Shane Claiborne, “Bringing the Kingdom of God Down to Earth”

http://vimeo.com/8450605

This talk is so inspiring. His talk is directed to the people of God to be an imaginative counter-culture.

Claiborne articulates so many things so well but I like these especially: quoting Gandhi he says, “‘There is enough for everyone’s needs, but not enough for everyone’s greed.’ God has not created an economy where there is too many people, or too little stuff, but we’ve created poverty because we haven’t figured out how to live out this command of ‘loving our neighbour as our-self’”

“If the credit cards can be so imaginative in getting people into debt, why can’t we liberate the captives! It’s that imagination which we are invited into because we are God’s counter-culture. We are not to conform to the patterns of Wall Street but to the upside-down Kingdom of God.” – the renewing of the mind for him transitions into business strategies!

“But the kid, he knew the secret! That the best things to do with the best things in life are to give it away, not to keep it for ourselves. The blessings of God are too good to keep for ourselves. And it flys in the face of the world and even in the church, with this self-centered gospel of prosperity, that is about us and finding your best life and becoming a better you. And if we’re not careful, we lose the secret of Jesus (which is if you want to find your life, you have to give it away)”

Wow I love this talk so much! I might actually transcribe the whole thing when I have a moment. I like how action-filled his descriptions are. Now, so many of us Christian’s have taken the back seat waiting for things to happen. Through dependent faith, God can do all things, even move mountains!

Life as a Gift

I want to see my life as a means of blessing others.

No greater love is there than this to lay your life down for a friend.

Jesus Christ did that for His Father and me.

Meditations on Time and the Pantheon

The following series of photographs posted on flickr were taken for a photo-essay examining the embodiment of notions of time in the Pantheon. The notions of time were inspired by Walter Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History”.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/timothywat/sets/72157628942650719/

Poetic Details

Do not cover the brilliant shifting casts of colours of daylight with your lighting strategy.

Consider noise created by mechanical systems.

Is there poetry in dropped ceilings? Can anyone suggest any good manufacturers?

To which group do you belong?

To my brothers and sisters,

As it was in the time of Christ, it is now: everyone falls into one of three categories:

1. Those who did not follow Christ

2. The crowds that followed Christ who came to hear His Words but did not listen to His Words.

3. The few that followed Christ, who came to hear His Words and listened to His Words. “Who heard the word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance.” Luke 8:15

To truly hear is to understand and take the Word to heart and carry it through in our lives. I think often we can say, we did our devotions, but isn’t it equivalent to the crowds that took to hear Christ back then as well? It is not enough because goodness has not found a place in your heart and actions yet. God desires you to be pure and clean!

I find it sobering to think that it is not knowledge nor the fact that he wrote half of the New Testament, that saved Paul. His works and merit did not account for anything but his faith did. (Luke 13:22-30) He did not say, “Lord look what I know about you and did for you.” But simply, “You know Lord, that I never turned my back on you and I followed every Word that You gave me and wherever you led me.”And when he arrived at the gates of heaven I am sure Jesus was waiting to embrace him.

The Value of Space 0.2

“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” – Gaston Bachelard

Gaston Bachelard, “The Poetics of Space”, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994,  pp.6

 

“[Architecture] offers societies a place for existential orientation… When successful, architecture allows for participation in meaningful action, conveying to the participant an understanding of his or her place in the world… While, theory may be rooted in mythic or poetic stories, philosophy, theology or scientia, during different times of its history, architecture is none of these, but an event. As such, it is ephemeral, yet it has the capacity of changing one’s life in the vivid present… Thus it can be said to embody knowledge, but rather than clear logic, it is a knowledge understood in the Biblical sense: a carnal, and therefore opaque experience of truth.”  - Alberto Pérez-Gomez

Alberto Pérez-Gomez, “Ethics and Poetics in Architectural Praxis”, Crossover. Architecture Urbanism Technology, Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006,  pp.679

The Question of Scale, Magnitude, Monumentality

In reference to a historian’s relating of a gap of a thousand years, “A historian who takes this as a point of departure stops telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary. Instead he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one.” - Walter Benjamin

I love the subtle difference in conception that Benjamin sees, which completely changes your perception of the relationship at hand. I think often we trivialize or overlook the true nature of a relationship when it is either truly something greater demanding a greater respect or something of relatively little importance. It hints that the question of scale and magnitude are key to gaining an accurate understanding of something.

*Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, Illuminations, intro. Hannah Arendt, New York: Schocken Books, 1968, pp. 263.

Psychology of Space

Architectural thought of the day:

“Our understanding of space arises from both tangible and intangible the past stories. Perhaps it is the skateboarders leaving markings on the benches of a piazza, or the stigmas and feelings towards the politics of skateboarding in public spaces, perhaps it was a myth placed in that space or rumors or perhaps the murder of someone in the space and although the blood is cleaned and no tangible traces remain of the tragedy somehow the psychology of the piazza had changed and there are new things that the space must respond to.”

Loose quote of Amrit Phull in discussion on Ricour’s “Architecture and Narrative”

Questions on the Power and Role of Art?

The image of Louis Kahn’s courtyard at Salk Institute is burned onto my mind!

There is something to it but it brings so many questions to mind. I’m very curious about the power and role of art, why am I drawn into that image so much versus the countless other images of other spaces? Is this due to a personal preference?

I don’t really understand yet. I can’t shake the feeling that art reaches a limit…

Is art simply a rich man’s treasure, a rich man’s intellectual stimulation?

Do I belong doing more practical concerns where people with serious problems need help? Or could architecture address not only physical, emotional, and the spiritual?

Even if it is possible for us to eventually create something like Kahn, what is the point? What is purpose of art?

 

* Top image credited to A.CHOUPINA, bottom image credited to Chris Withis and Brian Phelps of sitephocus.com

Plan as Social Map

“as Kahn was, urgently concerned with the social dimensions of space, the plan [was] a map of locales to be lived in, a choreography of choice, of probabilities, of human presence and absence.” Michael Merrill, Louis Kahn – Drawing to Find Out, Pg.13

The creation of choice, the tuning of probabilities of interaction and event, the effect of human presence or absence on a person or culture are profound domains of a designer.