Back To Your Senses

Abstract

When asked "What are the essential items you cannot live without?"many people would name their I-pods, computers, or their car. For many, the four essential items that every human needs in order to live; air, food, water, and shelter may not come to mind at all.lt is a very simple, unassuming question. Air, food, water, and shelter are resources cultivated by our planet. However, these essentials have not been valued as they should have by society since the beginning of urbane life. Humans are offered the pleasure of enjoying the vitality of our world. However, instead of embracing what has been given to us, our world has become a society of monotony. People don't have the chance to sit down anymore and actually taste a meal. People do not let themselves enjoy the connection our bodies inherently make with the gifts the earth has to offer. However, some remarkably civilized societies embraced what the earth has to offer. The Romans took bathing as a leisure sport, experiencing the stimulation of pool temperatures, hot vs. cold. The Cree and Ojibway tribes, both in practice today, live by cultivating the earth's resources, using the animals and the sky as guides. The resources offered by the earth in combination with attuned human senses, forms a bond that is much more potent than the over stimulation our minds consume daily. These two reciprocal natural phenomenona, however, often are not integrated as intended. Can the existence of this bond be reawakened from an appreciation of the Earth's resources through a physical or mental state of mind? How is it possible to bring the people of today back to a mindset that promotes a quality of living far exceeding anything offered in today's society? Through the use of architecture it will be interesting to investigate the stimulation of the human senses brought on by the Earth's resources, and encapsulated within the treatment of a built environment. How would this space form the connection between human stimuli and the Earth's resources in the mind of an urban inhabitant? Is it possible for a built environment to be so powerful that it embodies the very resources needed for its existence? Can it be used as a tool to inadvertently make people aware of their senses and the resources used for stimulation? Is it possible to have this type of 'retreat' in an urban environment in order to enliven the resources hidden within? What type of 'program' is capable of handling these senses and presenting them to the inhabitant in the most pleasurable way possible? Lastly, can this be part of someone's everyday life, unknowingly affecting their lifestyle beyond the realm of the proposed building?