"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a hou

September 25, 2006

Downtown

"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again."

So begins Henry David Thoreau's Walden, or Life in the Woods, who devoted 26 months of his life in utter solitude in order to remove himself from civilization. During his journey to realization, his removal from any form of human interaction was essential to his larger question; ¿He wanted to find out what was life -- what is absolutely necessary in life and what is superfluous," says Thomas Blanding, who studied and restored Thoreau¿s journals. Thoreau¿s pilgrammage represents a drastic version of what humans struggle with on a daily basis: self-realization and one¿s place in the world. To many, nature represents an escape from problems, complexities, issues¿a break from life, essentially. In contrast, city life is a chaotic pandemonium characterized by a constant pressure to do and go, especially seen in America, where the lifestyle is often personified by a constant level of stress. The city is also connotative of ¿a chaos of intentions¿a jumble of eras and architectures that only a distant view of the skyline or a lens like Central Park can harmonize,¿ (Klinkenborg, Bump, 721). However, the city is also the home of a great majority of America¿s population, where home, work, and all other aspects of life are within a comfortable driving distance of one another. It is the only world many know. So the question is, live like our ancestors with Mother Earth or accelerate with the times into city life? And yet, Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the most prominent and influential architects of the 20th century, merged his two worlds-natural and professional-noting that, ¿Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day¿s work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain¿ (). Perhaps, Wright has realized one of the key dogmas to leading a successful life: balance. Even an architect, who typically represents he who is most removed from nature, is able to integrate two seemingly contradicting aspects of life. Wright is also an example of how architecture can lend itself to this balance. Just because architecture is typically associated with city life does not mean that it cannot have its source in nature, as Wright has illustrated. From Prehistoric Indians who ¿capitalized on what nature had provided¿ to the Victorian Period which emphasized structure and ornamentation from the actual materials, to Gothic architecture whose very design emulates nature, architecture, and subsequently cities, are inevitable linked to nature (Bump, 469). In fact, every aspect of human society is built upon a foundation of nature, from our shelters, to our diets, to recreation, to a source of comfort and solitude necessary to balance the hectic day. Instead of pitting one against the other, nature and cities can harmonize one another, complementing the other to enrich human life, as long as humans do not encroach upon Mother Nature¿s bounty, without replenishing it. For most people, each locale represents differing aspects of the human persona, and are thus, both necessary for the ultimate source of happiness: balance.