Abstract:
I've felt the sacred everywhere; at the dinner table with my family, in the woods on a snowy night, and even, (though its rare), up in studio. And in all of those times, when I realized the sacred is when I realized the moment. When my mundane actions became sacred was the very moment I noticed them. when I acted consciously rather than habitually.Furthermore, this consciousness is a result of fording connection to others, to myself, to the world, and to God. When I felt those connections, when I became aware of those connections, I touched the sacred.As a designer, I have the potential and the power to encourage and allow that kind of connection to occur in those who encounter my work. If I understand the rituals that allow for connection, I can design with them. Furthermore, I can design the rituals themselves, letting them inform and guide the design.I do not think I can create the sacred. To hope to do so would be ludicrous. If we maintain that any activity has the potential to be sacred it follows that any activity has the potential to be profane as well. What I can do, however, is provide opportunities for the sacred. And if one person fords a window, set just right to catch. the morning sun, and draws strength from the encounter, I have succeeded. and if one person notices the ground fall away as they climb into a bed just high enough, or watches the colors from a stained glass window sweep across the floor every afternoon, and those activities become rituals in their lives, I have succeeded then as well.So that's what this project is all about. an attempt to create those moments where the sacred is possible. Not to force any action, but to allow for and encourage interaction.So, before I designed the spaces, I had to discover the ritual behind them, I had to create the ritual behind them. So I sat, and wrote rituals, stories about the people in this place, and what it was to be them and be there. In them, I wrote about how the place felt, and what it looked like, and what I felt when I was there. Sometimes the stories were journal entries, sometimes they were narratives sometimes they were a few sentences long, and sometimes a few pages. In any case, all describe, in one way or another, how someone might touch the sacred, might make a connection, through s ritual made possible through place. And as I wrote, I drew the rituals. I drew them as movement and as place, until a ritual place began to emerge.
