Dimensioning the Public Sacred by A Nelson 2012

Dimensioning the public sacred
MArch / MLA thesis paper
Amber D Nelson
C
ommittee: Anthony Dubovsky Galen Cranz
December 2012
youtube.com/user/amberdaniela

ii
Spread 1 : the architectural cosmos p22
Spread 2 : presentation boards p24
Spread 3 : annotated presentation boards p26
Spread 4 : two years of inhabiting the sacred p60
Spread 5 : two years of imagine mandalas p62

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Introduction : the need for public sacred place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Strange Man from Strange Land : a design parable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Departure : Inhabiting the Sacred. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Spread 1 : Architectural Cosmos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Spread 2 : presentation boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Spread 3 : annotated presentation boards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
0D. INTEREST & 1D. THOUGHT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2D. EDUCATION : representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3D. DESIGN : demonstration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4D. PRACTICE : manifestation & collaboration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Spread 4 : two years of inhabiting the sacred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Spread 5 : two years of imagine mandalas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
THANK YOU!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Bibliography + Works Consulted. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Contents

NOT:
BUT:
SHED
SHEDness
LAND
LANDness
Fig 1. Not shed OR land separated but shedness AND landness combined.
The world has become large, alluring, and confusing. Social evolution has been so rapid that no agency has been developed in the larger community of the state for regulating behavior which would replace the failing influence of the community and correspond completely with present activities. There is no universally accepted body of doctrines or practices. The churchman, for example, and the scientist, educator, or radical leader are so far apart that they cannot talk together. They are, as the Greeks expressed it, in different ‘universes of discourse.’
-W. I. Thomas

Introduction : the need for public sacred place
I, and I suspect many others, have been many times lost in a web of contradictory workflows and approaches to design. It is no argument that educators nor practitioners have agreed upon a set of “best practices” for the profession as it rapidly evolves alongside the technological revolution. For instance, we have no clear consensus about what point the computer is best introduced into the design process and when it actually becomes a cumbersome hindrance, or when an idea might be best communicated with a freehanded sketch instead of an Illustrator diagram. While these sorts of details will inevitably vary according to each individual’s skillset, we can be conscientious and rigorous about this process and in fact must learn to be if we are to contribute positively as a profession to the long-term sustainability of our way of life. My research thesis does not advocate digital over analogue techniques nor the reverse; instead it suggests a both/and condition and attempts to organize a structure, the architectural cosmos, for the trained architecture student transitioning into practice to visualize their career path.
Cameron Sinclair stated in a CED lecture in 2007 that 90% of sustainable measures to improve our livelihood will happen out of necessity; it will be sustainability or extinction.1 This means our profession will be faced with the challenges of rapidly-changing environmental and social conditions that must be solved quickly and carefully. It is imperative that the architect strengthen his collaborations with other disciplines within and beyond the design field. Of particular importance due to its similarity in subject and scale is collaboration between architecture and landscape to emerge as a mechanism of sustainability; the monument in the field and the aesthetic yard must both give way to the ecologically democratic functional landscape (Fig 1). With these challenges come great opportunity not only to find sustainable solutions to potentially catastrophic problems but also to create spaces imbued with meaning and delight. We have more tools available to us than ever before and systems of communication that allow us to connect instantly with anyone, anywhere, anytime, so it is up to the architect to utilize these tools towards the greatest ends.
In a massively virtual world, however, the physical reality in which we actually operate all too often gets neglected of our attention. As our needs are increasingly met through a digital interface, our reliance and
1 Cameron Sinclair, “Design Like You Give a Damn” (lecture presented at the CED Architecture Lecture Series, The College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, October 17, 2007), 6:30.
1

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therefore our understanding of physical space becomes less nuanced. No type of place is more effected by
this trend than the public realm, where genuine interactions between neighbor and neighbor or neighbor and
place is the exception rather than the expectation. As Jane Jacobs passionately testifies, “Conventionally,
neighborhood parks or parklike open spaces are considered boons conferred on the deprived populations of
cities. Let us turn this thought around, and consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and
appreciation conferred on them. This is more nearly in accord with reality, for people do confer use on parks and
make them successes or—else withhold use and doom parks to rejection and failure.”2
Public space has the unique ability to satisfy fundamental human needs of diverse group of people. In a
forthcoming book written by myself and Professor Emeritus Randolph T. Hester Jr., Inhabiting the Sacred, we call
places ‘sacred’ when they successfully satisfy the human needs of certainty, new experience, response and
belonging. These places become beloved to their citizens who in turn may become motivated to contribute to
the place by maintaining it, advocating for it, or simply visiting it and becoming a familiar presence. Though our
subject matter is broad in scope, the message has been focused toward the everyday citizen, guiding them from
a place of ignorance about their homplace to a place of empowered community activism, to inhabit and to
share a public sacred place.
In this thesis which serves as a departure from the above manuscript, I turn the focus to the design professional.
I assert that the method of design to derive the form and function of the public sacred is a process which
oscillates, often organically, between intuition—that which is derived through exploration and free association—
and precision—that which is produced through accuracy and exactness. Furthermore, there are five
‘dimensions’ the designer operates within as his career develops (Fig 2):
0D- the point of interest
1D- the line of thought
2D- the plane of education
3D- the cube of design
4D- the tesseract and system of practice
You will see that little of this thesis is venturing into uncharted territories but is actually quite conservative in its
call to create the public sacred through deepening relationships between architect and architecture. It is,
perhaps, more of a reminder than a revolutionizer. I have used three of my own recent projects as means to
explore the notions discussed with Randy Hester in his final years teaching at Berkeley. Finally, these examples
serve to illustrate and ground the concepts suggested by the dimensions through the approach to design we call
‘inhabiting the sacred.’ The ultimate aim of this thesis is to serve as a mental roadmap of the architect’s universe,
so that designers (myself primarily) can use it to confidently and boldly move forward in the creation of places
that are part of the solution instead of the problem in this confusing profession and maddened world.3
2 Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961, 89.
3 Lappé, Frances Moore. Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage in a World Gone Mad. Cambridge, MA: Small
Planet Media, 2007.
Fig 2. (opposite) The architectural
cosmos as a roadmap to navigate
through the profession

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Intuition
line
point
0D
1D
2D
3D
4D
plane
cube
system
tesseract
INTEREST
THOUGHT
EDUCATION
DESIGN
PRACTICE
Precision
T
he Architectural Cosmos
. . .
X you are here
X ... or here ...
X ... maybe even here!
X and eventually here.

s1
arrival to
campus
s5
espresso, a
masterpiece!
s9
“let me teach you...”
s13
drinking
daily
s2
“...my
thermos?”
s6
Ode to
the Cup
s10
empty
design
s14
going with
the flow
s3
“The Daily Cal!”
s7
“What is
that thing?”
s11
They don’t love it!
s15
happily ever
after!
s4
“...your thermos?”
s8
“a means to drink...”
s12
“Why no! I have not...”

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Fig 3. Precise Man’s definition of thermos and coffee
I would like to begin by offering a short parable about a designer’s developing career, affectionately named Strange Man from Strange Land Inhabits Coffee. Here Strange Man is an archtype for the design student, the coffee receptacle is place and the coffee itself is experience in place.
A strange man from a strange land arrives to our university’s campus (s1). He stumbles into Bechtel Hall and sees many engineers walking about, busy about their calculations. He finds most curious that each holds a receptacle of some sort in their hands, from which they consume a warm, bitter liquid. Determined to understand why mankind seems so tethered to such a devise, he inquires about its nature to one of these busy engineers,
“Man of Precise Thinking, what is that cup that each of you carry and why do you consume its contents?”
“You mean my Thermos?” (s2)
Precise Man, anxious to solve Strange Man’s problem doesn’t waste time with small talk. Instead he dives silently into the chemical and sub-atomic makeup of the Thermos’s components and the effect of caffeine on the human brain. He is especially pleased with his calculation of man’s efficiency at work with and without coffee consumption, a proof that might just be worth publishing in the Daily Cal (Fig 3, S3).
Strange Man is obliged for the concrete definition, pockets the pages of formulas and continues his journey. Next he arrives to Kroeber Hall and is surprised to see an atmosphere drastically different to that of Bechtel: these people work with colors and beauty. He observes how their work seek the general truths of the universe. Yet still, these artists keep “Thermos’s” close by and drink as readily from them as the engineers (s4). He decides to
Strange Man from Strange Land : a design parable

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ask one artist:
“Man of Intuitive Thinking, what makes the thermos you drink from so important to your life
that you must always have it at hand?”
“Oh, Strange Man,” he responds, “this is no thermos, THIS is a masterpiece!” And Intuitive
Man paints for him the joys of the espresso cup, all the while musing aloud the artistic
accomplishments he has attained thanks to the divinity of his dear black gold (s5).
“Gosh, It’s so... BEAUTIFUL!” (s6)
Thoroughly inspired by the eloquent speech and his delightful abstract painting Ode to the
Cup (Fig 4), he runs out of the building intent to learn more and asks the first person he
sees, who happens to be an architecture professor just leaving Strada with a fresh soy latte
contained within the iconic map-laden to-go cup,
“Excuse me Sir, I have asked two men about the cup in your hand, and one said it was an
algorithm of formulas and the other said it was a divine masterpiece...which is correct? What
is that thing??” (s7)
Gentle Man was very wise: “Well Strange Man, actually both are correct, but both are
missing the point. The best definition of this receptacle in my hand is that it is a means of
which to drink coffee (s8). The quality of the experience is dependent on how well-suited
the receptacle and coffee ingredients are to your own personality.”
Being a design professor, Gentle Man wished to help Strange Man understand the knowledge
he sought, “Come, let me teach you to design your own receptacle so that you may bring
this skill back to Strange Land.”
And Gentle Man makes Strange Man his student, teaching him about the standard and
avant guard types of mugs and coffee, the materials to build it and the forms that can be
invariably altered to suit the user’s needs (s9).
Eternally grateful, Strange Man takes his extensive notes on the subject back to Strange
Land and makes 1,000 of his favorite coffee mugs and gives them away to his people so
Fig 4. Intuitive Man’s definition of that they can use them.
espresso and receptacle

