The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

INTRODUCTION
the library, and as I looked out a different window and studied
from a new chair, it seemed to me that the very shape of the interior
had somehow changed since my first visit to the building a
year earlier. For an entire week I ate my lunch in the library and
consumed everything I could find about the psyche until, without
realizing it, something inside of me shifted and the mysterious
dynamics of the unconscious took hold of me.
I remember leaving the library as it was closing, late in the afternoon
of Christmas Eve, and walking up St. Martin’s Street towards
Leicester Square. The darkening street was filled with Londoners
hurrying home or rushing to do last-minute shopping. Standing on
the edge of Leicester Square, I stopped in the midst of this busy
scene and suddenly felt something inside me open. I had always
thought that London was very reserved and its citizens introverted,
but now every face and every building seemed filled with inner
stories and the world was somehow alive and freely expressing
these hidden messages. Amazed, I felt as though I had slipped into
a place that linked and underpinned the built world and the inner
world. Ever since that moment, I have been trying to understand
the practical lessons this experience has to offer.
Through the years that I worked as an architect, I continued my
search. I spent 10 years exploring Buddhism and finally returned
to school to study psychology and began working as a psychotherapist.
I love architecture, but I carried within me a passion to
understand the unseen side of things. It was that feeling that the
world was made of two strands, the seen and unseen, that drew
me to learn about the psyche and the role of the unconscious. I felt
that architecture as it is generally practiced does not include the
richness and complexity we see when we look at things psychologically,
where mystery, uncertainty, or difficult conditions can
surface and become integrated. With the built world, the provisional
and irrational nature of things is seldom acknowledged. I felt
I needed to enter and explore this aspect of the world. From architecture
I learned how to look at the built world and something of
the forces that shape it. From Buddhism I began to appreciate the
depth of inner world. Finally, with psychology, I began to learn
how our inner world and the built world are related.
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