Dimensioning the Public Sacred by A Nelson 2012

Dimensioning the public sacredMArch / MLA thesis paper

Amber D Nelson Committee: Anthony Dubovsky

Galen CranzDecember 2012

youtube.com/user/amberdaniela

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Spread 1 : the architectural cosmos p22

Spread 2 : presentation boards p24

Spread 3 : annotated presentation boards p26

Spread 4 : two years of inhabiting the sacred p60

Spread 5 : two years of imagine mandalas p62

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Introduction : the need for public sacred place 1

Strange Man from Strange Land : a design parable 5

Departure : Inhabiting the Sacred 13

Spread 1 : Architectural Cosmos 22

Spread 2 : presentation boards 24

Spread 3 : annotated presentation boards 26

0D INTEREST & 1D THOUGHT 29

2D EDUCATION : representation 33

3D DESIGN : demonstration 41

4D PRACTICE : manifestation & collaboration 51

Spread 4 : two years of inhabiting the sacred 60

Spread 5 : two years of imagine mandalas 62

Conclusion 64

THANK YOU! 65

Bibliography + Works Consulted 66

Contents

NOT: BUT:

SHED SHEDness

LAND LANDness

Fig 1. Not shed OR land separated but shedness AND landness combined.

The world has become large, alluring, and confusing. Social evolution has been so rapid that no agency has been developed in the larger community of the state for regulating behavior which would replace the failing influence of the community and correspond completely with present activities. There is no universally accepted body of doctrines or practices. The churchman, for example, and the scientist, educator, or radical leader are so far apart that they cannot talk together. They are, as the Greeks expressed it, in different ‘universes of discourse.’ -W. I. Thomas

Introduction : the need for public sacred place

I, and I suspect many others, have been many times lost in a web of contradictory workflows and approaches to design. It is no argument that educators nor practitioners have agreed upon a set of “best practices” for the profession as it rapidly evolves alongside the technological revolution. For instance, we have no clear consensus about what point the computer is best introduced into the design process and when it actually becomes a cumbersome hindrance, or when an idea might be best communicated with a freehanded sketch instead of an Illustrator diagram. While these sorts of details will inevitably vary according to each individual’s skillset, we can be conscientious and rigorous about this process and in fact must learn to be if we are to contribute positively as a profession to the long-term sustainability of our way of life. My research thesis does not advocate digital over analogue techniques nor the reverse; instead it suggests a both/and condition and attempts to organize a structure, the architectural cosmos, for the trained architecture student transitioning into practice to visualize their career path.

Cameron Sinclair stated in a CED lecture in 2007 that 90% of sustainable measures to improve our livelihood will happen out of necessity; it will be sustainability or extinction.1 This means our profession will be faced with the challenges of rapidly-changing environmental and social conditions that must be solved quickly and carefully. It is imperative that the architect strengthen his collaborations with other disciplines within and beyond the design field. Of particular importance due to its similarity in subject and scale is collaboration between architecture and landscape to emerge as a mechanism of sustainability; the monument in the field and the aesthetic yard must both give way to the ecologically democratic functional landscape (Fig 1). With these challenges come great opportunity not only to find sustainable solutions to potentially catastrophic problems but also to create spaces imbued with meaning and delight. We have more tools available to us than ever before and systems of communication that allow us to connect instantly with anyone, anywhere, anytime, so it is up to the architect to utilize these tools towards the greatest ends.

In a massively virtual world, however, the physical reality in which we actually operate all too often gets neglected of our attention. As our needs are increasingly met through a digital interface, our reliance and

1 Cameron Sinclair, “Design Like You Give a Damn” (lecture presented at the CED Architecture Lecture Series, The College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, October 17, 2007), 6:30.

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Dimensioning the public sacred

therefore our understanding of physical space becomes less nuanced. No type of place is more effected by this trend than the public realm, where genuine interactions between neighbor and neighbor or neighbor and place is the exception rather than the expectation. As Jane Jacobs passionately testifies, “Conventionally, neighborhood parks or parklike open spaces are considered boons conferred on the deprived populations of cities. Let us turn this thought around, and consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and appreciation conferred on them. This is more nearly in accord with reality, for people do confer use on parks and make them successes or—else withhold use and doom parks to rejection and failure.”2

Public space has the unique ability to satisfy fundamental human needs of diverse group of people. In a forthcoming book written by myself and Professor Emeritus Randolph T. Hester Jr., Inhabiting the Sacred, we call places ‘sacred’ when they successfully satisfy the human needs of certainty, new experience, response and belonging. These places become beloved to their citizens who in turn may become motivated to contribute to the place by maintaining it, advocating for it, or simply visiting it and becoming a familiar presence. Though our subject matter is broad in scope, the message has been focused toward the everyday citizen, guiding them from a place of ignorance about their homplace to a place of empowered community activism, to inhabit and to share a public sacred place.

In this thesis which serves as a departure from the above manuscript, I turn the focus to the design professional. I assert that the method of design to derive the form and function of the public sacred is a process which oscillates, often organically, between intuition—that which is derived through exploration and free association—and precision—that which is produced through accuracy and exactness. Furthermore, there are five ‘dimensions’ the designer operates within as his career develops (Fig 2):

0D- the point of interest1D- the line of thought2D- the plane of education3D- the cube of design4D- the tesseract and system of practice

You will see that little of this thesis is venturing into uncharted territories but is actually quite conservative in its call to create the public sacred through deepening relationships between architect and architecture. It is, perhaps, more of a reminder than a revolutionizer. I have used three of my own recent projects as means to explore the notions discussed with Randy Hester in his final years teaching at Berkeley. Finally, these examples serve to illustrate and ground the concepts suggested by the dimensions through the approach to design we call ‘inhabiting the sacred.’ The ultimate aim of this thesis is to serve as a mental roadmap of the architect’s universe, so that designers (myself primarily) can use it to confidently and boldly move forward in the creation of places that are part of the solution instead of the problem in this confusing profession and maddened world.3

2 Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961, 89.3 Lappé, Frances Moore. Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad. Cambridge, MA: Small Planet Media, 2007.

Fig 2. (opposite) The architectural cosmos as a roadmap to navigate through the profession

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IntuItIon

line

point0D

1D

2D

3D

4D

plane

cube

system

tesseract

INTE

RES

TTH

OU

GH

TED

UC

ATI

ON

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IGN

PRA

CTI

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PrecIsIonthe ArchItecturAl cosmos . . .

X you are here

X ... or here ...

X ... maybe even here!

X and eventually here.

s1arrival to campus

s5espresso, a

masterpiece!

s9“let me teach

you...”

s13drinking

daily

s2“...my

thermos?”

s6Ode to

the Cup

s10empty design

s14going with

the flow

s3“The Daily Cal!”

s7“What is

that thing?”

s11They don’t

love it!

s15happily ever

after!

s4“...your thermos?”

s8“a means to

drink...”

s12“Why no! I have

not...”

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Fig 3. Precise Man’s definition of thermos and coffee

I would like to begin by offering a short parable about a designer’s developing career, affectionately named Strange Man from Strange Land Inhabits Coffee. Here Strange Man is an archtype for the design student, the coffee receptacle is place and the coffee itself is experience in place.

A strange man from a strange land arrives to our university’s campus (s1). He stumbles into Bechtel Hall and sees many engineers walking about, busy about their calculations. He finds most curious that each holds a receptacle of some sort in their hands, from which they consume a warm, bitter liquid. Determined to understand why mankind seems so tethered to such a devise, he inquires about its nature to one of these busy engineers,

“Man of Precise Thinking, what is that cup that each of you carry and why do you consume its contents?”

“You mean my Thermos?” (s2)

Precise Man, anxious to solve Strange Man’s problem doesn’t waste time with small talk. Instead he dives silently into the chemical and sub-atomic makeup of the Thermos’s components and the effect of caffeine on the human brain. He is especially pleased with his calculation of man’s efficiency at work with and without coffee consumption, a proof that might just be worth publishing in the Daily Cal (Fig 3, S3).

Strange Man is obliged for the concrete definition, pockets the pages of formulas and continues his journey. Next he arrives to Kroeber Hall and is surprised to see an atmosphere drastically different to that of Bechtel: these people work with colors and beauty. He observes how their work seek the general truths of the universe. Yet still, these artists keep “Thermos’s” close by and drink as readily from them as the engineers (s4). He decides to

Strange Man from Strange Land : a design parable

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ask one artist:

“Man of Intuitive Thinking, what makes the thermos you drink from so important to your life that you must always have it at hand?”

“Oh, Strange Man,” he responds, “this is no thermos, THIS is a masterpiece!” And Intuitive Man paints for him the joys of the espresso cup, all the while musing aloud the artistic accomplishments he has attained thanks to the divinity of his dear black gold (s5).

“Gosh, It’s so... BEAUTIFUL!” (s6)

Thoroughly inspired by the eloquent speech and his delightful abstract painting Ode to the Cup (Fig 4), he runs out of the building intent to learn more and asks the first person he sees, who happens to be an architecture professor just leaving Strada with a fresh soy latte contained within the iconic map-laden to-go cup,

“Excuse me Sir, I have asked two men about the cup in your hand, and one said it was an algorithm of formulas and the other said it was a divine masterpiece...which is correct? What is that thing??” (s7)

Gentle Man was very wise: “Well Strange Man, actually both are correct, but both are missing the point. The best definition of this receptacle in my hand is that it is a means of which to drink coffee (s8). The quality of the experience is dependent on how well-suited the receptacle and coffee ingredients are to your own personality.”

Being a design professor, Gentle Man wished to help Strange Man understand the knowledge he sought, “Come, let me teach you to design your own receptacle so that you may bring this skill back to Strange Land.”

And Gentle Man makes Strange Man his student, teaching him about the standard and avant guard types of mugs and coffee, the materials to build it and the forms that can be invariably altered to suit the user’s needs (s9).

Eternally grateful, Strange Man takes his extensive notes on the subject back to Strange Land and makes 1,000 of his favorite coffee mugs and gives them away to his people so that they can use them. Fig 4. Intuitive Man’s definition of

espresso and receptacle

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At first, his people love the idea and carry the mugs with them wherever they go (s10). Soon, however, he begins seeing his mugs stashed in cupboards, misused, and even abandoned along the roadside. Frustrated and confused, he returns to Gentle Man and asks why his people do not care about the mugs (s11). Gentle Man asks,

“Strange Man, do you remember the first thing I taught you, that the best coffee receptacles are those that allow us to drink the coffee most tailored to fulfill our individual needs? Have you yourself tried to drink coffee to understand which coffee and receptacle satisfies you most?”

“Why, no! I have not! Thank you again Gentle Man Sir...” (s12)

And with that he begins drinking coffee everyday (s13). At first his coffee and mugs are not pleasant at all, but with time he finds the balance between size of cup and handle, type of coffee bean, time of day, and temperature of liquid that pleases him most and makes him more efficient while working. Some days he is meticulous about his measurements while others he just goes with the flow (s14).

The next 1,000 cups he produces for his people are each custom made through conversations and collaboration with the user himself and his mugs and coffee become most beloved in all the land and of course, everyone lives happily ever after (s15).

At the moment when Strange Men enters the university, he notices that everyone holds a receptacle in their hand. This is the moment of conception, the birth of an idea. For the public sacred, this is the moment when a person realizes that place can have value. This person can be of any age, a three-year-old laying in the moist grass staring up at the warm sun or a fifty-year-old who finally visits the Sierras and has seen an awesome landscape for the first time. For the architecture student, this moment has probably happened before deciding to go to design school. This is the 0 Dimension, the spark of interest, or the point of conception.

After Strange Man conceives of the idea of coffee, he then wishes to know more about it. Specifically, he ventures to relate himself to the object. Here he begins his search. This is the moment of thought and questioning. As he journeys to understand coffee, he meets three people that each offer him a distinct definition of the receptacle and liquid. This process of relating self to other is the 1st dimension, the creation of thought, the line of investigation.

He first finds Precise Man, who is far on one end of the spectrum of understanding. He knows his world to be categorized and compartmentalized. In his understanding, most things are this or that, have identifiable names and recognizable contexts. For things that he does not immediately understand, there is Google or an iPhone

point

line

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app. He instantly knows exactly how many friends have looked at his Facebook wall or how long it will take to drive from Berkeley to Black Rock City in traffic. His discipline is tending towards further specialization and his social trend is given identity through its separation from other trends.

