#11 PART.II.thought — Introduction
The Goal in Architecture PART.II.0 thought — Introduction Part 2
This part continues the previous introductory article #10 PART.II. thought. This second half of the introduction moves forward to relate thought to architecture to enable a concept of thought that is related to spirituality, based on our spiritual practice of choice of the Indian Knowledge System. Questioning thought in conjunction with architecture can be framed within such a contextualizing structure. Turning to those faculties of humanity that are not thought knowledge or discovered in thinking can reveal its role relative to its effects in architecture practice
It is difficult to conceive of architectural practice not centred on thought. Architectural practice requires a well-trained faculty of thought. It is common for us to identify with our thinking as is if is ourselves and difficult for most of us to consider ourselves as other than our thoughts. Yet, taking a bit of leap to practicing architecture, most architects will admit that an Entwurf1 cannot come strictly out of thought, thinking is only a part of it and something else is also active.
An Entwurf can be said to be a project's architecture in essence. While that is not the whole of an architect’s work, that initial concept is like the seed and very important to its meaningfulness. Often, much is done inuitively at the start, while this part of a project can be very small. The Entwurf comes together out of effort that is not all within thought process.
I suggest that projects that are majority owned by thought are less humane, tending toward what I call concealing architecture. In such cases a project begins with a lot of calculation, perhaps based on previous projects and models abstracted from experience. We will be examining how thought is essential to the professional while it is not the essence of being an architect. Thought can be used to discriminate2 but a highly refined thinker practicing architecture may not ever achieve a work that provides for architecture.
The condition of architecture that is generated within each of us is not easily communicated other than as architecture as it presences through the formal objects that we call architecture, integrated with measure. We feel it without knowing what it is, which seems paradoxical in our time that is dominated by thought. Our thinking does not encompass this, it is beyond it.
Most of us labour with some anachronistic ideas that are taught in universities and in our places of work. They are accepted because they remain. They are not necessarily justified other than as habits or entrenched systems of value and function. This thinking is justified in part by our intentional environment and the activity formed in the environment that was formed by process and design.
Architecture existed long before our common era. Or, put more precisely, we conceive of what we understand architecture to be today as also present a very long time ago. We have written documentation older than 2000 years in which the architect’s orientation can be found to be quite similar to today’s terms. De Architectura libri decem authored by Vitruvius, most often represented by the more recent derivations by Alberti and Palladio, and the Mānasāra,3 are two examples that are often taken as coherent with current terms.
Thought has always been part of humanity and architecture, but was thought then part of architecture as it is now? It certainly had different cultural weighting. Current thought in design can seem uncanny in association with the past when it is thought to be the same then as we feel it now.
Thought is managed and controlled as an intentional mode of engagement, (i.e. broader than the individual task or project) within the individual practitioner as design in architectural practice. A specific set of choices as a design are only small expressions or symptoms of the values that thought is manifesting. In our current technicist valuation in the Machine Ages and Modernist thinking, this leads to the commonly expressed equivalency of architecture and design where architecture is taken up in terms of equivalent with technology.
The use of the word ‘design’ interchangeably with ‘architecture’ makes apparent that neither design or architecture are easy to define, since it is obvious at least that they are not the same. That these terms are commonly used interchangeably by architects, even in most scholarly work, is meaningful to this project. Discriminating the two will reveal what is collapsing the two into one. This means defining them. Defining architectural practice is what PART.I Goal was about. What is the need for and cause of equating the two? That information is the 'gap' that was discussed in article #7 Practical Approach PART.I.4.2/3. It represents what we have de-valued, concealed and subverted of humanity, what value we have got, and what our intentional environment reflects. This is our approach to gain perspective on the cultural value weighting in context of architectural practice.
We are all trained to manage and control thought in its role in architectural practice guided toward an intended outward engagement in our career (i.e. broader than tasks). In our individual interiorized life, inwardly, within ourselves, there is very often little interest in developing thought's role in terms of mind’s refinement, which is related to spiritual practice. The focus is on productive knowledge and skills. This project questions not only the narrow so-called pragmatic approach that is justified as bringing professional competence, but also the wider frame that is then opposed, such as academic approaches and ideals that we attempt in school but are often not justified in the business of professional practice. That is, the whole needs to be questioned if it has oppositional components within.
What is absent that leads to the trouble that drives questioning the values and leads to the ancient opportunity that we propose then appears? The ancient opportunity is acknowledging our capacity to better know ourselves and that this is a responsibility to evolve because it is each of us that is the maker of the outcomes of practice. This responsibility is linked to the aspiration that we come into the world with.
