exemplar analysis - himalayan buddhist temples

in my exemplar research i came across this wonderful pdf which immediately falls into line with my analysis of monastery typologies around the world...

at a glance there is one huge element that draws parallels... the courtyard

it seems as though, at this very early stage of research - there is an attachment to this internal - external spatial arrangement that causes those within it to achieve a heightened sense of enlightenment.

intriguing... the courtyard (in planning sense again) holds more impact then the key building - in this case the pagoda...

exemplar analysis - the bora ring

although not a monastery as such, thinking about the cloister space in the abbey - i immediately thought of the bora-ring. the main ceremonial space within indigenous australian culture.

last semester i spent a great deal of time looking into this element of indigenous australian culture and its spatial hierarchies. immediately the introspective nature of the courtyard and cloister draw amazing parallels... additionally, the boar ring was constructed by digging soil from the centre of the circle outward to form mounds - similar to how the buildings in an abbey precinct form the spatial arrangement...

here is a diagram i did last semester to describe the bora-ring...

the kakka (meaning something wonderful) is at the centre of the ring and where all initiations of young men took place, as well as any other ceremonies. whilst in terms of built form very different to the abbey - this notion of perimeter and spatial arrangement begins to form an interesting parallel...

exemplar analysis - "the abbey"

in moving forward, it is important to look back - to where we have come from... therefore the next section of the blog will focus on my exemplar analysis. 

in understanding the dynamics of a monastery / seminary I feel it important to analyse the layouts and workings of these building typologies around the world.

the firs one i have decided to look at is the traditional "abbey"

the abbey is broken up in to very distinct zoning that focus around a central courtyard - girt by the "cloister" - or main circulation space of the gathering of buildings. this is done to create an element of "introspectiveness" for those within the abbey.

when analysed closer against our 5 elements - the typology can be broken down concisely...



eating, dwelling, making, moving, breathing

the key point that resonates with me with this abbey typology is the very ordered structure of the buildings and their strong relationship to the inside courtyard - in planning sense - even more strongly so then to the cathedral, or key building within the composition. 

the importance of the "cloister" or movement space is integral also as this is where monks and visitors were immediately drawn for conversing and thinking... resonating strongly with my own ambitions of the "consciousness" element of the woodfordia project.

it will be interesting to compare this against monasteries of other religious denominations and cultures... hopefully this can inspire my own built form and spatial relationship...

http://talleypcb.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/dscf0128.jpg?w=717&h=538

above is the incredible courtyard space at westminster abbey... a truly inspiring and incredible space - regardless of your religious inclination...

elders without voices....

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”

a passage from "wandering" by hermann hesse

this is the most beautiful piece of writing I have ever come across and resonates strongly with my feeling towards my woodfordia proposal - i won't go into it too much more as I feel as though it is time to begin moving out of the theoretical realm and into some more solid architecture - however I will continue to revisit this throughout the design process for clarity and vision.

the importance of elders

i think it is very important to note that the idea of the seminary is by no means a religiously driven notion - rather the exchange of knowledge between peers - overseen by "elders"- a type of people we struggle to understand in western culture but invaluable in terms of out level of "consciousness"


peter stutchbury mentions this in his book under the edge also...


"our elders are those who have travelled long distances and gathered wisdom, we should orient ourselves around those who are most important to our path, yet also pay respect to those that have taken the the time to evolve. lessons need to be comprehended and passed on so that tradition is and acquired wisdom is not lost to bright light and fast cars. the simple word that explains this process is respect."


in a woodfordia context i can see a new paradigm developing - where we look to the past but forward at the same time -simultaneously... to create a new path into the future. consulting with our "elders" -such as indigenous australia who have many great lessons to teach in regards to "consciousness" and attachment to "being"

consciousness and knowledge

“I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.” 

Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund


as i have spoken about in recent posts i feel as though a pursuit of increased consciousness in regards to the issues facing all of us is the only way that we can really change the momentum of the crises that we are currently experiencing.

before semester i read a book that has become very powerful to me - by hermann hess - narcissus and goldmund - which documents the meeting of two kindred spirits within the walls of a seminary. without going into too much detail, the two key characters are very different people in terms of personality but drawn to each other as they help increase the others understanding of the world - a heightened level of consciousness.

it is the early chapters set in the seminary though that resonate with me in terms of the future of this project. those that populate the seminary are an eclectic mix - although in a christian environment there is a range of life paths being undertaken and the seminary provides the forum for learning and understanding. the descriptive nature of the author takes the reader within the walls of this highly educational facility that looks further than education in terms of pure documentation and facts. instead it looks at the heightened "consciousness" of those enrolled.

seminary in etymological terms

seminary 

mid-15c., "plot where plants are raised from seeds," from L. seminarium "plant nursery," figuratively, "breeding ground," from seminarius "of seed," from semen (gen. seminis) "seed" (see semen). Meaning "school for training priests" first recorded 1580s; commonly used for any school (especially academies for young ladies) from 1580s to 1930s. Seminarian "seminary student" is attested from 1580s.

the raising of seeds - what a wonderfully appropriate description of how i envision woodfordia developing from a seed - becoming a breeding ground for new thought. 

i feel as though perhaps woodfordia in my mind is a "seminary of consciousness" of sorts. something that i would love to pursue from this point on in the design process... creating a place of residence and living, understanding and teaching, DEVELOPing those 5 mantras.

