#17 PART.II thought — How to think meaning and value in measure.

The Goal in Architecture PART.II Thought 4.0 Using measure as we aspire architecture.

This article opens up measure in architecture to develop the intricate relationship between thought–time, our perception of 'world', and architectural practice, according to our interiorized sense of time and light of the value of measure for environments aspiring architecture. The conversation between Dr David Bohm and Krishnamurthi points us to a way to express this in thought that thinks it needs time. It is often based on perceived separations and "hurt," defining our sense of self, shapes our experience. This subjective experience of time influences how we measure and value the world, a process mirrored in architectural practice as we project our internal condition into our surroundings.

We further examine the idea thatour attempts to resolve things by technological cause and effect can paradoxically reinforce them, by creating a self-referential loop. We do the same for the paradigm of the profession, and we have created a hyper-conservative culture. Finally, the article touches uponarchitectural concepts of monumentality, sublimityand bignessas architectural expressions intertwined with interiorized time and its ending.

Do we think that thought has size? Although it may seem strange that thought might have size, we do literally attempt measure of thought quantitatively in a struggle to ascertain how the brain works and its functioning. To give objective quantity to mind follows from engaging thought intervals in mind. Science does not clearly discriminate between measure of brain and mind. This is related to this discussion on human thinking that intends time in increments. We try to add measure, but it is not clearly measure of brain discriminated from mind, objectively. Relative valuation using increments is very much what we do in fulfilling our work in the world for environments. Nature measures through humanity. We give measure to the environments that we dwell in. We give measure to environments to fit them to our intentions. We gain the opportunity for aspiration in dwelling through conscious awareness of which our measure–giving is part.

Time is the world, giving distance. We interiorize time that is borne in nature for its purposes in manifesting the world. Scientifically, time exists in space as factors of measure, size and scale intertwined. We have generated value as time in mind, which we hold psychologically, socially and culturally, using our capacity to act in nature. We give measure to the brain physically and psychologically from the outside, and 'inwardly' as how our thinking is shaped and its valuative process. Time is not merely brought within thought conditions. It is thought structuring the contents of awareness. Architecture is measured work that includes aspiration.

‘I’

There is a direct relationship between the 'I'–ness, or intentionality and ego, and the interiorization of time. If we think in measure, what is gained and lost? For Krishnamurthi and Dr. David Bohm this critical aspect includes describing its condition as “to think I am something”. We think ‘what I am’, ‘what is’ and what may otherwise be, where these may be and in what time interval.

I can question that difference between what I see and what might actually be. I may think that I am something. I may think I am that here, at a place. I may want change. I may think that I may be this in another place or that I am different in the first place than in the other place. Between involves thought-measure of interiorized time. This relates to distance. The mind, however, has not got 'distance' or delay to anything. Distance is increments that measure the size of 'I'.

My time-based thought-condition is discrepancies in my thought-condition that thinks time and is con—fused as objective measure. Between the places in which I am something, ‘I’ is thought as measure of time and distance. Interval between what I am here, in one place, and there in another created place, is physical form of thought. The intervals that we perceive in the world are supposed as objective and fixed, while creativity is attributed to mind but mightily influenced by the objective world. Time is created within, then verified in action outwardly and then again formed as measures of the inward being through thinking it. Those objective measures of the world have ‘returned’ to become our interiorized measure.

This is appropriated in architectural practice. Architecture lives with us through measure given to our life. 'I', which refers to the ego and values, and in turn to aesthetics and freewill, is how we form our environment. With interior(ized) time-space in our individuated relationships to the world within each one of us, we project time inwardly. The condition of psychological time is a gap that we made, and all of us use it together. The thinking and thought contents of awareness are in conflict. We are in conflict together. This must be where architecture is activist now.

It is not at all clear that our current science can be true ‘before’ this interiorized—time came to pass. This has been a long time coming. We are dependent on this and we aspire its end game. Questioning our measure of world and the answers that science provide is essential to dwelling in aspiration.¹ That is the avante guard of architecture now.

Hurt

Dr. David Bohm: … The first thing is that there has been a hurt. That is the image, but at first I don’t separate it. I feel identified with it.

Krishnamurthi: I am that.

DB: I am that. But I then draw back, and say that I think there must be a ‘me’ who can do something.

