isparchitecture.com like the inaugural issue last summer, the present issue owes the lion’s share of its contributions to an international conference held by the international society for the philosophy of architecture, the society behind architecture philosophy. entitled ‘autonomy reconsidered’, the conference raised a host of questions to both disciplines, indeed calling the disciplines to join their efforts in answering them: contemporary philosophy and architecture discourse alike marginalize the ethical dimension of architecture. yet, it seems that the ethical dimension in both architecture and philosophy has been compromised because both disciplines have not established a clear interdisciplinary understanding of autonomy. together, and in service to both fields of study, we must reconsider what autonomy means for both architecture and philosophy, or rather, for architecture philosophy. without consideration to design intent, societal (at times, utopian) agendas and programs, architecture is still largely deemed to be ethically ‘neutral’ or silent. but is architecture ethically neutral? is it ethically silent? can ethical evaluation of designs and built objects operate autonomously from evaluation of the human agents that create them? can a designer’s activity be considered autonomous, and hence allow for questions of attribution and responsibility? once we isolate the architectural, landscape, or urban designer from outside pressures, and only focus on her core métier – to what extent is philosophy and architecture discourse alike marginalize the ethical dimension of architecture “ ” autonomy reconsidered carolyn fahey, stefan koller & tom spector ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 136 ed it or ia l that isolated activity autonomous? and if an architect’s actions cannot be autonomous, would architecture stop having to answer to itself ? philosophical ethics has opened its purview beyond human action to animal ethics and environmental ethics, but has not yet found a way to expand its existing reflections to designed objects, particularly built ones. perhaps in parallel to ethics, contemporary aesthetics discusses the moral repercussions of art works with clear representational content – socially critical novels, figurative paintings – but has not paid closer attention to architecture. is the lack of attention in aesthetics due to architecture’s representational content being elusive, or because architecture’s aesthetic appraisal is taken to proceed autonomously from moral considerations? how would architecture be considered otherwise? 1 the conference’s call went on to, “invit[e] papers which probe these questions, or re-draw the assumptions behind them.” 2 it is in that spirit that we present to readers the opening contribution, a keynote at that conference. in “the myth of autonomy,” nathaniel coleman exposes and dissects foundational myths that, he argues, drive various autonomy projects in architecture to this day. such projects, coleman argues, operate on assumptions that cannot be upheld, and presuppose the unavailability of architecture’s live relation to the social and the ethical. that unavailability comes into stark question once architecture’s relation to utopia is reconsidered: not autonomy, but its great other, merits reconsideration if we are to redraw present day assumptions. coleman’s authoritative tour de force across the prominent figures in today’s autonomy debates in architecture sets the stage for the journal issue more widely. its claim that philosophers’ (especially kantian) notions of ‘autonomy’ are of limited use in such concerns should certainly not stand unanswered for long. tackling the call for papers’ challenges to the philosophical community head-on, noël carroll and christoph baumberger also argue against the self-insulation of architecture from ethical considerations, as coleman does. yet, they appear more conservative about the means required to get us there, while disagreeing between themselves on those means – thus inaugurating the proliferation of viewpoints and arguments this journal seeks to promote. carroll and baumberger’s implicit disagreements are delicate precisely because both authors are driven to a similar position: ‘moderate moralism’. moderate moralism is a position carroll himself coined and developed for various art forms, but never before for architecture. the position’s validity – especially its claim to an internal relation 137 isparchitecture.com of architecture to ethical values – both authors remind us, has vast consequences for how we build and design. autonomism, once again, is found to be unsupportable. will no one stand up for its defense? this brings us to the papers of mark jensen and felipe loureiro. jensen considers autonomy from a different point of departure. what, he asks, if autonomy were primarily concerned, not with the status of the object, but with the status of its producers? could their relative autonomy be an important determinant of the quality of the built environment? to consider these questions, jensen draws from aristotle’s ethics as a framework. felipe loureiro’s essay on the applicability of philosopher of media vilém flusser’s ideas to architectural images engages the topic of autonomy indirectly by examining the increasing opaqueness of the means of architectural image production – from hand drawing, to photography, computer images, and now protoyping – in contemporary times. while the means of image generation becomes increasingly abstract, the decreasing distance between conception and production is blurring the distinction between design and craft. could this development be bringing the modern-day designer’s unhappy choice between irrelevant celebrity or embedded anonymity back into some sense of real control and significance? if the journal’s inaugural issue introduced features not often encountered in an academic journal – follow up questions posed to authors or their targets, an interview, room for sidebar notes – the present issue inaugurates a further such feature central to the journal’s concept: the continuing of conversations previously left open, as befits philosophical reflection. the second part of paul guyer’s essay on monism and pluralism, and the interview with andrew ballantyne both take off where we left them in will no one stand up for [autonomy”s] defense? “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 138 ed it or ia l the previous issue. with both conversations having run their course thus far, we look to readers to pen questions of their own – whether to join conversations already begun, or to start a fresh thread of exchange. endnotes 1. fahey, carolyn, and stefan koller, june 27, 2013, “autonomy reconsidered,” international society for the philosophy of architecture, http://isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/ given the wealth of new ways of conceptualizing building, its practice, and its meanings, this call for papers prompts authors to reconceptualize the notion of buildings’ functions in terms of use, particularly as is described in wittgenstein’s use theory. by engaging one of philosophy’s richest and most formidable postmodern thinkers -– ludwig wittgenstein – the discourse surrounding function can move away from architecture’s modernist paradigm that has largely defined how we think about and deal with questions relating to function. wittgenstein – who remains largely undealt with by the architectural discourse, but whose work has nevertheless had ample development from within the philosophical discourse – provides genuine contributions to the understanding of use and meaning. specifically, the wittgensteinian notion of meaning as use moves the discussion away from mechanical or systematic notions grounded in scientific enquiry, and instead focuses analysis on the particular context or language-game within which ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 call for papers: international wittgenstein symposium w itt ge ns te in ho us e, vi ew fr om st re et keynotes: james conant, professor of philosophy, university of chicago ákos moravánszky, professor of architecture theory, eth zürich simo säätelä, professor of philosophy, university of bergen paul wijdeveld, author of ludwig wittgenstein, architect use value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions wittgenstein house vienna, austria 17-18 august 2015 isparchitecture.com a building partakes. thus, the hope is to utilize ludwig wittgenstein’s theory of meaning to achieve radically alternative analyses of building’s use, thereby allowing for productive re-engagement with one of architecture’s most fundamentally philosophical questions. lines of enquiry may include: • does a building mean in isolation from humans? does a canonical building mean outside of its local socio-cultural context? or does a building only mean within the architectural discourse that has canonized it? • within wittgenstein’s use-theory, does the distinction between building and architecture exist? in which contexts does this distinction hold meaning? is the distinction still meaningful today? • what is the use value of building in contemporary society? are there new use values in building that suggest a shift in the trajectory of the building practice, of society, of culture? • does building itself challenge commonly accepted theories of meaning? does building itself challenge commonly accepted readings of wittgenstein’s use-theory? are there specific instances in which building can be shown as revealing limitations in wittgenstein’s theory of use? • does wittgenstein’s use theory supplant notions of the symbolic? or does it give symbolism renewed significance? how do different types of architectural symbolism figure in wittgenstein’s use theory? the symposium will take place between the 17th and 18th of august 2015 in the famous wittgenstein house in vienna, austria. given the unique and incredibly inspiring setting, space is limited. abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words. all submissions are due by 01 may 2015 submitted in rtf file format to isparchitecture@gmail.com. for questions regarding the call for papers or the symposium please contact the acting editor for the issue and event organizer, dr. carolyn fahey at carfahey@gmail. com. refer to the ispa website for the most up-to-date information regarding the event’s organization. a selection of the papers will be published as a special issue in architecture philosophy. symposium delegates who wish to be considered for inclusion in the special issue will be asked to submit papers between 5,000 and 7,000 words by 01 december 2015. more details regarding full paper submission will be provided at the time of the event. in the meantime, detailed submission instructions for architecture philosophy are available in this printed journal as well as on the ispa website at isparchitecture.com. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is the paper written in english to general academic writing standards for the humanities? does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines? review criteria isparchitecture.com please direct all submissions and general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. there are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special issue, conference proceedings, etc.). submission types authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. full papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word abstract, response pieces should be between 500 and 1,500 words, and book reviews between 1,000 to 2,000 words. general formatting all submissions should be presented in accordance with the university of chicago style. papers should be rtf documents, 12 point font, times new roman, doublespaced, and with no additional or otherwise unique formatting. references should be manually placed in brackets (e.g. [1], [2], and so on) with full citation information placed in the references section at the end of the document. photo guidelines and image permissions images should be at least 300 dpi and read well in greyscale prints. the images should be submitted as individual files (tiff or jpeg), in combination with proof of copyright permission. authors are responsible for obtaining image permissions, and are asked to have done so prior to submitting their papers for review. the oklahoma state university image archive is also available for use. please send inquiries about the osu image holdings to prof. tom spector at tom.spector@okstate.edu. the papers published by architecture philosophy are protected by copyright. the content must not have been previously published and cannot be republished without the permission of the journal’s copyright holder. the copyright holder is oklahoma state university. authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permission for the use of images in their papers. original images created by the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines isparchitecture.com architectural writing that engages philosophy has been around for decades. philosophical writing with reference to architecture has been around for centuries. but almost none of it has sustained a conversation. it is as though each outing might be the last. nothing seems to build—one thought upon another. too often, when those from the architectural side of the fence reference philosophy in their work, it appears they are doing so ornamentally—to render the work with the appearance of higher order wisdom derived from analytic or continental or environmental or eastern philosophy, yet without enduring the painstaking work of having done so. too often, when those from the philosophical side of the fence reference architecture, their stylistic or ideological prejudices are all too apparent, and their understanding of the workings of the world of architectural production are too naïve to be persuasive. and yet—the built environment is too important a force in the world for philosophers to neglect in their work of questioning, criticizing and systematizing who we are, what we know, what is important, and all the rest of the fields of inquiry under their roof. and by the same token, philosophy is too important a practice for architects to ignore their efforts to understand the world they account for. the deficiencies have themselves created a need and desire for a field of inquiry that incorporates the expertise of both architecture and philosophy. sustaining the inquiry and securing the field, is achieved with a journal. until a budding discipline has a journal to call its own, it cannot mature because it has no regular the purpose of architecture philosophy is to provide the platform to allow the field’s self-identification process to begin, establish the field’s standards, and identify the most pertinent topics “ ” why architecture philosophy? tom spector, carolyn fahey, & stefan koller ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 6 ed it or ia l home within which to find its center, explore its boundaries, quantify progress, and evaluate contributions. there is no way of knowing whether an area of inquiry has already been dealt with by others, whether it may prove fertile, and standards for inquiry are left entirely undefined. these criteria are currently lacking in writing at the junction of architecture and philosophy. the purpose of architecture philosophy, therefore, is to provide the platform to allow the field’s self-identification process to begin, establish the field’s standards, and identify the most pertinent topics. the initial issues will explore the boundaries of writing on architecture philosophy and, in the process, begin to show what the key questions, positions, and disagreements amongst architecture philosophers are. often times, this diversity is apparent in their formal disciplinary training, whether of post-structuralist architecture or analytic philosophy or otherwise. as editors, we are not interested in homogenizing the thinking represented in the nascent field, but rather in engendering genuine debate. at times the voices will be disparate, resonating as a cacophony of debate, but there are already apparent moments of commonality. the prospect of meaningful agreement creates a worthwhile pursuit. the desired tone of the essays is to aim for accessibility, but at a level that can presume familiarity with the basics of philosophy and with the main currents in recent architectural thought. the method of research sought is of highly rationalized and evidenced arguments, in which poetics are inadequate, authoritarian claims indefensible, and ungrounded abstractions immobile. most of the writing presented in this inaugural issue is drawn from essays presented at the 2012 ispa conference— ethics and aesthetics in architecture—held at newcastle university.1 the original call for papers is here: the subject of aesthetics is often taken as dealing with questions of mere beauty, where the word ‘aesthetic’ is colloquially interchangeable with beauty and liking. someone might, for instance, explain their liking the look of a particular object on the basis of its ‘aesthetics’. interestingly, even within the specialized architecture discourse, the aesthetic is largely discussed on the basis of an object’s appearance. yet, the aesthetic is not limited and should not be limited merely to the way things look. any philosophically informed aesthetician will contest this limited view, saying something along the lines of ‘the aesthetic is everything’. the aim of this conference is therefore in part to address this discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience. in taking on the aesthetic in a manner that pushes its considerations beyond the realm of mere beauty, questions of ethics 7 isparchitecture.com often arise. indeed wittgenstein famously asserted that, “ethics and aesthetics are one and the same”.2 questions as to why, for instance a building’s form takes the shape it does, not only raises the more conventional aesthetic questions but also questions about what purpose or meaning the building serves beyond purely visual stimulation. does the form for instance relate somehow to a social ideal or economic ideal? and if so, is this ideal something that its inhabitants subscribe to or are even aware of ? in an effort to draw thinkers’ attention to the ethical role architecture plays as well as the ethical function architects play, the second part of this conference call addresses this often overlooked dimension of architecture.3 the intent in raising such questions is not merely to broaden architects’ discourse to meaningfully include ethical considerations, but also equally as much to broaden the philosophical discourse which has done little to investigate the very same philosophical questions architects do. the hope with bringing the two disciplines together is to propel the broader discourse beyond the limitations of a purely visual understanding of architecture and its aesthetics. the essays in this inaugural issue move beyond those limitations by drawing on a diverse range of approaches. david leatherbarrow’s “sharing sense” employs aesthetic readings of architecture to illuminate ethical problems. paul guyer’s “pluralism and monism” traces a strand in the philosophical genealogy from kant to ruskin, establishing what the cognitivist approach to understanding architecture is and how this position is situated firmly within both ethics and aesthetics. emmanuel petit’s essay “architecture of ethics” looks at the ethical journey of the architect stanley tigerman through his architectural practice in chicago. rafeal de clercq’s essay “building plans as natural symbols” investigates how the architectural plan may be interpreted and understood in terms of symbology. nathaniel coleman’s “is beauty still relevant?” is a as editors, we are not interested in homogenizing the thinking represented in the nascent field, but rather in engendering genuine debate “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 8 ed it or ia l fine-grained analysis of an aspect of ancient greek aesthetics applied to contemporary artistic problems, which seeks to examine whether and how ethics and aesthetics can be understood in tandem. rick fox’s “a new interpretative taxonomy” is a textbook example of epistemic inquiry, which delineates common positions within popular architecture discourse: the singularist, constructivist, and contextualist. to further explore the journal’s limits we include an interview with andrew ballantyne, who has made many of first successful forays into the interdisciplinary territory of architecture and philosophy, as well as an interview with chicago-based architect stanley tigerman, and a book review. in later issues, we hope to encourage more dialogue with our readers in the form of responses to published essays, book reviews, roundtables, etc. occasional themed issues are also anticipated. the society’s international events will continue to supply the journal with papers, but we also maintain an open submission. submission details and guidelines can be found at isparchitecture.com or in the back of this issue. endnotes 1. “ethics and aesthetics conference website.” international society for the philosophy of architecture, 13 dec. 2010. web. 30 may 2014. <ispaconference. wordpress.com>. 2. wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus, §6.421. 3. fahey, carolyn. “2012 conference: call for papers.” international society for the philosophy of architecture, 13 dec. 2010. web. 30 jan. 2014. <isparchitecture.com>. andrew ballantyne’s books include key buildings from prehistory to the present: plans, sections and elevations, 2012 architecture in the space of flows, 2012 (co-edited by c. smith) deleuze and guattari for architects, 2007 architecture theory: a reader in philosophy and culture, 2005 architecture and experience: radical change in spatial practice, 2004 architectures: modernism and after, 2004 architecture: a very short introduction, 2002 what is architecture?, 2002 architecture, landscape and liberty: richard payne knight and the picturesque, 1997 andrew ballantyne and stefan koller trying to think in a connected sort of way andrew ballantyne in conversation with stefan koller question: you’ve written deleuze and guattari for architects, you’ve written on architecture philosophy, but originally you’ve written things that were maybe not so clearly yet situated within the philosophy of architecture. how did you eventually came to that material and why? answer: it is difficult to summarize, but my doctorate and my first book were about richard payne knight and the theory of the picturesque. i was interested in the topic from the point of view of architecture theory, but it turned out to be the theory of everything else as well. especially the theory of landscape design, people’s relationship with their environments, people’s relationship with ideas, and the ideas that they use to think about things, think about places, think about nature and how they engage with nature. so i found myself going on a very wide-ranging study of knight’s ideas. i first encountered him as a theorist of architecture through peter collins’ book, the changing ideals in modern architecture where he’s positioned as someone who thought all rules were wrong. that seemed to me to be so evidently sensible. i didn’t understand why anyone would every have moved on from that position. so i wanted to find out about him, and through a very rich, very rewarding character who turned out to have lots of interest. now of course i do understand why people moved on from that position. because if you have rules, it simplifies things, it cuts down the range of choices. often what you want as a designer is a reason to limit what you’re interested in so that the often what you want as a designer is a reason to limit what you’re interested in so that the question isn’t as multifarious as it could be “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 120 ba ll a nt y ne question isn’t as multifarious as it could be, but it’s focused on the issue of the day, or of the issue that we decide to make the issue of the day, and that simplifies things. it resolves the question into what we’re dealing with now. q: these are all inherently, genuinely, legitimately philosophical questions. at what point does moving on and engaging with people like deleuze and guattari become a move towards philosophical questions? or is it more of the same that just happens to be concerned with authors who are recognized by others as having philosophically dealt with the built environment? a: i’m not sure, but what i want to pick up on in that question is the idea of the variety and multifariousness of the world as we know it, of things, and the way we need to simplify it in order to deal with it. what i’d hope that i try to do is engage with lots of things and the big complexity of what we are immersed in and then fasten on different things to focus on in each text. so, we hone in on something and try and address some sort of questions, but i do want the background richness and the background, complexity or chaos – whatever it is – i want that to be part of my life, part of my intellectual outlook, and so there’s a tradition of dealing with those things. deleuze and guattari very nicely formulate it as nomadic thought where you move about, you change the set of ideas that you’re using to deal with the world from one occasion to another, and you use the ideas that are the most effective at the given time, given what you are trying to do, what you’re trying to think about, what you’re trying to engage with and then move on from them and use a different set on another occasion. q: deleuze’s book on nietzsche talks about taking other peoples’ insights like arrows that have landed on the ground and that we can just pick them up and shoot them off again. so it seems you instrumentalize the arrows and you make them do the things that you want them to do for you. in the sense there is a tradition that engages these broader questions more narrowly or in a more design-oriented context, is that one way to draw on and instrumentalize the philosophical tradition? in order to pose, articulate, and sometimes answer questions within the tradition of architecture that may be harder otherwise to unearth? a: my first reaction is to think, ‘i don’t know, i’ll have to go away and think about that’. but, what i do know is that i don’t read philosophical texts as a philosopher. i read them, however i do read them. there are some things that jump out and seem interesting, seem compelling and i somehow latch on to and they seem like something that i’ve got to do something with. if what i’m doing with that concept is just explaining it in exactly the same terms that the philosopher has presented it, then 121 isparchitecture.com i have no role, there’s no point in my doing that. other people can do that. the philosopher has done it already. why would it be interesting just to repeat back what the philosopher has said? what i’m interested in doing is taking it up, picking up that arrow, firing it to a new place, and seeing where it lands. it’s an instrument for exploration of something. you find that it will do something, and i’m not always clear what it’s going to do, but i have this feeling that something is going to happen with it. we find out as we progress with the text, with the thinking, with exploring that idea, seeing what it leads ups with, and seeing where it lands. q: in deleuze and guattari for architects you quote from a novel by bernard malamud where he reads spinoza. malamud reads spinoza with great speed and says, ‘sometimes i wouldn’t understand a sentence and i would go through it and afterwards i felt i wasn’t the same man anymore’. so there’s a transformative potential of philosophy here which doesn’t require malamud’s character to read spinoza’s text the way academically trained philosophers might feel compelled to do (line by line). so it’s a way to open up something about architecture without knowing where it will lead you, but also without feeling compelled that for philosophy to do this, you have to follow an academic philosophical attitude of engaging the text. is that fair to say? a: yes, it is fair to say, but also i would say that one of the things that i like about listening to philosophers is that methodical presentation of an argument and leading me through step-by-step. i hope that’s something that i can learn from and can follow that sort of procedure. i’m not sure that it always works out that way, but i would hope (to have) that clarity of thinking and the precision of thinking that philosophers are so good at demonstrating. that’s something i’d aspire to do and that i’d hope that i could learn from. the way that i come across philosophers being used by architects, far too often, is of imperfectly understood ideas being collaged together. i know the way that i come across philosophers being used by architects, far too often, is of imperfectly understood ideas being collaged together “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 122 ba ll a nt y ne that if i hear the names of more than three philosophers in a sentence i panic. i just know that i’m not being presented with something that’s being thought through. i’m perfectly comfortable with the idea that i don’t know everything, and i’m perfectly contented with the fact that there may be philosophers who’ve thought the way i’ve thought before, and i’m not referencing them; that doesn’t invalidate the argument. what i’m really keen on doing is trying to think in a connected sort of way like philosophers do. it’s that i want to learn from them more than anything. q: what i find so interesting is the way you characterize your work, the way you characterized what you sometimes find in the field, and what i think many of us have encountered. of course, that is nothing at all peculiar to architects. philosophy belongs to the public and to a readership well beyond the academic establishment, which means that people engage with it without scholarly scruple. perhaps in the same sense that they read novels without having to feel the need to attend a seminar on say french literary theory first. sven olov-wallenstein’s book on bio-politics contains a history of all of enlightenment philosophy. that’s not a presentation, or representation, of someone like kant or locke in these pages that is recognizable to a trained philosopher, but at the same time it would be extremely effective, and has been extremely effective in opening up some questions to ask of architecture, or to confront architecture with. that’s exactly the same mixture of not being too scrupulous with the source material to be able to arrive at something original. that is something that olovwallenstein does, in a very short space, and i understand that you give yourself and your own philosophical explorations much more space and fewer authors to work with. but compared to your work, is the olov-wallenstein example a difference in degree, or difference in kind? a: well, i don’t know my way around that text, but i would guess that the substance of it, if it’s doing something valuable, probably isn’t in those introductory remarks. that’s setting the scene and if it is doing something valuable then it would have to be thinking through things in a more careful way than that. it may be giving a few broad-brush strokes to set things up. there may be something inaccurate or wayward in that, but maybe that’s not important, that’s just background. the key to it would be the central argument where the ideas are properly engaged. i don’t know, but that’s my suspicion from your description there. there’s always something that’s in the background that you don’t know about but you might need to make reference to it, just as something maybe out of focus in the background which nevertheless is helpful in establishing some sort of context. part ii of this interview will appear in vol. 1, no. 2 of architecture philosophy. 207 isparchitecture.com book review the aesthetics of architecture. roger scruton. princeton, nj: princeton university press, 2013 (1st edition 1979). reviewed by hilde heynen roger scruton is a well-known and wellrespected philosopher whose work has been extensively studied and commented upon, especially in the field of aesthetics [1]. in this field, scruton’s recently reissued book on architecture is generally appreciated. it is even considered a “classic in architectural philosophy” [2]. scruton’s standing within the field of architectural history and theory, on the other hand, is a point of contention. in this regard, the book is far less extensively studied and certainly not seen as indispensable. in the recent sage handbook of architectural theory, the sixty page section on “aesthetics/pleasure/excess,” for example, only mentions the book in passing, as an example of normative discourse “pitched against the theoretical developments published in progressive architectural journals” [3]. how does one attempt to explain this discrepancy? how is it that a book that clearly impresses many philosophers fails to register broadly in architectural culture? there is of course the possibility that aesthetics as a field matters to architects or artists only like ‘ornithology to birds’ [4]. it seems, however, that the reasons for the discrepancy are more complicated than that. architectural culture supports, after all, a flourishing critical and theoretical discourse with a multitude of journals, books, and series all devoted to discussing the merits and values of particular trends, architects, works, and ideas. this discourse engages quite intensively with a host of philosophical references, and many prominent architects are actively involved ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 208 he y n en in the exchange. how is it then that the parameters of the discourse are so clearly different in philosophical aesthetics and in architectural theory? would one not expect that these fields would be involved in an intensive transdisciplinary dialogue? both try, after all, to make sense of what it is that drives architecture and what makes up its specific qualities. this review will try to delve into this problem after briefly discussing scruton’s position and summarizing the book’s content and merits. when the aesthetics of architecture was first published in 1979 the book was understood as part of a series of publications that all focused on questions regarding the meaning of architecture. semiotics was, at that moment, a central concern in architectural culture, and many authors sought to develop an approach to architecture that could go beyond the functionalism and rationalism of the modern movement. such publications provided the intellectual ground for what became known as postmodernism, and scruton’s book might be seen as part of that endeavor. scruton, however, was different from the other authors in this field (such as norberg-schulz, eco, jencks, bonta, and others) in that he considerably narrowed the type of architecture that he saw as ‘right.’ his book may be simplified as an argument in favor of some form of classicism in architecture, and there are thus only a few contemporary architects whom he would sympathize with. as such, his position is out of sync with the architectural culture of the last decades. classical-minded architects and theorists, just like new urbanists and neo-historicists, belong to a subculture which sometimes manages to evoke popular appeal, but which has not penetrated the academic sphere or the higher echelons of the professional field. the new introduction scruton wrote for the 2013 edition confirms the impression of desynchronization with mainstream culture. here the author is more outspoken in his criticism of modernism and in his alignment with particular architects and theorists than he was in the 1979 version of the book. he mentions such architectural figures as christopher alexander, nikos salingaros, and leon krier as people who share his convictions. these are authors who indeed do not figure among the most prominent individuals in current architectural culture. alexander and krier briefly occupied a position of influence in the 1980s and 1990s—the heydays of postmodernism—but their intellectual impact has largely withered away due to the renewed prominence of modernism and modernity, in all their complexities, as the main point of reference. salingaros is a mathematician and younger collaborator of alexander, who has written several works 209 isparchitecture.com on architecture and urbanism. he calls for a built environment catering to human emotions and providing agreeable and pleasant places to live, and thus fights ‘stararchitects’ as well as all forms of deconstructivism and poststructuralism. again, salingaros’s work seems to have some popular appeal, but it is not widely known or highly regarded within the architectural field as a whole, which rather engages with questions of technology, sustainability, infrastructure, urbanism, or justice [5]. many architects are weary of easy argumentations like saringaros’s because they understand how the call for ‘pleasant places’ can hide utter conservatism as well as resistance against any form of innovation. let us now turn to scruton’s book itself and its arguments. the author helpfully provides a summary in the third part of the book, which rehearses its line of reasoning. i will draw upon that summary to give an overview of his argument. scruton posits in the first chapter that architecture does not derive its nature from being a form of art but rather from an everyday occupation with getting things right—which is basically an aesthetic concern. he thus wishes to start from the aesthetics of everyday life as the basis for his discussions. in the next chapters, he deals with theories that, according to him, detach aesthetics from architecture or that erroneously perceive some concept as central or essential to architecture. he thus dismisses functionalism, rationalism, theories of space and proportion, as well as discourses based upon the art historical concepts of riegl (kunstwollen) and wölflinn (zeitgeist). all of these approaches are ‘vacuous’ because they all fail to adequately describe the experience of architecture. in order to give a positive account of the experience of architecture, scruton reverts to the concept of imagination, which he deems absolutely crucial for his aesthetics. moreover, he claims that it “is because the experience of architecture is imaginative that architecture can be judged right or wrong” [6]. for [scruton’s] position is out of sync with the architectural culture of the last decades. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 210 he y n en aesthetic judgment is based upon imagination, informed by perception, and modified by reasoned reflection. it aims at an ideal of objectivity and at a continuity with moral life—hence its normative quality. with all this, the basis is put together for further dismissals of other competing discourses. freudian and marxist analyses are seen as largely irrelevant to the understanding of architecture because they either generalize beyond aesthetics or devote themselves to a falsification of architectural experience, thus missing the point. the efforts of semiotics to understand architecture as a language likewise turn out to be ‘vacuous’ because they lack a theoretical basis or a critical application. concepts such as ‘representation’ or ‘expression’ are faulted for not adequately connecting aesthetic judgment with the practice of the builder. finally, the concluding chapters argue the importance of detail and the role of style as an indispensable adjunct to architectural knowledge. they culminate in a defense of classicism, which is seen as the only approach to architecture that allows it to connect with a true understanding of the self and with objectivity. this quick summary of course does not properly acknowledge the depth of the author’s knowledge or the fine-tuned details of his specific discussions. scruton is well read in the history of architectural theory, and he is an expert in the tradition of aesthetic philosophy up to kant and hegel. he clearly makes an effort to familiarize himself with architectural discourses such as those of giedion or tafuri. many of his architectural examples are also quite illuminative and help to clarify his arguments. these qualities, however, cannot detract from the book’s weak point: its set-up as a take-it-or-leave-it argument, almost like a mathematical proof that sets out to validate the correctness of a formula by deriving it from previously proven formulas or from axioms. if, as a reader, one disagrees with only one step in the reasoning, that is enough to render the whole argument—and especially its conclusions— unconvincing (or ‘vacuous,’ to use scruton’s own term). this, of course, happened to this particular reader early on in the text. i disagreed with scruton’s analysis of functionalism and the theories of space in chapters 2 and 3. whereas i was still following him in chapter 1—agreeing with his approach to architecture as being based on utility, location, public character, and continuity with decorative arts, which he later sums up as ‘aesthetics of the everyday’—his analysis of functionalism struck the wrong chord. scruton understands ‘theory’ as prescriptive: “architectural theory consists in the attempt to formulate the maxims, rules and precepts which govern, or ought to govern, the practice of the builder” [7]. that means that he is reading texts by architects as if 211 isparchitecture.com they are fully explanatory of the architecture they produce, which is rarely the case. if hannes meyer wrote manifests of functionalism—which he did—this does not in turn mean that all his design projects can be explained as if he just applied his own rules—he did not. it also means, however, that a mere philosophical disputation of the correctness of the theory is not enough to deny the buildings associated with it any aesthetical significance. it is not because modernist theory does not hold that modernist buildings therefore lack any value. this however seems to be an important subtext in scruton’s book. the author also takes issue with giedion’s and zevi’s theory of space, which considers space and spatial articulations as the essence of architecture. “taken literally,” he states, “the theory that the experience of architecture is an experience of space is obviously indefensible” [8]. the reasons for this indefensibility however do not convince me. according to scruton, as soon as one can point to an architectural feature that does not relate to space or spatial experience, the theory is invalidated. he thinks he found such features by referring to materials or by referring to the differences between carved and molded forms. however, for people thinking as architects (i count myself among them), both materials and carved versus molded forms are fine examples of how some details can articulate space in different ways, causing different experiences of space. hence for me the theory of space continues to be a contender for adequately conceiving what the ‘essence’ of architecture might be. because i thus repeatedly found unaddressed objections to parts of scruton’s argument, the whole book seemed to become one large fallacy, constructed to prove the inescapability of what scruton calls ‘classical vernacular’ as the only valid form of architecture. the more i read, the more the text came across as a potentially interesting but largely irrelevant elaboration of an argument, many its set-up as a take it or leave argument “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 212 he y n en parts of which i found too poorly developed to sustain scrutiny. there are other small mistakes and larger misunderstandings in this book that might irritate people familiar with architectural culture. (they are competently summed up by juan pablo bonta in his review from 1981 [9].) rather than further repeating the flaws, however, i would like to point out two major issues that are responsible for the wide gap that separates scruton from much contemporary reflection in architectural theory. the first has to do with the import of modernity, the second with his claim to objectivity. from the turn of the twentieth century onwards, architects and architectural theorists have been talking about modernity. around 1900, berlage, muthesius, loos, van de velde, and many others agreed that industrialization and urbanization gave rise to societies with a wholly different way of life, which hence necessitated a wholly different kind of architecture. there was a widespread consensus that modernity implied a rupture with tradition, and that this discontinuity somehow had to be reflected in architecture. the intensity of the conviction provoked an aesthetics that no longer took classicism to be the ultimate point of reference. the new aesthetic sensibility has since been elaborated in many different ways—avant-garde, modernism, art deco, regionalism, critical regionalism, high tech, postmodernism, deconstructivism, neomodernism, etc.—but across the board the idea that architecture needs to relate—somehow—to modernity has remained paramount. this means that ‘getting things right,’ as scruton says, is only part of the equation for contemporary architects. since dissonance, struggle, and contradictions are so much a part of that modern condition, a new aesthetic register seems to be more adequate, one that can show, in a right way, that things are not all right. such an aesthetic register is more consistent with the philosophical musings of walter benjamin, theodor adorno, jean-françois lyotard, jacques derrida, or gilles deleuze— names indeed prominently present in contemporary architectural culture. secondly there is the issue of objectivity. whereas i agree with scruton that aesthetic judgment assumes in the act of judging a claim to universal validity, i would be much more reluctant than he is to translate the claim into something actually true and objective. as an architectural theorist who has taken to heart the criticisms of rational discourse coming from marxism, feminism, and postcolonial theories, i have a hard time accepting scruton’s writing as possibly universally valid. it rather strikes me as an excellent example of how an intellectual of a specific (hegemonic) class, gender, and culture produces a discourse 213 isparchitecture.com that serves the continuation of the dominance of that class, gender, and culture. i do not believe, in other words, that there really is a general consensus possible about how buildings would ‘feel right.’ i do not believe that the aesthetics of the everyday can be anything else than confusing, contradictory, and hybrid (which, by the way, i see more as an asset than as a problem). all in all, i think scruton’s the aesthetics of architecture narrows architecture to something which most of its practitioners today would not recognize as such—as if architecture essentially deals with only questions of style and detail, regardless of everything else. most architects and theorists would agree that architecture necessarily engages with the real world—that it is crucial therefore to consider political and social issues (such as, who is the client? who is excluded? who is included?), technological and material questions, ecological constraints, contextual considerations, and so on, as part and parcel of what architecture is all about. an aesthetic theory valid for today needs to adequately address these issues, not putting them aside as ‘marginal’ to the ‘essence’ of architecture. i am afraid that scruton’s book does not live up to these expectations, not in 1979 and not now. endnotes [1] andy hamilton and nick zangwill (eds.), scruton’s aesthetics (new york: pallgrave macmillan, 2012). [2] rafael de clercq, “scruton on rightness of proportion in architecture,” british journal of aesthetics 49, no. 4 (2009): 405. [3] john macarthur and naomi stead, “introduction: architecture and aesthetics,” in the sage handbook of architectural theory, eds. greig crysler, stephen cairns, and hilde heynen (london: sage, 2012), 126. [4] barnett newman, “untitled” (presentation, 4th annual woodstock art conference, woodstock, i would be much more reluctant than he is to translate a claim into something actually true and objective. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 214 he y n en ny, august 22-23, 1952). [5] the sage handbook of architectural theory doesn’t even mention salingaros. [6] roger scruton, the aesthetics of architecture (princeton: princeton university press, 2013), 240. [7] ibid., 3. [8] ibid., 39. [9] juan pablo bonta, review of the aesthetics of architecture, by roger scruton, journal of aesthetics and art criticism 39, no. 3 (1981): 328-330. isparchitecture.com appendix: heidegger’s “man’s dwelling” translated by cesar a. cruz for ease of cross reference between essay and appendix, paragraph numbering has been added to the appendix, as well as page references to the german original in volume 13 of the heidegger gesamtsausgabe.1 [1] [213] hölderlin’s saying – “full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth” – is hardly registered by us, has not been fully fathomed; nor has it entered our collective memory.2 and how could it? in light of contemporary reality – a reality regarding itself, and the very reserves it draws on, as that of a self-made and self-sustained society – the poet’s saying is easily watered down by just about anybody as fanciful. poetry is seen in contemporary society as the production of literature. [2] that hölderlin’s saying is not taken seriously is also testified to by the present stage of hölderlin research. that research groups the saying among the poet’s “questionable works” because its text has not come down to us in manuscript form, or so wilhelm waiblinger emphatically states at the close of his 1823 novel phaedon. by contrast, norbert von hellingrath’s “prologue to a first edition of hölderlin’s translations of pindar” (1911, page 58, note 3), talks of “passages that in essence well could be genuine.” hellingrath’s [214] efforts at researching hölderlin’s oeuvre rested on a distinct poetic approach to the poet himself – a poet (hölderlin) who one day may stand revealed as the poet herald of a future art of poetry. [3] strangely enough, the adjective “poetic” does hölderlin’s saying [...] is hardly registered by us, has not been fully fathomed; nor has it entered our collective memory. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 56 cr uz not occur in hölderlin’s poems in the final text of his published works. nevertheless the stuttgart edition (ii, 635) includes the adjective as variant in line 28 of the poem “the archipelago”, the relevant passage (lines 2529) reading as follows: likewise, heaven’s own, they, the powerful up on high, the silent ones, who a serene day and sweet slumber and foreboding from far away cast over the head of men sensitive and receptive to it out of the fullness of their might, even they, the ancient companions in play, dwell, as before, with you…3 [4] in the first draft, instead of “the ancient companions in play, / dwell,” hölderlin writes “poetic companions in play, dwell.” thus the poetic thought of a poetic dwelling is in no way foreign to the poet. but the adjective “poetic” in the quoted passage qualifies the manner of dwelling of the heavenly bodies, not man’s.4 what then does “poetic companions in play” say if instead it turned out to say “the ancient companions in play” in the final version? [5] in what respect are the “ancient” the “poetic”, and the “poetic” the “ancient”? [6] the heavenly bodies in the poem refer to things that always have been – ‘ones of yore’ – as well as to things that shall return in what is yet to come. they are ones of yore in a twofold sense. their being of yore explains their present state, their everlasting aspect in hölderlin’s phrase of the “ever blooming stars” (draft, ii, 365) goes beyond mere persistence. the ancient companions in play bring, to “men sensitive and receptive to it,” the serenity of day and the night’s slumber and foreboding. these companions donate constancy to mortals across their lifetime, and are thereby poets (or ‘poetizing’ ones). the ancient companions in play “dwell poetically” with the god of the aegean sea, with its islands and the inhabitants. [7] [215] even though the final version of the poem calls the heavenly bodies the “ancients,” this did not eliminate their designation as “the poetic ones.” for the verses that follow (lines 29-42) begin by expressly naming the most supreme of the celestial bodies, “the day’s sun,” the “all transfiguring” sun – and line 38 calls it “the poetizing one.” the sun bestows a clarity that allows all things to shine forth in their uniqueness and gives to mortals their measure. [8] and yet, the poem “the archipelago” expresses itself in more meaningful and complete a manner than a set of inevitably fragmented notes ever could. [9] meanwhile, a question imposes itself. don’t the passages, certified by the poet’s own hand and preceding the final version of this poem, 57 isparchitecture.com diminish or entirely do away with any doubts surrounding the authenticity of the words “in lovely blueness blooms” (employed by hölderlin in a prose text) from which the line “full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth” was taken? even if this were true, the distinction mentioned above between “the ancient” versus “the poetic” would still remain. [10] according to “the archipelago”, the heavenly bodies “dwell poetically,” with the sun being, as the most supreme of heavenly bodies, “the poetizing one.” the designation “poetic” thus goes with “heaven’s own.” according to the later prose text, “poetic dwelling” goes with the mortals “on this earth.” [11] according to “the archipelago,” the heavenly ones were inclined to impart to those on earth their measure. according to the prose text, mortals concede the imparting of their measure to the heavenly. “imparting their measure in equal ways?” we may ask, ere we pause and hear the text’s own question: “is there a measure on earth?”, and have to immediately ponder the text’s own answer: “there is none.” [12] the poetized ones on earth are only the measure-takers of a heavenly gift of measure. poetized mortals always only bestow meaning by building on something they themselves already received. for hölderlin, the making of poetry is not a creative power that resides in the individual poet. rather, it is a measured building (bauen) the heavenly ones employ, to the full extent of their power, with works of saying being the result of such building. in this way a region is kept open for mortals to sojourn within it.5 [13] [216] that region’s overall inclination ought to be termed a clearing: a clearing in which the heavenly ones incline towards earth’s mortals in a manner both foreign and generous, and where those on earth incline to the heavenly by way of gratitude and cultivation. to a region of such for hölderlin, the making of poetry is [...] a measured building (‘bauen’) the heavenly ones employ “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 58 cr uz inclination belongs, by way of giving and receiving of measure – thus, poetically – that the heavenly and mortals each dwell in their own way and alongside one another. [14] still, isn’t all of this a mere dream, the creation of an arbitrary imagination that is lacking all reality, any prospects of possible realization, every claim to validity and obligation? [15] a single casual glance upon the state of the world today may suffice to compel us towards these questions. yet here we overlook too easily that hölderlin himself became cognizant of what poetry demanded and of its hazards along his path – more cognizant than we ever could become today, reflecting on his thought. [16] the closing stanza of the hymn “the journey” expresses this as follows (hellingrath iv, 171; stuttgart edition ii, 141): heaven’s servants are ever so wonderful, just as all of god’s children. through a dream it comes to him who wants just once to steal from heaven, yet there is retribution for those that through forceful means want to be equal to it; often it is a surprise to the one to whom it has hardly ever come to mind before6 [17] and thus it remains premature, even on hölderlin’s own behalf, to point to, let alone announce as having been uttered with any commitment, the saying “poetically man dwells on this earth”. if we were to mention “poetic dwelling,” the most we could reach by way of assertion at this point is: man today dwells on this earth, but not poetically. [18] [217] and what does that mean? does hölderlin even speak of it? norbert von hellingrath, under the section entitled “fragments and drafts,” presents us with a short text with the heading of “the nearest best.” it goes as follows: [o]pen are heaven’s windows and set free is the nocturnal spirit, who in storming the heavens has our land enticed, and, by having much to say, by being unpoetic, has wallowed in the debris up to this very hour. and yet what i yearn for, it will come, … .7 [19] does “unpoetic,” as used here, mean the same thing as not poetic? in no way. yet, if these terms are to connote different things, in what respects do they demand that we differentiate them? [20] there is an answer readily at hand. the difference lies in the 59 isparchitecture.com manner of negation. a triangle for example is not poetic, but it can never be unpoetic. for, to be that, it must have been able to be poetic – such that it could, in this regard, be lacking something, and fail to comply with the poetic. in the history of thinking, there has long been a distinction between mere negation and deprivation. it remains open to further consideration whether, this distinction in place (one that required plato’s utmost intellectual efforts to disentangle in his sophist), the question concerning the “not” has now been sufficiently settled. [21] we can only learn how to understand the “un” in “unpoetic” in the present case if we succeed in more precisely determining the “poetic”. fortunately, hölderlin himself provides the type of assistance we need. [22] the word “unpoetic” only occurs once in the preserved manuscripts of hölderlin. hellingrath’s “appendix” (iv, 392) records the term’s variants, and comments: “just above the occurrence of unpoetic, the following variants are [218] listed on top of one another: infinite, unpeaceful, unbounded, unrestrained.” [23] how are we to understand the varying nature of these variants? does one variant just go in place of another, with a preceding one extinguished by a subsequent one – such that only the final one remains valid for the text’s final form? [24] the stuttgart edition (ii, 868) sets down these variants as listed “one above the other,” but adopts “unrestrained,” (occurring in the list’s topmost position) instead of “unpoetic” as the text’s authoritative reading (ii, 234 and 237). this might be true if we were adhering to a philological rule (see the stuttgart edition i, 319). but it is not ‘poetologically’ true; it does not reveal what the poet wants to say and record. [25] the variants show hölderlin’s effort at determining the meaning of “poetic” in “unpoetic.” the “unpoetic” names the unessential of the man today dwells on this earth, but not poetically. