Thorncrown Chapel - Simon Ott

In a similar vein to my previous blog, I love the pairing of nature and worship.  So much of our lives today as humans has divorced us from our relationship with the world around us.  Since the industrial revolution we've created more and more of our world around us seperating us from the planet that has sheltered, fed and molded us for millennia.  We tend to forget our roots.  We also tend to forget how vital a spiritual life is as well.  Regardless of our personal belief as individuals the fact that we do and have believed in a higher power has shaped our history and lives and brought us to where we are today.  

Places to remember those fundemental cores of our human experience are vital to our continued existence and thriving.  The Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, AR is a beautiful way to do that in my opinion.  The world around us provides so much beauty and remembrance that there is more to life than buying the next big screen tv or latest smartphone.  I believe that creating architecture that helps us to engage with the greater world around us is the highest form of the craft of architecture. 

The truest architecture creates a space for us to comfortably live safely and thrive on this planet while maintaining our relationship with the planet.  Looking back, everytime we forget that principle we create problems for either ourselves or the planet as a whole forgetting that were so completely linked that the two cannot possibly be considered separate.  Places that we build for the purpose of coming together to remember a higher power helps us to keep our relationships with others and our world as a whole in perspective, especially if it is a place like Thorncrown Chapel.