INHABITING TIME

In modern cultures, it is assumed that the future lies in front of us and man’s action to  conquer space sacrifices time, in other words we expend time in order to gain space. 

In perceiving that the future is forward and in front of us, we focus on what lies ahead of us and not on what has gone before us. In this way, there is a loss of the marks and traces that connect the past to the present and with it a disconnection from tradition and history. 

Facing forward, there is a greater focus on how we inhabit space and to a much lesser degree focus on how we inhabit time. Juhani Pallasmaa, in his article Inhabiting Time, writes of architecture that there has been less focus on how the design of buildings might impact the experience of people who inhabit them and of the importance of what it means to consciously “dwell in time” (Pallasmaa, 2016).