Precise Man is a specialized engineer like Dr. Anil K. Chopra of the University of California - Berkeley, a civil engineer who researches selection and scaling of ground motions for nonlinear response history analysis of buildings. He determines engineering demand parameters by nonlinear response history analysis of a computer model of the building for an ensemble of multi-component ground motions. To obtain this pedigree of knowledge, he has earned four advanced degrees and many honors, including an honorary doctorate and is listed as one of the twenty people who most contributed to advances in dam engineering.1

Precise Man’s analysis of thermos and coffee is correct. Thermos’s do function well as a vacuum body, elimitating convection and conduction to keep hot liquid hot or cold liquid cold, and coffee does make a person more effective at work because it shuts down various instincts such as the need for rest and relaxation as it puts the consumer into a state of adrenalin-fueled emergency.2 However, Precise Man is missing the point. His definition is too meticulous, too one-sided to explain the full experience. His equations are accurate, but Strange Man is unsatisfied because it does not explain man’s unrelenting attachment. If Precise Man were an architect, his projects would likely function well, for instance a waste water treatment plant or city bus terminal, but its users would not feel attachment to the place beyond the servicing of their basic physiological needs.

Strange Man next finds Intuitive Man, who is at the opposite extreme of understanding. In his world, digital technology makes everyone an artist, anyone is able to make a blog, upload a YouTube film, sell a book on Amazon or post their new best song. Reality television programs prove daily that everyday people become stars overnight. He streams most media instantaneously and for the rest, he download it by exchanging virtual capital. His genres are colliding and hybridizing, his boundaries are blurring, his people are multi-tasking at incredible rates.

Intuitive Man is an artist who uses color and material to explore universal truths. He is like Andre Stringer who directs, designs and edits film. He has a small but successful film production company Shilo that began back when he was a skater and recorded his moves on VHS. Each person in his company has been mostly self taught and their workflow is entirely organic; as the process of creation shifts so too does their approach. No two projects are executed alike and they are able to be so flexible because their skillset is so broad.3

Intuitive Man’s explanation of espresso is likewise correct. A well-crafted cup and quality coffee do inspire many people and is celebrated almost cultishly among the young professional class. Drinking coffee has become a lifestyle choice with endless varieties and has created a profitable industry reliant on people’s love of it. Nonetheless, Intuitive Man also lacks a complete definition. If he were an architect, his projects would be

1 “Anil K. Chopra | Civil and Environmental Engineering”, n.d., http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/chopra.2 Conversation with physicist Ed Stress. See Fig 3.3 David Dworsky and Victor Köhler, PressPausePlay, Documentary, 2011, 42:00.

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exciting visually, but fail in their usefulness and probably fall out of favor as soon as the novelty of the project wore off.

Finally, Strange Man meets Gentle Man who has found the balance between precision and intuition. His world is not an either/or approach, but a both/and approach. He understands that each of these approaches has value and a moment for their use. In this oscillation between precise and intuitive crafting, he find the middle ground that has both accuracy and beauty. At times he is highly specific, in others he is broadly general.

Gentle Man is an architect, whose responsibilities principally involve mediation between many parties namely the client and contractor in the process of constructing spaces. He is also the ideal professor because he has both practical knowledge of the profession and also a theoretical appreciation for the discipline. Most importantly, he inhabits the sacred and is interested in sharing this wisdom with others who may benefit. His projects are likely to be both useful and meaningful to their users. Therefore, they will grow to love, appreciate and care for these places far into the future.

At this point in the parable, Gentle Man invites Strange Man to become a student. Strange Man gains both conceptual understanding of architecture and exposure to the many tools architecture uses to conceive, create and develop form. At this moment of placing himself in academia, Strange Man is immersed within the 2nd dimension, the process of education, the plane of representation.

Finally, Strange Man is ready to test his knowledge of coffee and give it to his clients, the residents of Strange Land. He applies what he has learned from Gentle Man and produces what he imagines to be the best receptacle and liquid. To the architecture student and professional, this is the process of design, where theories are applied to situations and decisions are made according to the many factors involved in the design process: personal taste, site, program, budget, feasibility, technology, etc. Taking on a project and applying knowledge is the 3rd dimension, the event of design, the cube of demonstration.

The act of designing does not guarantee success of design. Strange Man made what he believed to be the best solution based on precise and intuitive investigations but without use of any first-hand knowledge. We saw that the cups and coffee were perfectly good and enjoyed by his clients at first, yet after the novelty wore off they no longer cared for the product. Likewise, architecture lacks its ultimate potential if we, the designers, do not personally know through experience what it is to inhabit space. We see projects of this sort all the time: lots of pomp and circumstance, but something fundamental remains missing and so the public fails to gain attachment to it. The space become profane, unmeaningful and ugly just shortly after its construction. Unfortunately this outcome is the rule rather than the exception unless the designer pushes his work towards the goal of quality over time.

There is a deeper dimension to architecture that has the potential to imbue space with meaning. Strange Man begins to enter this dimension when he decides to make drinking coffee a daily experience, gaining phenomenological knowledge to supplement and give context to his conceptual knowledge. This process is

plane

cube

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analogous with the architect’s involvement in a public sacred space created by his own design, labor, and time for his personal benefit. The project can be of any type- a garden, meeting spot, a club house, community center, etc- as long as it is available to the general public and it is sacred to the creator because it satisfies some or all of his fundamental needs. It is important that this be a public place because only then can he benefit from the opportunity of having a dialogue with the community around him. He will learn first-hand how his design affects others and learn if his sacred place can also be sacred to others. This phase in an architect’s career is the 4th dimension, the practice through time, the tesseract of manifestation.

Finally, Strange Man again designs receptacle and liquid for his clients. This time, however, he understands what is required to make a them sacred because he has gained personal experience. He now understands that each client is distinct from each other and from himself, so no two products will be exactly alike. He is able to know and implement design solutions that satisfy his personal needs and also those of others. In our profession, most projects and clients will be located outside of our home and neighborhood. It is where the largest design problems for our profession will occur and therefore our greatest opportunity to contribute positively through the creation of public space (aka the receptacle) that is sacred (aka the coffee). These projects manifest through a process of community involvement during the design phase and are meaningful to the community because they have participated in its creation. They then continue to participate as active users and stewards of the place. This approach to architecture is the deep end of the 4th dimension, practicing within a system of collaboration.

Ultimately, the goal of this parable is to serve as an illustration of the designer’s cosmos- a mapping of the universe in which the architect may operate within. We are all confronted with conflicting theories about architecture and are at times confused and unsuccessful in design until we learn to apply our own ideas of sacredness into our work and then supplement them with experience.

Like Precise Man’s definition of coffee, our profession’s precise tools such as CAD, BIM, and parametric modeling are efficient and indispensable to today’s process yet in isolation cannot design buildings suitable for quality human habitation. Intuitive Man’s definition is equally limited. If our profession only sketched, charretted and rendered our buildings could never be built.

Therefore the architect’s best approach is to rigorously oscillate between precision and intuition to achieve public space that is well-suited to its users’ needs. Primarily, we can be taught these skills in school in a similar fashion to how Strange Man was instructed by Gentle Man. However, conceptual understanding remains purely superficial until substantiated with experimentation and experience. It is, nonetheless a critical point of entry into the profession. We can then test theories through real and hypothetical design projects; this is an excellent method of inquiry and is the ultimate end towards which we operate. Later knowledge is gained through sustained practice of hands-on construction and daily maintenance of a public sacred space. The aim here is to incrementally improve the experience of this place until it is sacred to you personally and learn to oscillate between precision and intuition in the design process. The designer satisfies both his own fundamental human needs while also providing them for others in his community and learns from their feedback. Finally, design work for other people in other communities has potential to be imbued with meaning and potential to empower its

system

tesseract

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users to participate in the process of sacred place making. Architects learn to communicate with their clients and understand their unique needs.

As a point of departure into the specifics of the public sacred, I will now define the term and outline principle concepts in the book Inhabiting the Sacred.

Fig 5. The steps to inhabiting the sacred. From Inhabiting the Sacred, 2011.

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The challenges facing the designer in the 21st century are many. We are confronted with rapidly-changing environmental and social conditions that the world has never before seen and are asked to create sustainable solutions for them. We must mitigate conflict between invested parties with differing worldviews. Simultaneously we are grappling with new tools of design technology that may give us unprecedented power and reach, but can also stifle creativity when used inappropriately. Furthermore, project timelines are growing shorter, demanding more of us in less time. Nothing can adequately prepare us for this radically uncertain future, but there are ways to train ourselves to be flexible and visionary for when it comes demandingly before us.

Randolph T. Hester Jr. and I worked for two years on a book that guides the ordinary citizen towards community activism for managing such challenges. INHABITING THE SACRED: When you Awaken to a Landscape that Touches your Heart in Everyday Life, Consecrate it, Cultivate it as Home, Dwell Intentionally within it, Slay Monsters for it, and Let it Loose in your Democracy is a book with a simple thesis and tested techniques for doing a critical task.1 The premise is that Americans—and many others in advanced societies—hunger, often unconsciously, for places to live that are more than efficient machines for economic living. We seek places that enable us to fulfill our true humanity, add meaning to life, reintegrate emotion with reason, and enrich self and community. This book explains how to give deeply held values form in everyday landscapes, thus turning profane space into sacred place.

This transformation, which gives people a sense of nearness and rootedness, may be accomplished inside and outside, privately or publicly. Processes and techniques are outlined to be useful in defending territories essential to the survival of both metropolitan and rural or indigenous cultures. Many projects can be realized by the individual or community alone, but complex projects require assistance from a professional designer familiar with the process of inhabiting the sacred. Shaping public space into the public sacred requires partnership between citizens, government, planners and designers.

For the designer, the process may be similar to the process of the community activist, but as stated above,

1 Hester Jr., Randolph T., and Amber D Nelson. “Inhabiting the Sacred.” Forthcoming publication. George Thompson Press, 2011.

Departure : inhabiting the sacred

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our professional responsibility is more complex. For instance, it requires us to be diplomatic to each investor involved in the project—citizen, businessman and wildlife alike. However, our role offers many incredible benefits if we manage to do it successfully. Designing to inhabit the sacred can produce places that are not only environmentally sustainable but also socially sustainable because they are imbued with community values and cared for by the citizens themselves long after construction. This approach empowers individuals and communities to become involved in their public spaces, drastically changing the character of the place for the better.

The Public SacredWe call these public spaces that are beloved to the community ‘sacred.’ This is not the standard use of the term. Sacred is a loaded and multi-dimensional word; as such it evokes powerful but often misguided or misunderstood reactions. Originally from Latin sacer meaning ‘holy’ and sancîre ‘consecrate,’ historical uses of the term associate it with religious architecture: “In sacred architecture, humans attempt to bring themselves closer to the divine by creating a special space to hold this powerful and precious contact.2” This type of architecture was closely aligned to a society’s political situation and is often built to embody a model of ethics and morality of a society.3 More contemporaneously in the wake of the 1970’s environmental movement, scholars sometimes use sacred place to mean ‘a place with spirit,’ or genus loci: powerful places that are attractive due to their outstanding landscape qualities, making them prime targets for tourism and therefore overdevelopment.4

It is useful to expand the meaning of sacred in design discourse. While standard definitions are not excluded in Inhabiting the Sacred, the term is broadened to describe the ability to satisfy fundamental human needs. It posits that sacred place is not program or scale dependent but rather defined as a place that satisfies its users. By this definition, any built or unbuilt space can be sacred.

Also embedded within this terminology is a complete qualitative description of the space’s function. More than the basic requirements for survival such as food, water, waste removal and shelter, fundamental human needs as defined by W. I. Thomas are those essential to a satisfactory existence as a member of a society.5 He calls them wishes, I call them needs. These requirements therefore span physiological as well as emotional impetus. The fundamental needs for quality living are certainty, new experience, reciprocal response, and belonging.

More about W. I. Thomas’s wishesW. I. Thomas was an early 20th century sociologist from the Chicago School. He is best known for his seminal work on Polish Immigrants to the United States, though he directly, and rather humorously, addresses the topic of human needs in his 1923 report “The Unadjusted

2 Ayto, John. Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Arcade, 1991, 8.3 Humphrey, Caroline. Sacred Architecture. Boston: Little Brown, 1997, 8, 13.4 Swan, James A. The Power of Place: Sacred Ground in Natural & Human Environments: An Anthology. Spirit of Place Symposium. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1991, 4.5 Thomas, William I. The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis. Criminal Science Monographs 4. Boston: Little, Brown, 1923, 4, 12, 17, 31, 32, 78.

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Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis.” Here he discovers four “forces which impel [people] to action.” He coins them the wishes: the desires for security, new experience, response and recognition.

“The desire for security . . . is based on fear, which tends to avoid death and expresses itself in timidity, avoidance, and flight. The individual dominated by it is cautious, conservative, and apprehensive, tending also to regular habits, systematic work, and the accumulation of property.

“The desire for new experience is . . . emotionally related to anger, which tends to invite death, and expresses itself in courage, advance, attack, pursuit. The desire for new experience implies, therefore, emotion, change, danger, instability, social irresponsibility. The individual dominated by it shows a tendency to disregard prevailing standards and group interests. He may be a social failure on account of his instability, or a social success if he converts his experiences into social values, puts them into the form of a poem, makes of them a contribution to science.

