When we look at human society across history and around the planet, the Sacred is perhaps the most important realm of all, for it expresses the invisible passions that move us. Although there is much discussion among social theorists, architects, planners, and others, about the public and the private realms that constitute our habitat, there is hardly any attention paid to, the Sacred Realm.
The chocolates are delicious, the scenery is beautiful, but it is not quite the same. To the Japanese, Mount Fuji is sacred; to the Swiss, Mont Blanc is just a very high mountain. This difference is of decisive importance to their architecture and to their lives.
Of course, by sacred, one does not mean only the religious but the primordial as well. Religion is perhaps the most facile path to the world of the non-manifest, but it is not the only one. In fact, as Europe has increasingly distanced itself from religion over the last two centuries, the primordial has become a fecund source of mythic. This is why Picasso and Matisse in their painting, Stravinsky in his music and Le Corbusier in his architecture, intuitively searched out the primitive. They wanted to find the Sacred.
The chocolates are delicious, the scenery is beautiful, but it is not quite the same. To the Japanese, Mount Fuji is sacred; to the Swiss, Mont Blanc is just a very high mountain. This difference is of decisive importance to their architecture and to their lives.
Of course, by sacred, one does not mean only the religious but the primordial as well. Religion is perhaps the most facile path to the world of the non-manifest, but it is not the only one. In fact, as Europe has increasingly distanced itself from religion over the last two centuries, the primordial has become a fecund source of mythic. This is why Picasso and Matisse in their painting, Stravinsky in his music and Le Corbusier in his architecture, intuitively searched out the primitive. They wanted to find the Sacred.
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