The light, the cut gem and the darkness that draws the light.

A-07 The value that makes concealing architecture impossible.

I will write about measurement systems and gems to express the value that will make concealing architecture impossible. Architecture of building and environments is like the light in a gem, coming into the gem and appearing to us. The environment is cut with measure like a gem is cut with facets. The light in a gem is like the light of love in people, and in the places we make for each other.

Measure

We generally assume no value to a measure beyond the number that the system declares as a dimension. The measurement of our buildings, and everything else today, is based mainly on Imperial and Metric systems of standardized increments whose role is to transmit dimensional factors. But this does not mean that it is just numbers. Any measurement system includes information to its specific culture and its environment.

Prior to the 19th century we did not have global standardization as we do now. Without contemporary industrial production and trans- and intercontinental trade with the need for interchangeable components, both physically and economically, there was no motivation for such standards. Our standardized systems now reflect our factories, our economies based on the way that we look at matter. The reductivist value of the system is data. That reductive attitude is also a value.

The meaning borne in a length or a weight, etc., as number is an increment that was decided on basis of the measurement system. There is a social and cultural history. The Imperial system originated in the ancient Greco-Roman system that was based on the 1:6 proportion of the body. The vertical dimension of the head relative to a body is nominally equal to the height of the head that belongs to the foot as an Ancient Roman ideal. Over the centuries the length of the 'foot' became a multitude of dimensions. In the 19th century it was standardized within the British Empire for commercial purposes. The system does not convey any significance for human spiritual wellbeing.

The metric system was generated in the cultural space of the French Revolution. It was originally calculated as a portion of the circumference of the earth, which is actually quite difficult to define. Today it is changing as meltwater flows to the equator, broadening the planet relative to its axis (and slowing its rotation). Early on there were also multiple dimensions for the meter. It is now defined as 1/299,792,458 the distance light travels in one second, which is hard to measure at home, but we still assume that the speed of light is constant.

Measurement systems scale using proportions. Imperial proportioning is 1:3, 1:12 (inch/foot/yard), and 1:4, 1:8, 1:16, etc. The Metric proportion is 1:10, defaulting to our numeric system. While both of these proportional systems are taken for practicality, the inherent value is not particularly meaningful to our built world.

When we developed our projects on paper or in materials, increments were essential to how we worked. Our technology now allows us to create in digital 'space' to which any increment system can be fitted once we are ready for that stage. If design production is fully within a digital system, whatever numbers are there can be concealed within the machine, like email addresses and URLs that we do not actually need to know. Product dimensions, like bricks or panels, may be part of a design, and make conversion an issue within the design as these are tied to incremental measurements systems, and they are tied to structural and biological form.  'Hard conversion' from a form, if we prioritize the form itself, or from one to the other of the systems, makes for strange numbers. Even that matters less now because any number is a good number to a computer and we do not need to round or do soft conversion for convenience if machines are producing the elements.

However, our standardized measurement systems are not as neutral as all this makes them seem. Even if they are concealed, they influence and have their effect. They are essentially technological and are informing us with the science that influences all of our processes, even when they are concealed within production, linking what we do through quantities defined accordingly. These systems have value in terms of the Machine Ages Modernist technological paradigm.

This creates conflict in work that does not adhere to the intent of Modernism, which these dimensional systems support, such as natural systems, which it is orientated to dissect and exploit. If architecture is attuned to the grown of nature, of which consciousness is integral, it opposes architecture as well. This is where post-modernism’s wry and cynical aspect is telling as it was an attempt for more meaningfulness beyond what had become dogmatic modernism. The intent that architects may have had was caught a priori in Modernist Machine Ages technic. Wherever grounds for Modern architecture remain a sincere goal, the challenge and irony of post-modernists, such as in the 1980s work of Michael Graves, Terry Farrell or Charles Moore, and Deconstructivist work, are lost. The look may be taken up, but they are not produced with integrity, and are meaningful only as a stylistic message. That is, nevertheless, also meaning and value.

Any architectural project can bear its own system of proportion and increments that register its measure. Given the freedom to transmit dimensions in a digital realm, it is possible to integrate local, specific environmental and cultural measure of the mode of building and to develop renewed integration and harmony with the nature's living process. Any project has form that can be coalesced into a system of measure.

The Indian Traditional Knowledge System integrates place and person to make project specific increments that are part of a wider arrangement of proportional relationships based on natural things such as seeds. This was before science was hived off from 'natural philosophy' and before technology as we understand it now separated from the natural world. The system of proportions that is based on people, not on a fixed increment of distance. Its measure is registered to the most important people involved in a particular environment and nature's growth. The architect would create a measuring stick for each project. This and other such systems do not comprehend contemporary methodology and materiality, although a brick remains similar and the relationship can be extended that way. I have used this 'meta' level to understand the meaningfulness of our systems.

A system of measure is different from a measurement system of increments. Measure reflects, represents and enlivens life at a place within universal life and consciousness. It may form intentions and aspiration. Measure is meaningful in the public sphere, like architecture.

