The Architect Who Moved to His Street

Marcus Webb spent three years designing the Westfield Tower, a mixed-use complex in downtown Cleveland. He drew sightlines and traffic flows, calculated natural light angles, specified the tile in the lobby. On paper, every decision was rational. Then the building opened and tenants began complaining. The lobby felt cold in ways no thermostat could fix. The corridors felt isolating. The courtyard, which looked beautiful in the renderings, sat empty.

Webb could have issued a report. Instead, he did something his colleagues called eccentric: he leased an apartment on the eighth floor and lived there for a year. He woke at 3 a.m. when the HVAC cycled on. He learned which neighbors left for work at dawn, which ones argued through the walls. He felt the building's problems with his body, not just his mind.

When he submitted his renovation proposals the following spring, they were different — warmer, more human, shaped by a knowledge that blueprints alone can never hold.

The prologue of John's Gospel makes a staggering claim: the eternal Word, the one through whom all creation was spoken into being, did not send instructions from a distance. He moved in. John uses the Greek word eskēnōsen — "He pitched His tent." He took on flesh, felt hunger, woke in the night, walked on dusty roads.

The Architect of the universe came to live on His own street. That is the miracle of the Incarnation.