7
At first, his people love the idea and carry the mugs with them wherever they go (s10). Soon,
however, he begins seeing his mugs stashed in cupboards, misused, and even abandoned
along the roadside. Frustrated and confused, he returns to Gentle Man and asks why his
people do not care about the mugs (s11). Gentle Man asks,
“Strange Man, do you remember the first thing I taught you, that the best coffee receptacles
are those that allow us to drink the coffee most tailored to fulfill our individual needs? Have
you yourself tried to drink coffee to understand which coffee and receptacle satisfies you
most?”
“Why, no! I have not! Thank you again Gentle Man Sir...” (s12)
And with that he begins drinking coffee everyday (s13). At first his coffee and mugs are not
pleasant at all, but with time he finds the balance between size of cup and handle, type of
coffee bean, time of day, and temperature of liquid that pleases him most and makes him
more efficient while working. Some days he is meticulous about his measurements while
others he just goes with the flow (s14).
The next 1,000 cups he produces for his people are each custom made through conversations
and collaboration with the user himself and his mugs and coffee become most beloved in all
the land and of course, everyone lives happily ever after (s15).
At the moment when Strange Men enters the university, he notices that everyone holds a receptacle in their
hand. This is the moment of conception, the birth of an idea. For the public sacred, this is the moment when
a person realizes that place can have value. This person can be of any age, a three-year-old laying in the
moist grass staring up at the warm sun or a fifty-year-old who finally visits the Sierras and has seen an awesome
landscape for the first time. For the architecture student, this moment has probably happened before deciding
to go to design school. This is the 0 Dimension, the spark of interest, or the point of conception.
After Strange Man conceives of the idea of coffee, he then wishes to know more about it. Specifically,
he ventures to relate himself to the object. Here he begins his search. This is the moment of thought and
questioning. As he journeys to understand coffee, he meets three people that each offer him a distinct definition
of the receptacle and liquid. This process of relating self to other is the 1st dimension, the creation of thought, the
line of investigation.
He first finds Precise Man, who is far on one end of the spectrum of understanding. He knows his world to be
categorized and compartmentalized. In his understanding, most things are this or that, have identifiable names
and recognizable contexts. For things that he does not immediately understand, there is Google or an iPhone
point
line

8
app. He instantly knows exactly how many friends have looked at his Facebook wall or how long it will take to
drive from Berkeley to Black Rock City in traffic. His discipline is tending towards further specialization and his
social trend is given identity through its separation from other trends.
Precise Man is a specialized engineer like Dr. Anil K. Chopra of the University of California - Berkeley, a civil
engineer who researches selection and scaling of ground motions for nonlinear response history analysis of
buildings. He determines engineering demand parameters by nonlinear response history analysis of a computer
model of the building for an ensemble of multi-component ground motions. To obtain this pedigree of
knowledge, he has earned four advanced degrees and many honors, including an honorary doctorate and is
listed as one of the twenty people who most contributed to advances in dam engineering.1
Precise Man’s analysis of thermos and coffee is correct. Thermos’s do function well as a vacuum body,
elimitating convection and conduction to keep hot liquid hot or cold liquid cold, and coffee does make a
person more effective at work because it shuts down various instincts such as the need for rest and relaxation as
it puts the consumer into a state of adrenalin-fueled emergency.2 However, Precise Man is missing the point. His
definition is too meticulous, too one-sided to explain the full experience. His equations are accurate, but Strange
Man is unsatisfied because it does not explain man’s unrelenting attachment. If Precise Man were an architect,
his projects would likely function well, for instance a waste water treatment plant or city bus terminal, but its users
would not feel attachment to the place beyond the servicing of their basic physiological needs.
Strange Man next finds Intuitive Man, who is at the opposite extreme of understanding. In his world, digital
technology makes everyone an artist, anyone is able to make a blog, upload a YouTube film, sell a book on
Amazon or post their new best song. Reality television programs prove daily that everyday people become stars
overnight. He streams most media instantaneously and for the rest, he download it by exchanging virtual capital.
His genres are colliding and hybridizing, his boundaries are blurring, his people are multi-tasking at incredible
rates.
Intuitive Man is an artist who uses color and material to explore universal truths. He is like Andre Stringer who
directs, designs and edits film. He has a small but successful film production company Shilo that began back
when he was a skater and recorded his moves on VHS. Each person in his company has been mostly self taught
and their workflow is entirely organic; as the process of creation shifts so too does their approach. No two
projects are executed alike and they are able to be so flexible because their skillset is so broad.3
Intuitive Man’s explanation of espresso is likewise correct. A well-crafted cup and quality coffee do inspire
many people and is celebrated almost cultishly among the young professional class. Drinking coffee has
become a lifestyle choice with endless varieties and has created a profitable industry reliant on people’s love
of it. Nonetheless, Intuitive Man also lacks a complete definition. If he were an architect, his projects would be
1 “Anil K. Chopra | Civil and Environmental Engineering”, n.d., http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/chopra.
2 Conversation with physicist Ed Stress. See Fig 3.
3 David Dworsky and Victor Köhler, PressPausePlay, Documentary, 2011, 42:00.

9
exciting visually, but fail in their usefulness and probably fall out of favor as soon as the novelty of the project wore
off.
Finally, Strange Man meets Gentle Man who has found the balance between precision and intuition. His world
is not an either/or approach, but a both/and approach. He understands that each of these approaches has
value and a moment for their use. In this oscillation between precise and intuitive crafting, he find the middle
ground that has both accuracy and beauty. At times he is highly specific, in others he is broadly general.
Gentle Man is an architect, whose responsibilities principally involve mediation between many parties namely the
client and contractor in the process of constructing spaces. He is also the ideal professor because he has both
practical knowledge of the profession and also a theoretical appreciation for the discipline. Most importantly,
he inhabits the sacred and is interested in sharing this wisdom with others who may benefit. His projects are likely
to be both useful and meaningful to their users. Therefore, they will grow to love, appreciate and care for these
places far into the future.
At this point in the parable, Gentle Man invites Strange Man to become a student. Strange Man gains both
conceptual understanding of architecture and exposure to the many tools architecture uses to conceive, create
and develop form. At this moment of placing himself in academia, Strange Man is immersed within the 2nd
dimension, the process of education, the plane of representation.
Finally, Strange Man is ready to test his knowledge of coffee and give it to his clients, the residents of Strange
Land. He applies what he has learned from Gentle Man and produces what he imagines to be the best
receptacle and liquid. To the architecture student and professional, this is the process of design, where theories
are applied to situations and decisions are made according to the many factors involved in the design process:
personal taste, site, program, budget, feasibility, technology, etc. Taking on a project and applying knowledge is
the 3rd dimension, the event of design, the cube of demonstration.
The act of designing does not guarantee success of design. Strange Man made what he believed to be the
best solution based on precise and intuitive investigations but without use of any first-hand knowledge. We saw
that the cups and coffee were perfectly good and enjoyed by his clients at first, yet after the novelty wore off
they no longer cared for the product. Likewise, architecture lacks its ultimate potential if we, the designers, do
not personally know through experience what it is to inhabit space. We see projects of this sort all the time: lots of
pomp and circumstance, but something fundamental remains missing and so the public fails to gain attachment
to it. The space become profane, unmeaningful and ugly just shortly after its construction. Unfortunately this
outcome is the rule rather than the exception unless the designer pushes his work towards the goal of quality over
time.
There is a deeper dimension to architecture that has the potential to imbue space with meaning. Strange
Man begins to enter this dimension when he decides to make drinking coffee a daily experience, gaining
phenomenological knowledge to supplement and give context to his conceptual knowledge. This process is
plane
cube

10
analogous with the architect’s involvement in a public sacred space created by his own design, labor, and
time for his personal benefit. The project can be of any type- a garden, meeting spot, a club house, community
center, etc- as long as it is available to the general public and it is sacred to the creator because it satisfies some
or all of his fundamental needs. It is important that this be a public place because only then can he benefit from
the opportunity of having a dialogue with the community around him. He will learn first-hand how his design
affects others and learn if his sacred place can also be sacred to others. This phase in an architect’s career is the
4th dimension, the practice through time, the tesseract of manifestation.
Finally, Strange Man again designs receptacle and liquid for his clients. This time, however, he understands what
is required to make a them sacred because he has gained personal experience. He now understands that
each client is distinct from each other and from himself, so no two products will be exactly alike. He is able to
know and implement design solutions that satisfy his personal needs and also those of others. In our profession,
most projects and clients will be located outside of our home and neighborhood. It is where the largest design
problems for our profession will occur and therefore our greatest opportunity to contribute positively through the
creation of public space (aka the receptacle) that is sacred (aka the coffee). These projects manifest through a
process of community involvement during the design phase and are meaningful to the community because they
have participated in its creation. They then continue to participate as active users and stewards of the place.
This approach to architecture is the deep end of the 4th dimension, practicing within a system of collaboration.
Ultimately, the goal of this parable is to serve as an illustration of the designer’s cosmos- a mapping of the
universe in which the architect may operate within. We are all confronted with conflicting theories about
architecture and are at times confused and unsuccessful in design until we learn to apply our own ideas of
sacredness into our work and then supplement them with experience.
Like Precise Man’s definition of coffee, our profession’s precise tools such as CAD, BIM, and parametric modeling
are efficient and indispensable to today’s process yet in isolation cannot design buildings suitable for quality
human habitation. Intuitive Man’s definition is equally limited. If our profession only sketched, charretted and
rendered our buildings could never be built.
Therefore the architect’s best approach is to rigorously oscillate between precision and intuition to achieve
public space that is well-suited to its users’ needs. Primarily, we can be taught these skills in school in a similar
fashion to how Strange Man was instructed by Gentle Man. However, conceptual understanding remains purely
superficial until substantiated with experimentation and experience. It is, nonetheless a critical point of entry
into the profession. We can then test theories through real and hypothetical design projects; this is an excellent
method of inquiry and is the ultimate end towards which we operate. Later knowledge is gained through
sustained practice of hands-on construction and daily maintenance of a public sacred space. The aim here
is to incrementally improve the experience of this place until it is sacred to you personally and learn to oscillate
between precision and intuition in the design process. The designer satisfies both his own fundamental human
needs while also providing them for others in his community and learns from their feedback. Finally, design work
for other people in other communities has potential to be imbued with meaning and potential to empower its
system
tesseract

