Two of my DESIGN-BUILD PRINCIPLES that I've used over the last 16 years of creating outdoor experiences, spaces or features are:
1) Humans need beauty, awe, and wonder
2) Design drive human behavior
I believe that our species - homo sapiens - must have beauty, awe and wonder in order to have a full experience on Planet Earth. A "full experience" means to me to act and live in accordance with one's NATURAL human potential and expression. All else is unnatural.
If a human's life experience is lacking beauty, awe and wonder then what sits in the place and space of these three aspects?
What do I mean by "design drives behavior"?
It's really simple: Humans will unconsciously act or behave in accordance with how something is built. If you've designed your home with a television screen in every room then you will most likely turn on the TV and watch it all the time.
When i design and build an outdoor stone experience, space or feature I always think about how humans naturally will move around a feature, their average dimensions and how to create a place where they will connect to themselves, to others or to nature by virtue of how I design and build the actual feature. I want to create human connection, not distancing.
My conclusion is this: DESIGNERS, ARCHITECTS, BUILDERS and STONEMASONS! We are living in some very unusual, unnatural times where external forces are doing a great job of DISCONNECTING humans. Those of us that design and build could radically affect the human experience by designing and building in such a way as to create different behaviors that connect us to ourselves, to others and to nature!
