Building Vision

A sermon offered by Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia
Unitarian Universalist Church, Lafayette, Indiana, February 19, 2001

We have been taught that there is no objective difference between good buildings and bad, good towns and bad.

The fact is that the difference between a good building and a bad building, between a good town and a bad town, is an objective matter. It is the difference between health and sickness, wholeness and dividedness, self-maintenance and self-destruction. In a world which is healthy, whole, alive, and self-maintaining, people themselves can be alive and self-creating. In a world which is unwhole and self-destroying, people cannot be alive: they will inevitably themselves be self-destroying, and miserable.

But it is easy to understand why people believe so firmly that there is no single, solid basis for the difference between good building and bad. It happens because the single central quality which makes the difference cannot be named. It is unsayable.

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

The quality which has no name is so ordinary that it somehow reminds us of the passing of our lives. The search which we make for this quality in our own lives is the central search of any person, and the crux of any person’s story.

Second Reading

The more living patterns there are in a place – a room, a building, or a town – the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self maintaining fire which is the quality without a name. And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety in the presence of the fact that all things shall pass. This is the quality itself. --Christopher Alexander

What are the voices of buildings? How do they speak to us? How do they touch us? How are we shaped by them? There is no doubt that buildings speak – they can speak to us of serenity, of warmth, of authority, of mystery, of emptiness, of pride, and even of arrogance. They do this beyond words -- by moving our bodies, guiding our steps, by compressing or expanding the space around us, by directing our eyes, by meeting our hands. Architecture is the language of space – space bounded and freed – space shaped and shaping. This congregation is engaged in a dialogue with a building -- a future space – perhaps the word dialogue is too limited – what can we call the profound conversation over years, of more than one hundred and fifty people with one another, with materials and space, with plans and visions, with principles, and with a building that does not even yet exist?

There are qualities of living – of architecture – of community – that are both spoken – like the languages of buildings and at the same time deeply unsayable – like tasting the sunlight in an apple. But here we do, as Marge Piercy wrote, serve the word we cannot name. No matter – we can still taste the sunlight and plant the tree. And, try, as ever we must, to come close to the unsayable – the qualities that cannot be named.

Was there ever a moment when you entered a building or some other structure and you were positively moved, amazed, healed, or even challenged to grow by the building itself. The opposite is surely true -- there are countless times that each of us enter a building and we’re baffled, frustrated, irritated or put off. In banks, office buildings, high schools, shopping malls, welfare offices, and houses of beaurocracy – and numberless cinderblock structures, our bodies and our senses encounter not simplicity but barrenness, not grandeur but arrogance, not clarity but emptiness -- the heart is constrained and the spirit sinks. It’s so common an experience that we can become – are used to it – or at least we seem to be…

But let me return to the first question – how many of you have had a signal experience in which your heart, your mind, when you were transformed by architecture?

My first dramatic encounter with Architecture was at Fallingwater – the home in the Western Pennsylvania woods designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Kaufman family. I went there one autumn in high school – I remember the blazing colors of the leaves in chaotic brilliance on the ground and the sharp fall light moving through the branches. Inside I yet felt outside – I stood – dizzy -- in the living looking down at the water rushing under the house and my notions of what-a-building-was-for changed forever.

Our relationship with architecture is intimate. We move amid architecture all of the time in our need for shelter and for boundaries. But we are more than merely creatures of shelter. We need not simply to be out of the wind or rain or fierce sun – though we need not to be ravaged by the elements – we are yet of them. They dance in us as vitality. Burn in us as the fire of life. We are elemental – of the elements – we are – not romantically but in fact, the children of this earth – made of a piece with the elements.

Made of a piece with The wind and rain

The brilliant leaves and the rich dark soil they become

The soft darkness and the blazing sunlight

The movement of grass and the slow growth of trees

The hard, subtle hues of stone and the delicate lace of lichen…

We are made of and into nature – but we also shape nature – we shape all of that mass of being that surges around us. Our relationship with architecture is this intimate – that we take nature – of which we are – of which we are – and we transform it and define our relationship to it through architecture. We shape nature as we shape everything – but this is an ultimate relationship: life giving or life denying – religious in the sense that I talked about two weeks ago. If you recall I mentioned that the word religion is from the latin root religare – to bind together to tie back together. The Rev. Kendyl Gibbons reminded me this week that the word also comes from the same root as ligament – it binds together. But in a flexible and living way. In this sense the work of religion is to bind life back together – deeply – to reunite and make whole. And such is also the work of architecture. Those buildings, which support our relationship with nature – with our true relationship with nature – that are of it and delicate within it – those buildings begin to restore our wholeness. We know them when we experience them – like Fallingwater they feel vibrant – alive.

