The Monastery of the Forgotten Crafts

Abstract

In questioning the dichotomy between individuals and collective society- where does there exist the balance between public and private space; the desire for privacy and the need for companionship. The humanistic need for silence, solitude, and inner-retreat are being lost to entertainment and worldly desires. With rapidly growing technologies and new media, the city is morphing from localization to extension; to the arrangements of a system of invisible infrastructure of networks and flows, creating virtual and ungrounded identities. How do we avoid becoming artificial actors in insect-like colonies? How can the humanistic design of space facilitate intimate visible communities that are concerned with the group; the ‘we’ rather than communities which are swarms of ‘I’s’?