Might ‘design’ be revealed as thought that belongs as ‘architectural technology’ in architects’ practice and the profession ? Is 'design' a bridge over the gap that we have created? A fictitious gap? Design as knowledge–production demands ignorance. There is no knowledge production without ignorance of that knowledge to be produced. Ignorance is an aspect of human life; one that prepares us for architecture's presencing. It is initiated by ignorance.
While it is common to focus on progress, the ignorance necessary for thought to re–territorialize ‘what is’ must be considered as well. ‘Progress’ does not remove ignorance in principle. Solving individual moments of ignorance does not stop it. Knowledge–production requires a balance of ignorance and the lack of it. That implicit need for ignorance, which is there like the air around us is a resource for ‘discovery’ (as we do with internal combustion engines, but in a natural way). It also proves the existence of modes of knowing other than thought.
Spirituality, however, points to a condition of complete ignorance, or an absolute absence of ignorance. They are the same. Ignorance that drives knowledge creation definitely comes before complete absence of ignorance, while the former is not a direct process to the latter because both knowledge and ignorance are infinite. Thinking as I am referring to it is only a stage. The latter mode is concealed beyond the need of ignorance for knowledge acquisition that defines our human world now. We devalue ignorance and its place in consciousness, and yet we also elevate it. If a stage beyond is possible, it is a paradox to the thinker in the former stage.4
Architecture implies the attainment of stages beyond knowledge. Ignorance is necessary if knowledge is sought. Ignorance is an essential part of architecture through the importance given to design. But these are not the same. Spirituality may be brought to the fore through the key role of knowledge–production and its ignorance that conscious Mind brings into dwelling. What cannot be solved by thought, thinking and human-made knowledge may already be taken care of by other aspects. It may also be hindered by concealing tropes.
Thousands of years ago thought itself was already differentiated and referred to as a way to transform being human. The ancient Greeks formed what we still call philosophy. The ancients of the Indian subcontinent formulated a very extensive well tested approach to training via thought in terms of evolving Self. It is difficult to relate this to professional architectural practice. Hence the small steps of these articles.
The role of thought in spiritual practice is essential in a way that differs from philosophy. It engages as practice rather than the artifacts of thinking process, such as building, planning, urban, or managed wilderness space, or philosophical discourse. It is not analytical per se, although the activity of differentiation is engaged. It is not knowledge–production, although it is ‘learning’ in support of transformation. Spirituality is essentially transformative, rather than objective knowledge building, theory and utilization of world. We utilize our life to transform ourselves.
Spirituality and architecture as essentially harnessing mind are bound up together in a role that includes but supersedes thought, thinking and the play of knowledge and ignorance in dwelling. The practice of such harnessing would have essential characteristics which necessarily go back before our current histories and technology, as do spirituality and architecture. An approach to architectural practice in conjunction with spiritual practice allows us to engage thought in architectural practice, in the context of the human communal whole that is mind, as superordinate to the principles of its practical application of design, planning and construction. The approach to this must be sober and step by step, for thought is con—fused5 within everything, and it is fickle, mischievous and relentless.
Thought can be differentiated within mind, and mind’s attributes as defined within spirituality can be linked within architecture concisely enough to become a part of architectural practice, allowing it to supersede thought. The work being done in the two fields are different, but it can be taken like two of the sides of a coin, whereby the third side is never simultaneously visible. We always know that the other side must be there.
Architecture is within spirituality as the awareness that presences aspiration as we dwell. Spirituality is within architecture and its superordinate programme. That is not a symmetrical relationship. The conditions associated with thought and thinking at large in humanity are influential in architecture and in spirituality in the same way, although their ends differ. One serves the other.
If architecture were exterior to spirituality, then it would also be exterior to being human. Yet, if current architectural practice and its profession are taken at face value, then this exteriority is true. It also implies inhumanity. But then, if it has to be human, it is true as fiction, which is story–telling. Architecture can also presence as stories. Inhumanity is then never true, it is only a (bad) story. These stories are often about the absence of architecture. As such, there is no 'bad' architecture; architecture either is, or is not.
The inner self, the individual, identity and self-understanding are necessarily taken up together with architectural practice in this way. Spirituality and the current profession are now connected as fiction in practice. That is how the condition of the verknüpfung is contextualized now. It is a story about concealing architecture. This architecture tells of its concealing nature as architecture that is not. The story is of a lot of thought going on while misery, unreason and insanity are endemic and epidemic. This is in the places we make and how they presence architecture in its concealing technicist form. Architecture is 'true' and its value is asserted, defined and rooted in the pan-human plane in the public sphere as a realm that is at the scale of all of humanity.