11
users to participate in the process of sacred place making. Architects learn to communicate with their clients
and understand their unique needs.
As a point of departure into the specifics of the public sacred, I will now define the term and outline principle
concepts in the book Inhabiting the Sacred.

Fig 5. The steps to inhabiting the sacred. From Inhabiting the Sacred, 2011.

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The challenges facing the designer in the 21st century are many. We are confronted with rapidly-changing environmental and social conditions that the world has never before seen and are asked to create sustainable solutions for them. We must mitigate conflict between invested parties with differing worldviews. Simultaneously we are grappling with new tools of design technology that may give us unprecedented power and reach, but can also stifle creativity when used inappropriately. Furthermore, project timelines are growing shorter, demanding more of us in less time. Nothing can adequately prepare us for this radically uncertain future, but there are ways to train ourselves to be flexible and visionary for when it comes demandingly before us.
Randolph T. Hester Jr. and I worked for two years on a book that guides the ordinary citizen towards community activism for managing such challenges. INHABITING THE SACRED: When you Awaken to a Landscape that Touches your Heart in Everyday Life, Consecrate it, Cultivate it as Home, Dwell Intentionally within it, Slay Monsters for it, and Let it Loose in your Democracy is a book with a simple thesis and tested techniques for doing a critical task.1 The premise is that Americans—and many others in advanced societies—hunger, often unconsciously, for places to live that are more than efficient machines for economic living. We seek places that enable us to fulfill our true humanity, add meaning to life, reintegrate emotion with reason, and enrich self and community. This book explains how to give deeply held values form in everyday landscapes, thus turning profane space into sacred place.
This transformation, which gives people a sense of nearness and rootedness, may be accomplished inside and outside, privately or publicly. Processes and techniques are outlined to be useful in defending territories essential to the survival of both metropolitan and rural or indigenous cultures. Many projects can be realized by the individual or community alone, but complex projects require assistance from a professional designer familiar with the process of inhabiting the sacred. Shaping public space into the public sacred requires partnership between citizens, government, planners and designers.
For the designer, the process may be similar to the process of the community activist, but as stated above,
1 Hester Jr., Randolph T., and Amber D Nelson. “Inhabiting the Sacred.” Forthcoming publication. George Thompson Press, 2011.
Departure : inhabiting the sacred

14
our professional responsibility is more complex. For instance, it requires us to be diplomatic to each investor
involved in the project—citizen, businessman and wildlife alike. However, our role offers many incredible
benefits if we manage to do it successfully. Designing to inhabit the sacred can produce places that are not
only environmentally sustainable but also socially sustainable because they are imbued with community values
and cared for by the citizens themselves long after construction. This approach empowers individuals and
communities to become involved in their public spaces, drastically changing the character of the place for the
better.
The Public Sacred
We call these public spaces that are beloved to the community ‘sacred.’ This is not the standard use of the term.
Sacred is a loaded and multi-dimensional word; as such it evokes powerful but often misguided or misunderstood
reactions. Originally from Latin sacer meaning ‘holy’ and sancîre ‘consecrate,’ historical uses of the term
associate it with religious architecture: “In sacred architecture, humans attempt to bring themselves closer to the
divine by creating a special space to hold this powerful and precious contact.2” This type of architecture was
closely aligned to a society’s political situation and is often built to embody a model of ethics and morality of
a society.3 More contemporaneously in the wake of the 1970’s environmental movement, scholars sometimes
use sacred place to mean ‘a place with spirit,’ or genus loci: powerful places that are attractive due to their
outstanding landscape qualities, making them prime targets for tourism and therefore overdevelopment.4
It is useful to expand the meaning of sacred in design discourse. While standard definitions are not excluded in
Inhabiting the Sacred, the term is broadened to describe the ability to satisfy fundamental human needs. It posits
that sacred place is not program or scale dependent but rather defined as a place that satisfies its users. By this
definition, any built or unbuilt space can be sacred.
Also embedded within this terminology is a complete qualitative description of the space’s function. More than
the basic requirements for survival such as food, water, waste removal and shelter, fundamental human needs as
defined by W. I. Thomas are those essential to a satisfactory existence as a member of a society.5 He calls them
wishes, I call them needs. These requirements therefore span physiological as well as emotional impetus. The
fundamental needs for quality living are certainty, new experience, reciprocal response, and belonging.
More about W. I. Thomas’s wishes
W. I. Thomas was an early 20th century sociologist from the Chicago School. He is best
known for his seminal work on Polish Immigrants to the United States, though he directly, and
rather humorously, addresses the topic of human needs in his 1923 report “The Unadjusted
2 Ayto, John. Dictionary of Word Origins. New York: Arcade, 1991, 8.
3 Humphrey, Caroline. Sacred Architecture. Boston: Little Brown, 1997, 8, 13.
4 Swan, James A. The Power of Place: Sacred Ground in Natural & Human Environments: An Anthology. Spirit of Place
Symposium. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books, 1991, 4.
5 Thomas, William I. The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis. Criminal Science Monographs
4. Boston: Little, Brown, 1923, 4, 12, 17, 31, 32, 78.

15
Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis.” Here he discovers four “forces
which impel [people] to action.” He coins them the wishes: the desires for security, new
experience, response and recognition.
“The desire for security . . . is based on fear, which tends to avoid death and expresses itself
in timidity, avoidance, and flight. The individual dominated by it is cautious, conservative,
and apprehensive, tending also to regular habits, systematic work, and the accumulation of
property.
“The desire for new experience is . . . emotionally related to anger, which tends to invite death,
and expresses itself in courage, advance, attack, pursuit. The desire for new experience
implies, therefore, emotion, change, danger, instability, social irresponsibility. The individual
dominated by it shows a tendency to disregard prevailing standards and group interests.
He may be a social failure on account of his instability, or a social success if he converts
his experiences into social values, puts them into the form of a poem, makes of them a
contribution to science.
“The desire for response . . . is primarily related to the instinct of love, and shows itself in
the tendency to seek and to give signs of appreciation in connection with other individuals
. . . In general the desire for response is the most social of the wishes. It contains both a
sexual and a gregarious element. It makes selfish claims, but on the other hand it is the main
source of altruism. The devotion to child and family and devotion to causes, principles, and
ideals may be the same attitude in different fields of application.
“This wish [of recognition] is expressed in the general struggle of men for position in their
social group, in devices for securing a recognized, enviable, and advantageous social status
. . . The showy motives connected with the appeal for recognition we define as “vanity”;
the creative activities we call “ambition.” . . . Society alone is able to confer status on the
individual and in seeking to obtain it he makes himself responsible to society and is forced
to regulate the expression of his wishes. His dependence on public opinion is perhaps the
strongest factor impelling him to conform to the highest demands which society makes upon
him.
A distinction made in W. I. Thomas’s definitions of the wishes and their use in Inhabiting the
Sacred is that he applies them as major motivations to explain dominant behavioral trends
whereas we express the wishes as emotional responses to qualities of public space.

