There Is A Myth, Sometimes Widespread, That

There Is One Timeless Way Of Building. It Is A Thousand Years Old, And The Same Today As It Has Ever Been. The Great Traditional Buildings Of The Past, The Villages And Tents And Temples In Which Man Feels At Home, Have Always Been Made By People Who Were Very Close To The Center Of This Way.

We Must Face The Fact That We Are On The Brink Of Times When Man May Be Able To Magnify His Intellectual And Inventive Capability, Just As In The Nineteenth Century He Used Machines To Magnify His Physical Capacity. Again, As Then, Our Innocence Is Lost. And Again, Of Course, The Innocence, Once Lost, Cannot Be Regained. The Loss Demands Attention, Not Denial.

There Is A Myth, Sometimes Widespread, That A Person Need Only Do Inner Work...that A Man Is Entirely Responsible For His Own Problems; And That To Cure Himself, He Need Only Change Himself....the Fact Is, A Person Is So Formed By His Surroundings, That His State Of Harmony Depends Entirely On His Harmony With His Surroundings.

It Is Possible To Make Buildings By Stringing Together Patterns, In A Rather Loose Way. A Building Made Like This, Is An Assembly Of Patterns. It Is Not Dense. It Is Not Profound. But It Is Also Possible To Put Patterns Together In Such A Way That Many Patterns Overlap In The Same Physical Space: The Building Is Very Dense; It Has Many Meanings Captured In A Small Space; And Through This Density, It Becomes Profound.

The Difference Between The Novice And The Master Is Simply That The Novice Has Not Learnt, Yet, How To Do Things In Such A Way That He Can Afford To Make Small Mistakes. The Master Knows That The Sequence Of His Actions Will Always Allow Him To Cover His Mistakes A Little Further Down The Line. It Is This Simple But Essential Knowledge Which Gives The Work Of A Master Carpenter Its Wonderful, Smooth, Relaxed, And Almost Unconcerned Simplicity.