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 60 cr uz “poetic,” that which in it is uncanny or not “at home.” “unpoetic” is the adjective used to qualify “having much to say,” to qualify how “the nocturnal spirit” speaks, “who has our land / enticed,” – a spirit who is, “in storming the heavens,” hostile, even rebellious against the heavens. [26] in being “unpoetic” the “poetic” does not disappear, but rather the “finite” is dismissed, the “peaceful” troubled, the “bound” undone, the “restrained” wrongfully transforms into the “unleashed.” all this tells us: that which bestows measure is not admitted, the very reception of measure is suppressed. the region that would be so inclined is instead buried under debris. [27] what leaps to mind is how the quoted fragments mentioning the “unpoetic” – fragments certified in manuscript form – belong together with the apocryphal text of the saying, “poetically man dwells.” [28] meanwhile, one difference between the two texts still remains. “the nearest best,” that fragment published by hellingrath, does not speak of man’s dwelling. or at least, so it seems. for exactly that impression is put to rest by that fragment’s text [219] variant entitled “draft hymn” offered by friedrich beissner in the stuttgart edition. the three draft forms (ii, 233-239) were brought together in a convincing manner “based on handwritten idiosyncrasies,” and are to be interpreted as poetry of the “dawn of a newly realized age following the patriotic reversal” (ii, 867 and following). this age, and the care by which we are to enter it, underscores hölderlin’s poetry in the elegy “homecoming.” (see my “annotations to hölderlin’s poetry,” supplemented by the two lectures, “hölderlin’s earth and heaven” and “the poem” in: collected works, volume 4, 5th edition.) [29] hölderlin’s poetry persists in the care shown in the “homecoming.” it is the care shown in establishing those places whereby man dwells poetically, and is shown in the patient waiting for salvation that is a part of this earthly sojourn. the draft “the nearest best” expresses this implicitly by referring to “having much to say” as “being unpoetic.” [30] nonetheless, ever since hölderlin poetized his hymns, it may have been all too clear: this poem says and waits in vain. the saying regarding man’s poetic dwelling remains unfulfilled, it remains just one great illusion. [31] yet the question remains whether in light of this statement we will ever think through the poet’s message with sufficient patience. man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way, which is to say, assuming his way of being in name only, unpoetically.8 for the sake of his will to produce himself and [produce] reserves that can be cultivated, man seizes measure from an earth that his machinations leave disfigured. he lacks the ability to hear hölderlin’s answer to the question: “is there a measure upon earth? there is none.” 61 isparchitecture.com [32] “having much to say,” what “entices our land,” are in reality only the monotony of language from which everything which is said lies flat: the computer’s language of informatics. the only measure for computing man is the quota. [33] certainly hölderlin had not foreseen or foretold the state of the world today. [220] nevertheless there remains what his saying has established and left for us to keep in our thoughts. much is left to consider, that is, to experience thoughtfully. next for us to consider is: first of all, to think about the unpoetic aspects of our world sojourn as such, experiencing the mechanization of man as his fate instead of dismissing it as merely arbitrary and an infatuation. further, it calls for us to realize that there is no measure on this earth, but rather that the earth can give no measure when it is quantified on a planetary scale, that the earth is carried away in the lack of measure. [34] in the midst of the unpoetic it is insufficient for the poetic to think of the way out in the apparently equalizing dialectics. [35] we still rush past the mystery of the “not” and of what is not. we do not yet experience clearly enough what is suggested to us in the withdrawal because we do not yet know the withdrawal itself. we do not yet know the poetic in the unpoetic. endnotes 1. the copyright for the original german version of this text is held by vittorio klostermann verlag, 2002. this translation was very much a cumulative effort between the editorial staff and contributing colleagues of architecture philosophy, and myself. i would like especially to thank tom spector and stefan koller for their great help in proofreading, verifying, and editing this translation. 2. “hölderlin’s saying”: wort is translated in this in being “unpoetic” the “poetic” does not disappear, but rather the “finite” is dismissed, the “peaceful” troubled “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 62 cr uz essay, of course, as “word,” but primarily as “saying” and “message,” as it refers both to the entire line “full of merit…” and, as heidegger sees it, the message inherent in hölderlin’s poetry. 3. the translations of hölderlin’s three poems quoted in this essay benefitted from consulting previously published translations of each. nevertheless, the translations here are my own, as in each case there were enough differences, sometimes subtle but significant enough differences, that i could not use the previously published poems. for comparison of “der archipelagus” see friedrich hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: poems and fragments, trans. michael hamburger (ann arbor, mi: the university of michigan press, 1967), 212-215. 4. ‘heavenly bodies’ (himmelskörper): literally, celestial bodies (as in section 7). the translation preserves heidegger’s referene to ‘the heavenly’ in hölderlin’s poem (section 4) and his own fourfold. 5. heidegger writes “the region” (die gegend) instead of “a region.” the latter is used here because he is referring to a kind of region or regioning, not a specific locality or place. also, like sections 7 and 10, the present paragraph uses ‘poetize(d)’ to designate ‘dichten(d)’, the verb (and adjectival form of) ‘to make poetry’. cf. aurenque’s essay above, n. 8. 6. for comparison of “die wanderung” see friedrich hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: hymns and fragments, trans. richard sieburth (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1984), 66-67; friedrich hölderlin, hölderlin: his poems, trans. michael hamburger (london: the harvill press, 1952), 188-189; and hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: poems and fragments, 398-399. 7. for comparison of “das nächste beste” see hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: hymns and fragments, 174-175 and 274-275; and hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: poems and fragments, 544-545. 8. “way of being”: the only use of dasein in this essay. literal translation: “man of the present age too dwells poetically – namely, that is, as per (unter) the name of his dasein, unpoetically.” isparchitecture.com editorial stefan koller & tom spector the 2014 conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture and its twin themes of autonomy and morality continue to furnish our journal pages with productive discussion. graham owen’s opening essay “whatever happened to semi-autonomy?” traces a strand of recent architectural discourse by reminding us that architecture theory was not long ago engaged in a serious search for an architectural mode of production existing midway between pure formal autonomy and dissolution in social science. he looks for evidence that such a position is still possible in such efforts as activist architecture. the writings of sarah whiting and robert somol make a prominent appearance in this essay, as well as in pauline lefebvre’s “varieties of pragmatism: architectural objects made moral.” rather than dissect the discourse, as owen does, lefebvre elects to dissect the concept of autonomous architectural objects against the concepts provided by american pragmatism—especially as outlined by john dewey and richard shusterman. she finds promising avenues of exploration made possible by the pragmatist tradition but no clear solution to the problem of seeking agency within architecture itself. finding the pragmatist orientation towards placing opposing tendencies along continuums more useful than isolating them into clear-cut categories, she seeks to discredit a stultifying predelineated moral domain “where some things are included while others are excluded.” a similar conclusion is reached by diana aurenque in her essay on heidegger’s late ethics, ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 2 ed it or ia l “heidegger on thinking about ethos and man’s dwelling”: “to dwell poetically one has to forfeit the very domain of the moral, a domain in which good and evil have already been decided upon.” while no one would accuse such heidegger early and middle work mainstays as being and time, “the origin of the work of art,” or “building dwelling thinking,” of being breezy reads, aurenque and architecture philosophy hope to initiate a correction to the neglect of heidegger’s later works by architectural audiences enthralled with bt, “owa,” and “bdt,” due in no small part to the later works’ reputation for impenetrability, by mapping a wide range of heidegger’s works characteristic of the late period—above all, his commentaries on hölderlin’s poetry. to substantiate these assertions about both the accessibility and resonance for architectural audiences of heidegger’s later work, a piece of that later work, 1970’s “man’s dwelling,” is included here as a companion to aurenque’s exegetical study. although nine of its companion essays in volume 13 of heidegger’s complete works have been rendered in english before, “man’s dwelling” is here translated, by cesar a. cruz, for the first time.1 aurenque herself stays focused on textual interpretation. she deliberately eschews all attempt to deploy her readings of the later heidegger in the service of widerranging reflections, such as those found in the more explorative, at times speculative, readings of heidegger’s mid-to-late works offered by, say, the scholarship of rodolphe gasché, hubert dreyfus, or philippe lacouelabarthe, scholarship that rarely if ever reckons with “man’s dwelling.”2 “man’s dwelling” finds heidegger continuing to explore fundamental questions of building and dwelling raised in 1954’s “building dwelling thinking.” heidegger writes in his nearly-trademarked strategic mode of initially beguiling the reader into following him into a meticulous, even affectionate, examination of a work (or even a single word) from the past for the purpose of providing the necessary critical distance to abruptly turn the reader around to face the existential questions of our time. here hölderlin’s poem “the archipelago,” as its variations unfolded for the poet in the process of writing, serves as his launchpad to tease-out the ideas to which he wants us to attend. but, uncharacteristic for heidegger, in this essay he actually projects the reader towards the future as well as the present and the past. heidegger’s suggestion “that man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way – namely […] unpoetically,” certainly presages similar assertions by such post-humanist-minded architects as peter eisenman against christopher alexander’s nostalgic holism. with “man’s dwelling” and its careful contextualization by aurenque now available to an english speaking audience, many questions open up, 3 isparchitecture.com especially for readers and future contributors to this journal: how does the reading of this additional text change or inflect existing discourses on heidegger in relation to architecture? what does it tell us about his analyses of dwelling and other foundational concerns in architecture philosophy? what does “man’s dwelling” add to the discourse or to the understanding of architecture more broadly? by expanding the textual material to be reckoned with, of which “man’s dwelling” is one piece, aurenque has laid a useful beginning for such inquiries, even if her own concerns are largely propaedeutic to them. we hope that future contributors feel sufficiently encouraged (or provoked) to join a debate on this work, and furnish us with critical commentary and elaborations of their own. aurenque and lefebvre stake out a common ground of phenomenology and pragmatism: the eschewing of a pre-established domain of the moral itself. thus, where others have sought to bring ethics to architecture, both lefebvre’s dewey and aurenque’s heidegger seek to rescue architecture, and dwelling, from a too-prescriptive conception of ethics. they thus subvert and redraw the questions behind the 2014 ispa conference, just as that conference’s call for papers hoped contributors would.3 a similar contestation of architecture ethics resurfaces in the present issue’s final two essays. while dewey, famously, sought to embed aesthetics more fully in life, adorno’s contrary insistence that art maintain a privileged existence beyond the clutches of capitalism informs alberto rubio-garrido’s “autonomy and expression in architecture.” rubio-garrido sees autonomy not as an established concept, but rather as a struggle unleashed in the enlightenment that begins with kant, gains gravity with schiller, and gets a muchneeded reinterpretation with adorno. adorno’s conception of autonomy and emancipation as adorno’s liminal presence in these essays [is] a fascinating development “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 4 ed it or ia l dialectical, counteracting poles presents the prospect of a more complete understanding of the workings of aesthetics and ethics emerging out of— even thriving on—their limits. while christian illies and nick ray’s concluding essay, “obliged to beauty: an aesthetic deontology of architecture” implicitly opposes— and is greatly challenged by—rubio-garrido’s argument for an enigmatic architecture that preserves a fenced-off aesthetic realm in adorno’s mold, the idea of thriving on limits would seem to operate in the background here as well. the authors call into question the autonomy of the aesthetic realm by exploring the possibilities of an obligation to beauty that is itself moral. if such an interpretation holds, it promises to make the familiar tug between function and aesthetics in the design of architectural works no longer incommensurable. thus, a different kind of freedom can emerge by acknowledging a lack of full autonomy. in conjunction with their essay, illies and ray’s new book philosophy of architecture is reviewed, and some of its arguments are examined. we find adorno’s liminal presence in these essays a fascinating development that we hope inaugurates more exploration of the relation of his thought to architecture. more generally, we hope these concerted investigations continue further discussion, and not conclude it, on the subject of autonomy. 2015 saw several developments of importance for ispa. first, the society’s 2016 conference in bamberg, germany was announced. in a purportedly post-modern, post-humanist age, the conference’s focus on the human holds promise for bringing forth refreshingly contrarian thinking. the conference’s announcement and call for papers is reprinted in this issue’s concluding pages. as always with ispa’s biennial conferences, readers of architecture philosophy will be able to read a selection of premier conference papers in an upcoming issue. with the strong growth of society membership in the past two years, ispa was able to sponsor two smaller events in the conference off-year 2015 to enable more frequent personal interaction among members. thus, august 2015 saw the inauguration of an annual ispa symposium series at the wittgenstein house in vienna, the next installment of which is announced in this issue. moreover, readers can look forward to reading the fruits of that event in architecture philosophy’s first themed issue, forthcoming spring 2016, to be edited by carolyn fahey. in the second ispa event, marking the first in north america, an intimate workshop in taos, new mexico convened in august. though the workshop had no stated theme, it was clear that the function of aesthetics as life-expression was either an explicit or implicit topic for 5 isparchitecture.com all participants. this event links this issue’s cover with its centerpiece. it feels unavoidable to speculate that if ever there was an architecture apart from his beloved greek temples that heidegger would find emblematic of true dwelling in the fourfold of gods and men, earth and sky, it would be in something like the taos pueblo. endnotes 1. thomas sheehan maintains an up-to-date document as to which parts of heidegger’s complete works have been translated into english (and where). see thomas sheehan, “heidegger’s gesamtausgabe texts and their english translations,” stanford academia: thomas sheehan, last modified october 2014, https://www.academia.edu/9830630/ heidegger_s_gesamtausgabe_texts_and_their_english_translations_as_ of_october_2014_. 2. for a thorough overview of heidegger’s relevance to architects, see adam sharr, heidegger for architects (new york: routledge, 2007) and for a recent review of heidegger’s reception, especially in relation to architecture, see glen hill, “poetic measure of architecture: martin heidegger’s ‘…poetically man dwells...,’” architecture research quarterly 18, no. 2 (2014): 145-154. 3. carolyn fahey and stefan koller, june 27, 2013, “autonomy reconsidered,” international society for the philosophy of architecture, http:// isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/. reprinted in architecture philosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 135-6. on durability mari hvattum “an attempt to grasp eternity” on november 9, 1993, the mostar bridge fell. for months it had withstood heavy artillery, withstood in the same way that it had endured wars, floods, and disasters ever since its erection in 1566.1 but that afternoon it finally gave in; its collapse was broadcasted on television screens all over the world. some days after the event, the croatian journalist slavenka draculić picked up a newspaper with two pictures on the front cover. one showed the body of a woman, killed in the ongoing war; the second was a photograph of the destroyed bridge. to her own dismay, draculić found herself crying as much over the bridge as she did over the dead woman. it made her feel slightly guilty, prompting her to reflect on her own reaction: “why do i feel more pain looking at the image of the destroyed bridge than the image of the woman?” she asked herself, and continued: “perhaps it is because i see my own mortality in the collapse of the bridge, not in the death of the woman.” draculić added: “we expect people to die. we count on our own lives to end. the destruction of a monument […] is something else. the bridge, in all its beauty and grace, was built to outlive us; it was an attempt to grasp eternity. […] a dead woman is one of us – but the bridge is all of us, forever.”2 in a collection dedicated to the human in architecture, draculić’s “eternity” offers, i believe, a poignant point of departure. we do indeed expect the built world to persist on november 9, 1993, the mostar bridge fell “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 49 hv a tt um longer than we ourselves do. people die, but the things they built tend to last a little longer. it is a twofold that says something crucial about the role of architecture. in the next few pages i want to use this particular kind of “eternity” as a point of departure for thinking about that which lasts and that which perishes, and the ways—or at least some of the ways—in which it happens. relative permanence architecture may last longer than the people building it, but it is not eternal. buildings are subject to all sorts of changes: weathering, war, neglect, changing uses and needs, economic upand downturns, the force of gravity and the law of materials. in her book the human condition (1958), hannah arendt writes about the relative permanence that characterizes the human-made. “the durability of the human artifice is not absolute,” she points out, yet artifice gives to human life—fragile as it is—a certain stability and solidity.3 “the things of the world,” says arendt, “have the function of stabilizing human life, and their objectivity lies in the fact that – in contradiction to the heraclitian saying that man can never enter the same stream – men, their ever-changing nature not-withstanding, can retrieve their sameness, that is their identity, by being related to the same chair and the same table.”4 the durability of the human-made—the fact that the things we make last longer than us and are modelled on things that last longer still—is what for arendt upholds a human world. at first glance, arendt’s observation may seem staggeringly out of sync with her times. more often than not, twentieth century architects and artists took the exact opposite stance, celebrating the ephemeral over the durable and looking towards the future rather than the past. “our houses will last less time than we do, and every generation will have to build its own city,” proclaimed antonio sant’elia triumphantly in his manifesto for futurist architecture from 1914.5 to many modernists, ephemerality was a badge of honour, testifying to the dream of an architecture that responded strictly to the here and now. when the english architect william holford characterized the modern monument as a “momentary crystallization of a scientific fact,” he testified to this belief.6 if the historical monument spoke of eternity, the modern monument, paradoxically, must speak strictly of the now. the fascination with the transient carries well into the present. a quick look at contemporary architectural publications, exhibitions, or student projects gives a strong sense that the ephemeral has a great deal more 50 isparchitecture.com appeal than the durable. but there is another side to the coin. for if modernity is “the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent,” as charles baudelaire famously stated, he also reminded us that its other half is “the eternal and the immutable.”7 and modernity has indeed sought eternity: the eternity of scientific facts, for instance, or the eternity of a petrified past, safely stowed away in the museum. in architecture, the desire for eternity is perhaps encountered most directly in modern preservation, with its dream to fixate the historic monument as an unchanging entity, available for contemporary veneration. i will try to steer clear of both poles in this dichotomy, addressing neither the ephemeral nor the eternal. or rather, the “eternity” that i will speak of—the eternity that draculić hinted at as well, i think—is not the pretend eternity of the musealized monument but rather what hannah arendt called durability, that is, the relative permanence of the human-made world. “the things of the world”, says arendt, “have the function of stabilizing human life” “ ” figure 1: old bridge in mostar, ca. 1974 ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 51 hv a tt um the durability of making let me try to be a bit more specific. for what—if we stick to the realm of architecture—is it that endures? the buildings themselves? their materials and constructions? matter can certainly endure for a very long time, like the stones of the cave tombs in barnenez, supposedly the oldest building in the world, or the tar-saturated wood of the nearly 1000 year old norwegian stave churches. ancient matter has a fascination of its own—alois riegl, for one, considered the appreciation of “age value” as a particularly modern sensibility.8 the memory of matter can endure even longer, like aldo rossi’s famous example in the architettura della citta of how traces of a roman amphitheatre continue to structure the city, even when the original stones and bricks are long gone.9 rossi drew on a long tradition of seeing type as a harbinger of durability, a dominant position in architectural thinking throughout much of the modern period.10 this is not, however, the only way to think about durability in architecture. here i will focus on a little handful of thinkers who, each in their own way, proposed that what endures in architecture is not just matter, or type, but human action: ways of doing things, ways of making oneself at home in the world. if hannah arendt wrote of the reification of work into a world of things that in turn stabilizes and lends durability to human life, then we can perhaps speak of architecture as a reification of human action into built form. the three nineteenth century thinkers that i will discuss in the following—the german art historian karl bötticher; his fellow countryman, the architect gottfried semper; and the norwegian ethnologist eilert sundt—did just that. and although only one of them could be considered an ethnologist by profession, all three drew on the new discipline when trying to understand the origin and development of architecture. in fact, their thinking on architecture could be seen, if not as fully fledged ethnologies (or anthropologies) of architecture, then at least as attempts to integrate the human into architectural thinking in ways that broke sharply with the academic neo-classicism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. if theorists such as marc-antoine laugier or antoine chrysostome quatremère de quincy had envisioned architecture as an imitation of primordial architectural form—most famously the primitive hut—these mid-nineteenth century thinkers saw architecture as an imitation, rather, of human action. 52 isparchitecture.com baumkultus der hellenen karl bötticher is most famous for his books on greek tectonics, published in several versions from the mid-1840s onwards.11 here, however, i will discuss a much more idiosyncratic work by bötticher, namely der baumkultus der hellenen from 1856. despite its small size and seemingly obscure topic, this book presented a fierce criticism of nineteenth century art history, which had, according to bötticher, ignored the link between ritual action and architecture. the obsession with style and appearance had led to a neglect of the purpose for which man builds, he argued. in the eyes of the ancients, ritual practice could not be separated from the building or artefact accommodating it, and understanding ritual action was thus a prerequisite for understanding architecture, the greek temple in particular.12 cultic practice and its physical setting formed one indivisible knot of meaning and should be studied accordingly. that more holistic approach was exactly what bötticher set out to achieve. he traced the decorative apparatus of the temple back to the ephemeral adornment of sacred trees: ribbons, bells, and garlands embellishing places for ritual and sacrifice. he considered such arrangements architectural pre-forms, motives that would later be reified into architectural form in the temple. “bäumen seien die ersten tempel der gottheiten gewesen” (trees were the first temples of the dieties) he stated.13 by suggesting that the adornment of holy trees was the beginning of architecture, bötticher invoked a notion of origin that broke sharply with neoclassical thinking. the origin of architecture, far from being found in architecture itself, resides in the ephemeral arrangements of worship.14 bötticher’s thinking on the origin of architecture turns our conventional ideas about ephemerality and durability upside down. what lasts, here, is not matter, construction, or type, but ephemeral human ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 53 hv a tt um acts, metamorphosed into the architecture of the temple. it is a delicious idea: the most durable thing in architecture is a ribbon or a bell, fluttering in the wind. durable metamorphoses bötticher did not develop his ideas on ritual into a fully-fledged theory of architecture. as many scholars have pointed out, der baumkultus remains a somewhat isolated work within his oeuvre.15 for bötticher’s contemporary, gottfried semper, however, the ritual origin of architecture would become a central premise. in semper’s view, architecture is essentially about the stuff people do in order to make themselves at home in the world. and the most primordial way of doing that is to imitate. primitive man imitates the order of the world around him, writes semper: the rhythmical shifts of day and night, the cycle of the moon, the ebbs and flows of the sea. he continues, “[p]rimitive human beings […] delight in nature’s creative law as it gleams through the real world in the rhythmical sequence of space and time movements, in wreaths, a string of pearls, scrolls, round dances, the rhythmic tones attending them, the beat of an oar [...] these are the beginnings out of which music and architecture grew.”16 by imitating nature’s rhythms in the things he does and makes—in dance, knots, or tattoos on his skin—man makes for himself a specifically human realm. architecture emerges gradually out of these ephemeral acts, as a metamorphosed reification of human action. the origin of architecture, then, is not found in building, but in man’s attempt at coming to terms with the world around him through rhythm and ritual. weaving is one of semper’s key examples of how the ritual act is translated into physical form.17 beginning with the rhythmic movement imitating the order of the natural world, the weaver produces an enclosure—the wickerwork wall, for instance—which in turn establishes a human domain separated from the natural world. weaving, then, is simultaneously a ritual imitation of cyclical time and the technical origin of the architectural wall. it runs through the history of architecture as a constant motif, yet is continuously transformed and metamorphosed into new guises through the process of material transformation, or stoffwechsel, as semper called it. the wickerwork enclosure, then, ossifies into chinese lattice work, assyrian stone reliefs, pompeiian frescoes, and sixteenth century portuguese tiles, continuing to echo even in the modern wallpaper. through history, architecture retains its role as enclosure yet it is never exactly the same—it goes through a never-ending material 54 isparchitecture.com metamorphosis and carries all the memories of its previous stages with it, at any point of its development.18 so what is it that endures, here? not matter, certainly: the material is but a medium in this metamorphic process. what endures is human work, ossified in a chain of ever-changing materialities. rather than looking for the origin of architecture in architectural form, semper located it in human action, thus overturning key principles of neo-classical thinking.19 in one of his late essays he stated this quite explicitly: “in a most general way, what is the material and subject matter of all artistic endeavour?” he asked, and answered, “i believe it is man in all his relations and connections to the world.”20 patterns of use the nineteenth-century discipline that most vigorously explored ‘man in all his relations and connections to the world’ was of course ethnology, or kulturgeschichte as it would be called in german and scandinavian-speaking countries. both semper and bötticher were influenced by contemporary ethnology. scholars have for instance pointed out semper’s reliance on the german ethnologist gustav klemm, whose allgemeine kulturgeschichte der menschheit (1843–1851) elaborated on the ritual origins of art and postulated dance and knots as the dual origin of architecture. klemm described artefacts as “mimetic narratives” and as primary vehicles for man’s orientation in the world.21 if architects read ethnology, ethnologists also sometimes read architectural history. at least that is the case for the norwegian ethnologist eilert sundt (1817–1875), a younger contemporary of semper and bötticher.22 neither an architect nor a historian, sundt nevertheless made a significant contribution to understanding the relationship between architectural form and human action. he what endures is human work, ossified in a chain of ever-changing materialities “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 55 hv a tt um also gave quite an original answer to our initial question of what it is that endures in architecture. sundt studied theology and earned his living as a protestant minister. his reputation as pioneer of norwegian social science, however, he earned from his empirically scrupulous studies of everything from marriage habits and mortality statistics to norway’s gypsy population and the social conditions of the urban poor. among his many books is one on vernacular architecture in the norwegian countryside published in 1862. it is called om bygnings-skikken paa landet i norge, a title perhaps best translated as “on the manner of building in the norwegian countryside.”23 on his many travels up and down the country, sundt tells his readers, he had been struck by the underlying regularity of vernacular buildings. although each hamlet, farm, and building was to some extent different from every other, they all adhered to a common pattern. the regularity was noticeable not least in the organization of the domestic interior. sundt observed how building form, furniture, and permanent elements such as fireplaces, windows, and entrances followed the exact same template, reflecting the social structure of rural norwegian society. “i cannot tell how surprised i was when i first realized this house custom [hus-skikk]” he wrote: once you have gotten to know how things are arranged in one house, you know for certain how all houses of a similar kind are organized. when i now travel through the gudbrandsdalen region and see an old-fashioned house, it is as if i can see through the walls and know, that here, by the door, stands the great cabinet; there in the corner is the main seat; in the other corner, the master bed, etc. it is as if the houses were made of glass.24 while in the city, people build “after their own heart,” sundt writes; in the countryside, building is governed by ancient traditions that regulate not so much the building itself as the way of life that in turn regulates building. sundt called this reciprocal process ‘skikk.’ it is a tricky concept to translate, but comes close to tradition, or custom. ‘skikk’ refers to ways of doing things, ways of arranging social phenomena into certain patterns that can be embodied in buildings and things. it is tempting to adopt arendt’s vocabulary: ‘skikk’ is human work transformed into a built world. the durable factor in sundt’s architectural analysis was not wood or stone, but ways of translating life into recognizable—and indeed durable—configurations. in an almost proto-structuralist fashion he describes how the ‘skikk’ governs life, how life governs architectural form, and how architectural form in its turn gives stability to life. it is a slow cycle that is not unchangeable but nonetheless relatively stable. interestingly, sundt sees this mimetic stability between life and artifice 56 isparchitecture.com as a waning phenomenon. modern man does not adhere to any ‘skikk,’ he writes. in the modern city, houses reflect individual habits and desires, and have thus no durability outwith the life of the individual: “it is different in the cities: the houses are more singular and the people as well – each with their own habits and needs, […] one in this way, the other in that way.”25 modernity, for sundt, represents a break with the durability of ‘skikk.’ it is replaced by individualist transience, but also, we may add, by a compensatory search for eternity. for sundt’s farmhouses, that eternity came in the form of the museum, where so many of the interiors he studied would end up. mimesis of praxis “[b]uildings and paintings and poetic texts, as much as rituals, are cables that hold a society together through time” write alexander nagel and christopher s. wood in their book anachronic renaissance.26 nagel and wood are particularly interested in artworks that—explicitly or implicitly—evoke multiple temporalities, like the way roman spolia in early christian churches acted as veritable time machines, connecting and doubling time and tying the present to multiple pasts “like a homeopathic remedy for discontinuity.”27 in the modern city, houses reflect individual habits and desires, and have thus no durability without the life of the individual “ ” figure 2: section of farmhouse, norway taken from sundts book ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 57 hv a tt um semper’s material metamorphosis, bötticher’s reified ritual arrangements, and sundt’s long-enduring “skikk” are all examples of such multi-temporal conditions. their durability has nothing to do with the fixed eternity of the museum or the immobilized past of the historical monument. instead, all these examples demonstrate architecture’s capacity to accommodate and preserve human action, giving shape to our attempts at making ourselves at home in the world. aristotle said that the tragedy was “not an imitation of men but of actions and of life.”28 much the same could be said for architecture in the way i have outlined it here, as a “mimesis of praxis,” it is an imitation of human action. all of us back to the question: what is it that endures in architecture? a brief glance at semper’s theory of stoffwechsel, bötticher’s ephemeral tree decorations, or sundt’s “skikk” has taught us that it is neither matter nor form. it is rather—very much like hannah arendt proposed—the fact that work and works tie us to a shared duration, not a singular, monolithic past, but a heterogeneous, multi-temporal, contentious past. perhaps that can help us understand slavenka draculić’s reaction to the destruction of the mostar bridge. “why do i feel more pain looking at the image of the destroyed bridge than the image of the woman?” she asked herself, emphatically stating that while “the dead woman was one of us, the bridge was all of us, forever.” in what way was the bridge all of us? by means of its symbolic role as a bridge between east and west, muslim and christian—a sort of super-symbol of a multi-ethnic balkan? perhaps, but that is not the whole story. as the architectural historians hans-henrik egede-nissen and emily macas have both pointed out in their respective phd dissertations, this symbolism is not uncontroversial.29 political scientist heiko wimmen put it even more strongly: “this popular image probably reveals more about the western need to reduce a complex and multi-layered structure to clear-cut oppositions, which can then be, as it were, bridged.”30 it seems to me that draculić’s “all of us” may point to something more than simply the bridge as a symbol of ethnic conflict and its potential reconciliation. rather than a horizontal “us,” she evoked a vertical “us” linked through time as much as through geographical or ethnic divides. the bridge was an attempt to grasp eternity, she wrote—a complex, contested, and relative eternity in this case, but nevertheless an eternity involving “all of us.” it was perhaps this contentious but significant common-ness that made unesco forego their usual requirement of material authenticity and inscribe the reconstructed mostar bridge into 58 isparchitecture.com the world heritage list. what lasts in architecture is not stone, but rather memories, rituals, dreams, and acts metamorphosed into matter and form a thousand times over. at a time when we seem to oscillate between a fascination for ephemerality and a longing for museum-like eternity, it may be good to keep this relative permanence in mind, particularly when thinking about architecture and its relationship to the human. endnotes [1] the mostar bridge was erected for sultan suleiman the magnificent in 1566 by the architect mimar hajrudin. the bridge was hit several times during the 1992-95 bosnian war, both by the serbian-backed yugoslav peoples’ army (jna) and the croatian defense council (hvo). for more information, see “nomination dossier: the old city of mostar,” unesco, january 2005, http:// whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/946rev. pdf. i am indebted to hans-henrik egede-nissen, whose ph.d. dissertation “autentisitetens relevans: på sporet av et endret fokus for kulturminnevernet,” presents a thorough analysis of the destruction and reconstruction of the mostar bridge. see hanshenrik egede-nissen, “autentisitetens relevans: på sporet av et endret fokus for kulturminnevernet” (ph.d. dissertation, oslo school of architecture and design, 2014), 175-234. [2] slavenca draculić, “falling down. a mostar bridge elegy,” the new republic, december 13, 1993. [3] hannah arendt, the human condition (chicago: university of chicago press, 1989), 136. [4] ibid., 137. [5] antonio sant’elia, “l’architettura futurista: manifesto” (milan, july 1914). english translation in ulrich conrads (ed.), programmes and manifestoes what lasts in architecture is not stone, but rather memories, rituals, dreams, and acts metamorphosed into matter and form a thousand times over “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 59 hv a tt um on 20th-century architecture (london: lund humphries, 1970), 38. on the convoluted history of the manifesto and its reception, see esther da costa meyer, the work of antonio sant’elia: retreat into the future (new haven: yale university press, 1995), 141-168. [6] william holford, “in search of a new monumentality,” architectural review vol 104, no 621 (september 1948): 125 [7] charles baudelaire, painters of modern life, trans. j. mayne (london: phaidon, 1995), 12. [8] alois riegl, der moderne denkmalkultus: sein wesen und seine entstehung (wien und leipzig: braumüller, 1903), 9 and 16-18. [9] aldo rossi, the architecture of the city, trans. d. ghirardo and j. ockman (cambridge: the mit press, 1982), 89. [10] see, for example, anthony vidler, “from the hut to the temple: quatremère de quincy and the idea of type,” in the writing of the walls: architectural theory in the late enlightenment (new york: princeton architectural press, 1987), 147-64; anthony vidler, “the third typology”, oppositions 7 (1976): 1-4; and adrian forty, “type,” in words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture (london: thames & hudson, 2000), 304-11. [11] karl bötticher, die tektonik der hellenen, vols. 1-2 (potsdam: riegel, 1844-1852). second, revised edition: berlin: ernst & korn, 1874-1881. [12] karl bötticher, “einleitung,” in der baumkultus der hellenen nach den gottesdienstlichen gebräuchen und den überlieferten bildwerken dargestellt (berlin: weidmann, 1856), 1-6. [13] bötticher, “umriss des hellenischen baumkultus,” in der baumkultus der hellenen nach den gottesdienstlichen gebräuchen und den überlieferten bildwerken dargestellt (berlin: weidmann, 1856), 9. [14] ibid., 7-25 [15] see, for example, hartmut mayer, die tektonik der hellenen: kontext und wirkung der architekturtheorie von karl bötticher (stuttgart and london: menges, 2004), 16. [16] gottfried semper, “prolegomenon” in der stil in den technischen und tektonischen künsten; oder, praktische aesthetik: ein handbuch für techniker, künstler und kunstfreunde, vol. 1 (frankfurt am main: verlag für kunst und wissenschaft, 1860), xxi-xxii. english translation in gottfried semper, style in the technical and tectonic arts; or, practical aesthetics, trans. and ed. h. f. mallgrave and michael robinson (los angeles: getty 2004), 82. [17] semper presented his ideas on weaving in several places, see, 60 isparchitecture.com for example, der stil §54 and §57-61, as well as “the four elements of architecture,” in the four elements of architecture and other writings, trans. and ed. harry f. mallgrave and wolfgang herrmann (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1989), 103-104. [18] a poignant presentation of semper’s notion of stoffwechsel and bekleidung is found in §66, “excursus über das tapetzierwesen der alten,” in der stil in den technischen und tektonischen künsten, vol. 1 (frankfurt am main: verlag für kunst und wissenschaft, 1860), 276-322. [19] this point is elaborated in j. rykwert, “gottfried semper and the conception of style,” in gottfried semper und die mitte des 19. jahrhunderts, eds. a. m. vogt, c. reble, and m. frölich (basel: birkhaüser, 1976), 68-81. [20] gottfried semper, “on architectural styles,” in the four elements of architecture and other writings, trans. and ed. harry f. mallgrave and wolfgang herrmann (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1989), 269. [21] gustav klemm, allgemeine kulturgeschichte der menschheit, vol. 1 (leipzig: teubner, 1843), 2-3. [22] the links between semper and sundt have been explored by the swedish art historian rudolf zeitler in the unpublished lecture “om eilert sundt og g. semper” (1979, typewritten manuscript held at the norwegian directorate for cultural heritage archive in oslo), though from quite a different vantage point than the present comparison. [23] eilert sundt, om bygnings-skikken paa landet i norge (christiania: malling, 1862). [24] ibid., §5, 14. in the original text: jeg kan ikke sige, hvor jeg blev forundret, da jeg første gang blev opmærksom på og opfattede denne hus-skik. [...] det er så i disse bygder, at når man først har gjort sig fortrolig med hver tings plads i et hus, så veed man med det samme, hvordan det er i alle de andre huse af samme bygningsmåde. når jeg nu kjører igjennem gudbrandsdalen og i forbifarten ser på et hus, at det hører til dette gammeldags slag, med stue og kleve, hvilket er tilfælde med de allerfleste, og når jeg fremdeles ser, hvordan huset er stillet, eller hvad der er fremsiden og bagsiden hvilket kan skjønnes på dørens eller vinduernes eller skorstenspibens plads, så kan jeg ligesom se ind igjennem væggen og vide, at her ved døren står fremskabet, der ved hjørnet er høisædet, i hjørnet hist borte står husbondens seng o.s.v. det er, som om husene skulde være af glas. [25] ibid., 14-15. in the original text: anderledes i byerne: husene mere ulige og menneskene ligeså med ulige vaner og fordringer, mere udviklet forskjellighed i sind og tænkemåde, en så, en anden så. i den fjerne landsbygd kan en velstående og en fattig bonde have det så temmelig ens i sit hus og sit daglige liv, i hovedstaden derimod kommer forskjellen mellem den ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 61 hv a tt um rige og den fattige, den dannede og den udannede o.s.v. tilsyne på hvert punkt. der er vexel-virkning her: under bylivets bevægede forholde kunne de forskjellige anlæg og sindsretninger udvikles frit, og frit sees da enhver at indrette sit hus og sit hele husliv, som han bedst veed og kan; men de udvortes forskjelligheder, som herved opstå, skabe igjen forskjellige vaner, tilbøieligheder, lidenskaber, og hermed påskyndes hin sindets og tænkemådens udvikling, så forskjellen mellem de enkelte mennesker bliver altid større og større. [26] alexander nagel and christopher s. wood, anachronic renaissance (cambridge: the mit press, 2010), 15. [27] ibid., 183. [28] aristotle, poetics, trans. j. hutton (new york: norton, 1982), 1450a. [29] egede-nissen, autentisitetens relevans, 210. emily gunzburg macas, “the old bridge,” in representing competing identitites, (ph.d. dissertation, cornell university, 2007), 198-255. [30] heiko wimmen, “new nations, imagined borders: engineering public space in post-war mostar, bosnia-hercegovina” (paper presented at the beirut conference for public spheres, beirut, lebanon, october 22-24, 2004), quoted in macas, representing competing identitites, 217. 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter isparchitecture.com sharing sense: or, how ethics might be the subject matter of architectural aesthetics david leatherbarrow posing a productive question about ethics and aesthetics in architecture is no easy matter, for these subjects raise whole clusters of problems, not simple or single questions. that observation is not new; these complexities were apparent two millennia ago when the terms were first introduced. aristotle wrote not one but three books on ethics; as for aesthetics, also three, if you count the poetics, the lost book on comedy, and the rhetoric. after centuries of successive translations and interpretations, through semantic and conceptual innovations, as well as substitutions, alterations and forgeries, we have an exceedingly wide range of issues and meanings from which we borrow and select, always partially, sometimes uncritically. in our search for non-trivial form-making in architecture we have been invited to suppose that ethical considerations will help us imagine aesthetic approaches that are not limited to purely visual concerns. in the terms of a title frequently cited in discussions of both ethics and aesthetics, this question would ask how the beautiful might be relevant.1 an implied corollary is that ethical understanding in architecture can be made tangible through aesthetic creativity. although these premises are suggestive, i believe that progress along these lines will not be straightforward. the realities of professional practice in our time present a serious challenge to any aesthetics-substantiated-by-ethics thesis. like it or not, architectural work today is largely a matter of business, in which project making is hurried and abbreviated by cost-cutting measures: mostly we ‘fast-track’ design development, reuse ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 10 le a th er ba r r ow details that worked well in previous projects, specify familiar products, have specialists take responsibility for fragments of designs rather than allow single individuals to develop projects in full, and so on. these measures are meant to save time and assure outcomes. there have been business-minded changes in the ways architects work with builders, too. building construction, a practice that traditionally involved both skill and innovation is now seen as the sort of labor that requires regulation by the various instruments of managerial science. today’s design business also constrains the sorts of collaborations that have historically enriched projects—collaborations among architects, builders, clients, critics, and members of the public. today we govern collaboration through contract administration. design as planning and construction as management not only save money but allow confident investment. these comments are not meant as a complaint, only an observation that conditions are no longer what they once were; that the sense of the discipline possessed by academics and critics is often out of step with the realities of practice. if reflection is to illuminate action, if the word is to render a service to the work—something i believe—then the divergence i have described must be taken into account.2 as in most types of business, moral issues rarely obtrude themselves into contemporary design practice; except, of course, in the sorts of arguments that lead to legal proceedings. architects tend to think that ethics is an academic subject, which indeed it is, with linkages to other scholarly pursuits: philology, hermeneutics, decision theory, and so on. the bearing of these on the architecture trade is far from obvious. the old idea that theory is unrelated to practice provides a historical context for the incompatibilities we sense. more significantly, architecture has been absorbed into a broader framework of technological thought and production, a kind of thought that emancipates design from place and functional purpose. why? because technical knowledge allows one to do again what has been done before, regardless of context. nothing in work that is essentially technical acknowledges territorial obligations.3 this is one of the reasons why technological objects enjoy world-wide distribution. ethical action is just the reverse; its deliberations and decisions are always bound to concrete circumstances and ways of living, without which they lose their sense of urgency, difficulty, and criteria of relevance. less positively, calls for ethical behavior sometimes lead to localism and insularity. in these cases the agreements that structure communities are buttressed by practices of exclusion.4 faced with this dichotomy, one might think that reciprocal support is the answer, that techniques could give concrete form to 11 isparchitecture.com ethical understanding and that judgments about what is right in given circumstances could give instrumentality a sense of what should—not only could—be done. this possibility is implied in a wonderful aphorism from georg simmel: “the richness of form is that it can adopt an infinity of contents—the richness of content is that it can enter into an infinity of forms. where both infinities meet, the finite construct emerges. . .”5 unfortunately, when today’s designers seek alternatives to technical reason they generally turn to purely formal operations—sometimes called “aesthetic” practices—and focus on geometric experimentation and innovation. we see a lot of it today. obviously, there is nothing wrong with form; one cannot imagine a design without it. but, as with technical approaches, working with shape or geometry alone runs against the grain of ethical understanding because modern aestheticizing accents not so much what is shared in society and culture, but what is unique to a designer’s personal technique and vision, an architect’s brand. critics reinforce aestheticizing by praising experimentation in architecture in the ways they would less practical forms of expression and authorship. we commonly identify architectural works with the name of their designer: a nouvel, gehry, or ando building, as if an accommodation were nothing more than a we commonly identify architectural works with the name of their designer: a nouvel, gehry, or ando building, as if an accommodation were nothing more than a representation, a paper menu the meal “ ” schreiner house: view towards garden ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 12 le a th er ba r r ow representation, a paper menu the meal. despite these tendencies, one occasionally senses that there may still be some shared background for judgments about what makes a building good, even beautiful. this background is not so much what each of us might state as our values, but a historically constituted and forceful ethos that shows itself now and again in both the settings of everyday life and works of art. obviously, the key question concerns the relationship between these two. how and when might this ethics-made-apparent-by-aesthetics come into being? i will begin my answer by citing an early modern architect, adolf loos. personalizing his avant garde polemic, he wistfully reminisced as follows: i did not grow up, thank god, in a stylish home. at that time no one knew what it was yet. ... here was the table, a totally crazy and intricate piece of furniture ...[with] a shocking bit of work as a lock. but it was our table, ours! can you understand what that means? evenings, when i was a young boy and the lamp was burning, i was never able to tear myself away from it. and there was the writing table. there was an ink stain on it, my sister hermine had knocked over the inkwell when she was a little baby. and there was the picture of my parents ...[with] a hideous frame ... a wedding gift from the workers at my father’s shop. and that old-fashioned chair, a leftover from my grandmother’s household. every piece of furniture, everything, every object had a story to tell, a family history. the house was never finished; it grew along with us and we grew within it. of course it did not have any style to it. that means there was no strangeness, no age. but there was one style that our home did have—the style of its occupants, the style of our family.6 my opening suggestion is that the style loos describes embodies an ethos. it was not a personal matter, such as the manner of henry van de velde or charles renee mackintosh, nor a set of rules or objective values. loos describes a framework that was formed out of habits and shared practices, also conflicts, accidents and bad decisions. he does not say, but it would not be wrong to suppose, that some measure of design intention was part of it too, even if non-professional. such an ethos attains concreteness in the desired and recurring situations of prosaic life, in the house of course, but elsewhere too, in all manner of situations, each with its own decorum and typical configuration. ethical knowledge comes not just from the intimate but also from the public. it is acquired through encounter, meetings that are alternately familiar and challenging, assuring and conflictual. one title from loos, trotzdem, makes the difficulty of ethical action apparent. shared sense is key, for it is what distinguishes ethical understanding from 13 isparchitecture.com the various kinds of technical knowledge possessed by individuals. because it is teachable, technical knowledge individuates: a person taught to bake bread has a different contribution to a meal than a person who knows how to grow vegetables or play music. architects know how to design, carpenters to construct. the living ethos loos described is something different, neither taught nor possessed individually, but inherited in a given culture, modified slowly, and often taken for granted. thus, there is a tension between the comparatively stable and shared ground of ethical sense and productive and relatively autonomous character of technical production. negotiating this tension is the real work of design (neither experimentation nor affirmation). i have used the english words ethics and ethos interchangeably. to explain my usage i need to take a detour into word origins. two terms interest me, ethics and ecology. i will say why shortly. of the word ecology’s two-parts i will discuss only the first. despite the fact that this compound was introduced in the nineteenth-century, the two-parts are ancient. the eco of ecology derives from the greek word oikos, meaning household or estate—something larger and more inclusive than a single building. a faint echo of this origin survives in the grade-school subject ‘home economics,’ but that term is essentially redundant. our modern sense of economics narrows the ancient meaning, which embraced all the tasks and understandings of domestic stewardship. xenophon’s famous oeconomicus described a wellrun house, farm, or extended family domain. as a treatise on estate management, it addresses topics such as the arrangement and storage of furnishings and supplies, the hiring of slaves, the cultivation of soils, and the management of one’s family. his architectural topics included the building’s placement and orientation, with respect to times, seasons, weather patterns, and natural in our search for non-trivial form-making in architecture we have been invited to suppose that ethical considerations will help us imagine aesthetic approaches that are not limited to purely visual concerns “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 14 le a th er ba r r ow resources, as well as existing buildings and settlements. further, his account presents a play of analogies between the building, body, and world, as well as practical advice on forms of cooperation, achieving health, undertaking simple and teachable forms of work, and living an honorable life. here the ethical is linked to the ecological. discussions of ethics addressed what is required for a good life, as the opening pages of aristotle’s nichomachean ethics make clear. local interests were at issue, but also involvements with outsiders. what involvement was to aristotle orientation was to xenophon. with respect to buildings, the latter’s basic premise—one i think we should restore to current thinking—is that the sources of architectural order are partly external to the work itself. for my part, i call this architecture oriented otherwise.7 one way of making the work’s involvements clear is to repeat the fact that xenophon describes an estate not a house. much later, in sixteenth-century usage—palladian theory and practice—this meant attention to the form and life of the entire villa, not only the casa. pre-modern economics, then, was the discipline that allowed a person or family to keep a well-ordered residence, given limited means, energy, and time. because oikos also pertained to an individual’s relationships with others, ethical considerations were key to ideas about the house. economics involved good housekeeping for one’s family and for others as both groups existed together in the natural world. this style of thinking joins together two terms and two sciences—economics and ethics. can we equate this early sense of ethos with our current sense of ethics? yes and no. no, especially if we assume the original term meant something like morals or a code of conduct meant to guide everyone’s behavior. conduct was signified by the ancient word, but it meant a more particular and less objectified sense of behavior than our sense of ethics typically implies. a good comparison is with health, for the knowledge one has of one’s own heath can be distinguished from the account presented in scientific description. that’s why good doctors always ask patients how they themselves feel, regardless of what the thermometer says.8 ethos was also constituted culturally and apparent in patterns of behavior that were, in turn, subtended by the belief that they were good. the best translation of ethos i can propose is habit of dwelling. this usage accords with ancient usage and can work in modern understanding. accordingly, habits are not only behaviors performed repeatedly but those that are right in specific instances. dwelling habits can be seen as ethical if they embody the ways of life individuals and others desire in particular circumstances. decisions about what makes a setting good are the ethical aspects of design. here, then, is a definition of architecture that acknowledges these 15 isparchitecture.com terms and builds on the premises they establish: built works give durable dimension and legible expression to the habits of residing that are commonly understood to be good. in ancient thought a single principle governed the design and construction of works of this kind: decorum in latin, prepon in greek.9 for vitruvius décor was the principle that allowed one to judge that the form of a building was appropriate for its cultural value, use, and location. in rhetoric the term indicated the style suitable for the subject; gravity for funerals, for example. in everyday life anything or any act could be considered with respect to its appropriateness or fit: celebration is an appropriate response to victory, repayment to debt; likewise, fabric is a fitting choice for shirts, leather for shoes, and so on. the key is this: decisions of suitability were made concretely, in view of existing circumstances, seen as variations on a norm; in architecture, a cultural norm. today, the word decorum sounds a bit stuffy or dusty. our equivalents are character and atmosphere: a spatial setting has the right atmosphere when its dimensions, forms, and materials are appropriate for and express a given event or situation. indefinite but unmistakable, the many types of spatial character or atmosphere allow a range of embodiments and encourage interpretation. i have said that decisions about suitability are partly determined by conditions external to the work, but only partly. good arrangements also depend on relationships among elements internal to the work. since antiquity the term that named the right relationships between a work’s component parts has been proportion. our english word derives from latin, which translated the greek word for symmetry. that coupling sounds puzzling when the bilateral sense of the latter term comes to mind. for the greeks symmetry resulted from commensurate relationships, as indicated etymologically: sym-metron meant ‘of like measure.’ one way to distinguish the greek and latin words is to see symmetry as normthe best translation of ethos i can propose is habit of dwelling “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 16 le a th er ba r r ow definition and proportion as norm-realization, the first quantitative, the second qualitative. unfortunately, this simple distinction was complicated by vitruvius’ introduction of a third term, analogy. symmetry arises from proportion and the greeks called this analogia.10 this last word was not explained by vitruvius but the authors on whom he relied, varro and cicero, did provide definitions. varro, in lingua latina, introduced both terms in his discussion of regularity, relation, and ratio in the inflection of terms. for relation or ratio varro read pro portione, by proportionate likeness, which was in his opinion the same thing as the greek analogia, that is, according to logos.11 the word symmetria also appeared in the famous canon of polyclitus, a treatise on sculpture. the canon’s importance is attested by many sources, most clear and instructive for us is a passage from the medical writer galen: “beauty, says polyclitus, resides not in the commensurability of the [the elements of the human body], but in the commensurability of [its members], finger to finger ... these to the forearm … [and finally] everything to everything.”12 galen’s distinction between elements and members defines the former as the “hot, cold, dry and wet” parts of the body and the latter as fingers, hands, arms, and so on. the commensurability of elements leads to health, that of members to beauty. thus for the doctor, proportionality could be discovered among the body’s warm and wet aspects; the balanced co-ordination—symmetry and proportionality—of the four elements defined good health, an ethos of suitable, known relationships. widening the horizon, but earlier, the philosopher empedocles argued that the qualities that enter into combination in the body are akin to those that make up the wider environment: the air we breathe is the air of the heavens, at the supper table our bodies incorporate the yield of the land.13 again we see a connection between ethos and oikos, ethics and what would come to be called ecology. earlier, still, in the hippocratic texts, the connections between character and place demonstrated the same set of interconnections or continuities. the symmetry of elements, in both the body and the world, structures action and life. the key point is that these actions may appear to be beautiful in a metric or formal sense. when they do, in a well-proportioned plan, for example, the work is both suitable and beautiful; which is to say ethical and aesthetic. when the balance between the body’s elements has been disturbed by disease the ancient doctor’s task was to devise a regime that would restore the correct proportion of the hot, cold, dry, and moist elements. a synonym for healthy is well-tempered, for sick, ill-tempered. the intemperate among us are characterized by asymmetry. this is what 17 isparchitecture.com aristotle’s successor, theophrastus, described in his famous book on character, which was the ancient source of later architectural theories about a building’s character (boffrand, blondel, boullee, quatremere, and loos). again, while this symmetry of qualities defines good health, it is not always apparent; cosmetic arts—lip painting, hair coloring—fabricate attractive appearances that can cover disease and sickness. yet symmetry is not only a matter of appearances. cicero wrote that while the beauty of the body is attractive to the eyes because of the fit composure, proportion and harmony of its members, the order, consistency and regularity of words and actions, the proportions of conduct can also be judged beautiful.14 there is a similitude between physicality and attitude. can the same be true of a building, or must architects make a choice between the measures that define the building’s physical body and the patterns of life the work is meant to accommodate. if not, what might illustrate their conjunction? a common event—a shared meal—may provide an answer. defined prosaically, a meal is a division and sharing of consumables. often, though not always, one person is charged with the task of dividing the whole into the portions or shares that will be distributed to the group. as if the plate of food were akin to the plan of a building, two acts are essential in the work of apportioning: division and distribution (or disposition, dispositio, l., or diathesis, gk.). each act assumes a good sense of measure, of the dish and the desires of the diners. here is how table-top proportioning works: obviously, no one is given a piece that’s too big or too small, but a fair share is not necessarily an equal one, a person’s rank or status—a house guest, for example—may entitle them to a larger or preferred portion, also a person’s hunger or size. inequality is not only fair in dining but required. when the meal unfolds as it should, when the child and adult, family member and guest are given their due, the event can be said the key point is that these actions may appear to be beautiful in a metric or formal sense. when they do, in a well-proportioned plan, for example, the work is both suitable and beautiful; which is to say ethical and aesthetic “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 18 le a th er ba r r ow to be properly portioned or well-proportioned. our current sense of a balanced diet derives from but abbreviates this idea, neglecting issues of social rank and expressions of generosity. nevertheless, table-top economy presents a fairly good portrait of a group’s social structure and internal relationships and ethics. by portrait i mean legible appearance, which sometimes can be beautiful. edward hopper’s table for ladies shows a man and a woman at a restaurant table, sharing some beverage, white wine is what i would like to think. his desire for a drink seems to have been interrupted by something she has said. they are not alone, or will not be for long, additional tables have been prepared for others; there is also a woman in black behind a countertop and register; and a waitress or cook dressed in white, grasping a basket placed among other items on display—i can’t tell if she is removing or returning it to where it belongs. with respect to the setting’s economy, emblems of excess and restraint have their place in the scene. on the one hand a principle of tacit serviceability governs many of the elements we see: the expanse of glass we are looking through, the chalkboard of prices, the plain wooden cladding, the mirrors, and black and white floor tiles all express modest and purposeful urbanity. restraint seems to be the theme of the figure in black: looking down, curled into her work, concentrated and concentric, she is fully absorbed in collecting and counting, also limited by her work station, which is itself equipped with containers of various sorts—the cash register, toothpick dispenser, and vitrine. the figure in white shows something completely different, not limitation but outward reach, suggesting a range of involvements, or spread of interests: clearly she’s more concerned about something on the street than the basket of fruit—if only for the precise moment hopper brings before us—but her apron links her back to the kitchen; her shadow in the first mirror gives her a place among the diners, and her reach ties her to the consumables on show. the line-up of fruit, meat, and greens says no one—at least the two at the table—will go hungry, or even thirsty for that matter, as the bottles below the server’s right elbow are clearly within reach. this little scene, like any other, has its own internal coherence. the objects make the room all-of-a-piece. all that’s required for public dining is there, nothing missing, nothing unnecessary. the room’s geometries argue the same point, unbroken patterns, clear horizons, and repetitions bring all of the parts into coherence. but to say that the room is well-defined, that its parts are commensurate, does not mean it is insular. topographically, the setting and events reach back to the kitchen, forward to the street, and upward. the diner’s hats and coat recall the weather and the town, the latter is also the server’s focus. more abstractly, or formally 19 isparchitecture.com the prominent diagonals (her back and its shadow line, the row of grapefruits, the window frame, and the hand rail) open the enclosure to settings beyond its ostensible limits. just as the renaissance villa coordinated the internal structures of the casa with the external opportunities of the location— according to the principle of orientation and the rule of “ecology”—this setting’s character, temperature, or ethos result from the interplay between interior and exterior orders. the proportionality hopper has constructed, the similitude of ratios that stages a possible meal, not only accommodates a way of life but also paints a portrait; in this case one of considerable beauty. to end i would like to describe something similar in the works of the great norwegian architect sverre fehn. fehn lectured often but wrote little, to say that the room is welldefined, that its parts are commensurate, does not mean it is insular “ ” schreiner house: fireplace ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 20 le a th er ba r r ow just one essay, which is really a gloss on his visits to moroccan villages.15 his account begins ecologically and ends ethically: furthest out from the village center, at the threshold of the desert, he found covered stalls that protected the livestock. closer in were small storerooms for animal fodder, which were necessary because grazing was impossible in the parched environment. still closer to the heart of the village were the dwellings, ringing its center. the center itself, however, shifted in dimension and configuration, by virtue of changes in the perimeter rings, as if by some reversal of the laws of physics ripples of land and building form converged on the center in order to shape it. about this central space fehn had little to say, his description abruptly turned at this point to the dwelling itself, seen in section. he began with a workplace, observing that the cool temperature and deep shade that result from its lower position are congenial to housework when the summer heat and light are too fierce for work of any other kind. just as the sectional position of these rooms reduces heat gain, so does the thickness of the house’s walls. above the ground level is the floor for food preparation, above that the level for sleeping and living. little furniture gives a trace of these activities, but there seems to be no uncertainty about uses to which these rooms are put, for their long history makes these practices strikingly stable, contrasting domestic topography with the shifting sands outdoors. and these uses are not only the kind we might call functional, the ethos they express is also symbolic: the instance fehn gives of the latter is the removal of shoes before a meal. enabling the meal also is a mat or carpet on which one sits, and the table around which people gather. while fehn does not elaborate the analogy, he implies that a ratio or symmetry governs the use and meaning of these architectural elements: what the mat is to the dwelling floor the table is to the village center, both serving as gathering places that give orientation to a “round dance” that ties together the settings that make up the perimeter, the very same ones that accommodate the dance’s functional patterns. as if they were capable of performing this dance, the several pieces of furniture in the house are “mobile.” this movement of people and their accommodations, fehn explains, is a remnant of nomadic culture, the steps and shoes of which still carry ancient sands into the house, challenging the distinction between inside and outside just observed. with this entire structure in mind—from livestock stalls to the central carpet— fehn’s approach can be called cultural ecology, or an aesthetics of ethical life. there are two aspects of this account i want to hold onto: the rings of distance that encircle the house, giving its settings and events their orientation and limits, and the coupling of the practical and representational aspects of architectural elements, as if ways of living and of showing, ethics and aesthetics can, indeed, be linked together. 21 isparchitecture.com schreiner house: plan schreiner house: dining space ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 22 le a th er ba r r ow in the schreiner house, finished several years ago, fehn indicates just this coupling, this double proportionality: forms to functions and house to environment. the corner of the dining space, where the window and side walls meet will be my point of focus. reportedly, fehn himself rather liked this position, especially during wintertime meals, when the brick bench on which the leather cushions sit radiated heat from the fireplace behind. i sat there just once, in summer, but could easily imagine the spot’s thermal sense. the social dimension of a meal there benefited from the spatial dimension of the situation, between the warm surround and the open prospect. tectonically, this corner joins together the building’s two basic types of enclosure, timber cladding and window walls. using the term ‘wall’ for both the glazing and the cladding is perhaps incorrect for each is really a ‘partition,’ which is to say a non-load-bearing element that structures space, modulates natural forces, and confers character. when seated at the dining table, the view into the garden is unimpeded; the glazing extends from the floor to the ceiling and from one side to the other. an adjustable blind hangs from the top frame, ready to block any glare that might arrive from the late afternoon sun. the right hand edge of the glass panel also operates in the milieu: a narrow louver that edges the glazing screens the interior against insects and admits fresh air through a full-height hinged panel. turning to the timber cladding to the right of the dining table, we find another well-proportioned ensemble: at eye height a cantilevered book case sets one level, the horizontal boarding extending the enclosure establishes another, and the clear story glazing that admits direct light to the depth of the room defines still another horizon. through these means the changing conditions outside the house—the environment’s constructive and corrosive forces—are modified to suit the interests and needs of the interiors, preserving its quiet stability and warm intimacy, which is to say its character, atmosphere, or ethos. the atmosphere fehn has made is both tangible and legible. is it also beautiful? my answer is yes because its aesthetic shows nothing less than how we might share the sense of the world it accommodates and expresses. endnotes 1. hans-georg gadamer, the relevance of the beautiful (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1987) “relevance” translates gadamer’s aktualität. 2. i borrow this phrase, “the word rendering service to the work,” from paul ricoeur; see: “work and word,” history and truth (evanston: northwestern university press, 1965), 197-222 3. the argument is developed in the concluding chapter to david leatherbarrow and mohsen mostafavi, surface architecture (cambridge, mass.,: mit, 2002), 21523 isparchitecture.com 242. 4. on this point see: helmuth plessner, limits of community: a critique of social radicalism (new york: humanity books, 1999). 5. georg simmel,”life and form,” in rembrandt [1916] (london: routledge, 2005). 6. adolf loos, “interiors in the rotunda,” [1898], in spoken into the void (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1982), 22-27. 7. david leatherbarrow, architecture oriented otherwise (new york: princeton architectural press, 2009). 8. this point is made clearly in hans-georg gadamer, “treatment and dialogue,” the enigma of health (stanford: stanford university press, 1996), 125-140. 9. although somewhat old, the best study of this term in architecture remains alste horn-oncken, über das sichliche (göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 1967) 10. vitruvius, on architecture, 3.1.1 (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1970), 159. 11. varro, on the latin language, (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1977), 10, 36-38. 12. galen, on the doctrines of hippocrates and plato, 5.3.15 (berlin: akademie-verlag, 1981) 13. see the unpublished ph.d. dissertation by esra sahin, exchange of forces: environmental definition of materials in the works of vitruvius, alberti, le corbusier, and peter zumthor, university of pennsylvania, 2009: http://repository.upenn.edu/ edissertations/76 14. cicero, on duties, ch. 18 (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1913) 15. sverre fehn, “moroccan primitive architecture,” [1952] in the poetry of the straight line (helsinki: museum of finnish architecture, 1992), 38-41 isparchitecture.com whatever happened to semi-autonomy? graham owen writing in the yale journal perspecta in the mid1980s, k. michael hays put forward an argument for “a critical architecture that claims for itself a place between the efficient representation of preexisting cultural values and the wholly detached autonomy of an abstract formal system.”1 in setting up such a relationship between autonomy and criticality, hays was elaborating his mentor stanford anderson’s efforts to promote a pragmatic ethical rapprochement—or compromise—between an autonomous practice that aspired to kantian rigor and purity and the obligations of cultural—if not also social—engagement. “quasi-autonomy,” as anderson had it, or “semi-autonomy” in hays’s variation, offered the possibility of an architecture resistant to instrumentalization in the service of the dominant order. both anderson and hays were alluding to louis althusser’s notion, derived from karl marx, that superstructures in capitalist society, taken in this instance to include cultural activities such as architecture, were “relatively autonomous” from its infrastructure, its economic base: marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by ‘levels’ or ‘instances’ articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, or economic base (the ‘unity’ of the productive forces and the relations of production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two ‘levels’ or ‘instances’: the politicolegal (law and the state) and ideology (the different ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.). […] semi-autonomy […] offered the possibility of an architecture resistant to instrumentalization “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 8 ow en their index of effectivity (or determination), as determined by the determination in the last instance of the base, is thought by the marxist tradition in two ways: (1) there is a ‘relative autonomy’ of the superstructure with respect to the base; (2) there is a ‘reciprocal action’ of the superstructure on the base.2 anderson’s formulation was originally put forward in a 1966 paper written in response to the positivist, even scientistic, interest of the time in “problem-solving” design methods. incorporating and elaborating upon that paper in his perspecta 33 essay of 2002, titled “quasi-autonomy in architecture: the search for an ‘in-between’,” anderson began by noting that: [r]ecurrently, anxieties arise around such issues as these: can architecture be other than a mere servant to commercial/capitalist/ideological forces? […] is not autonomous production the only way to avoid submersion in the material conditions of one’s time? how can a formally driven enterprise like architecture address social issues responsibly (or at all)?3 in the 1966 paper, anderson had cited le corbusier’s carpenter center as exemplary, in that it was not the “frictionless, efficient” result desired in problem-solving design, but rather a building where “all of one’s senses and the whole of one’s perception are engaged,” a building that is “a world, a context, a problem [not yet solved], and we have the happy opportunity to form ourselves against it.”4 in the later article, de stijl, exemplified by gerrit rietveld’s schröder house, and the early works of peter eisenman such as house i (the toy museum in princeton, nj), take on this role: the de stijl and early eisenman works are of fundamental importance to the discipline of architecture. they project new ways of conceiving material form, space, light, and, at least to my mind, implications for use and meaning. significantly, these ‘new ways’ are deployed in such a manner as to give as much or more attention to their generalized potentials as to the specifics they initially served. it is in this that they approach autonomy and establish new references within the discipline.# anderson notes the importance of the intimacy of scale of these examples, and the fact that “a particular use is not defined.” he observes that “[o]ne is acutely aware of one’s own body in, and in relation to, these environments – and with this, also the anticipation of one’s occupation in various modes.”5 his concerns were thus humanist in nature, and the ethical issues as he implied them suggested, first, the virtue of generous contributions to the discipline, and second, to the community, in effect a duty of care to the built environment and to human experience within it. he concluded: “to seek to live only a life of the mind at one pole, or of materiality at the other, or of coercive power from either, is to impoverish one’s self, one’s 9 isparchitecture.com discipline, and one’s smaller or greater community.”6 michael hays, in his perspecta 21 article of 1984, sets up the dialectical opposition between, on the one hand, “architecture as instrument of culture,” where it occurs as “essentially an epiphenomenon, dependent on socioeconomic, political, and technological processes for its various states and transformations” and “reconfirms the hegemony of culture and helps to assure its continuity,” and, on the other hand, architecture as autonomous form, where both design and its criticism are involved with: the comparative absence of historical concerns in favor of attention to the autonomous architectural object and its formal operations – how its parts have been put together, how it is a wholly integrated and equilibrated system that can be understood without external references, and as important, how it may be reused, how its constituent parts and processes may be recombined.7 on one side, he remarks: describes artifacts as instruments of the self-justifying, self-perpetuating hegemony of culture; the other side treats architectural objects in their most disinfected, pristine state, as containers of a privileged principle of internal coherence.8 in seeking a way out of this dichotomy, hays proposes an architecture and a criticism characterized by “worldliness,” and in this respect acknowledges a debt to the thinking of edward said. hays’s exemplar of such a semi-autonomous architecture is, perhaps surprisingly, mies van der rohe. citing the unbuilt alexanderplatz project in particular, as well as the barcelona pavilion and iit’s campus, hays asserts that: mies’s achievement was to open up a clearing of implacable silence in the chaos of the nervous metropolis; this clearing is a radical critique, not only of the established spatial order of the city and the established logic of classical composition, but also of the inhabiting nervenleben. it is the extreme depth of hays proposes the ethical virtue of architectural and interpretive work that does not acquiesce to the interests of hegemonic culture, but at the same time does not withdraw entirely from engagement “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 10 ow en silence in this clearing – silence as an architectural form all its own – that is the architectural meaning of this project.9 implicitly, then, in semi-autonomy hays proposes the ethical virtue of architectural and interpretive work that does not acquiesce to the interests of hegemonic culture, but at the same time does not withdraw entirely from engagement. also implicit in this opening gambit is a duty of faith to the battle cries of modernism’s avant-garde. in his subsequent writings on this theme of critical architecture, most notably in his books modernism and the posthumanist subject, of 1992, and architecture’s desire: reading the late avant-garde, of 2010, hays’s exemplars and his arguments undergo shifts. his exemplars move from mies to hannes meyer and subsequently, in the third book, aldo rossi, bernard tschumi, john hejduk, and peter eisenman. the shifts in hays’s arguments have been charted in depth by louis martin in his essay “frederic jameson and critical architecture” published in 2011. martin notes that jameson’s thinking becomes increasingly important in hays’s later writings, which alter the construction of the dialectical oppositions and which address, in turn, the negative dialectics of the frankfurt school, deconstruction, the pessimism of the italian critic manfredo tafuri, and lacan’s psychoanalytic thinking. throughout this period, eisenman, in parallel with hays, continues to publish on the topic of a critical architecture, convinced that his own work exemplifies such practice. what had remained constant, says louis martin, is that “[c]ritical architecture … seeks change through resistance, negation, and opposition to the forces maintaining the status quo.”10 mary mcleod, however, had summed up well the haunting skepticism of the italian critic: [the tafurian position] views architecture as pure ideology, in which ideology is defined as ‘false consciousness’ – that is, as reflection of dominant class interests. architecture thus plays a negative social role: it becomes an instrument of the existing power structure. even purportedly critical architecture (and in this category tafuri places all utopian impulses in architecture since the enlightenment) contributes in its uselessness and, more seriously, in its deception to the perpetuation of bourgeois capitalism.11 responding to hays’s series of texts seventeen years after their initiation, sarah whiting and robert somol, also writing in perspecta 33, offered a “projective” alternative to “the now dominant paradigm of criticality.” for both hays and peter eisenman, they claimed, “disciplinarity is understood as autonomy (enabling critique, representation, and signification), but not as instrumentality (projection, performativity, and pragmatics). […] as an alternative to the critical project, – here linked to the indexical, the dialectical and hot representation – this text develops an alternative genealogy of 11 isparchitecture.com the projective – linked to the diagrammatic, the atmospheric and cool performance.” 12 where hays had cited mies’s exemplary status, somol and whiting invoke koolhaas, contrasting his response to the skyscraper frame in delirious new york with eisenman’s experiments with le corbusier’s dom-ino frame: “these new york frames exist as instruments of metropolitan plasticity and are not primarily architecture for paying attention to; they are not for reading but for seducing, becoming, instigating new events and behaviors.”13 perhaps even more so than koolhaas, for the purposes of the essay the acting style of robert mitchum (read through art critic dave hickey) is put forward as an exemplar: “‘mitchum architecture’ is cool, easy, and never looks like work […]. here, mood is the open-ended corollary of the cool-producing effect without high definition, providing room for maneuver and promoting complicity with subject(s).” nevertheless, whiting and somol felt it necessary, in their conclusion, to insist that “[s]etting out this projective program does not necessarily entail a capitulation to market forces […].”14 some of whiting and somol’s allies in this cause, however, felt less need to be equivocal.15 in the early 2000s michael speaks in particular set out an aggressive polemic against the notion of critical architecture and, indeed, its entire context of critical theory. speaks’s background included doctoral studies at duke university with frederic jameson, but perhaps of greater ultimate influence on speaks’s thinking were the debunking diatribes of literary critic stanley fish. so motivated, speaks took on the role of advocate for the “new economy” movement of that time, particularly as promoted by kevin kelly in wired magazine. technology was changing everything, according to both kelly and speaks, and architecture needed to be not critical but innovative. in one of a series of articles published in the japanese periodical a+u, speaks wrote: “just as theory confronted technology was changing everything [...] and architecture needed to be not critical but innovative. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 12 ow en philosophy with its slowness and morality, so today does pragmatic entrepreneurial thought confront theory with its historical connection to the dreams and utopian aspirations of philosophy.”16 he cites an essay by alejandro zaera-polo, then of foreign office architects, in which the author constructs what he calls a “niche-seeking map” that can, according to speaks, “be used to create flexible practices that are better able to respond to the new market reality of globalization.”17 in an intriguing passage from the same article, speaks invokes management guru peter drucker. architectural practice under the avantgarde model, informed by critical theory, speaks claims, “is nothing more than what […] drucker calls ‘problem solving’.” for speaks, practice in this model simply takes direction from theory, and “adds little or no value along the way. innovation, drucker tells us, works by a different, more entrepreneurial logic, where, by rigorous analysis, opportunities are discovered that can be exploited and transformed into innovations.”18 speaks had, whether knowingly or not, repurposed stanford anderson’s original opposition of 1966, substituting critical architecture for anderson’s target, the scientistic design methodology of late modernist “problemsolving.” but speaks had also inverted that opposition: for anderson, 1960s problem-solving was too much of the world of corporate capitalism. for speaks, critical architecture’s version of problem-solving was too little of it; the solution was to embrace wholeheartedly the logic of the market. george baird, in turn, responded in his essay of 2004, “‘criticality’ and its discontents,” drawing into his analysis of post-criticality the positions of whiting and somol’s fellow-travelers stan allen, sylvia lavin, and michael speaks. noting that for koolhaas, “if it turns out that ‘criticality’ constrains efficacy, then to that extent ‘criticality’ must give way,”19 baird is nonetheless ready to allow him some remaining capacity for resistance, but is wary of post-criticality’s potential consequences. to what extent, he wonders, will it develop models to measure “the ambition and the capacity for significant social transformation”? “without such models,” he went on, “architecture could all too easily find itself […] ethically adrift.”20 were baird’s apprehensions borne out? what were the ethical attitudes embodied in calls for a projective, post-critical architecture? whiting and somol’s concerns, insofar as they can be interpreted in ethical terms, appear predominantly pragmatic. they address architecture’s capacity to be effective. from their perspective, an avant-gardist position of principled critical distance could not be maintained if architecture was to be recognized as a practice with value in the world, and in this respect they might also be taken as suggesting a utilitarian model. but then there is this business of robert mitchum, of “cool”: social autonomy of a kind in 13 isparchitecture.com one sense, to be sure, though in another requiring a social setting in order to be recognized. but doesn’t cool imply a freedom from constraint; an unruffled individualism untroubled by conscience; a natural gift for getting what you want, by whatever means; even rule-breaking as an aesthetic? is there perhaps a machiavellian streak in their position? for michael speaks, there is no shame in being an operative critic, to use tafuri’s term; no shame in engaging in promotionalism and career brokerage. in a series of interviews in a+u,21 speaks extols the virtues of rapid prototyping and versioning enabled by digital modeling and fabrication, and indeed technological innovation in general. presented as exemplars in this respect are firms such as shop; greg lynn form; neil denari; asymptote; maxwan; and amo, the research arm of oma. speaks’s use of the business model is millennialist, his rhetoric neoliberal with its embrace of competition, technocracy and the market as arbiters of all success. does he present us with innovation as an implied ethical duty of the designer? yet he decries the “moralism” of traditional philosophical intellectualizations of architecture. success in the marketplace is, evidently, a virtue in itself. for speaks, there is no other world to be part of; autonomy, semior otherwise has become an effective impossibility. instead, he presents us with the received ethos of social darwinism. what if we undertake a thought experiment here? what if we take at face value speaks’s cheerleading for the new-economy business model, for digital technology as the central concern for forwardlooking architectural practices, and examine what innovation would really mean? clayton christensen, clark professor of business administration at harvard, is a widely admired theorist of what he terms “disruptive innovation,” innovation from below that undermines and displaces the established leaders in a field. speaks is clearly seeking to be disruptive, to gain market share, so to speak, from [speaks] decries the ‘moralism’ of traditional philosophical intellectualizations of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 14 ow en the established authorities and positions within the field of architectural intellectuals. but christensen, in his book the innovator’s dilemma, notes that in the field of technology, disruptive innovations “result in worse product performance, at least in the near term”22: early japanese cars, for example, early digital cameras compared with film, or the sound quality of cellphones. here we might recall a lecture that architectural critic wilfried wang gave at mit in the early 1990s. wang, a staunch advocate of european builderliness in his formal presentation, remarked in discussion afterwards that, by contrast, rem koolhaas’s buildings would fall apart in a few years’ time. but might we also understand this lower performance as applying to ethics as well? christensen’s second major point is that disruptive innovation creates new markets where consumption in that field had not been occurring before. his colleagues cite the example of the chotukool, a small-battery powered refrigerator produced by a company advised by christensen’s consulting firm innosight. david duncan, a senior partner there, confirms that “[b]y the standards we are used to, it doesn’t perform well. it would never sell [in north america]! but in rural india they have sold 100,000 units in the last year or two.”23 the analogy is once again rough, but could we understand the connection in this instance as being to the proliferation of iconic architecture in places it had not hitherto appeared: kazakhstan, azerbaijan, the emirates, and china, and its ethical performance in those contexts? if there is some insight to be gained for architecture from this thought experiment, how might we understand the motivation of somol, whiting, and speaks’s allegiances? the oedipal nature of their assaults has been noted by baird and others. one aspect, however, has not received so much attention: the fact that the promoters of post-critical architecture— whiting, somol, speaks, stan allen, and sylvia lavin—were all at that time pursuing or already in administrative positions in architectural academe. now i do not wish to impute ethically questionable activity to all academic administrators, nor indeed necessarily to all members of this group. but it is nonetheless worth noting that the business model was also widespread in the university by this time, with all the consequences for tenure, academic freedom, and collegial values which we experience today. the antagonists of semi-autonomy and critical architecture, speaks and company, would need to have become entangled, if not embedded, in fundraising, marketing and the academic equivalent of flexible accumulation. in short, a necessary and perhaps ingratiating closeness to capital would have become part of their daily modus operandi. for some, advocating at least a partial autonomy, and a critical distance, from the 15 isparchitecture.com hegemonic social order might well have appeared, in these circumstances, to be a liability. some reflexive institutional critique appears to be necessary here, although this is a subject for another essay.24 what of the ethics of the actual projects of the projective camp? reinhold martin tackled this question in an essay of 2005, taking to task some of that movement’s exemplars for their involvement in the 2002 exhibition and competition for the rebuilding of ground zero. foreign office, martin noted, accompanied their entry with the exhortation: “let’s not even consider remembering…. what for? we have a great site in a great city and the opportunity to have the world’s tallest building back in new york.”25 greg lynn, for his part, asserted that “the transfer of military thinking into daily life is inevitable.”26 the projects, says martin, “monumentalize, in exemplary ‘postcritical’ fashion, the neoliberal consensus regarding new ‘opportunities’ opened up by techno-corporate globalization. accordingly, the responsibility of professionals in the new world order is confined to facilitating the ‘new’ while washing their hands of the overdetermined historical narratives […] through which this new is named.”27 things came to a head at the projective landscape conference, held at the technical university of delft in 2006 and including hays, somol, whiting, speaks, stan allen, roemer van toorn, and reinhold martin, among others. as reported by the web site archined, willem jan neutelings asked “what should he do if he were asked to build a new head office for the fascist vlaams belang party? while the assembled panellists (twenty in total) fiddled uneasily with their glasses, a high-spirited robert somol bellowed ‘take the job’. somol then turned on michael hays: ‘i don’t care what you think. you do your thing and i’ll do mine, and let’s both have fun.’” reinhold martin observed that the “idea […] that the arrival of capitalism opens an immense field of possibility in which the speaks and company, would need to have become entangled, if not embedded, in fundraising, marketing and the academic equivalent of flexible accumulation “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 16 ow en designer can experiment freely is an outstanding example of ideology.” this criticism michael speaks “heartily laughed away saying, ‘the market is something that happens, and what happens is reality, not ideology’.”28 and finally, what of the arch-exemplar of the post-critical, rem koolhaas? at least from his earliest days in america, koolhaas had exhibited a consciously transgressive enthusiasm for the commercial. delirious new york, of course, assigns the power of a subconscious manifesto to the commercial production of manhattan architecture, and while at the institute for architecture and urban studies, koolhaas had produced an exhibition on the work of wallace harrison. the exhibition, even then, had the nietzschean title “beyond good and bad.” two decades later, writing on the effects of globalization on the city, koolhaas remarks that: [w]e realize . . . that we are now moving into uncharted territory, a territory characterized by fluid conditions – flows of traffic, flows of human beings, flows of money, flows of work. […] confronted with this mutation, this new urban condition, we refuse to recognize that we are powerless to forestall it. […] i would like […] to help make us […] a profession able to formulate perfectly rational answers to perfectly insane questions. for it seems clear that we are increasingly confronted with utterly irrational problems, problems that we no longer have the luxury of refusing.29 as louis martin observes, “the iron cage of an oppressive status quo becomes through koolhaas’s sublime descriptions the terrifying splendours of the real, a real in which there is no situation rotten enough for not containing a new positivity. to negativity and resistance, koolhaas opposes an exhilarating acceleration of the real as the only strategy for achieving change.”30 in a 2004 interview with mark leonard, koolhaas attempted to rationalize his acceptance of the cctv commission, then estimated to be worth $740 million, elaborating on the nature of the opportunity: in the cctv building there is a utopian nostalgia that is the foundation of architecture and in my work in the past there have been very few triggers for that. […] what attracts me about china is [that] there is still a state. there is something that can take initiative of a scale and of a nature that almost no other body that we know of today could ever afford or even contemplate.31 apologists for the koolhaasian position have often invoked the image of the surfer as a redemption or transcendence of that position’s affiliation with globalized capital, and as an attempt to redirect narratives of architecture’s powerlessness. a “new pragmatism,” in the face of the overwhelming complexity of undecidable outcomes, informs the choice of ride.32 the surfer, far from being overwhelmed by the inexorable 17 isparchitecture.com force of events, instead is skillful enough to ride the wave, to use its massive energy and power to enable his or her own (spectacular) performance. of this image, several observations need to be made. first, the surfer presents the (deleuzian) trope of the intuitive calculator, able to judge speed and position with an uncanny ability. second, the flow that the wave exemplifies is indeed inexorable, a force of nature, its direction unchangeable (and, ultimately, determining of the surfer’s own). third, in capitalizing upon this force for his performance, the surfer not only valorizes but also aestheticizes the wave: through his work, he gives it legitimacy.33 the image of the surfer, in its positive valence, is another metaphor of innovation in the face of massive change. but how does koolhaas feel about innovation of the kind that motivated michael speaks: iphones, wireless fridges that remind you what to buy, the internet of things? could it be that, with the passage of time, he has finally fallen off his board? as jay merrick wrote in a review of the 2014 venice architecture biennale, directed by rem: despite his craving for data, koolhaas has become increasingly concerned about what he referred to at the biennale launch event as ‘digital regimes’. and he added: ‘i seriously question if it’s safe and sane to surrender more and more of our information … if our current involvement with digital technology continues, our houses will betray us.’34 for those who feel they have witnessed a different kind of betrayal—by the members of the postcritical international star system who seem willing to build anything for anybody anywhere—a turn to architecture as activism appears to offer an ethical alternative.35 amid present-day efforts to instrumentalize architecture once again—but this time as agent of environmental and social redemption—has the argument for semi-autonomy come full circle? activist architecture does, as in stanford apologists for the koolhaasian position have often invoked the image of the surfer as a redemption [...] as an attempt to redirect narratives of architecture’s powerlessness “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 18 ow en anderson’s model, seek to detach itself from the dominant culture—or at least distance itself from it. what is its economic model, after all? some activist work is funded by grants, which is to say potentially by surplus accumulation of capital channeled—or some might say laundered— through philanthropic entities. other activist work is enabled through pro bono professional services and volunteer labor, which is to say again by surplus accumulation that enables members of one class to donate their time to assist another. could we say that these kinds of activist work follow a traditional development aid model, in which there is a charitable transfer of wealth without necessarily being accompanied by capacity building? if so, would research work in international development ethics come into play on these issues? anderson’s criteria for quasi-autonomy include the capacity for fundamental and generalizable contributions to the discipline. activist work, however, can be characterized as having exhibited an abundance of goodwill and, initially at least, a shortage of theory. have such contributions to the discipline occurred—can they occur—if the existing discourse, the existence of a discipline per se are brought into question by activist praxis? do activist practices, then, mirror the predicament of michael speaks, in that from their perspective there is no disciplinary world in which to place the other foot? what theory and discourse as do exist seem to have emerged from areas such as critical urban studies, but these fields, with their emphasis on bottom-up spatial production, are by nature suspicious of elite professional interests.36 the next ethical frontier, i suggest, is to determine how the design disciplines and professions can get on board, in an intellectually productive way, without leaving some of their most valuable baggage behind, and without hijacking the bus. this baggage includes the fundamental and generalizable contributions that anderson still valued so highly: those “new ways of conceiving material form, space, light, and […] implications for use and meaning” that can establish “new references within the discipline,” but pursued without the exclusive “life of the mind […] or of coercive power” leading to that impoverishment of self, discipline and community he feared so much.37 endnotes 1. k. michael hays, “critical architecture: between culture and form,” perspecta 21 (1984): 15. 2. louis althusser, “ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation),” trans. ben brewster, in lenin and philosophy and other essays (monthly review press, 1971). originally published in 19 isparchitecture.com la pensée, 1970. accessed june 30, 2014, https://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm. 3. stanford anderson, “quasi-autonomy in architecture: the search for an ‘in-between’,” perspecta 33 (2002): 30. 4. ibid., 33. 5. ibid., 35. 6. ibid., 37. 7. hays, “critical architecture,” 16. 8. ibid., 17. 9. ibid., 22. 10. louis martin, “frederic jameson and critical architecture,” in the political unconscious of architecture: re-opening jameson’s narrative, ed. nadir lahiji (farnham: ashgate, 2011), 198. 11. mary mcleod, quoted in louis martin, “frederic jameson and critical architecture,” in the political unconscious of architecture: re-opening jameson’s narrative, ed. nadir lahiji (farnham: ashgate, 2011), 173. 12. robert somol and sarah whiting, “notes around the doppler effect and other moods of modernism,” perspecta 33 (2002): 74. 13. ibid., 75. 14. ibid., 77. 15. indeed, as ole fischer has pointed out, in “post-critical” work, “[d]iagrams, slogans, logos, and new media are deployed as a kind of ‘mental powerpoint’ to reduce the complexity of architectural projects to recognizable icons, core messages, or brands, and thus to promote a fast, approximative perception and an intensive experience or atmospheric ‘feeling’ – particularly with regard to a broad audience of occupants, consumers and clients,” in contrast to the difficulty and resistance of “critical” work. i thank dr. fischer for drawing my attention, after the first presentation of this paper, to his excellent essay which tackles similar issues at greater length. the reader is directed to that paper for a finely nuanced and more extensive discussion of the theoretical ramifications of “the critical.” see ole w. fischer, “architecture, capitalism and criticality,” in the sage handbook of architectural theory, eds. c. greig crysler, stephen cairns, and hilde heynen (london: sage, 2012), 59. 16. michael speaks, “architectural theory and education at the millennium, part 3: theory practice and pragmatism,” a+u 372, no. 9 (2001): 24. 17. ibid., 22. 18. ibid. 19. george baird, “‘criticality’ and its discontents,” harvard design magazine 21 (2004): 18. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 20 ow en 20. ibid., 21. 21. michael speaks, “design intelligence [parts 1-12],” a+u 387-399 (2002-2003). 22. clayton christensen, the innovator’s dilemma (new york: harperbusiness, 2011), quoted in craig lambert, “disruptive genius,” harvard magazine, july-august 2014, 39. 23. ibid., 41. 24. see, for example, my “after the flood: disaster capitalism and the symbolic restructuring of intellectual space,” culture and organization 17, no. 2 (2011): 123–137. 25. reinhold martin, “critical of what? toward a utopian realism,” harvard design magazine 22 (2005): 107. 26. greg lynn, “a new world trade center,” max protetch, www. maxprotetch.com/site/previous/anewwtc/form/index. html, quoted in reinhold martin, “critical of what? toward a utopian realism,” harvard design magazine 22 (2005): 107. 27. martin, “critical of what?,” 107. 28. “design intelligence – speaks & co in delft,” archined, published march 27, 2006, accessed june 24, 2014, http://www.archined.nl/ archined/5303.0.html. spirited and subtly argued defenses of criticality in architectural practice and theory were also mounted by the contributors to the “critical architecture” conference of 2004 and publication of 2007. on the relationship to autonomy, see particularly the editors’ introductory essays in that volume and those of leach, cunningham, benjamin, heynen, barber, dovey, and rice. eds. jane rendell, jonathan hill, murray fraser, and mark dorrian, critical architecture (abingdon: routledge, 2007). 29. rem koolhaas, “understanding the new urban condition: the project on the city,” gsd news (1996): 13. 30. louis martin, “frederic jameson and critical architecture,” 198. 31. mark leonard, “power housing”, financial times, march 6/7 2004, w6-7. 32. see cynthia davidson, “introduction,” anyhow (cambridge, ma/new york: mit press/anyone corporation, 1998), 10, and john rajchman’s essay in the same collection. 33. passages in this section appeared in my introduction to architecture, ethics and globalization (abingdon: routledge, 2009). 34. jay merrick, “rem loves the smell of information in the morning,” architects’ journal, june 6, 2014, 53. 35. see, for example, “architecture and ethics,” architectural record, june 2014, 167-206. 36. as discussion with colleagues, after the first presentation of this paper 21 isparchitecture.com in delft in 2014, suggested, a further productive conjunction might be made with the arguments of erik swyngedouw regarding the post-political in environmental debates. although the proponents of the post-critical in architecture celebrated the expanded ability of designers to embrace the complexity of issues embodied in any contemporary project, it is through professional and technological expertise that this expansion is achieved. swyngedouw too is skeptical about expertise so mobilized and its ability to neutralize sociopolitical debate. 37. anderson, 5. _goback isparchitecture.com heidegger on thinking about ethos and man’s dwelling 1 diana aurenque heidegger’s reflections on dwelling point us to a distinct ethos, a distinct way of being in the world. as he puts it in “letter on humanism,” “dwelling is the essence of being-in-the-world.”2 he thus explicitly relates the theme(s) of ‘being-in’, themes raised in his early work, to that of dwelling, and thus to thinking about ethos. as heidegger frequently reminds us, ‘ethos’ (ἦθος) means “the dwelling of man, his sojourn in the midst of all that is.”3 already at this juncture, it is decisive to hold on to the idea that ethos, understood as sojourn, always relates us to an obligation of sorts.4 this much transpires if we consider that being without sojourn indicates a state of up-rootedness. and a person who is uprooted, without sojourn, is a person who ‘stands’ nowhere, and may well not understand much of her own position either. in the course of the present paper i would like to show, accordingly, that heidegger’s philosophy not only essentially comprises a reflection on ethos, on man’s sojourn in the world, but also that this reflection queries a genuine obligation man enters. that reflection thus queries whether there is an appropriate way of residing or sojourning, and seeks to articulate an exemplary dwelling for man. and if (as remains to be shown) there is furthermore an appropriate way of human sojourn, of ethos, then this trajectory will also contain, or afford, direction and guidance. it contains direction insofar as exemplary ethos denotes something we need to seek. it is not the case that humans, by their very nature, are endowed with an appropriate ethos. ethos is rather, and actually, a becoming—is ethos, understood as sojourn, always relates us to an obligation of sorts. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 40 a ur en q ue something that exists historically, or that happens in existence. dwelling, as heidegger frequently puts it, “is something we have yet to learn.”5 he emphasizes repeatedly how we always are already in the world—always already enjoy a sojourn in it of sorts. and even so, we have to obtain a certain distance from the very form of ethos we are most familiar with, an ethos we enjoy as a matter of course and without much reflection. such lack of reflection accrues from the routines of our everyday life and a certain obliviousness towards being itself. by gaining a distance from that familiar ethos we can make truly ‘our own’ both the world and ourselves. without such distance, everyday phenomena comprising things, fellow human beings, and one’s own being lose the very value that makes them themselves. heidegger beckons us towards a particular form of sojourn not only in his late works, but also in his early freiburger lectures or even in being and time. but his late works, this paper will show, deal with the matter and related themes more directly and explicitly than previous works. dwelling and the fourfold concerns with spatiality exert a formative influence on heidegger’s language in his late works, and constitute a cornerstone of his reflections in those works. in his late thought, the problematization of man’s sojourn receives explicit elaboration. words like ‘dwelling’, ‘sojourn’, and ‘ethos’ now feature in the foreground of his (so-called) ‘ontic-historical’ reflections. while a certain reflection on ethos forms a recurrent theme across heidegger’s thought, it is only in the context of his ‘topology of being’6 that heidegger begins to explicitly reflect on human sojourn and human dwelling. unlike in being and time, heidegger’s late work is no longer concerned with the essential and inessential modes in which dasein or a distinctly human way of being takes on existence. rather, his main concern is now with the essential and inessential ways in which humans design or conceive of their being, their sein. in this regard, dwelling is central. his essay “building dwelling thinking” makes it rather clear that ‘dwelling’ is not merely conceived of as one’s having or possessing an abode or roof over one’s head: it rather designates “the main feature of human existence (dasein).”7 on the one hand, we are to think of human existence as arising from dwelling; on the other, the nature of (making) poetry is to be determined as (a form of) building.8 dwelling, in its inner contours, has to be traced to and thematized as dwelling and (the making of) poetry. just as dwelling can only be obtained through building, true building only happens to further dwelling. heidegger here refers to an etymological relation between ‘i am’ (ich bin) and ‘building’ (bauen).9 in that regard, the 41 isparchitecture.com ‘i am’ that goes with ‘building’ actually denotes ‘i dwell’. he writes, “the way i am and you are, the way in which we humans are on this earth – that is building, that is dwelling.”10 making poetry and dwelling are likewise related in their origin. to make poetry is not merely one (of many possible ways of) “letting oneself dwell”: it rather denotes “the actual ways of letting oneself dwell.”11 heidegger terms the essential and actual (or proper, eigentlich) dwelling a sojourn in the fourfold (geviert). this ‘fourfold’ denotes the gathering of four domains or ‘quarters’, namely heaven and earth, divine and mortal.12 and this gathering receives expression in a “world play,”13 that is, denotes the actual form in (and as) which human existence realizes itself or manifests in a world of things. accordingly, the truth about (human) being becomes manifest in this fourfold: “we thought of the truth of being in worlds[,] of ‘world’ as the mirror play of the fourfold of heaven and earth, of mortals and immortals.”14 more precisely, heidegger conceives of the dwelling in the fourfold as a poetic way of dwelling. dwelling poetically if man dwells in the fourfold, he dwells poetically.15 heidegger takes over hölderlin’s poetics of man’s ‘poetic dwelling’: “full of merit is the man who in his toil manages to produce works.”16 human toil and creation of a work is here interpreted as an accomplishment (such as, for instance, man-made culture). but that accomplishment does not suffice, by itself, to understand human existence or dasein in its foundation, insofar as culture is only a derived consequence of the more original ‘poetic dwelling’ of man. in his lecture on hölderlin (winter semester, 1934-1935), heidegger gives a clue for understanding ‘poetic dwelling’: “by this i mean: the historical existence or dasein of man is borne from a foundation, and directed by that [mode of] being which poets experience ahead [of the rest of us], the ‘i am ‘ that goes with ‘building’ actually denotes ‘i dwell’ “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 42 a ur en q ue which they put into verbal garb for the first time and thereby bring to the people.” 