It seems like one powerful way to bring out the feeling of meaning in our lives, and to really build it into everyday life, is to find ways to connect meaning into physical space.
Now this is just the beginning of a huge topic, but I feel there’s so much potential in this area.
Think of all the spaces where we spend our time every day.
There’s the regulars, the home, there’s the route we take maybe on our way to and from work, there are the different routes through the city that we travel, different places that we visit.
It becomes like our personal corner of the world.
And it’s so easy to look at this space as just being this sort of drab, bland physical space.
And unless we are lucky enough to live in a particularly naturally beautiful place, then it can often appear quite grey, utilitarian, and really devoid of significance.
There’s often no meaning that really feels built into the buildings and the streets that are around us.
It seems like it’s up to us to give it some kind of significance.
The world we live in now is very functional.
Architecture, for the most part, is rectangular boxes, because that’s the most efficient, and we have most streets and structures are made of grey concrete, because that’s the most efficient.
And it’s great to have all this efficiency, because then it allows us to build more and get more done, but there’s something missing if we simply let just be this grey efficiency.
We have the ability to build stories into the landscape, stories into the streets, the walls, the buildings, all of these things that we see every day.
Imagine looking at the details of them.
Imagine really having a story for your walk to work or your drive to work.
Imagine having some feelings connected with each of the different parts of the spaces that you live in.
Like in your home, maybe each corner, each corner of each room can have its own feeling, its own story.
Now maybe that seems over the top, to have a whole story just for the corner of your living room, or the space behind the bathroom door, or whatever it is.
I mean, it’s up to you how much detail you can go into it.
But it seems like just having something special about every little space that is part of our lives brings so much richness to our everyday experience, so that we’re not simply living in a utilitarian box.
We’re not simply functioning.
We’re actually living.
We’re actually experiencing an unfolding story in the environment around us.
And, well, how do we do this? I guess it’s just imagination.
I mean, we can take what’s given to us, if we have a naturally beautiful environment, if we have skies and water and trees, and we have these elements already given to us that we can work with, and simply appreciate the details of this environment around us.
And if it’s just grey concrete streets and grey concrete walls, then it’s up to us to have a human story.
Because even in the most boring street, in the most boring building, there have been so many people that have come and gone through that space, that the stories are already in there, somehow, to be extracted, through all the lives that have been lived.
I just think of like my walk to the local train station, that has, you know, a grey sidewalk, grey street, but there’s all these little details along the way, and there’s so many people passing through every day, that it’s like together we’re building some kind of a story out of it.
Of course, there could be many different threads of story that can be pulled out of it.
So I’m very interested to explore this topic further, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what kind of stories do you have for your home, your work, your neighbourhood, and what are possible ways that we can really build meaning into the spaces that we live in.
#meaningfulspaces #localspaces #meaningfularchitecture