There was a time, I imagine, when building did not begin with explanation.
One did not first ask what a space was meant to do,
but what kind of a world it allowed one to enter.

Knowing was not something added to things.
It was something things carried.
Stone, light, proportion—
they did not require interpretation to make sense.
They addressed the body directly,
and through it, the mind.

At some point, this intimacy thinned.
Understanding learned to stand back from what it encountered.
The world became something to observe,
then to measure,
then to manage.
What once disclosed itself began to require justification.

Geometry survived, but its tone changed.
It counted rather than spoke.
Structure grew precise, but less expressive.
Form became efficient, then impressive,
and finally free—
free in a way that no longer knew what it was free for.

Meaning did not disappear.
It drifted.
It learned to arrive later, attached by narrative or value,
circulating as image, brand, or claim.
Buildings came to matter because of what they signified,
not because of how they oriented a life.

Gradually, space began to answer primarily to experience.
How it felt.
How it moved the senses.
How it mirrored the self standing within it.
This brought a new sensitivity—
and with it, a quiet solitude.
Each body became its own measure.

Freedom expanded.
Constraints loosened.
Forms multiplied.
Yet was there a shared horizon?
Choice grew weightless.
Movement continued, but direction became difficult to name.

None of this happened out of malice.
Much of it emerged from care—
from the desire to improve, to liberate, to respond.
But care, when unmoored, can also scatter.

What remains is not a call to return,
nor a demand for invention.
It is an invitation to pause.

To ask whether space might still do more than contain activity.
Whether building might once again participate in knowing—
not by asserting truths,
but by allowing them to pass through.

Such places do not resolve the fractures of the modern world.
They do not heal what has been split.
They offer something quieter:
a chance to stand long enough
for orientation to become possible again.

سفر کردم به هر شهری دویدم
چو شهر عشق من شهری ندیدم
ندانستم ز اول قدر آن شهر
ز نادانی بسی غربت کشیدم

I traveled and ran to every city
Like the City of Love, I saw no other city
From the beginning, I did not treasure that City
Much alienation I experienced from my stupidity

به غیر عشق آواز دهل بود
هر آوازی که در عالم شنیدم
از آن بانگ دهل از عالم کل
بدین دنیای فانی اوفتیدم

Except for the melody of Love
All else in this universe was the sound of a drum
Into this transient universe I fell
From the bang of that Heavenly Drum

ندا آمد ز عشق ای جان سفر کن
که من محنت سرایی آفریدم

A cry came: oh soul travel away with Love
From this careworn created place of mine

— Rumi, in Divān-e Shams, sonnet 1509