Phenomenology, Architecture and the Built World is an introduction to the methods and basic concepts of phenomenological philosophy through an analysis of the phenomenon of the built world. The conception of the built world that emerges is of space and time fashioned in accordance with a living understanding of what it is for human beings to exist in the world. Human building and making is thus no mere supplementary instrument in the pursuit of the ends of life, but a fundamental embodiment of the self-understanding of human beings. Phenomenological description is uniquely capable of bringing into view the physiognomy of this understanding, its texture and complexity, thereby providing an important basis for a critique of what constitutes its essence and its conditions of possibility.
The role of phenomenology in architectural theory and practice, the relation of architecture to other arts, and the role of architecture in urban and suburban design are examined within the context of modern architecture.
Architecture and urban design are typically considered as a result of artistic creativity performed by gifted individuals. Postphenomenology and Architecture: Human Technology Relations in the Built Environment analyzes buildings and cities instead as technologies. Informed by a postphenomenological perspective, this book argues that buildings and the furniture of cities—like bike lanes, benches, and bus stops—are inscribed in a conceptual framework of multistability, which is to say that they fulfill different purposes over time. Yet, there are qualities in the built environment that are long lasting and immutable and that transcend temporal functionality and ephemeral efficiency. The contributors show how different perceptions, practices, and interpretations are tangible and visible as we engage with these technologies. In addition, several of the chapters critically assess the influence of Martin Heidegger in modern philosophy of architecture. This book reads Heidegger from the perspective of architecture and urban design as technology, shedding light on what it means to build and dwell.
Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. Jorge Otero-Pailos shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. In the first critical intellectual account of the movement, Otero-Pailos discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, Otero-Pailos contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However, as Otero-Pailos makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory. Otero-Pailos reveals how, ultimately, the rise of architectural phenomenology played a crucial double role in the rise of postmodernism, creating the antimodern specter of a historical consciousness and offering the modern notion of essential experience as the means to defeat it.
A classic examination of superb design through the centuries. Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence—ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing's Winter Palace—Rasmussen's accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession, but as an art that shapes everyday experience. In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one's professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit, but also from one's shared, everyday experience of architecture in real time—its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm and sound. Experiencing Architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”
Contemporaryphilosophyseems a great swirling almost chaos. Every situation must seem so at the time, probably because philosophy itself resists structura tion and because personal and political factors within as well as without the discipline must fade in order for the genuinely philosophical merits of performances to be assessed. Nevertheless, some remarks can still be made to situate the present volume. For example, at least half of philosophy on planet Earth is today pursued in North America (which is not to say that this portion is any less internally incoherent than the whole of which it thus becomes the largest part) and the present volume is North American. (Incidentally, the recognition of culturally geographic traditions and tendencies nowise implies that striving for cross-culturalif not trans-cultural philosophical validity has failed or ceased. Rather, it merely recognizes a significant aspect relevant from the historical point of view.) Episte- Aesthetics Ethics Etc. mology Analytic Philosophy Marxism Existentialism Etc. Figure 1. There are two main ways in which philosophical developments are classified. One is in terms of tendencies, movements, and schools of thought and the other is in terms of traditional sub-disciplines. When there is little contention among schools, the predominant way is in terms of sub-disciplines, such as aesthetics, ethics, politics, etc. Today this mode of classification can be seen to intersect with that in terms of movements and tendencies, both of which are represented in the above chart.
themes among the essays resurface and resonate. Though our request for essays was broad and open-ended, we found that topics such as seeing, authenticity, interpretation, wholeness, care, and dwelling ran as undercur rents throughout. Our major hope is that each essay plays a part in revealing a larger whole of meaning which says much about a more humane relation ship with places, environments and the earth as our home. Part I. Beginnings and directions At the start, we recognize the tremendous debt this volume owes to philosopher Martin Heidegger (1890-1976), whose ontological excavations into the nature of human existence and meaning provide the philosophical foundations for many of the essays, particularly those in Part I of the volume. Above all else, Heidegger was regarded by his students and colleagues as a master teacher. He not only thought deeply but was also able to show others how to think and to question. Since he, perhaps more than anyone else in this century, provides the instruction for dOing a phenomenology and hermeneutic of humanity's existential situation, he is seminal for phenomenological and hermeneutical research in the environmental disci plines. He presents in his writings what conventional scholarly work, especially the scientific approach, lacks; he helps us to evoke and under stand things through a method that allows them to come forth as they are; he provides a new way to speak about and care for our human nature and environment.
Husserl and Spatiality is an exploration of the phenomenology of space and embodiment, based on the work of Edmund Husserl. Little known in architecture, Husserl’s phenomenology of embodied spatiality established the foundations for the works of later phenomenologists, including Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s well-known phenomenology of perception. Through a detailed study of his posthumously published and unpublished manuscripts on space, DuFour examines the depth and scope of Husserl’s phenomenology of space. The book investigates his analyses of corporeity and the “lived body,” extending to questions of intersubjective, intergenerational, and geo-historical spatial experience, what DuFour terms the “environmentality” of space. Combining in-depth architectural philosophical investigations of spatiality with a rich and intimate ethnography, Husserl and Spatiality speaks to themes in social and cultural anthropology, from a theoretical perspective that addresses spatial practice and experience. Drawing on fieldwork in Brazil, DuFour develops his analyses of Husserl’s phenomenology through spatial accounts of ritual in the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé. The result is a methodological innovation and unique mode of spatial description that DuFour terms a “phenomenological ethnography of space.” The book’s profoundly interdisciplinary approach makes an incisive contribution relevant to academics and students of architecture and architectural theory, anthropology and material culture, and philosophy and environmental aesthetics.
Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Interpretation of Heidegger’s Philosophy investigates the theoretical contribution of the world-renowned Norwegian architectural theorist Christian Norberg-Schulz (1926 – 2000) and considers his architectural interpretation of the writings of German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Though widely recognised as providing the most comprehensive reading of Heideggerian philosophy through the lens of architecture, this book argues that Norberg-Schulz neglected one of the key aspects of the philosopher’s contributions: the temporal nature of being-in-the-world as care. The undeveloped architectural implications of the ontological concept of care in his work prevented the fruition of his ultimate aim, transforming the ‘art of place’ into an ‘art of living’. This book seeks to realign Norberg-Schulz’s understanding of time as continuity and change to present a holistic approach grounded in Heidegger’s phenomenological philosophy; architecture as art of care. Aimed at academics and scholars in architectural theory, history and philosophy, Christian Norberg-Schulz’s Interpretation of Heidegger’s Philosophy surveys the implications and significance of the theorist’s works on architectural criticism in the late 20th century.
