One step forward, two steps sideways
On the process of building.
When we talk about design, we usually reflect on the finished pieces. The ‘delicate carvings on a facade’, the ‘sonorous silence in a sacred space’, the ‘spectacle of a towering edifice’. A hindsight-powered takedown of structures, a cultivated critique of something deemed ‘complete’.
But is anything ever truly complete?
La Sagrada Familia is one of the most famous churches in the world, known for the fact that it has been under construction for more than a century.
Work on the church began in 1882, and has been going on since (with a bit of a break during the Spanish Civil War). For context, 1882 is when the first electric clothes iron was patented. Almost 150 years later, we have all moved on to wearing wrinkle-resistant polyester, and the Sagrada Familia is still being built.
The most commonly cited cause of this elongated timeline is issues with funding; almost all construction money comes from private donations. But the other fact is that its design is simply very complex, and needs a lot of time to get done.
The main man behind the church was Antoni Gaudi, the eclectic and visionary architect. Gaudi is known for his colourful and curvaceous works, and in Sagrada Familia we see the zenith of his genius.
Typically, the process of making a building begins by drafting the design on paper to mark how the spaces flow into each other and to establish the locations of load-bearing elements that create the skeletal structure.
Gaudi designed the church by first creating plaster models of the structure and then deriving the structural drawings from it. The result was an incredible building with very few straight lines, held up by tensile columns at fantastical angles and hyperboloid vaults. The arched-ness that the church is known for is not of the facade, the frame of the building is cambered and twisting, giving the impression that the building is an organic structure, rather than a man-made creation.
The sheer complexity of the design means that the form is being developed as it is being built, although the construction has picked up pace now with all the computer-aided tools available today.
Even though tourists throng the halls of the Sagrada Familia every day, the building isn’t ‘done’, quite clearly. But then, neither are so many of the places we inhabit in our day-to-day lives.
Is a building complete because its owners move in? At each point in its lifetime, a building exists. Before, as a vision; during its life, as structure; and after, in memory.
But it exists, completely. At no point is it ‘lacking’ anything. Each stage of its life is the stage it is meant to be at. Being ‘unbuilt’ is being complete in its own way — there is an ‘ing’ in ‘building’ after all.
The house we live in right now was ‘done’ when we moved in — all construction complete. Then it was a different kind of ‘done’ when we added our furniture to it — ready for us to live in. And it is a different kind of ‘done’ every day as the seasons change, as we put up awnings over the doors for the rains, or change out thinner curtains for thicker ones before the winter. As each morning rolls in, we wake up to find the house a little bit undone, and with each little change we make it a little bit more ‘done’.
The Sagrada Familia, like all our lives, is still being built, and yet, it is quite complete.
The point of design is not the end product but the process of making it. Every architect, no matter how experienced, is making a building — that particular building — for the first time.
We too are always too young for everything. We do everything, always, for the very first time. You might do the dishes each day, but every distinct day, with every distinct event, is always experienced for the first time. When someone tries to stop their child from crying all night, they are doing that for the first time, each time, even if they have three other children. Even an old person is becoming old the first time in their life — they’ve never done this before.
Every moment of our lives we are too young to be experiencing that moment. And each time, we can only try to do a bit differently, a bit better, the next first time.
The ‘done-ness’ of our homes and lives doesn’t exist, they are constantly being built. The work we do towards being ‘done’ isn’t linear either. And although it appears arbitrary, it is measured, intuited, a response to the dance of changing days and changing times. All that matters is that we move on, waltzing and tango-ing as needed, one step forward, two steps sideways. Dancing a new dance the first time, each time.
This reminded me of that famous zen saying - we cannot step into same river twice! Yet to he river is complete all the time.
Well expressed, Revati. To me the takeaway of this piece is - focus on the process, on this moment - because truly there's no end, no 'finish' ...
Keep writing more often
"...Every moment of our lives we are too young to be experiencing that moment. And each time, we can only try to do a bit differently, a bit better, the next first time. ..."
Loved this! <3