surroundings that speak of enchantment

Instead I’m asking you to ask yourself: where do you feel most comfortable and confident? Where do you laugh the loudest? Where do you let your guard down? Where do you feel the urge to take an Instagram photo because you want the world to see what you see and feel how you feel? Where do you get your biggest ideas? Where do you feel free to stretch

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Taking architecture seriously therefore makes some singular and strenuous demands upon us. It requires that we open ourselves to the idea that we are affected by our surroundings even when they are made of vinyl and would be expensive and time-consuming to ameliorate. It means conceding that we are inconveniently vulnerable to the colour of our wal

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The ongoing work of making the spaces in which we live cultivates a kind of alchemy, in which stronger links between people and place can arise.

“Sense of place – the way we perceive places such as streets, communities, cities or ecoregions – influences our well-being, how we describe and interact with a place, what we value in a place, our respect for ecosystems and other species, how we perceive the affordances of a place, our desire to build more sustainable and just communities, and how... See more

But when architecture falls out of sync with the conditions we live in, home begins to feel more and more precarious. The reason we dislike contemporary architecture is because it fails to achieve this essential purpose, to, as the architect Antonio Sant’Elia put it, “freely and audaciously harmonize man with his environment”.