ABSTRACT
For Mr. Michael Rotondi, designing retreats has incorporated personal experience with his skills as an architect and his principles and beliefs about humanity. Rotondi believes that "the role of humans in the universe, because people can think about things and because of the consciousness that they have, is to push back against entropy". When he was working with American Indians, the elders made it clear that he was there to listen to their stories and convert their stories into buildings. Rotondi read a lot of Thomas Merton and then he began working with American Indians in South Dakota. The myth is basically the big story, the ritual people can say is the program, and the space is the medium for the body, either moving or at rest. The insights garnered from personal religious practice changed Mr. Rotondi's approach to designing such spaces: he began to understand that that's what meditation is really about.