17 it follows that the poetic has to be understood as an originating and measure-bestowing endowment,18 because to found something means “the foundation of what hitherto was not.”19 poetic (use of) language brings to the fore a design or concept of being for an entire community. the way that ‘being’ beckons man (here) corresponds to how the ancients conceived of the divine to beckon in poetic creation. this leads heidegger to say that “the poet […] is a founder of being.”20 if heidegger says (with hölderlin) that poets found “what persists,”21 what exactly does this founding moment denote? for poetry neither discovers, nor invents, the historic dimension of human existence as such. rather, that dimension is being ‘founded’ in this sense: poetry corresponds to the enunciation of being itself. in the unconstrained creation of poetry, the boundary between the merely possible and the real is created anew. the poet’s “dream yields the not-yet-appropriated fullness of the possible and preserves a transfigured remembrance of the real.”22 that remembrance of the real is such that “the possible and (more precisely) what is still to come, arrest our expectations, and arise as one where art bestows history, a dream.”23 this new order of things— heidegger calls it the poets’ “dream”—is “terrible, because for those it shows itself to, the dream rips them out of a careless sojourn in a reality they are used to, and throws them into the horrors of the unreal.”24 the expression “horrors of the unreal” refers to the infinite expanse of ‘the possible’; that expanse appears as “horror” because its fleeting nature cannot be grasped by purposive or practical rationality. the horror it instills is the terror of the unknown and uncertain, a horror man attempts to evade and flee along his life’s path. the poet does not reside or remain in “a careless (mode of) residing”25 but copes with the fleeting nature (and contingency) of human existence through his creative work. for heidegger, dwelling poetically ultimately means sensitive attention to things. this dwelling is a stance “in the presence of the divinities,” a stance of solemnity “towards the nearness of things’ essence.”26 the poet attends (and respects) in his poetic dwelling the gathering of things in a way that respects their diversity and coherence. the poet dwells in a manner that itself is a preservation happening in poetic dwelling. but this is only possible so long as the poet remains awake and sober in relation to those things. accordingly, the stance in dwelling poetically must be sober and attentive: to acquire free use of one’s own ability means to ever more exclusively acquiesce in being open towards what one is assigned – acquiesce in alertness of what is yet 43 isparchitecture.com to come, in a sobriety that […] retains only what is needed. a sober, attentive openness towards the sacred is at once a concentration on the quiet, corresponding to that ‘resting’ on which the poet dwells and thinks. this resting is an ability to remain in one’s own.27 such “learning” of man’s own poetic essence simply requires a radical and attentive willingness to accommodate oneself with the order of the world, an order that arises from the world’s becoming. or, because we already are poets, we have to become poets. this signals, not merely an element of pindar in heidegger’s philosophy, but also the thought that ‘dwelling poetically’ is to remain (persist) in conformity with what is. ‘dwelling poetically’ is something as yet to be attained—it is, for heidegger, something one needs to make one’s own. by dwelling poetically one realizes a return to ‘one’s own’, a state rendered attainable through recognition of the foreign or alien: “to be freely able to draw on one’s own, to first acquire free use of one’s own, first requires confrontation with the foreign.”28 thus man has to become a “traveler,”29 needs “to render oneself, in what is foreign, strong and ready for what is one’s own; for what is one’s own cannot be acquired by a sudden grasp for the (apparent) own.”30 man must appropriate what is his own, and that requires a process of appropriation intimately related to experience of the foreign. such selfappropriation is certainly not easy: “what is one’s own is hardest to find and, thus, easiest to miss.”31 precisely because it is hardest to find, “its search has to be longest, and as long as it’s sought, it won’t be lost.”32 heidegger calls this search for one’ s own a “steady reluctance,” namely “the reluctance of one who dwells long on the same spot, looks forward and backwards, because he searches and persists in a point of transition, a threshold. finding and appropriating one’s own, is at once a reluctant transition.”33 he who is searching for his own, and understands himself to be ‘on his way’ to himself or journeying to himself,34 dwells poetically. for heidegger, dwelling poetically ultimatley means sensitive attention to things. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 44 a ur en q ue heidegger already announced the relation between “self-hood”35 and actual dwelling in his introduction to metaphysics (delivered in the summer term of 1935): “man only reaches himself, and is a self, in a mode of historicity and questioning.”36 man’s self-hood can thus not be attained without a certain stance, an idiosyncratic form of residence or sojourn. only by dwelling poetically can man be brought to accord with his own essence—meaning, can man realize what he always and already is: the most uncanny. “to be the most uncanny – that is the foundational trait of man’s essence.”37 via poetry and the disclosure of historic space—the location of our actual dwelling accomplished in poetry—humans attain access to themselves. poetic dwelling has its own measure in persistence: “return endows the persistence of what is unequal. when that persists, then that persistence alone is in which fate can persist in a state of purity.”38 heidegger calls this “persistence of a persisting fate” “the measure of actual dwelling,”39 as it shows itself in the measure of actual poetic dwelling. and that persistence is precisely a time of celebration, meaning, a time for the unusual and the rare, and thereby the moment in which fertile rupture occurs with one’s customary and familiar relations to the world. the significance—even the reality—of the familiar is put into question, occasioning a return to the uncanny. dwelling poetically is, in that light, this idiosyncratic persisting in the actual place, in the fourfold opened up towards whichever thing we face: “to persist is, now, no longer the mere insistence of the readyto-hand. persistence happens. it brings the four into the light of their own.”40 dwelling and measure heidegger’s reflections engage the ethical also in another respect— with respect to their ideas of measure and measuring. here, the heavenly receives special attention: “man has always already measured himself as (hu)man in relation to something, and in relation to something heavenly.”41 the heavenly, however, is only gathered by a measure—the divine. when heidegger, with hölderlin, tells us that in dwelling man “measures” himself against—that is, competes with42—the deity, heidegger primarily means that existing man always has to find anew the interrelation that gathers things together. that measure is not rendered present by an invention of man—but only occurs in relation to the respective way in which a thing allows itself to be seen. what heidegger calls “measuring” reveals itself in the act of making poetry.43 the poet gathers a measure of all things from the things showing themselves. this measure is, for hölderlin, an unknown god,44 always 45 isparchitecture.com alien and never familiar. equating the divinity with a measure—moreover, an unknown measure at that—is, however, problematic: “the divinity as he who he is, is unknown to hölderlin, and the divinity qua this unknown is verily the poet’s measure.”45 that the divinity should be something revealed by the heavens also means that hölderlin’s divinity—the measure—is to be understood in the respective context of its becoming apparent, in the heavens of the fourfold. the divinity is kept open as precisely an open measure through its dwelling in the fourfold. the poet’s measure is, in this sense, never an external and already decided one, but rather becomes the measure as things command, meaning, [the measure of] the fourfold: “building (das bauen),” which is poetics, “appropriates from the fourfold the measurements for all cross-measurements of the spaces, which in turn assume [their] space through places that bestow them.”46 as heidegger puts it in his 1970 essay “man’s dwelling,” “earthly poets are just those who take measure of a heavenly measure.”47 precisely because the poet knows better than anyone else that there is nothing that is unique and bestows measure and meaning for all time, is he able to ever bestow new being: “it bestows higher clarity, one that enables all things to appear in their own and which provides a measure to all that is mortal.”48 in that regard, the poets’ saying(s) correspond to the voice of being. since being ever appears under new historical guises, there is a never-finished need for repetition, as occurs through being founded poetically. dwelling poetically is the possibility of an actual sojourn of man, in contrast to the careless sojourn in an age of modern technology. in his lecture “wherefore poets?,” heidegger emphatically notes that technology is, so to speak, an illusory or deceptive sojourn of man. it is, “as if there could be – for the relation of essence, by which man is related to the whole of being through the technical what heidegger calls “measuring” reveals itself in the act of making poetry. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 46 a ur en q ue will – a segregated residence in an annex building, an annex able to offer more than a transitory way out of self deceptions (such as taking refuge in the greek pantheon).”49 in poetry, a return to ‘the open’ is drawn—that very open that remains shut in a technical ethos. to dwell poetically thus means to persist in that openness in which things come to the fore first and show themselves in their truth. it is about opening up to, and letting in, the truth of things, the truth of other people, of the world. insofar as the things-that-are (das seiende) are conceived in their relative determinacy in relation to their historic origin, these things remain open towards being, in dwelling and thinking: “in thinking we first learn of dwelling in that region, in which occur the overcoming of being’s fate, the overcoming of the constellation (das gestell).”50 only by man dwelling in the fourfold, a fourfold realized poetically, is the possibility of ethos in an age dominated by ‘constellation’ possible. here, the actual ethos is always already latently present in ‘the constellation’. man cannot but relate to the poetic, cannot but be (in an actual or inauthentic way) poetic, for “even the man of today’s age dwells, in his own way, poetically,”51 as heidegger puts it in “man’s dwelling.” yet, on the border of paradox, heidegger inserts an ethical measure into the poetic, into its very name: “man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way – namely, that is, as per (unter) the name of his dasein, unpoetically.”52 heidegger says, echoing hölderlin, that our mode of dwelling today is “unpoetic.”53 it is a mode in which “man seizes measure from an earth that his machinations leave disfigured.”54 the ‘unpoetic’ dwelling in the ‘constellation’ is a sojourn in which man relates himself to the whole world (all things in it, other people, and his own being) by seizing domination. if the unpoetic nature of our being in the world today is conceived as such, this means that “there is no measure on this earth, but rather that the earth can give no measure when it is quantified on a planetary scale, that the earth is carried away in the lack of measure.”55 poetic dwelling registers this in “the lack of holy names” and “the deity’s death”: only a sojourn in the open region, which smacks of the lack [of holy names], permits insight into that, which today is, but from which it is lacking.”56 in this regard the poet’s role comes to the fore, paradigmatically: the poet is a paradigm and exemplar, for he not merely gazes but also shows, has “the demonstrating gaze for what is open, an openness in which the divinities alone become guests and men can build an abode within which the true is, and of which men can grab hold of.”57 such bestowing of dwelling is the original dwelling of the poet, for this measure originally founds the actual dwelling of man. the poet accomplishes this by having the measure designed with ever a view to allowing himself to get 47 isparchitecture.com close to the, ever differently appearing, world. the poet’s measure, put differently, is ever built anew as the situation commands. poetic speech and its dwelling dwelling poetically, then, receives prominence in poetic speech. “how does man dwell poetically? he dwells thus because he speaks thus.”58 the poet draws on “the free use of his own ability,”59 meaning, he does not use language,60 but rather takes language for what it originally is, namely as endowment. his bestowing through language is set in conformity with being,61 and thus his endowment conforms to “the openness for what he is assigned to, the alertness of what is yet to come.”62 the poetic endowment of words resides thus in the openness for what is to come and ever possible. such openness for the alien and foreign is the poetic dwelling of the poet—a place of residence that the gods visit where they are [our] ‘guests.’63 only the poet, possessing an “essential gaze for the possible,”64 may create the very openness necessary to enable the gods to appear. the possible and the possible foundation of all assembly65 can only appear when room for such an appearance has been opened. the divinities are thus guests in our language. poetic dwelling must first become hospitality, a friendly waiting on and for the gods. whether or not man welcomes the gods with hospitality is his own decision. if he decides in favor then his words respond to the claims of the gods. consequently, man decides in favor of his belonging to the occasion or happening. poetic language serves conformity with that happening in which the gods only begin to speak (and commit themselves) to us. the word naming the divinities’ claim is the word remaining faithful to the particular (and only) selfdisplay of the phenomena. a description of how things are through poetic language is not a seizing, a determination of a thing, but the literal mirroring of that thing in the very manner it appears in. a the poet is a paradigm and exemplar, for he not merely gazes but also shows. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 48 a ur en q ue word’s validity arises for heidegger not in the “public claim of what is written,”66 but purely in the word’s relation or obligation to the thing itself. as heidegger emphasizes time and again, man has to learn actual dwelling as the dwelling of the poet. the poet joyously dwells in that “sparse nearness,”67 meaning, he knows that what appears is not the only possibility of openness (of becoming apparent), in contrast to man who only abides in the public. and since only poetic man “has the demonstrative gaze for the open,”68 it is his task to help other people to build their abodes such that in them is truth. the poet’s role is, however, for heidegger “neither to instruct, nor to educate”, but rather “he permits the reader to let be, so that he may attain by himself an affection towards the essential, to which the friend of the family [the poet] already tends so as to talk to us.”69 others don’t yet know that sojourn in “sparse nearness”—they have to yet learn how to dwell. the poet helps others to return to their home. this home is the proximity to the origin. in that home man recognizes himself, not only as “someone learning of things,” but also as someone knowing that things are “in strife.”70 the fundamental mood of reluctance is “the mood of a thinking come home to the origin.”71 akin to the underlying mood of reluctance in heidegger’s 1936-1938 contributions to philosophy, reluctance here is the “knowledge that origin cannot be experienced immediately.”72 if man persists in this fundamental mood, he knows that the mystery is more encompassing than any specific openness of being, and he remains in a stance open to the possible. in dwelling poetically, man knows that the concealed, the secret, the original, and the indemonstrable can never be transferred completely into the determinate and present. conclusion: dwelling and phenomenological ethos dwelling poetically turns out to be the actual sojourn, the actual ethos of man. man here remains open towards the possible, alert to how individual phenomena become apparent. if we re-examine that ethos more carefully, it becomes impossible to reconcile with the very possibility of an existence bound by rules a priori. the measure of poetic dwelling only ever arises from the respective sojourn in the company of things, and not from a pre-existing measure. to dwell poetically one has to forfeit the very domain of the moral, a domain in which good and evil have already been decided upon. by poetry, “the region will remain open for the presence of the mortals in [that region].”73 and yet this forfeiture of morality occurs in favor of an ethos in which the truth of things, of world and others, can attain their validity in their respective and very own way. in this way poetic dwelling connects to a philosophical ethos—because in this dwelling it is paramount to not miss out on the true self-appearance of the phenomena. 49 isparchitecture.com or put differently: the task is to take up a [form of] residence in which the equanimity74 towards the truth of things is preserved—and not the obstinate will to security. furthermore, the philosophical ethos accentuated in dwelling poetically can be said to receive primary articulation as a phenomenological ethos. how the phenomena themselves are to be perceived can never be dictated externally, but exclusively from the phenomena themselves and the very context or correlation in which they appear to us in the first place. the phenomena and their possible characters are precisely what is preserved in poetic dwelling and its poetic, endowing speech. dwelling is for heidegger of such a kind that man has to take responsibility for himself. dwelling thus carries an insurmountable intrinsic paradox: we always already dwell with what is original; precisely because we do, it remains concealed: “to dwell in one’s own is that which arises last, rarely comes together, and always remains hardest.”75 and that is why dwelling as dwelling has to be yet acquired when it comes to man, so that man can truly be what he already has been—namely, “uncanny” and foreign unto himself.76 “the most uncanny of the uncanny is man himself.”77 in his own being uncanny, foreign, and without home, resides man’s essence, even when man himself may not see this. humans essentially dwell in the fourfold, and yet in the exiguous age of modern technology they dwell without awareness of their own existence: “not yet are the mortals owners of their own essence.”78 it appears as if man dwells asleep in the fourfold. dwelling becomes what is customary,79 and escapes notice. if it does so escape notice, however, the essence of dwelling “can never be pondered as the foundational trait of being human.”80 accordingly, the age of technological domination becomes an age bereft of home and earth. man has become estranged to his own essential dwelling, and this we always already dwell with what is original; precisely because we do, it remains concealed. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 50 a ur en q ue estrangement of his essence constitutes a loss of essence itself. just as home is a becoming—namely a return to one’s own through the unfamiliar and foreign,—dwelling in the fourfold embodies that moment in which we sojourn once again with what is original. beyond that, dwelling in the fourfold denotes a specific dwelling radically different from everyday dwelling under the dominance of technology. to at all recognize the “actual want of dwelling”81 is enough to put us on a path to rescue, even if that rescue can only happen by a re-claiming of essential sojourn, of dwelling in nearness to the truth of being. heidegger’s thought “that the mortals have to ever first search for the essence of dwelling, they have to yet learn how to dwell,”82 directly portends the domain of original ethics and its original ethos. human being realizes itself only by a sojourn in the fourfold and the world of things. man’s essence only becomes manifest through a particular dwelling: “to spare the fourfold – to rescue the earth, receive the heavens, expect the gods, and accompany mortals – this four-fold sparing is the simple essence of dwelling.”83 man has to acknowledge this ‘simple essence’ of dwelling. heidegger’s enlightenment of man’s dwelling indicates the actual and thus highest form of dwelling. heidegger’s own reflections on ethos constitute a gesture indicating direction. there is a concealed and yet actual and original mode of existence, one we have to seek. dwelling in the fourfold is something we have to yet reach. and we will only reach it by coming to recognize it as man’s true dwelling. endnotes 1. this paper builds on my book, diana aurenque, ethosdenken: auf der spur einer ethischen fragestellung in der philosophie martin heideggers (freiburg im breisgau: verlag karl alber, 2001), and was translated by stefan koller. 2. martin heidegger, “letter on humanism,” in the heidegger gesamtsausgabe (ga), volume 9, page 358.—translator’s note: the gesamtsausgabe is an ongoing effort to collect the complete works of heidegger in german. with the exception of “man’s dwelling”, all heidegger translations in this paper are original to the paper, and are from here on referenced in abbreviated form, by ga volume and page number. 3. heidegger, “essay on heraclitus,” ga 55:214. 4. translator’s note: heidegger’s term for ‘being obliged’ denotes our being bound, existentially rather than morally, to something or other—even the world itself, as heidegger explains in “man’s dwelling.” see heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:215. 5. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:163. for an alternative 51 isparchitecture.com translation of this essay see martin heidegger, poetry, language, thought, trans. albert hofstadter (new york: harper row, 1971), 141-160. 6. heidegger, “from the experience of thinking,” ga 13:84. 7. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:193. for an alternative translation of this essay see heidegger, poetry, language, thought, 213-229. 8. translator’s note: as before, an idiomatic verb for ‘to make poetry’ is sorely lacking in english. such a verb exists in german and greek, and denotes not just the creation of verse (rather than prose), but more generally, to make things unconstrained by preconception and established technique. 9. cf. also heidegger, prolegomena, ga 20:213: “i dwell, reside in (and with) the world as my familiar other.” 10. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:149. 11. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:193. 12. heidegger, “the nature of language,” ga 12:202. the term further contrasts an understanding of the world as ‘gestell’, an understanding both ego-centric and dominated by means-ends practical rationality. for discussion of the fourfold, see also heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” “building dwelling thinking,” and “the thing,” as discussed below. 13. ibid. 14. heidegger, “the turn,” ga 11:121. 15. cf. heidegger, “language and home,” ga 13:180. 16. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:89. for an alternative translation, see martin heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, trans. keith hoeller (new york: humanity books, 2000). 17. heidegger, on hölderlins hymnen ‘germania’ and ‘the rhein’, ga 39:184. 18. cf. heidegger, “johann peter hebel,” ga 16:493-494: “true and elevated poetry always accomplishes this one thing only: bringing the nonapparent into appearance.” 19. heidegger, on hölderlin’s hymns ‘germania’ and ‘the rhine’, ga 39:184. 20. ibid., 33. 21.heidegger, elucidations of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:41. 22. heidegger, on hölderlin’s hymn ‘remembrance’, ga 52:121. 23. ibid. 24. heidegger, elucidations of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:113. 25. ibid. 26. ibid., 42. 27. ibid., 118. translator’s note: observe that the german for ‘one’s own’ (das eigene) here and in the sequel allows an impersonal reading where the english does not; comparable to how english translators of being and time have to render heidegger’s decidedely impersonal das man as ‘the they’. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 52 a ur en q ue 28. heidegger, on hölderin’s hymn ‘remembrance’, ga 52:123. 29. heidegger, elucidations of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:23-24. 30. heidegger, on hölderin’s hymn ‘remembrance’, ga 52:123. 31. ibid. 32. ibid. 33. ibid., 124. 34. or, wanderung. see heidegger, “address on hebel,” ga 16:537. 35. heidegger, introduction to metaphysics, ga 40:152. 36. ibid. 37. ibid.,160. 38. heidegger, eludications of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:105. 39. ibid. 40. heidegger, “the thing,” ga 7:175. translator’s note: (to be) ‘ready-tohand’ is the near literal translation of ‘vorhanden(sein)’, a key term of being and time. see heidegger, being and time, ga 2. 41. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:199. 42. translator’s note: the german ‘messen’ can importantly mean both. 43. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:200. 44. cf. ibid., 200-201. 45. ibid. 46. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:171. 47. heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:215. 48. ibid. 49. heidegger, “wherefore poets?,” ga 5:294-295. 50. heidegger, “the turn,” ga 11:71. translator’s note: ‘constellation’ (gestell) denotes the (technological) contrast of the fourfold (geviert). 51. heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:219. in order not to clutter the main text, lengthy quotations from this text have been moved to a separate appendix below. see appendix, section 31, including a less literal rendering of the present line. see further appendix, sections 1-9 on how heidegger sets up his discussion of hölderlin. 52. ibid. see also appendix, section 31. 53. see appendix, sections 22-28. heidegger’s argument here builds on the foregoing analysis in sections 15-21. 54. see appendix, sections 31-32. 55. see appendix, sections 33-35, and cf. sections 29-30. 56. heidegger, “the lack of holy names,” ga 13:235. 57. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:148. 58. heidegger, “solicited prolegomenon to a poets’ reading at bühler heights,” ga 16:470. 59. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:118. 53 isparchitecture.com 60. cf. heidegger, what is thinking, ga 8:132-133. 61. cf. heidegger, “solicited prolegomenon,” ga 16:470: “how does man speak? he speaks in conforming to language. for actually, language speaks. mortals only ever speak by conforming, and by thus having fulfilled their essence in relation to language’s own encouragement.” translator’s note: ‘conform’ and ‘fulfil’ in german are cognates of ‘language’ and ‘speak’: it is impossible to render the ensuing poetic quality of heidegger’s sentences here. 62. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:118. 63. ibid., 120. translator’s note: as will shortly become obvious, heidegger plays here on the german term for hospitality, gast-freundschaft, lit. kindness to strangers, which in greek is xenia (antonym: xeno-phobia): the stranger or xenos is shown hospitality, and the greek gods would typically travel under the disguise of a foreign visitor or xenos. 64. heidegger, on the essence of truth, ga 34:64. 65. translator’s note: gathering (versammlung) corresponds in ancient greek to ekklesia, our word for church, as in ‘ecclesiastic’. 66. heidegger, “solicited prolegomenon,” ga 16:471. 67. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:25. 68. ibid., 148. 69. heidegger, “address on hebel,” ga 16:541. 70. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:36. 71. ibid., 131. 72. ibid. 73. heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:215. see appendix, section 12, with sections 10-11, 13-14. 74. translator’s note: gelassenheit is cognate with the earlier ‘einlassen auf’, a verb used earlier to denote how man should be open to things—by letting them be as they are, also in relation to him, as opposed to seeking to control things by technical means or means-ends reasoning. 75. heidegger, hölderlin’s hymn ‘the ister’, ga 53:24. 76. translator’s note: heidegger plays on the german relation of ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich) to the lack of ‘home’ (heim). 77. heidegger, hölderlin’s hymn ‘the ister’, ga 53:83. 78. heidegger, “wherefore poets?,” ga 5:274. 79. translator’s note: in german, ‘gewöhnung,’ a pun on ‘dwelling’ (wohnen). 80. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:150. 81. ibid., 163. 82. ibid. 83. ibid., 161. see again the definition of the fourfold. isparchitecture.com use-value value and the question of completion emre demirel the post-modernist approach to architecture often presents tradition as a problem of image [2]. postmodernism prioritizes the display of stylized images of historic buildings in order to prompt one to deal primarily with the visual appeal of the historic forms rather than the (bodily and emotional) experience of the buildings [3]. tradition is polarized against modernity when it is treated as a reconstruction of past images or styles, which is to say that the appearance of traditional buildings or their object-like material presences are treated as always complete and fixed to a particular point in time when they were built. when tradition is understood in purely visual terms, it loses its relevance in our modern world, becoming instead a static image of the past. the rigidity of historical images creates a sense that tradition has nothing to do with future imaginations, and history’s appeal operates by virtue of its fictive attributes [4]. past images or styles cannot be re-created in the present time. when they are re-constructed today they permanently demarcate the moment to which they belong. on the other hand, the bodily and emotional experiences of such buildings are free of time. such experiences could be re-embodied through new building materials and techniques tradition is polarized against modernity when it is treated as a reconstruction “ ” you say to me: ‘you understand this expression, don’t you? well then – i am using it in the sense you are familiar with’. – as if the sense were an atmosphere accompanying the word, which is carried into every kind of application. ludwig wittgenstein [1] ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 170 de m ir el which are specific to the present time. the possibility of the re-embodiment of our emotional experiences from a traditional environment opens a door to new architectural configurations and the invention of an alternative modernity which is connected to our past. looking from a non-visual but tactile view point, tradition can be considered as incomplete and enduringly open to new completions by offering a negotiable dialogue between the past and future. in order to explore how tradition can be understood in terms of the building’s physical qualities so as to open tradition to future inventive possibilities, wittgenstein’s philosophical proposition of meaning as use is herein used as the basis of argument. wittgenstein’s proposition suggests meaning cannot be predetermined or contain absolute definitions limiting our understanding to fixed mental images or other forms of representation. meaning is provisional, open-ended, and continuously re-configures itself as it is used [5]. the flexibility and fluidity of wittgenstein’s definition of meaning suggests that our understanding of things can be viewed in both complete and incomplete aspects. what is completed is associated with an object-like presence or, in edmund husserl’s terms, with the object of thought, whereas what is not yet complete refers to use, the experience of things, or the act of thought, all of which require active bodily engagement in the environment [6]. before going into further detail, it might be useful to explain briefly what is meant by the word completion. the word complete is defined as “lacking nothing, whole, entire, full, or having all the required or complementary parts included; something undivided, uncompromised or unmodified” [7]. such a definition indicates any kind of situation or process that has already ended. therefore, complete suggests any case that has been fully established in itself or reached an ideal form which has no flexibility or tolerance for further interference. on this basis, paul ricoeur distinguishes between two types of meaning: ideal (complete or absolute) and circumstantial (or situational). according to the first type, the grasp of language occurs in reference to the absolute presence of objects, materials or actions. the absolute is similar to the way a dictionary introduces a term’s meaning within purely objectified and pictoral norms. the second type, on the other hand, suggests a grasp of language based on our experiences of the lived world. accordingly, ricoeur draws attention to the differences between names (words) and sentences. while any single name or word individually refers to the purified object-like presence of the thing as defined in the dictionary, a sentence refers to our lived experiences, our circumstantial engagements with the environment [8]. 171 isparchitecture.com regarding our lived experiences, ricoeur underlines the second concept: the process of completion or fulfillment. he argues that whatever we have experienced in the past remains in our minds or memories and in turn all these experiences cause us to re-embody these through new actions, events, or structures. it is like referring to past experiences for our future actions. what is meant by the term completion is simply the re-embodiment of our lived (emotional) experiences, and this embodiment renews itself continuously [9]. as hannah arendt notes, our lived experiences are like an invisible energy which enduringly holds a potential to be converted into a new concrete entity [10]. applying this approach to tradition, it can be said that stylistic engagements present tradition as a picture: like reality, they develop a kind of normative understanding of tradition. however, our sentimental engagements with traditional environments structure our emotional experiences of them. these experiences are always open to renewals or new completions as they could be re-embodied through new modes of building materials and building techniques. taking wittgenstein’s position as a framework for this analysis, tradition is generally completed as an image or picture reality when it is engaged with its object-like qualities. when tradition is introduced as a display commodity, our encounter with tradition is reduced to a visual understanding. within the terms of visual understanding’s reduction, tradition can only be contemplated retroactively in picturesque re-productions but not in new beginnings. wittgenstein’s approach draws attention to the experiential and participatory qualities of traditional environments [11]. such qualities can never be concretized by specifically defined stylistic orders; they are formless but at the same time formative; our emotional experiences and participation within spaces act like an invisible power that continuously initiates a person into meaning is provisional, open-ended, and continuously reconfigures itself as it is used. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 172 de m ir el re-embodying it as new architectural reality. the question of completion in tradition will be demonstrated with three examples. the first is a miniature painting by the persian artist kamal al-din bihzad (1450-1535), the second is a series of le corbusier’s sketches of istanbul and the green mosque—which were done during his trip to turkey in 1910—and the final example is the 1994 b2 house designed by the turkish architect han tümertekin. at first glance these examples might appear completely different and irrelevant to one another. however, when the sketches are closely analyzed they reveal distinctly similar positions regarding the concept of tradition. the common point between kamal al-din bihzad, le corbusier, and han tümertekin is that they propose an alternative way of understanding tradition which suggests that one considers tradition not as a fixed object-like reality—or what is typically rendered as stylistic images or the outer appearance of building facades—but rather as an experiential reality, which is to say, a reality that is fluid, unfixed, and open to new configurations. from this perspective, kamal al-din bihzad, le corbusier, and han tümertekin share similar grounds in that each envisions architecture not as an object to be seen but rather as an articulation of an emotive terrain [12]. the emotive terrain does not prioritize the optical but rather a full bodily and sensuous contact with the physical built environment. such an approach leads to a perception that traditional architecture is not primarily a physical but rather an existential entity. viewing miniatures through the eyes of wittgenstein the fifteenth century miniature painting by the persian artist kamal al-din bihzad (1450-1535) depicts a famous religious event: the escape of the prophet joseph from his lover zulaykha. zulaykha, the wife of the respected egyptian officer potiphar, falls in love with joseph and seduces him in her house. joseph attempts to flee, but the house is structured in such a way as to make escape difficult (figure 1). although bihzad was a talented painter and well aware of perspective, he opts to depict the cosmos in a distorted manner [13]. the distortion goes beyond the compositional technique typical of miniature paintings. it also relates to his way of conceptualizing architecture. the representation of architecture reveals something of bihzad’s idea about what architecture itself means to the human mind. on closer inspection, bihzad avoids illustrating a literal or realistic representation of the building. he was apparently not interested in how the building could be seen from the outside. rather, his interest lies in what could be 173 isparchitecture.com figure 1: the palace of potiphar and the escape of joseph. illustrated by kamal al-din bihzad (1450 – 1535). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 174 de m ir el emotionally experienced moving from one space to another throughout the building [14]. as seen in the painting, the overall composition is established in the patterning of oblique lines. the movement—or the escape of joseph from one space to another—is sensed through the change of door color, each located on the oblique lines. each oblique wall draws attention to the movement from one closed door to another. the attention to each door creates a feeling as if someone is running from one corner to another in a labyrinth but cannot find a way out. there are many oblique walls and lines that suddenly change colors, creating a chaotic and confined atmosphere. as it is seen in the miniature, the building is not presented as an enclosed space; rather it looks like an unfolded box or an unwrapped three-dimensional shape. it seems that bihzad did not envision the building in the sense of an object, which is apparent in bihzad’s treatment of shape and profile as a topoi or a cartographic map. in paul rodaway’s terms, a topoi is the collection of emotional experiences and sentimental contacts that all draw an unfixed, re-imaginative, shapeless world [15]. according to sufi philosophy, the case of shapelessness always presents the challenges of re-embodiment or finding new form, but perhaps such a challenge is unattainable for any sustained period [16]. the concept of shapelessness is similar to the idea that whatever meaning we attribute to the environment renews itself as we use it, or, in other words, as we sentimentally experience it each time. bihzad’s approach runs parallel to wittgenstein’s idea of meaning as use. looking at this miniature painting from wittgenstein’s point of view, bihzad tries to create a perception of the cosmos which renders itself in an account of use rather than in picturing reality. as explained above, use refers to our bodily involvement with things and activities; it is highly connected to what we experience sentimentally through our environment [17]. as wittgenstein asserted, any temptation to concretize meaning reduces our understanding of it to mental representations [18]. presenting architectural reality as a fixed physical presence is avoided by bihzad. his interest lies in the shapeless presence of the building, as if he wants us to think about the paradox which is, in wittgenstein’s terms, between the non-existence of the intended object and the fullness of the seen object [19]. the way bizhad conceptualizes architecture constructs a kind of vision that recommends how to look at tradition and traditional architecture. in the miniature, what we see is an example of traditional architecture, but it is presented in a way that is dramatically different from the way 175 isparchitecture.com figure 2: le corbusier, majesticsilhouettes of themosques on the”hugehumpedback tostamboul”, 1911. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 176 de m ir el the postmodern has conditioned us to see tradition. the building is presented not in a completed shape; rather, it looks shapeless. the reason for presenting reality in such a way is closely linked to how bihzad wants us to give meaning to (traditional) architecture. it seems bihzad brought architecture into consideration not as a question of the object, which is how postmodernity intends to shape our perception of the traditional environment, but as a question of completion. the question of completion is not concerned with the reproduction of reality (representing as fully as possible the appearance of things and thus repeating past forms and styles) which is already completed; instead, it is primarily concerned with the re-activation of what is sensually experienced, which leads the way toward the configuration of new realities. miniatures and le corbusier’s drawings: re-conceptualizing tradition the analysis of one of bihzad’s miniatures has shown that the building is not presented with a photorealistic impression. it was argued that lack of photorealistic impression is closely linked with how bihzad conceptualizes architecture. he constructs a vision about the built premises that suggests the viewer consider traditional architecture not in the sense of its material reality but in the sense of what we emotionally experience through it. thus, bihzad’s engagement with the traditionally built environment is in this regard parallel to how le corbusier considers tradition. le corbusier’s approach is clearly demonstrated by his sketches of istanbul and the green mosque in bursa during his trip to turkey in 1910 [20]. although the sketches were made using different painting techniques and materials, like bihzad, le corbusier did not picture the buildings in the way they realistically appear. le corbusier’s concern was not the outer appearance of the buildings or their stylistic images, but what he emotionally experienced through his immersion in the historic environment. looking at le corbusier’s sketches more closely, it can be seen that they lack any photorealistic depiction or clearly rendered detail; his record of the existing built environment was always intentionally left incomplete (figure 2). as in bihzad’s miniature, the manner of incompleteness releases the architectural object from its physical existence and converts it into an experience of its emotional ambiance. in doing so, the sketches refresh our engagement with the architectural object in keeping the prospect of wonder alive and arousing different emotional states in each and every moment viewed. thereby, our perception of the architectural figure is not confined to the aesthetic definition of its absolute object-like appearance, and is instead left open-ended to new emotional encounters. 177 isparchitecture.com figure 5: the sultan’s prayer room is noted in le corbusier’s drawing as the darkest place. emotional effect created by the transition from darker to lighter spaces thet primarily indicated in le corbusier’s plan drawing. figures 3 & 4: floor plan of the green mosque in bursa by leon parville (left); plan sketch of the green mosque in bursa by le corbusier (right). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 178 de m ir el the aforementioned attitude of le corbusier can also be attributed to his drawing of the green mosque. le corbusier’s notation on the plan of the green mosque demonstrates that he is imprecise about the exact position of the walls, the location of the outer windows and the doors, and does not elaborate the ornamental details that emphasize the material-like presence of the building. instead, he keenly illustrates the emotional reactions created in the transition from the darker to the brighter and from the brighter to the darker spaces. le corbusier does not intend the drawing to re-construct the object-like presence of this traditional building but rather reconfigure its emotional cartography [21]. for example, the darkest hatch is the sultan’s prayer room, which was clad with dark blue tiles and was located opposite to the large prayer hall clad with white marble (figures 3-5). moving from the lower darker space to a higher and brighter space creates an emotional experience that affects how the building renders itself in our mind. le corbusier’s concern is not what exists as a literal built reality but as a sensed reality. again, the aim of analyzing le corbusier’s drawing of the green mosque is not to show the material le corbusier engaged. instead, it is to reveal his working methods insofar as tradition is concerned. his visual notations demonstrate that his approach to tradition is not architectural but topical [22]. this nonarchitectural but topical vision is in keeping with how bihzad and the turkish architect han tümertekin engage with tradition. overall the point of significance is not le corbusier’s sketching or painting methods. instead, his alternative method of engaging traditional architecture is the point of interest. as elaborated above, le corbusier offers a model for understanding tradition [23]. for le corbusier, tradition is not the fixation of things in representations inherited from the past, such consideration that inevitably causes the development of a standardized position toward tradition highly conditioned by pre-defined patterns. instead, tradition suggests new beginnings for le corbusier. he exemplifies the alternative notion of tradition in his paintings as he does not limit reality to pre-defined norms and patterns or to picturesque definitions. instead, he intended to evoke different emotional reactions each time his paintings were viewed. therefore, his painting is alive and dynamic as it produces new feelings and thus new meanings at each viewing of it. le corbusier’s attempt to re-approach tradition is similar to a wittgensteinian philosophical approach in that both suggest discovery is what makes meaning renewable. putting things into rigid preconceived patterns of what they ought to mean makes our perception of meaning past-oriented because meaning 179 isparchitecture.com refers to the moment when things first appeared to us. like the outer appearance of the building, the patterns are already constructed and mark the moment of the time completed. however, what makes meanings persist through time is perhaps their shapelessness that puts actions in the first place as opposed to meanings. within the context of this issue, how tradition could be future-oriented is the main question of this paper [24]. b2 house the b2 house was built in a small traditional mediterranean enclave, büyükhüsun, in northwestern anatolia. this small settlement is established on a mountain slope, which descends steeply southward towards the aegean sea below. it is a couple of miles away from the ancient greek city of assos located on the coast. büyükhüsun is a traditional town and in keeping with the town’s look and feel, the intention of han tümertekin was to create a traditional house [25]. when the awardwinning house was built, the building’s front facade (figure 8) drew the attention of respected local and international journals. however, tümertekin’s approach to tradition was different. on the one hand, the architect controversially reveals the ways in which modernity has conditioned us to see traditional architecture. on the other hand, his figures 6-8: view of b2 house overlooking aegean sea and lesvos island; distant view of b2 house subtly emerging from landscape; and view of front facade (left to right). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 180 de m ir el figure 9: sketch of b2 house depicting tensions between defined and undefined boundaries. figure 10: view of retaining wall and building suggesting a kind spatial dialogue between the two. figure 11: view of house and rear retaining wall. figure 12: view of house and rear retaining wall. 181 isparchitecture.com approach strongly parallels the way both miniaturist bihzad and le corbusier consider traditional turkish architecture, particularly when looking to a wittgensteinian inspired reading of tradition. approaching the enclave, the settlement’s houses have a landscaped look, as they are camouflaged to blend into the slope’s surface. among them is the b2 house, which stands with a back-like front, aligning with its context. it is not visually insistent and therefore does not dominate over the other buildings. on the front facade, tümertekin refrained from a picturesque definition. the large binding panels made by reed strips create a plain front surface unrelated to any picturesque display of existing traditional dwellings. in the overall simplicity, only the bindings’ colors permit the building to be seen from a distance. before gaining a clear idea of the appearance of the building, the dark-brown color strikes the eye and evokes curiosity. the experience of the building piques interest before one even arrives at it (figures 6 & 7). the starting point for tümertekin is the retaining wall at the back rather than the building itself. however, tümertekin’s intention is more than constructing a simple wall to hold the earth behind. his intention, rather, is to continue the angled pattern of the already existing traditional street. following the street pattern, the building was not designed as an absolutely individual object. it emerges as a seemingly natural outcome of the continuing wall (figure 8). the retaining wall begins before a person arrives at the boundary of the building and in doing so, it prolongs the path that one normally expects to complete at the building’s main entrance. however, when a person arrives at the entrance door, the retaining wall immediately directs attentions to another distant point. the purpose of the retaining wall is not defining a physical boundary but rather topographically the confinment to appearance practiced in an architectural context can be interpreted as the idealization of meanings. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 182 de m ir el narrating the building as evoking a bodily and emotional experience. in fact tümertekin does not want the visitor to face the building immediately. as gill explained by referring to wittgenstein, immediacy is limitation [26]. when we grasp things immediately, our understanding of the things are reduced to the visual level [27]. such understanding is like the way a dictionary presents things as a momental event that allows no freedom to consider them habitually [28]. here delaying the arrival enables bodily involvement with the building, which happens before the visual one. the delay in turn gives time to construct the architecture mentally in the mind before physically experiencing it. the other intention of tümertekin’s retaining wall is to create a streetlike settlement. he addresses the experience of the turkish street. for tümertekin, the street is not a collection of the building facades set sideby-side. rather, he considers it a journey already-begun in order to enact it bodily. neither the retaining wall on the left nor the blind wall of the building on the right is directly related to any appearance of the traditional turkish houses specific to the region. his attempt is not to re-picture them but rather to allow traditional architecture to re-establish meaning as the re-embodiment of what we have bodily and sentimentally experienced through the setting. therefore, the building reveals its meaning not so much when someone looks at its front and other façades individually, as when one actively participates in the journey which starts from the enclave and continues throughout the building. the irregular relationship between the retaining wall and the north face of the building is manipulated in such a way as to create a spatial dialogue that encourages bodily experience. arriving at this point, one faces a lower retaining wall, which is positioned in such a way as to create a passageway to the other side of the building. on first viewing, the convergence of the retaining wall and the building itself gives the impression that the journey to the building site is complete. however, this is not actually so. surprisingly, on approach, the upper wooden deck immediately frames the view far beyond the building, and, together with the lower retaining wall (in the middle), takes the attention away from the building to the sea and to the infinite horizon in the rear (figures 9-12). tümertekin’s intention is not to create a destination that is completed by physical boundaries, but rather to create the sense of an incomplete journey. here the temptation is always to draw attention toward the back of the building. in contrast to a building’s front, david leatherbarrow argues that “the back is hardly an identifiable figure, neither a picture-like 183 isparchitecture.com figure 13: main floor plan of the b2 house. figures 14 & 15: floor plan of traditional turkish house juxtaposed with photograph of traditional turkish house (left to right). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 184 de m ir el display of representational shapes” [29]. yet, for tümertekin, the building does not consist simply of its outer appearance. its appearance constitutes an emotional experience engendered by bodily movement, responding through personal interaction with all aspects of the building [30]. in doing so, more emphasis is given to invisible presence, which is re-configurable ad infinitum over time. for tümertekin architecture does not start when we physically enter the building but rather occurs at the moment we sentimentally begin to experience things related to the building before and after arriving within its physical boundaries. architecture begins when the building begins to alert one’s feelings and evoke some anticipation. in this regard, tümertekin addresses the traditional turkish mediterranean houses in bodrum. the b2 house’s design was based on the same traditional experience, as described by the architect here: i am gradually thinking that architecture lies in the differences between the physical boundary and the perceived boundary. […] first i formulized this a little with the bodrum house; here the boundary of the house physically exists, but these are the boundaries that are set up when only the doors are closed. outdoor and indoor are deliberately interlaced with each other. during day-time the sliding doors of the house around the courtyard remain open and the garden continues into the inside and the inside continues into the garden. this obscurity is so advanced that when all these sliding doors are closing at night-time, the small kid says that his grandmother is setting up a house […]. there are two boundaries; one is physically what you own and the other is what you can see beyond or what you can perceive a location which is yours and not yours [31]. accordingly, architecture has two boundaries. in the first case one can physically see it, and in the other, one can sense it, but cannot show or empirically demonstrate it. mentally, architecture first occurs at the moment of tension between these defined and undefined albeit boundaries. the tension is the same that wittgenstein described as the emptiness of the intended sign and the fullness of presence [32]. accordingly, architecture may not be limited by its physical boundaries. its sentimental boundaries are not stabilized as exactly as the physical ones, and therefore they are incomplete. the experience of boundary continues both before and after. the continuation is what tümertekin sought to achieve using the uniquely placed retaining wall. in fact, buildings are constructed on the definition of physical boundaries which separate inside from outside. however, when too much focus is given to boundaries, architecture reduces itself to a frontal articulation, or an outward appearance. addressing wittgenstein, the confinement 185 isparchitecture.com to appearance practiced in an architectural context can be interpreted as the idealization of meanings. in other words, reducing circumstantial meanings to ideal ones occurs when things are decontextualized from the intended audience and environment [33]. the crucial point for tümertekin is creating a journey before creating the object itself. creating a journey means taking off any façade-like frontal barrier and by doing so initiating a person to move. in one sense, tümertekin’s manner addresses how the miniature artist bihzad perceives architecture, which is façade-less and boundless so that it is presented in a picturesquely less defined and more ambiguous form. it comes into being as an unfolded box or a topoi, a sentimental narration of landscape that contains a collection of emotional moments. in the b2 house, the utility spaces appear withdrawn and are located in the back. as a result, there is large empty living space generated for the daily use. the living space is not divided into smaller rooms, going so far as to have no interior wall or partition separating the terrace. the space is like a large room, except for a wardrobe compulsorily used to separate two bedrooms on the upper floor. in contrast, it is completely left open and tolerant of future arrangements and other incremental adaptations that occur as someone inhabits the space. in that sense, the way tümertekin arranged the house’s layout is attributed to the re-embodiment of the traditional mediterranean turkish house experience (figures 13-15). in those dwellings, all functional places and storage units are placed to the sides allowing for the creation of a large open space in the middle perfect for a variety of social activities [34]. as turkish scholar and architect cengiz bektaş has noted, traditional turkish architecture is so often tempted to eliminate frontal barriers and characterizes itself as an open venue [35]. even furniture is constructed as earth-bounded element; any object used for sitting is not much heightened or separated from wherever it is located. such objects are introduced as part of their ground. less heightened furniture does not sharply separate one space allocated for a specific activity from others arranged in a single living room. so the entire floor is a piece of furniture, not confined to a predetermined activity. more openness increases the opportunities for possible bodily interactions with the space. taking traditional turkish architecture as reference, the intention of tümertekin is not to create architecture in the sense of building, because building to him means to verticalize things or construct spatial elements in a vertical sense. verticalization physically gives space a boundary or physical definition. instead the tendency in experiencing the b2 house is to eliminate a definitive account or sense of ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 186 de m ir el total completion as much as possible. the b2 house interior comes into being in the sense of topology [36], an open venue that continually takes shape as someone interacts with it. perhaps there are other factors, beyond the way of interpreting tradition, contributing to the b2 house’s success. however, when looking at the region where the b2 house was built—büyüksun—many buildings imitate local traditional buildings by using local materials. many originally concrete buildings are clad with traditional facades consisting of stylistic figures and ornaments. the superficial use of material strengthens the stylistic consciousness of tradition created by post-modernist tendencies. that the b2 house exemplifies a model of encountering tradition in building, not in an imitative manner but in an inventive one, remains worthy of exploration. conclusion the philosophical approach of wittgenstein’s meaning as use is a model for an alternative way of considering tradition in architecture. a miniature painting by bihzad, sketches of istanbul and the green mosque by le corbusier, and the b2 house design by han tümertekin were the examples of how wittgenstein’s notion of tradition transpires in architecture. although it seems that these examples appear quite different in material and method, or that they are seemingly irrelevant to one another, they share the same concern and propose a similar approach to tradition. how each handles tradition, as demonstrated here, serves as a model for contemporary practice, which maintains a propensity toward an incessant vacillation between the imitation of the past and the ultratechnocratic conception of the future. the alternative is consistent albeit constantly in flux. it is not limited to an encounter with the historic image of buildings, but is rather concerned with what is emotionally experienced or communicated through them. the emotional reading of buildings could explain why bihzad avoided photorealistic, object-like depiction of the buildings in his miniatures and likewise why le corbusier’s sketches lack any precise depiction. the main interest of these thinkers was not representing a picture of reality but rather the emotional contact between a sensuous body and the built environment. in a similar way, the b2 house comes into being not as a re-figuration of the traditional motifs but as a re-embodiment of the emotional experiences of traditional building. their conceptualization of tradition addresses wittgenstein’s criticism that the fixation of a meaning is a kind of idealization that converts things into frozen mental images. yet, as husserl suggested, anything more ideal 187 isparchitecture.com means more remote and independent from its audiences; idealization is subject to mere objectification. the concern then is not the object-like presence of the traditionally built environment, but the sentimental contact with it however so conceived. as merleau-ponty suggested, our direct bodily (and sentimental) involvement with things is always provisional, indeterminate, and open-ended [37]. merleau-ponty’s idea could be interpreted to mean that the appearances of traditional forms are fixed to a particular time when they are constructed. however, the sentimental connections are renewable; they can be re-collected and re-embodied through new materials and forms specific to the present time. in doing so, they hold out the promise of new architectural configurations derived from traditional architecture. as such, the b2 house can be taken as an example of how tradition can play an inventive role in an alternative modernity. endnotes [1] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, trans. p. m. s. hacker and j. schulte (west sussex: blackwell publishing ltd, 2009), §117. [2] joseph rykwert, the necessity of artifice (new york: rizzoli, 1982). see also david leatherbarrow, the roots of architectural invention: site, enclosure, materials (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1993) and nathaniel coleman, utopias and architecture (london and new york: routledge, 2005). [3] hannah arendt, between past and future: eight exercises in political thought (new york: viking press, 1968). [4] ibid. [5] wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, §43. [6] edmund husserl, logical investigations, vol. 1 (international library of philosophy, trans. j. n. findlay (oxon: routledge, 2001). [7] july 16, 2015, “complete,” dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/ browse/complete?s=t [8] paul ricoeur, “the later wittgenstein and the later husserl on language,” ricoeur studies 5, no. 1 (2014). [9] ibid. [10] arendt, between past and future. [11] máire eithne o’neill, “corporeal experience: a haptic way of knowing,” journal of architectural education 55, no. 1 (2001): 3-12. see also david seamon, “body-subject, time-space routines, and place ballets,” in the human experience of space and place, ed. anne buttimer and david seamon (london: croom helm, 1980), 157-158. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 188 de m ir el [12] giuliana bruno, atlas of emotion: journeys in art, architecture, and film (new york: verso, 2002). [13] michael barry, figurative art in medieval islam: and the riddle of bihzad of herat (1465-1535) (spain: jcg, 2005). [14] robert hillenbrand, “the uses of space in timurid painting,” in timurid art and culture: iran and central asia in the fifteenth century, ed. lisa golombek and maria subtelny (netherlands: e. j. brill, 1992), 76-102. [15] paul rodaway, sensuous geographies: body, sense and place (london: routledge, 1994). [16] william c. chittick, the sufi path of knowledge: ibn al-arabi’s metaphysics of imagination (albany: state university of new york press, 1989). [17] walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” in illuminations, ed. hannah arendt (new york: schocken book, 1968), pp. 217-51. [18] ludwig wittgenstein, the blue and brown books: preliminary studies for the philosophical investigations (new york: harper and row, 1965). [19] ricoeur, “the later wittgenstein and the later husserl on language,” 28-48. [20] le corbusier, journey to the east, trans. ivan zaknic (cambridge: the mit press, 2007). see also le corbusier, towards a new architecture, trans. f. etchells (new york: dover publications inc, 1986). [21] bruno, atlas of emotion. [22] david leatherbarrow, topographical stories: studies in landscape and architecture (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2004). [23] alois riegl, problems of style: foundations for a history of ornament, trans. evelyn kain (princeton: princeton university press, 1993). [24] benjamin r. tilghman, wittgenstein, ethics, and aesthetics: the view from eternity (london: macmillan, 1991). [25] tansel korkmaz, “b2 house: both strange and familiar,” domus, last modified february 24, 2005, http://www.domusweb.it/en/ architecture/2005/02/24/b2-house.html. [26] jerry h. gill, “language and reality: whitehead, wittgenstein, and the analytic,” process studies 43, no. 1 (2004): 59-67. [27] david trotter, “sterescopy: modernism and the haptic,” critical quarterly 46, no. 4 (2004): 38-58. [28] riegl, problems of style. [29] david leatherbarrow, uncommon ground: architecture, technology and 189 isparchitecture.com topography (cambridge: the mit press, 2000), 173. [30] o’neill, “corporeal experience,” 157-158. [31] “han tumertekin söyleşi,” arkitera, accessed may 1, 2009, http://www.arkitera.com/v1/diyalog/hantumertekin/soylesi/html. [32] ricoeur, “the later wittgenstein and the later husserl on language,” 28-48. [33] nicholas f. gier, wittgenstein and phenomenology: a comparative study of the later wittgenstein, husserl, heidegger, and merleau-ponty (albany: state university of new york press, 1981). [34] önder küçükerman, turkish house: in search of spatial identity (istanbul: touring and automobile association of turkey, 1996). [35] cengiz bektaş, türk evi (istanbul: yem yayın, 2016). [36] leatherbarrow, topographical stories. [37] maurice merleau-ponty, phenomenology of perception (london and new york: routledge, 2000). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 the fact that buildings are so strongly associated with various power holding empires, nation-states and other forms of civilization is widely recognized in the study of both the history of people and their buildings. from pericles’s acropolis to niemeyer’s brasilia, architecture has long been associated with political figures and institutions. buildings such as the british parliament, the russian kremlin, and the u.s. capitol stand out not just as iconic architecture, but also as representative of the politics, institutions, and culture of their nations. architecture and politics are intimately connected, yet precisely how are political concepts captured in the form and function of buildings? certainly utility plays a strong role here. we know that buildings serve the establishment and maintenance of a governing body. but in serving that function, do they also necessarily contribute to maintaining a particular ideological belief system? if we acknowledge that buildings hold both deterministic effect and autonomous disassociation, how do architects and politicians act? to what extent should architects design public structures intended to capture the social and political ethos of the people? do architects have an obligation to address the socio-political in their work, or is this kind of moral obligation misplaced? is it rather that the work of architects is already tacitly, inextricably part of the political isparchitecture.com call for papers: biennial society conference ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 process? and to what end? is the ‘autonomous turn’ in architecture of the 1980s well and truly dead? beyond considerations of functionality, how do rulers utilize building to achieve their political goals and ideals? is building fundamental to realizing ideological goals or a mere part of the process? one might also worry that we read too much into the social and political power of architects and buildings. while power routinely uses architecture to further its agenda, how reliably can we read buildings as instances of specific intentions? architecture can be a highly political art form, but what can be said about the relationship between political intentions and aesthetic merit? are there styles or typologies particularly conducive to establishing and maintaining power? is the association of contemporary democracy with classical greek and roman architecture appropriate or warranted? and is the style’s reverence intrinsic or learned? could the romanesque not equally as well serve the same purpose? assuming that buildings are already intrinsically enmeshed within the governing body’s authority, can a single building work against that same authority? can a building undermine a regime more readily than it can legitimize it? some may argue that the berlin wall marked the end of the communist rule over eastern germany, but how much weight can we ascribe to a building’s maintenance of a governing body? does time sanitize architecture that came into existence in the service of repugnant regimes? how effective, for instance, are efforts to rebuild iraq? do contractors design buildings that are consistent with the social and political climate of the people? can the people interpret these buildings independently of their feelings about the builders? could it be that the very act of building in iraq may be taken as an offense by some in the iraqi nation-state? although not all instances of international exchange are as contentious as this one, can architecture be incompatible with particular political concepts or systems? finally, what of the relation between architecture, power and capital? does the globalization of capital and in its wake, of architecture, render architecture’s connection to any individual state obsolete? or to put it another way, is everything becoming an expression of the values of global capital? the intent of this interdisciplinary conference is to gather philosophers, architects, urban planners, and critics to consider these questions regarding building’s service to political ideologies, governing authorities, and sociopolitical contexts. the event will be held in one of the most iconic and representative projects of the international style of 20th century modern public architecture: walter netsch jr.’s united states air force academy—a premier education facility— in colorado springs, colorado. the conference itself will be held in the latest addition to the academy: the new polaris hall—a 45 million dollar addition isparchitecture.com designed by som that remains true to netsch’s original vision. the stunning new addition breathes new life into a pristinely preserved modernist campus, a detailed analysis of which is featured in the journal of the american institute of architects. in addition to the conference, presenters and participants will have the rare opportunity to tour the academy, including the well-known academy chapel with its four distinct worship spaces. full consideration will be given to all proposals (500-700 words) received by 15 january 2018; acceptances announced no later than 12 february 2018. send your proposal as an attachment prepared for blind review to isparchitecture[at]gmail.com. a selection of papers will be published in a special issue of architecture philosophy, edited by prof. tom spector, dr. mark jensen, and dr. carolyn fahey.. the ethical criticism of architecture: in defense of moderate moralism christoph baumberger the practice of architectural criticism is supercharged with ethical evaluations. we praise certain works of architecture for their sustainability, their inspiring and enlivening character, their encouragement of an autonomous and satisfying life for their users, or their contribution to the peaceful cohabitation of different social or ethnic groups. we criticize other works for the harm they cause to the environment, for their negative impact on the health or well-being of human beings, for the morally reprehensible attitudes they convey or the morally despicable functions they serve. such assessments of architectural works are of an ethical nature, or at least possess an ethical dimension. i take this feature of architectural criticism seriously and wish to address two questions1: do ethical assessments of architectural works have any bearing on their value as works of architecture? and how is the ethical value of an architectural work related to its aesthetic value? the answers i defend are, roughly, that the ethical value of an architectural work has a bearing on its architectural value, and that the ethical and aesthetic value of such a work have a bearing on each other. more precisely: 1) a work of architecture will in some cases be architecturally flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it has ethical flaws (or merits). 2) a work of architecture will in some cases be aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it has ethical flaws (or merits). 3) a work of architecture will in some cases be ethically flawed (or meritorious) due to the moderate moralism claims that the relations between the ethical value and the aesthetic and architectural value are invariant and symmetric. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 180 ba um be r ge r fact that it has aesthetic flaws (or merits). in claims 1 to 3, “work of architecture” is to be understood in a very broad sense, including works of artistic as well as of everyday architecture, and buildings as well as other elements of the built environment, such as bridges and squares.2 such a broad notion of an architectural work suits my purpose since buildings and other elements of the built environment can – regardless of whether they are artworks or not – be judged from an ethical as well as from an aesthetic point of view, and it certainly makes sense to assess their overall value, what i call “architectural value”.3 the questions about the relation between ethical, aesthetic and architectural value arises thus for architectural works in the broad sense. moreover, this broad notion is of great importance since our built environment contains much more than buildings, and most of what it contains are not (or, at least, are not typically considered to be) artworks. in this article, my main concern is to defend claims 1 to 3. in my argument i will mention particular works of architecture, but any detailed examination of specific works is beyond the scope of this article and will have to wait for another occasion. before i defend my three core claims (sections 2 to 4), i first further specify the proposed view these claims substantiate, distinguish that view from opposing views and explain what is at stake in holding the view (section 1). 1. moderate moralism claims 1 to 3 define what i call moderate moralism with respect to architecture. it is a form of moralism for two reasons. firstly, it claims that there is some ‘interaction’ between ethical assessments of architectural works and their aesthetic and architectural assessments, where claims 1 to 3 define the nature of that interaction. this distinguishes moderate moralism from autonomism, which holds that ethical flaws or merits are never aesthetically and/or architecturally relevant; either because it makes no sense to morally evaluate works of architecture (radical autonomism), or because the ethical assessment and the aesthetic or the architectural assessment of an architectural work never interact (moderate autonomism). secondly, moderate moralism claims that the relations between the ethical value and the aesthetic and architectural value are invariant and symmetric, i.e. positive ethical qualities are always associated with positive aesthetic and architectural qualities and negative ethical qualities are always associated with negative aesthetic and architectural qualities. this distinguishes it from contextualism, which agrees with moderate moralism that the ethical value of a work of architecture can have a bearing on the 181 isparchitecture.com aesthetic and architectural value, but takes it to be a contextual matter whether an ethical flaw or merit is aesthetically and/or architecturally meritorious or defective. according to contextualism, the relations between ethical, aesthetic and architectural values are complex and invertible, i.e. negative ethical qualities can in certain cases be associated with positive aesthetic or architectural qualities, and vice versa. in this respect, moderate moralism is more demanding than contextualism.4 what makes it nonetheless a moderate form of moralism is that it does not claim that ethical assessments of architectural works and their aesthetic and architectural assessments always interact. my use of the terms in italics differs from their usage within the recent debate on the relationship between art, aesthetics and morality.5 this is partly due to the fact that i deal with architecture whereas the recent debate is focused mainly on the representational arts, such as literature and painting. the main difference is that moderate moralism or (as berys gaut calls it) ethicism is usually defined only by a claim regarding the influence of the ethical on the aesthetic, i.e. by a claim of type 2. in particular, it does not involve anything which corresponds to the distinction between aesthetic and architectural value, and thus no claim of type 1. the value of a piece of literature or a painting is its aesthetic or, maybe, artistic value, but the value of architectural works in my broad sense is, as we will see, not exhausted by their aesthetic value, and it cannot generally be identified with their artistic value since most buildings and other elements of the built environment are not artworks. moreover, moderate moralism as it is usually defined does not include any claim regarding whether the aesthetic value of a work has a bearing on its ethical value. but this question, addressed in claim 3, is especially pressing in the case of architecture since due to their public character architectural works unavoidably affect people’s well-being. hence my version my version of moderate moralism is more ambitious than the view is often characterized. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 182 ba um be r ge r of moderate moralism is more ambitious than the view is customarily characterized as being. whether architects should regard themselves as moderate moralists has important implications for how they should conceive of their profession. if moderate moralism is correct about the relation between ethical, aesthetic and architectural values, then ethical considerations belong to the core of architecture and must play a crucial role in design, planning and construction processes. architects cannot dismiss ethical criticisms of their works as irrelevant or misguided in principle. moreover, they cannot defend ethical flaws of their works by arguing that these flaws contribute to the aesthetic worth of the works, as would be possible if contextualism were right; at most, they can argue that the ethical flaws in question are neither aesthetically nor architecturally relevant. before i turn to claims 1 to 3, here is what i mean by ethical, aesthetic and architectural values of works of architecture. firstly, i construe the ethical in a wide sense, according to which it concerns normative questions regarding what is morally right or wrong, as well as evaluative questions regarding the good life. thus the ethical value of an architectural work includes its positive or negative contributions to the good life and the well-being of people, as well as its promotion or violation of moral rights or duties. secondly, the aesthetic is also to be understood in a wide sense, according to which it concerns questions regarding aesthetic experiences and properties (aesthetic questions in a narrow sense), as well as questions specifically regarding artistic architecture, for instance, about artistic style, expression, genre and art-history. beside its capacity to yield aesthetic experiences (aesthetic value in the narrow sense), the aesthetic value of an architectural work with art-status thus also includes, for example, stylistic, expressive and art-historic qualities, which contribute to the artistic value of the work. aesthetic value cannot generally be identified with artistic value since we can aesthetically experience buildings and other elements of the built environment which are not artworks. such structures can thus have aesthetic value (in the narrow sense) even if they do not have artistic value. finally, i construe architectural value as the total value of a work of architecture as such. it includes all qualities appropriate to consider when evaluating an architectural work. aesthetic properties are certainly among these qualities, but even in the case of architectural works with artstatus they do not exhaust them. thesis 1 claims that at least some ethical properties should also go into an overall evaluation of an architectural work. i leave it open which further properties or values constitute architectural value, but it seems likely that utility,6 durability, social values 183 isparchitecture.com and cognitive values are also among the qualities that should be considered in an overall evaluation of a work of architecture. architectural value can thus not be equated with the aesthetic or the artistic value of an architectural work. 2. ethical value and architectural value claim 1 states that architectural value partly depends on ethical value in such a manner that a work of architecture will in some cases be architecturally flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it has ethical flaws (or merits). this might seem uncontroversial if the architectural value represents the total value of an architectural work. however, autonomists raise two objections against this first thesis. according to the first objection, we morally assess people (their actions, motives, intentions and characters), but it makes no sense to morally evaluate artifacts such as architectural works. moral evaluations of such works, so the objection goes, are based on a category mistake since moral criticism assumes moral responsibility and thus moral agency, but architectural works have no mental states and can thus not be moral agents.7 however, such artifacts as laws and constitutions, for instance, are also subject to moral evaluation. hence, there is no general objection against artificial products of human activity being subject to ethical assessment. moreover, a closer look at critical practices reveals that we can and do morally evaluate architectural works.8 firstly, we morally evaluate such works with respect to their planning, design, and construction processes. a building can, for instance, be ethically criticized due to a violation of moral rights during its construction phase, at least in certain instances.9 secondly, we morally evaluate architectural works with respect to their impact on the environment. a building can, for instance, be ethically criticized due to its disproportionate emission of pollutants, ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 184 ba um be r ge r energy consumption, and waste of resources. thirdly, we morally evaluate architectural works with respect to their impact on individuals and society. a building can, for instance, be ethically criticized because it negatively influences the health, well-being, or behavior of individuals, and because of its negative social ramifications. finally, we morally evaluate architectural works with respect to their functions, symbolic meanings, and forms. clearly, such aspects can be ethically evaluated regarding their impact on human beings and the environment. however, there may be reasons for ethically evaluating them regardless of their impact. some functions seem to be ethically objectionable, regardless of whether they actually impair any person’s well-being. the symbolic meaning of a building that expresses morally abject attitudes seems to deserve a negative ethical evaluation, regardless of its actual influence on people. and nigel taylor has argued that the form of a building which has obviously not received requisite care is ethically objectionable, regardless of how it actually influences the wellbeing of persons.10 the first three ways to morally evaluate architectural works determine their extrinsic ethical value, since such evaluations concern the conditions under which the works are developed, as well as their causal effects. the last one establishes the intrinsic ethical value of an architectural work, since such an evaluation concerns features of the work itself, regardless of how it affects people and the environment. within the debate about the relation between ethical and aesthetic values of artworks, the ethical value is often restricted to the intrinsic ethical value which, in turn, is typically construed solely in terms of the ethical features of attitudes that the artwork manifests.11 however, such a conception of ethical value is too narrow for architecture and rules out consequentialist considerations from the beginning. thus there are senses in which judging architectural works along ethical lines appears reasonable and is common practice. but how should such ethical judgments be interpreted? it has been argued that such judgments should be re-described as evaluations of what is done through the works by those who have participated in their realization and maintenance, and can be meaningfully considered responsible for.12 according to this view, the ethical appraisal is primarily directed towards people who commission, design, construct or use an architectural work, and only obliquely towards the work itself. others have argued that we can at least take particular moral assessments of architectural works at face value if we distinguish between moral responsibility and moral accountability. from such a perspective, an architectural work itself can be morally accountable, even though it cannot be made morally responsible due to its lack of moral agency.13 my answer to the first objection against claim 1 does not require any decision 185 isparchitecture.com as to which strategy is more promising. the second objection against claim 1 grants that architectural works can be morally evaluated, but insists that the ethical cannot be architecturally relevant since some architectural works are good or even great works of architecture, even though they are severely ethically flawed. some (architecturally) great works are ethically flawed due to a violation of moral principles during their planning and building phase; perhaps corruption was involved, or exploitation, or discrimination, forced labor, even the use of slaves, as is the case for the egyptian pyramids. other great works are ethically problematic due to harm they cause to the environment, as is the case for minimally insulated modernist buildings with ecologically wasteful heating systems. further great works are ethically deficient due to negative impacts on the health or well-being of humans, either due to immoral intended use (as with the roman coliseum), or due to functional unsuitability (as in case of mies van der rohe’s farnsworth house, where comfort is sacrificed for the sake of aesthetics). there also exist great buildings that are ethically flawed due to morally objectionable attitudes or views they express; an example is giuseppe terragni’s casa del fascio, which is often described as symbolizing fascist ideologies.14 this objection applies only to an extreme moralism, according to which architectural value is exclusively determined by ethical value. such extreme moralism is implausible since we evaluate works of architecture with respect to a wide variety of qualities, such as their beauty, originality, site specificity, durability, functionality, or clarity. a moderate moralist should be a pluralist with regard to architectural value and acknowledge that, beside ethical values, architectural value also encompasses aesthetic, design, and use-values, as well as arthistoric, social and cognitive values, among other ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 186 ba um be r ge r things. then he can hold that a building is architecturally flawed as it is ethically flawed, but that it has many architectural merits, which make it a good or even great work of architecture overall.15 3. ethical value and aesthetic value the main argument for my second claim – that an architectural work will in some cases be aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) due to ethical flaws (or merits) – is that it best suits our evaluative practices. this can, for instance, be demonstrated with reference to the role functional considerations play in architectural criticism. such considerations are crucial for evaluations of architectural works since architecture is essentially functional. it does not only deal with shapes and forms, but these shapes and forms must be arranged such as to provide a suitable framework for specific human activities. as i have pointed out, functional considerations have a bearing on the ethical evaluation as functional suitability of an architectural work can influence the wellbeing of its users. we can, for example, praise a building ethically for spatial adequacy and user-friendliness. however, functional considerations frequently influence also the aesthetic evaluation of an architectural work. it is widely assumed that we can, for example, aesthetically praise a building due to its functional beauty.16 a building can be functionally beautiful if it is, and also appears, fit for its function, since the expectations triggered by our knowledge of its function appear to be satisfied. thus many art nouveau residential buildings appear to offer a place suitable for living. a building can also be functionally beautiful if it exhibits a pleasing tension with respect to its function, given that it fulfills its purpose yet shows some surprising features in relation to its functional category. mies van der rohe’s boiler plant at the illinois institute of technology, for instance, functioned well though its tower-like chimney and high clerestory windows made it look more like an early church. finally, an architectural work can be functionally beautiful if it is elegant with respect to its function, by meeting our expectations and fulfilling its function in efficient or ingenious ways. robert maillart’s salginatobel bridge, for instance, crosses a steep valley in a bold and elegant manner without employing unnecessary elements. in this way, functional adequacy (or inadequacy) can be an ethical as well as an aesthetic merit (or flaw) of an architectural work. hence, there are ethical merits (or flaws) of architectural works that constitute aesthetic merits (or flaws). this is what 2 claims. in the remainder of this section, i further defend my second thesis by addressing four objections. the irrelevant dimensions objection insists 187 isparchitecture.com that not every ethical flaw of an architectural work is aesthetically relevant: a building during construction of which human rights of workers have been violated, or a building which uses materials produced under inhuman conditions, may be ethically flawed, but it is doubtful whether such a building is consequently aesthetically flawed. this, however, is not an objection against my second thesis, since 2 only claims that ethical flaws or merits of architectural works will in some cases be aesthetically relevant. moderate moralism postulates only that an architectural work is aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) when it contains an ethical flaw (or merit) which is aesthetically relevant.17 this raises the question whether there are general conditions of aesthetic relevance with regard to architecture. it seems unlikely that there exist strict criteria, but we might hope to find symptoms of the aesthetic relevance of ethical flaws or merits. as a rough idea, an ethical flaw or merit tends to be aesthetically relevant if it is essentially connected to at least one main feature of architectural works; frequently mentioned candidates for such features are (a building’s) form, function, structure, and meaning.18 an ethical flaw is essentially connected to such a feature if the feature could not have been realized or maintained in morally legitimate ways, or if the flaw consists of ethically problematic aspects or effects of this feature. a general account of aesthetic relevance is certainly desirable, yet not necessary to argue successfully for 2. autonomists (as defined in section 1) often invoke another argument against 2: the aesthetic attitude objection. it claims that ethical flaws or merits of an architectural work are never aesthetically relevant because we adopt an aesthetic attitude when we assess works aesthetically, and this attitude is insensitive to moral considerations.19 the aesthetic attitude is generally characterized in terms of disinterested attention to the aesthetic object. it has been questioned whether such a specific aesthetic ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 188 ba um be r ge r attitude exists,20 but even if it does, a dilemma arises. either the aesthetic attitude is understood as precluding any appeal to functional considerations, or it is understood in some other way. in jerome stolnitz’s approach, for instance, disinterestedness requires a deliberate withholding of concepts so that the very attempt to conceptualize an object in terms of its function is incompatible with adopting an aesthetic attitude.21 if the attitude is understood in these terms it is too narrow for capturing everything that is aesthetically relevant, since functional considerations are aesthetically relevant. alternatively, the aesthetic attitude is understood in such a way that it may include an appeal to functional considerations. according to glenn parsons and allen carlson, for instance, disinterestedness only requires an object to be appreciated for its own sake rather than for some personal benefit it may signify, but this does not entail experiencing an object without applying any concepts to it.22 if the attitude is understood in this manner it need not be insensitive to moral considerations, since functional considerations are ethically relevant. hence, the aesthetic attitude is either too narrow or not necessarily insensitive to moral considerations. a third objection against my second thesis has been put forward by contextualists (as defined in section 1). they claim that ethical flaws of works are sometimes aesthetic merits at the same time.23 one major argument for this view is the immoral function objection. as we have seen, an architectural work may be aesthetically meritorious when it is functionally beautiful. however, an architectural work can be functionally beautiful with respect to an immoral function. in such a case, the work is aesthetically meritorious due to the fact that it is ethically flawed. thus, the ethical flaws of architectural works may be in some cases aesthetic merits. an argument along these lines has been put forward by andrea sauchelli. his example is the basilica of saint peter in rome. a critic of catholicism might argue that it has the immoral function of promoting an ideological worldview that harmfully influences moral education. however, the critic might, at the same time, appreciate the ingenuity and adequacy of the basilica’s design to the end of fulfilling this immoral function. the critic might argue that the basilica is functionally beautiful with respect to an immoral function, thus illustrating a building’s ethical flaw that at the same time is an aesthetic merit.24 in such cases, though, it is not the ethical flaw as such that promotes the aesthetic merit. the aesthetic merit is based on the function, not on the immorality. in contrast to a comedy that achieves its humor by means of the immorality of its point of view, the basilica does not succeed aesthetically due to its immoral function, but due to a function that just happens to be immoral. hence the example does not establish any particular connection between aesthetic value and immorality. 189 isparchitecture.com sauchelli himself ponders such an answer to his objection against moderate moralism.25 this may indicate that we should construe his objection as an instance of another objection against 2, i.e. the inseparability objection.26 according to moderate moralism, some moral flaws are aesthetic flaws, so it seems that the removal of such moral flaws should lead to aesthetic improvement of the work – but this is not the case. an aesthetically commendable feature of an architectural work (e.g., its functional beauty) may depend on its moral flaws (i.e., having an immoral function). hence removing the moral flaw (replacing the immoral function by a morally good one) would not necessarily aesthetically improve the work, since it might then no longer be functionally beautiful. however, as gaut stresses, moderate moralism does not claim that removal of a moral flaw invariably leads to an aesthetically better work. moderate moralism is formulated in terms of the pro tanto principle that an architectural work is aesthetically flawed when it contains ethical flaws; in other words, that ethical flaws of a work diminish its aesthetic value.27 but moderate moralism does not hold that removing an ethical flaw must – all things considered – aesthetically improve the work. the reason is that removing the ethical flaw (namely, replacing the immoral function) might remove some other aesthetic merit depending on that flaw (namely, its functional beauty). thus, moderate moralism agrees with contextualism that removing a moral flaw might not aesthetically improve an architectural work, all things considered, but moderate moralism insists that, when a work is ethically flawed, it is aesthetically flawed, too.28 let me illustrate this claim by using the example of the farnsworth house. according to moderate moralism, the house is aesthetically flawed due to the fact that it is ethically flawed because of its functional unsuitability. however, this claim does not imply that improving the user-friendliness of the house will improve it aesthetically. this will moderate moralism does not claim that the removal of a moral flaw invariably leads to an aesthetically better work. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 190 ba um be r ge r hardly be the case since the house achieves its remarkable beauty precisely because it distills habitability to the breaking point. that many aesthetic qualities of the house depend on its user-unfriendliness does, however, not imply that it is the ethical flaw which makes the house aesthetically appealing. the kind of beauty the house exhibits may only be achievable at the cost of the ethical flaw of being functionally unsuitable, but the ethical flaw is not among the features that we aesthetically appreciate. (i here presuppose that not all beauty a building can have is of a narrowly functional variety.) moreover, the claim that the house is aesthetically flawed due to its ethical flaw is compatible with claiming that it is excellent from an aesthetic point of view and a great work of architecture. the aesthetic flaw constituted by its ethical flaw is clearly outweighed by other aesthetic merits of the house. 4. aesthetic value and ethical value debates regarding relations between ethical and aesthetic values usually discuss whether the ethical value of a work can influence its aesthetic value. the converse question – whether the aesthetic value of a work can influence its ethical value – is rarely discussed.29 my third thesis affirmatively answers this further question; here is an argument: p1) an architectural work is ethically flawed (or meritorious) when it impairs (or promotes) human well-being. p2) since living in an aesthetically appealing environment is essential to human well-being, an architectural work will in some cases impair (or promote) human well-being due to aesthetic flaws (or merits). c) an architectural work will in some cases be ethically flawed (or meritorious) due to its aesthetic flaws (or merits). (thesis 3.) all three steps of this argument are pro tanto claims. the influence of an architectural work on the well-being of human beings is not the only factor to determine its ethical value. for instance, the work can also be ethically flawed because it contributes to violation of moral rights. and having aesthetic merits or flaws is not the only factor to determine whether a work promotes or impairs human well-being, or whether it is ethically meritorious or flawed. the work can, for instance, also promote human well-being and be ethically praiseworthy because it is structurally safe and suits its function. furthermore, p2 and c are qualified as relevant in some cases, since not all aesthetic merits and flaws are sufficiently significant to be ethically relevant or have serious impact on human well-being. this argument leaves three big questions to address. the first two 191 isparchitecture.com concern p1, the third p2. firstly, whose wellbeing should be considered in ethical evaluation of an architectural work? for fairness’ sake, this must encompass all persons affected by the work. due to their public character, architectural works affect even the well-being of persons not directly involved in constructing or using them. due to their durability, they affect people for a long time, often over many generations. hence not only the well-being of architects, workers, and users should be taken into consideration, but also the well-being of neighbours and passers-by, for instance; and not only the current well-being of people, but also their future well-being – even the well-being of future generations. secondly, what does it mean to promote or impair the well-being of affected human beings? this depends on the account of well-being.30 according to a “desire-satisfaction” account, well-being lies in the satisfaction of one’s informed desires, that is, desires one would have if one were fully or at least sufficiently informed about one’s situation. it is likely that these desires include the desire to live in an aesthetically pleasing environment, as well as much more specific aesthetic preferences, which may vary across persons and cultures. the main problem with such accounts is that people may desire things that run counter to their own (and other people’s) well-being, and they may hold such desires even after being properly informed of such. “objective list” accounts, on the other hand, hold that well-being lies in possession of all or most of the goods to be found on a list, which is objective in the sense that its items contribute to our wellbeing even if we do not desire them. most lists proposed in the literature contain an aesthetic asset – “aesthetic experience,”31 for instance, or “the awareness of true beauty.”32 a frequent objection to such accounts is that they ignore reasonable differences among people as to what well-being consists of. this objection can be accommodated the kind of beauty the house exhibits may only be achieveable at the cost of the ethical flaw of being functionally unsuitable, but the ethical flaw is not among the features that we aesthetically appreciate. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 192 ba um be r ge r to some extent by admitting that the listed goods can often be realized in very different manners. a third big question arises relative to subjective preferences, which include aesthetic propensities: which qualities of an architectural work count as aesthetic merits, and which are considered aesthetic flaws? this may vary with culture and age, but also within a culture during a certain age. there is, for instance, often a divide between the aesthetic assessments of experts and those of laypersons. architects and architectural critics tend to find certain forms, materials and styles beautiful, which laypersons may find ugly and unfriendly; and laypersons tend to find buildings aesthetically appealing, which experts may criticize as banal or kitschy.33 taking aesthetic preferences of laypeople as authoritative might lead to a banal repetition of conventional structures; in many contexts, retroarchitecture which imitates a well-established and popular style of the past may be what best fits the aesthetic preferences of the general public. letting experts determine what is considered an aesthetic merit means adopting a paternalistic attitude. both are undesirable stances. since architectural works are part of our living environment, aesthetic preferences of people who use public spaces need to be taken into account in planning contexts as well as in political decisions regarding land-use. these aesthetic preferences, however, should not be regarded as simply given and unchanging, as laypersons may learn from experts who are more experienced in dealing with aesthetic questions. to navigate an intermediate course between uncritical satisfaction of laypersons’ aesthetic requirements and a paternalistic approach demands dialogue between architects and the public, and presents an educational challenge to architects and architectural critics.34 conclusion i have proposed a broad notion of architectural value which includes all qualities appropriate to consider when evaluating a work of architecture. it is beyond dispute that aesthetic properties are among these qualities. my first thesis claims that at least some ethical properties are also among the qualities that should be considered in an architectural evaluation. my second and third theses concern relations between the ethical and the aesthetic value out of the values involved in composing the architectural value. these theses claim that the ethical and the aesthetic value interact in such a manner that an architectural work will in some cases be aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it is ethically flawed (or meritorious) and vice versa.35 193 isparchitecture.com endnotes 1. however, i do not take for granted that, every time architects or architectural theorists use morally supercharged terminology, the evaluation is of an ethical nature. since vitruvius’ age, architects and architectural theorists have often used ethical terms in order to justify aesthetic preferences – e.g. when claiming that it be a moral duty to design buildings true to their materials, not hiding structural support, and expressing the spirit of their period. see maurice lagueux, “ethics versus aesthetics in architecture,” the philosophical forum 35 (2004): 124-133. 2. “work of architecture” is often understood in a much narrower sense and reserved for works of artistic architecture, which are distinguished from mere buildings. nikolaus pevsner, e.g., opens his outline of european architecture (harmondsworth: penguin, [1948] 1957, 23), with the famous remark: “a bicycle shed is a building; lincoln cathedral is a piece of architecture.” 3. what i mean by ethical, aesthetic and architectural values is further explained at the end of section 1. 4. technically, the difference between moderate moralism and contextualism is as follows. moderate moralism takes the value relations to be invariant and symmetric; according to contextualism, they are complex and invertible. 5. see, e.g., noël carroll, “moderate moralism”, british journal of aesthetics 36 (1996): 223-238; berys gaut, art, emotion and ethics (oxford: oxford university press, 2007), ch. 3; alessandro giovannelli, “the ethical criticism of art: a new mapping of the territory,” philosophia 35 (2007): 117-127. giovannelli’s taxonomy has been adapted to architecture by andrea sauchelli, “functional beauty, architecture, and morality: a beautiful konzentrationslager?” the philosophical quarterly 62 (2012): 128-147. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 194 ba um be r ge r 6. it could be argued that we should not be concerned with utility when evaluating a work of architecture as such because a building’s usefulness is disturbingly malleable over time while other features such as its beauty may endure. (thanks to tom spector for raising this objection.) however, i do not think that the variability of a feature is a good reason not to consider that feature in an evaluation of an architectural work. furthermore, in evaluating a work, we should distinguish between its intended and its actual function. an architectural work may have fulfilled its intended function, even though it is no longer in use (as in case of ancient temples), or it may function well, even though it did not fit the originally intended function (as in the case of zaha hadid’s vitra fire station). 7. cf. sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 138. 8. see christian illies and nicholas ray, “philosophy of architecture,” in philosophy of technology and engineering sciences, vol. 9, ed. anthonie meijers (amsterdam: elsevier, 2009), 1199-1256; warwick fox, “architecture ethics,” in a companion to the philosophy of technology, ed. jan kyrre berg olsen, stig andur pedersen and vincent f. hendricks (chichester: wileyblackwell, 2009), 387-391. 9. under which conditions can we say that the architectural work itself is morally flawed in such cases? james harold has suggested a counterfactual test for narrative artworks that can be adapted to architecture: the violation of moral rights during the planning and construction phase of an architectural work influences its moral evaluation if the same work could not have been realized without violating moral rights. see james harold, “on judging the moral value of narrative artworks,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 64 (2006): 259-270. 10. nigel taylor, “ethical arguments about the aesthetics of architecture,” in ethics and the built environment, ed. warwick fox (london: routledge, 2000): 163-206, here 201-205. 11. see, e.g., gaut, art, 6-9. 12. see sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 138-139. 13. for the distinction between responsibility and accountability see luciano floridi and j.w. sanders, “on the morality of artificial agents,” minds and machine 14 (2004): 349-379. 14. see, e.g., simona storchi, “’il fascismo è una casa di vetro’: giuseppe terragni and the politics of space in fascist italy,” italian studies 62 (2007): 231-245. 15. cf. gaut, art, 64-65. 16. see sauchelli, “functional beauty.” in contrast to sauchelli, i assume 195 isparchitecture.com that simply looking, without being, fit for function is not an aesthetic merit. a more elaborated treatment of functional beauty should distinguish between intended and actual functions (see endnote 6). for slightly different conceptions of functional beauty than sauchelli’s, see glenn parsons and allen carlson, functional beauty (oxford: oxford university press, 2008), and larry shiner, “on aesthetics and function in architecture: the case of the ‘spectacle’ art museum,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69 (2011): 31-41. 17. cf. gaut, art, 83. 18. the notions of form, function and structure are widely debated and defined in very different ways within architecture theory; for a good overview, see adrian forty, words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture (london: thames & hudson 2000). an in depth study of the varieties in how and what buildings ‘mean’ is provided in christoph baumberger, gebaute zeichen. eine symboltheorie der architektur (frankfurt a/m: ontos 2010). 19. cf. gaut, art, 81-82. 20. see george dickie, “the myth of the aesthetic attitude,” american philosophical quarterly, 1 (1964), 56-65. for an overview of the debate provoked by dickie’s article see james shelley, “the concept of the aesthetic,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (fall 2013 edition), edward n. zalta (ed.), http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/ aesthetic-concept/. 21. jerome stolnitz, aesthetics and philosophy of art criticism: a critical introduction (boston, mass.: houghton mifflin, 1960), 35. 22. parsons and carlson, functional beauty, 25. 23. positions committed to this claim are sometimes labeled “immoralism.” see matthew kieran, “forbidden knowledge: the challenge of immoralism,” in art and morality, ed. josé luis bermúdez and sebastian gardner (london: ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 196 ba um be r ge r routledge, 2003), 56-73. 24. sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 143-144. he admits that in some cases (such as nazi extermination camps) immoral functions are perceived as so hideous that we are unable to aesthetically appreciate these buildings as functionally beautiful in virtue of their immoral functions. 25. sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 146. 26. cf. gaut, art, 59-60. 27. a pro tanto aesthetic principle specifies the contribution an aesthetically relevant feature makes to the aesthetic value of a work, but it does not determine whether the work is aesthetically good, all things considered. in this way, the moderate moralist’s pro tanto principle that ethical flaws of an architectural work diminish its aesthetic value leaves open the possibility that an ethically flawed work is aesthetically good overall. this will be the case if the work has aesthetic merits which outweigh the aesthetic flaws of the work constituted by its ethical flaws (see the last paragraph of section 1). 28. cf. gaut, art, 57-66. 29. while one could find historical examples, the matter is rarely discussed in the contemporary literature. an exception is robert stecker, “the interaction of ethical and aesthetic value,” british journal of aesthetics 45 (2005): 138-150. 30. cf. ibo van de poel, “can we design for well-being?” in the good life in a technological age, ed. philip brey, adam briggle and edward spence (new york: routledge, 2012), 295-306. for the distinction between “desire-satisfaction” and “objective list” accounts of well-being see also philip brey, “well-being in philosophy, psychology, and economics,” in the same volume, 15-34. 31. john finnis, natural law and natural rights (oxford: clarendon press, 1980), 60. 32. derek parfit, reasons and persons (new york: oxford university press, 1984), 499. 33. cf. robert gifford, donald w. hine, werner muller-clemm, d’arcy j. reynolds jr, kelly t. shaw, “decoding modern architecture: a lens model approach for understanding the aesthetic differences of architects and laypersons,” environment and behavior 32 (2000): 163-187. 34. see sabine roeser, “aesthetics as a risk factor in designing architecture,” in ethics, design and planning of the built environment, ed. claudia basta and stefano moroni (dordrecht: springer, 2013), 93-105. 