What we mean by a good building is one that has a certain quality, what we normally call "life." In a living environment,
as we define it, the people who live and work there are relaxed,
know that they belong there and enjoy a kind of freedom in relation to
the buildings and space around them. They feel and are “at home” in their
world.
In looking around us we can most frequently see this quality in traditional
buildings and towns, where, over the years, people have constructed an
orderly but loose configuration of space, rooms, gardens, houses, and larger
buildings. The later 20th century, for varied and complex reasons, has
not seen much in the way of living buildings and neighborhoods.
We do not wish to engage in a nostalgia for past centuries, but
to develop a modern interpretation of living structures that can speak
to us, our cultural specificity, and to our times, and yet reach this deep
understanding of spatial arrangements that support rather than deny humanity
and ordinary daily events.
Many ingredients are required to make a living structure: an understanding
of space and human response to it, appropriate technology and materials.,
constructing, from the outset, with and for the people who will adopt that
space as their own, and even arranging for the way that money flows for
initial construction, later repairs, adaptation, and growth. The key is in understanding and developing the processes by which living environments
can come into existence and prosper.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. The Picture Gallery shows you some of the buildings we have made in this spirit.