Tuesday 13 January 2009

The Love Bucket

"One designer celebrates life, the other searches for safety from it" - quoted from Natalia Ilyin's book: "Chasing the perfect". Which one are you? Which one are we as holotects?

There are some, who fall in love with the process of design. These delight in the way the wetted brush runs across texured paper, or adore the aroma of a fresh box of coloured pencils; the screeching sound of marker, or the scratching crumble of charcole. These see what is and ponder it in there hearts, taking delight in their discoveries.

There are other that are "axiety fighters [taking] delight in complexes of structure that will make things work better, make a safer or more cohesive world. That designer responds not to the world's beauty but to its chaos."

I cannot say which type is of greater significance. I cannot help but think that either play different roles. Indeed, I see my self as designer in one such "bucket" and at times in the other. I can tell you life is more of a pleasure when there joy is taken in the process. But we need our engineers to worry, so our artists can rest assured. Is this true?

Love and Fear. Frued calls these the two calls for action. One designer responds to their love of the world, "astonishment at its beauty [and] comfort in their natural sense of the place". The other attempts to design the world as they know it could be, out of fear of what could occur should they do not find themselves behind the reigns. Pehaps this spurs from a lack of trust in Providence?

Modernist philosophy is very much a response to fear, a need to control. Perhaps this is why our natural instinct repells us from the grey blocks of the 50s and 60s, but our minds can even be tempted to accept it, in a guilty, self assuring kind of way. We may long for safety, but vulnerability is the condition for love. Enclosed, protected in our cold concrete capsules, we may avoid harm, but but never experience the true light and warmth of the natural world in all of its beautiful imperfections.