197 isparchitecture.com 35. i thank stefan koller, tom spector, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments and suggestions. isparchitecture.com building thinking asking: what is the right way to do philosophy of architecture? a panel discussion between karsten harries and sir roger scruton moderated by christian illies karsten harries: when i was asked to participate in this session, i was told our conversation had to do with “building thinking asking: what is the right way to do philosophy of architecture?” what does the title mean to the philosophy of architecture? the question of course presupposes that there is the right way—i am not at all sure that there is. philosophers have concerned themselves with all sorts of things. they can write about sports, about the philosophy of cooking, just about anything is suitable fodder for philosophers of different types. now philosophers have concerned themselves especially with the different arts. this is what aesthetics stands for. and it has long martin düchs (l) introduced and christian illies (r) moderated the panel discussion between karsten harries (cl) and roger scruton (cr) ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 10 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on been recognized that architecture is one of the arts. but it had also been recognized that architecture is the art that poorly fits with the other arts in many ways because it is so dependent on the demands that the world puts on architects. so it is essentially an impure art. at least if you measure purity by a concern for beauty. so it is the one art that, perhaps more than any other, has to be sent into the world. that is to say, architecture has to recognize not only the physical neediness of man that’s obvious, but the spiritual neediness of man. that is more definitive. so given an understanding of beauty as ideally a self-sufficient presence, the sort of understanding that we can trace back, for instance, to baumgarten, architecture’s descent into the world must be considered as something like an unfortunate concession. the architect has to almost contaminate his concern for beauty, so understood. i think architecture invites us to question this understanding of beauty, not just for architecture, but to question in general the understanding of the work of art as an ideally self-sufficient aesthetic object. architecture’s descent into the world raises this question: must the understanding of beauty not be questioned that has played such a powerful role in the evolution of aesthetics; must it not be challenged? should beauty have a different function? in this connection i have argued that beauty should be understood as re-presenting the beautiful object—here i appeal to ernesto grassi for support—that the beautiful object forces us to look again. the object re-presents itself. it refuses to go away. and i think that when we go to vierzehnheiligen and banz abbey we will have a chance to experience that effect of beauty on these buildings. their beauty forces us to look again. they won’t leave us alone. so i want to say that the philosophy of architecture more than any other philosophy of art invites us to rethink the nature of beauty in general, also the essence of aesthetics. i also want to raise some questions about the relationship of architecture and philosophy. for a long time architecture and philosophy have gotten along quite well without worrying too much about each other. and many architects today still do not worry about philosophy at all. does that say something important? to be sure, there is something like a ‘philosophy envy’ among a certain small group of architects, or a theory envy, so that this group is open to philosophy in a way that invites questions. that deserves discussion. but that’s a little bit different from my first point, so i think we probably should stop there. christian illies: thank you karsten. i think, after having raised the issue of beauty, we cannot possibly stop roger from commenting on that. roger scruton: everything that karsten said was really interesting, i 11 isparchitecture.com don’t think i disagree with him in any way. but perhaps i should say a little bit about how i came about my interest in this topic, because it is unusual for an analytical philosopher to address aesthetics. karsten is much more used to the phenomenological and art historical way of approaching things, where the meaning of architectural objects is clearly part of how we experience them. analytic philosophy, which was my training at cambridge, or at least when i was growing up, largely ignored questions of aesthetics. and certainly the idea that you should be interested in the objects around you was disapproved of. but i’ve always been interested in the objects around me. when i was sixteen and first became aware of the world, it was architecture that principally impacted upon me. i was living in a little town, marlow, on the river thames near high wycombe—in a scruffy little working class house for the working poor. and around me was the beautiful old english gingerbread town of marlow. however, the developers were at work pulling it all down and putting up their glass and steel facades and concrete girders. that awoke me to the idea that the world is perhaps not as permanent as i had hoped, and that all kinds of evil forces were at work pulling it apart. that thought was deep in me throughout my career as an undergraduate. and when i started doing research in philosophy i decided, yes, i will do aesthetics because maybe that would will help me to understand what i felt when i had seen the uglification, as kundera calls it, of the world in which i was living. eventually that led to my book on architecture. but i was hampered by my training, i have to say. karsten was lucky, he wasn’t hampered by having a training in analytic philosophy. he looked to be sure, there is something like a ‘philosophy envy’ among a certain small group of architects “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 12 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on at the ‘things themselves’ as heidegger would say, or husserl at least, and extracted from them his philosophical ideas. i had to come down from the scaffolding that analytic philosophy erects above everything and bring my logical distinctions to earth. i had to apply them to what i read about what architects say and what architectural critics say. but i was rescued by one particular architectural critic and that is ruskin. i am sure you’ve all come across him—a slightly crazy but incredibly cultivated victorian writer for whom architecture really was an expression of the moral life. he had problems with women. but in architecture he saw the fruit of what we are as human beings. he tried to express it in the seven lamps of architecture and in the wonderful book the stones of venice. those are books that everyone should read. i had the sense that this is what philosophy should be like. how could i bring my analytical training to bear on the kinds of questions ruskin was raising: questions about the spiritual, historical meaning, the social significance of buildings, and the way in which for him the holy spirit enhances what we build? for ruskin, buildings were not made of stone; they were made of some spiritual substance which happened to have borrowed stone temporarily in order to manifest itself to us. that’s a hegelian thought, of course. i am sorry to hear that hegel fled from bamberg. but his writings on architecture show that he wasn’t that sensitive to this particular art-form. in the end i came around to see that heidegger’s wonderful essay on “building dwelling thinking” contains deep truths that we analytic philosophers have to rediscover. it is very hard though, and we have a discipline that we have to fight against to rediscover those truths. so, i’ve been wrestling downwards from that great analytical skeleton to the place where karsten has been “wallowing” successfully for some years. harries: for me, my interest in architecture is way older than my interest in philosophy, and it has continued to be a very intense interest. it began very early. it began—i recall the exact moment—it began when i was 7 years old—we had left burning berlin and found a home in bad königshofen. there’s a church outside bad königshofen, the pilgrimage church mariä geburt in ipthausen, and that church overwhelmed me. we were not religious. it was not a religious experience, and it wasn’t an aesthetic experience. it seemed as if i had stepped into another world. as if something touched me that i had not experienced. nowhere in berlin had there been anything like that. later, when i went to munich to the max-gymnasium and saw churches like the abbey church of kloster andechs, these churches repeated the experience to some extent. that intense experience of 18th 13 isparchitecture.com century churches in southern germany antedates my interest in philosophy. i could imagine myself working today in art history—indeed in any number of history studies. my interest in philosophy emerged partly because i was also very interested in mathematics. i tended towards philosophy because i thought it less confining. after i had come to america with my parents, had studied at yale, and begun to teach there, my colleagues in philosophy were more interested in painting as the purer art, but the architects felt the need for something like a philosophical core in our architecture school’s undergraduate program. so i was approached by the director of undergraduate studies kent bloomer—i had just published the meaning of modern art and grown a little tired of teaching this material. i was asked whether i would teach a beginning course in the philosophy of architecture in the architecture school. so that’s how it all began. the ethical function of architecture was, basically, the result of my course notes. it was written very much in connection with the development of that course. but it was not identical with it. since the book was reasonably successful, it led to requests for lectures and essays that kept me going. in recent years i’ve done a lot of other things, but have always drifted back to this topic. scruton: that’s very interesting because, i suppose, i was awakened to the problems of architecture by my experience of seeing the town demolished. it wasn’t from great works of art that i learned to care about building, but from ordinary natural streets. but they nevertheless were home, and there was something ‘unheimlich’ about their destruction. that really awoke me to the ethical significance of architecture. obviously ruskin was writing about great works of architecture, just as you write. i spent some time in rome after leaving it wasn’t from great works of art that i learned to care about building, but from ordinary natural streets “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 14 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on university, and was overwhelmed by the fabric of the city, and especially the roman baroque and borromini as its greatest exponent. but i came back with the thought that if you can’t defend the ordinary, vernacular, uninteresting architecture which we all appreciate without noticing it, then you haven’t done architecture justice. the americans see beautiful buildings from the past as landmarks and say to themselves, “this has got to be preserved.” so you’ll see a rather beautiful courthouse surrounded by horrible towers of mirror glass which completely destroy its character, and i want to say: “that wasn’t the point.” this courthouse only made sense because of all the things that surrounded it. if we can only treat architecture as a collection of great works of art then we have missed what really matters. harries: on that we completely agree. i do want to invite us to think a little bit more about how works of architecture relate to the vernacular. for instance, my wife and i explored the area around bamberg a bit and we noticed how the churches related to the red roofs of the houses around them. what moved us was the way architecture related to the vernacular—the way the roof of some church related to these other red roofs. there’s this important dialogue going on between the vernacular and works of architecture. but sometimes the latter get in the way of more modest buildings. these get blocked by these works of architecture, by works which refuse, really, to engage with the vernacular. there is a problem when you get a building that just sits in the city, doesn’t move, and doesn’t engage its surroundings in an important way. it just sits there and wants to be appreciated as a self-sufficient aesthetic object. what we are talking about, what i want to talk about, is that architecture should answer to, should speak to the vernacular. buildings should recognize they are not just sitting alone. they should also respond to the weather. this can be seen with the strongest architecture in central europe—consider, e.g., fischer von erlach’s italianate villas. it is interesting to look at the way his southern work was appropriated by viennese architects. they realized that the weather made it impossible to create italian forms in the north. the weather just wouldn’t allow certain domes or made their upkeep very expensive. the ice would tear them apart. for the same reason, the fabric of the french cathedrals is not very suitable to the kind of climate we have here. the baroque architecture in southern germany and especially the austrian baroque is a beautiful answer to those who tried to build italian architecture and failed to consider how the weather would tear it apart. and the result is the typical or what we think of as the typical 15 isparchitecture.com south german and austrian baroque. the weather comes into the picture, and that is to say, also, the vernacular. this means that the architect should be sensitive to the climate, consider the way the vernacular relates to the climate. the weather helps give works of architecture their special voice. illies: you’ve both approached architecture from a very personal experience. but what role does philosophy play in this experience? part of what you say could have been said without philosophy. is was simply about how educated people should approach architecture. that seems to raise no specific question for philosophy, rather, more generally, the problem of aesthetic education. or is there a specific role for philosophy in it? and what would that exactly be? harries: we can see the issue with our architecture students. there is the idea of the work as something that we ought to discuss in isolation, as a beautiful object. they want to create a beautiful object by bounding space in certain ways. that seems to be the task for many of these students. and there is a presupposition here, namely the aesthetic understanding of the successful work of art as ideally a self-sufficient object. it is here upheld, even if there are concessions to functions and so on. but i would challenge this. here i think a philosopher’s task is a little bit like yeast. he should raise questions that make architects more mindful. some of these questions involve philosophical assumptions. this is a self-critical function of philosophy. scruton: i was going to say that there is an aspect of philosophy which is neglected by architects and which should not be neglected because architecture is an application of practical reason, you’ve both approached architecture from a very personal experience. but what role does philosophy play in this experience? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 16 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on about which philosophy has something to say. consider the questions: “why do this?” “why add that detail?” “why go on in this way?” philosophers have had a lot to say about those questions. for example, they have distinguished reasons about means from reasons about ends. architecture was invaded by the functionalist heresy at a certain stage, which made all practical reasons into reasons about means. functionalism was part of the utilitarian disease, which had a long gestation period in the nineteenth century. ruskin was battling against that disease. of course there are important means to our ends, but there are also the ends themselves. we have to understand them. we have to reason about them. when you lay a table, for example, or when you put your clothes on in the morning, you are not reasoning about means, you are reasoning about ends. you are saying: “how should this be, in itself ?” “how should it be and therefore how should it look?” and you are always, as kant says, looking for agreement in judgment. you try to imagine the others into the arena with you. of course karsten is right, weather is always important. function is always important. but function is not the end of the architect. harries: this relates to something we said before. we spoke of the vernacular and how it makes you feel at home. and you need to feel metaphysically at home. and when you spoke of laying out a table for a nice meal, somehow this makes us also feel more at home in that room. that’s an accomplishment. and it is an accomplishment if we build and from the very beginning keep in mind that function; if we build not just to provide shelter, but bound space in such a way that we feel somehow more at home. scruton: yes. harries: it is crucial to bound space in such a way that we feel somehow more at home, not that we necessarily will feel more spiritually at home. but that remains an important function of architecture. illies: you criticized the idea of the self-sufficient aesthetic object, which removes architecture from exactly that function. but is that not also a problem of all aesthetic decisions? when i say, “the window has to be exactly there, because there it is right. it cannot be an inch further to the left. this is its place,” am i already moving too much towards the self-sufficiency of the object and away from the homeliness? it must be like this because it has exactly the right light, or something like that. is there some sort of tension between these two forms of thinking? scruton: yes. now you see, when you are doing philosophy, or philosophy about architecture, you are asking the question: “how do you 17 isparchitecture.com reason about the intrinsic rightness of something? what are the constraints? is it just that you are trying to create a home, or is it about something else?” to me, that is what aesthetics is about. and i think analytical philosophy is probably in need of correction here. however, i may be the only one who thinks that. [laughs] the question you raised puzzles me. interestingly enough, wittgenstein in his few remarks about aesthetics, fixes on that very example. he thinks of a door. what guides me in designing and making a door? and he says, you don’t ask whether it is beautiful or not. you ask: “is it right? does it look right to you?” “does it fit in?” the functionalists think they can settle such questions by procedures and that’s what’s wrong with them. when there is no procedure for answering a question, there may be a real question nevertheless. harries: here we must recognize how conditioned the question of what is right or wrong is by historic circumstances.take the example of vierzehnheiligen. balthasar neumann had planned a cruciform basilica with the altar to the fourteen saints to be placed in the crossing, as one might figure 1: vierzehnheiligen, banz, germany ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 18 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on expect. but the architect in charge of executing neumann’s plans, gottfried heinrich krohne, whose own earlier design had been rejected, missed the sacred place by quite a few yards by moving the church to the east, which caused the sacred spot to fall into the nave. apparently, this protestant architect did not take it to be all that important: what did a few feet matter. but they did matter. what was to be done? the executed plan hints at the ingenious solution at which neumann arrived. he made things right. here you have an understanding of what is right that is very different from the sense of right that would be part of a society that doesn’t bring the religious into the story. neumann could not say, “oh it doesn’t matter, a few yards to the east or the west”—because here the architecture had to respond to precisely this very specific sacred place. we no longer reckon with place in that way. take the example of a house. the place has significance for any number of reasons. and then you ask, “what’s right?” there is no simple answer. it depends on the context in which the question gets raised and then different answers will be given in a different context. scruton: what animated me when i wrote the aesthetics of architecture was in part the sense that people give phony answers to the question, “what is right?” they invent something like corbusier’s modulor, in order to justify the nonsensical things that they do. i think we should recognize that people take refuge in systems, when it is precisely the systems that are wrong. alberti wrote beautifully about this when he said that what matters in architecture is the appropriate. he hardly ever uses the word “beautiful” or any equivalent of it. but the appropriate object in the appropriate place matters and that should guide architecture. for that it is very hard to find rules. maybe you are saying that the rules have to be constructed post facto. we generalize from what has been successful. that’s what the rococo style in this room exhibits. no architect, i hope, had anything to do with this—a local builder did it. harries: it’s not rococo. scruton: late baroque, then. illies: the problem i have with “feeling at home” is that some people feel at home in buildings i think they shouldn’t feel at home in. especially in the standard architecture of today—with its appalling inappropriateness. harries: since you mentioned it, i think this is a good place to pursue this question, a question that heidegger has discussed in “building dwelling thinking”. first of all, he gives us a very broad definition of 19 isparchitecture.com ‘building.’ and he points out that philosophy and architecture, both in a sense, have built—one in a conceptual space, the other one in a real space. from the very beginning people have tried to orient themselves in space by bounding it in various ways to make themselves feel at home. and they have not just done that by building in the literal sense by raising structures, but they have also done so conceptually, mainly through language, by slowly controlling their environment. they are both ways of grappling with the task of making this world into a home. this need has been a fact from the very beginning and it remains a need architecture must meet to prove itself. scruton: i think that the word ‘wohnen,’ which is in the title of heidegger’s essay, could also be translated as “settlement.” i think that’s really what he had in mind, and that’s something that all human beings need. we are, naturally, settled beings. we can be launched into nomadic existence in desperate situations. but our natural condition, and that is especially true of european civilization, is settling in one place. and maybe the story of romulus and remus, of how the settler took advantage over the wanderer, tells us something. settling means having boundaries, and recognizing within those boundaries that we are sharing things. we don’t share everything. we don’t share our wives and children and the rest of our domestic assets. nevertheless of the things we do share the most important is often the temple—which is the mark of our settlement. that is why with heidegger we can say that it’s important to get the sacred place to be in the right place. harries: i am surprised to hear you quoting heidegger! we are, naturally, settled beings “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 20 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on scruton: i am an educated man! [laughs] harries: today it seems to me that we face, thinking of architecture, two challenges: one is the increasing scarcity of space. i think that architects are still profligate in their use of space because they don’t realize that space is becoming a scarce resource. i think that this is something that architects can learn from history: to reckon with space as a scarce resource. we aren’t just talking about cars and air pollution, but space itself. and the other challenge is in a way an opposite challenge. we are liberated, as never before, by the digital revolution. it opens up an entirely new space. so there is a tension here between, on the one hand, the increasing scarcity of space and, on the other hand, that opening up of space which promises a new freedom. there is the call of freedom that speaks on the one side. and there is the opposite call to be settled in one place. i think the successful architecture of today should not try to find a solution in the middle, but has to recognize that that tension is part of a successful life. that we cannot have it one way or the other, that that thought shortchanges us. so we have to give space to freedom, and also to the need to have a home. we need both. without that we impoverish ourselves. scruton: i think that one of the things that troubled me when i first started thinking about this is an incident that occurred in 1979, i think, when i published the aesthetics of architecture. i was reading gideon’s book space, time and architecture. i thought here was somebody who didn’t really understand physics and who is playing around with concepts beyond his grasp. he made it look as if architecture is simply about space and not about that much more important thing, which is the boundary that encloses space. gideon gave the sense of conquering the world, of opening up and of making it our own, when in fact all the great architecture we know from the past history was putting boundaries around space, making it smaller. people had to make it smaller in the middle ages. those little hilltop towns in italy, which everybody loves, contained an awful lot of people—a thousand or two thousand people in that tiny little area. they had to be in that area because it was the only thing they could defend. but by being crowded in that space, they made their piled-up homes beautiful, and i think all were at home there. italians now may go to america and make a fortune, coming back to build some absolutely appalling bungalow in the valley underneath. but still their heart is in that little village on the top. i think that idea that we enclose space, that we make it smaller, so as to adapt it to ourselves, is a really important part of the architectural motive. 21 isparchitecture.com harries: yes, i agree with what you said, but i think we shouldn’t forget that other metaphor, which finds its expression in an understanding of the church in the image of jacob’s ladder, a ladder that escapes the earth and that opens it up [gestures to the sky]. you will see in the church of vierzehnheiligen how self-consciously the architect opens up the architecture to the infinite. illies: that sounds as if karsten becomes a hegelian and roger turns into a heideggerian. we should close the conversation before the transformations get out of hand, and open it to the audience. audience questions question: what about heidegger’s “terror of time.” where do you think it belongs? does it belong to architecture or philosophy? harries: where does it belong? it belongs to both. i think it is part of the human situation. question: that means it belongs to space as well? harries: i think the two are related. as a matter of fact, the separation of time and space is itself very problematic. i talk a lot about that. how space and time are one. in other words, i am not satisfied by separating the arts of space and the arts of time. i think space enters into music, and time enters into architecture. and so the “terror” comes to both. question: you both mentioned vernacular architecture. i want to ask, what do you think about the role of tradition and style? it imposes rules: rules which allow us to understand and still to create homely architecture. scruton: i think it’s a fundamental question. when rules are a priori rules, worked out without consulting the object, and preceding the practical problem, you might justify them perhaps in functional terms. but there are also certain rules ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 22 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on in architecture that define tradition rather than reasoned solutions. they are not a priori maxims, but the collective wisdom over the many years— people worked them out by trial and error. architects see (for example) that when you make a room like this you should have a molding that goes along just below the ceiling, which has got three or four parallel lines in it, so as to bring the wall to an end. that’s something discovered over many centuries. and until modernism came along it was accepted. those are the sort of things that are, i would say, legitimate rules in architecture. they are not a priori rules, they are the résumés of experience—that’s what a tradition is. why do human beings need traditions, and when is it right to depart from them and when is it wrong to follow them? these are the big questions of the twentieth century. question: you spoke of the spiritual in architecture. can there be such a thing as exclusively secular architecture? scruton: jolly good question. [to harries] shall i just say something? harries: you start. scruton: i have in recent years been quite intrigued by that question because i am very much impressed by what the classical tradition achieved. in all its forms. in particular, in vernacular architecture. you are familiar with the vernacular georgian house. it uses details which are mimicked in the next house. there’s something similar with the german baroque cities. but the origin of the repeated details is not secular. it is holy. the details come from the greek and roman temples in the neoclassical case or from the baroque churches in the german case. so it looks as though the deeper ground of vernacular architecture does not come from the secular world. it comes from something holy—whether you say it was handed down by god, or just say it comes from the religious instinct. funnily enough, if you look back at the book of exodus, at the moment when god hands down the tablets of the law to moses, he hands down at the same time the design for a temple. he says “i don’t just want you to stop committing adultery and am not only speaking of the other things you’ve been doing. i want you to build a home for me, and here’s how you do it with columns, architraves, and capitals.” it’s very much a metaphor, but we do think ultimately that the origin of architectural grammar has to be divine. today we live in a secular society that doesn’t believe there is a divine origin of things. so somebody could say that this leaves us in the wilderness harries: i would give a somewhat different answer with less emphasis on the classical tradition. but i would also say that it is a mistake to divorce the sacred from the beautiful. and that the vernacular buildings 23 isparchitecture.com that roger speaks of, in some measure, all recognize the beautiful. in unpacking this, i don’t consider myself particularly religious. i would emphasize the re-presentational function of the beautiful; that is where we should begin. when i deck out a table for a festive meal, that is what i do: i invite people, as it were, to feel good in that room at that table. i think that’s what vernacular architecture does too. that’s what a good, wellplaced door does. scruton: a festive meal, though, traditionally, allows you to see a state of grace. harries: yes, and i would welcome that. i think that we recognize the importance of the distinction between the sacred festal and less festal times. and the same thing goes for spaces. this is part of a successful life. illies: would you say that a similar thing happens even in modernist architecture, where you don’t start with divine points of reference? but architects still need, do they not, some normative points of reference? you look for certain qualities to replace the divine points of orientation, for example the ideal of ‘equality.’ they can give a kind of orientation for an entire building. so you still have an orientation in normative ideals—functionless ideals which are then incarnated in the entire building. harries: i would like to then turn to particular examples. i would agree with you here, but what i would not overlook is the offering of the site. it’s not just the materials, it’s not just the setting, it’s the recognition of the site and its constraints. the building then re-presents the landscape; it lets us look more happily at it. a good building is not like a scar on the land, it lets you look more happily at that land—at the same land. i think quite a few modern architects succeeded very well at that. so i would not restrict it to a certain style. i mean i happen to like the eighteenth century, but if i ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 24 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on were to build myself a house today, it would be modern. scruton: well, yes, i would disagree with that bit! [general laughter] question: if we were to look at architecture today, it is on the one hand characterized by different approaches with different priorities. on the other hand, we have to try to integrate architecture. what shall we do? should we try to correlate the different approaches in a more substantive way, or should we remain constant on this different approach? scruton: hegel says in the introduction to the “elements of the philosophy of right,” when philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a form of life grown old—meaning that philosophy comes after life. it’s a reflection upon it, and it is not the premise upon which life begins. i think this is also true about the philosophy of architecture. you don’t want architects to begin from a philosophy of architecture. you want them to be architects. philosophers meditate on what they are doing, and perhaps make sense of it. but there is always a danger in trying to start from a philosophy of something and then arriving at the thing. one of my writings consists of a book on the philosophy of wine. i’ve never thought that someone could start making wine by learning the philosophy of it. but of course wine is an incredibly pregnant object for a philosopher to think about, and also to drink. so the philosophy comes afterward. of course you can come to the conclusion, through philosophy, that this architect is doing something really interesting and this one is perhaps doing something wrong or whatever, but those are not topics that architects themselves need to be very interested in. harries: i would just want to add that, yes, philosophy should come afterwards, but i think it should come afterwards with its questions. that is, it should make the architect a little bit less sure of himself. it should invite him to call into question certain assumptions. for example, the attitudes towards space of the students in our architecture schools. i think it needs to be challenged. it needs to be questioned. so i see the function of philosophy in architecture schools to be a little like yeast that makes the dough rise, as it were. iillies: thank you very much. we’ve had fascinating conversions between karsten and sir roger and heidegger and hegel. but it is time to come to an end. let us do what roger warned us not to do; we inverse the order. we’ve had philosophy, and now we turn to wine. acknowledgment: the editors would like to thank tom spector whose transcription made this article possible. 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter isparchitecture.com call for papers the human in architecture and philosophy: towards an architectural anthropology 20 july – 23 july 2015 bamberg, germany human beings normally live in buildings – structures built specifically for this function. this raises interesting questions. why do we build dwellings (such as the ones we do)? and for whom do architects build houses? these questions view the same phenomenon from two different perspectives: architecture can tell us something about the human condition (in general or in a particular culture) and we can derive insights about architecture from our understanding of human beings. this topic is inspired by two observations and two related questions: 1) many architects, contemporary and historical, claim to focus on the needs of human beings. the resulting architecture, however, often does not meet the needs and desires of the people who live there. for whom should architecture actually build? 2) architecture, traditionally, has played a negligible role in our philosophical understanding of human beings (as also for our sociological, psychological, and other anthropological analyses). although it has always been generally acknowledged that human beings need built dwelling places, more careful analysis of this need is surely necessary. what does it say about human beings that they depend upon the buildings they construct for their own habitation? these observations point to a deficit both in philosophical analysis and in the practical application of philosophy of architecture. a more systematic analysis of both areas could contribute to a better understanding of human beings and to future architectural endeavour better satisfying the needs and wishes of human beings. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 90 ca ll f or p a pe r s the 3rd international society for the philosophy of architecture international conference seeks to answers these questions (and to pose some new ones) by bringing together architecture and philosophy with a variety of other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, civil engineering, design, law, and psychology. philosophers are far from having reached a consensus about the question as to what human beings are. kant thought this the philosophical question par excellence and that upon which all other questions hang. philosophers do not even agree on how to put this question. are questions about human beings not already presupposing an outdated essentialism? whatever one’s metaphysical position might be, it does seem that this obstinate philosophical-anthropological question remains. even rejecting the question is, in a way, to acknowledge that it is a philosophical problem. human beings normally spend a significant proportion of their lives in buildings. architecture, and the built environment in a wider sense, is therefore of great importance in any adequate philosophical anthropology. when we look at the history of architecture, we find very different (and often fascinating) answers to kant’s question; answers that are implicitly given by the way in which architects and non-architects build or have built. they present an ‘architectural anthropology’ often containing insights beyond philosophy. it is also remarkable how dramatically much architecture often fails to provide an adequate architectural anthropology. very basic needs and desires of inhabitants have not always been satisfied. some architects and builders seem to ignore what human beings are really like. although architects are generally aware of this challenge, and many claim to pay much attention to the needs of the human being, there are hardly any practical systematic endeavors aimed at finding out what these human needs are. most architects operate with a rather vague anthropology and few have attempted to articulate their position within their own writings. to overcome the problem of unsubstantiated, and possibly incorrect, assumptions about human needs, and in order that architecture might relate the better to the human being, we need a developed and theoretically self-aware architectural anthropology. that there has been little in the way of cross-disciplinary encounter between philosophy and architecture is part of the problem. such encounter would contribute to architecture and urban planning better adapted to human beings and would also deepen our understanding of ourselves as beings who build. the built environment is of great importance for the well-being both of the individual and of society. this conference addresses the challenge of this encounter in seeking a 91 isparchitecture.com mutual answer, or at least approach, to the questions of for whom we build and what it is we should be building. prospects we aim to attract architects and philosophers. it is envisaged that architecture be approached through the means, methods, and models of analytical (western) philosophy with a particular focus on (philosophical) anthropology. scholars from across the humanities and social sciences (including, but not limited to, sociology, psychology, anthropology, civil engineering, theology, art history, and design) who are interested in the topic are also welcome. possible topics which papers might address: i. implicit and explicit architectural anthropologies: • what are the implicit or explicit assumptions about the human being inherent in buildings or architectural styles? (eg: van eyck’s orphanage, koolhaas cctv-tower, zumthors thermal bath, etc.) • comparison of the architectural anthropology of different buildings, styles, and cultures • what are, or were, the range of expectations (needs and desires) of human beings with regard to architecture: synchronically through history and diachronically in different cultural settings? • can philosophy assist in the development of a better architectural anthropology? • would architects build differently if they changed their assumptions about what humans are? • the effect of digital architecture on implicit anthropology. ii. cultural differences and their anthropological relevance: • the architectural anthropology of cultures without dwellings (such as nomadic societies) • architectural anthropology in art, literature, and film (for example, the architecture of different species in the lord of the rings) ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 92 ca ll f or p a pe r s iii. classic texts revisited: • what assumptions about the human being can be found in the classic texts on architecture (for example alberti, semper, koolhaas, etc.)? • what have philosophers of anthropology written about architecture? • building and planning regulations and their implicit assumptions about humans. iv. architecture as a source of philosophical knowledge of human beings: • do architects know anything about human beings which philosophy should take more seriously? • can philosophy find new insights into the human condition through buildings (both internationally notable and otherwise)? • what does the fact that human beings have to live with and within architecture mean for them? • can building be regarded as a primary activity of human beings? • evolutionary perspectives on architecture and its interdependence on human beings. v. ideology and architecture: • politics and architecture (e.g. the moma exhibition ‘small scale – big change’ presented ‘new architectures of social engagement’. what about ‘human scale – big change?’) (e.g. implicit racism or discrimination in architecture). • architecture creating new types of human being (e.g. bauhaus and the ‘new human being’ (der neue mensch)). • would architects build differently if they changed their assumptions about the human being? submission the 2016 conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture invites papers which probe these questions, re-draw the assumptions behind them or ask new ones. it welcomes architects and philosophers willing to scrutinize extant (inter)disciplinary boundaries and consensus on these questions and issues. the conference celebrates 93 isparchitecture.com attempts to operate at the intersection of both disciplines, and promotes work ready to give philosophical anthropology and concrete architect(ure)s serious consideration alike. authors are invited to submit a 250-300 word abstract by monday february 1, 2016. please submit your abstract to isparchitecture@gmail.com. the abstract should be prepared for blind review and formatted as a rtf file. please also provide a short cv. submissions should be in english, and presentations will be held in english. a selection of papers will be published in architecture philosophy. date and location • 9am wednesday 20 july to 9pm friday 22 july + day trip on saturday 23 july • city of bamberg, bavaria, germany is a world-heritage site located near to nuremberg and home to the university of bamberg and the villa concordia künstlerhaus. timetable monday 1 february: deadline for abstracts thursday 31 march: notice of acceptance may: circulation of conference program organising committee professor christian illies philosopher, university of bamberg christian.illies@uni-bamberg.de dr. martin düchs architect and philosopher, university of bamberg martin.duechs@uni-bamberg.de ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 94 ca ll f or p a pe r s 95 isparchitecture.com how can architecture be both immortalized and ordinary? “ ” wittgenstein famously argues against metaphysical claims, or those explanations he describes as having gone beyond both the limits of language and of our ability to comprehend. the boundaries of architecture’s language, typically set by our historians, theorists, and practitioners, would by extension also teeter into the non-sensical on crossing the threshold of comprehension. given the possibility of non-sense in architecture discourse, this call for papers asks that architecture’s language be scrutinized according to the loosely analytic method of later wittgenstein. for many lay person, perhaps even lay architect, would claim there is discourse that is either setting new limits to our language surrounding building or falling into non-sense. perhaps there is value in delineating what the boundaries of sense in architecture are? the position against metaphysics, often referred to in the standard reading as the anti-metaphysical critique, suggests that wittgenstein would reject all of architecture theory. yet, a sweeping rejection seems too drastic, even for wittgenstein. given that theoretical work has successfully resonated with us, its audience, evidenced by the fact that we in turn shape building informed by theoretical work, not all theoretical reflection would appear to be meaningless. on closer reading, it is clear that wittgenstein suggests that some forms of reflection do fall outside of his metaphysical critique, suggesting further still that only some forms of theory are contested by his non-sense claim. compounding the matter within the case of architecture, wittgenstein defines architecture in such a manner as to suggest that it is defined beyond its physical reality, or metaphysically. he states, ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 96 ca ll f or p a pe r s “architecture immortalizes and glorifies.” precisely what is immortalized and glorified is necessarily an idea about a thing, or a notion attributed to the building, as opposed to a physical characteristic embodied within it. assuming there is no contradiction with wittgenstein’s anti-metaphysical critique and architecture theory broadly speaking, the paradox of wittgenstein’s writing and his definition of architecture becomes clear. his anti-metaphysical critique values the immediacy of the present and the tangibility of what is physically verifiable, yet he defines architecture as immortalizing and glorifying. how can we understand architecture as both ordinary and immortal? how can architecture maintain its understandings and narratives with the everyday while simultaneously reaching a status of immortality and glorification? the two-day symposium set at the wittgenstein house in vienna looks to bring to architects and designers’ attention the potential significance of wittgenstein’s method of investigation to their work, in terms of both understanding architecture and excelling at its practice. the possibilities for explanation are broad and interdisciplinary, and as such, participants are asked only to narrow their focus to the building, the city, or tectonic exercises. participants are also asked not to limit their discussion to either aesthetics or to ethics, as for wittgenstein, “aesthetics and ethics are one and the same.” organized by dr. carolyn a. fahey. for any questions regarding the call for papers, event, or post-event publication, please email the organizer at carfahey[at]gmail.com. abstracts are due by 01 april 2016 to isparchitecture[at]gmail.com. abstracts should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words. authors of accepted abstract submissions will be notified by 01 may 2015 for participation in the symposium. symposium participants are then invited to submit full papers for a special issue of architecture philosophy. full paper submissions will be double-blind peer reviewed and, if accepted, published in the special issue. a new interpretative taxonomy for works of architecture rick fox i. recent interpretive practice a core aim of architectural interpretation is to elucidate, explain, make sense of, and help others understand the existing built-environment, proposed works of architecture, architectural theories, and other elements of architectural discourse. indeed, there are numerous aspects of architectural works, theories and discourse about which we may render interpretations. the field of architectural interpretation broadly construed includes, inter alia, the literature of philosophical aesthetics, the writings of design professionals, architectural thinkers and educators, the views of architectural critics, and the voices of the general public. in this essay, i aim to introduce readers to a new philosophically grounded approach i have developed for organizing interpretive positions within architectural discourse. the interpretive taxonomy i advocate relies on some philosophical insights from the american philosopher michael krausz. i will concentrate my efforts on presenting an overview of the taxonomy, and focus on its importance to the philosophy of architecture. to illustrate various elements of the framework, i mention particular works, and discuss specific views, but the focus here is not on a detailed examination of specific works, nor do i offer a robust rejection or endorsement of any particular view. before i get into the framework’s specifics, let me try to establish the breadth of the problem, by offering three examples where interpretive practice would benefit from a more rigorous understanding ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 98 fo x of the space of interpretation. whether a new work of architecture ought to “fit in” with extant works is an enduring problem in architectural theory and practice. frequently, architectural works are criticized on the grounds that they do not belong. many famous, and now respected, works have been criticized for this supposed failure. the contextualist argument relies on the claim that the existing context deserves our respect, and we ought to show deference to current norms and practices in our decision-making about how to, or even whether to, alter it. the argument, however, also makes a deeper supposition, namely, that the context is comprised of self-evident facts and meanings. yet, understanding what is “already there” is often more than simply a straight-forward documentation of a few observable facts; it is a matter of active engagement and interpretative practice. so, the background views of the interpreter as to whether the context is “fixed” play a relevant role. the way we construe the boundaries of a given context, and determine which aspects of it are salient for our understanding is also a matter of interpretative practice. when we encounter a familiar work of architecture we do not feel compelled to interpret it; we simply take it for granted. an alien or anomalous work that does not comport with our current understanding challenges us, and we are inclined to try and make sense of it. indeed, the views of the interpreter may be affected in the process. the anomalous thing may prompt some of us to recontextualize a few of our existing beliefs as we attempt to make sense of the world and the anomaly. others prefer instead to reject the anomaly and adhere to their cherished certainties. commonplace interpretive practices regarding context fail to account for its malleability, and the dialectic nature of interpretive practice. the rebuilding efforts on new york’s world trade center site following the events of 9/11 illustrate a second type of interpretive problem. significant disagreement exists in answer to the question, what does 9/11 represent? answers that have been offered include, but are not limited to: 1) the unprovoked attack marks the turning point from the cold war to the “war on terror;” 2) it is a pointless act perpetrated by psychopaths who simply want to kill vast numbers of innocent people as a demonstration of their cruelty; 3) islamic fundamentalists seek to end western imperialism by any means possible—no matter how violent; and, 4) the attack is a misguided hatred of global democracy and global freedom. for our purposes, the precise answer does not matter all that much, since it is not the real focus here. no matter what specific answers 99 isparchitecture.com are offered, the question itself calls our attention to a broader philosophical concern, namely, is there a single right interpretation of these events or not? furthermore, it is clear that the meaning of the underlying events, no matter how we construe them, significantly affect our interpretation of the architectural work that is supposed to denote, memorialize, exemplify, or express them. in these sorts of cases, our background knowledge, beliefs, and values play a significant role in the interpretive process. these background views often include beliefs about what role architecture ought to play, if any, in responding to important social, political, and historical events. to further complicate attempts to interpret the meaning of and best response to 9/11, the view of new york’s world trade center ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 100 fo x byzantine array of stakeholders has been the source of a number of complicated political, economic, aesthetic, and interpretive disagreements over whose interests the work ought to advance, and whose stake ought to take precedence. when the results of the international design competition sponsored by the lower manhattan development corporation were unveiled in fall 2002, the popular response was unprecedented. unlike most of the other entries, daniel libeskind’s proposal resonated loudly with prominent architectural critics and the public. ada louise huxtable emerged as an early advocate of libeskind’s proposal and remained an unwavering supporter of the priorities expressed in his design. conversely, herbert muschamp, architecture critic for the new york times, dismissed the rich symbolism employed in the design as jingoistic. john silber, professor emeritus of philosophy and law, and former president of boston university, scathingly criticized the proposal calling it “an exotic and enticing jumble of novelties” that expresses “hubris and a penchant for absurdity.” 1 still other observers felt strongly that the only correct response to the tragedy was to rebuild exactly as before. how could such divergent interpretations all be, in some sense, correct or at least admissible? we take it for granted that all of these critics are interpreting the same work of architecture. this commonplace assumption, however, overlooks deeper philosophical questions about the nature of the thing they are interpreting. for instance, it is a commonplace argument nowadays that complex things (such as a work of architecture) license a plethora of interpretations, and our contemporary society is prepared to regard so many things as indeterminate anyhow. additionally, it is commonly accepted that in a pluralist society diverse and divergent interpretations ought to be encouraged, and tolerance ought to be embraced. many argue that non-judgmental acceptance of a plurality of viewpoints is the ideal we should strive for in a democratic society. but, as the controversies surrounding the various interpretations of the freedom tower design and the 9/11 memorial illustrate, it seems counter-intuitive to think we are genuinely obligated to countenance every interpretation offered. is there a non-arbitrary basis for admitting some interpretations while excluding others? if so, how would this impact interpretive practice? the question of how to properly construe the relationship between the three-dimensional form of an architectural work and its meaning, a staple of debate within architectural discourse, illustrates a third type of interpretive problem. a celebrated debate in 1989 between leon krier and peter eisenman on the theme of “reconstruction versus deconstruction”2 101 isparchitecture.com forms a case in point. at the time, the stylistic skirmishes over historicism and the “next wave,” of which this debate was a part, garnered a great deal of attention, and pre-occupied many of us in the architectural community. it came as no surprise at the time that, stylistically, krier and eisenman were far apart with eisenman claiming that history had few relevant precedents for contemporary conditions while krier argued that all the necessary precedents already existed prior to modern times. the enduring gulf between them is rooted in their divergent views about what a work of architecture is, how we understand it aesthetically, the role architectural discourse is supposed to play within culture, and how best to interpret what a work of architecture means. the underlying philosophical differences between eisenman, the paradigmatic spokesperson for autonomy and krier, the traditionalist, could hardly have been greater. while the urgency of this particular debate seems to have waned, the deep, unresolved disagreement about what properly constitutes a work of architecture, and how we are to interpret or explain it remains worthy of our philosophical attention. in my view, both historicism and deconstructivism are examples of interpretive practices that rest on a few philosophical mistakes. historicism is built on the premise that an object’s determinacy secures only one right interpretation of it while deconstructivism, an example of critical pluralism, holds an object’s indeterminacy licenses an open-ended plurality of interpretations. (the critical pluralist argues that: 1) there can be more than one good way to construe the initial object; 2) divergent interpretations are always admissible; 3) differing interpretive aims provide differing criteria as to what constitutes a valid interpretation; and, 4) disagreements among qualified interpreters can be reasonable yet they may not be reconcilable. what makes critical pluralism attractive, according to its advocates is the intuition that taken together several ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 102 fo x judgments may be inconsistent, yet each judgment could be individually true. since the identity of the thing being interpreted is not stable, it is not susceptible to fixed interpretation. thus, critical pluralism gives us a polite way to have our strenuous disagreements, and robust truth at the same time.) these sorts of claims: that what a work of architecture is necessarily entail how many interpretations of it we ought to hold admissible, while widely accepted, are mistaken; the entailment is not necessary. as i think these examples illustrate, what we have in each situation, ultimately, is a stand-off. we need a better way to talk about interpretive practices within our discipline to transcend their intractability. architectural practitioners, theorists, critics, educators, and philosophers of architecture need new interpretive tools. ii. a krauszian-style taxonomy in this enterprise of developing new tools we need a philosophically grounded approach to architectural interpretation that: 1) promotes interpretive tolerance, whereby architecture may be interpreted in a number of ways, without fostering unrestricted license; 2) serves as a superior framework to others prevalent in contemporary architectural interpretation, notably critical pluralism; and, 3) is not based on the false assumption that an object’s ontology necessarily entails the number of interpretations we find admissible. one candidate for introducing a new basis for architectural interpretation can be found in the two-tiered framework advocated by michael krausz. this framework differentiates the interpretation from the thing being interpreted, called the object of interpretation. i prefer the term interpretandum, because this makes clear that what is being interpreted could be a real object, an abstract object, a sense perceptible phenomenon, a theory, or a social practice, but is not necessarily a material thing. one of krausz’s major contributions to the philosophy of interpretation is his insight about the logical non-entailment between our ontological theory of the interpretandum and the number of interpretations we hold as admissible of it. this thesis is called the detachability thesis. i offer the following formulation: d: our ideal interpretive stance with respect to the number of admissible interpretations of a given common object is logically detachable from specific ontological theories. it is this mechanism that de-couples ontological theories from interpretive ideals. each enterprise is logically independent of the other; 103 isparchitecture.com neither logically entails the other. thus, it is this thesis about the logical non-entailment between specific ontological theories of interpretanda and the number of interpretations we hold about them that sets up the overall framework of possible interpretive positions that i advocate. next, i offer overviews of two ontologies useful for architectural interpretation, followed by a discussion of the two interpretive ideals that comprise this taxonomy. ii.i: realism/constructivism one difficulty with the literature of architectural theory and professional practice is that typically design professionals, architectural educators, and theorists do not have philosophically articulated ontological views. this makes it difficult to discern the full extent of their interpretive position. although i discuss various ontological views about what an architectural object is, for the purpose of articulating various interpretive positions, i do not endeavor to resolve in this essay whether there is a correct ontology for works of architecture, and if so, what it ought to be. the gulf between realists and constructivists derives, at least in part, from the distinction between object-as-such and object-as-represented. the realist may not be able to say precisely how things are, but insists that there is a way that they in fact are. the realist holds that realism can be defended even if access to the way the world is cannot be (fully) obtained. constructivists hold that this is a distinction without a difference, and that the object-as-such collapses into object-as-represented. since the object-as-such does no interpretive work, then according to the constructivist, it ought to be dropped. for the constructivist, objects are never simply “given,” and no fact of the matter exists that grounds either the interpretation or the thing being interpreted. so, it is in this way that all attempts to segregate objects-as-such from objectsone of krausz’s major contributions to the philosophy of interpretation is his insight about the logical non-entailment between our ontological theory of the interpretandum and the number of interpretations we hold as admissible of it. this thesis is called the detachability thesis “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 104 fo x as-represented fail according to the constructivist. any interpretive framework that presupposes that interpretanda are constituted as matters of fact is already predisposed to realist ontology; frameworks denying this are predisposed to constructivism. such presumptions would be detrimental to the larger project of showing how an object of interpretation is constituted within interpretive practices, and that the ontology of an interpretandum does not necessitate the number of interpretations we ought to find admissible. for the aesthetic realist, aesthetic properties are reified; there are real properties in the work and these ought to ground our judgments about it. aesthetic realism does not demand that for any given artwork only a single aesthetic description is admissible; more than one description may be admitted. the realist view of what constitutes a work of architecture is that a work is necessarily a “brick and mortar” building possessing aesthetic properties, and standing before us. the claim that the difference between a building and an architectural work ought to be grounded in the possession of aesthetic properties is well entrenched. when the british architectural historian sir nikolaus pevsner famously remarked, “a bicycle shed is a building; lincoln cathedral is a piece of architecture,”3 he likely meant that aesthetic properties make the difference. the ontic locus of aesthetic quality is in the work. by implication, then, aesthetic judgments are seen as stating truths that occur in virtue of some mindindependent state of affairs. realists hold that a substantial notion of truth is a valuable resource in ridding ourselves of interpretations we find inadmissible. preference is a measure of how an interpretation comports with descriptive truth. thus, under architectural realism elucidation aims at explicating actual or emergent properties in the work itself – it is an object-centered ontological enterprise. the constructivist would find these claims unsupportable. according to the constructivist, a work of art is primarily a mental object; its physical presence is primarily a device for transmitting meaning from one mind to another. advocates hold that aesthetic perception is theory laden and thus we ought to drop any talk in aesthetics of an un-interpreted world. the architectural constructivist holds that the design is the work of architecture, and a building is just a “brick and mortar” instantiation of that work. under the constructivist’s approach a work of architecture can be construed to exist in multiple media; a floor plan drawing, a perspective rendering, and a 3-d computer model could simultaneously constitute the same design, and hence the same work of architecture. in a recent interview, the writer and architect iman ansari poses a question to eisenman that 105 isparchitecture.com probes the difference between the [architectural] object and the idea of the [architectural] object. eisenman responds, “‘real architecture’ only exists in drawings. the ‘real building’ exists outside the drawing. the difference here is that ‘architecture’ and ‘building’ are not the same.”4 it is important to note that this distinction between ‘architecture’ and ‘building’ is possible even where no actual brick and mortar construction exists that can be pointed to as the finished work. thus, under architectural constructivism elucidation characteristically aims at clarity of consciousness— at epistemic rather than ontological clarity. it is an interpretation-centered epistemic enterprise. in section 3, i will expand on these ontologies as a way of further illustrating the structure of this taxonomy. the next major component of the framework is comprised of the interpretive ideals of singularism and multiplism, to which we now turn. ii.ii: singularism & multiplism krausz distinguishes and explicates two interpretive ideals. one he calls singularism; the other he calls multiplism. andreea deciu ritivoi, offers a helpful summary, “an ideal is a critical stance that identifies the range of admissible interpretations of a given object prior to the conduct of interpretive inquiry.”5 as krausz uses the term in his interpretive philosophy “idealization” is best construed as something like the “desiderata of interpretive practice.” thus, an “ideal” refers to a value or belief about interpretive practice that is worthy of being optimized and promoted – it is a norm of practice. (in private conversation krausz has stated that he does not intend “ideally” to be read in any platonic way.) singularism is the view that there is a one-toone relation between the thing being interpreted and an interpretation, and several admissible singularism is the view that there is a one-to-one relation between the thing being interpreted and an interpretation “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 106 fo x interpretations are conjoinable into a single “unified” interpretation.6 i offer the following formulation of the singularist thesis: s: any given object of interpretation necessarily answers to one and only one ideally admissible interpretation. the singularist holds that incompatible interpretations cannot be jointly defended, and incomplete knowledge about competing interpretations ought not act as a barrier to embracing the ideal of a single comprehensive interpretation. for the singularist, under ideal conditions there just is one and only one right interpretation.7 although the singularist advocates the pursuit of a single right interpretation it should be noted, however, that the singularist need not advocate infallibilism. the possibility exists, even for the singularist, that any given interpretation could be replaced with a better one. in this formulation the singularist understands the admissibility of a given interpretation in bivalent truth-functional terms. for any given object, when distinct interpretations are present, the singularist would argue that the true ones are conjoinable into a single coherent interpretation. logically, a conjunction is true just in case each of its conjuncts is true. so given a number of interpretations, the adherent of singularism first determines which are true and which false, and then proceeds to work out how the true ones are conjoinable. contemporary architectural interpreters, particularly those committed to critical pluralism, are unlikely to hold a strict view of s. yet, i hold that a thickened description approach, where a “unified” singular view of the work emerges, qualifies as singularism. later, i will argue in more detail why i think zaha hadid holds this view. multiplism is the view that a one-many relation holds between the thing being interpreted and interpretations of it. i offer the following formulation of the multiplist thesis: m: some objects of interpretation may answer to more than one ideally admissible interpretation. this thesis claims that multiple non-convergent interpretations are ideally admissible and ought not be conjoined into a single “unified” interpretation. the multiplist is committed to the view that sometimes there just is no such singularity, and holds that more than one interpretation could legitimately be held at the same time. though multiplism recognizes that while several interpretations may be possible, not all of them should be considered equally admissible; further it is not the case that all admissible interpretations are equally preferable. this allows the multiplist to embrace certain singularist cases, but not vice versa. the multiplist could acknowledge that there are cases where a one-to-one relation 107 isparchitecture.com between an interpretandum and an interpretation could occur without committing to the truth of s. in this formulation the multiplist understands admissibility in multivalent terms, in krausz’s words as, “reasonableness, appropriateness, aptness or the like.”8 for the multiplist, affirming one interpretation as admissible does not necessarily exclude others as inadmissible. even though multiplism does not adopt a bivalent mode of determining admissibility, principled distinctions among competing interpretations remain possible. thus not every would-be interpretation is admissible. so, the architectural multiplist is keen to point out that rational inquiry about works of architecture does not mandate a bivalent “truefalse” assessment of an interpretation. iii. interpretive positions with this understanding of ontological theories and interpretive ideals we are better equipped to understand the import of the four main interpretive positions that a krauszian-style taxonomy affords. two of these positions are orthodox; two are heterodox. the orthodox view is that constructivists promote a multiplicity of interpretations while realists promote a single right interpretation. in my view, it is precisely their individual entrenched commitments to their respective orthodox views that deeply mired eisenman and krier during their rancorous 1989 debate. i offer leon krier, the american philosopher michael mitias, and the british philosopher roger scruton as characterizing the real-singularist position, and those of nelson goodman and peter eisenman as characterizing the constructive-multiplist view. i would argue that in addition to being divided by their ontological commitments, these advocates embrace differing interpretive ideals that further divide them. the detachability thesis, d, suggests that the heterodox interpretive positions of constructivemultiplism is the view that a one-many relation holds between the thing being interpreted and interpretations of it “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 108 fo x singularism and realist-multiplism might be fruitful ones to hold. i offer two british architects, zaha hadid and richard rogers, both modernists, as examples of constructive-singularism and realist-multiplism, respectively. while both of them embrace the stylistic virtues of architectural modernism, and on the surface this would seem to unite them, their ontological commitments and their differing stance about how many interpretations are ideally admissible creates an interpretive gulf between them. hadid’s commitment to modernism amounts to singularism, insofar as she holds that the proper role of architecture is singularly fulfilled to the extent every project strives to be culture-altering and an opportunity to invade “new territories.”9 rogers’ considerably more conciliatory view that architecture ought to be capable of adapting to emerging social and technological circumstances, and be aesthetically resilient enough to endure alteration amounts to multiplism. while the views of hadid and rogers characterize the heterodox interpretive positions, their views may not be exhaustive of their respective positions. as with the orthodox positions, the views of these interpreters ought to be seen as instances of the positions they occupy within the taxonomy, and not fully constitutive of the entire position. under mitias’ realist-singular account, a work of architecture emerges, that is it comes into being, in the aesthetic experience of a building. our experience of the building as the physical structure of an architectural work is the proper starting point for aesthetic inquiry. he rejects the claim that external factors such as background knowledge of cultural practices and knowledge of symbol systems are inherent to the work’s features qua object. according to mitias, in his essay, “expression in architecture,” buildings possess and express their properties: a building possesses its aesthetic properties. those properties are not…added, or introduced, to the work from the outside, regardless of the nature of this external source. they originate from the building.10 yet these aesthetic properties are not ready made realities, rather they exist as potentialities in the work. aesthetic perception is needed to discover properties in the work “not given to ordinary perception.”11 in this way aesthetic properties are emergent in the aesthetic experience of a work. he writes: this means that a building becomes art, i.e. acquires its aesthetic identity as a work of art, only during an event of aesthetic perception, and outside this perception its status is similar to the status of ordinary objects.12 in a subsequent essay, “the aesthetic experience of the architectural work,” he clarifies his view that aesthetic qualities are not feelings 109 isparchitecture.com evoked in the observer when aesthetic attention is brought to bear on the object, rather the quality is inherent in the object itself.13 his commitment to a realist ontology forces the conclusion that what distinguishes a building from a work of architecture is the existence of potential aesthetic properties in the latter but not in the former. similar to pevsner’s view, aesthetic properties are the ontic differencemakers between ‘architecture’ and ‘building.’ mitias embraces the view that there is only one set of non-contradictory properties that can be said to emerge from a given artwork. the claim that aesthetic qualities inhere but not as ready-made realties, that is, as actual properties given to sense perception, but as potentialities in the work implies a certain singularism insofar as mitias does not think that it is possible for several non-convergent aesthetic potentialities to emerge from the same building. the singularist is keen to point out that it cannot be the case that p & ~p are inherent in the same work. mitias certainly does not want to countenance the idea that contradictory qualities could emerge from the same work for two different interpreters. if two people hold contradictory views, then someone must be wrong. taken together mitias’ claims of aesthetic realism are supposed to compel his conclusion that a single right interpretation of a work is the goal of inquiry. in his essay, “how buildings mean,” nelson goodman claims that architecture is a building that symbolically functions, that is, a work of architecture performs a referential function that a mere building does not. although modernist works of architecture typically do not denote anything outside themselves, at least not in the manner of classical architecture, neither are they devoid of meaning, contrary to the claims of realists such as krier. under goodman’s account the work qua object has features that allow it to point both outside itself and to itself. a given work of architecture has meaning in virtue of its hadid’s commitment to modernism amounts to singularism “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 110 fo x capacity to simultaneously embody, and make explicit reference to, the properties it possesses. thus, a building’s meaning is rooted in what it exemplifies. one example he cites is gerrit reitveld’s schroeder house (1924), utrecht, where the work references its own structural features of columns, beams and walls. one advantage of goodman’s constructivist account is that the difference between a building and a work of architecture does not require any distinction between ordinary and aesthetic perception. furthermore, his view that referential functioning, at least in part, ought to ground the divide that separates a building from a work of architecture has an additional advantage for the constructivist, because this approach does not require an ontological resolution of aesthetic properties. it only requires human understanding of symbol systems. in goodman’s view of meaning, exemplification plays an important cognitive role with respect to works of art, because it affords epistemic access to features we might not otherwise attend to. as this line of reasoning demonstrates, it is not incoherent to talk of an internal locus for meaning, particularly for non-representational works, but focusing on the notion of a locus tends to reify meaning and distract us from goodman’s central point that the value of a work of art is its role in furthering our understanding, and that meaning is a correlate of that understanding. as catherine elgin has remarked of goodman’s views, “understanding works of art is not a matter of passive absorption, but of active intellectual engagement with symbols whose syntactic and semantic features are often elusive.”14 his endorsement of a multiplist ideal is explicit and unmistakable, “a work of art typically means in varied and contrasting and shifting ways and is open to many equally good and enlightening interpretations.”15 the multiplicity of interpretations goodman is prepared to accept appears to be rooted in his commitment to constructivism. goodman makes an important point about his view of the nature of architecture and interpretation. he writes “more than any other art, architecture makes us aware that interpretation cannot be so easily distinguished from the work.”16 his path to multiplism is evident insofar as what we think the work is due to our interpretations of it – our interpretations thus construct the work. can a constructivist object to mitias’ ontology yet concur with s? i hold that this is a reasonable result and i offer the iraqi-born british architect zaha hadid as an example of a constructive-singularist. she is a constructivist due to her thorough-going reliance on the centrality 111 isparchitecture.com of “constructed” symbol systems in her work. no determinate meaning exists to be discovered, so she claims. she is a staunch advocate of aesthetic modernism and, in her view, this is the singular lens through which works of architecture ought to be interpreted.17 her unyielding commitment to a purified aesthetic modernism and her advocacy of the aesthetic implications of modernity is clear: we can no longer fulfill our obligations as architects if we carry on as cake decorators. our role is far greater than that. we, the authors of architecture, have to take on the task of reinvestigating modernity ... there is only one way and that is to go forward along the path paved by the experiments of the early modernists.18 in claiming that hadid’s commitment to aesthetic modernism grounds her singularism, i am not making the larger claim that all adherents of modernism are necessarily advocates of singularism. nor am i making the claim that modernism is somehow the aesthetic equivalent of singularism. in hadid’s case her singularism is rooted in her commitment to modernism, yet this commitment in itself does not entail that only singular interpretations emerge from modernity. i classify her as a singularist, largely because i think that a thickened description of her work renders a single interpretation of it the best approach. the thickened description argument for s relies on the distinction between “thin” concepts and “thick” concepts. thick concepts are those where less variation is tolerated among instances. so, in the process of building up numerous descriptions of the thing under inquiry we narrow the range of admissible variations of it, and thus come to see it as “unified.” stylistically, hadid stands in stark contrast to the british philosopher roger scruton. in his book the classical vernacular scruton argues that generations of architects educated in a modernist outlook that rebuked traditional ornament, traditional ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 112 fo x materials, and the orders of classical greek and roman architecture have created aesthetically disappointing and nihilistic works that disregard the civic nature of architecture.19 in short, he argues that classicism is more aesthetically correct than modernism. he is forthright in his disdain for modernism, “its language is uncouth, unredeemed by detail, utterly indifferent to its surroundings, or to the person who is obliged to pass by the building.”20 we need to see that his aesthetic commitment to classicism need not be tied to his interpretive commitment to singularism. a multiplist, for example, could hold the views expressed by scruton that modernism is not aesthetically satisfying, but reject his claims about the sole “true” function of architecture. clearly hadid and scruton disagree about the aesthetics of modernism. even though both are singularists they are divided by their ontology. in contrast to these two singularists, the british architect richard rogers stands as an example of a realist-multiplist. he is a realist insofar as he is committed to the view that the thing being interpreted, the “brick and mortar” building, is constituted independent of what interpreters think. rogers holds that technology, scientific research, and an emphasis on function should serve as the basis for contemporary architecture. however, he also holds that architecture ought to be capable of adapting to changing social and technological needs. he is a multiplist due to his deep reliance on an “open ended” architectural object that is in principle flexible enough to admit numerous interpretations. he writes: though a building must be complete at any one stage, it is our belief that in order to allow for growth and change it should be functionally and therefore visually open-ended. this indeterminate form must offer legible architectural clues for the interpretation of future users. the dichotomy between the complete and the open nature of the building is a determinant of the aesthetic language.21 yet we need to be careful not to argue that an underlying indeterminacy of the work is what necessitates his being a multiplist. contrary to the deconstructivist position, this line of reasoning would undermine m1, rather than bolster it. instead, it is important to show that in principle a common object is countable yet it admits of more than one interpretation. that rogers holds this outcome to be both possible and desirable is evident in the following passage: the building form, plan, section and elevation should be capable of responding to changing needs. this free and changing performance will then become part of the expression of the architecture of the building, the street and the city. program, ideology and form will then play an integrated and legible role within a changing but ordered framework. the fewer the building constraints for the 113 isparchitecture.com users, the greater the success; the greater the success the more the need for revision and then programmatic indeterminance will become an expression of the architecture.22 rogers points to an important set of difficult cases, namely, those objects of interpretation that change over time. these sorts of cases present difficulty not because they threaten our interpretive ideals; both singularism and multiplism remain unaffected. the singularist, for example, would argue that the one-to-one relation still holds over time, because at any given time the single right interpretation is grounded in the state of the object at that particular time. the multiplist would agree that an object’s changed status could, though not necessarily would, ground different interpretations than those rendered earlier, but not because multiplism is false. these cases are difficult, precisely because where something is physically altered, the question emerges, do we have a new interpretanda or not? what would constitute a priori limits to alteration, such that the interpretanda remains “fixed,” is difficult to say but is the crux of the interpretive problem facing contextualists discussed at the outset. under a krauszian-style interpretive account, the community of informed interpreters would be relied upon to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not alterations to a given work of architecture create a new object of interpretation.23 furthermore, this same approach to resolving interpretive disputes about individual works would apply to the larger context within which a new work is to occur. some works of architecture change the context within which they occur, and some do not. this realization that a dialectical relation exists between our views about context, and our views about the identity of interpretanda could help move the contextualist debate forward. as the world trade center site example hadid and scruton disagree about the aesthetics of modernism even though both are both singularists “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 114 fo x illustrates, the ways in which architecture ought to memorialize human events continues to be a significant source of interpretive disagreement. this framework makes it clear that interpretive debates often occur on many levels simultaneously. and this may be a significant source of their seeming intractability. when differences in belief about the underlying events (what it is that is being memorialized) are conflated with how admissible interpretations elucidate architectural responses to it, disagreement is bound to occur. additionally, the framework makes it evident that one could be a either a singularist or a multiplist with respect to an underlying event, and proposed responses to it. whether a critic could be a singularist about an underlying event, and a multiplist in regards to proposes responses (or vice-versa) is a question this approach explicitly raises. this taxonomy also brings conceptual clarity to the krier-eisenman debate by providing an account of how their respective positions are both grounded in specific, yet differing, ontological commitments and differing interpretive ideals. in spite of their many differences, both eisenman and krier, in effect, endorse the view (though they would not have phrased it this way), that claims about what a work of architecture is necessarily entail the number of interpretations of it we ought to hold. as this taxonomy makes clear, both eisenman and krier have overlooked a crucial philosophical point about the relationship between their own ontological views and their interpretive ideals. iv. responding to objections several objections may be raised against this taxonomy. here, i address a few. objection 1: many contemporary works of architecture are indeterminate, and this undermines s. this is the critical pluralist’s objection. i concur, that one feature many contemporary works have in common is their indeterminacy. the existence of indeterminate works, however we construe them, is a separate issue from whether indeterminacy compels the adoption of a specific interpretive ideal. importantly, the success of both s and m depends necessarily on the notion of commonality—the proper construal of a common object. for differing interpretations of entities to meaningfully compete they must be about a common object of interpretation; they must be about the same thing. as i have already argued here, the determinacy of the object of interpretation does not necessitate singularism, nor does indeterminacy necessitate multiplism.24 thus, indeterminacy does not threaten s1—it remains a defensible ideal. 115 isparchitecture.com objection 2: the taxonomy is incomplete; there are more than two ontologies for works of architecture. this objection is almost certainly true. there is at least a third major ontological theory – constructiverealism – in this taxonomy that i discuss elsewhere, but given its philosophical complexities i chose to forego discussion of it for two reasons: 1) the difference between internal and external constructive-realism makes it difficult to determine the relevance of constructive-realism as an architectural ontology; and, 2) no one within the field of architectural interpretation, as far as i know, has advanced anything to discuss. objection 3: there are lots of interpretations about architecture; not just four. true, insofar as we are talking about the number of actual interpretations; they are inestimable. but an interpretation is not an interpretive position. the focus of the taxonomy is to articulate a philosophically-grounded framework that fosters enhanced dialogue and comprehension of interpretive positions and strategies. as i have argued, the number of interpretive positions is not unlimited. my aim here is not to articulate and then adjudicate specific interpretations, but rather to enrich dialogue among disputants, build a few bridges, and get beyond the interpretive gridlock that has characterized architectural interpretation in recent decades. objection 4: the detachability thesis, d, fails. for the sake of brevity, i offer two reasons why d succeeds. first, each of the four positions is coherently adoptable. there are no internal contradictions within any of them. second, the methodological issue of which interpretive ideal we should adopt, s or m, can occur prior to interpreting any particular object, and it simply does not hinge on how we characterize the ontology of the object we are interpreting; one issue is located at the level of practice, the other at the level of ontology. in conclusion, the interpretive framework ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 116 fo x i propose has numerous advantages. first, the interpretive conduct it sanctions with respect to the number of admissible interpretations does not entail an a priori commitment to a specific ontological theory, something architects do not possess as a matter of professional training, and something that few architectural theorists articulate in any careful or systematic fashion. second, where an interpreter is committed to a particular ontology with respect to works of architecture, such commitment does not obligate them in advance to accept a specific number of admissible interpretations. being a realist, for example, does not compel an interpreter to embrace the view that a single right interpretation exists. last, it is useful for assisting interpreters that may be unable or unwilling to overcome differences in their interpretive positions and reach agreement about the cultural value and meaning of specific works. for all these reasons, i consider this interpretive framework to be a substantial improvement over what we have now. endnotes 1. john silber, architecture of the absurd: how “genius” disfigured a practical art. (new york: quantuck lane press, 2007), 59. 2. peter eisenman and leon krier, “peter eisenman versus leon krier: my ideology is better than yours,” architectural design 59, 7-18. 3. nikolaus pevsner, an outline of european architecture (layton, ut: gibbs smith, 2009), 10. 4. see “q & a: peter eisenman”, in the architect’s newspaper, vol7, issue 5, may 29, 2013. p. 22. 5. andreaa deciu ritivoi, introduction to interpretation and its objects, ed., andreea deciu ritivoi (amsterdam: rodopi, 2003), 8. 6. michael krausz, introduction to is there a single right interpretation?, ed., michael krausz (university park: pennsylvania state university press, 2002), 1. 7. for proponents of the singularist view see david novitz, “against critical pluralism,” in is there a single right interpretation? ed. michael krausz (university park: pennsylvania state university press, 2002), 101-121; and, brandon cooke, “critical pluralism unmasked,” british journal of aesthetics 42, 296-309. 8. krausz, introduction, is there a single right interpretation? 2. 9. zaha hadid, “the eighty-nine degrees,” in theories and manifestoes of contemporary architecture, 2nd ed., ed., charles jencks and karl kropf (hoboken: wiley academy, 2006), 280. 10. michael h. mitias, “expression in architecture,” in philosophy and architecture, ed., michael h. mitias (amsterdam: rodopi, 1994), 99. 11. mitias, “expression,” 99. 117 isparchitecture.com 12. mitias, “expression,” 100. 13. michael h. mitias, “the aesthetic experience of the architectural work,” journal of aesthetic education 33, 64. 14. catherine z. elgin, “relocating aesthetics,” in the philosophy of nelson goodman: nelson goodman’s philosophy of art, vol 3, ed., catherine z. elgin (new york: garland publishing, inc., 1997), 171. 15. nelson goodman, “how buildings mean,” in reconceptions in philosophy and other arts & sciences, ed., nelson goodman and catherine z. elgin (indianapolis: hackett publishing, 1988), 44. 16. goodman, “how buildings mean,” 45. 17. hadid, “eighty-nine degrees,” 280. 18. hadid, “eighty-nine degrees,” 280. 19. roger scruton, introduction to the classical vernacular: architectural principles in an age of nihilism (new york: st. martin’s press, 1994), xiii. 20. scruton, classical vernacular, 16. 21. richard rogers, “observations on architecture,” in theories and manifestoes of contemporary architecture, 2nd ed., ed., charles jencks and karl kropf (hoboken: wiley academy, 2006), 252. 22. rogers, “observations,” 253. 23.what constitutes the community of informed interpreters, and who qualifies for admission into it, is an important aspect of the framework. for a more in-depth treatment see chapter 3, richard n. fox, interpreting architecture: a krauszian approach. (long beach, ca: california state university long beach, 2009). 24. i first argued this point in richard n. fox, “ambiguous works of architecture: a krauszian-style interpretive approach to the gehry residence,” (paper presented at the pacific division meeting of the society for the philosophic study of contemporary visual art, san diego, california, april 2011). in the paper i offered a critical extension of the notion of a common object of interpretation and examined what we ought to look for in construing what the common object amounts to when we examine a specific work of architecture. i argued that: (1) concerns about determinacy ought not compel us to adopt a particular interpretive ideal; and, (2) a work’s ambiguity does not hinder interpreter’s ability to agree on what constitutes the common object of their interpretive disagreement. isparchitecture.com the myth of autonomy nathaniel coleman architecture, one would think, has its own validity. it needs no reference to any other discipline to make it “viable” or to “justify” its value. we might even question whether words like value or morals are applicable to an architectural style.1 my point is very different from e.g. eisenman’s idea that architecture is self-centered and only concerned with its own formal-compositional issues. eisenman posits that architecture should throw off its concern with the world, abandon function and only concentrate on architectural form. [...] i am trying to formulate the overall rationality of the discipline that necessarily involves the integration of world-reference (function) and self-reference (form).2 in this article, the so-called ‘autonomy project in architecture’, as theorised by ignasi de solà-morales (1942-2001); k. michael hays’s (b. 1952); patrik schumacher’s (b. 1961), of zaha hadid’s office; and pier vittorio aureli (b. 1973) is interrogated. in particular, the main aim of this article is to reveal the project of autonomy in architecture as a myth, especially in relation to the parallel myth of an avant-garde (especially a neo-avant-garde) in architecture. however, it is important to underline that my interrogation of ‘the myth of autonomy’ has little to do with recent trends in anti-theory, for example as outlined by jeremy till (b. 1957) in his architecture depends (2009). ultimately, the aim of this article is to recover a critical-historical perspective that reveals the project of orthodox modern architecture eschewed by ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 158 co le m a n autonomists as itself an earlier response to the same persisting disciplinary crisis that animates their efforts. following on from this, utopia is reintroduced as providing architects with a much more promising set of tools for redeeming architecture than autonomy ever could. as i will argue, the most significant contribution utopia can make to architecture is to return the social and political to it, which also provides a way to resist the formalist pull of autonomy. renewal of utopia, and with it the social and political dimensions of architecture, inevitably reveal(s) autonomy as a myth invested primarily in the dissolution of just such a possibility. the great paradox of autonomy in architecture is that it is duplicitous, using the inevitable impurities of realization as a cover for impossible desires for purity as a means to liberate architecture from its obligation to communities. the apparent naiveté of the modernist project as one of engagement, as interpreted by architects such as aldo van eyck, is discarded in favor of disengagement as apparently the only realistic response. oppositions in the introduction to the oppositions reader compilation he edited, hays ruminates on why autonomy became such an important preoccupation of so many of the architect authors and theorists who contributed to oppositions (1973-1984), the journal of the institute for architecture and urban studies in new york city (1967-1984). however, he goes no further than raising the question, a move as provocative as it is frustrating: for the essential contradictions between architecture’s autonomy – its selforganization into a body of formal elements and operations that separate it from any place and time – and its contingency on, even determination by, historical forces beyond its control subsumes all the ‘formal socio-cultural and political’ concerns into an all embracing dialectic. the conflicts of formalism and determinism [...] seem almost symptomatic of a deeper [...] social pathology [... .] one should ask not whether architecture is autonomous, or whether it can willfully be made so, but rather how it can be that the question arises in the first place, what kind of situation allows for architecture to worry about itself to this degree.3 despite leaving readers without a definitive response to his question, hays does offer several takes on autonomy drawn from the pages of oppositions. even so, relatively convincing explanations for architects’ turn inward, away from material reality and the perplexing burdens of their discipline, do exist. as the german philosopher of hope ernst bloch (1885-1977) and the italian architectural historian and theorist of closure manfredo tafuri (1935-1994) have intimated, architecture as a ‘work’, akin to the 159 isparchitecture.com unique achievements of the fine arts, rather than as an industrially reproducible ‘product’ – as french sociologist and philosopher of cracks henri lefebvre (1901-1991) asserted – is all but impossible under capitalism. the failures of orthodox modernism, in particular its ostensive social project and ultimate rejection of this, left architects without a program or project for architecture and the city. ascribing this failure to utopia also left them without the tools for thinking their way beyond capitalism and modernism. although these phenomena are often presented as a new condition particular to the crisis of modernity after the second world war, with the move toward autonomy seen as having taken a cue from the frontiers of visual and performing arts. however, this understanding deprives narratives of the terminal condition of orthodox modernity of a critical-historical perspective that might well reveal the project of modern architecture eschewed by autonomists as itself an earlier response to the same persisting disciplinary crises. although tafuri’s discussion of piranesi in the sphere and the labyrinth is very helpful in illuminating this predicament, to my mind, british architectural historian and theorist joseph rykwert’s (b. 1926) the first moderns (1980) offers an even more lucid account of the shift in direction for the discipline suggested here. indeed, rykwert, who was awarded the 2014 royal institute of british architects gold medal, pushes the origins of this shift slightly further back than tafuri does, to the end of the baroque and the period of the rococo, in particular to claude perrault’s (16131688) conceptualization of ‘positive and arbitrary beauty’ – the division between the quantitative and qualitative in building. in light of the dramatic consequences of this, for rykwert, the only way forward for the discipline of architecture is to recuperate its enduring vocation: the nature of our responses to the world of artifacts, the way in which groups and communities appropriate space, occupies sociologists and anthropologists. and utopia is reintroduced as providing architects with a much more promising set of tools for redeeming architecture than autonomy ever could “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 160 co le m a n we acknowledge these human scientists as important and wholly serious people. yet their studies are, in the last reduction, almost inevitably problems of form. this book [the first moderns, 1980] recalls a time when the architect’s business was just that. perhaps if there is to be a place for the architect’s work within a future social fabric, he will need to learn how to deal with such problems again.4 rykwert leaves us with a challenge at the end of the first moderns, rather than an answer: for architects to regain their lost place within the culture, they must reconnect with those aspects of their discipline that once ensured this. although not explicitly stated, this clearly reveals the project of autonomy in architecture as a profound form of alienation that deprives buildings of many of its associations and topics. while rykwert’s reconstruction of the preconditions that have led to the current situation of the past forty to fifty years is decidedly wide-ranging, he does not exactly excavate the causes of this condition, which tafuri is more comfortable doing. as such, the significant socio-political import of his argument is somewhat obscured. perhaps the reason for this is that whereas tafuri had lost all hope for architecture, rykwert has remained optimistic, leaving it to those more pessimistic of his readers to intensify the polemic his work suggests. indeed, my consideration of autonomy in relation to architecture developed here is informed by the battle for an architectural soul (perhaps only my own) carried out – in spirit at least – in the triangulated space between the thinking of tafuri, lefebvre, and rykwert.5 the tension that exists between tafuri’s theoretical world and lefebvre’s is a product of the friction between the former’s conviction that the world system of capitalism is totally closed, and the latter’s belief in the generative potential to be drawn through the cracks that always exist in that never quite totally closed system. rykwert provides the third point of the triangle by being even more stalwartly optimistic than lefebvre on the one hand, and unconvinced by tafuri’s pessimism on the other. arguably, the play of architectural theory today continues to be carried out within the triangulated space created by the tensions identified above, even if it tends to be imagined as operating within the altogether less determinate spaces of collage city, as conceived by architectural historian and theorist colin rowe (1920-1999), who, as hays observes, suffered a, “deep disillusionment with the utopian mission of [modern] architecture.”6 actually, of the four theorists introduced just above, rowe is the one who most believed, if only half-heartedly, that autonomy – as a using of things and not believing in them – alone could redeem orthodox modern 161 isparchitecture.com architecture from its significant failings that came into view after world war ii. tafuri was also committed to autonomy in architecture, but did not share rowe’s conviction that it could only be redeemed by formalism, which promised to quash its social and political content. tafuri’s conception of autonomy differs from rowe’s as fundamentally a critique of the tragedy of architecture under capitalist production. however, the inevitable self-indulgence of the autonomy project in architectural practice, especially as advanced by the new york five architects in the 1960s and 1970s proved too much for tafuri to take. ultimately, he came to see the crisis of architecture as ‘a crisis of ideology’. in light of this, he came to assert that architects are powerless to resist their capture within the system of capitalist production; as they are little more than technicians within a building industry, ensnared within the total closure of the capitalist/neoliberal system. it is in confronting tafuri’s pessimism (valid as it might be) that the possibility of the counter-spaces suggested by rykwert, and more emphatically theorized by lefebvre really cannot be ignored. rykwert’s positivity, and, in particular, lefebvre’s stubborn optimism, furnishes compelling antidotes to tafuri’s resolute pessimism. as introduced above, lefebvre could locate possibilities in even the most unpromising conditions of the same system described by tafuri as total; precisely because lefebvre believed that systemic closure is never as total as it might appear: cracks in the system can always be detected, which reveals the apparently impossible as actually possible, even across the scant moments that separate the two. paradoxically, tafuri’s pessimism seems to me to have been, at least in part, an inevitable byproduct of the ultimately frustrated hopes he placed in autonomy, no matter how short-lived, while lefebvre’s work on space, in particular his determined optimism, would have ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 162 co le m a n been impossible had he grounded his hopes for transformation, even his ideas on autgestion (self-management), in autonomy. the crypto-utopianism of rykwert and the more overt utopianism of lefebvre articulate an alternative to the project of autonomy that long ago lost its political edge as a form of resistance to the inevitable dissolution of the engaged cultural work of architecture when subsumed within the building industry as one of the most extreme forms of capitalist production. tafuri, lefebvre, and even rykwert share serious doubts about the architect as expert, or advocate, or as guardian of some imagined “communal imaginary” (at least in the present), rendering such a view difficult to sustain, unless the conventional professional mythologies of the architect are left unchallenged. although tafuri and lefebvre shared a relative suspicion about autonomy and the avant-garde alike, what separates them are their respective ideas on the degree to which the total closure of the given condition is actually final. as such, they differed on the relative value of utopia as well. in contradistinction to its reputation, utopia is bound up with the real world on the ground (at least in lefebvre’s conception of it, and my own). as such, utopia offers real possibilities for overcoming given conditions without exiting the everyday. indeed, utopia is actually nearly always about the everyday. but utopia permits us to act on the everyday, and even exit given conditions, without necessitating the delusion of either autonomy or a fictional avant-garde to imagine transformative alterity. the otherness of utopia is always about return as well – the exit is necessary to re-imagine the present that will be transformed. ultimately, concrete, or constitutive, utopias mount a challenge to autonomy in architecture, to the repetition compulsion of neo-avant-gardes without a cause as well. the alternatives that utopia posits enlivens history and renews tradition by being a ‘handing over’ rather than a ‘handing down’: utopia imagines how the past can be surrendered to the future by way of renewed – reimagined – tradition. reading autonomy through utopia, as i am doing here raises a paradox by which utopia (in the way i understand it) although so commonly presented as impossibility or no place, inevitably problematizes the myth of architectural autonomy. by returning the social and political to architecture, utopia provides a way around the formalist pull of autonomy while retaining the hope of freedom in the distanciated space it articulates, which autonomy must negate. the space of utopian thought, though located elsewhere in space or in time, is always situated in the present as a critical appraisal of and alternative to it. in this way, utopia can never be autonomous, as its engagement with the context it attempts 163 isparchitecture.com to transform is always dialogical, interweaving self and other, individual and society. autonomy must ultimately take the form of a myth – in art as in life – because all works – especially architecture – and all people are always already embedded within a wider web of associations, primarily social. in this way, autonomy in architecture is arguably above all else a fairytale remarkably well-suited to transforming ideologies of freedom, individualism, and neoliberalism into a myth, a self-soothing story that perpetuates the illusion of agency (particularly evident in the endless cycles of aimless neo-avant-gardes in architecture). considered in this way, the shape autonomy has taken in architectural theory and practice as formalism begins to make sense, especially in the form of spatializations of disconnectedness from the social and political in architecture that autonomy entails. as developed immediately above, what i am proposing here might well seem to be at odds with framing the question of autonomy in a traditionally kantian way. for kant, autonomy is to be valued as a form of ethical understanding, in the sense that it presupposes some rational will. as noted kant expert paul guyer notes, above all, kant was the philosopher of human autonomy, the view that by the use of our own reason in its broadest sense human beings can discover and live up to the basic principles of knowledge and action without outside assistance, above all without divine support or intervention.7 i am unconvinced that life on the ground bears this out as a real possibility. while such a belief may be seductive, how many people actually act in accordance with their own moral duty (or even their own best interests, rather than apparent self interest) independent of a web of social relations? although autonomy in practice in architecture might be explained as the (morally) laudable effort autonomy in architecture is arguably above all else a fairytale remarkably well-suited to transforming ideologies of freedom, individualism, and neo-liberalism into a myth, a self-soothing story that perpetuates the illusion of agency. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 164 co le m a n to act ‘without outside assistance’, architecture is not philosophy, at least not in the sense that permits the purity of argumentation in isolation from concrete experience and practices on the ground. so while arguments in philosophy might need not be troubled by the way in which the mundane inevitably taints practice, as architects we are so deeply embedded in the world that attempting to claim any such luxury is at best a misapprehension. inevitably, as architects, only if we are vigilant in attending to just how infrequently any of us actually act in our own best interest, or on behalf of the communities to which we belong, will we have any hope of acting in remotely ethical ways. it is in this regard that autonomy as individualism (and as willful disengagement), inevitably suggests just the sort of isolation associated with formalism. intriguingly, the idea of freedom that best describes a wide range of autonomy projects in architecture is transcendental (in the sense of being a priori or preternatural), rather than empirical (in the sense of being experiential or pragmatic).8 in this regard, perhaps the opposition ought to be more simply stated as the ‘pure’ as opposed to the ‘impure’, which in terms of utopia could be indicated as the difference between the ‘abstract’ (transcendental) and the ‘concrete (empirical). however, for these differences to have dialectical value, in terms of defining an alternative idea of freedom with regard to architecture, the concrete, empirical, or pragmatic would need to be thought of as far more nuanced than technocratic understandings of them usually permit. k. michael hays influenced by philosophical post-structuralism in their responses to the failures of architects’ flirtations with positivist social science that so marked the orthodox modernism of the post world war ii period, a fair number of the generation of architects reaching maturity post-1968 set for themselves the task, as hays has put it, of ‘thinking architecture back into its own.’ interestingly, this group’s prevailing conception of architecture’s own imagined it as domain of practice free of social obligation and unfettered by the habits of culture, of comprehensibility and of the everyday. arguably, this fantasy of a pure architecture remains dominant, or at least prevails as an aspiration for practice, what hays calls the ‘autonomy project.’9 given the association of high-modern, or orthodox-modern architecture with utopia, most of the post-1968 generation of architects wants to be as post-utopian as they are autonomous; indeed, many are categorically anti-utopian. according to hays’s reading (and that of other chroniclers) of 165 isparchitecture.com autonomy, architects as divergent as aldo rossi and peter eisenman, or bernard tschumi, rem koolhaas, and zaha hadid (amongst others) share a suspicion of architectural sincerity of the sort aldo van eyck detailed until his death in 1999, and which rykwert continues to encourage. the counterprojects of still practicing architects as diverse as tadao ando, deborah berke, david chipperfield, herman hertzberger, renzo piano, tod williams and billie tsien, and peter zumthor come to mind. paradoxically, the first group attempt to escape utopia by way of inventing architectures in which some relative perfection is achievable, whereas the second group transacts in the transformative potential of hope, while embracing hints at fallibility as a crucial humanizing characteristic (yes, arguably even ando, zumthor, and chipperfield). consciously or otherwise, i believe this tension reveals some sort of awareness (in both camps) that autonomy is preternatural, only possible outside of the realm of “time and necessity” (as alberti observed), or “place and occasion” (as van eyck observed). equally, as john ruskin long ago asserted (and le corbusier practiced) perfection is reserved for the unknown or unknowable, or is achievable only when the problem is so reduced, or the aims set low enough, that it can be attained. confirming this interpretation, hays argues that the “autonomy project” entails freeing “architecture from the burden of utility” necessarily so in “recognition of the impossibility, or failure of meaning” for an architecture inexorably compromised by its capture within the building industry that realization ironically exacerbates. it is for this reason that autonomists like hays are not particularly interested in the actual reception of built works. only theories and theoretical (or visionary) projects have any chance of freedom from the burden of use and the destructive consequences of the capitalist production of building. in hays’s view, architecture, in, “any traditional sense, such as van autonomy as individualism (and as willful disengagement) inevitably suggests just the sort of isolation associated with formalism. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 166 co le m a n eyck proposed,” is irredeemably lost, ostensibly leaving autonomy as the only authentic response.10 the troubling thing about the supposedly authentic response of autonomy is that it requires emptiness, or meaninglessness, for its achievement. as an example of this, consider tafuri and francesco dal co’s assessment of louis i kahn’s work: [t]he new bases for architecture set up by kahn are every bit as artificial as the myths and institutions in which he put his trust [...]. it is nostalgia that determines kahn’s language. that determinism breaks with the modern tradition no less violently than does every attempt to confine it in the display cases of a museum. kahn’s work inveighs against the reduction of architecture to a negligible object. but this signifies protecting the values from the process of history by transfiguring them into symbols, by attempting to recover their arcane properties.11 while i might experience kahn’s work as an audacious attempt to recuperate social meaning and comprehensibility in modern architecture, tafuri and dal co necessarily see it as confirmation of a false consciousness, in the sense that it is an attempt to resist the, ‘reduction of architecture to a negligible object,’ as an inevitable consequence of capitalist production and the flows of history. in tafuri and dal co’s terms, although resistance of this sort might be possible because it exists, it is false – a myth – in the sense of misleading us as regards the material, ideological and institutional processes of capitalist society. the significance of this is that, in marxist terms, those conditions could only ever be overcome if nothing diverts attention from the reality of our circumstances under capitalism. while i have great sympathy for this position, i remain unconvinced by the prospect of autonomy – of a socially and politically empty architecture that retreats from reality and the everyday, as much as from utopia – as the way to set the stage for what ernst bloch called “true architecture” that will only ever be possible when architecture emerges from the, “hollow space of capitalism.”12 although this might make me into a utopian socialist who encourages piecemeal attempts to willfully act upon history out of step with its flows, rather than a scientific socialist, deleuze and guattari argue that, “[w]hat matters is not the supposed distinction between utopian and scientific socialism but the different types of utopia, one of them being revolution.”13 in my estimation, as practiced, autonomy is not a revolution but rather a restoration of sorts in the sense that an empty architecture, whatever its claims to resistance, is an architecture fully coincident with the processes of the capitalist production of buildings. without the edge of utopia, of a sustained critique of the present that seeks to transform it, 167 isparchitecture.com architecture is just another product to be exchanged. by the same measure, the autonomy project of architecture is compensatory; a sad response to architects’ diminished authority and reduced influence within the building industry of capitalist production, effected through a reduction of the tasks of architecture primarily to formal or typological concerns. thus, the autonomy project is less liberation than requiem. couched as a form of resistance to the dominance of capitalist production, autonomy in architecture is more convincingly a symptom of the very condition it purports to resist. in point of fact, autonomy in architecture constructs an apologia for solipsism, radical individualism, self-indulgence, and a negation of the social and other external forces that shape architecture and which it shelters, to say nothing of the web of associations of which it is part. clearly, nothing could be more consistent with the logic of products. though i feel closer in spirit to lefebvre and rykwert, this pessimistic conclusion is closer to tafuri, who, as hays observes, “found architecture in a double bind. to the extent that architecture can function in a capitalist society, it inevitably reproduces the structure and codes of that society in its own immanent logics and form.”14 escape becomes capture, suggesting that the choice is between either capitulation or transformation, rather than between determinism or autonomy. summarizing tafuri, hays notes: “when architecture resists, when it attempts to reassert its own disruptive voice, capitalism simply withdraws from service, relegates it to the boudoir, so that demonstrations by architects of their works’ autonomy and degraded life become redundant and trivialized in advance.”15 indeed, for tafuri, the, “return to pure architecture,” that capitalism necessitates, is little more than a return, “to form without utopia [...] to sublime uselessness.”16 the autonomy project is less liberation than requiem. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 168 co le m a n ignasi de solà-morales for ignasi de solà-morales (1942-2001), the autonomy project really begins to take shape in the aftermath of the rebellions of 1968. for him, in its present form, this condition is describable as, “our present panorama of incertitude and desolation.”17 indeed, the self-absorption suggested by the very desire for an autonomous architecture arguably only becomes a preoccupation in periods of crisis, or of “pessimism.”18 in morales’s view autonomy entails, “the disappearance of all reference to anything beyond the universe of artistic products’ themselves.”19 what is more, “the idea’ is put ‘before the materiality of the object […]. the process is more important than the work of art. more important than the finished, isolated object are the ideas [that] made it possible.”20 although for morales the preceding describes what he calls “plastic arts,” a similar condition exists for architecture, in which its autonomy is “based on the body of theory intrinsic to it.”21 in a passage that highlights the limitations of thinking of theories and projects as autonomous from construction – from the built reality of building – morales describes the experience of visiting a constructed building designed by italian architect aldo rossi (1941-1997), as opposed to the genuine pleasure of seeing his drawings and other representations: the sense of disillusion experienced by many upon seeing a rossi building constructed on an actual site and from concrete materials derives from the fact that the building thus asks to be considered objectively or functionally, while its author tries to call instead to the process revealed in his drawings, so that the construction of the building is an episode in an architectonic discourse understood as autonomous and thus indifferent to construction or use.22 in such work, including that of the architects peter eisenman (b. 1932), michael graves (b. 1934), richard meier (b. 1934), john hejduk (19292000), and charles gwathmey (1938-2009) considered in the 1971 book the new york five, “[t]he idea, defined by sketches, not by built work overtakes the importance of the ‘real thing.”23 the desire for ‘the autonomy of the discipline’ of architecture is a symptom of, “the failure of modern architecture,” that apparently joins this grouping of architects together.24 as described by morales, the architecture of autonomy is characterized by, “the evocation of impossible architectures, of ruins, of spatial absurdities, and of conceptual paradoxes,” indicative of a, “loss of confidence in the possibility of a truly buildable and culturally valid architecture.”25 the internalized work of automist architects is, “concerned purely with syntax [the composition or arrangement of architectural elements]: semantics [the meaning of architectural elements that emerges from assemblages of 169 isparchitecture.com them, and from their metaphoric power] constitute not so much a goal to be reached as a point from which to depart.”26 here, morales returns our attention to the association between autonomy and a draining away of culturally associative content in architecture, in response to the crisis of architecture (and modernity) as a crisis of meaning and ideology, and as a symptom of the capitalist production of buildings. pier vittorio aureli (b. 1973) – the project of autonomy for aureli, the key aim of what he calls “the project of autonomy” is to intensify the difference between “present thinking” and “past thinking.” in this sense, “autonomy” is that process by which the apparent uniqueness of the present can know itself as distinct from the past and from tradition, even if both become tropes that autonomists “mess” with. however, while aureli is interested in autonomy as a project of international architectural culture in general, his main preoccupation is with emphasizing its italian origins and the multiplicity of expressions within that context, which is to say, that while it might be convenient to identify aldo rossi with tafuri, for aureli they are different in the way that rowe and eisenman are. although the subtlety of this might be elusive, it is surely reasonable to argue that historian/theorists (tafuri and rowe) will be different from practitioner/ theorists (rossi and eisenman). at the very least, the former could make a much more convincing claim to autonomy than the latter: history and theory exist in the realm of texts, which are much less costly or risky to produce than buildings are. on the other hand, architecture is always implicated in the dominant culture and bound to its modes of production. as such, the construction of architecture always renders it already far too compromised – by association – to lay any claim to autonomy of any substantive sort. it is precisely ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 170 co le m a n this compromised position that implementation foists upon architecture that encouraged a range of autonomists to initially turn away from making buildings toward the construction of theories and representations. however, even these activities, in particular the crafting of supposedly autonomous representations, are quickly subsumed within the logic of the provision of products and of consumption. the beautiful representations of architect theorists may have been free of the ‘burden of use’ because they could, or would, never be constructed, but this did not inoculate them from quickly becoming objects of exchange, far from autonomous in any convincing sense. one need only think of the importance of the leo castelli gallery in soho new york city in this regard during the 1970s and early 1980s. many architects’ reputations were made, and building careers ultimately launched, on the basis of first producing apparently autonomous representations. it is in this regard, as aureli observes that “capitalism evolves to disarm [...] resistance.”27 aureli’s argument, it is worth noting, obtains to a small architectural elite that is not representative of architecture as generally practiced. nor does his argument particularly relate to the individuals who conventionally populate buildings. indeed, this is likely the point: autonomy of any sort that actually proceeds to some real form of resistance presupposes isolation from the mainstream. it is in this regard that autonomy is countercultural, which ostensibly confirms it as a critical practice of a sort. though only for so long as it is not named as a style or consumed as one. the near impossibility of actually achieving this turns on the duration of the cycles of style that autonomy is part of having – paradoxically – become shorter and shorter since the 1970s. although aureli offers something of a history of autonomy in architecture – from the 1960s onward – with an emphasis on italian currents, it seems to me that the main aim of his project is to locate, or more precisely, to carve out, a place for his own practice by laying claim to an inheritance from the italian autonomists, in the belief that this would actually make practice – his own – possible in the midst of capitalist production. thus, his observations about the convictions of the autonomists appear to mirror his own hopes: [the autonomists’ project was] not about the destruction of capitalist culture and bourgeois history per se but, on the contrary, [it was rather about] their deep analysis and instrumental use. autonomy was not the creation of politics and poetics ex nihilo but rather an audacious effort to appropriate the political realm in order to construct an alternative to capitalist domination.28 the peculiar thing about aureli’s reading, or perhaps of the strain of autonomy he is interested in, is that its aims are, according to him, 171 isparchitecture.com “postpolitical” rather than “political”, which to me seems a sure recipe for failure.29 clearly, attempting to act upon capitalist production in some postpolitical manner comes just a bit too close to the myths of the end of history that underpin the neoliberal project today. however, in telling the story in this way, aureli brings us close to a truer condition, that of melancholia, of a sense of exhaustion and despondency in the face of the apparent failure and defeat of communism, and of the left more generally, particularly in their inability to offer up a compelling alternative to the entrepreneurial spirit and chameleon-like wiles of capitalism. indeed, in aureli’s view autonomy’s target was not so much capitalism as it was communism and the left, in the belief that through the antagonism of autonomy, capitalism could be transformed (somehow from within). but how this could be achieved – disengaged from politics – remains a mystery. nevertheless, aureli is clear: he wants to, “attempt to extract from [the] history [of the project of autonomy] what is still valid today.”30 achieving this clearly presents a significant problem in a context where autonomy suggests a particular attitude, or style, as much as a retreat from many of the multiple problems that make up architecture, for example, encounters with place and use. ultimately, for aureli, by the time the autonomy project in architecture was exported to the anglo-american context it arrived as an already spent force, suggesting aesthetic innovations of a formalist sort, rather than any radical political initiative. as such, the very conditions of extreme commercial production that autonomy professed to counter quickly consumed it within its own capitalist logic. nevertheless, aureli looks to, “autonomia as a way to establish long-term responsibilities and solid categories by which to counter the positivistic and mystifying ways that social and political development comes to be seen as evolutionary progress.”31 while i certainly agree with the necessity of doing just this, the “autonomy ultimately, the myth of the autonomy project maintains the status quo by which utopia must still be renounced. