“Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away”
Thanks, Rolling Stones.
The thing about a great song is, we
hear it and absorb it and it matters not to us what the original impetus was; it
serves us when we need it.
On my daily walks around the city, I
can’t help but notice the proliferation of makeshift shelters for the
homeless. Jerry-rigged from cardboard and
plastic sheeting, sometimes a bit more substantial in the form of pup tents,
these dwellings define shelter in only the most rudimentary form. These inadequacies are magnified by the
strictures of shelter-in-place that coronavirus demands of us, strictures
obviously unenforceable without basics like running water and sanitation, and a
sturdy roof to keep out the rain. How
did we come to this? And doesn’t shelter have a greater meaning than just
structures?
In prehistoric times, early man used
the natural environment as shelter, trees and caves, later using stones and
hides and tree branches in early construction.
Then came sun-dried bricks, used for hundreds of years by the ancient
Egyptians, until the Assyrians improved upon this by baking them in fire and
waterproofing them with a glazing process. Greeks and Romans advanced this
construction with varied, stronger materials, and innovations such as central
heating through underground pipes, leading to the concept of architecture. The word architect comes from a compound Greek
word meaning “to be the first,” “who commands” and “mason” or “builder.” Thus, construction moved from the realm of
basic shelter toward the realm of design and art, (to say nothing about the
“starchitects” of today, whose work is often more in the realm of the
theoretical than that of the practical.) At any rate, advances in technology
moved shelter from personal agency to mass production. Sometimes the
adaptations different cultures made to designs, fitting their habitat, climate and
heritage needs, were adopted on a larger scale.
Too often, a more dominant culture imposed its own designs, devaluing
and ultimately destroying indigenous solutions.
And with urbanization, shelter expanded
to include shared social spaces. Small apartments meant more time spent outside
the dwelling; cafes became substitute living and dining rooms. Lack of gardens in tiny townhouses meant
recreation in public parks. Successful
urban streetscapes took into account the need for benches to rest weary feet,
and public toilets for those away from their homes. As populations increased in urban areas,
seeking employment and educational opportunities, inequities, racism, financial
inequalities and greed began to affect shelter, both private and public. Some of us have a lot; many of us have very
little; some of us have none.
Which brings me to my second thought
about the meaning of shelter. To shelter
is to offer comfort, to provide a place of refuge, for the soul and the spirit
as well as the body. Being socially distant means the public spaces where we meet
each other, the extensions of our dwellings, are no longer open to us, increasing
our loneliness and social isolation.
Spending days and months inside our homes, we feel as if those homes are
shrinking; our privileged architecture
of designated spaces ( here we cook, here we eat, here we recreate, here we
sleep) morphs into crowded multi-use office/school/playroom/kitchen/gym/therapy
couch. Hard to control the clutter, hard
to meet varying needs of time and space and occasional silence. Our shelters are no longer always
sheltering. Which should lead us to
empathy. It only takes a moment to
envision ourselves navigating these all too familiar tensions in the space of a
four by six-foot pup tent with only a hand-washing station shared by
dozens. There are many calls upon our
compassion these days. Sheltering,
emotionally, physically, financially, is creating the architecture of humanity.
Here is Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s
“House and Home.” Art Heals.
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