“The desire for response . . . is primarily related to the instinct of love, and shows itself in the tendency to seek and to give signs of appreciation in connection with other individuals . . . In general the desire for response is the most social of the wishes. It contains both a sexual and a gregarious element. It makes selfish claims, but on the other hand it is the main source of altruism. The devotion to child and family and devotion to causes, principles, and ideals may be the same attitude in different fields of application.

“This wish [of recognition] is expressed in the general struggle of men for position in their social group, in devices for securing a recognized, enviable, and advantageous social status . . . The showy motives connected with the appeal for recognition we define as “vanity”; the creative activities we call “ambition.” . . . Society alone is able to confer status on the individual and in seeking to obtain it he makes himself responsible to society and is forced to regulate the expression of his wishes. His dependence on public opinion is perhaps the strongest factor impelling him to conform to the highest demands which society makes upon him.

A distinction made in W. I. Thomas’s definitions of the wishes and their use in Inhabiting the Sacred is that he applies them as major motivations to explain dominant behavioral trends whereas we express the wishes as emotional responses to qualities of public space.

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Places of certaintyPlaces that provide sustenance, stability and safety amidst uncertainty become sacred to individuals and societies. We need settings we can depend upon for support, aid, vital nourishment and protection from harm. Cognitive assurance of certainty must be constructed to carry out basic human functions. As a result, places that provide ecological, biological, physical and social safety are as vital as food and water.

Designers can create places that reinforce survival, order, worldview, ritual and explanation of the inexplicable. Places with these characteristics can help quiet the fear and mistrust that exist in many people when in the public realm. Several strategies to achieve certainty are to clarify a center and a boundary, to acknowledge the fear by making risks transparent, to produce essentials locally, and to revive participatory democracy in the design and construction process. A clear example of a public sacred place that fulfills the need of certainty is a church such as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres in France (Fig 6). Here worldviews are confirmed and there is a system in place that explains the otherwise unexplainable.

Places of new experienceA second source of sacredness is places of growth. These changes within an individual are like the emergence of a moth from its cocoon, outgrowing the nourishing haven of its bounded pupil stage to a more extensive environment. Like metamorphosis, the human world of new experience, although contrasting with security is not its categorical opposition, but a process in which one stage depends upon the previous. Venturing forth requires a base of certainty and a place beyond to explore, grow and stretch the boundaries. The combination of certainty and growth form identity.

Places that offer opportunity for free expression of identity, creativity, dreaming and adventure can help people curb the desire to seek superficial thrills and pseudo-adventures, like ownership of a home much larger than necessary or an extravagant vacation to a distant corner of the world only for the experience of the exotic. These things may indeed be enjoyable, but they are hardly sustainable nor responsible to the problems facing us today. Burning Man is one such example that offers its participants adventure and the opportunity to define, test, and challenge limits (Fig 7).

Places of reciprocal responseA third source of sacredness is places of reciprocal response, where humanity fulfills the requirement to elicit reaction from another person or place by one’s mere being. When the setting is right, this reaction is involuntary, a truly spontaneous impulse that produces a feeling of closeness and understanding that the world around us is interconnected and much larger than a single individual. Such response overcomes the culturally created divisions that separate us from each other, our community and environment. Reciprocal response encourages intimate and deep experience with place. The stimulus and response is not a one-way cause and effect, but rather a two-way interaction, a commingling of person and place that gives us pleasure and makes us accountable to each other and the environment we inhabit.

This mutual give-and-take is most visible between two people, say friends or lovers, but it can happen between

Fig 6. Chartres Cathedral in France,a public sacred place of certainty

Fig 7. Burning Man in Black Rock CIty, NV, a public sacred place of new experience

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any two subjects: person and pet, person and plant, person and landscape. Response is emphasized in places that offer multi-sensory experiences, accessibility, morality, or metaphysical transcendence such as meditation. In this way we can help people reconnect with their surroundings and combat the sense of detachment to place that may arise due to our increasing time spent on computers or mechanized processes. Parks and other natural settings fit this description well (Fig 8).

Places of belongingThe fourth source of sacredness is places of social belonging and recognition. We seek to be part of social units that make up our society, and we want to be acknowledged by others within the culture. In order to be fulfilled we need to join, be accepted and known for our contribution. Belonging to a group requires a territory, a home base, a place for group rituals and settings that are visible to other groups in the society. These places distinguish insiders from outsiders, proclaim who is in control and reflect deep democracy at work.6

Designers can create opportunities for citizen volunteerism, recognition of accomplishment or status of a community, or places that foster group identity. In this way, people may participate in the making of the place rather than simply use it. Ultimately it helps them reach a healthy level of self-recognition, rather than becoming obsessed with status by gluttonously searching for newer, bigger, rarer, and cleaner. A Stadium or theater, anywhere that accompanies a group of people that gather around a common purpose can be a place of belonging (Fig 9). In these places, people share in the wins, losses and drama of the moment.

Public sacred places do not always fit neatly into one of the four categories, and in fact it is ideal if they intersect and fulfill several or all of the needs. For example a community garden can fulfill the need of certainty if the user grows food there and the need for new experience if gardening is new to the user. It can offer reciprocal response because the user is giving to the earth and the earth is giving back to the user, and it can provide a sense of belonging to the group of gardeners sharing the land.

In Thomas’s view, one wish usually dominates others. While we support this thesis, we continue to propose that only spaces that cause a balance of the wishes will be truly sacred. Or, if a space is highly dependent on one wish over the others, there must be equally powerful spaces in near proximity for public use in order for this, say certainty-dominant space to become sacred to its users. In other words, those places that connect people directly to multiple needs in a harmonic balance or exemplify a single wish become hallowed and beloved, while those that connect people only weakly to their needs tend to be profane and unloved.

Without these needs met at least minimally, a person is left feeling unfulfilled, confused or meaningless in place and so does not invest their time or energy there. A person commonly feels a sense of sacredness about other people, hobbies or events such as a role model, listening to music, or the holiday season, but less common is a conscious feeling of sacredness for one’s home, park or neighborhood. Because the four needs can also be in conflict, our values embedded in place can reflect those conflicts. For

6 Hester Jr. and Nelson, “Inhabiting the Sacred,” 70.

Fig 8. Kairaku-en in Mito, Ibaraki, Japan, a public sacred place of reciprocal response

Fig 9. Estadio Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a public sacred place of belonging

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example, a certain amount of tension between inside and out, hearth and cosmos is necessary and healthy. When individuals and societies are insecure, threatened, and/or unsettled as Americans often are, coupled with the fact that many are not consciously aware of place values, these conflicts become simultaneously desperate and irrational. At such moments the healthy tension between certainty and personal transformation is replaced with either senseless fear of the other or pseudo-adventuring. Similarly, when public places lack uniqueness and access to nearby nature, reciprocal responsiveness is supplanted by rootless relativity, and recognition gives way to untethered status seeking. These are not only barriers to inhabiting the sacred, but also among the most serious problems of American society. Needs that go unmet often produce scary, meaningless, dirty, dangerous or superficial landscapes. The people using these problematic landscapes then feel one or more of four monsters: fear, superficial thrills, lost nearness, and status obsession.7

Inhabiting the Sacred shows ways to both undo the monsters and assertively create a healthy and beautiful city around us and beyond. Of course, in order to accomplish this design approach, our training and normal way of thinking must be supplemented with new workflow procedures such as community outreach and collaboration. We also need to adopt new terms into our professional nomenclature and use them, i.e. sacredness and place attachment. We should incorporate intentional oscillation between intuition and precision in workflow in order to practice and enhance fundamental skills. With these adjustments mastered, our ability to create spaces with a sense of sacredness, which gives meaning to life itself, might just be in our grasp.

While it is necessary and beneficial for people to make their intimate places like home and work sacred, of most critical importance is sacred place in the public realm. These are areas open to all citizens that also satisfies their basic requirements for living quality lives. It is in public where most crime takes place and makes people feel afraid of their neighbors. However, public places also have tremendous power to create community identity and connect neighbors. The more needs-serving public places that exist in a neighborhood, the safer and more enjoyable it will feel, and the more citizens feel certain and entertained in a space, the more likely they are to visit it and participate in its maintenance. These citizens will then likely consider this public place sacred.

Unfortunately crime is not the only enemy of the public sacred. Jane Jacobs argues that people’s presence is the magic recipe for a lively city, so any factor that distracts people from getting out in their neighborhood is hurting the potential for the pubic sacred. Among these factors is our American tendency to privatize historically public institutions. Picnics in the park have become backyard BBQ’s, pool parties happen at home rather than at the municipal pool, flirting is online rather than at the public square, etc. This ever-privatization of the public makes the public sacred that much rarer and therefore that much more important to create and preserve. If our old uses of public space are obsolete, it is our job as architects to envision and manifest new, needs-fulfilling programs for our new public spaces. For these reasons, my thesis focuses its attention on these types of projects, though the architectural cosmos can be applied to any project type.

Inhabiting the Sacred


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In order to inhabit the sacred, people must first know what it is, both conceptually and phenomenologically. In the book, Randy and I suggest six steps for the community activist to arrive at the pinnacle stage of inhabiting the sacred (Fig 5, on page 12).

STEP 1. AWAKENING New Thoughts and Feelings about the Everyday LandscapeA citizen who feels discontented with their physical environment discovers personal sacred places and their qualities by meditating and drawing them. After stating wants and needs, they outline changes in self and home to implement sacredness into their everyday environment.

STEP 2. EVIDENCING Our Sentiments for Community PlaceThis citizen forms a like-minded group of and together they convert qualitative place-values into quantitative evidence for a unified collective awareness through mapping. This gives place sentiments a legitimacy that can compete with strong economic pressures.

STEP 3. TRANSFORMING Place Values through SacrificeCommunities push for value transformation by making choices that require sacrifice of private luxuries for public necessities.

STEP 4. ORGANIZING An Action Plan towards Intentional LivingAfter agreeing upon a unified vision about changes in the community, the group can form organized action to capitalize on opportunities for creating, defending, or restoring sacred place. They can manage challenges among conflicting interests and power imbalances.

STEP 5. MANIFESTING Four wishes through DesignNext citizens create tangible form imbued with meaning, defining spatial qualities for the four wishes and design implications, meanwhile avoiding the common inhibitors to realizing these wishes.

STEP 6. INHABITING THE SACRED In the Everyday LandscapeFinally they construct, dwell, steward, ritually visit, advocate for and enjoy their sacred place.

The steps of awakening consciousness, evidencing place-sentiments, transforming values, organizing action, and manifesting the four wishes through design enable us and our community to inhabit the public sacred. Inhabiting means more than mere physical presence in a landscape, more than occupying space, more than living somewhere. Inhabiting is to be fully alive in our place. Inhabiting is to live intentionally. It satisfies the four wishes through a powerful bond between self, place and community. The place offers the inhabitants certainty, new experience, reciprocal response, and belonging; the inhabitants offer the place the same in return. The landscape is imbued with meaning and power because it is shaped from fundamental values of self and community. The phenomenon is not mystical; rather it is a matter of awareness, alertness and action. Yet when a

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sacred place is entered, people intuit that it is a special, wondrous realm.8

Dimensioning the Public SacredAs previously discussed, we architects may work towards these same aims, yet there are distinctions between the activist and professional. In this thesis I have proposed a different framework consisting of five deepening ways of ‘dimensioning’ the sacred:

0D. INTEREST : conceptionThis is the moment of conception for the design student, the moment he first becomes aware of a place having an affect on his experience. This is the spark that begins a lifelong journey of interest in architecture. This is like Strange Man seeing people with coffee for the first time and finding it extraordinary.

1D. THOUGHT : investigationOnce a person discovers sacred architecture, he searches for a way to become involved. His thoughts tell him that space is designed and built by people and that there may be a way to enter into this world himself. Once Strange Man begins to ask questions about the coffee receptacle, he has begun his search.

2D. EDUCATION : representationThis person then becomes a design student. He absorbs information from instructors who give him a conceptual understanding of the value of the public sacred. This is achieved through acquiring skills of 2D representation such as drafting, sketching and watercoloring and through serial practice to develop a routine and familiarity. This engagement is an indispensable entry to the approach though it in itself it is limiting. Strange Man learned enough from Gentle Man that he was able to construct 1,000 coffees.

3D. DESIGN : demonstrationStudents and professionals then apply these concepts to real and hypothetical projects they design for clients. Here they pose inquiries about the specifics and test complex theories. These tools include 3D representation of computer and analogue modeling. These projects may be exceedingly beautiful or functional, but they will not reach their full potential to become sacred because the architect’s knowledge is not yet personally internalized. This is why Strange Man’s first coffee was ultimately rejected by his clients.

