I recall many years ago, in the Architectural Review, an article entitled, ‘I can play you the Doges Palace’ – a correspondence between physical form and music. I have also puzzled over Christopher Alexander’s notions of ‘life’ in design. I think perhaps he kids himself but that there is something in it.

I have experienced ‘life emerging’ in what I would not have expected to show signs of life – in our own residential management centre, for instance, something touches people who come. The place really does have a life of its own. I am fascinated by this. I think it has to do with understanding and growing systems – holistic systems are living systems.

Being living systems ourselves, we can intuit much about relationships without being directly aware of their nature. Perceptives, such as Debussy who spoke of the music being between the notes, may be aware of them directly. We are so conditioned by reductionism that we think in ‘parts’ and strain to consider the relationships between them (relationships are what can fill the space between). Life emerges in the ’space between’ the inanimate bits and manifests as what Csikzentmihalyi calls ‘Flow’. I think this is something we can and must all learn to do – to develop ‘new organs of perception’!

When it comes to bringing organisational vision to life, CMC has used a whole variety of techniques to get people out of their mindset. Mindset is an efficiency of mind but it also inhibits novelty. I like to use collage but have also used photographs to stimulate free-thinking. Gordon Lawrence uses Social Dreaming. We have made extensive use of outdoor experience. I think a good principle here is that to open up minds you need to get people out of their heads and into emotional, physical or other domains of experience.

John Varney 23.9.2009