In projects like Biozentrum (1987), Peter Eisenman's studio attempted algorithmically derived measure to integrate a cultural space in the design. Parametrics are not as important here as the intent to evolve proportional measure specific to the project. We have unleashed a lot of power using technological measures, but it is clear now how humanity can confront or contradict, but not ignore or erase these forces. The materials that we use must adhere to nature's forces, proportions, and scaling rules. That architectural systems try to develop this subjective level of measure is important.

The Cut Gemstone

Gemstones are cut to show light. The pressure, the molding, the proper cooling, and the subtle ingredients that give colour are rare on our planet. Without being cut, gem stones often look literally like stones. The most wonderful gems seem to be filled with light. That light does not emanate from the stone, but in our eyes, the light fills the stone so that a gemstone may seem to have its own light. The greatest stones when cut properly seem to cry out for light, sometimes even the sun is not enough to fully satisfy them. The more light, the greater the color, the greater the miracle.

This is like people. Wisdom and great heartfulness are formed in this world by the pressures in the myriad ingredients of a life or many lives. How that love forms creates a glow that transcends the body, and the health and wealth, of the individual. Life creates a soul's path and the aspiration of consciousness cuts the facets. Architecture is the same as the light that we perceive, which appears to be in the gem; planning for architecture is to cut the environment of the public sphere and nature so that the light of consciousness aspiring fills it. All of the life around us is the light that makes it bright. The gem appears to have its own light because it has been made in our environment. Human life appears in our environments as architecture.

It is easy for us to accept that the light we feel in the environment comes from the built objects. Science says that light reflects and refracts, but it is beauty to us. We cannot scientifically determine that architecture is any built form, but we can experience it together. Architecture's presencing is within us. It is in each of us and also in Mind. Mind is not mine or yours; it is ours.

The Value

Our body and the places we inhabit appear to be separate. But from conception we are always in a space. We cannot not be in a space. There is no way to even imagine not being somewhere. No human being is ever without a place to be. Ancient systems say that space is always, and it is time and movement that creates our universe.

Although the body appears distinct, we and everything else are 90% invisible and immeasurable, which science verifies. Body and place are separate only as we perceive them. Our perceived self with the whole being that is there for us to discover is immersed in an ocean of energy. According to the knowledge we have had for millennia, but almost not at all in recent times, our bodies have multiple layers and realms that proceed into subtlety, with increasing capacity and potential that we can develop to evolve ourselves.

In environments that we prepare and build, this counts not only for the person in a place, but all the people that contribute to creating it and maintaining it, and everyone who has ever been there. This energy is bound up and borne as our consciousness. It is physical, mental and beyond. The world, therefore, exists differently than we perceive it, and it changes when we perceive it. Nature creates as it does on its laws and rules. But nature is also in us, and the results of how we perceive is shared with all being. Measure based in proportion, taking cues from natural living metabolism can resonate into invisible domains that we do occupy.

Many knowledge systems do this, from Vedic or Indian Traditional Knowledge to North and South American traditional and indigenous knowledge. Most traditional systems do not express other stages or levels of being directly. Although it seems not, this really depends on the awareness of an individual. In the jewel, the facets reflect within, sometimes in complex cascades of form. With closed eyes, only the surface is tangible, while the potential reflection within is knowable through touch. Traditional knowledge is borne in practical use through great tenderness and care for precision, in reverence for nature and its beings and creatures. That precision is often for the ‘light’ that we can not see, but maybe we can feel. A measurement system includes and encodes this depth, both in general and specifically for a place.

The environments that we make are output of the world that we perceive. Our homes, our cities, our parks, and what we do as we urbanize the land and the oceans, are the result of capacity that nature produces only through humanity (in this planet), made according to what we perceive that we have to work with. Nature is to us as we perceive it in practice. Practice of making environments can change what we perceive, and that changes what we have to work with.

Any individual can evolve their perception as they wish. The architecture that architects may prepare in resonance with human Mind is based on how each one takes up that global human perception of world. Experience or aspiration is granted by our participation in humanity when we presence architecture. That is how gratitude, compassion and impeccable behaviour are effective. It is, therefore, possible to extend awareness through architecture.

What we do, feel and know is shared everywhere like the cells of our body share influence in each of us. Allegorically, our bodies are well or ill based on how we influence all of its parts, whether we are aware of them or not. So too are our hearts in terms of the environment and what we do in the space we are part of. The environment always affects us. The more we are consciously aware of that, the more valuable it is. For made environments and things, measure can extend that awareness. Measure forms ‘facets’, allegorically, of the environment.

The valuation of this infinite energy and intricate love that we have in the world is not a matter of whether or not we have love and participate in that love or not. We must. Nevertheless, we have aspiration that requires a great deal of work for almost everyone to allow themselves to be illuminated by that love. Who can see that kind of light? Yet even the blackness of space is attracting us with its secret light.

Architecture is the environment we make facilitating the illumination of that light in gems that the light of love fills as the universe brought through human life in our nature. The light in a cut gem is not from within the gem, but it appears to be in it. So too does the light in us become evident in our humane and divinely oriented environments, if we prepare them for that. Then we will be in them aspiring that light.

This is the value that makes concealing architecture impossible.