It Went Into Me
Aug 2012

It went into me, as part of my life. Then it comes out from somewhere—from my emotions or whatever, my feelings.

Peter Zumthor has expressed the relationship between personal memories, perception, feelings, emotions and his architecture in his 2009 Pritzker Prize speech. I was very much moved by what he said, which, not coincidentally, reminded me of Neruda’s Poetry. To me, this is a budding articulation of the relationship between the architect and his/her work.

Poetry (first stanza)

And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.