Not all architecture is concealing in this way. This is a time where that is recognized as architecture. It is the livelihood of many practices.
Practice works within what is provided; it is opportunity found in paths that are formed at site at a place as context. The 'site' in this case is all of humanity. Spiritual practice is knowledge as practice, based on millennia of refinement within human evolution, to reveal (again) what is already long part of architecture and its practice.
Thought may be applied to change humanity, which seems obvious and necessary. Now it is about the concealing story and how to reveal architecture. Architectural practice serves this.
Summary of the introduction. PART.II introduces the concept of thought in relation to architecture. Thought is considered essential to humanity but is not the entirety of the mind. The current architectural profession is overly dependent on thought, leading to a disconnect from the other components of mind. This over-reliance on thought has resulted in a slow devaluation of architects in practice and misunderstanding of what architecture is. In this context, design is often mistakenly used interchangeably with architecture, with design being a form of architectural technology. Architecture is not merely design but is integral to consciousness and well-being. There are negative outcomes, such as poor built environments and a focus on short-term material gains that do not support humane environments, with the architectural profession implicated in the exploitation of the natural world.
The text questions the role of thought in architecture and humanity's well-being, noting that despite progress, many problems remain unsolved, and the quality of life has suffered. It calls for a reevaluation of thought and its role in practice, suggesting a connection between architecture and spirituality. We can draw from the Indian Knowledge System, which describes the mind as having four components: thought (manas), intellect (buddhi), ego (ahankara), and conscious mind (chitta), and the use of thought for attaining personal evolution. The need for discrimination, distinguishing between need and desire, is emphasized to realize the essential value of architecture.
See definition of ‘Entwurf’ in G¡a N.3.1 Definitions. German. Ent: Prefix that expresses the beginning of something. (drückt in Bildungen mit Verben den Beginn von etw. aus:) Wurf: Successful (artwork), something meaningful, prospering. ‘Werfen’ also means to throw, or throwing. (2. gelungenes [künstlerisches] Werk, etw. Bedeutendes, Erfolgreiches: mit dieser Erfindung ist ihm ein [neuer] W. gelungen; das Werk ist kein großer W. From Duden.) There is no single English word that represents the meaning of this German word. It describes the overall sense of an instance of architecture, of its character, its intents, its formality et al., while it is also an object. This is not intended to connote a concept that is culturally German, it functions in a wide sense and serves where there is no English word. Entwurf in architecture is outcome of the superordinate programme of architecture in service of a locus in a project that responds to all and any necessary complexity, inclusive of form, matter and the doing of production in the form of its essence.
From the G¡a definition. Discrimination. Although common usage of ‘discrimination’ often describes a gross lack of judgement or discernment that forms prejudice, it is also activity that leads to higher quality character and awareness. Prejudice is not discrimination itself, but the condition and skills of the one who uses it. The value for outcomes is formed by what is subjected to discrimination. A faculty of discrimination of values in the context of spiritual practice (e.g. neti neti, ‘not this, not this ...’) if provided adjacency to architectural practice, brings the evolutionary purpose of Mind near architectural practice. Discernment describes an ability, while discrimination is knowing, understanding and recognition, and relates to aspiration. Discrimination applied to what is evident and to what is intended in architectural practice, is on a path to ascertain the use of the world for the ‘highest’ purposes in dwelling.
The Mānasāra and its translation/interpretation in the early 20th century will be described in the articles of PART.IV.5. That will be referenced here.\
In an upcoming article there will be a discussion in terms of rajayoga that elaborates the concept of an ignorance/knowledge duality. That will be referenced here.
From definition of ‘con—fusion’ in N.3.1 Definitions. This term is used according to Univ.- Prof. Dr. Elisabeth von Samsonow’s usage of Konfusion as a positive term, based on an assertive or constructive action of elements that are ‘fused’ together. The emphasis is on the positive prefix ‘con’, which refers to ‘together’ and ‘jointly’, and ‘fusion’, ‘fused’ or fusing. It can result in the negative connotation of confusion when it is about elements joined in disharmony. This word as a positive action that exists whether or not disorientation and a lack of knowing arises. Fusing components for an Entwurf with force of intent (hence, ‘con’) is what the architect would create and prepare for. See Lehrveranstaltung Wintersemester 2010/11 Vorlesung Anthropologie I, “KONFUSION, Die Wahrheit der Wahrnehmung”, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. < http://kunstanthropologie.akbild.ac.at/index.php/ws-10-11-konfusion>