ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine how in Colin St John Wilson a common child-under-the-table aedicular experience was transformed into profound understandings and manifestations of the need for an architecture that accommodates that deep human need for places where they can feel 'at home'. Despite Wilson's talk of his obsessiveness, others perceive a gentlemanliness that lacks the 'hunger' or the hardness of his foes, such as Philip Johnson. Wilson's affirmation of the ethical leads to an architecture rooted in both awareness of psycho-physical realities and real patterns of use: its invitation allows theorists to move between inner and outer reality, from aedicule to polis, and to enjoy the potentialities of the in-between moment. Wilson correlates the need to possess and the need to feel a sense of achievement, and links the need to fulfil a creative endeavour with the need to draw a degree of sustenance from that endeavour.