4D. PRACTICE : manifestation & collaborationPracticing to inhabit the sacred through hands-on, sustained experience of creating the public sacred gives the designer the opportunity to know sacred place at its fullest and finally to inhabit it. This immersive involvement in a public project gives the designer at


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once a feeling of sacredness by having his own needs met but also gives the experience to others in his community. Practice requires manifestation in four dimensions rather than representation or demonstration: full-scale construction and maintenance over time. Strange Man finally understood inhabiting the sacred when he began to drink coffee daily and test its properties. Finally, once a designer knows how to inhabit the sacred, he can apply this phenomenological experience to other places outside of his experience and community. These clients can participate in place-making and will be the key to long-term success of the project. This is exemplified in the parable when Strange Man was able to make 1,000 of the best coffees, each tailored to the particular client.

To illustrate just one possible path towards dimensioning the public sacred, I will use my own experience with learning, teaching, designing and practicing in the following chapters. It is not my intention to prescribe a recipe for others to follow, but merely to describe an organized yet flexible structure for others to operate within and navigate their own paths (Spread 1, on next page).

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line

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IntuItIonPrecIsIonthe ArchItecturAl cosmos . . .

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collaboration

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chartlist

statementmap

diagram

freehand draftinghardline drafting

Computer Aided Drawinglaser cutting

scaled model3D rendering

parametric model3D print

architecturehardscape

soundtouchtastesmell

photographsongpoem

conversation

gesture drawingcontour drawing

sketchpainting

watercolor

concept/sketch modelmold

sculpture

landscapesoftscape

SPARK

IDEA

DRAWING

MODEL

CONSTRUCTION&

MAINTENANCE

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cAreer through tIme

DePth of engAgement

tyPe of engAgement

discoveringplace

creek behindhouse*

walk bydaily

lower divisioncourses

designcharette

commissionedpark

installation of base camp

fish + swim

upper divisioncourses

neighborhoodredevelopment

outdoor classroom fabrication ofdome

Burning Man*

air-conditionedtrailer

Base Campregular

relating self and place

immersing self withinacademia

immersing project

within self

dialogingself and place,

creating public sacred

deep

*examples only

deep

deep

deep

deep

shallownon-self

public sacred

selfshallow

shallow

shallow

shallow

upper divisioncourses

art grantproposal

commercialpet shop

etc

etclower division

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PresentAtIon BoArDs

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PrecIsIon

ArchItecture

PArAmetrIc moDelAxonometrIc DrAwIng3D PrIntDemonstrAtIon

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lAnDscAPe

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sketch moDelPlAster molDconcePt moDelPersPectIve renDerIng

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0D. INTEREST & 1D. THOUGHT

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Mathematically, we know that there are infinite dimensions. In algebra class we are given problems like x²³ * x¹ºº = x¹²³, or x to the 123rd dimension. In geometry since it concerns our physical environment, it usually remains in 3 or less dimensions. For example three dimensional solids are known to be 3D, meaning three variables: x, y and z. 2D shapes are easily plotted on the Cartesian plane consisting of x in the horizontal and y in the vertical. 0 and 1 dimensions are harder to explain in geometry, though they are common in algebra: 5x + 3x = 8x or 8x¹ or 8x to the first dimension. Similarly 5 + 3 = 8 or 8xº or 8 to the zero dimension. There are more than 3 dimensions in our universe; quantum theory believes there to be 11, but other theories suggest up to 26 dimensions!

In physical space, we routinely witness the three dimensions of height, width, and length. We approximate two dimensions when we draw something on paper and though the paper has a width, it is negligible and therefore can be imagined to be non-existent. 0 and 1 dimension spaces are likewise physically impossible, but architectural convention uses them as frequently as 2D and 3D space. 0D space is absolute non-space; it is a singular point in the undefined infinite. Yet it is the inevitable beginning of any other dimension. 1D space is a line, consisting of two points. It has exactly one degree of freedom in any direction. 2D space, the world of shapes, has two degrees of freedom, 3D space of solids and forms has three and 4D space has four. These dimensions are exponentially complex in theory and ramification, so they will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. Here I would like to set up an illustration of the design student along these dimensions.

DIAgrAm comIc Prose fIgure/grounD stAtement quote song PhotogrAPh

sounD touch tAste smell

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Imagine Strange Man arriving to campus. He sees many things but is struck extraordinarily by the fact that people drink coffee. This experience propels him to ask for clarification. The design student is similarly introduced to the world of architecture, specifically sacred architecture. He may exist for many years using architecture without consciously experiencing it, for most architecture is not sacred. Additionally, he may feel an attachment to architecture without ever assigning vocabulary to this attachment because these words do not exist in our vernacular. The moment he is struck by a space, that singular spark or phenomenon when he is touched personally by some place that satisfies a need of his (sacredness) is the moment when he realizes the importance of architecture. This interest is the 0 dimension of the public sacred. For that moment, lasting one instant or many years, there exists only that place and that phenomenological experience of fundamental needs being met by a physical place (Fig 10). The budding architect is lost in space, inhabiting the sacred and truly living in the present.

For me, the earliest moment I can remember was when my father moved into a new house with an extraordinary tree in the backyard. It had massive branches that began low and horizontal, spread wide and continued high. It was the perfect climbing tree. I would spend hours each day in the ‘Everything Tree’ as I named it, dreaming about the things I could build and do within its large and generous limbs. This was my first 0D experience, but l have had many more since, all of which contribute to my passion for architecture and design.

Next Strange Man began to ask about the mugs of coffee. He wished to understand the connection between coffee and mankind. Similarly, the 1st dimension for the design student is the search for more information. He has begun to think about the place in relation to self (Fig 11). Perhaps he consciously observes his needs being met or he process this phenomenon through thought and speech. Finally, this student is stirred to action by his desire to know more places like this one and begins his path towards education, the 2nd dimension of the public sacred.

My ID experience began with a fascination with extreme weather conditions. Perhaps in part because not long after meeting the Everything Tree, it was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew, the hurricane that devastated much of Florida in the summer of 1993. Amazingly, however, the trees destruction meant salvation for my father’s house: as the tree uprooted, its reaching branches held the roof on and kept the things inside relatively in tact while the neighbors’ homes were stripped down to the structure. I remember making paper models of the everything tree, writing poetry about rain and gaining an interest in art because it was a means to explore the tree and my experience with it.

With each dimension there are precise tools and intuitive tools to engage the sacred and utilize the dimension’s potential. Though each person uses tools distinctly, in 0D space sight and measurement are usually precise, while sound, touch, smell and taste tend to be intuitive. In 1D space reading and writing are precise tools to think about self in relation to non-self. Listening, talking or singing are examples of intuitive tools. At these early stages of place awareness, however, these distinctions between precision and intuition are hardly noteworthy because consciousness is also nascent. The important takeaway is that momentum is gaining towards the next dimensions, when someone with an interest in the physical world acts upon this interest.

Fig 10. 0D- discovering place

Fig 11. 1D- relating self and place

place

self

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0D. INTEREST & 1D. THOUGHT

Finally, in each dimension there are depths of engagement. If the 0 dimension is to become aware of the non-self, a shallow engagement in the non-self is to immerse himself only partially in the experience whereas a deep engagement would be to be so immersed in the experience of a place that it has a lasting impact on future personal development. In the 1st dimension of the public sacred a shallow engagement at Burning Man might be to stay in an air-conditioned trailer whereas a deep engagement would be to sleep on the Playa floor under the stars or be a regular visitor at Base Camp and paint or write about life there (Fig 12).

Together, the 0 and 1st dimensions function as the motivation to decide to study design. The next chapter focuses on the 2nd dimension of architecture, the education of a designer. Specifically, I examine a pedagogical approach to introducing students to the idea of inhabiting the sacred.

Fig 12. Shallow and deep types of engagement in the 0 and 1st dimensions

deep

deep

shallow

shallow

To build a factory in the form of a temple is to lie and disfigure the landscape. - Mies van der Rohe

lAser cut cAD sectIon DrAwIng hArDlIne DrAftIng tectonIc sketch

2D. EDUCATION : representation

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Strange Man was curious enough to ask three people about coffee. The third, Gentle Man was able to give not only a comprehensive explanation but offer further understanding through education. Strange Man eagerly accepted and became a student of coffee. Likewise begins the designer’s path in architecture. Education is the 2nd dimension to inhabiting the sacred (Fig 13).

2D space for the design student is the process of learning to represent concepts visually. He is placed within the larger context of academia and for a time this intellectual environment is his reality. Ideally this will be a moment of intense growth within the mind, body and spirit as he absorbs knowledge form many sources on many subjects. His work, at least initially, focuses on accurate understanding of the material he is given and he is expected to produce visual products that represent this understanding. In architecture school, the principle tool of representation is the drawing.

There are many forms of drawing - from messy gesture sketches in a sketchbook to meticulous ink on mylar constructions. Each tool depending on the individual’s skill will lie somewhere on the scale from precise to intuitive. Ideally the student will be taught to use each drawing tool appropriately for the purpose the drawing is intended to serve. For example, for note-taking, nothing more than a contour sketch is necessary, but to explain how a wood and concrete foundation meets the earth, a hard-line scale drawing or CAD section is needed.

During the process of education, there are shallow and deep forms of engagement in academia. On the

Fig 13. 2D- immersing self within place (academia)

freehAnD DrAftIng contour DrAwIng

fIelD sketch gesture sketch PAIntIng wAtercolor

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shallow end, a student will believe their academic world to be only a small amount larger than themselves, or they may envision themselves to know a lot and consider their body of knowledge to be only slightly smaller than the entire body of knowledge within academia. On the deep end, a student will acknowledge how little they actually know and imagine themselves to be small in comparison to the academic institution (Fig 14).

My path towards a design career began serendipitously. Since I had an interest in art at an early age, I was already somewhat talented in the basic techniques. I desperately wanted to take advanced art classes in high school, but the only one available to me without having to take the basic art prerequisite was mechanical drafting, followed by architectural drafting. I was nonetheless thrilled about the precision of drafting and the skill became sacred to me as a harmonious counter-balance to the other intuitive tools of expression I used in the art I created outside of school. I was passionate about drafting and even won an amateur design competition, so the choice to study architecture in college seemed natural and obvious.

Looking back on my first years of architecture school, I am frightened by the places I designed. The concepts behind them are quite interesting and relevant, but they are atrocious places for human habitation and could never be sacred. It was not until Randy’s ‘Landscape as Sacred Place’ class in graduate school that I began to think of the architect’s responsibility to his clients. His teachings opened up many avenues for me and shortly thereafter we began writing Inhabiting the Sacred and taught the class together the following year. I have used a lot of these experiences with Randy in formulating a pedagogical approach when teaching subsequent classes as a Graduate Student Instructor. I will now explain this approach by examining one recent semester of teaching representational drawing.

Case Study: Teaching studioFrom January to May 2012, I taught Environmental Design 11A: ‘Introduction to Visual Representation and Drawing’ to fifteen undergraduate students just beginning studies in the College of Environmental Design at the University of California - Berkeley. This was their first design studio and the curriculum served to introduce them to principles of representation using drawing, graphics and composition. As these students had yet to declare a specialization, there was a mix of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning interests. As Graduate Student Instructor, I taught under Professor Chip Sullivan, who prioritized freehand drawing techniques such as contour and gesture drawing, perspective from observation, tone, graphic composition, prismacolor and watercolor. These classes included two hours of lecture by Chip and six hours of studio instruction weekly. Additionally, I taught a one-hour section where I was given opportunity to introduce supplemental material from what was already covered in regular studio. For these meetings, I focused on drawing techniques they were already learning in studio but material was geared toward introducing them to the notion of inhabiting the sacred. Throughout the eleven weeks we completed many of the exercises created for the first step, Awakening of Inhabiting the Sacred: sacred place drawings, home satisfaction/dissatisfaction lists, home-making manifesto, and beginning designer’s manifesto.

Weeks 1-5: Meditation and sacred place drawing exercisesWeek 6: Pin-up and discussion of common themes in sacred place drawings

deep

shallow

Fig 14. Shallow and deep types of engagement in the 2nd dimension

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Week 7: Comparison of students’ common themes to those in the bookWeek 8: Lists of satisfactions and dissatisfactions about and from homeplace.Week 9: Home-making manifesto discussion and sketchingWeek 10: Careers in design and the value of place discussionWeek 11: Beginning designer’s manifesto presentation

Sacred place drawingsFor five weeks I read the meditation script from Inhabiting the Sacred then asked them to draw. The script prompted students to sit in quiet meditation for about 5 minutes and reflect upon their special places of the past. It asked them to visualize all aspects of the place: location, temperature, smell, materiality, openness, activity, involvement with others, light, sound, and color. Then they drew this place in dip pen, pencil, or watercolor for about 30 minutes.

