Comment

Comment by Neil Rocher on December 9, 2009 at 5:14pm

and the further you pull away from the rest of us......

Comment by Elizabeth on December 9, 2009 at 2:34pm

Thank you for bringing up an important question. (As one who has been studying sacred spaces for over 2 decades, all I can say is, the more I learn the more I realise my ignorance!)

Comment by Neil Rocher on December 5, 2009 at 2:08am

Spot on, it has nothing to do with materials it has to do with feeling. A building is a living space that absorbs live and emits an aura. I believe it starts from the first thought and idea and never ends. Even when you visit a ruin that is nothing more than rubble on the ground you can feel it. That building had soul and the soul still lives

Comment by Elizabeth on December 5, 2009 at 1:53am

Neil, this is very good but a rather difficult question, don't you think? When you ask if we breath life into what we create or is the breath already there, you are really commenting upon something magically complex and wonderful. In my view there is a never-ending interaction (for better or worse).
In a sense, space syntax also touches upon this chicken-and-egg type of question. The answer, of course, is both. You are creating spaces and you are inviting the existing energy or anima into those spaces. And all the users are creating anima as well. Thus, a building is constantly evolving and cannot be thought of as finished until until it has been embraced by its occupants (if it is ever finished).
I realise that to some architects, people are rather in the way and they would prefer their designs to be pristine and unsullied by users, who only add wear and tear and make things messy. People interfere with the purity of artistic vision. From seeing your fantastic designs, I doubt this describes you.
Users add their own layers of memory, emotion, perception, energy, anima to a space. Hopefully the architect has sensitively observed the site, respected the soul of the place, infused the space with his own soul, and intelligently designed for the highest possible energy from people within the space.
We have all entered dead zones, or at least, areas where life is not welcome, and know the difference instantly.
I hope I have understood your question correctly and not veered off the point?

Comment by Neil Rocher on November 24, 2009 at 11:12am

Modern materials allow us MORE create space they do not MAKE us creative

Comment by giovanni angelo on November 24, 2009 at 8:36am

if we take our survey on the materials we risk losing sight of the central point of the question. mud mud remains until a human being hit by divine illumination (use of his faculties to a higher level = creativity = soul) sees it as a different use and understand that plasma can return a different form, which give a different way until it becomes brick wall that becomes built space becoming becoming the ziggurat, the pyramids, to conceive that space can multiply and become a cell Mycenae or Miletus, etc. ... the piece of coal was born from fire Coal remains until a sentient being understands that with that object can make marks on a wall of a cave e. .. the central passage for me is the human ability to feel how nature, the world that we live offers. knowing how to act in harmony with the nature becomes the passage to develop a creative sensibility (feeling and express the soul).

Comment by Neil Rocher on November 24, 2009 at 1:26am

I'm not sure I believe all of that, the ice hotel is rebuilt every year, zulu huts are made from grass and there are loads of people who build with mud. I agree that we should look into what materials are used but I feel there is more to a design than the material. Anybody can can put a structure together but do they breath life into it?

Comment by giovanni angelo on November 23, 2009 at 8:55am

I believe we must distinguish what we mean by soul object architecture. wanting to give this term an aesthetic, formal, then a building that has a soul distinguish him from the common housing production to value art, top, which is intended to represent beauty, harmony, a different vision of life . for me it has a soul Fallingwater, Ville Savoye has a soul as though different form, the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies, Villa Malaparte, Schroeder house, for example. I can not see, feel, contemporary production, the same way to communicate. I rather think that globalization and standardization of language (and lifestyle) has deeply infected the architecture by reducing the expressive vocabulary a few words, forgetting the grammar and diversity dictated by latitude and different climates. I also believe that contemporary architects have lost contact with Earth, reducing the relationship with it in a simple "I'll use to do what I want." cities and homes were born in the past, after a careful evaluation of the sites. not today.

Comment by Neil Rocher on November 20, 2009 at 4:17pm

Exactly so do the buildings we create today have a soul? architecture is about creation but do we breath life into what we create or is the breath already there? do we even try today or have we lost the respect, vision and feel.

Comment by Salem Al Qudwa on November 20, 2009 at 3:58pm

Animism

by Alan G. Hefner and Virgilio Guimaraes

The term animism is derived from the Latin word anima meaning breath or soul. The belief of animism is probably one of man's oldest beliefs, with its origin most likely dating to the Paleolithic age. From its earliest beginnings it was a belief that a soul or spirit existed in every object, even if it was inanimate. In a future state this soul or spirit would exist as part of an immaterial soul. The spirit, therefore, was thought to be universal.

There has been sharp divisions of thought as to the original concept of animism held by primitive peoples. An British anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor in his "Primitive Culture" (1871) defined animism "as a general belief in spiritual beings and considered it 'a minimum definition of religion.'" He stated all religions from the simplest to the most complexed shared some sort of animistic belief. According to him primitive peoples, defined as those without a written tradition, believed the spirits or souls caused life in human beings. They pictured these souls as vapors or shadows going from one body to another. The souls not only passed between human beings but into, plants, animals and inanimate objects as well.

Tylor reasoned primitive man arrived at his animistic belief to help him explain the causes of sleep, dreams, and death. There naturally aroused a need to distinguish between an individual who was awake and one who was asleep, or an individual who lived and one who did not. Also there was a need to give a reason for the pictures some saw when they slept. The spirits were the early man's explanations.

Tylor was criticized by another British anthropologist Robert Ranulph Marett (1866-1943) who was convinced that primitive man had not developed the intellectual to form even such simplistic explanations as Tylor proposed. Marett suggested early religion was more emotional and intuitional in origin. He theorized that early man recognized some inanimate objects because they had some particular characteristic or behaved in some unusual way which mysteriously made them seem alive. He believed early man treated all animate objects as having a life and will of their own, but they never distinguished the soul as separate from the body, and could enter or leave the body. Marett conceded early man possessed the belief of animism, but it developed from the idea that some objects seemed to be alive like man.

It is insignificant how men and women gained the belief that a spirit or soul resides in all objects it is historically evident that they did. Trees and plants were worshiped as totems or because of their usefulness and beauty. In many cultures certain trees and plants have been feared. In some ancient cultures "trees were generally regarded as maternal deities or forest spirits, to be respected even when their lives were sacrificed for human use (pagan woodcutters never felled a tree without first begging its forgiveness). Female tree spirits live on in myth and folklore as dryads, the Greek version of the tree-worshiping druid priestesses."

Plants and trees have been considered sacred by themselves because, as some have thought, they are home to certain spirits. Both the soma plant of India and the coca shrub of Peru are worshiped for the intoxicating properties of the products made from them. Field crops, thought to harbor spirits of infertility, has been honored by ancient tribesmen and peasants throughout Europe. Traces of these cults can still be found.

The above describes nature worshipers among which many occultists are numbered. They view life as being in everything, and everything, even man, supporting life. Life is sacred -- all life. "One of the foremost characteristics of Neo-Paganism (or occultism) is the return to the ancient idea that there is no distinction between the spiritual and material, sacred and secular." Everything is still one as it was to primitive man.

Animism may also be the unconscious fabrication of a spirit manifestation by the medium. It is not a fraud as the medium actually believes that he is channeling a spirit. It usually happens when the medium is put under pressure to attend a request or works in a spiritualistic circle where spirit phenomena are expected to occur. The spirit of the medium then fabricates a manifestation and it is interesting to notice that the medium´s body undergoes all the usual changes that happen in an actual spirit communication, such as altered breathing, contortions, and such procedures.

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/a/animism.htm