7 For living elements like these, a new form of making is required
I do not believe that living centers of the type that I have illustrated can ever be made by the indirect mechanical, technical process that architects accepted in the 20th century. Although it is possible, in theory, to invent and put on paper what as to be done, the emotional energy of creating a living thing comes, in my experience, only — and necessarily — from an intimate connection with the making of that thing.
You can draw something for someone else to build. But the life blood of the material, knowing what it means to hold a plane, or how to move a piece of wood through a table saw, how to cut and machine a piece of plastic — unless one has the experience and knowledge of the thing in one’s own fingertips, I do not see that it is possible to transform material into a living center.
Thus the question of living centers in the construction material of a building does not touch only choice of physical material and design of geometry. Living centers cannot be created merely by design. For the centers (and physical components) of a building to be truly alive, they must be made in a way that draws on deeper emotional resources. To be clear about reaching this, we must define a new, modern process that we may call “making”, as opposed to production. What I mean by “making” is the physical process of creating the building, which does not call for it to be assembled by a mechanized process, but unfolded by a living process.
Only this will allow the details to be shaped by human feeling, and to be governed by the whole. It is a nearly biological process where construction elements unfold, take shape, fall into place in a fashion that lets them grow out of the whole and enhance the whole.
For these reasons, I believe, firmly, that the creation of a building — not only the invention of the building elements, but the whole process of building itself — must — absolutely must — be understood as an act of making.
#book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World# #book/The Nature of Order/3 A Vision of a Living World/14 Construction elements as living centers#