HOMECOMING

With the help of these subtle energies we also choose the place where we live. You may be living in a rented apartment or own a house. You may live in a mobile home or be homeless under a bridge. You may go on holidays in a tent or a hotel room. You may even make your living designing, building or selling houses. Whatever your situation, you are always in a place and will always be surrounded by space.

How can I introduce a subject as alien to our thinking as energies in places and buildings, especially, as I do not mean devices powered by oil or wind or solar energy? When I say energy I do not mean these technical energies which bring comfort into our homes and connect us to the world.

 

I am referring to energies which are in us and all around us. These energies allow our heart to pump and our lungs to breath and, at a subtler level allow us to think and to feel. When we are connected to these energies, we become aware of our behaviour, feelings and thinking and why we choose particular thoughts. We also gain access to our creative energies through this connection.

 

With the help of these subtle energies we also choose the place where we live. You may be living in a rented apartment or own a house. You may live in a mobile home or be homeless under a bridge. You may go on holidays in a tent or a hotel room. You may even make your living designing, building or selling houses. Whatever your situation, you are always in a place and will always be surrounded by space.

 

In order to feel rooted wherever we are, we need to connect to the place and the spirit of the earth. Once we are connected, the light from above (universal energy) and the light from below (earth energy) merge and become one. Because we are connected to our centre within, we feel at home where ever we are.

I focus on houses and family homes in this book as this was my main focus as an architect. However, once we understand the basic principles of connection, they can be widened to the spirit of towns and cities, to the spirit of family or an organisation or company, or any task we are engaged in.

 

We cannot think our way into energy. The only way to connect to energy is by feeling into it. While we in the western world live predominantly according to a materialistic world view, quantum physics makes us aware of a subatomic world of energy and matter, wave and particle. We know from the findings of quantum physics that the subatomic world constantly switches from wave to particle and back to wave, thus opening a world of probability. In this world pure energy can manifest in seemingly rigid material form only to disintegrate back to energy again. This means that the overwhelming majority of reality is invisible energy, which manifests at times as physical reality. A place or a building exist both on an energetic and a physical level; as wave and as particle.

 

The deeper we go inside ourselves, the more we are able to see these invisible layers of reality reflected all around us. The place in which we live provides a mirror of our own energy field. The deeper we look into this mirror, the better we get to know ourselves.

 

 

Through all my encounters with places, I have learned that places and buildings are alive. Their energy field contains information which helps us see problems with a wider and more inclusive perspective. This is how we can solve problems and understand situations with a clarity gained by perceiving the whole of a situation.

 

In order to perceive the whole, we need to switch to another wave length in our brain, tune into another frequency and change our mind. The secret is in the energy frequencies. With our eyes we can only see a certain band of frequencies. With our ears we can only hear a very limited band of frequencies. So, to widen our perception of reality, we have to go beyond our limited sense of reality. We cannot find a multi-dimensional reality out there with our five outer senses. Instead we have to develop our inner senses-which are much more than a sixth sense. We need to feel into the situation, into the space or place. When we do this, the boundaries between me as the observer and the house or place seen as an object disappear.

 

We experience a union, a live communication resulting in a mutually supportive relationship. The relationship unfolds in the space between the place and us humans, between object and observer. Or better still: the object and the observer are transformed into this relationship. Two separate, material entities transform into something invisible. This invisible relationship is what I call the energy, spirit or essence of a place or building.