

On a flat terrain, you build a solid straight wall, higher than a man and quite long. It will divide your land in two parts, and will thus also define two half-spaces, both clearly identifiable but unaware of the other’s existence because they cannot communicate. Your wall is a sort of Berlin wall, isolating two worlds. In a way, you have three objects which are all linked, but which for all intents and purposes are separated: the wall, and each of the two spaces that exist on either side of it.

If you build a door into your wall, this hole will be the only point of passage between the two spaces. The wall will regulate the relationship between the two spaces, and the relationship will still be minor. Next, you build a variety of windows and doors into the wall, and the relationship between the two spaces becomes more lively. It becomes more intense and more diverse with each hole that you bore through it. Eventually, as the wall fills with holes, it ceases to exist as such. It is no longer an object, but rather a filter, which defines the relationship between the two spaces. We end up with only two objects (the two spaces), joined by a filter, which intervenes, in a diverse relationship between them. Yet the three original objects are still there.

Lesson from the 1^st Lesson

The passage from the notion of the object (the wall) to that of the relationship (the dematerialized filter) is not marked by a clearly defined threshold. This qualitative passage has more to do with the way in which we look at the world. Our society is profoundly materialistic; it only sees and only considers that which is palpable. Therefore, it favours reflections based on objects, and neglects empty space (judged as being too abstract) and relationships (judged as being too complex). By adding together the objects that it sees, it develops an analytical vision from the addition of partial visions, and it cannot achieve a complete vision. It can define neither the relationships nor their nature, and is even less capable of defining the movement that makes them evolve. In these circumstances, it is difficult for our society to understand the general meaning of our world, and to understand that towards which the universe tends to move globally.

2^nd Architecture Lesson: Fullness/Emptiness

The house in which you live was built with various constructive elements, both vertical (walls, pillars) and horizontal (beams, floors). These are the elements, which make up the material aspects of architecture. By placing these various "full" material elements in your house, the architect gave life to the empty spaces which he joined together through the use of other elements of "emptiness": the doors, the windows, the intermediary spaces; relationships which are in fact holes in matter. What matters the most to you, the inhabitant of this house, is not the full elements (the "positive" elements), but the empty ones (the "negative" elements). In other words, the spaces in which you live, and which are in fact the parts that the builder did not build (in contrast to the constructive elements which he directly designed). The spaces -- the "empty" parts of the house -- are in fact the true objects of architecture, which thus becomes a game in which the rule is to design the "negative" elements in "positive", but to give them shape using only the full, "positive" elements, which are in fact designed in the negative. It is rather like writing words on a page by blackening the page in a way that leaves the letters themselves white.

Lesson from the 2^nd Lesson

This game underlines the ambiguous relationship between "fullness" and "emptiness", between positive and negative, between matter and relationship, object and preoccupation, and means and realization. That which is essential in the house is not what we would think; it is not in its physical elements. It is the relationships between full and empty spaces, the games between negative and positive and shadow and light, that give it its quality, and that the house's inhabitants come to fill with their spirit. The spirit of the place resides in a dimension that is difficult to define, situated outside of the functionality of the place, but which nonetheless must be taken into account when drawing the plans. Our civilization ignores the presence of these empty spaces though, as if they were the total absence of everything.

1^st Digression

Newton conceived of a representation of the world based on the celestial bodies as objects (apples!); this is a notion of the world from which empty space is absent, except with regards to the distance between two objects or bodies. These are linked by simple laws of mechanics, and are for him the basic fundamental material of the universe, in the image of the atom, which is also an image of the universe. Gravitational force exists only in relation to these bodies. That is, the relationship depends on them; moreover, it is proportional to their mass. This force is certainly a necessary condition to the subsistence of the system, but in reality, it is but the cement that ensures their cohesion. This notion of the cosmos, even if it allows for repetitive movement (cyclical and simple), offers a static image of an immobile universe which undergoes almost no changes (in contrast see Einstein’s notion of relativity). In his book, "The Universe is a Green Dragon", the physician Brian Swimme inverses this representation and puts gravitational force -- which is a force of attraction, of union and of creation, and the inspiration of the universe -- at the centre of the universe. The relationship becomes the priority, and it is energy (directed by spirit) which, in a way, generates a universe in movement, caught in an evolution towards a goal that we perceive intuitively even if we cannot quite define it. It is vital today to relearn this new way of seeing, to rediscover a vision of the world based on relationships and animated by the movement of a creative evolution. This notion of a world oriented towards a spiritual goal is in fact held by an increasing number of scientists (see Capra).

2^nd Digression

Matter is composed of atoms that are made of nothing but empty space, with the exception of minute and almost insignificant parts of matter (the nucleus and electrons) which are so minute in quantity, that this matter – particularly the electron (by its speed) – is more of a probability than a reality. This vision is the opposite of Newton’s: energy, the relationship prevails over an almost absent matter. Yet, our senses perceive matter as being a compact body, because they cannot penetrate it, like a wasp bumping into glass: the world beyond the glass does exist; it moves and changes without end, but we can neither touch it nor perceive this movement by touching it. Our senses make us accustomed to their own deceiving perceptions of things. It is up to our spirit to re-establish truth.

