“The sun never knew how wonderful it was until if fell on the wall of a building,” according to Louis Kahn, one of the most accomplished modern architects from the West.  Even before the rise of modern architecture, going back to the beginnings of humanity, there has always been an innate compulsion towards the brilliance of sunlight.  Gods and deities have been christened in the name of the sun as a promoter of growth and prosperity.  But, what of his counterpart, the moon, in our modern era?  The mellow aura of the moon, which begets the serene solidarity of night, has long slipped away from our society where everything has become illuminated.  At night, cities radiate bright lights long after the sun has departed, eradicating the vista of heavenly twilight skies.

            Where daytime and sunlight is personified through the hustle and bustle of activity, conversely, there is an antithesis within the vivacity of society when night falls. Introspection seems to be more deliberate, and contemplation becomes easier when the commotion of people dissipates as the sun sizzles out below the horizon. Henry David Thoreau mused that the “higher harmonies of thought” were more easily procured “in the hush and quiet of darkness.”  Night, furthermore, propagates the cycle within humans to sleep, propelling one into the sphere of dreams and visions, analogous, perhaps, to the slowly rotating celestial bodies of the cosmos; they are seemingly unreal, yet continue to materialize upon us like clockwork.

            Within our modern and industrious society, luminosity has become a prevailing feature that is illustrated through bright city lights and gleaming high-tech gadgets.  The Japanese culture of old, however, serves as a juxtaposition of those concurrent trends that our society follows and is best exemplified through the writings of Jun’ichiro Tanazaki.  Tanazaki addresses how the Japanese welcomed light with moderation in order to achieve harmony through all aspects of their life such as in their home, food, silverware, and use of materials.  Tanazaki interpreted all issues related to ambiance, comfort, thought, and appetite as being negatively influence by the modern penchant towards more and more illumination.  There is a sublime dimness that encompassed the traditional Japanese culture, but it seems that it made them more pensive, appreciative, and at ease.

            While industrialization is imperative to the progress of society, introspection becomes lost when things move too fast.  Though light is not the only factor that affects our loss of harmonious thought, it is important to acknowledge its importance.

There is a saying that time is of the essence.  Contractually, this means that something agreed upon must happen within a certain time, lest the contract becomes null and void.  Time is of the essence also serves as a euphemism, reiterating the scarcity of time, forcing one to be cognizant of an ever-diminishing interval of time.  In reality, however, time is constant and never ending.  We only allow ourselves to be restricted by agendas and timetables, to be guided by itineraries to usher us from bed to class and back to bed.  In J.G. Ballard’s Chronopolis, society at first must adhere to draconian schedules set by the Ministry of Time, whom unconditionally regulates the aspects of every citizen’s life.  People become dehumanized and unable to establish their personal agendas.  The totalitarian approach to scheduling eventually leads to a usurpation of the Ministry and time becomes wayward, with little to dictate how people manage their time.  The protagonist Newman said that life became “unsynchronized and ambitionless.

            There must be mediation between how a schedule is organized and how time is utilized.  There are unnecessary stresses that accompany strict conformity to the will of a schedule.  Constant deadlines create burdens and cannot account for any indiscriminate events that may happen to arise.  Additionally, with the lack of planning, priorities can be lost within the obscurity of the passing minutes and hours.  It is important to not be disillusioned by thinking one has all the time in the world.  Though time remains constant, we are restricted by anthropological characteristics such as circadian cycles and aging.  Eventually one must sleep and one will die.  One must work reasonably within these constraints to fashion a schedule that uses time to guide and act as an overseer that will allow one to be conscientious of how time should be managed. 

To completely neglect the passage of time is irresponsible and to be subservient to time depraves one of any freedom.  Newman, in Chronopolis, yearns so long to schedule and observe the passage of time that he loses touch with reality.  Ironically, he finally is united with a beloved functioning clock in his prison cell, only to become ever so conscious of the continuous ticking, which he must endure for twenty years.  

The steps of collecting ones thoughts, whether they are cohesive or erratic, is the most proactive way to come to understand oneself.  To see the continual growth and evolution of a self-narrated anthology and to witness the growth of ones psyche is the most honest and rewarding way to self-critique.  There are a plethora of ways to chronicle thoughts, however, the most prevalent and enduring have been to keep a journal or sketchbook.  The greatest writers, innovators, and artists constantly organized their musings onto parchment, as they provided themselves the opportunity to flourish mere introspections into something tangible, able to be manipulated through constant revision.  I am also conscious to the act of scribing and scribbling as the most effective ways for me to progress in my development as an architect, which currently is of utmost significance for the forthcoming years.

            As a small child and young adult, my mother was always encouraging me to keep a journal, to record any of the relevant occurrences that would seem to arise throughout the day.  Unwillingly, I bended to her will and would scrawl with indifference, completely apathetic to recounting the events of the day.  Reading through the journals now, the days of my past seem monotonous, as if the words were merely there to take space, never to record anything meaningful.  However, the days that stand out most were when the emotions were strongest, and most evident of these emotions was anger.  How could a child possibly be filled with so much angst, more importantly, that child being myself?  Recounting those memories from the depths of those seasoned journals lingers like a bad taste on the back of my tongue.  Fortunately, nevertheless, those memories also allow myself the fortune of witnessing my progression into the person I am now.

            Presently, there is no better therapy than to collect my thoughts into something consistent, organized in a way to reduce the clutter in my brain that seems to accompany the life of an architecture student.  Every line, curve, and dot is therapeutic and simple sketches of fragmented thoughts can be recounted with the intention of being developed into palpable ideas.  The sketchbook has become an appendage, a tool that is as substantial as any sense that take for granted.

According to the Gestalt theory of Perception, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” This concept can be applied into the realm of architecture and visual representations of ideas.  The nuptial of space, form, and materials actualizes an edifice as a whole, which the architect attempts to personalize.  Not only do an architects understanding of the basic concepts of design applied to a building that an architect creates influence the buildings construction, but a piece of the architect is also embedded into his work.  The architects id, ego, behaviors, perceptions, his psyche, are tapped to act as a parallel to his or her idiosyncrasies that can be evidenced in a structure. The architect, through conception with these basic concepts of design, gives birth to his creation.

            Through this marriage between architect and design, a living, breathing building becomes fabricated.  The building embodies a part of the architect and like through genetics, exhibits traits that are dominant of the architect’s personal preferences.  The structure is not merely an expanse of steel, glass, and concrete. The parts that are additive to the building mean nothing until it can be summed up through the intelligent and learned design of the architect.  His influence is exponentially important to produce a structure that is at any means succinct. 

            As to how the architect is able to create this structure is intangible.  There is no mathematical formula that is able to produce a perfect building.  Yes, math must be allocated throughout the structures by means of tension, stress, and pressures in order to create a functional building, but this is irrelevant to how the architect analyzes his design.  The design is realized through artistic representation, through symbols that are meaningful and encompasses the artistic conscious of the architect.              Rudolph Arnheim’s theory of growth of a child’s conscious fully embodies this ideal.  He says that children draw through representational concepts.  This parallels how the architect creates idea.  In a sense, the way we create ideas of design and representation are infantile, we design the way we perceive and utilize these ideas with the intent of creating order into an arrangement that we believe to be beautiful.