The idea of ‘gestalt‘ was a school of psychology at the turn of the last century. It became a fundamental concept in the development of a number of theories, including prototype, categories and patterning. Like the outline of a butterfly, the minimum number of features, the fewest needed examples, the shape comes immediately to mind as an image with little effort or interpretation. However, the minimal nature of a gestalt object’s properties gives us permission to fill in the gaps ourselves. The human brain doesn’t like empty, tries to resolve absence. To understand. For me, the gestalt, simplest and prototypical shape is the circle. The moon, a wedding ring, a ‘circle’ of friends, going round in them.
Lift a circle out of a flat plain and we have a globe, a ball. We have an item ‘in the round’.
In the 1960s, the architect Christopher Alexander published the book A Timeless Way of Building. I was introduced to it by software mentors. It reminded me of the eighties craze for feng shui, everything being ‘just right’. To walk into a room or an old country village-on-the-green, and it feels right. Again, for me, the goldilocks space (when you walk into a new place, not home or the office) is a Yurt. A timeless way of building. It is comfortable. Safe.
The original design of a Yurt, and its name, came from the great plains of Asia where the winds could come from any direction so the circle meant pressure was evenly distributed no matter from which direction cometh the wind. For the nomadic lifestyle, it was the easiest shape to put up, repeatedly, in many different conditions. IKEA, take note, although I’m sure they’d point out you’re not putting up their wardrobe on the plains of Mongolia. If you were, perhaps they’d be round.
The plan is to establish a Yurt community as a base on the Isle of Wight. A large, 12 x 18m central Yurt, as used by the music festival for their acoustic sets, to provide a communal space, and satelitte living accommodation Yurts of differing configurations for lone travellers, couples or pairs, and families. We’ll deliver artistic retreats for revenue, courses in creative writing for revenue and creative writing for mental-well being and emotional balance, and encourage other artistic modalities to do the same. Especially dance. With a crippled body I can’t dance, and couldn’t / wouldn’t when I was a fit man. But, somewhat optimistically, am determined to dance at my next wedding. The physicality is less of an obstacle than the finding a wife. That’s an example of humour, not a dating appeal. I hope, come July and August, the Yurts can be used for glamping by the land owner to pay the ground rent.
Now for the other minor difficulty: finding the dosh.