3^rd Architecture Lesson

Today’s city is thought up in terms of objects, of masses in juxtaposition. External spaces (streets and squares) are residual spaces, left empty by the construction of buildings which -- in our society -- are never planned in relationship to their exterior spaces, because they are always thought of primarily in terms of their internal functions, in the limits of urban alignments which prevent any freedom. On the other hand, oriental architecture, invented by those with power according to the traditions that go with this power, reveals a continuity in space between the interior and the exterior. The portico marks a threshold, a rhythm in a passage that leads the visitor from one world to the other. The colonnade and the façade, with abundant holes, are filters -- places as much to contain the exterior as to open onto the interior. Streets and squares are a series of interiors that succeed one another. In this continuous fabric, one can situate oneself simultaneously on the interior and the exterior, depending on the microcosm of reference.

Lesson from the 3^rd Lesson

Our technocratic world no longer dominates anything and does little more than shaking up matter. In its fragmentary spirit, it no longer sees what it is doing: it is displacing or reconstructing the mosaic, minutely and fastidiously, piece by piece, but we lost the image of the whole long ago. The oriental notion of the world gives meaning back to emptiness and the continuity of space, and allows for an awareness of the continuity of the universe, especially if our vision of the world is not limited to our fragment or to our field of competency, especially if the world is not considered as being a space to possess, to control, to limit, but on the contrary, as being an unlimited mystery to discover.

4^th Architecture Lesson: Baroque/Exterior

Like the Indian palace, the baroque castle is a sign of power. However, it is generally thought of as an isolated object, placed in a park. It is first of all a façade -- often very well balanced -- that is therefore a pleasure for the eyes. It is primarily a décor, imposing by its presence and its authority. The baroque palace is designed in terms of volume and fullness. It is a dense mass: an object that one visits accidentally because in order to do so, one must penetrate this supposedly impenetrable mass. Once inside, the same phenomenon happens: we continue to watch a show that exists outside of us, just like before we entered. The baroque palace develops magnificent interior spaces, but they remain theatrical and confine us to the role of spectators. The baroque movement does not encourage an internalization towards an unsuspected dimension; instead, it folds in upon itself in self-contemplation, like in a mirror. Is not the mirror an integral part of the baroque?

Lesson from the 4^th Lesson

The baroque palace is inspired by a penchant for the human game: to please, to enjoy oneself, to entertain oneself, and to impose oneself upon others. Its creator has no objective other than himself. It is a static world because it is enclosed upon itself, in the image of its architecture.

5^th Architecture Lesson: Gothic/Interior

Just as the baroque palace is designed in terms of fullness, so the cathedral is the result of architecture that is conceptualized in hollows and emptiness; it is an architecture of the materialization of the immaterial. It puts relationships and movement before the material aspects themselves. At the same time, this does not prevent gothic architecture from being, above all else, the mastery of physical forces. Perhaps this requirement constitutes the physical constraint that -- in parallel to its mystic motivations -- obliged the gothic to think of space in terms of movements: after all, is not strength the movement and concentration of energy? The cathedral is an emptiness, to be traveled through on the inside, more than an object to be seen from the exterior. It is an emptiness directed by a movement of progression towards the choir (the sacred) and by an upward movement towards the light (towards the spirit); it is a cocoon of light that floods us in a movement of attraction, inviting us on inward travels, inspired by the presence of spirit. The cathedral is internalization in movement. It is the materialization of spirit. Matter is the support for spirit and vice versa.

Lesson from the 5^th Lesson

Gothic architecture is born of a spiritual preoccupation; the notion of it is based on a deep knowledge, inherited from the past that goes beyond the dimensions of the human universe. The gothic world is turned towards the source of its origins, which is exterior to it. It is an open world, in movement towards the source of its inspiration.

6^th Architecture Lesson: Songlines

Although they do not build, it is paradoxically Australian aboriginals who inspire this last lesson on architecture. For spiritual reasons, they in fact refuse to transform nature, and this absence of artifice allows them to live in harmony with the rhythms of the earth. For them, the visible world is current consciousness and the invisible world is consciousness in evolution. The song of the dream of origins (Dreamtime) recounts the story of the evolution of the earth, filled with the presence of the ancestors whom it embodies. The Aboriginals move along "songlines" that follow veins of energy through the earth and correspond to the mythical history of the place. They sing them as they move along. These lines weave a dense web on the earth’s crust, and establish links between tribes. There is no longer an interior, nor an exterior. The world is perceived in continuity through time and space, between matter and spirit. Architecture, as it is integrated into their perception of the universe, is no longer necessary for building relationships between their interior and the cosmos.

Lesson from the 6^th Lesson

For our conquering civilizations, this teaching is very inspiring, as it shows what riches and unknown elements reside immediately below our feet and all around us. Rather than wishing to conquer a world that we want to shape into our image without even having begun to know it, our goal should be to enter into the vibrations of places, with the energy that surrounds us. Like the image of a vector in physics, that represents a force on the one hand by its intensity (length of the vector) and on the other by its direction (the positioning of the vector), our pursuit should be to delve into this energy (the intensity of the force) and to make it into a vector by the direction that our spirit wants to give it so that this energy participates in the general movement of creation.

Without Conclusion

It is impossible to conclude! These six lessons call for a seventh time, which will be sabbath; a time of rest for a true understanding of the movement of this spirit. Matter and spirit participate in a common movement. The question is how can we breathe these dynamics into the matter that surrounds us and let ourselves be carried by them in order to become forces for creation?

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