Meditation for Sacred Place AwakeningClose your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Tune other things out and concentrate on your breathing until you feel yourself in tune with the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling . . . Take your time, relax your muscles . . . Visualize the flow of air as you pull the oxygen through your nose and deep into your lungs. Feel it and see it occupying your whole core . . . Now with a controlled exhale, release the air and watch it through your mind’s eye intermingle with the air outside. Then pull in another deep breath . . . Continue to concentrate on your breath until you feel whatever tensions in your body dissipate with each exhale . . . When you feel the tension gone from your body, give me a slight nod, and we will go to the next step.

Now let your mind’s eye search for the places that are most sacred to you personally . . . At first, let these special places go by as if they are individual images on a film clip going by slowly enough that you can see each frame. Let them move in and out of your imagination at will . . . They can be places from your past, present or future. There may be a lot of them or a few . . . Let yourself see all the places several times.

Now allow your mind’s eye to settle on the place that seems most sacred. Don’t worry if there are several and it’s hard to distinguish. You can visit all of these soon enough. Simply focus on one place for now . . . Linger on that one place in your imagination. Picture yourself completely in that place. Appreciate it. What senses does it most awaken? Explore it. What do you see? How does it smell? What do you hear? If you reach out, what do you touch? Feel the textures of the place.

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What is the temperature? Is it warm or cool? What is the light quality? Get a good sense of the light, where it originates, how it falls, what it highlights. Is the space open or enclosed? Does something form walls around you? On how many sides? Is there something forming a roof overhead? How far is it from your reach? How big is the space? Measure it by comparing its dimensions to something you know well. Look at the details of the place. Are there some specific things that seem especially important?

Now take note of what you are doing in the space. Is there anyone else with you in the place? Who? What are they doing? Is there some particular activity that defines the place?Now allow yourself to just be in this special place. Soak in the essence. How do you feel being here? Are there particular emotions you experience? Allow that feeling to soak in. You can stay at this place as long as you like.

When you have a good sense of the place, be sure to concentrate on the whole of it for a few moments. Get a clear image in your mind’s eye that conveys that space to you. Allow one image to settle into your consciousness, an image that would express physical aspects, the essential quality and the meaning of this place to you. Examine each aspect of the image, even the corners of the frame.

When you have a clear image etched in your mind and are ready to return from this special place, think about how to describe it: what media (pencil, crayons, paint, collage, models, etc) would best capture the essence of this place? Again, concentrate on your breathing. Be aware of the rhythm as you breath in and out.

When you are ready, open your eyes. Visualize the image that expresses the physical aspects, the essential quality and the meaning of this place.

Now on your paper make a picture of your sacred place. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Simply create the image that you recall from a moment ago. If it seems difficult, close your eyes again and get the image clear. You might be able to trace the image that way. This is a picture for you and you alone, so don’t worry what it looks like. If you can’t get all the aspects of the place in one image, you can add notes or other sketches to describe qualities that were hard to get down at first. In any case, draw, write, construct, or make poems until

Fig 15. Student Zach Kuga drew a river by his house, a place of relaxation and seclusion

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you’ve recorded everything, physical and emotional, that you felt and saw.1

At first I was careful to avoid use of the word ‘sacred’ to avoid confusion with religious connotations, using instead ‘special.’ Later, I explained our definition of the term and began using the word liberally from that point onward with little questioning or misunderstanding from the students. In week six, students pinned-up their five sacred place drawings and presented common themes they found between them. Most of these themes aligned with predicted outcomes from Inhabiting the Sacred- childhood, outdoors, homeplace, moral place, growth, ritual and participation. Some additional details that we had not written in the text that were observed by the students were places that a person spends long spans of time, places where food is eaten or shared, and places that allow for relaxation or seclusion from the daily routine (Fig 15).

At the conclusion of the exercise they observed that reflection upon their memories and making connections between them was a new process. They were surprised at how vividly the memories could be recalled—one student had a dream that evening about the sacred place she had drawn. For some this was their first relaxing experience of meditation and enjoyed it for this reason. All found the process calming. One student enjoyed the exercise at the beginning but later became frustrated because he “ran out of sacred places.” However, upon repeating the exercise time after time, he had a breakthrough when he realized that he had only drawn interiors of rooms and that outdoor places could also be sacred.

Satisfaction/dissatisfaction listsThinking about the lessons learned from the sacred place drawings, the students then thought about their everyday sleeping places (usually a dorm room or an apartment) and compared it to their idea of homeplace. They made four lists: one about their satisfaction of their current living situation and another about their dissatisfactions, and two more about their home’s contentment or discontentment with them as occupant. By addressing both points of view, the students had opportunity to reflect on both the place and themselves.

These students were in the age range of 18-20 years, most of them first-years at the university and for many their first home away from parents. Not surprisingly then, a majority of the conversation centered around organization and cleanliness. They were often frustrated about sharing space with roommates that did not contribute to a healthy living environment or being too busy to find time for housework. They were also concerned about new situations of public space, such as shared bathrooms or windows facing public corridors. Only a few students had appreciation or discontentment with architectural features of their place: a window ledge scaled to human proportion was perfect to perch and do homework on while feeling both in and out of doors, roof access offered a view, a seismic retrofit caused a room’s otherwise large and pleasant window to be covered with a steel cross-bar. As each presented their lists, I asked the rest of the class to rapidly sketch the issues being spoken about; all agreed it was a great intuitive sketching exercise (Fig 16).


Fig 16. Rapid sketches of student’s homeplace satisfaction/dissatisfaction lists

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Home-making manifestoTo follow up on the lists, the following week students presented home-making manifestos, which as assigned was to focus on making dorm-space feel more like home-space. Besides the common promise to maintain a cleaner home, there was also desire to organize better. Many spoke of wanting to put more effort into decorating with new and old personal objects or art to feel more ownership over an otherwise generic space. Some were interested in quality day and night lighting, wishing for a warm and enchanting mood. One student was concerned that her roommate was less invested in their apartment and so wanted to focus on empowering her to be as passionate as she is about their space. Another student presented the resolve to make his bed into a swing, so that he could be rocked to sleep.

Beginning designer’s manifestoIn the final meeting of the class, students presented beginning designer’s manifestos. I asked them to put passionately down on paper in any media with any method why they are involved in the design or planning professions and what power or potential these professions have for making positive change for themselves or the world. This was an excellent opportunity to explore 0 and 1 dimension experiences and perceptions thus far on the 2nd dimension, their education.

Many students talked about their passion for sustainable architecture. They were excited to learn ways of fixing the environmental problems facing them in their future. Some admitted how lost or small they feel in the architectural discipline, “even with time, we’ll never understand all of it.” A few reflected on how they first became aware of architecture’s beauty and value. One talked about the power of architecture to cause a person to slow down and notice their environment, another about its power to create positive change in a crime-ridden area, and another the ability to heal people. A few discussed the architect’s role to create space for other people’s memories, to be a leader, to create magic and enchantment. One woman was concerned about third world places and we had a great conversation about first world design influencing versus oppressing third world values. Another student was interested in place maintenance and the education of a place’s user to clean and respect their place. This meeting was incredibly rewarding to me as an instructor because I could see that they had absorbed many of the fundamental concepts about inhabiting the sacred. I feel confident that this early encouragement of intuitive observation about their world will be picked up in powerful ways later in their careers.

Overall, students enjoyed and grew from exposure to sacred place concepts. Since their regular studio meeting focused on a wide-rand of drawing techniques which taught them how to represent ideas in 2D space, the sections were not technique driven but instead based on phenomenological experience. Given this opportunity to reflect on their own history, students gained confidence in speaking about architecture, a crucial skill needed for the design profession. In addition the conversations gave them a grounding for which to place their academic knowledge in relation to the rest of their young adult lives. Students, like most anyone also love to talk about themselves!

Still there are a few things to reconsider. Since my section was just one of five in the entire class, at times my

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students felt like the exercises were extra work or that they struggled to find the connection between this material and the techniques introduced in studio. Also we did not have adequate time dedicated to developing tools of precision. As this young stage in their development, the sacred place exercises were strictly intuitive-based. I can only hope that with time and more schooling students will find meaning, context and precision in the material presented, that it is like a seed full of potential energy just waiting for water. Finally, we were unable to go further than the private sacred. At this nascent stage in education it would have been too large a jump to move from individual place values to community values, though this would have been the logical next progression. We could have, for example, discussed the college community versus the non-college community of Berkeley, interviewed people about their sacred placed then mapped them, or studied examples of treats to the public sacred and its people and how they were able to defend it against big power.

In the next chapter I will cover the realm of design. This is the dimensional bridge between study and practice and is most often understood to be the destination of the architecture profession, though I argue it is still part of the journey.

Again and again, Step by step,Intuition opens the doorsThat lead to man’s designingOf more advantageous rearrangements Of the physical complex of events Which we speak of as the environment,Whose evolutionary transition ever leads Toward the physical and metaphysical successOf all humanity. -R. Buckminster Fuller

PArAmetrIc moDelAxonometrIc DrAwIng3D PrInt

3D. DESIGN : demonstration

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After, and indeed during the educational phase of our training, we must design to apply and experiment with the concepts we have gained from our instructors. This is the 3rd dimension of design.

In the parable, Strange Man condensed the sum total of his conceptual coffee knowledge into a singular design solution. He tackled the design problem like a mathematical problem: he used the formulas and order of operations to determine the correct answer, forgetting there may exist many correct answers. This is a common mistake for the beginning student and it is only through design experience and incorporation of site factors i.e. program, climate and context that a design can be beautiful or functional (but there is still more to it becoming sacred. . . to be continued in 4D).

The 3rd dimension is the process of demonstrating physical space via precise and intuitive models, also in three dimensions. As always, these tools vary in their use per individual skill, but precise tools for construction documents might be 3D CAD programs like Rhino or Revit, and massing exploration can be satisfied with intuitive tools like sketch models in clay, chipboard or foam. Knowing which tools to utilize at the appropriate times may seem obvious, but when caught-up in the flow of design it is often forgotten. Especially in the school environment, where tools are new and deadlines always too soon, a student may rely almost exclusively on one tool for both precise and intuitive thinking. While in the short-term this overuse may be beneficial to learning the versatility of the tool, it can be stifling to creativity and limit the type of work the designer is qualified to do in the

sketch moDelPlAster molDconcePt moDelPersPectIve renDerIng

mAssIng moDel3D renDerIng

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long-run.

In an office workflows are more defined and tools standardized to fulfill certain phases of the design process. The danger here is that the office may become so set in their ways that they are reluctant to introduce new technologies and fresh ideas into their design proposals.

Ideologically 3D is an inversion from the 2D self and place dynamic: with education, self is located as a point in a cloud of academia and is engaged in absorbing its contents. During design, however, the place or project is a point inside a cloud of self. Rather than absorbing, the designer applies parts of self to place. Therefore the project is located inside the designer (Fig 17).

As with the earlier dimensions the 3rd dimension has shallow and deep forms of engagement. On the shallow end, a design project will be small in comparison to the totality of the architect’s experiences. Perhaps the project is little more than a means to learn a new 3D software or the program fails to excite your imagination so your design of a bus stop for example ends up looking like all the other bus stops. On the deep end, a project will occupy a larger space within you. This is the project where you combine your imagination, creativity, theoretical and practical knowledge, previous experience and a blend of precise and intuitive tools to invent a stunning and unexpected proposal to even the blandest project descriptions (Fig 18).

Therefore design is the dimension where we make inquiries about what we have learned and we form personal stylistic preferences as responses to real or hypothetical cultural, environmental or economic world issues. Design is the ultimate goal of our profession, yet paradoxically, it is little more than a reflection of ourselves and our perceptions of the world, a careful compilation of pieces of self imposed onto a site.

Case Study: Designing communityIn Inhabiting the Sacred, we suggest that sites have potential to be sacred if the design intent satisfies fundamental human needs. I used this approach in Spring 2012 as literally as possible in a studio project to see if i could create opportunities for the public sacred. The studio was called Vertical Cities Asia: Korea and taught by René Davids. The project’s premise was intense: a neighborhood of 100,000 inhabitants on a site just over 2km² in the center of Seoul. Furthermore the project was to be a competition entry for an international think-tank based in China who specified emphasis on the aging population. After an initial investigation of interests and ideas, we teamed up into groups of three students for the remainder of the semester for design development. My group consisted of myself and two MArch students: Misun Lee and Chawoo Rhee. We named our project Co-Inhabitat : Animal + Human.

Before designing, we first researched the ecological and social contexts of our project area to know the needs of the population (Figs 19, 20). This helped us gain an education about the site and its users. We were then able to see clearly how Yongsan became what it is today and name the potential of what it could be: an emphasis of both current and historical strengths and a reduction of weaknesses.

