In Search of Truth and Beauty

No.039 — Read old posts on Tinyfarmlab.com
Reading Time 4 minutes

It is true when Christopher Alexander said this.

“Making wholeness heals the maker…”

Building the mud house has healed us as humans and designers in many ways.

As we transformed the building, the building transformed us, from within.

Christopher Alexander is one of our intellectual heroes and an influential design theorist, who spent his life understanding and fighting for beauty. Since childhood, he has been intrigued by this one question:

“ What makes something beautiful? “

We agree with Alexander’s belief that nearly all buildings designed in the last century were ugly and lifeless. Thomas Heatherwick reiterated the same in his TED talk.

We are mindlessly copying the West, engaging in an aesthetic colonization of the global south, by building glass cubes to impress the architectural critics and constructing buildings only appreciated by the drones.

Our friend Aishwarya Lakhani, always reminds us of this dialogue from the movie Call me by your name, "But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste."

It seems like designers and architects can learn a lot from the movies. Aishwarya often reminds us that we don’t think about our feelings but usually feel them in our bodies.

As designers, we are all guilty of designing on CAD in our cubicles ‘thinking’ and not on-site ‘feeling’. Architecture often focuses mainly on what the architect thinks and believes, rather than on what people feel and experience.

Quarantine during the pandemic has made many of us realize how our built environments impact our mental health.

Both as designers and individuals, we want to move from being ‘thinkers’ to ‘feelers’. We wanted to move away from the architecture of money, efficiency, and productivity to an architecture of well-being: of land, of the people, and of the planet.

Building the Tiny Farm Fort was our search for truth and beauty. We wanted to approach the design with almost childlike wonder and exploration and design a place that feels like it’s been there forever.

A building that itself is like a living breathing sculpture and makes us feel alive.

It moves us and inspires us.

The designers and contractors have almost become fanatical about mechanical perfection, flat, perfect square, equal level. Here, we strived for a balance of roughness and perfection, a sort of Japanese wabi-sabi.

We believe that the purpose of architecture is to evoke emotions, lift spirits, and connect us, irrespective of our gender, caste, age, or country.

In this project we wanted to prioritize little things, how every corner would fill up the visitors with delight as they found an unexpected detail.

Alexander has this book The Timeless Way of Building where he talks about this thing he calls “the quality without a name.”

He says: you can’t label it.

It has no name.

But it’s something that makes a place perfect, or gives it “life” or “wholeness” or “harmony.”

No word quite captures this quality, though, he says.

How would you describe it? 

Is beauty ideological? or Is it spiritual? Or is it subjective?

What do you think? Reply to this mail and let us know. :)

Love,

Raghav and Ansh

What you can watch - Adaptation - with Christopher Alexander - part one: Adapting to the Environment or "Flint & Brick"

“ Among the steps you need to take - if you want to build in harmony with the environment, if you want to build with the living part of it, fixing the parts that are not so alive, thereby making things better and doing no harm - is to get in tune with the available materials, and find the best way to use them, and respect them. “

From May of 1995, during the construction of Alexander's Visitor's Centre for the West Dean College of Arts and Conservation.

What you can listen to - Christopher Alexander - Life in Buildings (Full)

This film includes interviews with the man, as well as an overview of his ideas and built projects.

What You Can Read - Democracy and Buildings by Nathan J. Robinson

What kind of places would we build together?

“ Only a handful of “starchitects” ever get the freedom to design whatever weird shit happens to pop out of their brain. “

“ Architecture has long had a democracy problem: The people who must live and work in buildings don’t have much of a say over what they’re going to look like. “

P.S. - Our most special podcast episode so far is now out on all your favorite platforms - YouTube, Spotify, and Apple podcasts.

Ep. 26 - City to Building his Eco-Village: Joshua Kwaku Asiedu's Journey Across Continents I I TFF Podcast

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