Walk Through Walls and Other Fascinations

I've always believed that architecture has a higher purpose than just to protect us from the elements. It forms our basis of relating to ourselves and to others. It creates the foundation of our organization and thought processes. A building is a manipulation of space and elements.

Since I can remember, most of my dreams have involved the organization based on architecture and the relations that develop in those spaces. I have had dreams of beautiful palaces, of interlinked deckwalks on a swampy bog, and intricate details of imagined churches.

I recall in elementary school I was one of a handful of kids in my class to test out of our final year of reading, and we were thrown into taking Spanish. Our Spanish teacher was a young man of northern heritage who grew up in Chile. As a class filled with smart kids, we usually would lead our Spanish classes off-topic or playing Spanish Password and BINGO. One day he talked about living in Chile and hiking the nearby mountains and what he'd found on his explorations. He mentioned that it was then he would gain ideas and insights about the forces of nature. He made a side remark once that he believed that in the future humans would be able to walk or pass through doors and walls without effort. (Maybe he had read something like this futuristic dream.) The thought intrigued me.

It was also during this time that I became involved in calligraphy and began perfecting my calligraphic writing. (Still not perfect, yet.) Several years ago, the Smithsonian magazine featured the first illuminated script of the Saint John's Bible. Wow. Researching illuminated script and sacred geometry pulled up even more interesting information: Coding sacred numbers and design into the illustrations.

Maybe there's a connection here between sacred architecture, geometry, faith and our physical nature.