16
Places of certainty
Places that provide sustenance, stability and safety amidst uncertainty become sacred to individuals and
societies. We need settings we can depend upon for support, aid, vital nourishment and protection from harm.
Cognitive assurance of certainty must be constructed to carry out basic human functions. As a result, places that
provide ecological, biological, physical and social safety are as vital as food and water.
Designers can create places that reinforce survival, order, worldview, ritual and explanation of the inexplicable.
Places with these characteristics can help quiet the fear and mistrust that exist in many people when in the public
realm. Several strategies to achieve certainty are to clarify a center and a boundary, to acknowledge the fear
by making risks transparent, to produce essentials locally, and to revive participatory democracy in the design
and construction process. A clear example of a public sacred place that fulfills the need of certainty is a church
such as the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres in France (Fig 6). Here worldviews are confirmed and there is a
system in place that explains the otherwise unexplainable.
Places of new experience
A second source of sacredness is places of growth. These changes within an individual are like the emergence
of a moth from its cocoon, outgrowing the nourishing haven of its bounded pupil stage to a more extensive
environment. Like metamorphosis, the human world of new experience, although contrasting with security is not
its categorical opposition, but a process in which one stage depends upon the previous. Venturing forth requires
a base of certainty and a place beyond to explore, grow and stretch the boundaries. The combination of
certainty and growth form identity.
Places that offer opportunity for free expression of identity, creativity, dreaming and adventure can help people
curb the desire to seek superficial thrills and pseudo-adventures, like ownership of a home much larger than
necessary or an extravagant vacation to a distant corner of the world only for the experience of the exotic.
These things may indeed be enjoyable, but they are hardly sustainable nor responsible to the problems facing us
today. Burning Man is one such example that offers its participants adventure and the opportunity to define, test,
and challenge limits (Fig 7).
Places of reciprocal response
A third source of sacredness is places of reciprocal response, where humanity fulfills the requirement to elicit
reaction from another person or place by one’s mere being. When the setting is right, this reaction is involuntary,
a truly spontaneous impulse that produces a feeling of closeness and understanding that the world around us
is interconnected and much larger than a single individual. Such response overcomes the culturally created
divisions that separate us from each other, our community and environment. Reciprocal response encourages
intimate and deep experience with place. The stimulus and response is not a one-way cause and effect,
but rather a two-way interaction, a commingling of person and place that gives us pleasure and makes us
accountable to each other and the environment we inhabit.
This mutual give-and-take is most visible between two people, say friends or lovers, but it can happen between
Fig 6. Chartres Cathedral in France,
a public sacred place of certainty
Fig 7. Burning Man in Black Rock CIty,
NV, a public sacred place of new
experience

17
any two subjects: person and pet, person and plant, person and landscape. Response is emphasized in places
that offer multi-sensory experiences, accessibility, morality, or metaphysical transcendence such as meditation.
In this way we can help people reconnect with their surroundings and combat the sense of detachment to place
that may arise due to our increasing time spent on computers or mechanized processes. Parks and other natural
settings fit this description well (Fig 8).
Places of belonging
The fourth source of sacredness is places of social belonging and recognition. We seek to be part of social units
that make up our society, and we want to be acknowledged by others within the culture. In order to be fulfilled
we need to join, be accepted and known for our contribution. Belonging to a group requires a territory, a home
base, a place for group rituals and settings that are visible to other groups in the society. These places distinguish
insiders from outsiders, proclaim who is in control and reflect deep democracy at work.6
Designers can create opportunities for citizen volunteerism, recognition of accomplishment or status of a
community, or places that foster group identity. In this way, people may participate in the making of the place
rather than simply use it. Ultimately it helps them reach a healthy level of self-recognition, rather than becoming
obsessed with status by gluttonously searching for newer, bigger, rarer, and cleaner. A Stadium or theater,
anywhere that accompanies a group of people that gather around a common purpose can be a place of
belonging (Fig 9). In these places, people share in the wins, losses and drama of the moment.
Public sacred places do not always fit neatly into one of the four categories, and in fact it is ideal if they intersect
and fulfill several or all of the needs. For example a community garden can fulfill the need of certainty if the
user grows food there and the need for new experience if gardening is new to the user. It can offer reciprocal
response because the user is giving to the earth and the earth is giving back to the user, and it can provide a
sense of belonging to the group of gardeners sharing the land.
In Thomas’s view, one wish usually dominates others. While we support this thesis, we continue to propose that
only spaces that cause a balance of the wishes will be truly sacred. Or, if a space is highly dependent on one
wish over the others, there must be equally powerful spaces in near proximity for public use in order for this, say
certainty-dominant space to become sacred to its users. In other words, those places that connect people
directly to multiple needs in a harmonic balance or exemplify a single wish become hallowed and beloved,
while those that connect people only weakly to their needs tend to be profane and unloved.
Without these needs met at least minimally, a person is left feeling unfulfilled, confused or meaningless in place
and so does not invest their time or energy there. A person commonly feels a sense of sacredness about other
people, hobbies or events such as a role model, listening to music, or the holiday season, but less common is a
conscious feeling of sacredness for one’s home, park or neighborhood.
Because the four needs can also be in conflict, our values embedded in place can reflect those conflicts. For
6 Hester Jr. and Nelson, “Inhabiting the Sacred,” 70.
Fig 8. Kairaku-en in Mito, Ibaraki,
Japan, a public sacred place of
reciprocal response
Fig 9. Estadio Maracanã in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, a public sacred place
of belonging

18
example, a certain amount of tension between inside and out, hearth and cosmos is necessary and healthy.
When individuals and societies are insecure, threatened, and/or unsettled as Americans often are, coupled with
the fact that many are not consciously aware of place values, these conflicts become simultaneously desperate
and irrational. At such moments the healthy tension between certainty and personal transformation is replaced
with either senseless fear of the other or pseudo-adventuring. Similarly, when public places lack uniqueness and
access to nearby nature, reciprocal responsiveness is supplanted by rootless relativity, and recognition gives
way to untethered status seeking. These are not only barriers to inhabiting the sacred, but also among the most
serious problems of American society. Needs that go unmet often produce scary, meaningless, dirty, dangerous
or superficial landscapes. The people using these problematic landscapes then feel one or more of four
monsters: fear, superficial thrills, lost nearness, and status obsession.7
Inhabiting the Sacred shows ways to both undo the monsters and assertively create a healthy and beautiful city
around us and beyond. Of course, in order to accomplish this design approach, our training and normal way of
thinking must be supplemented with new workflow procedures such as community outreach and collaboration.
We also need to adopt new terms into our professional nomenclature and use them, i.e. sacredness and place
attachment. We should incorporate intentional oscillation between intuition and precision in workflow in order to
practice and enhance fundamental skills. With these adjustments mastered, our ability to create spaces with a
sense of sacredness, which gives meaning to life itself, might just be in our grasp.
While it is necessary and beneficial for people to make their intimate places like home and work sacred, of most
critical importance is sacred place in the public realm. These are areas open to all citizens that also satisfies their
basic requirements for living quality lives. It is in public where most crime takes place and makes people feel
afraid of their neighbors. However, public places also have tremendous power to create community identity
and connect neighbors. The more needs-serving public places that exist in a neighborhood, the safer and more
enjoyable it will feel, and the more citizens feel certain and entertained in a space, the more likely they are to
visit it and participate in its maintenance. These citizens will then likely consider this public place sacred.
Unfortunately crime is not the only enemy of the public sacred. Jane Jacobs argues that people’s presence is
the magic recipe for a lively city, so any factor that distracts people from getting out in their neighborhood is
hurting the potential for the pubic sacred. Among these factors is our American tendency to privatize historically
public institutions. Picnics in the park have become backyard BBQ’s, pool parties happen at home rather than
at the municipal pool, flirting is online rather than at the public square, etc. This ever-privatization of the public
makes the public sacred that much rarer and therefore that much more important to create and preserve. If
our old uses of public space are obsolete, it is our job as architects to envision and manifest new, needs-fulfilling
programs for our new public spaces. For these reasons, my thesis focuses its attention on these types of projects,
though the architectural cosmos can be applied to any project type.
Inhabiting the Sacred

19
In order to inhabit the sacred, people must first know what it is, both conceptually and phenomenologically. In
the book, Randy and I suggest six steps for the community activist to arrive at the pinnacle stage of inhabiting the
sacred (Fig 5, on page 12).
STEP 1. AWAKENING New Thoughts and Feelings about the Everyday Landscape
A citizen who feels discontented with their physical environment discovers personal sacred
places and their qualities by meditating and drawing them. After stating wants and
needs, they outline changes in self and home to implement sacredness into their everyday
environment.
STEP 2. EVIDENCING Our Sentiments for Community Place
This citizen forms a like-minded group of and together they convert qualitative place-values
into quantitative evidence for a unified collective awareness through mapping. This gives
place sentiments a legitimacy that can compete with strong economic pressures.
STEP 3. TRANSFORMING Place Values through Sacrifice
Communities push for value transformation by making choices that require sacrifice of
private luxuries for public necessities.
STEP 4. ORGANIZING An Action Plan towards Intentional Living
After agreeing upon a unified vision about changes in the community, the group can form
organized action to capitalize on opportunities for creating, defending, or restoring sacred
place. They can manage challenges among conflicting interests and power imbalances.
STEP 5. MANIFESTING Four wishes through Design
Next citizens create tangible form imbued with meaning, defining spatial qualities for the
four wishes and design implications, meanwhile avoiding the common inhibitors to realizing
these wishes.
STEP 6. INHABITING THE SACRED In the Everyday Landscape
Finally they construct, dwell, steward, ritually visit, advocate for and enjoy their sacred place.
The steps of awakening consciousness, evidencing place-sentiments, transforming values, organizing action,
and manifesting the four wishes through design enable us and our community to inhabit the public sacred.
Inhabiting means more than mere physical presence in a landscape, more than occupying space, more than
living somewhere. Inhabiting is to be fully alive in our place. Inhabiting is to live intentionally. It satisfies the four
wishes through a powerful bond between self, place and community. The place offers the inhabitants certainty,
new experience, reciprocal response, and belonging; the inhabitants offer the place the same in return. The
landscape is imbued with meaning and power because it is shaped from fundamental values of self and
community. The phenomenon is not mystical; rather it is a matter of awareness, alertness and action. Yet when a