K: Yes, can operate on it.

DB: Now that takes time.

K: That is time.

DB: That is time, but I mean, I am thinking it takes time. … If I don’t do that, that hurt cannot exist.

K: That’s right.

DB: But it is not obvious in the experience itself that this is so.

K: … I am hurt. That is a fact. Then I separate myself — there is a separation — saying, ‘I will do something about it’.

DB: The me who will do something is different. … And he thinks about what he should do.

K: The me is different because it is becoming.

DB: It projects into the future a different state.

K: Yes, I am hurt. There is a separation, a division. The ‘me’ which is always pursuing the becoming, says, ‘I must control it. I must wipe it out. I must act upon it, or I will be vengeful, hurtful’. So this movement of separation is time.

DB: … there is something here that is not obvious. A person is thinking that the hurt exists independently of ‘me’, and I must do something about it. I project into the future the better state and what I will do.

K: My rationality discovers there is no separation.

DB: Yes. I am this and will become that. So I am hurt and I will become non-hurt. Nowthat very thought maintains the hurt.²

My development of this blends the use of 'hurt' as all that we overcome in life, including the condition we are born as. Each of us has been in times and places where we are hurt, and 'I' is not well. ‘Hurt’ is a condition that needs change. Imbalance is felt more intensively, naturally, while our fine or 'good' condition is less pointed, with less of an impulse for change. We need to change the world to prepare it.

I am hurt here and I will then go ‘there’ (in time and other self) where I am healed and safe, but in thinking that, I keep ‘hurt’ in a doubled structure that is an increment of distance to resolution. Interiorized time hurts to develop awareness and the perception that supports it, but it covets 'what is' as objective science and truth. The thought knowledge–ignorance continuum develops in psychological time. While we are in an ignorance—knowledge system where that doubling as thought structured with interiorized measure is a self-referential intensifying loop. Hurt, or other undesirable conditions, or a sought condition of self or being, are immediately/already modified measures of quality.

This poses that we can eliminate “the very thought maintains hurt” that doubling and separation as separation within. Does this activate what we call architecture in dwelling? It is possible to suppose that ‘hurt’ can get architectural form if measure can be given to it as built or form or environment, and can this neutralize that increment? Do we build hurt? Is building itself hurting us? A direct role of architects in practice, rather than via science and technological abstraction, in cooperation with Nature’s work as humanity’s role, is thus always ‘probable’ at this point. This is an essential relationship. It is always possible to ‘see through’ to that condition. What then is the effect on thought time of the intent to end ‘hurt’? Working communally in environments that are not conflicting environments is very near us at any stage.

Architecture resonates in the interaction of thought-time with its technological matters in the human(e) environment that proceed from ‘what is in the world’. In thinking, within our mind’s creations formed as a particular relationship with thought-time that takes on magnitude and distance, time passes as thought increments. The conflicting value of world and what is ‘I’ are dangerous and filled with shining and explosive grandeur in humanity’s past and its vast potential. Monumentality, sublimity, and Bigness are three cultural institutions of its measure in Machine Ages architecture.³ These are part of thinking the intents for thought.

These are some forms of judgment and values that recognize interiorized time, distance and increment in Modernist architecture. John Ruskin includes the passing of time and the quality of timelessness in sublimity. His concern for the future, against the then already palpable pre-Modern destruction of the extant past condition, which he sought to bring toward the future, was very highly valued as the sublime. Sublimity was that past as it counted out its last days. Monumentality heralded the ending of history via pseudo-scientific modern history. Bigness takes the stand for architecture to testify the end of modernist technology. Each is a laudatory effort of hauling past as far forward in great architectture into the impending future as possible. For its ends, thought time must have its end. TheYogasūtrawas already on it almost two millennia ago. On the way, it has many ends.

1. The Imperial and Metric systems do not have value for ‘subjective’ variation. I use the Mānasāra as an example of a measurement system that gives units of measure architectural importance by contextualizing units in per project. The Mānasāra system has scope for integrating contextualizing material. It can take up current scientifically verified attributes. This is not developed in current interpretations and the text needs re–translation to be interpreted better so that these can be developed.

2. Krishnamurthi, Bohm, The Ending of Time. 1985. p. 71–72.

3. I will be covering each of these three in upcoming articles.