Komodo Dragon: Vision & pool areas' architecture & design, as place, emerged together since the mid-1970s in a kind of organic, natural, hippy way

Harbin ethnography:


... So, seeing nudity in the pools and pool area is central to Harbin as place.

Vision and pool areas' architecture and design, as place, have emerged together since the mid-1970s and Harbin's Heart Consciousness Church, in a kind of organic, natural, hippy way around nudity. The sun deck itself, in the warmer times of the year, has so many people just lounging out naked – and designed for this, (like an open glade surrounded by trees of our primate ancestors?). People hang out under the grape arbor and all around the pool area, and are similarly visibility. The main walk between the sun deck and grape arbor is like a catwalk, and can become very colorful. This space is close enough for full nude visibility in every direction. Yet, people generally have quiet minds, even as this or that group of friends hangs out at the front edge of the sundeck, at this Harbin retreat center pool area all the while going in and out of these pools. A new deck is added here, and a new cold pool is opened there, all incrementally, and fitting in with the existing architecture, as if growing naturally from it; this is what I mean by organic architecture, in which, too, there was great interest in alternative circles (see, for example, “The Next Whole Earth Catalog”). And the co-ed dressing room, the large window into it, the way people rise up in their naked beauty the front pool stairs then down the stairs into the warm water itself to enter when coming into the warm pool the front way, all seems designed for looking. Walk along the side or stop at the drinking fountain beside the warm pool, naked, and people in the warm pool can see you. Walk into the hot pool in many of the doorways, and peoples' bodies are framed for viewing in a sense. And this is all normalized so people don't think about it, and the waters put people at ease. Those who come back again and again may well find all of this very erotic, from a vision point of view. There is a lot of visible, naked cuddling in the place of the warm pool, which is quite wonderful and easing to be part of, if only meditating or soaking alone in the Harbin waters. Harbin as place seems designed for hippy seeing and being seen, in the milieu of clean and relaxed Mainside, pool area, and waters.

Not only is Harbin Hot Springs a place of observing, but watching at Harbin is in relation to its being a retreat center, and Heart Consciousness Church, as well as the easing that occurs for everyone in the waters, and around the pools. …











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2011/03/komodo-dragon-vision-pool-areas.html - March 2, 2011)