20
sacred place is entered, people intuit that it is a special, wondrous realm.8
Dimensioning the Public Sacred
As previously discussed, we architects may work towards these same aims, yet there are distinctions between the
activist and professional. In this thesis I have proposed a different framework consisting of five deepening ways of
‘dimensioning’ the sacred:
0D. INTEREST : conception
This is the moment of conception for the design student, the moment he first becomes aware
of a place having an affect on his experience. This is the spark that begins a lifelong journey
of interest in architecture. This is like Strange Man seeing people with coffee for the first time
and finding it extraordinary.
1D. THOUGHT : investigation
Once a person discovers sacred architecture, he searches for a way to become involved.
His thoughts tell him that space is designed and built by people and that there may be a
way to enter into this world himself. Once Strange Man begins to ask questions about the
coffee receptacle, he has begun his search.
2D. EDUCATION : representation
This person then becomes a design student. He absorbs information from instructors who
give him a conceptual understanding of the value of the public sacred. This is achieved
through acquiring skills of 2D representation such as drafting, sketching and watercoloring
and through serial practice to develop a routine and familiarity. This engagement is an
indispensable entry to the approach though it in itself it is limiting. Strange Man learned
enough from Gentle Man that he was able to construct 1,000 coffees.
3D. DESIGN : demonstration
Students and professionals then apply these concepts to real and hypothetical projects they
design for clients. Here they pose inquiries about the specifics and test complex theories.
These tools include 3D representation of computer and analogue modeling. These projects
may be exceedingly beautiful or functional, but they will not reach their full potential to
become sacred because the architect’s knowledge is not yet personally internalized. This is
why Strange Man’s first coffee was ultimately rejected by his clients.
4D. PRACTICE : manifestation & collaboration
Practicing to inhabit the sacred through hands-on, sustained experience of creating the
public sacred gives the designer the opportunity to know sacred place at its fullest and
finally to inhabit it. This immersive involvement in a public project gives the designer at

21
once a feeling of sacredness by having his own needs met but also gives the experience
to others in his community. Practice requires manifestation in four dimensions rather than
representation or demonstration: full-scale construction and maintenance over time. Strange
Man finally understood inhabiting the sacred when he began to drink coffee daily and test
its properties. Finally, once a designer knows how to inhabit the sacred, he can apply this
phenomenological experience to other places outside of his experience and community.
These clients can participate in place-making and will be the key to long-term success of the
project. This is exemplified in the parable when Strange Man was able to make 1,000 of the
best coffees, each tailored to the particular client.
To illustrate just one possible path towards dimensioning the public sacred, I will use my own experience with
learning, teaching, designing and practicing in the following chapters. It is not my intention to prescribe a recipe
for others to follow, but merely to describe an organized yet flexible structure for others to operate within and
navigate their own paths (Spread 1, on next page).

22
line
point
0D
1D
2D
3D
4D
plane
cube
system
tesseract
INTEREST
THOUGHT
EDUCATION
DESIGN
PRACTICE
Intuition
Precision
T
he Architectural Cosmos
. . .
conception
investigation
representation
demonstration
manifestation
&
collaboration
vision
measurement
chart
list
statement
map
diagram
freehand drafting
hardline drafting
Computer Aided Drawing
laser cutting
scaled model
3D rendering
parametric model
3D print
architecture
hardscape
sound
touch
taste
smell
photograph
song
poem
conversation
gesture drawing
contour drawing
sketch
painting
watercolor
concept/sketch model
mold
sculpture
landscape
softscape
SPARK
IDEA
DRAWING
MODEL
CONSTRUCTION
&
MAINTENANCE

23
Career through Time
Depth of
Engagement
Type of
Engagement
discovering
place
creek behind
house*
walk by
daily
lower division
courses
design
charette
commissioned
park
installation of base
camp
fish + swim
upper division
courses
neighborhood
redevelopment
outdoor classroom fabrication of
dome
Burning Man*
air-conditioned
trailer
Base Camp
regular
relating self
and place
immersing
self within
academia
immersing
project
within self
dialoging
self and place,
creating public sacred
deep
*examples only
deep
deep
deep
deep
non-self shallow
public sacred
self
shallow
shallow
shallow
shallow
upper division
courses
art grant
proposal
commercial
pet shop
etc
etc
lower division
courses

26
precision
architecture
demonstration 3d print axonometric drawing aprametric model
laser cut
list
measure light
chart contour map
form implied form
square
project
within
self
cube
career
trough
time
shallow
deep
representation
investigation
cad section drawing hardline drafting
road map
color
tectonic sketch
computer analysis
palette
steel : rust brick : erosion
manifestation
+
collaboration
tesseract
system
Annotated Presentation Boards
PRACTICE
DIALOGUE
with
SELF
DESIGN
inside
SELF
EDUCATION
around
SELF
THOUGHTL
INE
POINT
CONCEPTION

27
landscape
intuition
wood : fire agriculture : desertification love : loss beauty : style nature : growth
concept model plaster mold sketch model
perspective
rendering
3d rendering massing model
diagram comic prose figure/ground statement quote song photograph
sound touch taste smell
freehand drafting
contour
drawing
field sketch gesture sketch painting watercolor

list
measure
light
contour map
chart
i
mplied form
form
road map
color
computer analysis
pa
le
tte

0D. INTEREST & 1D. THOUGHT
29
Mathematically, we know that there are infinite dimensions. In algebra class we are given problems like x²³ * x¹ºº = x¹²³, or x to the 123rd dimension. In geometry since it concerns our physical environment, it usually remains in 3 or less dimensions. For example three dimensional solids are known to be 3D, meaning three variables: x, y and z. 2D shapes are easily plotted on the Cartesian plane consisting of x in the horizontal and y in the vertical. 0 and 1 dimensions are harder to explain in geometry, though they are common in algebra: 5x + 3x = 8x or 8x¹ or 8x to the first dimension. Similarly 5 + 3 = 8 or 8xº or 8 to the zero dimension. There are more than 3 dimensions in our universe; quantum theory believes there to be 11, but other theories suggest up to 26 dimensions!
In physical space, we routinely witness the three dimensions of height, width, and length. We approximate two dimensions when we draw something on paper and though the paper has a width, it is negligible and therefore can be imagined to be non-existent. 0 and 1 dimension spaces are likewise physically impossible, but architectural convention uses them as frequently as 2D and 3D space. 0D space is absolute non-space; it is a singular point in the undefined infinite. Yet it is the inevitable beginning of any other dimension. 1D space is a line, consisting of two points. It has exactly one degree of freedom in any direction. 2D space, the world of shapes, has two degrees of freedom, 3D space of solids and forms has three and 4D space has four. These dimensions are exponentially complex in theory and ramification, so they will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters. Here I would like to set up an illustration of the design student along these dimensions.
dia
gram
comic
p
rose
figure/ground
statement
quote
song
p
hotograph
sound
touch
taste
smell

30
Imagine Strange Man arriving to campus. He sees many things but is struck extraordinarily by the fact that
people drink coffee. This experience propels him to ask for clarification. The design student is similarly introduced
to the world of architecture, specifically sacred architecture. He may exist for many years using architecture
without consciously experiencing it, for most architecture is not sacred. Additionally, he may feel an attachment
to architecture without ever assigning vocabulary to this attachment because these words do not exist in
our vernacular. The moment he is struck by a space, that singular spark or phenomenon when he is touched
personally by some place that satisfies a need of his (sacredness) is the moment when he realizes the importance
of architecture. This interest is the 0 dimension of the public sacred. For that moment, lasting one instant or many
years, there exists only that place and that phenomenological experience of fundamental needs being met by a
physical place (Fig 10). The budding architect is lost in space, inhabiting the sacred and truly living in the present.
For me, the earliest moment I can remember was when my father moved into a new house with an extraordinary
tree in the backyard. It had massive branches that began low and horizontal, spread wide and continued high.
It was the perfect climbing tree. I would spend hours each day in the ‘Everything Tree’ as I named it, dreaming
about the things I could build and do within its large and generous limbs. This was my first 0D experience, but l
have had many more since, all of which contribute to my passion for architecture and design.
Next Strange Man began to ask about the mugs of coffee. He wished to understand the connection between
coffee and mankind. Similarly, the 1st dimension for the design student is the search for more information. He
has begun to think about the place in relation to self (Fig 11). Perhaps he consciously observes his needs being
met or he process this phenomenon through thought and speech. Finally, this student is stirred to action by his
desire to know more places like this one and begins his path towards education, the 2nd dimension of the public
sacred.
My ID experience began with a fascination with extreme weather conditions. Perhaps in part because not long
after meeting the Everything Tree, it was destroyed by Hurricane Andrew, the hurricane that devastated much of
Florida in the summer of 1993. Amazingly, however, the trees destruction meant salvation for my father’s house:
as the tree uprooted, its reaching branches held the roof on and kept the things inside relatively in tact while
the neighbors’ homes were stripped down to the structure. I remember making paper models of the everything
tree, writing poetry about rain and gaining an interest in art because it was a means to explore the tree and my
experience with it.
With each dimension there are precise tools and intuitive tools to engage the sacred and utilize the dimension’s
potential. Though each person uses tools distinctly, in 0D space sight and measurement are usually precise, while
sound, touch, smell and taste tend to be intuitive. In 1D space reading and writing are precise tools to think
about self in relation to non-self. Listening, talking or singing are examples of intuitive tools. At these early stages
of place awareness, however, these distinctions between precision and intuition are hardly noteworthy because
consciousness is also nascent. The important takeaway is that momentum is gaining towards the next dimensions,
when someone with an interest in the physical world acts upon this interest.
Fig 10. 0D- discovering place
Fig 11. 1D- relating self and place
place
self

31
0D. INTEREST & 1D. THOUGHT
Finally, in each dimension there are depths of engagement. If the 0 dimension is to become aware of the non-self,
a shallow engagement in the non-self is to immerse himself only partially in the experience whereas a deep
engagement would be to be so immersed in the experience of a place that it has a lasting impact on future
personal development. In the 1st dimension of the public sacred a shallow engagement at Burning Man might
be to stay in an air-conditioned trailer whereas a deep engagement would be to sleep on the Playa floor under
the stars or be a regular visitor at Base Camp and paint or write about life there (Fig 12).
Together, the 0 and 1st dimensions function as the motivation to decide to study design. The next chapter
focuses on the 2nd dimension of architecture, the education of a designer. Specifically, I examine a
pedagogical approach to introducing students to the idea of inhabiting the sacred.
Fig 12. Shallow and deep types
of engagement in the 0 and 1st
dimensions
deep
deep
shallow
shallow