Christopher Alexander – the architect – wrote: The specific patterns out of which a building or a town is made may be dead or alive. The architect is saying that buildings and places speak in a language of patterns that may be dead – like a white castle hamburger joint – or alive – like the gardens of Antonio Gaudi in Spain – or like the surprising, vibrant, green trimmed bank one building in West Lafayette designed by Louis Sullivan (the teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright) in. Or… you may remember a living building or parts of buildings – patterns in whose presence you felt more alive because the pattern itself was alive.

My own second signal experience with architecture was, interestingly enough, with another Frank Lloyd Wright building. This time it was in college and the experience was with the Guggenheim museum in New York. Now I feel a defensive disclaimer coming on – I know well – all too well – that Wright wasn’t a perfect architect – he created roofs that were pure trouble and was more opinionated about ideal form than about plain human scale. But he was stretching – reaching quite a distance to find a new architecture and a new humanity to design and live in it. The Guggenheim, for those of you who may not have seen it, is a spiral building – made of rings that spiral larger and larger from the bottom floor to the top. The artwork hangs along these ever rising walls. The outside of the building looks almost like a great shell. Anyway, I entered the building and, in true Wright style the entry was low ceilinged –it’s been many years – my memory has it as soft and perhaps a little dim light. But then I emerged into the spiral gallery space and the ceiling opened some five stories above my head – with a powerful line of the spiral balcony as it rises and rises. For me the shock was enormous – this was power – not intimidating but promising – inviting -- not more than human but of humanity’s best. I stood in the center of the space and wept. All around me was some of the greatest modern art I had ever seen – the sorts of things I had only seen in books – just waiting for my eighteen-year-old encounter. It was, for me, the finest marriage of art and the spirit – the spiral lines of the building had drawn me upward – skyward – expanded me, while the artwork invited me to the heaven that we can create here together.

It is said that deep art – that profound art does two things.

First it touches – through a one person’s insight that is translated into an artwork – something which is shared – which is universal in some way.

The other gift of art is that the artist not only touches some deep shared thread among humans but also senses some future movement of the human spirit – somehow reaches into the future. It is an interesting idea – that the artist is, in some way, a prophet. Among other definitions, Merriam Webster says a prophet is: one gifted with more than ordinary spiritual and moral insight; one who foretells the future; or an effective or leading voice for a cause or group. I’d argue that the prophetic ability of the artist is one that comes from the insight of knowing humanity and therefore having some sense of humanity’s unfolding. So, I think that, largely, the prophetic power of art is the power of invocation and invitation. Art envisions – evokes a new future and then that vision invites people toward it – rooted in the human experience it is, at many times, likely to speak to humans and to have the power to invite us forward. Art – at its best – has the power to be both shared and prophetic.

It was the architect Frank Furness, a wild Victorian precursor to Louis Sullivan, who said, "Architects are the preachers of the streets." Furness is saying that – positive or not – for better or for worse – architecture speaks strong beliefs about the nature of humanity and the shape of life. Architecture shapes life – profoundly, as religion does – and I would venture, perhaps even more powerfully than religion – for it speaks to us first directly through our bodies. Powerful stuff. And just as there is bad religion – religion that hates, starves, punishes, isolates, and micromanages there is bad architecture that does the same. And just as there can be good religion – that loves, nourishes, forgives, unites, liberates there is architecture that does the same.

It does this by speaking in a language based on the patterns of human life. This is what Alexander, the architect, calls a Pattern language. These patterns are not based upon proscription or prescription but upon observation. These patterns are not, according to Alexander, invented by technicians to surprise or control the lives of people – by high priests of design. They are observed from the lives of people – lives of conversation, comfort, community, play, access, rest, celebration, reflection – and so on.

Again Alexander says "Some towns are more full of life; and others less. They get their character from the patterns they are made of." These patterns that are full of life generate a sense of life. They create it in the first place by liberating people. They create life by allowing people to release their energy, by allowing people, themselves to become alive. Or, in other places, they prevent it, they destroy the sense of life, they destroy the very possibility of life, by creating conditions under which people cannot possibly be free."

Free, alive.

