Chapter 1 of 24
A North American Tent
Why am I showing you a slide of a North American Indian? Well, I'm an architect, I've been practising for 20 odd years now, since the school of architecture, and what has become increasingly clear to me is that I feel the duty not just to design prime forms in the sunlight but above all to ensure that those prime forms have a real meaning and are not just sculptural or technological. And the meaning they must have is their relevance to the people that will be using them. And in order to understand the way in which architecture can be created in a very different way, which is commonly being called 'community architecture', or the 'community architecture approach', it's very important to remember that all of us are capable of being entirely self-sufficient. We don't actually need buildings. The Indians can survive in North America, the Eskimos can survive in sub-zero temperatures, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari can survive under the blazing sun in the desert. We don't actually need people to design for us.