Guardini, Technology, & Interiors

A Letter from Lake Como

Romano Guardini begins his short but lovely work Letters from Lake Como with vision and anticipation: “In the far distance the mountain ranges rose up in clear outline, and behind them the land that I had not seen for twenty years was waiting.” Italian by birth but raised in Germany, he writes his letters upon returning to Italy in the 1920s as a man, observing northern Italian culture’s embrace of industry and technology, its slow movement away from the organic, natural, unconscious life that had been its character. 

The view of Lake Como from our room in the village of Nesso.

When I read Guardini’s book on technology and culture several years ago, I was unsatisfied with his final exhortation, but his reflections on the problems of human progress and the rootedness of his ideas in this particular place were fixed in my imagination. He writes in images with a tenderness and grace not easily found.  

Throughout the book, Guardini gives perceptive descriptions of the relationship between culture and nature. He argues that human action can elevate and reshape nature while maintaining nature’s fundamental beauty and simplicity; this is genuine culture. However, in some bewilderment, he observes that this expression of culture is “dying” around us. Instead, a new movement is rising, one that disregards natural processes and forms and therefore answers to no natural limits or rules. Among the changes he laments are factories on the countryside and steamboats’ replacing sailboats. Of these, he writes, they are “so large that nature no longer has power over it; we can no longer see nature.” 

My husband and I recently visited the same area, spending time in several of the small villages that punctuate the hillsides with stone and stucco of orange and pink. The mountains surrounding Lake Como are thick and steep, rising up and around the water, their height an extension of the lake’s depths, the continuity of its bed into the dense, green woods and up to the mist of clouds. The roads that connect the villages are narrow and winding—a sharp ascent to one side and a steep, wooded drop to water on the other.  

A rainy view of the southern portion of the lake.

Guardini begins his book with a question. “It seeks the meaning of what is taking place before us,” he writes, “I want to see if I can find a direction and a path.” He explores his experiences of Lake Como (as well as life in the German “North”), looking for a hope that might be his consolation. I also came with a question, the question that is likely on many of our minds these days: How to humanely integrate technology into our interior lives—into our homes and our habits and ways of being?  

I have here and there referred to my desire for a humane interior life—in both the domestic and intra-personal senses. By “humane,” I mean an environment in which humans can flourish in all respects, a place founded in personal freedom, charity, and rich, multi-dimensional beauty. In other words, I think our homes (and our interior worlds) should be places well-suited to human living. Similarly, I think there are things both physical and metaphysical that are less suited. Or, as Guardini explains, his fear is “that a world is developing in which human beings can no longer live—a world that is in some way nonhuman.” The question rests the same before us: What is the way forward?  

An obvious piece of the “nonhuman” are technology’s spiritual and psychological consequences. As a person interested in interiors, however, I also spend a lot of time thinking about technology from a slightly different perspective: how it hinders the physical beauty of a space. And interestingly, the beauty of a thing is almost always integral to its cultural and personal implications.  

Laundry on the balcony outside our room. I love that many Italians still dry their linens this way.

To this end, a friend asked recently if I had suggestions for integrating technology into a space. Especially for those who work from home, computers, cameras, and screens are an unavoidable part of daily life. For others, the challenge centers more around leisure and the placement of a television screen. How can these pieces of contemporary technology be incorporated such that they don’t stand out like sore thumbs and misrepresent our values?   

As I considered my friend’s question, like Guardini, I grew a bit disillusioned: I’m not sure there’s actually a way to do it. Certainly, some computers and televisions are more pleasing to the eye than others, but they still all present (at least to me) an impassable visual block. The chrome and white, the black, blank rectangle of any size and the alternate nowhere it accesses seem a kind of violence against the natural, the beautiful, and the present. Even a smart phone absentmindedly left on a coffee table during an evening always strikes the eye with its emptiness—or the pixels of its screen. The digital breaks in.  

Companies have found ways of cleverly disguising screens with fake frames and digital art. Others have found ways to hide them with folding doors covered in artwork or sliding mirrors. All of these seem to me great avenues to keeping the tech out of view when it’s not in use. (They also imply that there’s something inherently discordant about the technology itself; many of us want it hidden.)  

Although some workspaces are more aesthetically pleasing, with sleek, white desks and large, nearly translucent computers, they all also seem spacey to me or antiseptic. When I reflect on the environment conducive to human life, they are not it. (A later note—upon looking for workspace inspiration, I found examples of some pretty beautiful places, all minimizing the presence of technology and housing it in rich, classic architecture.)

These are strong words, but maybe they should be acknowledged, and although I do not think there’s a way to relinquish technology altogether and remain morally responsible for our times, such a realization can instead reorient how we interact with the devices in our homes. Guardini in fact warns against rejecting technology. In the posture of Christian abandonment and confidence, we can trust that what has unfolded in the history of culture is not outside an eternal gaze and purpose. Rather, Guardini suggests, culture needs to grow and rise in new ways in order to meet technology’s demands. In this way, we can reclaim technology as the work of man, under his stewardship and dominion.  

We can reclaim these screens and wires for what they are. They are our tools, helping us with our work, enabling communication. This means we are intentional in our use of them, and when our work is done, we put them away.  

What I proposed finally to my friend was a daily ritual of setting up and then, at close of day, restoring all technological pieces to an out of the way place. This practice can correspond with a nightly tidying up, a restoration that helps refresh our homes (and our minds) for the following day. Similarly, we give ourselves (and again, our minds) a retreat from the incessant demands that technology represents: work, social media, stress, or even the lure of passive entertainment.  

Closets, roll-top desks, lidded baskets, cupboards, drawers—these are the places where we keep most of our tools. These are where our phones and computers (and television screens) belong as well. And we can add this to the list of ingredients to be aware of. Removing a screen from a room, covering up an outlet with a plant or lamp, putting the phone in a drawer—all instantaneously make for a more humane and beautiful space.  

I am not certain of how Lake Como (and much of Italy) can recover from the unique wounds that “progress” has inflicted. Many factories now stand dark and forgotten, their industry replaced by others far away. The soulful, humane life that once, at least in Guardini’s recollection, pulsed across the place is an artifact. However, I am convicted by Guardini’s call for a further deepening of culture, “a new awareness,” a new consciousness. We can first begin with our own homes, reclaiming the humane, and, in this way, as Guardini hoped, restore freedom and beauty in ourselves and in the world.