Fig 17. 3D- Immersing project within self

Fig 18. 3D- shallow and deep forms of engagement in inhabiting the sacred

deep

shallow

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In the development of the design concept, we incorporated the city’s political objective to expand green space and proposed a bold model of ecological, economic and equitable sustainability for both human and animal inhabitants (Fig 21). Then we began to imagine form that could support such this ambitious concept and again utilized a local influence to initiate the design—the mountain (Fig 23). From here, we studied microclimates found within the mountainous form and matched them with users’ needs (Fig 22). While the microclimate approach satisfied the fundamental needs of the animal species and some of the needs of the human species there were additional social needs to consider for the people. In such a large site with so many inhabitants, the best approach was to fulfill their needs with infrastructure. We began by listing the needs and naming an infrastructure that could fulfill that need. Then we cross listed the principles of sustainability (ecology, equity, economy) into a matrix (Fig 24). The result was a brainstorming framework of strategies that helped to clarify programmatic priorities. From there we were able to create while infrastructural systems based in the fundamental needs (Fig 26).

Finally, with the urban scale parameters worked out, we began organizing zoning and program. The intense population requirements made it imperative that we build vertically, but our mountain concept allowed us to stack public and private program more inventively than the typical skyscraper concept. We employed top, side and under mountain situation distinctly and designated where people/animal interaction were more likely and beneficial and where they would be less likely or counter-productive.

About Co-Inhbabitat : Animal + Human

Ecological context70% of Korea’s terrain is over 200 meters altitude, most of which is part of the country’s principle mountain range the Baekdu-daegan, believed to feed essential life-energy throughout the land. This mountainous terrain creates well-defined watersheds, the largest of which is the Han River Basin, covering 23% of South Korea’s area. Therefore the ecological influence of the Han River itself is immense: 16 billion m³ of water flows through the Han annually. Before the construction of dams and dredging, the river was known for its huge coefficient of river regime (ratio of flow fluctuation) of 1:390. Its fertile alluvial banks were ideal for rice cultivation and habitat for a large number of aquatic and terrestrial species. Despite efforts to regulate flow there are seasonal problems with flooding during monsoon rains. Yongsan, our project site, lies along part of its bank and is identified as one of the areas of highest flood-risk in Seoul (Fig 19).

Social ContextSeoul’s location was chosen because of the powerful feng shui energy between mountain and river (Fig 20). The Japanese occupied Seoul from 1910-1945 and expanded the city toward Yongsan for the purpose of rice exportation. They imposed a street grid over the Fig 20. Feng Shui of Seoul ca. 1394

Fig 19. Flooding of the Han River

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Fig 21. Mountain network. Yongsan is a link between six mountains that transect Seoul.

Fig 22. Mountain microclimates: base, peak, subterrain, ridge, valley

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organic system that followed topography and built a railroad for resource extraction. In 1954, The Korean War armistice established the Demilitarized Zone along the 38th parallel and Seoul’s population exploded to 10 million people in just 30 years. An interesting side effect of the DMZ (only 30 km from Seoul) is that many endemic and endangered species have found refuge there and consequently also within many of Seoul’s urban green areas. It is a major political priority to continue greening the city by establishing an unbroken green network between the six major mountains in the city limit. Yongsan lies in the path of this network (Fig 21).

Potential of YongsanYongsan’s spontaneous ecosystem of fertile alluvial plane was destroyed and urbanized: the annual floods were controlled through dredging and damming, the wetland was filled and developed, the seasonal rivers were culverted and covered with concrete streets, the natural ecosystems were destroyed in favor of constructed parks and public green space. In exchange, little was given to Yongsan to benefit the life quality of those who live there; besides a major transportation hub, the area is known as a slum and redlight district with a painful history adjacent to the center of Japanese occupation and later the US military. The unfortunate result is a fractured, obsolete, residual land within Korea’s largest and most dynamic city. Yongsan nonetheless holds much potential as an ideal fengsui site located between the city’s most popular mountain Namsan and it’s widest river, the Han.

Design ConceptOur design is inspired by and celebrates Seoul’s natural features and continues along the city’s trajectory of connecting green spaces into a network (Fig 23). Our design aims to offer a revitalized urban area that supports healthy living for all beings, man and creature alike. The project would support a population of 100,000 inhabitants: 2/3 of the population would be mammals (us, the people) and 1/3 will be wild animals that are native to Korea yet are categorized as rare or endangered due to urbanization and habitat destruction. Co-Inhabitat offers birds, amphibians, insects and human-mammals a variety of opportunities for cohabitation by utilizing environmental conditions found in Korea’s famous mountain topography. After identifying the key species and their fundamental needs throughout the year and day, we were able to create five mountain microclimates that support compatible species and programmatic overlap (Fig 25). These microclimates are peak, base, subterrain, ridge and valley (Fig 22). Each has a specific ecosystem function and infrastructure to support the target species:Peak- This rock outcrop ecosystem serves as breeding habitat for predatory birds and

amphibians, hiking trails for mammals, and primary rainwater treatmentFig 24. Sustainable infrastructure brainstorming matrix

Fig 23. Model of mountain concept

FOOD infrastructure for SECURITY

Terraced vegetable beds

Rice paddie marsh

Restaurants

sust

aina

ble

EQU

ITY

sust

aina

ble

ECO

LOG

Ysu

stai

nabl

eEC

ON

OM

Y

WATER infrastructure for RECIPROCAL RESPONSE

Living machine temples

Intertidal wetland

Park of memories

SOCIAL infrastructure for BELONGING

Childcare and primary health care

Outdoor/indoor recreation

Mom & Pop shops

TRANSPORTATION infrastructure for NEW EXPERIENCE

Adventure trails

Forrested commuter bike paths

Paved toll and emergency roads

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Certainty of FoodA. Sun- shines 4,380 hours each year on the southern slopes in SeoulB. Rice paddy- if 1/10 of Yongsan’s area had rice paddies on the roofs, retired people can farm 60 metric tons

of rice C. Home consumption- Koreans eat about 100kg of rice/year. 100 Farmers could eat 100% of their rice needsD. Surplus- the remaining 50,000kg can be sold in a marketE1. Home consumption- locals can eat it at homeE2. Restaurant- locals or visitors can eat it in local restaurants. Surplus will feed 8% of rice needs to all Yongsan

citizens

Reciprocal Responses of Person + WaterA. Rain- 2600m³ falls on site annually, and much more comes in from other areasB. Bioswale- rainwater is filtered to potable level in valleysC. Storage- 1 week’s supply of municipal use water is stored in tanks below gradeD. Potable water use- koreans use about 100liters a day in their sinks, laundry, shower and kitchenE. Graywater use- reusing graywater for toilets saves over 5,000m³/day of potable waterF. Living machine- sludge is separated and the blackwater is sent through a living machine for primary

treatmentG1. Fertilizer- the sludge is converted to nutrient-rich fertilizer for the crops on siteG2. Wetland- water is secondarily treated in the wetland, then filtered to teriary (potable levels in the bioswales)H. Storage- 1 week’s supply of municipal use water is stored in tanks below grade

New Experience of TransportationA. Recreating- pedestrian and bike-friendly pathways along the roof for nature viewing and exerciseB. Erranding- underground parking allows use of pedestrian greenways for short trips around town, animal

corridorC. Traversing- underground expressways with skylighting for quick traversing through townD. Visiting- access through Yongsan station subway then transfer to local monorail

Belonging to the CommunityA. Easy Mobility- at ground level, all necessary amenities are near. For people with physical limitationsB. Active Free Time- still close to amenities, exercise paths are also convenient. For people without jobs but

still activeC. Diverse Interests- equally distanced from all areas. For people or families with many activitiesD. Work + Play- easy access to pedestrian paths for circulating to work and home. For professionals who are

active outdoors E. Busy with View- at the peak, primary access to nature is visual through the window. For busy people with

little time to recreate

Animal-Human Community Space is the area where people can view and interact with the other species.Human-Human Community Space is the area where people can interact with people of other ages, interests,

and abilities.

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Valley- The valley is perhaps the most rich microclimate for coinhabitiation, as the angle of slope of the valley’s edge offer much variety from canyon ecosystem to riparian corridor ecosystem. It serves as secondary rainwater treatment and habitat for mammals and amphibians.

Ridge- The ridge has two varieties of grassland ecosystem: on the southern Ridges are rice paddies for amphibian habitat and small-scale urban agriculture whereas the northern ridge hosts perennial grassland for songbirds. Both aid in secondary rainwater treatment.

Base- This wetland ecosystem hosts secondary municipal water treatment, aquatic sports for mammals, and migratory bird resting and breeding islands.

Subterrain- This forest canopy ecosystem is used for community and commercial amenities, municipal utilities, transportation corridors, floodwater retention and primary and secondary wastewater treatment.

We feel this bold landscape move from destroyed alluvial plant to mountainous topography is acceptable and appropriate because we will be able to recreate a similar alluvial plane controlled by the geometry of the constructed topography, solving simultaneously the ecological problem of habitat loss and the social problem of annual flooding. This strategy serves to further emphasize the geography already familiar to the area rather than impose a new sense on the landscape.

Fundamental Needs In order to be a sustainable city of the future, Yongsan must keep its major infrastructures local. This is better for city-wide systems that are already maximized and also better for our citizens (Fig 26).

Certainty of FoodThe aging population has both more free time and more agricultural knowledge than the younger urban population in Seoul. We would like to focus on these strengths and incorporate a rice production network into the reimagining of Yongsan.

New Experience of TransportationInhabitants will have many opportunities to travel within Yongsan in any method they choose: foot, bike, kayak, car, bus, train or monorail. These expanded mobile possibilities aim to make each day an adventure close to home. Depending on the destination of each visit to Yongsan, there are four recommended ways of travel within the site.

Fig 26. (opposite) Satisfaction of fundamental needs with sustainable infrastructure

Fig 25. Species program occupancy by season and time of day

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Reciprocal Responses of Person + WaterNo one’s life is healthy without direct access to clean water to drink and touch. We have designed a closed-cuircuit water treatment cycle to benefit human and animal alike.

Belonging to the CommunityWe have designed many types of living situations to maximize options for people of all interests, lifestyles and physical mobilities. Since age is a state of mind rather than a number, we have categorized the housing according to access to animal-human community space or human-human community space.

Bio-dynamic ArchitectureThrough identifying the geometry of habitual activities of all species, we can define parameters of activity and allow the zones of one specie to collide with another, creating inter-species community space within the overlap. These spaces are expressed in the form of a modified hexagonal shell that defines each residential unit for human and animal (Fig 27).

The performance structure, another dominant architectural element aims to organize the human specie’s needs of socializing and working. It weaves loosely between the hexigonal hills to connect them via pedestrian corridors and a monorail. Program includes commercial, office, hospital and school. This mammal-centric area will also benefit the other inhabitants by serving as wastewater treatment and distribution to the entirety of Yongsan.

The public space is located in the open areas below and above each residential structure. Below the houses is human-human program such as theater, stadium, park, cultural center, recreational facility, church, etc. Depending on the program’s needs, some of these areas will require structures and enclosed envelopes while others will be in the open air and landscaped. The program above and around each san is programmed for human-animal interaction via varied habitat spaces and bike, hiking, and walking paths at grade and roof levels (Fig 28).

Both the team and professor were excited ad passionate about the proposal, yet after the final review, it failed to be chosen as one of the projects that would represent our school in the competition in Singapore. The basic feedback from the jury explained that although they thoroughly understood and appreciated the design concept and project aims, the formal embodiment of these ideas failed to achieve these goals. Reflecting on how this happened, I notice a few failure in our workflow. For instance, we never consciously chose tools according to use. Instead we divided the shared workload according to the tool that each of us were most comfortable using: MiSun on AutoCAD and Illustrator, Chaewoo on Rhino and Photoshop, myself on InDesign, Word, and physical modeling. This roughly translated into division by portions of the design process: MiSun on

Fig 27. Hexagonal residential units, by Misun

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architectural details, Chaewoo on urban-scale massing and final renders, and myself of research, concept and partí. However, we lacked a designated platform in which to discuss design conflicts and explore concrete solutions. For instance, we could have benefited greatly from sketching on trace or concept modeling with clay or chipboard. We did at time sketch on a plan for zoning options, but each attempt was unsuccessful because we had no system to incorporate our precise knowledge into these intuitive explorations, so we usually ended the brainstorm in intellectual gridlock and resorted back to our comfortable tools of precision and worked out details independently instead of as a group.

Another failure in the overall proposal I foresee should it be implemented is that our design path never ventured into the 4th dimension- time. Although we did speak to several citizens during our site visit, we did not conduct a focused survey to the able to incorporate local wisdom. As proposed, residents would then have to accept whatever our idea of quality living is. Furthermore, there was no thought to the maintenance of the system as a whole and without occupant participation in the design process, there is no guarantee of citizen investment in their homeplace, so therefore little chance of sacred place-making. We would be forced to rely on faith that an unusually wise citizen activist would initiate inhabitation of the public sacred.

In the next chapter about the 4th dimension of practice, I will explain more about the architect’s engagement with the public sacred both for his own benefit and the benefit of his clients. I will illustrate the public sacred using my personal experience with building and maintaining Fito’s Place.

