Status Updates From The Timeless Way of Building

"Although it is true that a unique event can sometimes change our lives completely, it is not too much to say that the overall character of our lives is given by those events which keep on recurring over and over again. And, by the same token, it is roughly true that any system, any aspect of the life of a part of the world, is essentially governed by those situations which keep on repeating there."

"The life of a house, or of a town, is not given to it, directly, by the shape of its buildings, or by the ornament and plan—it is given to them by the quality of the events and situations we encounter there."

"Those of us who are concerned with buildings tend to forget too easily that all the life and soul of a place, all of our experiences there, depend not simply on the physical environment, but on the patterns of events which we experience there."

"We can identify the towns and buildings which have this quality simply by asking whether they are like us when we are free. We need only ask ourselves which places have made us feel that breath of sudden passion in them, which whispers to us, and lets us recall those moments when we were ourselves. And the connection between the two is not just an analogy, or similarity. The fact is that each one creates the other."

"But the very beauty of the word "alive" is just its weakness. The overwhelming thing that stays with you is that the fire lives. And yet this is a metaphor...If we are pressed to explain why we call one fire alive and another dead, then we are at a loss. The metaphor makes us believe that we have found a word to grasp the quality without a name."

"We have so far beset ourselves with rules, and concepts, and ideas of what must be done to make a building or a town alive, that we have become afraid of what will happen naturally, and convinced that we must work within a "system" and with "methods" since without them our surroundings will come tumbling down in chaos."

"Imagine the most beautiful place you have seen or dreamt of. You have the power to create it, at this very moment, just as you are. And this power we have is so firmly rooted in every one of us that once it is liberated, it will allow us, by our individual, unconnected acts, to make a town, without the slightest need for plans, because, like every living process, it is a process which builds order out of nothing."

"Even the life and beauty of the most are inspiring great religious buildings came from the languages their builders used. But in our time the languages have broken down. Since they are no longer shared, the processes which
keep them deep have broken down; and it is therefore virtually impossible for anybody, in our time, to make a building live."

Rereading this now that I have a physical copy.