Eating, Dwelling, Making, Moving, Breathing...

a centre in which apprentices can devote time to becoming more in touch with these basic elements of human existence...

adaptability - us + them... a case of consciousness???

i have been pondering the idea of what allows some species, or even individuals within a species to be more adaptable to their environments than others, and furthermore what that really means.

in a lot of reading that i have done in the past couple of years the idea of "consciousness" plays a significant role in helping us understand why things happen, and also why we choose to do these things - live a certain way or make particular choices.

to simplify what i am talking about and to draw it back to the previous posts i have made about the adaptability of native australians, we can look at the way in which a tribe would choose a particular dwelling space at particular time of the year in relation to climatic factors. 

in summer months a camping ground would be selected upon the premise of proximity to water, ample shading, access to breeze - access to food resources and finally there would be a decision made to move onward once the resources in the area became scarce and unable to replenish themselves. there was a certain level of consciousness involved in every decision made - therefore establishing a strong report with the environment around them - a responsibility to the mother earth that fed, housed, clothed them. each member of the tribe had an immediate relationship - not only to one another - but also to the landscape.

in terms of eating, dwelling, moving, making, breathing - it seems obvious that the indigenous australian was far more in sync with the decision making process involved in every daily activity and how through engaging with the landscape they ensured the most comfortable lifestyle possible. additionally there was a spirituality involved in this relationship.

compare this to the current western model in which we live and it begins to become apparent that it made be perhaps our lack of "conciousness' in what we consume and do that has resulted in a non-sustainable life cycle.

we move in fossil fuel vehicles which require the earth to be dug up from beneath us, our food comes from farms 1000's of kilometers away on trucks and boats which run on pollutants also, our houses require air conditioning and touch the earth heavily with little consideration of the climatic zones they are within, we make things and buy and sell to other corners of the earth - cut down trees for palm oil plantations and so on etc...

for me until this level of "consciousness" is addressed then the "sustainability" issue can not be appropriately dealt with. we continually look for high tech solutions to high tech problems - however many of us do not even comprehend the smallest details of our daily life, such as "where does my meat come from?"... 

my vision for woodfordia is starting to shape - addressing the human connection to the elements of 

eating, dwelling, moving, making, breathing

in their apparent simplicity - how complex they have become - we need to start a shift in "consciousness" of people to enforce change... that is what the "think farm" needs to become! thinking in terms of "conscious thought" rather than developing new technologies as such...

the aboriginal nations

in terms of describing the difference between indigenous and western inhabitants of this incredible country, perhaps no other image can be as powerful... we can see that australia was once divided by hundreds of aboriginal nations that derived their boundaries - and in particular size from the overall area required to sustain the people of that particular nation.

for example those in coastal regions on the east coast of australia, with an abundance of resources require much smaller areas to survive as opposed to countries in the more harsh central australian desert regions.

we see immediately that in comparison to the political state lines that we live by in todays western culture the mapping was purely driven by means of survival and the self-sufficiency of the tribe. 

wealth in this case is based upon survival - not money...

"it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change." 

charles darwin

reading - environmental adaptability

this reading raises a topic of discussion that has recently become very important to me. the notion of permanence and ephemerality within the environments we create, not just as architects - but as human beings as a collective.

in western culture we like to refer to "sustainability" as a new notion that has gathered a great deal of momentum in the last 20 years especially. however i find this insulting and ignorant of the lifestyles and cultures that inhabited, and continue to inhabit the world today - indigenous cultures that had a strong attachment to the world surrounding them - people that lived harmoniously within the landscape, without exhausting resources and responding to the natural factors influencing them.


"now we reverse the inquiry to discuss, not the adaptability of the organism to the environment, but that of the environment to the changing purposes of the organism."


through technological advancements and the rapid exchange of information - mankind has become able to easily manipulate the world around him. whether it be by the use of a halogen light to brighten a poorly lit room, air conditioning to cool a non ventilated office in the CBD or even the use of a refrigeration unit to preserve our processed meat. in general we are out of sync with what adaptability really is in its purest sense.

Peter Stutchberry discusses the notion of indigenous australians and the way they lived within the landscape as an exemplar of adaptable living.


"the traditional indigenous australian house is the landscape. it is usually temporarily occupied and located near a water source. invariably there is some shelter but essentially it is rooms in the environment for

cooking, talking, making, sleeping. (very much like our big 5 themes)

privacy is not a priority. as the room is big for what is fundamentally sharing - it is not a place for selfish behavior"

under the edge - page 22


one would consider this form of living extremely simplistic in its nature, however as we become more sensitive to the landscapes around us we begin to realise the complex network of systems working even in, what on face value, could seem like a very basic environment - such as an arid desert setting.

the reading talks about the nature of adaptability of environments in terms of levels of complexity...


"from an analogy with biology, it might be suspected that highly specialised forms would be relatively in-adaptable, while forms of little differentiation and low structure would be the ones that from which future development will most easily proceed. thus a simple square house of one room would be more adaptable than a more intricate design fitted about the special habits of a particular client.

but simpson points out the fallacy of this notion even in the course of biological evolution. we are accustomed to associate unadapted, and therefore extinct species with "over-specialised" ones."

also that -

"that specialised organism, man, has so far proved himself to be the most adaptable creature going"


i understand the logic behind the authors statements - but at the same time argue that the adaptability of man hinges not upon his reliance on the complex systems of the environment around him - which for 60,000 years allowed indigenous australians to flourish in this country. but instead on his artificial, and indeed still very complex systems, that work in complete disagreeance with the environment around him.

what we have established in this western model is 2 very complex systems working in complete juxtaposition at all times. in early posts i have discussed the notion of finding low-tech solutions to future sustainability issues... working with the complex systems inherent in the environment around us without forcing against it is the only way to achieve balance i feel. similar to the way the traditional owners of this land did for so long.