Author, Home at Kabakwa Lake, 2008
The Ericksonian framework for understanding individual identity is broken down into three particular parts: Ego Identity, Personal Identity and lastly Social or Cultural Identity. Assuming a sense of self can be established in the realm of the individual's "home", the next step in the complete realisation is the individual interaction with the rest of the world. The farm house on the praires, the canoe in the lake, the retreat on the hillside-- all become instruments that help interpret the public sphere. We need these series of nanospaces as a medium of reference, to orient and guide our understanding of the vast landscape. Architecture becomes a mediater between the individual and his or her surroundings, establishing a means of complete identity.
"People in the city often wonder whether one gets lonely up in the mountains among the peasants for such long and monotonous periods of time. But it isn’t loneliness, it is solitude....Solitude has the peculiar and original power of not isolating us but projecting our whole existence out into the vast nearness of the presence of all things."- Heidegger
I don't enjoy being at the cottage with a big group of friends. The essence of being at the cottage is lost with endless chatter, numerous trips to pick up groceries and dump garbage, loud card games and jarring music. I prefer being there alone.
Now, it is the end of another summer and my family returns to the city from Haliburton after closing down the cottage for the season. There is a certain sense of loss on the drive home. It is a small, cozy structure , inaccessible by the main road, hidden along a cliffside overlooking the lake. I will miss the silence and the space. I often wonder why one cannot reproduce the same positive sense of dwelling back in surburbia. I am reminded of a passage written by Adam Sharr on Martin Heidegger's 6m x 7m hut at the edge of the Black Forrest in Marbarg.
"I’m off to the cabin – and am looking forward a lot to the strong mountain air – this soft light stuff down here ruins one in the long run. Eight days lumbering – then again writing....It’s late night already – the storm is sweeping over the hill, the beams are creaking in the cabin, life lies pure, simple and great before the soul...Sometimes I no longer understand that down there one can play such strange roles." Heidegger
The hut becomes as a vessel for his thoughts within the landscape and an instrument for internalizing the logic of nature. But what are the "strange roles" that he speaks of and how can we define them in built form?
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