The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

PART THREE | INNER RESOURCES
repress and project onto others. This act of repressing takes considerable
energy to maintain, as does the act of sustaining a
judgmental projection. Not only is this energy lost to us, it prevents
us from having compassion for anyone–including ourselves.
This need to assimilate our shadow aspect is easy to write
about, but is difficult to achieve. It is difficult because it means
accepting longstanding parts of ourselves that have been labeled
unacceptable. The value of the shadow to the designer is that it
often presents us with new ways to understand our problems. For
example, when we draw a building two-dimensionally, there is no
shadow. The building exists only as a façade. Not until we incorporate
the shadow does the building become three-dimensional
and gain depth. In other words, incorporating the dark shadow can
often bring the quality of transformation to our work in the form
of new images and ideas.
The shadow is within us, but because we don’t search for it
there, our only choice is to project it out onto others or into the
world and build it. Because the shadow belongs to individuals, it
can manifest itself in all things that are created by individuals. It is
found in collective entities like business organizations, institutions,
and governments. The shadow of society is a massive force, an
accumulation of unconscious aspects projected onto others, onto
our cities, and onto the way we treat the natural world. It is found
in our institutions, in our public spaces, and in our homes. In a
sense, everything created contains the unconscious imprint of its
makers and carries their shadows. In an individual, this may
appear as a sudden stream of judgment; in society, it manifests
when those in positions of power collectively refuse to acknowledge
vast depressing stretches of city because of the unconscious
judgments they project onto those places and the people who live
there. The contemporary trend to “heal” toxic sites, be they residential
or industrial, represent positive examples of reclaiming the
collective civic shadow.
One example of shadow that has been assimilated into the built
world over the last 30 years is interesting because it may herald a
shift of awareness as profound as any of the great technological
inventions of the past. Since the 1970s, for the first time, building
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