Home Design Book

Sacred Space: Creating Homes with Soul

By Anne Knorr

Overview

In 1998 when I participated in a program to learn the subtle art of spiritual direction, listening to another person's spiritual journey and bearing witness to his or her experience of God, I began to think about how spirituality, the center of my personal life, and architecture, the center of my professional life, interface. At some level, I knew they were both about space. Architecture deals with the physical and tangible space of structures and how they affect the way we live and feel, while spiritual direction delves into the internal space of spirit, emotion and personality. Both practices require me to listen carefully to hear the underlying longings and dreams of my clients. This is where the idea of Sacred Space, a guide for spiritually minded people who dream of living in homes with soul, began.

"The People whose lives are lived simply and wholesomely, in the open, and who have, in a high degree, the sense of the sacredness of the home, are the people who have made the greatest strides in the development of the race."

- Gustav Stickley
Simplicity and Domestic Life

As an architect, I found myself wanting to design homes that nurture my clients' spirituality and connect them to something larger than themselves; homes that are beautifully designed and comfortable to live in, but also homes infused with meaning because they capture the intentions and dreams of those who live there. The melding of the tangible physical space with the intangible qualities of a person's personality and spirit makes a home sacred. This book is the culmination of my inquiry into the link between the interior space of a person's spirit and the exterior space where one dwells. In my experience of bringing the sacred into my own home and the homes of clients, I've found it can sometimes be as simple as rearranging a single room or as extensive as remodeling an entire house.

Masters such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan often alluded to the connection between spirituality and architecture but never discussed it directly. Intrigued by the idea that spirituality impacts the design of buildings, I read about ancient sacred structures hoping to find insight into the nature and form of this connection. And I did. In the sacred text of the Torah and the Old Testament of the Bible I discovered the Tabernacle, a Jewish tent used for worship. Reading the forty chapters devoted to descriptions of the tent and its contents, it dawned on me that the account of the Tabernacle was a blueprint for a divinely inspired structure that had been handed down through generations.

As I read the descriptions of rich fabrics, acacias wood, golden clasps, candles and incense, I found myself transported to my childhood and to the secret place I created with my brother and sister from blankets, pillows and furniture in the basement playroom of our two story Midwestern home. Our sacred tent included a long dark tunnel we crawled through to reach the main room whose curtain would only be lifted with the secret password. Flashlights lit our tent made from the quilts pulled from our beds much like a candelabra lit the Jewish tent made from animal skins. And like the Tabernacle which housed sacred relics, our tent protected our most precious items; an Indian head nickel, a Raggedy Ann doll, a dime store diamond ring, bubble gum and a baseball card of our favorite St. Louis Cardinal, Bob Gibson. The Tabernacle resonated with this universal childhood experience of creating secret places and I saw that it had an archetypal quality to it. Captivated by the exquisite details of the Tabernacle I sketched a rudimentary plan of the structure. Three main spaces emerged:

The Court: Public Space
The Holy Place: Private Space
The Holy of Holies: Intimate Space

The pattern of three appears in many faith traditions and is often associated with the divine. Christians believe God has a triune nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Buddhists hold three universal truths as the foundation to their tradition, and the triad of heaven, earth and humanity is the classic expression of the Tao. The three spaces of the Tabernacle articulated the range of experiences the Jewish people encountered while worshiping God, but they also expressed the range of experiences we need in our own homes for a sense of completeness or wholeness. We need spaces in our homes and in our lives that are public, open and energetic like the Outer Court, but we also need private places, a Holy Place, for deeper connection with family and friends as well as intimate spaces where we can quiet our minds and reconnect with our hearts in our personal Holy of Holies.

The combination of intangible qualities along with the physical characteristic found in the Tabernacle provides the framework for creating sacred homes, whether building from scratch or enhancing an existing space. This framework is the basis for Sacred Space, a book that offers a fresh perspective in the home design field by using of the Tabernacle as a template for creating personal sacred environments. Sacred Space specifies four qualities that are essential when integrating spirituality into a home. To be a sacred space, a home must:

Reflect who we are and the context where we live
Invite us to unstructured time and mystery
Transform ordinary space into extraordinary space through ritual
Be understood as the gift it is

These were the intentions and dreams the Jewish people brought to the Tabernacle that gave it meaning and that can be brought to our own homes as well.

Sacred Space will be organized around the triad of space as depicted in the tabernacle. Readers will be shown how to identify the public, private and intimate spaces in their homes, which is the foundation for the chapters that follow. They will be reminded of the intuitive understanding of sacred space they already possess, particularly from their childhood and their experiences in nature. The four qualities that bring meaning to a dwelling will be explored, and using my skills as a spiritual director I will help readers articulate their dreams and develop rituals that foster connection with their spirits and their homes. The Holy of Holies will be looked at in detail, including spaces for couples and children. Architectural details will be presented in an accessible manner giving readers the tools they need to enhance their home. Final chapters will make recommendations for specific rooms, both new and existing, and suggest remedies for common problems. Each chapter builds, like a workbook, instructing readers and leading them to transform their homes into sacred spaces.

The longing for our homes to nurture our souls is a legitimate yet intangible need. I am moved by the enthusiasm of participants in my Sacred Space workshops and by the richness they have experienced in their daily lives from applying these principles. While seemingly simple, the message of the Tabernacle and Sacred Space is profound: Space matters. We are connected to the places where we live. Our environment has an impact on us physically, emotionally and spiritually and our spirituality, in turn, informs and shapes our living spaces. When thoughtful design is intertwined with the dreams of our hearts, our homes can indeed become sacred.