by Dennis R. Mannisto (e-mail); first draft [notes] 11. November. 2000.
Architecture intends to allow and possibly to enhance human life with the context of people's greater environment. The context requires architecture to consider the environment as part of --as an *integral* part, an essential part -- of the architectural plan. One must avoid building igloos in the jungle [importing snow contradicts the environment, even if successful] & planting bananas in the tundra. Successful contradiction of existing environments inevitably alters that environment; this in turn will make the architectural piece fail because it no longer meets the conditions for which it was designed [i.e., the new conditions.]
People live according to a single fundamental process: we act and we rest. The Hindu [Bh. Gita], Judeo-Christo-Islamic [Jesus], and modern OBE investigators R.A.Monroe & Brian Weiss, all concur and make this action-rest [A-R] rhythm explicit; the Tao Te Ching & its well known I Ching symbol similarly express this. Drawing from current scientific work in complexity studies and string theory we can see that "all-that-is" and all-that-occurs springs from this fundamental and universal process. The architect who succeeds must, therefore, create a piece that not merely acknowledges A-R, but who actually attempts to both permit and even encourage and enhance the A-R rhythm. Stewart Brand [? "How Buildings Learn"] reports that one of the most successful bldgs, from an occupant's standpoint, is at MIT. There the occupants enjoyed what Brand calls "cave & commons" space. This notion demonstrates the practical expression of the fundamental action-rest process of this universe, and demonstrates that daily success and pleasure derive from concurrence with A-R.
Architects could easily misconstrue action-rest as merely different language for the well known "form-function" parameter of architecture. But action-rest is not form-function.
Superficially "function" resembles action, and rest seems a variation of "form." However, architects use the word "function" as a generic or classifying or inclusive term that refers to all of many particular actions. For example, cooking occurs in kitchens, dining nearby, bathing elsewhere, and so forth. "Action" in the action-rest process runs deeper than mere inclusion. Action instead refers to activeness itself that in fact becomes any of an unlimited number of kinds of actions and functions.
"Rest," in the action-rest paradigm is not "form" but is instead another action. Specifically, "rest" includes complete lack of action (utter emptiness), active inhibition of action, and also the simple passage of time between actions. It includes settling down, too, that time during which activenesss withdraws into itself, collects, and coalesces. This (rest itself) generates form: the end result of action(s) completed and coalescing.
Action-rest, then, is that rather than forms allowing actions, or self-structuring to elcit action, actions become the form at the instant of rest.
Action-rest must not be confused with stimulus-response. Response si another action; rest occurs between S & R. Also, cause-effect differ from action-rest as rest occurs between the two events.
I'll get back to architecture in a moment, but want to mention this.
On a completely speculative basis, and as a complete amateur, consider contemporary physics' string theory [no link].
Fundamentally physicists hypothesize that a vibration occurs at the sub-atomic, in fact at the sub-sub-sub-atomic level. Yet the theory specifies that there is no object or any other kind of thing doing the vibrating. Vibration itself underlies [or precedes] all of reality. This matches the "activeness" of the metaphysical action-rest model presented by mystics, prophets, and others.
String theorists go on to hypothesize particles called gluons that become familiar states of matter that we all know and love.
However, I (again an amateur) dispute their model. It begs the question by postulating matter -- a particularly tiny particl -- to explain matter. I believe the vibrating non-matter -- or vibration itself, or "vibratoriness" -- suffices when put into the action-rest model. While string theorists presume matter to explain matter, and call matter the effect of a cause involving matter and action, action-rest postulates action that, during a rest phase, presents an apparently stable state which we merely perceive as matter. Matter is a still-frame from a really fast movie.
My version of action-rest seems to say there is no matter (something the Buddha also said.) But those moments of stability and rest do in fact exist. Perceiving that stable moment requires no presumption of matter, but does seem to require perceptiveness. This raise the question of what or who perceives, but I dismiss that.
Adjacent vibes -- to use the vernacular -- bump into one another. Intuitively we might presume the bump alters (has an effect upon) each vibe. But this only applies to objects vibrating and we presumed vibratoriness of nothingness. So we rule out modification of vibes by other vibes. Instead we consider wave interference and immediately recognize the appearance of unlimited variety in what appears to the observor. Those effects themselves are perception.