Overall Feeling

Overall feeling: What do the buildings say?

The three buildings are integral to each other. Together they bring forth a new light to learning and teaching. They join, link, embrace the hitherto disperse. Not in the sense of uniformity but in the sense of unity-in-diversity, shared commonalities along with our wonderful differences.Three buildings representing: Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. Yin, Yang, Tao. Of course, the number three has a long tradition. For example, in numerology it represents the catalyst for change, in Catholicism there is the concept of the divine trinity, whereas in Buddhism it stands for the three ways in which the universe manifests itself.

Three floors in each building taking into account how the sun will affect the meadow and surrounding vegetation of the park. The three floors repeat the three buildings’ message. Three buildings that implement water, natural materials, natural light, sacred images throughout. Three buildings where to study, learn, and teach in community

What kind of human relationships do the buildings encourage?

Excerpts from Earth in Mind by David W. Orr

To what large issues and causes do the buildings direct our attention?

The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter but mastery of one’s being.

1. 1. Knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that is well used in the world.
   2. The way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses.
   3. Ordinary campus architecture reinforces passivity, monologue, domination and artificiality.
   4. Buildings on college and university campuses characteristically usually show so little thought, imagination, sense of place, ecological awareness, and relation to any larger pedagogical intent.
   5. Faculty and students are rarely consulted on whether or what to build or where.

   The TAO Metaversity is an environment where teachers and students question, probe and create a world in peace and openness; where the natural recognition of self is fostered by encouraging the connection between humanity and nature. It is an united nation welcoming all. An united Metaverse created by all. It is a living environment where each brings their doubts and beliefs, knowledge and ignorance; where giving and receiving are one. It is a place of healing and growth.

   What is the character of this place?

The TAO Metaversity is the place where the prodigal son and daughter returns home to find they never left. An environment that can hold the realization of that “holy instant” when all falls away as all comes together in oneness. An environment allowing for the realization/remembrance that I am home. I am that which I have searched for. An environment that encourages a birth of volcanic strength, erupting from an idea announcing the beginning of an ancient truth remembered without words.

A campus where ecology and economics come together. The buildings will be energy efficient utilizing, materials that support the environment, utilize natural airflows for heat and cooling, wind power for electricity, water utilization for heating and cooling. The buildings and surrounding landscape are designed to be sustainable in energy sources as well as generating a positive cash flow. Buildings and landscape will extend our ecological imagination. Landscape will provide shade, break winter winds, propagate rare plants, provide habitat for animals, and restore bits of vanished ecosystems.

The design, construction and operation of this campus is in itself a liberal education in a microcosm that virtually includes every discipline in the catalog. This co-creation will cross disciplinary boundaries dividing the realm of thought from that of application.

What do the buildings say? Spaces must lift the spirit, cultivate imagination, fuel the intellect and remind us that we are citizens of ecological and spiritual communities. Architecture must raise aesthetic sensitivity and through it assist in developing gentleness, generosity, caring and compassion. Being should be celebrated over doing and having and allowed to interact with knowing in the here and now of the real. Architecture should support the practice of experiencing experience and, in doing so, unlock inner wisdom..

This page has the following sub pages.

• Nature and Soil-less Gardens