Fig 28. Rendering of a valley microclimate, by Chaewoo

performance structure

residential units

human-human community space

human-animal community space

When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world- which is saying the same thing. Human beings destroy their ecology at the same time that they destroy one another. From that perspective, healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world. - Chögyam Trungpa

BrIck : erosIonsteel : rust

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Fig 29. A plane becomes a cube and a cube becomes a tesseract

4D. PRACTICE : manifestation & collaboration

The practice of inhabiting the sacred is of the 4th dimension and as such is manifested in many forms. As previously stated, in math there are infinite degrees but in physical space there are only three. Many scholars have debated what might be the fourth dimension; could it be organization, cooperation, love, God? Most are content with time as the answer, the continuum of our three dimensional world from one moment to the next. Just as a square becomes a cube by expanding in a perpendicular direction its plane, a cube becomes a tesseract by the same process (Fig 29):

“The tesseract, or tetra-hypercube: a 4-space figure generated by the movement of a cube in the direction (to us unimaginable) of the 4th dimension. This movement is extended to a distance equal to one edge of the cube and its direction is perpendicular to all our 3 dimensions as each of these 3 is perpendicular to the others. The tesseract

wooD : fIre AgrIculture : DesertIfIcAtIon love : loss BeAuty : style nAture : growth

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contains an infinite number of finite 3-spaces (cubes) and is bounded by 8 cubes, 24 squares, 32 lines and 16 points.”1

To our physical bodies that can only experience one object at a time occupying space, the phenomenon of infinite cubes fitting into one space is impossible, but to science and math in can be experienced by seeing traces of it in the 3rd order world. For example, think of a cube in a stationary potion that begins to move. First it moves up 1 inch, then to the right another inch, then down, then left and finally up into its original position. We could say this cube made a circle-path movement through time; the shape of its movement would resemble a torrent, a simplified tesseract (Fig 30). If we could see the infinite positions the cube occupies along a three dimensional path compressed into a single instant, this would be the tesseract in the 4th dimension, but in our world we can only see the cube at any one position on its path. Marcel Duchamp attempts to illustrate the 4th dimension in a two dimensional painting, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Fig 31). The tesseract is conceptually represented on paper in several ways, each way offering perhaps a distinct interpretation on the nature of the fourth dimension. I see two as being relevant to the practice of architecture (Fig 32). The first diagram, the tesseract, is a standard drawing from 1912, published by Philip Henry Wynne. The second, the system, is used to explain a collective subconscious, where all beings are aligned toward a common goal and organized toward accomplishing this goal. Could this be what the Mayan prophecy predicts for December 2012?

In the parable, Strange Man’s first motion toward the 4th dimension was when he saw the failure of his design and wished to understand why. Fortunately he had Gentle Man to offer him this answer: “Strange Man, do you remember the first thing I taught you, that the best coffee receptacles are those that allow us to drink the coffee most tailored to fulfill our individual needs? Have you yourself tried to drink coffee to understand which coffee and receptacle satisfies you most?” So at the moment of beginning his daily practice, he began the journey of knowing through experience. It of course took time to relearn about receptacle and liquid this way, and as much as Gentle Man taught him, these concepts could never mean anything to Strange Man until he relearned them through direct interaction between himself and the coffee. He was finally fulfilling his own fundamental needs through his profession. This is the 4th dimension of manifestation, the shallow form of engagement in practice where personal needs are met.

In our design careers we begin to know 4D space when we build and maintain a place that eventually becomes sacred to us personally because we have learned to embed our needs in place. Making this space in the public realm will further enrich the experience because the architect does not only benefit from his own feedback and the response of the landscape but also the feedback and response of others in his community. He will learn in what ways his idea of sacred place coincides or conflicts with others.

Finally, Strange Man tries to design again. He has incorporated the knowledge of daily drinking and is able to know how to engage his client to maximize the potential for sacredness. Likewise an architect can apply his sacred experience to other communities. Through a process of collaboration, he engages the community

1 Bragdon, Claude Fayette. A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension). Tucson, AZ: Omen Press, 1972, Plate 1.

Fig 31. Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, 1912, oil on canvas

Fig 30. A square torus created from a cube in movement along an xy plane

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4D. PRACTICE : manifestation + collaboration

so that they are prepared to maintain and enjoy their public sacred place long after construction. This is the deepest engagement of the 4th dimension, collaboration within the system (Fig 33).

In 4D space the self and place are equal partners, true collaborators and creators of a third entity: the public sacred. From the existence of the public sacred emerges the opportunity for enjoyment and meaning for both self and place. In some ways, practice through experience is the simplest engagement because at this stage the tools are blended together into processes of precise intuition or intuitive precision, so regard for conscientious oscillation between them is unnecessary during construction and maintenance. However, this engagement cannot be achieved until first knowing the previous four dimensions, where a designer gains conceptual and experimental knowledge. Although this final dimension depends upon mastery of the first two, it cannot be taught in class and it cannot be commissioned by a client. It comes from within and is in essence the physical result of a conversation between you and your environment. Work is not represented or demonstrated; it is manifested in real space and real time.

It is possible to be a designer and never venture into the 4th dimension. However, to design to inhabit the sacred, fully knowing what it is to inhabit the sacred by creating and maintaining one of these spaces yourself is absolutely essential. I have entered the 4th dimension by building and maintaining a public sacred place in my neighborhood, discussed at length in a few pages. However, I have no experience yet with the deep 4th dimension, collaboration. I suspect that this stage of inhabiting the sacred is actually not the 4th but the 5th dimension, but until my hypothesis is substantiated with experience, I will continue to propose it to be simply a deeper form of practicing 4D architecture.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain how the practice of inhabiting the sacred can satisfy all four fundamental needs simultaneously is to illustrate with an example from Inhabiting the Sacred: Jules Park, in Manteo, NC.

The downtown area of was in a state of near abandonment and total disrepair when Jule Burrus began creating his vision for a waterfront park. His fellow townspeople were suspicious and the City Council unwilling to supply funds for a park in this derelict district. His colleagues at the Duchess Restaurant disapproved and made fun of his idea to his face and behind his back. People thought it was downright crazy trying to beautify such wasteland. Jule ignored the criticism as best he could, although he told Randy the year he died how much the scorn of his friends had hurt. Fortunately, he had the strength needed to pursue his vision, and managed to imbue the park with the vales of perseverance which are evident still today. Jule waged a personal campaign to win support and resources. He worked without official endorsement, and some questioned his ownership of the site, which was murky at best. His first breakthrough for support was when he decided to use the rubble from an old school that was being torn down. Generations of older townspeople had attended the demolished

Fig 32. Tesseract, by Philip Henry Wynne, 1912 and System, by Claude Bragdon, 1972

Fig 33. Shallow and deep engagements of 4D space

public sacreddeep

shallow

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school, so the rubble had sentimental value for many residents. Jule aimed to symbolically involve them in his project by using the theme “building from ruins” for his proposed park, a phrase that related to the many catastrophes the town had overcome in the past. He persuaded a local contractor to move the ruins of the school to the waterfront at no cost and began shuffling through the debris. People gradually warmed to his idea, and he persuaded the City Council to endorse his efforts as part of an upcoming historical celebration. When Jule got this official approval, he was finally able to legitimately solicit the help of others. A local handyman collected beach sand that had blown across nearby streets from an Atlantic storm and Jule deposited it between the pavers made of rubble to fill gaps with a smooth surface. The local electric power company sold him park lamps at cost, and residents paid for them as memorial dedications to loved ones. Jule asked a local cement company to erect a monument using a piece of rubble broken into the shape of a cross. This was years before the same symbol became pertinent again during the 9/11 aftermath. Jule was the daily leader, organizer, and solicitor of help, and completed the majority of the physical work himself with help from one other resident. At one point he became seriously ill, some testified from working in the contaminated water. This heightened the sense of his sacrifice and served as a moral example to others. The combination of powerful imagery, words and personal sacrifice raised the project to a patriotic plane, connected the effort personally to other residents and allayed the initial skepticism. The first phase of Jule’s Park was completed in just over one year and its quick turnaround made it easy for the rest of the community to embrace the project. The initial phase consisted of a grass lawn with an extraordinary view over Shallowbag Bay. This lawn was suitable for hundreds of daily activities plus community festivals, religious rituals and civic functions. In the next phase, trees were added during a volunteer planting day. Town involvement and donations continued steadily after the initial effort became visible. Nearby residents maintained Jule’s Park for many years. One group of friends went on evening walks and performed voluntary trash pick-up to keep the park clean. Another 80-year-old woman mowed the lawn for years as if it were an extension of her own backyard. His park invited so many other investments of affection that the large, flexible public space gradually got filled with trees, playground equipment and other claims of symbolic ownership. Jule actually resisted too much “stuff” in order to maintain the versatility of his original plan, a simple, open and un-programmed space suitable for adaptation and creative use. It was like a mantle which he imagined would collect new facilities and the gifts of others, but periodically be cleared of the additions. This open-endedness attracted others to

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continue what Jule started and makes the place beloved today. Recently, a new inscription was anonymously added to the base of the cross, honoring Jule Burrus and the values he represented.2

Jule’s Park illustrates how his and his neighbor’s fundamental needs were met by creation of a public sacred place. Jule chose to make this park because inhabiting the sacred filled him with purpose. It provided him certainty and adventurous nonconformity. It allowed him to belong and be recognized for the difference he made in his community. In turn, the community stewarded his park and felt reciprocal response and reason to ritually visit. The community united on a ideological and spiritual level. The park still thrives and is one of the most expressive tokens of identity in Manteo. Projects like Jule’s Park typically begin as an individual’s idea and passion. They are neither participatory nor populist in origin, but they eventually capture community place values if they are to thrive. The dreams of others are accommodated in order to secure their help.

Case Study : Building the public sacredOn September 12, 2010, an innocent man was attacked and killed in Berkeley. He was a man who was larger than life, passionate beyond reason, loving past words. This event had catastrophic effects on many: his family, his fiancé, his friends, his neighborhood. As one of the effected many, I gathered some friends and painted Yoko’s tribute to John Lennon where he fell, and soon after I again gathered some friends, turned the soil of a derelict public strip of land adjacent to the site, planted some cabbage and kale, and have returned each day since to maintain it.

Unfortunately this awakening was stirred by tragedy rather than a light-hearted effort of goodwill or a deliberate attempt to inhabit the sacred in the 4th dimension. Nor was the concept of the place premeditated; it evolved slowly into the neighborhood landmark that it is today. Only now upon reflecting on the process of how Fito’s Place came to be, I can see how even in moments of intense grief and pain, my earlier teachings of inhabiting the sacred helped guide me from a place of debilitating loss to enabling action. At the time of beginning the project, I was not acting as designer nor activist, simply a woman with broken-hearted desperation, but elements of both subconsciously worked within me. I had already taken Randy’s ‘Landscape as Sacred Place’ class, taught a semester with him and was in the throws of writing the book, so these elements too were silently active. To illustrate the story along the trajectory of this thesis I will continue using references to the four dimensions.

Fito’s death was the very aggressive, horrific 0 dimension, the violent act of awakening to a new reality that no one should witness. Yet since I had, I felt an intense need to relate this nightmare with the rest of my world, which previously had been promising and optimistic. Before the flowers were cleared from the street, I was already determined that this senseless crime could not be soon forgotten by the community. I think—again, everything at this time was subconscious, instinctual—I was searching for a way to evidence what happened here. This was my 1st dimension of inhabiting the sacred. We gathered for vigils and were a constant presence at the corner, but eventually we would have to go back to work, the flowers would get swept up, life would resume.


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The decision to paint the IMAGINE mosaic on the place where Fito died came to me as if a divine order. It was incredible; I emailed my friends with the idea and five hours later we had a crowd of twenty people, a laser cut stencil replica of the original mosaic and two color of spray paint. Everyone took turns painting but I had the distinct honor of painting the word IMAGINE in the center. Then we placed the flowers from the street corner over the painting in a mandala pattern. We encircled the painting and sat in revered silence. We had completed the 2nd dimension of inhabiting the sacred, the stage of representation.

The act of transforming the invisible pain of grief into a visible marker of crime and hope by painting the IMAGINE on the crosswalk of the street was an act of evidencing. It at once legitimized a shared community sentiment and raised awareness to people previously unaware. People in cars have often inquired out their window what happened here. They are alarmed and touched simultaneously. They are thankful for the attention paid to the spot and as one person said recently, “I had no idea this happened, but now every time I come by I will be careful not to drive over this sacred spot in the road.” Most often, these people who I encounter are of the same race and economic situation as those responsible for the crime.

