God is the Ultimate Voyeur.
 
The architect runs a tight second place.
 
The architect voyeur first fantasizes. He watches, in his mind's eye, imaginary people experiencing the space in his head. He imagines looking through their eyes to see what they see. He listens to what they are saying, to what they hear. He stands behind and outside himself in the shadows and watches how even he might feel, in the space.
 
In time, he picks up the pencil and begins the struggle of communicating how to construct what he sees in his mind. How is the space encapsulated? How is space contained without making a prison? How do people come to the site? How do they move through the site and how does the site move them? How does the place of the space find itself? How is the heaviness of the architecture supported? What are its connections to the ground? /concrete? Stone? Out of what architecture is the structure carved and how best to hold it up? What best articulates the movement memorized in the space of his head? Of what are the walls? How are the walls? When are the walls not at all, walls? And the windows? The doors? The roof? The rain? How is the space made comfortable? In the cold? In the heat? How is it lighted? How does it play with the sun? With the wind? What is outside that must come in? What is inside that must want out? Where are the damn restrooms and toilets and waste? How does a wheelchair, attached to a person, get to where wheelchairs want to get? And from where comes the money! And when comes the money! And who is in charge? Who is going to build this place? Who is going to care?
 
Finally though, God said, "Let It Be" and it was done.
 
And finally, the building is done and the voyeur stands behind and outside himself in the shadows and watches.

Come with me. Experience a very special place with me.
 
Long stucco wall stepping down. Forest beyond. Thick bamboo rising, hunter-green. Desert-tan stucco pulls us down the forest wall. Ancient iron gate. Wrought and rusted. Four generations of not the same colored paint, hangs heavy on two, towering, stained turquoise sentinels. Guards at attention, holding back the tall grass. They arrest us at the gate, The Portal.
 
Paving is stone, falling straight away, down. Fat, wide steps. The path stutters between four floating urns, a moment to stop and smell the flower. Lantana and Thyme. We might have taken the ramp to the right, turning back from the water fall. Falling long, into a pond full of fishes and ripples and sound.
 
Our pathway leads us. It has a focus. Live Oak tree, not huge but strong, not straight but longing. Like us, to belong. The variegated orange tiled roof and the rafters, the structure, step back, receive us and the tree. Shade. Repose. We walk past the fish in the pond past the water fall past the world outside.
 
We enter.
 
Ten concrete columns, three humans high, brothers to the sentinels still guarding the entrance, they march in symmetrical formation, from Tuscan Hall, due west. Two isles. Twin sets, compel us forward, coupled rhythm, toward the glow, toward the color, toward the segmented, fragmented, broken-up whole of geometric stain glass. It is found floating, suspended in steel, crossed, balanced between two arches, reaching. And here is water, rushing.
 
The cascading sound drowns out the profane, wraps a secret garden filled with portals and places and spaces made rich in the shade of the cedars. Bonsai.
 
One hundred fifty people meander, coalesce, in the shade of the giant roof. Some people are standing, some sit. All faces keep moving up and around, taking things in. But finally, always, every face is led up and forward by the columns and the trusses and the rhythm. Every face looks forward and up.
 
One half a dome wraps around the nave, pointed, like the glass, but stained clear. The dome faces the setting sun. It glows orange-golden, suspended between two broken arches. Two coming together. A wedding, a marriage, a merger.
 
One plus One is Three. The Bride and the Groom and THEIR SPACE, between. In THAT space is everything.
 
Are you here with me? Did the words paint the way? Do you see up there on the dais, under the dome and stained glass and water, can you see the groom and the bride? Do you sense the pride of space that lifts up their prayer s and vow?
 
Now, before anybody gets the idea that architecture dares compare itself to God's Creation, drop it.
 
God is the Ultimate Voyeur.
 
The architect runs but a tight second place.
 
But he does create. We ALL create. Every moment, every hour, every day, we create.
 
Be the voyeur. Watch yourself. Watch Creation create.