Listen to this audio discussion (above) with an architect who really lives and loves his practice.
David Barrett's studio, based in Boulder, Colorado has received many awards from the American Institute of Architects, notably in 2013, he was officially honoured for his contribution to architecture and society on a National level.
David’s passionate, integrated and warm hearted approach to design includes ‘deep listening’. This means quietening yourself down to become more present in the moment, with all your senses and awareness. To be in-touch with the site, your clients, your colleagues and yourself.
It’s a way of balancing and amplifying the relationship between our inner and outer realities.
Deep listening stands as a counterpoint to technology, which both speeds up our lives and encourages absence to our immediate reality. When talking or texting on a mobile phone, trawling facebook, TV etc; our awareness moves out of the our immediate environment and experience of time into a kind of timeless zone in cyberspace. It can sometimes feel like a form of hypnotism, where we are no longer present as self conscious individuals.
So the question we grapple with daily is, how do we engage with technology without loosing our all encompasing and viseral relationship to nature, one another and ourselves? Can our method of designing embrace the complexity of our times without becoming onesided, so that our buildings embody and support our full humanity.
