ABSTRACT
This chapter is partly autobiographical, and describes my own attempts over the last few years to find a satisfactory way of understanding the relationships between people and their environments. It is incomplete, in the sense that I cannot claim to have yet found, or that I will ever find, final answers to the questions that are bothering me. Indeed, if one of the main conclusions of what I have to say is that so-called ‘ends’ or ‘goals’ are but landmarks on a journey, then this must apply as much to my own thinking and writing as to everything else that people do in the world. The most fundamental thing about life is that it does not begin here or end there, but is always going on. And for the same reason, as we saw in Chapter One (p. 20), environments are never complete but are continually under construction. My purpose here is to consider the implications of this point with regard to our ideas about the similarities and contrasts between human beings and other animals in the ways in which they go about creating environments for themselves. I am concerned, in particular, with the meaning of architecture, or of that part of the environment which is conventionally described as ‘built’.