To build a factory in the form of a temple is to lie and disfigure the landscape.
- Mies van der Rohe
laser cut
cad section drawing
hardline drafting
tectonic sketch

33
Strange Man was curious enough to ask three people about coffee. The third, Gentle Man was able to give not
only a comprehensive explanation but offer further understanding through education. Strange Man eagerly
accepted and became a student of coffee. Likewise begins the designer’s path in architecture. Education is
the 2nd dimension to inhabiting the sacred (Fig 13).
2D space for the design student is the process of learning to represent concepts visually. He is placed within
the larger context of academia and for a time this intellectual environment is his reality. Ideally this will be a
moment of intense growth within the mind, body and spirit as he absorbs knowledge form many sources on
many subjects. His work, at least initially, focuses on accurate understanding of the material he is given and he is
expected to produce visual products that represent this understanding. In architecture school, the principle tool
of representation is the drawing.
There are many forms of drawing - from messy gesture sketches in a sketchbook to meticulous ink on mylar
constructions. Each tool depending on the individual’s skill will lie somewhere on the scale from precise to
intuitive. Ideally the student will be taught to use each drawing tool appropriately for the purpose the drawing is
intended to serve. For example, for note-taking, nothing more than a contour sketch is necessary, but to explain
how a wood and concrete foundation meets the earth, a hard-line scale drawing or CAD section is needed.
During the process of education, there are shallow and deep forms of engagement in academia. On the
Fig 13. 2D- immersing self within place
(academia)
freehand drafting contour
drawing
field sketch gesture sketch painting watercolor

34
shallow end, a student will believe their academic world to be only a small amount larger than themselves, or
they may envision themselves to know a lot and consider their body of knowledge to be only slightly smaller than
the entire body of knowledge within academia. On the deep end, a student will acknowledge how little they
actually know and imagine themselves to be small in comparison to the academic institution (Fig 14).
My path towards a design career began serendipitously. Since I had an interest in art at an early age, I was
already somewhat talented in the basic techniques. I desperately wanted to take advanced art classes in
high school, but the only one available to me without having to take the basic art prerequisite was mechanical
drafting, followed by architectural drafting. I was nonetheless thrilled about the precision of drafting and the skill
became sacred to me as a harmonious counter-balance to the other intuitive tools of expression I used in the art
I created outside of school. I was passionate about drafting and even won an amateur design competition, so
the choice to study architecture in college seemed natural and obvious.
Looking back on my first years of architecture school, I am frightened by the places I designed. The concepts
behind them are quite interesting and relevant, but they are atrocious places for human habitation and could
never be sacred. It was not until Randy’s ‘Landscape as Sacred Place’ class in graduate school that I began
to think of the architect’s responsibility to his clients. His teachings opened up many avenues for me and shortly
thereafter we began writing Inhabiting the Sacred and taught the class together the following year. I have
used a lot of these experiences with Randy in formulating a pedagogical approach when teaching subsequent
classes as a Graduate Student Instructor. I will now explain this approach by examining one recent semester of
teaching representational drawing.
Case Study: Teaching studio
From January to May 2012, I taught Environmental Design 11A: ‘Introduction to Visual Representation and
Drawing’ to fifteen undergraduate students just beginning studies in the College of Environmental Design at the
University of California - Berkeley. This was their first design studio and the curriculum served to introduce them
to principles of representation using drawing, graphics and composition. As these students had yet to declare
a specialization, there was a mix of architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning interests. As
Graduate Student Instructor, I taught under Professor Chip Sullivan, who prioritized freehand drawing techniques
such as contour and gesture drawing, perspective from observation, tone, graphic composition, prismacolor
and watercolor. These classes included two hours of lecture by Chip and six hours of studio instruction weekly.
Additionally, I taught a one-hour section where I was given opportunity to introduce supplemental material
from what was already covered in regular studio. For these meetings, I focused on drawing techniques they
were already learning in studio but material was geared toward introducing them to the notion of inhabiting the
sacred. Throughout the eleven weeks we completed many of the exercises created for the first step, Awakening
of Inhabiting the Sacred: sacred place drawings, home satisfaction/dissatisfaction lists, home-making manifesto,
and beginning designer’s manifesto.
Weeks 1-5: Meditation and sacred place drawing exercises
Week 6: Pin-up and discussion of common themes in sacred place drawings
deep
shallow
Fig 14. Shallow and deep types of
engagement in the 2nd dimension

35
Week 7: Comparison of students’ common themes to those in the book
Week 8: Lists of satisfactions and dissatisfactions about and from homeplace.
Week 9: Home-making manifesto discussion and sketching
Week 10: Careers in design and the value of place discussion
Week 11: Beginning designer’s manifesto presentation
Sacred place drawings
For five weeks I read the meditation script from Inhabiting the Sacred then asked them to draw. The script
prompted students to sit in quiet meditation for about 5 minutes and reflect upon their special places of the past.
It asked them to visualize all aspects of the place: location, temperature, smell, materiality, openness, activity,
involvement with others, light, sound, and color. Then they drew this place in dip pen, pencil, or watercolor for
about 30 minutes.
Meditation for Sacred Place Awakening
Close your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Tune other things out and concentrate
on your breathing until you feel yourself in tune with the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling . . .
Take your time, relax your muscles . . . Visualize the flow of air as you pull the oxygen through
your nose and deep into your lungs. Feel it and see it occupying your whole core . . . Now
with a controlled exhale, release the air and watch it through your mind’s eye intermingle
with the air outside. Then pull in another deep breath . . . Continue to concentrate on your
breath until you feel whatever tensions in your body dissipate with each exhale . . . When
you feel the tension gone from your body, give me a slight nod, and we will go to the next
step.
Now let your mind’s eye search for the places that are most sacred to you personally . . . At
first, let these special places go by as if they are individual images on a film clip going by
slowly enough that you can see each frame. Let them move in and out of your imagination
at will . . . They can be places from your past, present or future. There may be a lot of them
or a few . . . Let yourself see all the places several times.
Now allow your mind’s eye to settle on the place that seems most sacred. Don’t worry if
there are several and it’s hard to distinguish. You can visit all of these soon enough. Simply
focus on one place for now . . . Linger on that one place in your imagination. Picture yourself
completely in that place. Appreciate it. What senses does it most awaken?
Explore it. What do you see?
How does it smell?
What do you hear?
If you reach out, what do you touch? Feel the textures of the place.

36
What is the temperature? Is it warm or cool?
What is the light quality? Get a good sense of the light, where it originates, how it falls, what
it highlights.
Is the space open or enclosed? Does something form walls around you? On how many
sides? Is there something forming a roof overhead? How far is it from your reach?
How big is the space? Measure it by comparing its dimensions to something you know
well. Look at the details of the place. Are there some specific things that seem especially
important?
Now take note of what you are doing in the space.
Is there anyone else with you in the place? Who? What are they doing?
Is there some particular activity that defines the place?
Now allow yourself to just be in this special place. Soak in the essence.
How do you feel being here? Are there particular emotions you experience? Allow that
feeling to soak in.
You can stay at this place as long as you like.
When you have a good sense of the place, be sure to concentrate on the whole of it for a few
moments. Get a clear image in your mind’s eye that conveys that space to you. Allow one
image to settle into your consciousness, an image that would express physical aspects, the
essential quality and the meaning of this place to you. Examine each aspect of the image,
even the corners of the frame.
When you have a clear image etched in your mind and are ready to return from this special
place, think about how to describe it: what media (pencil, crayons, paint, collage, models,
etc) would best capture the essence of this place? Again, concentrate on your breathing.
Be aware of the rhythm as you breath in and out.
When you are ready, open your eyes. Visualize the image that expresses the physical
aspects, the essential quality and the meaning of this place.
Now on your paper make a picture of your sacred place. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Simply
create the image that you recall from a moment ago. If it seems difficult, close your eyes
again and get the image clear. You might be able to trace the image that way. This is a
picture for you and you alone, so don’t worry what it looks like. If you can’t get all the aspects
of the place in one image, you can add notes or other sketches to describe qualities that
were hard to get down at first. In any case, draw, write, construct, or make poems until
Fig 15. Student Zach Kuga drew a river
by his house, a place of relaxation and
seclusion

