The timeless way of building

Notes

CHAPTER 1 THE TIMELESS WAY

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There is one timeless way of building.

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always been made by people who were very close 1o the center of this way. 1t is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beausiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way.

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that sleepy, awkward grace which comes from perfect case.

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Each one of us has, somewhere in his heart, the dream to make a living world, a universe.

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though this method is precise, it cannot be used mechanically.

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we have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a “system” and with “methods” since without them our surroundings will come tumbling down in chaos.

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this seeming chaos which is in us is a rich, rolling, swelling, dying, lilting, singing, laughing, shouting, crying, sleeping order.

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CHAPTER 2 THE QUALITY WITHOUT A NAME

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a corner of an English country garden, where a peach tree grows against a wall. The wall runs east to west; the peach tree grows flat against its southern side. Tthe sun shines on the tree and as 1t warms the bn ks behind the tree, the warm bricks themselves warm the peaches on the tree. It has 2 slightly dezy quality. The tree, carefully tied to grow flat against the wall; warming the bricks; the peaches growing in the sun; the wild grass growing around the roots of the tree, in the angle where the earth and roots and wall all meet. This quality is the most fundamental quality there is in anything.

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In physics and chemisiry there is no sense in which one system can be more at one with itself than another. And no sense at all in which what a system “ought to be” grows naturally from “what it is.”

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we have been led to believe that what something “is,” is an entirely separate question from what “ought to be”; and that science and ethics can’t be mixed

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for many people, the effort to become true to themselves is the central problem of life.

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The quality itself is sharp, exact, with no looseness in it whatsoever. But each word you choose to capture it has fuzzy edges and extensions which blur the central meaning of the quality.

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the distinction between soine- thing alive and something lifeless is much more general, and far more profound, than the distinction between living things and nonliving things,

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A thing is whole according to how free it is of inner contradictions.

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When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.

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Your person‘ and the likes and dislikes which are part of you, are themselves forces in your garden, and your garden must reflect those forces just as it reflects the other forces which make leaves grow and birds sing.

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There is no degree of wholeness or reality which can be reached beyond that simple pond.

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It hints at a religious quality. The hint is accurate. And yet It makes it seem as though the quality which that pond has is a mysterious one. It is not mysterious. It is above all ordinary. What makes it eternal is its ordinariness.

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It is a slightly bitter quality.

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CHAPTER 3 BEING ALIVE

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In nature, this quality is almost automatic, because there are no images to interfere with natural processes of making things. But in all of our creations, the possibility occurs that images can interfere with the natural, necessary order of a thing.

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All these moments in my own life—I only know them now, in retrospect.

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CHAPTER 4 PATTERNS OF EVENTS

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The character of a place, then, is given to it by the episodes which happen there,

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Always it is our situa- tions which allow us to be what we are.

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It is the people around us, and the most commen ways we have of meeting them, of being with them, it is, in short, the ways of being which exist in our world, that make it possible for us to be alive,

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If I consider my life honestly, I see that it is governed by a certain very small number of patterns of events which 1 take part in over and over again.

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when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have on my life, on my capacity to live. If these few patterns are good for me, I can live well, If they are bad for me, I can’t.

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The action and the space are indivisible. The action is supported by this kind of space. The space supports this kind of action. The two form a unit, a pattern of events in space.

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in two cultures; people may see sidewalks differently, that is, they may have different patterns in their minds-—and that they will, as a result, act differently on the sidewalks. For example, in New York, a sidewalk is mainly a place for walking, jostling, moving fast. And by comparison, in Jamaica, or India, a sidewalk is a place to sit, to talk, perhaps to play music, even to sleep. It is not correct to interpret this by saying that the two sidewalks are the same.

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CHAPTER 5 PATTERNS OF SPACE

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