Green Building Library
Building Design
Silence, Song and Shadows
by Tom Bender
Silence, Song and Shadows introduces bold new perspectives on how the sacred and chi energy in our surroundings affect our lives and health. Explaining the energetic connections between people and place with historical and modern examples, it presents successful techniques through which we can experience and apply this aspect of design. Key concepts and actions are outlined to help us bring sacredness into our own homes and communities. An eloquent and visually powerful introduction to the energetics of place.
Explores a sweeping new dimension of energy and healing, showing how the world outside of our bodies affects our health.
Shows movingly how to use the heart of community -- our dreams, values, and connectedness -- to create places sustained by love.
Brings the sacred down to earth and into concrete application in our everyday lives, in ways we wouldn’t have dreamed possible.
Demonstrates real feng-shui -- for today -- masterfully translated and applied in ways that can powerfully change our lives and our surroundings.
Contains a whole array of new and easily applied tools with which we can bring the sacred and chi energy into our own surroundings.
This is real feng-shui - for today - masterfully translated and applied in ways that can powerfully change our lives and our surroundings.
The heart of community is not technology, but our dreams, values, and connectedness. Bender shows movingly how to use these to create places sustained by love.
The sacred, brought down to earth and into concrete application in our everyday lives, in ways we wouldn’t have dreamed possible.
Unique and powerful new tools for how we relate to, use, and design our surroundings.
“Reading this is a healing experience, filled with deep truths. Bender brings new life to the concept of chi. I feel moved to apply the simple, profound approaches he describes so well.”
- Carol Venolia, author of Healing Environments
“A wondrous work about the sacred nature of place and home, a forgotten language of design and craft that humans have used for millennia to discourse with their gods and inner selves. This book will make you ache for what we have lost, yet guide you to finding and creating enchantment once again.”
- Paul Hawken, author of Natural Capitalism
“The healing energy of place - why and how to bring sacred energy into the spaces that surround us. ....Lovely!:
- Donna Eden, author of Energy Medicine
“Bender reaches beneath the surface of ordinary life to find the essence of sacred space. Simply, yet eloquently, he prepares a pathway for us to occupy the universe as well as our intimate surroundings in a way that is meaningful and holy.”
- Denise Linn, author of Sacred Space
“Places the central questions of our time directly on the shrine of spirit, where they so richly belong. Here are the philosophical and spiritual foundations for a sustainable future. Everyone in the “green building” movement should read this book.”
- David Rousseau, author of Your Home, Your Health
“Captivating and enlightening! ... touches the heart, moves the soul, and reaches the core of our lives. I savored every page and couldn’t wait to share it with others.”
- Gail A. Lindsey, 1998 Chair AIA Committee on the Environment
“Designers need a far greater concern for exactly what Tom Bender describes. Important concepts for all of our work.”
- Louis deMoll, past president, American Institute of Architects; past president, International Union of Architects
“A lantern of hope for all concerned with the creation of a more sustainable and balanced world.”
- Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House
Here's an excerpt from Silence, Song and Shadows
Intention Changes Lives
Our intention towards a place can totally change the lives of others.
Out of an intention of making a Head Start Center good for the kids using it, we once asked what would be most wonderful to us as a kid coming in the door. “The smell of good food!” was the unanimous response. This lead us to put the kitchen right in the middle of the building, open to the classrooms and entry. It worked wonderfully, giving parents a place to stop for a cup of coffee and a chat, and to peek around the corner to know their kids were doing okay. It allowed the cook to be an extra friend and source of snacks and hugs for the kids, and a backup pair of eyes for the teachers.
What we didn’t realize until later, was how much our intention totally changed working as a cook in this place. Cooking is usually a “back-room” job, tucked 
away out of sight in service areas near the loading dock. In contrast, putting the cook in the middle of everything, and in contact with everyone, made them a central part of what went on. The design which embodied our intention towards the cook’s job would change the life of every person who would ever work as a cook in that place.
An architect later asked what we would do if the center was larger and needed a bigger kitchen and loading dock. I look at him a minute and said, “you’ve just defined ‘too big’!” Our gut feeling of ‘too big’ is really connected with a change in intention - from whole-person, meaningful work to mechanical function being dominant.
Table of Contents
2 Building with the Breath of Life
3 Change is Inheerent in All things
4 The Three “I”s
- Chi-Life Force Energy
- Li - Intention
- Intention Changes Lives
- Tummi - Heeding Our Hearts and Minds
- The Elements of Energetics
- Right Duration
5 The Spirit of Place
- Natural Places of Power
- Human Places of Power
- Moving in Energy
- Building with a Soul
- Gardens of the Spirit
- Cities of Passion
6 Community and Spirit
- Healing Diseases of the Spirit
- The Health of All Creation
- Giving
- Honoring
- Celebrating
- Changing Community Chi
- Wholeness
- Truth
7 Being at Home
- Welcome
- Inside Homes
- Everyday Sacred
- Mirrors
- The Community of Life
8 The Place of Spirit
- Sacredness
- Spirit Totems
- Living”Art”
- Sacred Work
- Portals to the Spirit World
- At Home with the Sacred
- Putting Love into a Place
