ESSAY
The Human House Integrity always commands respect. When a person holds their view of life with sincerity and honesty you may not agree with them, but there is always a basis for contact, understanding and growth.
of a New Zealand architect and the work of an English architect living in our country. When people see the world differently and see their own relationship to it differently, they build different windows. It is inevitable.
No person holds the whole of truth. There is something of the truth to be perceived in everyone who is true to themselves.
The person who only looks through a hole in a wall will always be a prisoner. It is very easy to see the world and yet not be part of it. It is very easy to see the help which the world needs, and yet not be willing to set about transforming the kind of people we are. Throwing crumbs out the window does not solve anything. Even throwing the whole loaf of bread out the window would only indicate desperation and despair.
To seek to be human is to seek to achieve harmony between the depths of being and the outward expression of life. Only then is it possible to be a whole person. To waste a life applying one cosmetic treatment after another is to forget that true beauty comes from within. To waste a house applying one cosmetic material after another is to forget that true beauty comes from within. In a work which is searching for meaning, a house which is nothing more than an assembly of features gathered from other houses will always mock at integrity. If you seek for a world of harmony and wholeness the best place to being, as always, is at home. Aotearoa New Zealand has had a fine tradition of integrations, both in our life style and in the way in which we relate inside and outside space. It is tragic now to see how disciplines such as planning are encouraging the stratification and alienation of our society. We are building windows and doors everywhere without understanding what windows and doors are all about. Every culture has a unique understanding of the relationship between inside and outside space. This is, for example, the first difference which the lay person notices between the work
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We need to look at the way in which we make bread. If we make bread in a way which indicated to others how they might also make bread, then we would all be able to make bread together. That would be a very human thing to do. New Zealand is in a unique position to save Western civilisation from self-destruction, but we need to begin by looking at the design of our windows. As a nation we do not need to compete with the death wish of other Western countries. We could seek instead for integrity. The dilemma for a wealthy nation is that although it is possible to keep on buying cosmetics to avoid reality, it is never possible to buy integrity. An exterior door must do much more than just close off the wind and the rain, or open up to catch the sun and the cool summer breeze. The door is the point where the interior space touches the exterior space and so it becomes a measure of the relationship between them. This sliding door is designed to express the wholeness of life. It seeks to catch something of
