Architecture as a Mindful Body “A landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air, which very continually” Claude Monet
a measure of length or distance”123 as the “interval between two 51 Ma Space: emptiness (or more) spatial or temporal things and events.”124 Arata Isozaki between heaven and earth, 2015 states that “ma signifies both the distance between two points - the in between space - and the silence between two sounds - internal time.”125 “Ma combined with a number of tatami mats denotes area”126 but it “is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements.”127 Ma is the emptiness between heaven and earth, the visceral expansiveness of the spatial world in which we live, dwell and die. A similarity is found in Western philosophy. Martin Heidegger defines dwelling as “the way in which you are and I am, the way in which we humans are on the earth, is dwelling...But on the earth already means under the sky.”128 Within this space resides conscious perception and where we human beings “constantly project our lives onto the horizon of our death, what Heidegger calls being-towards-death.”129 Gaston Bachelard reminds us that the true power of Ma lies within the spatial boundaries and not within the objects inside space. “Rilke wrote: These trees are magnificent, but even more magnificent is the sublime and moving space between them, as though with their growth it too increased.”130 Second, Ma has a relational and experiential connotation. “Ma also means among...implies that persons stand within, among, or 123 Nitschke, 1993, Op. Cit. P. 50. 124 Pilgrim, Richard B. “Intervals (Ma) In Space and Time: Foundations for a ReligioAesthetic Paradigm in Japan.” History of Religions 25, no. 3 (February 1986): 255-77. Accessed November 3, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062515. P.255. 125 Oshima, Ken Tadashi., and Arata Isozaki. Arata Isozaki. London: Phaidon, 2009. P. 162. 126 Nitschke, 1993, Op. Cit. P. 50. 127 Nitschke, 1966, Op. Cit. 128 Quoted from Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture. New York: Rizzoli, 1980. P.10. 129 Critchley, Simon. “Being and Time, Part 1: Why Heidegger Matters.” The Guardian. June 8, 2009. Accessed July 19, 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ belief/2009/jun/05/heidegger-philosophy. 130 Balechard, Op. Cit. P.201.
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