Preface

1. My Intention in Book 3

In Book 1, The Phenomenon of Life, I have offered a view of the natural and built worlds in which order is seen as underlying all life, and life -- visible as living structure -- a common and necessary feature of buildings.

In Book 2, The Process of Creating Life, I have argued that it is a special kind of adaptive process, not a mechanical or arbitrary application of properties, that creates life. Life in nature, and in the humanly constructed world, is generated by a process of unfolding in which living structure grows in stepwise fashion from a current condition (the system of centers which exists) and takes on greater life by a series of structure-preserving transformations, or adaptations. This life-generating process is, I have argued, knowlable and can guide human actions. The process is inherent in nature's infinite complexity and can only be grasped to a first approximation, but my hope is that readers will entertain and use the conception of living process as a reasonable approximation of how the built world comes to life.

Throughout Books 1 and 2, I have not disguised my belief and anger that the modern world -- especially with the advent of professional architecture separated from building -- has lost touch with life in the world we are making. We live in a world degraded and overwhelmed by construction which is driven by forces very different form, and often oblivious to, what I have been describing as necessary conditions for creating living order.

In this book, A Vision of a Living World, I try to show what happens if living processes are used pervasively, in widespread fashion, in our own era, and what kind of overall environment we may expect to see from their effects. I show examples of large buildings, small buildings, neighborhoods, gardens, public space, wilderness, houses, construction details, color, ornament.

The views I am advocating on building process are not widely accepted and they are often at odds with current ways of doing things. Still, I can only be grateful for having had so long and wide-ranging a chance to develop and to try many of my ideas on how to construct a wholesome, life-supporting world around us.

I hope to show that this world, because it is generated by repeated application of living processes, is indeed "living". That means, in particular, I hope it is visible in my examples that such a world is nourishing to human life and to human feeling; that it encompasses what we need, our joys, our sorrows. I would like you to begin to feel, for yourself, that such a world may be (at least in part) a model of the kind of world in which we might wish to live and in which we can live well.

Part One

The first two chapters contains discussion of what is perhaps the most important human issue in the built environment: our sense of ownership, participation, and belonging to the world.

Chapter 1, BELONGING AND NOT-BELONGING, suggests that our belonging to the world works in two ways: the belonging that we feel in public places and the belonging which we feel in individual, private, places. In a world whre living processes are working properly, each individual private place (whether private house, apartment, office, workplace, or workshop) will have its own uniqueness that allows its users to belong to it. At the same time, to work well each of these private places are directly attached to some hull of public space, thus giving us -- people -- participation in the social world at large.

Chapter 2, OUR BELONGING TO THE WORLD, describes with small examples, and with more intensity, just what I mean by belonging. This belonging -- the relation through which we human beings are connected to Earth -- a visceral feeling of joy -- hinges on the sensation that we have the right to be here, that we belong to the world and it belongs to us.

Only living process can generate belonging. When living process are working well, our belonging comes about naturally. Then, both in public and in private, our belonging to the Earth is established without effort.

1. Belonging and Not-Belonging

1. Who, Today, Can Truly Enjoy Belonging to the Earth?