I visited the IMAGINE often but had not yet made it a daily ritual. Just steps away from this spot is a taco stand and the owner was sympathetic, offering us a place to put the collectibles that had been accumulating at the corner. He showed me a thin, long strip of compacted mud and weeds and offhandedly suggested that he would be open to a plaque or planting in Fito’s honor. Immediately the light bulb switched on and I explained to him that I was a landscape architect and that I would be happy to steward this strip for him. He had little to lose (judging by the shape the land was in at that moment) and was agreeable to the idea, but also wary of potential negative effects of the crime on his business. He allowed use of this strip for a garden but had several requests: to take everything off of the fence, to plant nothing that grew over 24” tall, place no fliers about the crime around the entry of his restaurant (this latter request was unspoken but understood without words). Here began the 3rd dimension of inhabiting the sacred, design.

I remember I visited the strip several times with the intention of designing it. I knew I wanted a place for people to sit amongst plants with a view of the painting on the street. I also had considerable work to do before the soil would support anything besides the most resilient weeds, so I was devising a soil amendment and planting plan.

On December 12, 2010, three months after Fito passed, I acknowledged the day with a soil preparation gathering. I was as surprised as the rest of the neighborhood when ten hours later my friends and I not only turned the soil but had also de-littered it (not an easy task—we even found a huge sheet of steel laying 12” under the to soil), mixed in compost and planted about a dozen tiny cabbages, kale and purple aeonium along with vetch and clover seeds as nitrogen-fixing cover crops. A couple friends brought plants to contribute as well. At the day’s close we had unintentionally planted a garden! At that moment I unintentionally became the daily steward and unintentionally entered the 4th dimension of inhabiting the sacred. Design decisions from that point was made on-site, in real-time, with my own hands, using tools of precise intuition and intuitive precision.The garden is only one aspect of Fito’s Place; the IMAGINE is an important second component.

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Fig 34. The elements of Fito’s Place: garden, trunk, painting and post.

The garden and the painting work together nicely because stewarding the garden daily has given me opportunity to also visit the IMAGINE each time. The flowers and leaves that the garden produces and drops are each day brought to the IMAGINE and made into a beautifully ephemeral mandala. Sometime the wind blows it away before I can finish it, but sometimes the flowers persist for weeks, getting ever-more smashed into the paint by turning automobiles and blessing the concrete with love where hate once reined. Another important feature that boarders the garden is a tree stump. I had originally planned to carve it into a seat, but it evolved instead into something of a soapbox where fresh flowers and holiday offerings are placed and pictures of Fito are hung. A fourth component is a utility post positioned between the garden and the IMAGINE. Since the homicide case is still unsolved, I have been posting fliers around Berkeley asking the community to give any information they have to the police. However, they are routinely torn-down almost immediately. The only place they have been respected and persist is on this post at Fito’s Place. It has become the community message board, the outlet for communication where people can read about the crime, about Fito’s amazing life, and the inexplicable pain of losing him. Together the garden, picture trunk, IMAGINE, and community post make up Fito’s Place. None of these elements were planned to function as they do today and it is only a result of the daily visits and maintenance they they have become so (Fig 34).

Since September 2010, Fito’s Place has gone through many ‘versions’ or major changes in addition to daily maintenance: BETA: Street corner memorial 1.0: Fence and dirt patch memorial with many signs, candles, flowers 1.1: Vivafito.blogspot.com established 2.0: Painting of the IMAGINE 2.1: Fliers posted around the area 2.2: Establishment of trunk as area for photos 2.2: Dia de Los Muertos ofrenda in the dirt patch, memorial removed 3.0: Turning of soil, planting first plants 3.1: Creation of daily ritual visit to the IMAGINE 4.0: Establishment of nearby utility post as Fito’s flier post 4.1: Donation of plants and stepping stones from neighbors fill in some of the dirt 5.0: Cover crops turn dirt patch into flowering meadow 6.0: Planting of specimen plants into a designed garden 6.1: Block Party and repainting of the IMAGINE 7.0: Community gardening day and creation of Viva Fito! stickers 7.1: Fito’s family visits and contributes to the garden 7.2: Press covers the ritual visiting and family involvement 8.0: Dia de Los Muertos installation within garden 8.1: Garden expansion to entire strip of land 9.0: Garden at maximum capacity and is able to provide plants to others 9.1: Another wave of press focusing on the garden and maintenance of community awareness 9.2: Street renovations paint over the IMAGINE, initiating a temporary repainting of part of it

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Everyone in the neighborhood knows Fito’s Place and the story behind it. Most know who I am and hardly a day passes when a neighbor does not visit me while I am there. Most of them I have known for many months but often someone introduces themselves, always explaining that they have been aware of and appreciate my efforts there for a long time. Numerous times I have been present to observe how someone completely new to the place encounters it for the first time and connects the dots between the garden and the IMAGINE. Usually, it begins at the garden, as they pass by and are touched by the profuse growth and diversity of plants. Then they reach the stump and see the pictures and read ‘Justicia para Fito.’ They turn around and see the post which has the same sign and much more information, including a description fo the crime and its location. They realize that they are standing near the same corner and walk to it, finding the IMAGINE there with its flower mandala. Usually they will ask for confirmation that this was the place that was spoken about in the flier and if I am Fito’s fiancé. They are always deeply moved and usually offer a hug and thoughts about death. They are compassionate and open, telling me their own experiences and promise that they will respect and care for this place in support of me and Fito: “I never met this gentleman, but every time I walk by here, I feel that he was a wonderful person.”

Many neighbors are stirred to contribute. From time to time gifts appear at the garden including Christmas decorations on the trunk, a glitter painted rock, hand embroidered cloth, collage art, solar-powered night lights, hand-made and costume jewelry, a passport, a diploma and ashes, packaged and fresh food, a record, money, many cut flowers and dozens of potted plants (Fig 35).

Besides the passive support of many casual visitors, there have been some outstanding experiences that have lead to deeply meaningful interactions between neighbors. One man, who is of minority race with a criminal history, lives across the street has become something of the garden’s guardian. He was the first to offer support by donating a watering can, complete with home-made spout. He also installed solar lights found at the flea market, each one a different shape and size. He has often scolded people for disrespecting or misbehaving at the garden by urinating, sitting in, littering or stealing plants. He also stewards the street by sweeping and hosting it down. His experience with the garden has fostered a new interest in plants and he gives me updates about his new acquisitions and his strategy for keeping the cactus and fern both happy in the same pot.

Another neighbor on the block, an older yet sprightly gentleman has become a regular visitor. When I threw a block party there six months after Fito’s death, he happily used his name as the resident on the block for the paperwork to the city. He often comes and sits with me at the IMAGINE and he uses it as a place to remember his brother, mother and girlfriend who have passed. The owner of the apartment building on the block has also contributed significantly. He allows use of his hose and water to irrigate the garden. He recently took a class about healing gardens and used Fito’s Place as an example for his final presentation. Also since he has lived in the area for over a decade, he has unique historical knowledge. Once he brought me photos of the garden before it was Fito’s. Then it was Box Spring Park (Fig 36).

Another neighbor—this one a middle aged, stone bead making gardener—has become my partner in stewarding the garden. He is a constant presence each day there is major work to be done and a solid Fig 35. A few of the many gifts left at

the picture trunk.

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source of gardening knowledge. He waters when I am away and shares my joy when a plant thrives or flowers beautifully. We became acquainted shortly after the garden’s inauguration because he was being forcibly evicted from his home and sacred garden. He needed a loving home for the plants that he tended for nine years and I needed loving plants for Fito’s garden. Today in large part because of him, the garden is thriving and indeed overgrowing with lush greenery of every species. I joke that Fito’s Place is the most biodiverse garden of its size in Berkeley. If you count the plants plus the worms, ants, crickets, bees, butterflies and beetles that live there, it might just be true.

Creating and maintaining Fito’s Place is the furthest I have practiced in the 4th dimension. Conceptually, I imagine there to be even deeper engagement, the system. In this type of inhabiting the sacred, an architect has extended the knowledge they have gained through their own public sacred place and applies this knowledge to other community outside of his own. He collaborates with the users to understand and give form to their fundamental needs which inevitably will be distinct from the architect’s. Then, the users would assume the responsibility of stewardship and daily maintenance of their public sacred place, not because they are obliged to but because they receive their needs by doing so.

As I move from the role of student to professional, it is these opportunities for collaboration within the system that I will be looking to work on. This, I intuitively suspect, is our true destination as architects and designers.

Fig 36. Boxspring Park in 2000, 2004, and 2011 as Fito’s Place. First two photos by David

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two yeArs of InhABItIng the sAcreD

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two yeArs of ImAgIne mAnDAlAs

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Conclusion

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To bring this thesis to a close, architects who spend time to dimension the public sacred will be counted amongst those who contribute in a real and positive way to their communities. We require public sacred places in order to fulfill our fundamental human needs. Without these needs met, people will not be able to excel in other parts of their lives. In a world of threatening environmental collapse, the priority is likely to shift to survival only, but I would argue that the psychological realm of our humanity is equally, if not more important because it is at times so subtle and elusive. Creating quality environments available to anyone, anytime is simply essential and irreplaceable.

The architectural cosmos—the universe that our profession operates within—is actually larger than is commonly practiced. We conventionally see the destination of our work to be the Construction Document or Post Occupancy Evaluation at best. However, we could be doing much more to deliver a product that not only functions in utility or beauty; we have the potential to awaken our communities to place values that combat fear, pseudo-adventuring, rootlessness, and untethered status seeking. Energy saved from these vices can be spent in quality ways instead, so it is our responsibility to use our skills for the noblest cause. Perhaps my tone sounds dogmatic, and I suppose it is; yet as a person who has been deeply effected by other’s descent into the monsters of society, I am willing to take this risk.

I have attempted to explain the full depth and breadth of the architectural cosmos (0-4 dimensions on the y-axis and precision to intuition on the x-axis) so that we may understand the full extent of where our profession can operate. I hope this will allow us to be intentional with our tools in order to produce the maximum outcome possible. Doing more with less, as Buckminster Fuller would say, is the key to a sustainable future.

I see the real power of the public sacred to be a connection, between architecture and landscape, past and present, public and private, macro and micro, near and far, systems and autonomy, community and self, life and death, human as organism and human as machine, this and that, you and me.

THANK YOU!

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A thesis is never just a thesis, and this thesis came at the end of a long, hard, beautiful road. It is impossible to separate the completion of this work from the sustainment of life itself, so these thank yous are for those that have given so that I may rise. It is never taken for granted.

My committee: Anthony Dubovsky & Galen CranzMy mentors: Randy Hester, GrannyMy professors: Chip Sullivan, Walter Hood, Paz Gutierrez, Joe McBride, Rene Davids, Nezar Alsayyad, Louise Mozingo, Steve CancionMy academic advisors: Jill Stoner, Dana Buntrock, Tom Bruesh, Matt KondolphMy academic administrators: May Hudson, Joe Gouig, Michael de Leon, Tony Tieu, Lois Koch, Miguel Quinonez-SkinnerMy students: ED11A, ED11B, LA232, ED1, Arch150, particularly my ED11A spring 2012 students for being test bunnies for this thesis! My actors: Ileana Acevedo, Morgen Ramirez, Niamh BloomquistMy parents: Mommacita & Papa, Dad & MandyMy siblings: Big Bro V & Jillian, big lil sis Bayleigh, James!My family: Uncle D, Maxx & Emma, Aunt Janny & Uncle Barry, Brien & Jessica, Ashton & Pat, Chayce & Katie, Kristy & JM, Grandma Piggy & PapaMy non-human family: Stud, BayfairMi familia Chilena: Maria de la Luz, Adolfo, Ale, Coca, Alvaro, Antonia, Benja, Javiera, Magdalena, Mario y familia, Chango, Yanko, DianaMy Berkeley buddies: Cecil Howell, Bobby Glass, Eustacia Brossart, Daphne Edwards, Darryl Jones, Lisa Daye, Shaleece Haas, Nicole Rangel, Margot Jacobs, Eliot Rose, Rachel Kraii, Alex Harker, Chris Lesnett, Clare O’Reilly, Yu-Chung Li, Crystal Ward, Jonathan Espalin, Nathan Hodges, David GodshallMy lifelong friends: Emily Tipton, Sydney Hayes, Yuri Namkung, Ang Cui, Daniel S. Morris, Jim Lucas, Katia SobolskiMy Friends departed: Kevin Houska, Shelley Meilink, Jonathan Hearst, Billy WomackMy support team: Howard Lunche, Mestre Acordeon & Mestra Suely, capoeira, Shan Johnson, the PuratsMy neighbors: Chuch Pryor, Ed Stress, Dennis, Antonio, David, Jimmy, Steve, Kurt, Ricardo, Flower, ColibríMy plants: Bayfair parahebes, Brazilian elegans, Como la Selva, Kevin, Adam, the Aeonium Twins, frecita, Yosemite lichen, Peruvian solanum, Chilean flower of the Incas, las plantitas and all your neighbors. ...y especialmente, para siempre y sin parar, MI AMOR.

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