The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

PART THREE | INNER RESOURCES
Yang energy is masculine and is described as light, dry, directed,
focused, logical, and action-oriented. Yin energy is feminine and
described as dark, moist, diffuse, vague, intuitive, and receptive. A
simple example of the way these two energies are combined may be
found in the act of walking. First we need to learn to stand and get
grounded, which is feminine energy. This is followed by the energy
used to step forward, which is masculine. In the creative process, we
experience both of these energies. A creative cycle of work involves
receptivity or containment followed by a pulsation of something new
that inspires us and moves us forward, which is in turn contained
again before another wave of new images or ideas comes forth.
What interests me is the question of how these unconscious traits
find their way into the built world and how designers can learn to
work more consciously to bring these covert characteristics into their
work. Contra-sexual traits represent ways of experiencing the world
that are often excluded from our understanding of a design problem.
Yet what makes a design great is the way it manages to touch us
precisely because it embraces and transcends and makes conscious
what had once been thought of as irreconcilable opposites.
Cities that have lost their feminine qualities are full of places
where people no longer want to live. These places have often been
spoiled by large-scale infrastructure or ruined by political willfulness
that leaves us with no choice but to resort to extra policing for
life to feel possible. Public places that graciously draw us out of our
separateness offer us the setting we need to gather in peace and
watch life unfold. These kinds of places, like Pailey Park in New
York, are nearly impossible to quantify to a patriarchal civic
bureaucracy, yet they offer a refuge that fundamentally understands
our human longing to connect with others and ourselves. Airports,
when they are overly concerned with complex issues of organizational
movement, ignore the deep-seated anxiety that accompanies
the modern experience of travel. When offices become too
concerned with performance, mysteriously, performance declines.
How did the culture of design evolve to the point that our schools
often resemble factories or prisons?
When the symbolic masculine and feminine elements of design
work together, their own properties are expanded. Bridges are
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