STATEMENT OF BELIEFS
The Northside Center for Architectural Assistance is set up to serve the Ville Neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods in a number of specific ways, each of which is rooted in the following beliefs:
All of us have architectural needs that go beyond simply inhabiting solid, dry, structures in relatively good repair. We have a need for light, congenial colors, visual order, a well proportioned space. At a minimum each of us has a need for at least a single room we regard as beautiful.
Alain de Botton expresses it perfectly in his book, “The Architecture of Happiness,” when he says,
“An ugly room can coagulate any loose suspicions as to the incompleteness of life, while a sun-lit one set with honey coloured limestone tiles can lend support to whatever is most hopeful within us.”
We need the buildings which are so much a part of our lives to provide not only physical but psychological sanctuary.
We believe that each of us is inherently a worker, and by working together each of us can realize and even maximize our individual capacity to meet these needs.
By sharing knowledge, information, tools and materials, and through the coordination of everyone’s individual projects so as to facilitate this system of sharing, all of us can personally engage in the work of constructing and reconstructing the built environment in which we live.
The work of the center is rooted in the belief that when finally, upon entering a beautiful room, we experience elation, peacefulness, or feel even some vague support for an ascending mood and we simultaneously have a memory of all the benefits that flowed from performing the very work and craft which brought about such a room we will truly know what it means to seize a bit more control over our sense of well-being and happiness.