Again you can ask yourself – what places have supported you – made you feel most deeply alive and fully human, most supported you in your connections with others. A shade covered bench with room to seat two and enough space for privacy I remember from a garden I once visited. Outside of Atlanta. A window seat. A kitchen with plenty of room for visitors and a good view of the yard. But, one pattern alone cannot nourish or liberate a building or a town. They must be connected to other life giving patterns. Here’s an example: We all know buildings that open straight onto the sidewalk. This church does – but I would bet that it did not always. A building that has no entrance transition is a difficult building to feel comfortable entering. It is good to have a good sized landing – a place to stand while waiting for the door to be opened. That is a pattern that gives life. But a wide threshold is not sufficient to offer people comfort as they enter a building – this pattern is more effective when it is linked to other patterns in the building -- Sometimes a wide entry way, an overhanging eave, or a trellised area that serves almost as an outdoor room will help, in connection with one another, to create a friendly, and peaceful transition from street to house or building. Not only does this combination of patterns create a smoother entry to the building but it will foster interchange. The pattern, itself can foster or thwart connection. That is because there is an architecture of human life – made of the patterns of our lives as they move through space. Of the relationships.

So in every building or town there is a choice of what language to speak – what language of patterns -- one that is living or dead – one that confines or liberates, one that speaks of welcome or rejection, of connection or isolation.

And this choice – so powerful and so defining is of ultimate importance. It is the choice that this congregation has been working on – with an architect– with some great care – for some time now. It is made of a million small details -- patterns. But if the choices are life giving and affirming the patterns will combine to create a house of principle, community, worship, meeting, of celebration, shared mourning, comfort, of vibrancy and wholeness. Earlier I asked what can we call the profound conversation over years, of more than one hundred and fifty people with one another, with materials and space, with plans and visions, with principles, and with a building that doesn’t even yet exist?

You may know that the word worship come from roots that mean to shape that which is of worth? Therefore I would call that conversation here over years – worship. First architecture is – in its very nature – a form of worship – because when we build we are forever shaping that which is of worth – our relationship with the earth and with -- the elements of this earth – our own bone and blood. The word worship is too often associated with a purely vertical relationship – but it does not have to do with that – though that could be an element. Worship can have as much to do with the work of our gathered hands, and the discernment of our gathered hearts. Worship means that new time has been entered -- time to shape and transform in the presence of sacred life. If we are intentional then worship embraces that liminal time – that threshold time that I have mentioned that is the defining character of worship. That time where new things are possible – where the old is not what it used to be but the new is not quite yet formed – it is the forming edge of time. Full of promise. Like our present time. Our time of formation and choice. It is this time – in which we make choices about how we want to care for our children, how we want their overnights to feel, or their youth worships, this time in which we make choices about how we sit to talk together, sing together, weep together, listen together, study and learn together.

This time in which this congregation is working toward the new building is not simply about a future building and the activities we want to support in it – it is about the building within the building – the architecture of our life here – of our relationships and our work and our play. It is that building within the building whose supports must be strongest, whose lines must be cleanest, who purposes must be clearest – it is that building within the building that must especially be bright and open -- strong and full of life and light – which must especially design itself to speak that which is healthy and clear and best.

Alexander wrote: The more living patterns there are in a place – a room, a building, or a town – the more it comes to life as an entirety, the more it glows, the more it has that self maintaining fire which is the quality without a name. And when a building has this fire, then it becomes a part of nature. Like ocean waves, or blades of grass, its parts are governed by the endless play of repetition and variety. This is the quality itself."

Each one of us will be important to that sacred architecture of the building within the building – because each one of us is a piece of that building within the building – a facet of the quality itself, I-beams – the inner-girding of community. Thus the individual religious project of spiritual development, of exploration of the inner and outer cosmos is critical to the shared religious project – in this way we are each the living patterns in this place. Creating more and more life and freedom.

Thus project of building this new church is a shared project of worship and prophecy – I know that these can be unaccustomed words to Unitarian Universalists -- but we deserve them – through worship we honor our traditions and our principles and work to shape ourselves more finely in light of them. Through prophecy we speak to one another and to the world about the fresh and ever widening vision of Unitarian Universalism. In our project of church architecture we will publish our beliefs – form them in patterns of concrete and stone and we will send them forward into the future to form new generations. In every corner we will be speaking our values – whatever forms we choose – on every wall we will engrave our hopes for the future. In every relationship – we will continue to build the beloved community, which is the foundation for this work. With lines open and commitment strong, within arcs of care and integrity, over thresholds of age and love, between stories of growth and emergence, and through exits and returns we will build the true structure of the church that will be. Today we hold here – in our hearts – the self maintaining fire, the life giving quality, the material needed – let us vision and build together –