The sacred way

Abstract

The real task of architecture begins once functional and behavioral needs have been satisfied. Its essence is to give poetic form to the pragmatic. My work is only interested in the discovery, not the recovery of ideas; the invention, not classification. In working this way the search is for the essential and lasting principles in architecture, the origins of which must lie in the psychological experience of a building which is physically realized in the mind through one's senses. Thus architecture's manifestation begins as a set of intended experiences which begin to write a narrative or fable for a building. In writing a fable rather than a theoretical essay something basic has been found; fables remain immutable long after theories have disappeared. The invention of these writings is central to the work and not merely literary accessory, for it is this narrative that gives a building its ritual of experience, and it is to the support of these rituals that most of my work addresses itself. Thus the poetic form begins in the composition of experiences; the narrative.