Saint Jerome “The dessert, the study” by Allison Smithson. This reading is an analysis of the allegory of the two habitat of Saint Jerome that the renaissance painters painted in between 1400 and 1700 about Saint Jerome in spite he lived between 374 AD and 420AD. In the dessert he is exposed to the nature, the desire to retreat from the urban place to be alone in the nature expressed a human desire for the freedom that seems to be in the nature. In the Study he is no longer exposed but protected, with all the conveniences that a city offers, but in despite that, we can see in both paintings that they are reciprocal and have a pieces of each other, creating fragments of an enclave. In the Grotto Saint Jerome still is in nature, but with the protection of a cave, merging the two ideas together. What do we understand for sustainability? What is sustainability and how broadly it should be cast? Can it encompass economic, social and aesthetic concerns ever as it pursue environmental balance? Can architecture provide sustainable shelter and be art? Architecture is cultural and social, as architects we must re-imagine architecture as a partner in the pursuit of a new relationship with nature. After all, architecture, it is shelter at its most basic human level.