There are ways of knowing that do not proceed by distance.
They do not begin by separating the knower from what is known, nor by transforming the world into an object to be grasped, interpreted, or mastered. They begin elsewhere: in placement rather than perspective, in exposure rather than analysis, in a posture assumed before thought has time to intervene.
Presence names this beginning.
Not presence as sensation, not presence as intensity, not presence as the cultivated feeling of immediacy—but presence as a condition in which one is already addressed. A condition in which meaning does not arise from interpretation, but presses upon the soul by virtue of its own order. One does not produce presence; one enters it, often unwillingly, often unprepared.
Sanitas Studio, KHAO MO (Mythical Escapism). Public park installation, Bangkok, Thailand, 2014. Photo by Sanitas Studio.
In such a mode of knowing, the self is not sovereign. It does not stand at the center of disclosure. It does not decide what counts as real, meaningful, or true. Instead, it finds itself placed—before form, before measure, before an order that neither depends upon it nor waits for its consent.
Knowing here is not an act of possession.
It is an exposure to what exceeds the self and yet demands response.
This is what traditions of wisdom named knowledge by presence—'ilm al-hudūrī. Not a category of epistemology, but a refusal of epistemology’s founding gesture: the separation of knowing from being. Presence does not ask what the world means. It asks whether one is rightly aligned to receive it.
This distinction matters deeply for architecture.
Much of contemporary architectural thinking remains entangled in a representational frame: space is conceived as something to be expressed, interpreted, experienced, or consumed. Even when attention shifts toward atmosphere, affect, or embodiment, the underlying structure often remains the same—the human subject stands as the site where meaning is generated, evaluated, and affirmed.
What presence unsettles is not creativity, nor intelligence, nor care.
It unsettles sovereignty.
Thought trained to hover above what it studies finds this posture difficult to sustain. It prefers distance, mobility, flexibility. It translates reality into representations that can be compared, optimized, or controlled. Meaning becomes something produced within the subject, negotiated between subjects, or extracted through method. The world appears only after it has been filtered, named, and rendered available to use.
What is lost in this process is not information, nor complexity, nor even imagination.
What is lost is address.
The sense that reality speaks first; that form carries obligation; that space is not neutral but directive; that truth may arrive uninvited and unsettle the one who encounters it. Presence reintroduces this risk.
To stand before what is, without first converting it into an object of thought, is to relinquish the comfort of mastery. It is to accept that not all knowing clarifies, that not all illumination reassures, that some truths do not console but reorient.
Presence is not intimacy.
It is not warmth.
It is not immersion.
It is a kind of exacting nearness that strips away distraction and leaves little room to hide.
Sanitas Studio, Garden of Silence. Thailand Biennale, Cherntawan International Meditation Center, Chiang Rai, 2023. Consisting of Existence, Emptiness (shown), and Silence. Photo by Sanitas Studio.
Architecture once understood how to make such standing possible.
Before it became an instrument of expression, branding, or control, architecture arranged conditions in which the body could no longer evade its placement in the world. Thresholds slowed movement. Proportions disciplined attention. Light did not dramatize; it oriented. Space did not speak in excess; it demanded silence.
One did not enter such spaces to feel something.
One entered to be positioned—before order, before measure, before the weight of what is.
In this sense, architecture was not a medium of meaning but a custodian of presence. It did not generate truth; it prepared the ground upon which truth could disclose itself. The task of the architect was not to invent worlds, but to shelter a posture—one in which the human being might encounter reality without first reducing it to representation, utility, or image.
This task is not obsolete.
It is merely obscured.
Presence, then, is not an experience to be designed, nor an atmosphere to be curated. It is a condition that must be guarded against excess: excess of explanation, excess of imagery, excess of intention. It requires restraint, not novelty; fidelity, not innovation. It asks whether the space one builds—or the knowledge one produces—allows what is to remain other than oneself.
This text is written as an experiment in such restraint.
It does not seek to explain presence, nor to persuade through argument. It attempts, however imperfectly, to stand before its subject without enclosing it. To let language approach the edge of saying without collapsing into interpretation. To allow meaning to arrive, if it arrives at all, as something received rather than authored.
If an alternate architectural narrative is to take form today—one that does not merely oscillate between mastery and critique, construction and deconstruction—it will not emerge from louder claims or more agile theories. It will emerge from a different discipline of attention. From a willingness to be placed rather than positioned, addressed rather than empowered.
Presence does not promise resolution.
It offers exposure.
And from that exposure, another way of knowing—and perhaps another way of building—may begin.
Sanitas Studio, Garden of Silence. Thailand Biennale, Cherntawan International Meditation Center, Chiang Rai, 2023. Consisting of Existence, Emptiness (shown), and Silence. Photo by Sanitas Studio.