37
you’ve recorded everything, physical and emotional, that you felt and saw.1
At first I was careful to avoid use of the word ‘sacred’ to avoid confusion with religious connotations, using instead
‘special.’ Later, I explained our definition of the term and began using the word liberally from that point onward
with little questioning or misunderstanding from the students. In week six, students pinned-up their five sacred
place drawings and presented common themes they found between them. Most of these themes aligned with
predicted outcomes from Inhabiting the Sacred- childhood, outdoors, homeplace, moral place, growth, ritual
and participation. Some additional details that we had not written in the text that were observed by the students
were places that a person spends long spans of time, places where food is eaten or shared, and places that
allow for relaxation or seclusion from the daily routine (Fig 15).
At the conclusion of the exercise they observed that reflection upon their memories and making connections
between them was a new process. They were surprised at how vividly the memories could be recalled—one
student had a dream that evening about the sacred place she had drawn. For some this was their first relaxing
experience of meditation and enjoyed it for this reason. All found the process calming. One student enjoyed the
exercise at the beginning but later became frustrated because he “ran out of sacred places.” However, upon
repeating the exercise time after time, he had a breakthrough when he realized that he had only drawn interiors
of rooms and that outdoor places could also be sacred.
Satisfaction/dissatisfaction lists
Thinking about the lessons learned from the sacred place drawings, the students then thought about their
everyday sleeping places (usually a dorm room or an apartment) and compared it to their idea of homeplace.
They made four lists: one about their satisfaction of their current living situation and another about their
dissatisfactions, and two more about their home’s contentment or discontentment with them as occupant. By
addressing both points of view, the students had opportunity to reflect on both the place and themselves.
These students were in the age range of 18-20 years, most of them first-years at the university and for many their
first home away from parents. Not surprisingly then, a majority of the conversation centered around organization
and cleanliness. They were often frustrated about sharing space with roommates that did not contribute to a
healthy living environment or being too busy to find time for housework. They were also concerned about new
situations of public space, such as shared bathrooms or windows facing public corridors. Only a few students
had appreciation or discontentment with architectural features of their place: a window ledge scaled to human
proportion was perfect to perch and do homework on while feeling both in and out of doors, roof access offered
a view, a seismic retrofit caused a room’s otherwise large and pleasant window to be covered with a steel cross-bar.
As each presented their lists, I asked the rest of the class to rapidly sketch the issues being spoken about; all
agreed it was a great intuitive sketching exercise (Fig 16).
Fig 16. Rapid sketches of student’s
homeplace satisfaction/dissatisfaction
lists

38
Home-making manifesto
To follow up on the lists, the following week students presented home-making manifestos, which as assigned was
to focus on making dorm-space feel more like home-space. Besides the common promise to maintain a cleaner
home, there was also desire to organize better. Many spoke of wanting to put more effort into decorating
with new and old personal objects or art to feel more ownership over an otherwise generic space. Some
were interested in quality day and night lighting, wishing for a warm and enchanting mood. One student was
concerned that her roommate was less invested in their apartment and so wanted to focus on empowering her
to be as passionate as she is about their space. Another student presented the resolve to make his bed into a
swing, so that he could be rocked to sleep.
Beginning designer’s manifesto
In the final meeting of the class, students presented beginning designer’s manifestos. I asked them to put
passionately down on paper in any media with any method why they are involved in the design or planning
professions and what power or potential these professions have for making positive change for themselves or the
world. This was an excellent opportunity to explore 0 and 1 dimension experiences and perceptions thus far on
the 2nd dimension, their education.
Many students talked about their passion for sustainable architecture. They were excited to learn ways of
fixing the environmental problems facing them in their future. Some admitted how lost or small they feel in
the architectural discipline, “even with time, we’ll never understand all of it.” A few reflected on how they first
became aware of architecture’s beauty and value. One talked about the power of architecture to cause
a person to slow down and notice their environment, another about its power to create positive change in a
crime-ridden area, and another the ability to heal people. A few discussed the architect’s role to create space
for other people’s memories, to be a leader, to create magic and enchantment. One woman was concerned
about third world places and we had a great conversation about first world design influencing versus oppressing
third world values. Another student was interested in place maintenance and the education of a place’s user
to clean and respect their place. This meeting was incredibly rewarding to me as an instructor because I could
see that they had absorbed many of the fundamental concepts about inhabiting the sacred. I feel confident
that this early encouragement of intuitive observation about their world will be picked up in powerful ways later in
their careers.
Overall, students enjoyed and grew from exposure to sacred place concepts. Since their regular studio meeting
focused on a wide-rand of drawing techniques which taught them how to represent ideas in 2D space, the
sections were not technique driven but instead based on phenomenological experience. Given this opportunity
to reflect on their own history, students gained confidence in speaking about architecture, a crucial skill
needed for the design profession. In addition the conversations gave them a grounding for which to place their
academic knowledge in relation to the rest of their young adult lives. Students, like most anyone also love to talk
about themselves!
Still there are a few things to reconsider. Since my section was just one of five in the entire class, at times my

39
students felt like the exercises were extra work or that they struggled to find the connection between this material
and the techniques introduced in studio. Also we did not have adequate time dedicated to developing tools of
precision. As this young stage in their development, the sacred place exercises were strictly intuitive-based. I can
only hope that with time and more schooling students will find meaning, context and precision in the material
presented, that it is like a seed full of potential energy just waiting for water. Finally, we were unable to go further
than the private sacred. At this nascent stage in education it would have been too large a jump to move from
individual place values to community values, though this would have been the logical next progression. We
could have, for example, discussed the college community versus the non-college community of Berkeley,
interviewed people about their sacred placed then mapped them, or studied examples of treats to the public
sacred and its people and how they were able to defend it against big power.
In the next chapter I will cover the realm of design. This is the dimensional bridge between study and practice
and is most often understood to be the destination of the architecture profession, though I argue it is still part of
the journey.

Again and again,
Step by step,
Intuition opens the doors
That lead to man’s designing
Of more advantageous rearrangements
Of the physical complex of events
Which we speak of as the environment,
Whose evolutionary transition ever leads
Toward the physical and metaphysical success
Of all humanity.
-R. Buckminster Fuller
pa
r
a
metric model
a
xonometric drawing
3d print

41
After, and indeed during the educational phase of our training, we must design to apply and experiment with the concepts we have gained from our instructors. This is the 3rd dimension of design.
In the parable, Strange Man condensed the sum total of his conceptual coffee knowledge into a singular design solution. He tackled the design problem like a mathematical problem: he used the formulas and order of operations to determine the correct answer, forgetting there may exist many correct answers. This is a common mistake for the beginning student and it is only through design experience and incorporation of site factors i.e. program, climate and context that a design can be beautiful or functional (but there is still more to it becoming sacred. . . to be continued in 4D).
The 3rd dimension is the process of demonstrating physical space via precise and intuitive models, also in three dimensions. As always, these tools vary in their use per individual skill, but precise tools for construction documents might be 3D CAD programs like Rhino or Revit, and massing exploration can be satisfied with intuitive tools like sketch models in clay, chipboard or foam. Knowing which tools to utilize at the appropriate times may seem obvious, but when caught-up in the flow of design it is often forgotten. Especially in the school environment, where tools are new and deadlines always too soon, a student may rely almost exclusively on one tool for both precise and intuitive thinking. While in the short-term this overuse may be beneficial to learning the versatility of the tool, it can be stifling to creativity and limit the type of work the designer is qualified to do in the
sketch model
p
laster mold
concept model
p
erspective
rendering
massing model
3d rendering

42
long-run.
In an office workflows are more defined and tools standardized to fulfill certain phases of the design process.
The danger here is that the office may become so set in their ways that they are reluctant to introduce new
technologies and fresh ideas into their design proposals.
Ideologically 3D is an inversion from the 2D self and place dynamic: with education, self is located as a point in
a cloud of academia and is engaged in absorbing its contents. During design, however, the place or project is
a point inside a cloud of self. Rather than absorbing, the designer applies parts of self to place. Therefore the
project is located inside the designer (Fig 17).
As with the earlier dimensions the 3rd dimension has shallow and deep forms of engagement. On the shallow
end, a design project will be small in comparison to the totality of the architect’s experiences. Perhaps the
project is little more than a means to learn a new 3D software or the program fails to excite your imagination so
your design of a bus stop for example ends up looking like all the other bus stops. On the deep end, a project will
occupy a larger space within you. This is the project where you combine your imagination, creativity, theoretical
and practical knowledge, previous experience and a blend of precise and intuitive tools to invent a stunning and
unexpected proposal to even the blandest project descriptions (Fig 18).
Therefore design is the dimension where we make inquiries about what we have learned and we form personal
stylistic preferences as responses to real or hypothetical cultural, environmental or economic world issues. Design
is the ultimate goal of our profession, yet paradoxically, it is little more than a reflection of ourselves and our
perceptions of the world, a careful compilation of pieces of self imposed onto a site.
Case Study: Designing community
In Inhabiting the Sacred, we suggest that sites have potential to be sacred if the design intent satisfies
fundamental human needs. I used this approach in Spring 2012 as literally as possible in a studio project to see if i
could create opportunities for the public sacred. The studio was called Vertical Cities Asia: Korea and taught by
René Davids. The project’s premise was intense: a neighborhood of 100,000 inhabitants on a site just over 2km² in
the center of Seoul. Furthermore the project was to be a competition entry for an international think-tank based
in China who specified emphasis on the aging population. After an initial investigation of interests and ideas, we
teamed up into groups of three students for the remainder of the semester for design development. My group
consisted of myself and two MArch students: Misun Lee and Chawoo Rhee. We named our project Co-Inhabitat
: Animal + Human.
Before designing, we first researched the ecological and social contexts of our project area to know the needs
of the population (Figs 19, 20). This helped us gain an education about the site and its users. We were then able
to see clearly how Yongsan became what it is today and name the potential of what it could be: an emphasis of
both current and historical strengths and a reduction of weaknesses.
Fig 17. 3D- Immersing project within self
Fig 18. 3D- shallow and deep forms of
engagement in inhabiting the sacred
deep
shallow

