What is “place”?
Middle Creek Bungalow, Knowles Architect Inc, photo by @rgavinknowles
What do we mean by “place”? A certain intellectual heritage in architecture gives extra meaning to that word. The first obvious and most common connotation is the building’s site and its relationship to the physical characteristics of that site. For us, and for some others, it’s not just the building site, but also the neighborhood that it sits in and the ecosystem it will inhabit.
Every building site sits within a land community. This concept stems from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, first published in 1948. In that series of essays, he gave voice to the idea of “land ethic” which is an appeal for moral responsibility to the natural world. To be ethical we treat everyone in our community with respect, and a land ethic “simply enlarges the boundaries of the community” to include not only humans, but also soils, waters, plants and animals. When we use the term “the land”, we use it as Leopold used it, to mean the whole ecosystem inclusive of the human culture inhabiting it.
To be ethical we treat everyone in our community with respect, and a land ethic “simply enlarges the boundaries of the community” to include not only humans, but also soils, waters, plants and animals.
Flour + Water, Lundberg Design (R. Gavin Knowles project architect + principal), photo by @krescentcarasso
Leopold had particular rural places in mind when he wrote his essays, but that idea is not at all exclusive to rural places. In an urban landscape the land community is made up mostly of people, but there are coyotes roaming the streets of San Francisco and every city is inherently tied to the land from which is draws its resources. On a rural site the plants and animals may be the most obvious members of that community, but at the very least it also includes you, the owner who plans to make a life there.
Whatever site (be it rural, urban, or something in between) and whatever the program (be it a home, a restaurant, or something else entirely) we take particular care to get to know you, and your place, and how you might inhabit and improve upon that place in the world.
“Every site contains three places: the physical place with its earth, sunlight, and rain; a cultural place, the locus of the traditions of human intervention; and a spiritual place, a place of evocation that stirs our imagination and reminds us of far away, ancient images and analogs.”
– W.G. Clark, “Three Places”
Flying Dollar Residence, Lundberg Design (R. Gavin Knowles project architect), photo by @brianwetzelphoto