ABSTRACT
For as long as humans have designed their world, they have produced some
exceptional environments that stand out by not merely meeting physical/
utilitarian needs, but by addressing the plane of higher human aspirations –
the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels. These exemplary works have
profoundly inspired the human spirit by effectively fostering individual and
communal contemplation. The twentieth century too produced exemplary
works that have encouraged what Emerson has called “an original relation to
the universe.”1 Both as a practicing architect and a teacher of design, I have
long been interested in whether masterful works of the near and far past
could yield insights (including underlying principles, strategies and devices)
that might enable creative individuals to design works for today that can sim-
ilarly move and spiritually enrich people. In the course of my research of
representative works from many periods of history spanning Western,
Eastern, and “primitive” cultures, and of the human response to these
works, I came to realize that an environment’s contemplation-inducing, poetic/
spiritual dimension is ultimately its capacity for making a visitor/user’s con-
cerns of day-to-day reality recede temporarily into the background in favor
of an openness to contemplative beholding. The ensuing processes of
contemplation effectively cause one to step outside one’s typical frames of
reference of time, space and self, and can lead to a greater feeling of being
in the present and partaking in a greater harmony of all being. In that,
they are comparable to the early stages of using mind-stilling techniques
from meditative traditions, such as a mantra, or tying one’s attention to the
breath, all of which are intended to “trigger” the mind into entering a
meditative state.