43
In the development of the design concept, we incorporated the city’s political objective to expand green space
and proposed a bold model of ecological, economic and equitable sustainability for both human and animal
inhabitants (Fig 21). Then we began to imagine form that could support such this ambitious concept and again
utilized a local influence to initiate the design—the mountain (Fig 23). From here, we studied microclimates found
within the mountainous form and matched them with users’ needs (Fig 22). While the microclimate approach
satisfied the fundamental needs of the animal species and some of the needs of the human species there
were additional social needs to consider for the people. In such a large site with so many inhabitants, the best
approach was to fulfill their needs with infrastructure. We began by listing the needs and naming an infrastructure
that could fulfill that need. Then we cross listed the principles of sustainability (ecology, equity, economy) into
a matrix (Fig 24). The result was a brainstorming framework of strategies that helped to clarify programmatic
priorities. From there we were able to create while infrastructural systems based in the fundamental needs (Fig
26).
Finally, with the urban scale parameters worked out, we began organizing zoning and program. The intense
population requirements made it imperative that we build vertically, but our mountain concept allowed us to
stack public and private program more inventively than the typical skyscraper concept. We employed top, side
and under mountain situation distinctly and designated where people/animal interaction were more likely and
beneficial and where they would be less likely or counter-productive.
About Co-Inhbabitat : Animal + Human
Ecological context
70% of Korea’s terrain is over 200 meters altitude, most of which is part of the country’s principle
mountain range the Baekdu-daegan, believed to feed essential life-energy throughout the
land. This mountainous terrain creates well-defined watersheds, the largest of which is the
Han River Basin, covering 23% of South Korea’s area. Therefore the ecological influence
of the Han River itself is immense: 16 billion m³ of water flows through the Han annually.
Before the construction of dams and dredging, the river was known for its huge coefficient
of river regime (ratio of flow fluctuation) of 1:390. Its fertile alluvial banks were ideal for rice
cultivation and habitat for a large number of aquatic and terrestrial species. Despite efforts
to regulate flow there are seasonal problems with flooding during monsoon rains. Yongsan,
our project site, lies along part of its bank and is identified as one of the areas of highest
flood-risk in Seoul (Fig 19).
Social Context
Seoul’s location was chosen because of the powerful feng shui energy between mountain
and river (Fig 20). The Japanese occupied Seoul from 1910-1945 and expanded the city
toward Yongsan for the purpose of rice exportation. They imposed a street grid over the Fig 20. Feng Shui of Seoul ca. 1394
Fig 19. Flooding of the Han River

44
Fig 21. Mountain network. Yongsan is a link between six mountains that transect Seoul.
Fig 22. Mountain microclimates: base, peak, subterrain, ridge, valley

45
organic system that followed topography and built a railroad for resource extraction. In
1954, The Korean War armistice established the Demilitarized Zone along the 38th parallel
and Seoul’s population exploded to 10 million people in just 30 years. An interesting side
effect of the DMZ (only 30 km from Seoul) is that many endemic and endangered species
have found refuge there and consequently also within many of Seoul’s urban green areas.
It is a major political priority to continue greening the city by establishing an unbroken green
network between the six major mountains in the city limit. Yongsan lies in the path of this
network (Fig 21).
Potential of Yongsan
Yongsan’s spontaneous ecosystem of fertile alluvial plane was destroyed and urbanized:
the annual floods were controlled through dredging and damming, the wetland was filled
and developed, the seasonal rivers were culverted and covered with concrete streets, the
natural ecosystems were destroyed in favor of constructed parks and public green space.
In exchange, little was given to Yongsan to benefit the life quality of those who live there;
besides a major transportation hub, the area is known as a slum and redlight district with a
painful history adjacent to the center of Japanese occupation and later the US military. The
unfortunate result is a fractured, obsolete, residual land within Korea’s largest and most
dynamic city. Yongsan nonetheless holds much potential as an ideal fengsui site located
between the city’s most popular mountain Namsan and it’s widest river, the Han.
Design Concept
Our design is inspired by and celebrates Seoul’s natural features and continues along the
city’s trajectory of connecting green spaces into a network (Fig 23). Our design aims to
offer a revitalized urban area that supports healthy living for all beings, man and creature
alike. The project would support a population of 100,000 inhabitants: 2/3 of the population
would be mammals (us, the people) and 1/3 will be wild animals that are native to Korea
yet are categorized as rare or endangered due to urbanization and habitat destruction. Co-
Inhabitat offers birds, amphibians, insects and human-mammals a variety of opportunities
for cohabitation by utilizing environmental conditions found in Korea’s famous mountain
topography. After identifying the key species and their fundamental needs throughout the
year and day, we were able to create five mountain microclimates that support compatible
species and programmatic overlap (Fig 25). These microclimates are peak, base, subterrain,
ridge and valley (Fig 22). Each has a specific ecosystem function and infrastructure to
support the target species:
Peak- This rock outcrop ecosystem serves as breeding habitat for predatory birds and
amphibians, hiking trails for mammals, and primary rainwater treatment
Fig 24. Sustainable infrastructure
brainstorming matrix
Fig 23. Model of mountain concept
FOOD infrastructure
for SECURITY
Terraced vegetable beds
Rice paddie marsh
Restaurants
sustainable
EQUITY
sustainable
ECOLOGY
sustainable
ECONOMY
WATER infrastructure
for RECIPROCAL RESPONSE
Living machine temples
Intertidal wetland
Park of memories
SOCIAL infrastructure
for BELONGING
Childcare and primary health care
Outdoor/indoor recreation
Mom & Pop shops
TRANSPORTATION infrastructure
for NEW EXPERIENCE
Adventure trails
Forrested commuter bike paths
Paved toll and emergency roads

46
Certainty of Food
A. Sun- shines 4,380 hours each year on the southern slopes in Seoul
B. Rice paddy- if 1/10 of Yongsan’s area had rice paddies on the roofs, retired people can farm 60 metric tons
of rice
C. Home consumption- Koreans eat about 100kg of rice/year. 100 Farmers could eat 100% of their rice needs
D. Surplus- the remaining 50,000kg can be sold in a market
E1. Home consumption- locals can eat it at home
E2. Restaurant- locals or visitors can eat it in local restaurants. Surplus will feed 8% of rice needs to all Yongsan
citizens
Reciprocal Responses of Person + Water
A. Rain- 2600m³ falls on site annually, and much more comes in from other areas
B. Bioswale- rainwater is filtered to potable level in valleys
C. Storage- 1 week’s supply of municipal use water is stored in tanks below grade
D. Potable water use- koreans use about 100liters a day in their sinks, laundry, shower and kitchen
E. Graywater use- reusing graywater for toilets saves over 5,000m³/day of potable water
F. Living machine- sludge is separated and the blackwater is sent through a living machine for primary
treatment
G1. Fertilizer- the sludge is converted to nutrient-rich fertilizer for the crops on site
G2. Wetland- water is secondarily treated in the wetland, then filtered to teriary (potable levels in the bioswales)
H. Storage- 1 week’s supply of municipal use water is stored in tanks below grade
New Experience of Transportation
A. Recreating- pedestrian and bike-friendly pathways along the roof for nature viewing and exercise
B. Erranding- underground parking allows use of pedestrian greenways for short trips around town, animal
corridor
C. Traversing- underground expressways with skylighting for quick traversing through town
D. Visiting- access through Yongsan station subway then transfer to local monorail
Belonging to the Community
A. Easy Mobility- at ground level, all necessary amenities are near. For people with physical limitations
B. Active Free Time- still close to amenities, exercise paths are also convenient. For people without jobs but
still active
C. Diverse Interests- equally distanced from all areas. For people or families with many activities
D. Work + Play- easy access to pedestrian paths for circulating to work and home. For professionals who are
active outdoors
E. Busy with View- at the peak, primary access to nature is visual through the window. For busy people with
little time to recreate
Animal-Human Community Space is the area where people can view and interact with the other species.
Human-Human Community Space is the area where people can interact with people of other ages, interests,
and abilities.

47
Valley- The valley is perhaps the most rich microclimate for coinhabitiation, as the angle of
slope of the valley’s edge offer much variety from canyon ecosystem to riparian corridor
ecosystem. It serves as secondary rainwater treatment and habitat for mammals and
amphibians.
Ridge- The ridge has two varieties of grassland ecosystem: on the southern Ridges are rice
paddies for amphibian habitat and small-scale urban agriculture whereas the northern
ridge hosts perennial grassland for songbirds. Both aid in secondary rainwater
treatment.
Base- This wetland ecosystem hosts secondary municipal water treatment, aquatic sports
for mammals, and migratory bird resting and breeding islands.
Subterrain- This forest canopy ecosystem is used for community and commercial amenities,
municipal utilities, transportation corridors, floodwater retention and primary and
secondary wastewater treatment.
We feel this bold landscape move from destroyed alluvial plant to mountainous topography
is acceptable and appropriate because we will be able to recreate a similar alluvial plane
controlled by the geometry of the constructed topography, solving simultaneously the
ecological problem of habitat loss and the social problem of annual flooding. This strategy
serves to further emphasize the geography already familiar to the area rather than impose
a new sense on the landscape.
Fundamental Needs
In order to be a sustainable city of the future, Yongsan must keep its major infrastructures
local. This is better for city-wide systems that are already maximized and also better for our
citizens (Fig 26).
Certainty of Food
The aging population has both more free time and more agricultural knowledge than
the younger urban population in Seoul. We would like to focus on these strengths and
incorporate a rice production network into the reimagining of Yongsan.
New Experience of Transportation
Inhabitants will have many opportunities to travel within Yongsan in any method they choose:
foot, bike, kayak, car, bus, train or monorail. These expanded mobile possibilities aim to
make each day an adventure close to home. Depending on the destination of each visit to
Yongsan, there are four recommended ways of travel within the site.
Fig 26. (opposite) Satisfaction of
fundamental needs with sustainable
infrastructure
Fig 25. Species program occupancy by
season and time of day

Dimensioning the Public Sacred by A Nelson 2012

Dimensioning the Public Sacred by A Nelson 2012

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