For the Forge to Fulfill Its Core Purpose, It Must Be Experienced as a Home.
If we succeed in cultivating this experience, initially through design and aesthetics, then we will set the course for healing generations and creating joy. Taking a page from history, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “We shape our buildings and afterward they shape us.” Churchill well understood the effect architecture and design have in shaping the human experience. The context of the debate, and Churchill’s quote, is fascinating. Buried in his words, Churchill understood that there needed to be a healthy balance between order and chaos; between the rationale and irrational; between the present and the past. This mirrors a comment made by the great architect Daniel Libeskind many years later who said, “Life is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it’s about the experience, it’s about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.” What is obvious is that The Forge is a residential treatment center; what is not as obvious, is in order for The Forge to fulfill its core purpose of creating joy and healing generations, the environment in which we operate must be characteristic of the attributes that make home the emotional center of gravity for you and your family.
