Michael Rice is a Bio-Architect who eschews much modern architecture preferring to design using the principles of Eastern philosophy as his guide. As he explained to Suite101, he discovered martial arts whilst studying at University College Dublin School of Architecture.
It was the way that Shotokan karate used stillness and natural harmonies to create a sense of wellbeing and internal strength contrasted with what he was being taught by his architecture tutors that almost led him to give up architecture. Instead he decided to explore the whole field of Eastern Philosophy and Mysticism and discover how to use it’s insights in building design.
Eastern Mysticism Meets Roman Catholicism
All of Rice’s designs are distinctly different from the usual. It was this uniqueness and unquestionable beauty that a Portlaoise based Suite contributing writer observed in two buildings in the town in the Irish midlands. As a result he was prompted to ask for an interview which Rice readily agreed to give. Rice was asked first about the Portlaoise Parish Centre. Was any difficulty encountered in bringing the principles of Eastern Mysticism to bear on a design for a Roman Catholic institution?
Rice explained that the client brief he was given was a long and complex document. He chose to largely bypass this highly technical specification and concentrate instead on the function of each of the spaces contained within the Centre and its overall role in the community. From this consideration the required shapes and forms evolved under Rice’s pen. To his surprise his drawings were accepted and the building was constructed with only minor variations from his original concept.
The building incorporates office space for the Parish administration, rooms for public meetings and seminars, a cafeteria and a central meditation space. There is a living sloping roof and the building makes maximum use of sunlight.
Balancing the Immune Systems of Cancer Patients
The other Portlaoise building that interests Suite’s writer is the Cuisle Centre which provides a range of support services for cancer patients and their relatives. On his website Rice claims to believe that buildings can have the power to harm or to heal. How did this belief influence the design of the Cuisle Centre?
Rice pointed out that the site provided for the Centre by the Irish Government’s Health Service Executive on land close to the town’s Regional Hospital is traversed by electrical power cables. These emit radiation which might interfere with the balance of a patient’s immune system, especially if that immune system has already been compromised by cancer and/or its treatment.
So it was important to ensure that the building countered these harmful influences. Describing the impact of buildings on their occupants, Rice quotes the wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill “First we shape our buildings then they shape us.”
The Building as “Third Skin” Protecting the Body from Harm
He goes on to explain that the human skin is the body’s largest organ, sensitive to its owner’s environment and capable of adjusting the body’s other systems in response.
In the same way a building can be regarded as a third skin (clothing is the second skin), providing protection and channelling positive energy in a beneficial way.
He mentions, too, the fact that touching one’s tongue to the narrow end of a newly laid egg can cause the kind of tingle experienced when licking the positive electrode of an AA battery. He states that, whilst biologists acknowledge the presence of such an electrical charge in an egg they are unable to explain it. Rice believes it to be inherent in the shape which is one of many that are totally harmonious with nature.
By providing harmonious shapes and an open central courtyard, using sympathetic materials and maximising exposure to natural light Rice believes that he has created a building that is capable of assisting the healing processes carried out within its walls.
Natural Shapes That Replicate DNA
In the Cuisle Centre, as in many of his buildings, Rice makes use of the 5 and 10 sided figures, pentagon and dodecahedron. Revealing that a friend recently described him as “Pent obsessed”, he makes no apology, pointing out that these are shapes that proliferate in nature and replicate the double helix of DNA as viewed from above. He talks about the ease with which such shapes can be nested one within another like Russian dolls.
He believes that some modern buildings are damaging their occupants not only through “sick building syndrome” caused by gaseous emissions from glues and other chemicals present in many building materials. Returning to the Russian doll analogy, he sees the intrusion of some buildings into the human environment as analogous to inserting a brick shape into a sequence of such dolls.
Nevertheless he accepts that the use of brick and steel is perfectly natural but, as a Bio-Architect he prefers “to align with the shapes, forms, ratios, proportions and energy fields that nature uses at every scale to create sustainable, beautiful and energised living environments which create, support and enhance life and living environments.”
Buildings in Harmony With Nature
Michael Rice lives with his wife and 5 children in an extraordinary house of his own design close to the Slieve Bloom Mountains and the small market town of Mountrath in County Laois. His house, called Dreamfield, can be seen under construction in a series of slides on YouTube. “Off the shelf” house designs incorporating his revolutionary ideas can be purchased on-line but he much prefers to sit down with his clients and explore their passions so that he can design forms and spaces that harmonise with the client’s personality.
Rice concludes the interview with another quotation – unattributed – in response to those cynics who may be inclined to dismiss his ideas and methods. “Those who dance are considered insane by those who don’t hear the music”. The music Rice hears is the “music of the spheres, the music of the harmonics of nature.” His sole aim is to create buildings – spaces for living – that are in harmony with nature.
Frank Parker - Frank writes regularly on a diverse range of subjects which he researches thoroughly.
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