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 172 co le m a n project” in architecture must inevitably turn-in on itself to become both self-justifying and self-indulgent, little more than a compensation for the near impossibility of socially rich and significant architectural practise with the reach of capitalism. ultimately, the myth of the autonomy project maintains the status quo by which utopia must still be renounced, including the commitment to transformation it speaks, and the real social and political engagement it requires. in this renunciation, the architect can also maintain his or her fiction of some special status in the making and remaking of the world, despite all of the evidence to the contrary that persistently debunks this myth. patrik schumacher patrik schumacher, who teaches at the architectural association in london, is a director in the office of zaha hadid architects; his prominence in uk architectural education and position in hadid’s office, as representative of so-called starchitect practises, are the key reasons for considering his take on the autonomy of architecture here. the main shortcoming of schumacher’s writing on architecture is that to make his point he presumes an either/or situation of either grand master narratives, or none. as such, his argument is totalizing and lacks subtlety. his tone suggests that the current system of cultural production really is as closed as the absolute fragmentation he posits would ensure. he associates master narratives with the social renewal projects of utopia, evident, according to him, in the urban projects of orthodox modern architecture. overcoming master narratives, with a putative realism, entails, as with most autonomists, doing away with utopia. according to schumacher, the current condition reveals, “the all too evident impossibility of designing a new world,” not least, he argues, because the current condition, “indicates how far utopia has been left behind.” in this regard, schumacher observes, “two related tendencies that conspire to frustrate any straightforward utopian impulse within architecture and design: 1. the dissolution of the utopian politicocultural discourses of emancipation and social progress [...].” and, “2. the increasing autonomy and self-referential closure of the discipline of architecture, as expressed [...] in the [...] work and writings of peter eisenman.” he continues, “while [i]t might seem that [...] architecture withdraws into itself because no compelling social project exists that could inspire and direct architectural speculation [...], there is another way one could theorise the relationship between these two phenomena.”32 on the basis of the argument developed in the preceding pages of the present article, by this juncture it should come as no surprise that my conviction 173 isparchitecture.com is that the withdrawal of architecture into itself is indeed a symptom of having, “no compelling social project,” to, “inspire and direct architectural speculation.” in schumacher’s view: [t]he tendency towards architectural autonomy might be understood as a moment of an overall societal process of differentiation, whereby social communication fragments into a series of autonomous domains – the economy, politics, the legal system, science, art etc. – establishing self-referentially closed subsystems within society. each of these autonomous discourses contributes, in its specific way, to the overall social process. but this overall social process – society – does no longer have any control centre over and above the various increasingly autonomous communication systems. the differentiated discourses establish their own sovereign independence with respect to their underlying values, performance criteria, programmes and priorities. in this sense the various subsystems operate self-referentially [...] in a kind of self referentially enclosed autonomy.33 according to schumacher, such fragmentation is to be welcomed precisely because the condition of autonomy facilitates, “the ability to experiment with adaptations to a turbulent environment on many local fronts simultaneously, without the need to synchronise all moves, and without running the risk that failures rip too deep into the social fabric.”34 moreover, his belief is that such fragmentation protects architecture because, “design rationality too can neither be reduced to nor controlled by any other than its own logic.”35 schumacher’s discourse depends on a large degree of overconfidence in the supposed logic of his statements. nowhere is this arrogance more pronounced than in his naïve and out-of-date statements on utopia that are, admittedly, fairly typical of primitive understandings of the concept, and which stubbornly persist in architecture theory: ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 174 co le m a n the self-referential closure of the differentiated subsystems of societal communication spells the end of utopia. utopia as a coherent project and blueprint, i.e. as the wholesale reinvention of society integrating politics, law, economy and architecture, breaks up in the face of an insurmountable complexity barrier [...]. today society has no address, no centre and no opportunity to generate a binding representation of itself and its destiny.36 the preceding begs the question as to whether or not utopia must be blueprint to articulate reinvention. an alternative position arising from with the discipline of utopian studies and beyond is that the blueprint utopia is just one, albeit unfortunate, utopian possibility amongst others. examples of these alternatives include “utopia as method” as ruth levitas understands it, as a way of thinking about and working toward the “possible-impossible” as henri lefebvre described it, or the taking of the first resolute, though by no means certain, steps toward the realization of alternatives that would be “constitutive” rather than “pathological”(of a blueprint utopian sort), in paul ricoeur’s sense.37 amongst the many peculiar aspects of schumacher’s thinking is his conviction that: [a] mark of the self-referential closure of architecture is that design decisions are tightly knit to their kind and only obliquely/indirectly [...] refer to external demands and circumstances [...]. political, legal or financial concerns are not immediately architectural concerns.38 the sheltered vision of architecture this encourages only serves to further separate architecture from the everyday and to absolve architects of their obligation to communities and individuals. as construed by schumacher, autonomy liberates architects to a space of unobstructed self involvement of an “art-for-art’s-sake” sort which only confirms the disconnect between architects and their architecture from everyday life while contributing to the transformation of buildings and cities into little more than a collection of branded commodities. as with so many architects, schumacher’s ultimate defense for such a disconnected view of architecture is the cultural capital that attaches to some imagined association with a putative avant-garde: the distinction of avant-garde versus mainstream, merely commercial “architecture”, remains constitutive for the discipline. only innovative, generalisable contributions [...] that are deeply entangled in the autopoeitic network of architectural communication [are considered]. the degree of autonomy that architectural discourse has established by differentiating itself from the immediacy of everyday talk about buildings [...] should grow with the overall complexity of society.39 175 isparchitecture.com in conclusion although tafuri could see only false consciousness – and certain failure – in attempts to act upon history, when acting within history is seen as the only possible option, the risk is that the results will be as self-serving as they are anti-utopian. but what other possibility could there be if attempts to act upon history are seen as being out of step with its flow, and thus supposedly doomed? moreover, if acting within history entails doing away with utopia, acting upon history is fundamentally utopian. resigning oneself to history as determinant also risks becoming self-serving by absolving architects from being critical and acting critically. this conundrum leads me to a passage from deleuze and guattari’s what is philosophy?, with which i would like to conclude, as i believe it captures many of the strands i have been developing in this paper while helping us to imagine how to reconcile our desires for freedom with our simultaneous capture within webs of social association, by way of utopia: actually, utopia is what links philosophy with its own epoch, with european capitalism, but also already with the greek city. in each case it is with utopia that philosophy becomes political and takes the criticism of its own time to its highest point. utopia does not split off from infinite movement; etymologically it stands for absolute deterritorialization but always at the critical point at which it is connected with the present relative milieu [...]. in utopia (as in philosophy) there is always the risk of a restoration, and sometimes a proud affirmation, of transcendence, so that we need to distinguish between authoritarian utopias, or utopias of transcendence, and immanent, revolutionary, libertarian utopias [...]. the word utopia therefore designates that conjunction of philosophy, or of the concept, with the present milieu – political philosophy [...].40 if acting within history entails doing away with utopia, acting upon history is fundamentally utopian. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 176 co le m a n the quote above establishes an apparently irresolvable paradox for architecture: if the autonomy project in all of its myriad guises actually reveals an attempt to be free of utopia, it is precisely this self-deceiving attempt at escape that renders architecture irrelevant and ensures its conclusive separation from culture – in adolf loos’s sense – and from everyday life. conversely, it seems, then, that utopia holds out a potential resolution to the problem of renewed purpose and relevance for architecture, fortifying it to act against the solvent of capitalism, the very same condition that inspired most of the doomed attempts at architectures of autonomy in the first place. endnotes 1. philip johnson, “where are we at?”, architectural review, cxxvii, september 1960, pp. 173–75, reprinted in philip johnson writings (new york: oxford university press, 1978), p. 100. 2. thomas schumacher, “on parametricism: georgina day interviews patrik schumacher” (2012), available at http://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/on%20parametricism_.html 3. k. michael hays, ‘introduction’, oppositions reader (new york city, princeton architectural press, 1998), p. ix. 4. joseph rykwert, the first moderns: the architects of the eighteenth century (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1980), p. 470. 5. for more on tafuri, lefebvre, and rykwert see n. coleman, utopias and architecture (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2005), and nathaniel coleman, lefebvre for architects (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2015). i have also considered the importance of tafuri, lefebvre, and rykwert, as outlined here, in numerous journal articles. 6. ibid., p. xi. 7. paul guyer, “kant, immanuel”, in e. craig (ed.), routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, (london: routledge 1998/2004), retrieved june 16, 2014, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/db047 8. see paul guyer, “kant on the theory and practice of autonomy”, social philosophy and policy 20.2 (july 2003), pp. 70-98, here p. 98. 9. k. michael hays, “the textualization of architecture, 1978–1986” (talk presented as plenary speaker at text & architecture, an international word & image conference, paris, 26–28 june 2003, organized by the university of paris, 7 denis-diderot/college of the holy cross, worcester, ma, 26 177 isparchitecture.com june 2003). 10. k. michael hays, “textualization”, ibid. 11. manfredo tafuri and francesco dal co, modern architecture, trans. robert erich wolf (new york: harry n. abrams, 1976), p. 402. 12. ernst bloch, “building in empty spaces”, in the utopian function of art and literature: selected essays, trans j. zipes and f. mecklenburg (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1988), pp. 187-190. 13. deleuze and guattari, op. cit., p. 100. 14. hays, “introduction”, oppositions reader, p. xiv. 15. ibid. 16. manfredo tafuri, architecture and utopia: design and capitalist development (1973), trans. barbara luigia la penta (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1976), p. ix. 17. ignasi de solà-morales, “from autonomy to untimeliness” (1991), in differences: topographies of contemporary architecture, trans. graham thompson (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1997), p. 73. 18. ignasi de solà-morales, ibid., p. 73. 19. ibid., p. 74. 20. ibid., p. 74. 21. ibid., p. 75. 22. ibid., p. 77. 23. ibid., p. 77. 24. ibid., p. 77. 25. ibid., p. 82. 26. ibid., p. 77. 27. pier vittorio aureli, project of autonomy: politics and architecture within and against capitalism (new york city: princeton architectural press, 2008), p. 9. 28. ibid., p. 14. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 178 co le m a n 29. ibid., pp. 9-11. 30. ibid., p. 12. 31. ibid., p. 83. 32. patrik schumacher, “the autopoeisis of architecture”, in latent utopias experiments within contemporary architecture (vienna/new york: springer verlag, 2002). available online at: http://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/autopoeisis.htm. interested readers are encouraged to see also an earlier treatment of schumacher’s thinking on utopia and contemporary architecture in my article ‘utopia beyond amelioration’, boundaries 8 (april-june 2013), 4-11. 33. schumacher, “autopoeisis”. 34. ibid 35. ibid. 36. ibid. 37. see ruth levitas, utopia as method (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2013); nathaniel coleman, “utopia and a new romanticism”, in lefebvre for architects (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2015), pp. 18-52; and nathaniel coleman, in utopias and architecture (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2005), pp. 10-11, 29, 38-39, 52, 56-62, 237-38. 38. patrik schumacher, “the autopoeisis of architecture,” in latent utopias experiments within contemporary architecture (vienna/new york: springer verlag, 2002). available online at: http://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/autopoeisis.htm. 39. patrik schumacher, ibid. 40. gilles deleuze and félix guattari, what is philosophy? [1991], trans. g. burchell and h. tomlinson (london: verso, 1994), pp. 99-100. aristotle, autonomy, and design: ancient wisdom and the modern home mark jensen in the discipline of architecture, we can distinguish at least three different questions related to autonomy. first, we can ask about the autonomy of the concepts and judgments made by architects and philosophers of architecture. does architecture possess conceptual frameworks and principles of judgment that are logically independent of other disciplines, such as ethics, aesthetics, engineering, and politics? second, we can ask about the autonomy of the architect herself in her practice. are her designs constrained by persons and factors outside of her control? finally, we can ask about the autonomy of citizens who live in spaces designed by architects. what possibilities or constraints are actualized by the design of a space for those who dwell in it? hidden among these questions are two different conceptions of autonomy. the conception presupposed by the first question is concerned with the independence of architecture as an area of theoretical investigation. a discipline is autonomous when it can be carried out independently of other disciplines. a discipline that lacks autonomy is one that depends on other theoretical domains for its investigation. the conception presupposed by the second and third questions, however, is concerned with the autonomy or freedom of the people involved, both architects and those who occupy their dwellings.2 here, an architect is autonomous or free to the extent that her designs are within her control; an occupant is autonomous or free to the extent that she faces no external constraints the conception presupposed by the second and third questions, however, is concerned with the autonomy or freedom of the people involved, both architects and those who occupy their dwellings. “ ” 1 ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 199 je n se n in attempting to live according to her own rational plan.3 the problem for architects and occupants who lack autonomy is not dependence on something else but rather a restriction on their freedom to access their respective goods. my aim in this paper is to explore this second conception. is it possible that we as designers and occupants – are not realizing all of the goods that could be available to us? do current practices in residential architecture restrict the freedom of designers and occupants? it is my view that we have good reasons to answer these questions in the affirmative. in order to vindicate my judgment, i will develop a critical approach grounded in the anthropological, social, political, and architectural analysis of aristotle. central themes in aristotle’s thought, especially his accounts of eudaimonia (happiness), arêtê (virtue), and phronêsis (practical wisdom), have been rehabilitated by contemporary moral philosophers and find support among contemporary moral psychologists.4 insofar as aristotle’s thought in these areas retains theoretical and practical significance, it seems possible that other aspects of his thought, especially his accounts of the oikos (house) and the polis (city-state), are worthy of renewed attention as well.5 to be clear, my primary aim in this paper is not interpretive: while the reader will gain some insight into aristotle’s views on the topics in question, my aim instead is to develop a critical approach to architectural practice that draws upon some of the compelling aspects of aristotle’s thought. aristotle’s recent rehabilitation among moral philosophers was motivated by worries about the reigning enlightenment orthodoxy.6 similarly, the best way to appreciate the appeal of an account of freedom in architectural practice based on aristotle will be to begin by drawing a contrast with the enlightenment. this discussion occupies part 1 of the paper. in part 2, i develop my critical standpoint. finally, in part 3, i point out ways in which our contemporary architectural and urban planning practices inhibit the realization of important goods and sketch some avenues for improving the current state of affairs in accord with my approach. i also return to the distinction between the two different conceptions of autonomy that i laid out at the very beginning, arguing that my exploration of the second question has implications for how we think about the first. 1. autonomy and the enlightenment tradition in the western enlightenment tradition, autonomy is self-governance. the autonomous person is ruled by her reason; she is not controlled by the internal influences of passion and appetite or the external influences 200 isparchitecture.com of custom and culture.7 understood in this way, autonomy lies at the heart of the liberal tradition of western individualism. it is the only legitimate basis for political authority.8 it is the proper achievement of mature people in mature societies.9 with their correlative respect for the autonomy of others, mature autonomous citizens are reasonable, democratic, tolerant, and just.10 despite its many virtues, the enlightenment account of autonomy strikes many of us as too thin. in the first place, there is little explanation for how it is that we as individuals and groups achieve autonomy. apart from notable outliers such as locke’s discussion in some thoughts concerning education, rousseau’s meditations in emile, and mill’s personal reflections in his autobiography, little attention is paid to the specific task of cultivating autonomous people. in the philosophical tradition, mature, autonomous citizens are typically taken as given. the problem here is of course that real people are not like this. we were children once; we are adults now; and we will be senior citizens later. human life is a succession of stages with different challenges, standards, and requirements for selfgovernance at each stage. an account of autonomy that leaves out this dimension is not adequate. in the second place, the account of autonomy, especially in its kantian and neo-kantian versions, is tied to an account of self-governance that appears to be too abstract. for kant, the autonomous person is the person who makes moral judgments on the basis of a universalization procedure.11 it seems to me, however, that moral judgments cannot be made on the basis of a universalization procedure alone. moral judgment also requires a pre-deliberative canon of norms including ideals, functional descriptions, principles, practices, and habits. to be sure: i’m not defending a particular account of the pre-deliberative canon. my point is merely that the contents of a good life marked do current practices in residential architecture restrict the freedom of designers and occupants? “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 201 je n se n by excellent moral judgment cannot be determined on the basis of an impartial rational procedure alone. the implication of these concerns, it seems to me, is that we need a more robust account of autonomy. this not to reject the enlightenment tradition altogether: several aspects of the tradition seem to be correct. for example, autonomy of the sort that matters to us is a condition that human beings achieve when things are going right for us – it is a mark of human flourishing. it is something we achieve in varying degrees. in this way, autonomy is not a necessary or basic characteristic of the human condition; it is instead something that we must figure out how to get for others and ourselves. 2. autonomy and aristotle aristotle begins with a very different understanding of human flourishing and a correspondingly different account of self-governance. in developing my approach, i will focus on three specific aspects of his analysis: (i) his account of the fundamental unit of human life, (ii) his account of the good life in community, and (iii) the way he employs the “doctrine of the mean” in the context of architecture. these three elements will give us tools sufficient to sketch an account of freedom sufficient to sustain a critique of contemporary architecture – especially contemporary home design and construction. 2.1 the fundamental unit of human life the concept of the “fundamental unit of human life,” is the concept of the proper starting point for an investigation into the human species from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. finding this fundamental unit requires some care: we can err too small by focusing on a component and err too big by focusing on an aggregate. aristotle regards the household as the fundamental unit of human life and identifies its elements with a quote from hesiod. the household includes: “a house, a wife, and an ox for the plow.”12 abstracting a bit, let’s call these elements (i) one’s residence, (ii) one’s intimate relationships, and (iii) one’s tools for one’s work.13 we should notice immediately the contrast between aristotle’s starting point and that of the enlightenment. aristotle does not begin with the abstract rational individual. he begins instead with a person in context. from aristotle’s perspective, the enlightenment approach that begins with the bare individual is bound to fail in the same way that the biologist 202 isparchitecture.com is bound to fail who attempts to make sense of ants by starting the investigation with a single ant confined to a specimen jar. the component part is mistaken for the whole unit. aristotle’s more inclusive starting point lays the groundwork for our account of human freedom. the extent of one’s freedom will depend on the degree to which one achieves success appropriate to one’s residence, relationships, and work. for example, as physical beings, we require shelter from the elements in the world that threaten our bodies. as developmental beings, we require relationships with more mature people to help us grow. and as dependent and aspirational beings, we need avenues through which we can work to meet our unmet needs. together, it seems right to say that the degree to which we are free depends in part on the degree to which we have found success in building a dwelling, establishing a social network, and finding meaningful work.14 contrapositively, to the extent that these three tasks are challenges for us, our freedom is constrained and our lives are characterized by a kind of servitude. in other words, the idea of self-governance for aristotle is one that presupposes natural dependence on others and modifications to the environment. this insight is not especially profound; we might regard it as a philosophical adaptation of maslow’s hierarchy of needs.15 however, it seems to me that the relationship between these three elements of basic human life and human freedom is more complex. it is also the case that freedom, at least to some degree, is necessary in order to achieve a degree of success in these three elements. in other words, these elements, together with freedom, are symbiotically related. for example, in order to secure a residence that will enable my family to flourish, i require successful work. and in order to secure successful work, i require a secure residence in which or from which to do it. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 203 je n se n and both of these observations presuppose that i can make choices with respect to my residence and my work that are free from the constraints that would keep me from making reasoned choices that reflect my own moral, philosophical, or religious account of the good life in the context of my community. we can conclude then that the aristotelian account of freedom begins holistically and in situ. to be a human being is to be located in a place, intimately connected to others, and involved in work. autonomy in the more robust sense that i am developing here both requires and enables success with respect to these basic elements of human life. one is free to the extent that one can pursue one’s account of the good life. 2.2 the good in community while aristotle regards the household as the fundamental unit of human life, he does not regard it as the complete focus of an investigation into human affairs. by itself, a household is not self-sufficient. on his view, households are naturally organized into villages and a group of villages together constitutes a city (polis).16 only when we build a city do we achieve a self-sufficient human community, and, in turn, the proper focus for a comprehensive investigation.17 in other words, to understand and then evaluate human affairs we cannot but make reference to the city. villages, households, and citizens are all constituents of a city in their own fashion; their activities cannot be understood without reference to the city as a whole. now to say that a city is constituted by its citizens is not to say that a city is simply composed of citizens. if that were so, the good of the city could be measured purely in terms of the individual success and failures of its citizens. instead, the good for the city is a common good. it is achieved when each of the citizens in the city performs his or her specific function well. consider aristotle’s claim about the chief good at the beginning of the nicomachean ethics: and since it [political science] uses the other sciences concerned with action, and moreover legislates what must be done and what avoided, its end will include the ends of the other sciences, and so this will be the human good. for even if the good is the same for a city as for an individual, still the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complete good to acquire and preserve.18 as aristotle will explain in more detail, the function of the citizen is given not only in terms of her function in the context of the fundamental unit. citizens’ also have functions attached to their roles in the village, 204 isparchitecture.com and in turn, their roles in the city.19 in aristotle’s ideal constitution, the government assigns these roles according to citizens’ stages and capabilities. it seems to me that we need not follow him in assigning these roles involuntarily, but we must follow him in recognizing that the obligations associated with excellent citizenship extend beyond one’s obligations in the household. we must take care in describing the relationship between the household and the city in much the same way that we took care in describing the relationship between the constituent elements of the household and the freedom of the individual. the flourishing city is certainly one in which all of the households are flourishing as well. but it does not follow that a city of flourishing households is sufficient to realize a flourishing city. in other words, the success of individual households in achieving their private goods does not guarantee the achievement of all of the common and public goods associated with a flourishing city. insofar as citizens identify with the good not only of their household but also of their city, citizens’ pursuits will include a range of private, public, and common goods. as always, the starting point for these pursuits will be citizens’ dwellings, relationships, and work. as a result, our final account of these elements must be further tailored to suit the further goods that these elements both require and enable. importantly, free citizens are not defined in terms of the absence of government interference.20 instead, free citizens are those who are enabled by the city to accomplish their good and who, at the same time, enable the city to achieve its common and public goods. 2.3 the golden mean the “golden mean” is a central theme in aristotle’s moral and political thought. in many activities and pursuits, we achieve excellence when we find the mean between extremes of excess and the aristotelian account of freedom begins holistically and in situ. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 205 je n se n deficiency. courage, for example, is the moral virtue concerned with our feelings of confidence in the face of a threat.21 courage is found in the mean between excessive feelings of confidence (the vice of foolhardiness) and a deficiency of feelings of confidence (the vice of cowardice). aristotle doesn’t say much about architecture. but the few comments he does offer on the subject reflect a more generalized application of the doctrine of the mean. first, with respect to the organizational plan for houses in a city, aristotle says: where private dwellings are concerned, the modern hippodamean scheme of laying them out in straight rows is considered pleasanter and more useful for general purposes. but when it comes to security in wartime, the opposite plan, which prevailed in ancient times, is thought to be better. for it makes it difficult for foreign troops to enter and for attackers to find their way around. hence the best city-state should share features of both plans. this is possible if the houses are laid out like vine “clumps,” that is if certain parts and areas are laid out in straight rows, but not the city-state as a whole. in this way, both safety and beauty will be well served.22 notice here that aristotle is concerned with both form and function. for the purposes of aesthetics, he regards straight rows as superior. for better defense, irregular arrangements make it difficult for invaders to succeed. while this discussion departs from aristotle’s usual way of employing the doctrine of the mean, he is clearly following a middle path here between an extreme concern with aesthetics and an extreme concern with specific function. this moderate path will best achieve excellence in city planning. aristotle’s predilection for moderation can also be found in his reflections on residential design, at least by implication. in describing the design of the city, he says, “…it should be large enough to enable the inhabitants to live a life of leisure in a way that is generous and at the same time temperate.”23 aristotle’s overall aim is to describe a happy city where the citizens live flourishing lives together. flourishing citizens, in turn, are citizens who live excellently; living excellently, in turn, is a matter of performing activities virtuously. it would be consistent with aristotle’s argumentative approach, i think, to extend this remark to residential design. residences should be big enough to enable citizens to be leisured (that is, free to pursue the liberal arts and the social virtues) but not so big as to encourage vices of excess such as ostentatiousness and wastefulness. in other words, happiness will not be found in a life preoccupied with maintaining one’s estate. such a life would be similar to the hypochondriac or the germaphobe: people who’ve made an end out of something that should rightfully be regarded merely as a means to an end. residences for 206 isparchitecture.com aristotle are the tools of their occupants, not the purposes of life for the occupants. the homeowner who does nothing with his life but work on his home misses out on the complete human good and contributes little to the common good. interestingly, just as residences are not the ultimate ends of their occupants, nor are residences the ultimate ends of their designers. residences are designed and built in order to enable their occupants to pursue the good, including the individual, common, and public good. in this way, an architect is a good architect if she designs and builds residences that accomplish these aims. she contributes to the common good of the city. she is free qua architect insofar as she identifies with the common good of the city, this good informs her practice, and she is not encumbered by external constraints on her practice. finally, it’s not just the size of the residence that has an effect on the extent of our freedom. the design of the residence can also have an effect. aside from the studies that show that our environment can affect our mood and productivity, we know from our own experience that the nature and quality of our surroundings can profoundly affect the vitality of the talking, living, and working that we do in them. together with an excellent architect and builder, we believe that we could construct for our household a space that could maximize the capabilities of our household and thereby greatly increase the degree of freedom with which we could achieve an excellent (and thereby happy) life in community with others. 2.4 a model of autonomy in architectural practice let us now synthesize the themes that we’ve developed above. first, consider the residence. at bottom, residences are tools: they are spaces designed to enable us to flourish in the context of our relationships, our work, and our leisure. the good residence is one in which our freedom the homeowner who does nothing with his life but work on his home misses out on the complete human good and contributes little to the common good. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 207 je n se n is enhanced. at the same time, the design of the residence must reflect the circumstances of our household and its responsibilities with respect to the city more broadly. a good residence increases the freedom of its occupants to pursue the good life in community. but like all of our tools, we prefer those that do more than answer to our functional needs – we prefer those that answer to our functional needs in a way that we find aesthetically pleasing. next, consider the architect. we do not assume that every citizen will be a master of design and construction. in the excellent city there will be division of labor. some citizens will be excellent at design and construction; the flourishing life is one in which they are free in the city to design and construct residences (etc.) that enable households and the city to flourish. given what we’ve said above, the design and construction process must be a rational partnership. the architect brings expertise and experience to bear while the occupants bring aesthetic preferences and an account of the particular goods and pursuits attached to their household. the ultimate aim of the partnership is to produce a dwelling that conforms to the description above. finally, we must qualify this account by noting that, as human beings, there is no one perfect designed space in which we will be enabled to flourish for our entire life. at different stages in our life, we will have different functional requirements, together (perhaps) with developing aesthetic judgments. so either our residences must be flexible or our city must offer a range of choices. both of these options involve the risk of limitations to our freedom. 3. contemporary architecture 3.1 a critique of current practice how does this ideal match up with our current realities? we should note first that this entire vision is available to the wealthiest members of contemporary society. architects and builders exist who could, in partnership with homeowners, design and build dwellings that reflect and enable freedom in this sense. i frame this first claim counterfactually, however, because in most cases those homeowners who can afford to realize this model fail to achieve it. they build without regard to the common and public good of the community, seeking instead to isolate themselves in enclaves with other wealthy people. they also build large, wasteful, ostentatious homes that enable vice and inhibit virtue. at the same time, the socioeconomic realities of contemporary markets act as disincentives to architects and builders to partner with middle and lower 208 isparchitecture.com classes in pursuit of freedom in the sense i describe above. outside of the wealthy, most of us select from and live in residences that neither are the product of genuinely autonomous architecture nor enable freedom for occupants. in the first place, many of us cannot make significant alterations to our dwellings because we do not own them. even in the united states, the ownership rate is below sixty-five percent.24 in the second place, even when we have some choice among possible houses or apartments, our options are nearly all one form or another of mass housing. mass housing is, by definition, designed without contact and therefore without input from those who will occupy it. to be sure: designers of mass housing are constrained by the market – the market requires that they produce units that people will select among a range of choices. but since the architects of mass housing must cater to a wide range of people, they must produce designs that are suited broadly. this problem could be overcome if our building methods for mass housing permitted greater flexibility for configuration and reconfiguration. unfortunately, our contemporary designs and building methods permit very little change on a macro level. occupants can add furnishings, detailing, and color to a unit but they have little opportunity to create or adapt their main spaces to better match the distinctive aesthetic and functional characteristics of their particular household. macro level aesthetic and functional characteristics – the ways in which the beauty of the unit as a whole might be tailored to match the household – are inaccessible without great cost. the autonomy of occupants is significantly constrained. it is no better for the architects and builders of mass housing than it is for the occupants. in addition to having no direct connection to the eventual occupants of the dwellings they design and a good residence increases the freedom of its occupants to pursue the good life in community. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 209 je n se n construct, they are rarely permitted to add furnishings, ornamentation, color, and other details to their products. in other words, they are not really permitted to finish designing and building a residence. market forces require them to build residences that are incomplete from a design standpoint. note that the problem here is not merely that of not seeing a design plan through to its full realization. it is instead the problem that the architect is not permitted to fully design a residence. since she does not know the occupant, even a fully designed but not fully built structure would fail to satisfy the needs of a mass housing market that requires broad appeal. in this way, the architect too is constrained in her freedom with respect to the full use of her expertise in service of the good of the community and its citizens. 3.2 elements of a solution it is possible that the problems i suggest above all reduce to problems of economic class. even in a flourishing capitalist economy with redistributive policies that create a broad and flourishing middle class, it might be that the kind of freedom and flexibility that i defend is available only to the wealthiest members of society. a more optimistic attitude would hold that with creative thinking, sound government policy, and motivated entrepreneurship we could make progress. supposing that my model provides an attractive starting point for rethinking contemporary practice, it seems clear that at least the following three improvements would need to be made. first, we need to increase the flexibility of the residences that we design. given that households and their needs are constantly evolving over time, we must design and build residences that can be more easily configured and reconfigured to fit the conditions necessary for a flourishing household. to be sure: some changes in the nature of a household will require changing residences. but changing residences is highly disruptive to the household and ought to be minimized for the sake of their pursuit of the good. second, we need to find ways to enable households to make use of the full spectrum of talent that architects and builders have to offer. achieving a complete design offers benefits for both the architect whose full talents are utilized and the occupants whose dwelling will be better suited to achieving their goods. finally, we must find a way to reduce the costs associated with flexibility and complete design in order to expand the possibilities for a wider segment of the population. insofar as greater numbers of architects and occupants can better achieve their goods, the common good for the community is better achieved. 210 isparchitecture.com 3.3 two conceptions of autonomy revisited at the outset, i noted that the autonomy of architecture as a theoretical discipline is different from the autonomy of the architect and the occupant. the latter two forms of autonomy concern the realization of specific goods while the former concerns disciplinary independence. the critical perspective that i develop here implies that architecture qua theoretical or academic discipline cannot be independent. architecture serves the good of the city and thus stands subordinate to politics, broadly construed. of course, this follows only in the context of the aristotle-inspired ideal. if cities and other forms of community have no common good or telos, then architecture could be independent as a discipline. in a world of this sort, there is no such thing as a building out-ofplace since there would be no organizing principle from which to render the judgment in question. but insofar as we still find ourselves making judgments of this sort, we still find the aristotelian perspective or something like it attractive. acknowledgement the views expressed in this presentation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the u.s. air force, the u.s. department of defense, or the u.s. government. endnotes 1. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2nd international conference of the international society for philosophy of architecture: autonomy revisited, on july 11, 2014. 2. a discussion of the concepts of autonomy and freedom naturally invites the distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty. (for the in a world of this sort, there is no such thing as building outof-place since there would be no organizing principle from which to render the judgement in question. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 211 je n se n canonical paper, see isaiah berlin, “two concepts of liberty,” in four essays on liberty, oxford: oxford university press, 1969.) insofar as my account has roots in aristotle, it is best seen as part of the positive liberty tradition. however, it seems to me that the account i develop here can avoid the slippery slope to dogmatism and tyranny that was the chief concern of berlin. 3. for a contemporary discussion of the idea of a rational plan, see john rawls, a theory of justice, revised edition (cambridge: mass.: the belknap press of harvard university press, 1999), pp. 358-365. 4. see for example alasdair macintyre, after virtue, 3rd edition (notre dame: indiana, university of notre dame press, 2007), rosalind hursthouse, on virtue ethics (new york: oxford university press, 2002), and daniel russell, practical intelligence and the virtues (oxford: clarendon press, 2009). for virtue theory and moral psychology, see nancy snow, virtue as social intelligence: an empirically grounded theory (new york: routledge, 2010) and christian miller, character and moral psychology (new york: oxford university press, 2014). 5. some work has already been done to re-appropriate aristotle for politics. see aristide tessitore, ed., aristotle and modern politics: the persistence of political philosophy (notre dame, indiana: university of notre dame press, 2002). 6. see for example macintyre, after virtue, pp. 51-61. 7. see immanuel kant, groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, edited by lara denis (orchard park, ny: broadview press, 2005), pp. 98-102. 8. see john locke, “second treatise of government,” in two treatises of government, student edition, edited by peter laslett (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1988), §99 (p. 333). 9. see immanuel kant, “answer to the question: what is enlightenment [1784],” translated by thomas k. abbott, in basic writings of kant, edited with an introduction by allen w. wood (new york: the modern library, 2001), pp. 133-141. 10. john rawls paints a thorough picture here. see rawls, “the idea of public reason revisited,” in john rawls, collected papers, edited by samuel freeman (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1999), pp. 573-615. 11. kant, groundwork, p. 81. 12. aristotle, politics, 1252b10. 13. notice that i have framed my discussion of our dwellings, relationships, and work as abstract types, rather than specific tokens. in aristotle’s politics, 212 isparchitecture.com the specific tokens include a patriarchal marriage, and slaves (human tools) if you have the money for them. we can accept the view that our thinking about human anthropology begins with dwellings, relationships, and work without being required to accept his specific account of the household. 14. recently, andrew ballantyne has argued that architecture must be concerned with the habits of the occupants in their everyday lives. (see andrew ballantyne, “architecture, life, and habit,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69(1) 2011: 43-49.) on this point, ballantyne and aristotle are in agreement. however, aristotle and contemporary neo-aristotelians might worry that ballantyne’s appeal to pragmatism will not provide him with the normative justification that he needs for “an appreciation of the fitness of the match between place and the ethos…” (p. 48). they might suggest that a neo-aristotelian approach would provide what he needs. 15. abraham maslow, “a theory of human motivation,” psychological review, 50(4): 370–396. 16. there is an excellent monograph on this relationship. see d. brendan nagel, the household as the foundation of aristotle’s polis (new york: cambridge university press, 2006). 17. aristotle, politics, 1252b27. 18. aristotle, nicomachean ethics, second edition (kindle edition), translated and annotated by terence irwin (indianapolis: hackett publishing company), p. 2. 19. aristotle, politics, 1329a2ff. 20. cf. berlin, “two concepts…” as i noted above (note 2), i am defending a version of positive liberty. 21. cf. aristotle, nicomachean ethics, 1115a7ff. 22. aristotle, politics, 1330b25. 23. ibid, 1326b30. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 213 je n se n 24. robert r. callis and melissa kresin, “residential vacancies and homeownership in the second quarter 2014,” u.s. census bureau news, http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf. accessed august 1, 2014. isparchitecture.com enigma as moral requirement in the wake of ledoux’s work: autonomy and expression in architecture alberto rubio garrido architecture’s alleged capacity to meet ever new cultural and social challenges raises the dilemma between considering architecture a modern art or a vehicle for the realization of social good. the nature of the dilemma and its potential resolution in favor of the preservation of architecture’s artistic autonomy are this paper’s two leading concerns. to pursue them we first need to get clearer what renders art ‘autonomous’. as a concept, autonomy defies easy definition. it acquired multiple meanings in the history of ideas and frequently appeared under various guises, especially throughout the nineteenth century. purity, the absolute, perfection, freedom, selfdetermination, l’art pour l’art, futility, and more: such notions were, and continue to be, understood by reference to art’s struggle for autonomy. yet our understanding of that struggle, indeed of art’s autonomy, remains contested.1 on the face of it, ‘autonomy’ designates a thing’s (or someone’s) independence when determining its own laws. such laws, we shall see, can range over the ontological, the ethical, and even the aesthetic. autonomy expresses the fundamental modern principle of something’s giving itself its own laws and setting its own ends. if this minimal gloss is correct, its application to architecture requires clarification and defense right away. architecture as, or insofar as it is, a particular purity, the absolute, perfection, [...] continue to be understood by reference to art’s struggle for autonomy. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 64 r ub io g a r r id o art faces external constraints and limits on its autonomy; limits it cannot evade. perhaps the most noticeable limitation arises from architecture’s having to fulfill a function. insofar as the product of architecture has to satisfy this prerequisite, that product’s aesthetic form is already to some degree pre-determined. recognition of this fact hardly necessitates subscription to the claim that form ‘follows’ (is conclusively and solely determined by) function. yet that ‘fact’ may explain why functionalism (in this strong sense) remains autonomism’s bête noire in architecture. there are further (and just as obvious) limitations to architecture’s autonomy. let me mention two. firstly, architecture incorporates advances from other disciplines. often, those disciplines and their advances have not previously responded to aesthetic motivation: why should they do so now? secondly, architecture is a public art and as such resists being understood as the expression of individual will or as an isolated element alien to its socio-historical context. such limitations notwithstanding, an architectural theory and practice was established during the twentieth century with a determined effort to reach autonomous architecture, or something very much like it, as its cornerstone. this ‘effort’ began with emil kaufmann’s 1933 founding manifesto from ledoux to le corbusier: origin and development of autonomous architecture.2 since then, others have deepened and multiplied, if hardly clarified, the meaning(s) of ‘autonomous architecture’. indeed, the degree of consensus among later authors, authors as diverse as johnson, rossi, eisenman, hays, and aureli (one could easily mention more), terminates at their referring to the same concept and laying claim to the same sources. that the semantic stability of the term autonomy might be an issue, it seems, is never contemplated. in order to clarify this situation and move the debate beyond a collision of idiolects,3 the present study postulates the need to recover the genuine sense of the concept of autonomy in its philosophical sources—and to (re-)introduce that concept to artistic and historical discussions of architecture only thereafter. to that end, the paper proceeds as follows. sections 1 and 2 recover the kantian concept of autonomy and explain its implications in architecture: among these implications, a ‘requirement of expression’ is shown to reign supreme by the end of section 2. both sections discuss how this concept and its implications measure up against what kaufmann considered to be the two main features of autonomy in architecture. section 3 enlists schiller’s interpretation of kant’s autonomy to take into account the effective risks of autonomy in (and for) architecture. section 4 draws on adorno’s oeuvre to present an alternative to both schiller and kant. section v deploys that ‘alternative’ to demonstrate autonomy as one of the greatest (and definitely ongoing) challenges modern architecture 65 isparchitecture.com has faced since the enlightenment. before we begin, a word of caution. recognizing clear geo-historical differentiation, kaufmann regarded ‘the enlightenment’ as ideologically quite unified, certainly in relation to architecture. this paper follows suit (largely for the sake of argument) but acknowledges that more recent studies rightly urge us to regard the enlightenment as considerably more pluralistic—especially in its relation to ‘the revolutionary’, a relation that strongly exercised kaufmann.4 regardless of whether or not there is one enlightenment or multiple enlightenments, my minimal reliance on the fate of this argument should leave the essence of what is proposed here intact. 1. kaufmann with kant, one: autonomy as self-determination autonomy occupies a central position and gains new points of emphasis and relevance in philosophy from kant’s time onward.5 indeed, kant himself places the concept of autonomy at the very center of his practical philosophy. he claims that human reason is an autonomous source of principles of conduct, both in its value determinations and its active decisions. thus, human autonomy is both the highest value and the condition for all other values, with ‘autonomy of the will’ understood as the supreme principle of morality.6 in fact, kant never spoke about the autonomy of art. so, in a ‘transcendental’ sense, autonomy in art belongs to a broader project of humans’ autonomy from both natural and social determinations. in kant, autonomy implies the spontaneity of its powers given some formal exigencies, and it should be able to establish the laws governing the legitimation of their feasibility, scope, and limits. therefore, if we can distinguish a specific kind, more or less independent, of autonomous power in the field of art, the first type of autonomy should be regarded as fundamentally linked to the autonomous function of the power of judgment as a faculty of the soul distinct from reason and understanding.7 this kantian transcendental order is primarily that the semantic stability of the term autonomy might be an issue, it seems, is never contemplated. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 66 r ub io g a r r id o determined by the subject who transcends; and who, in his experience of reality, allows the object to transcend insofar as it is conceived as that subject’s representation. the work of art should not be considered as an entity sufficient unto itself but as a representation connected with the individual subject. pursuing kant’s line of thought to its conclusion in the artistic field, autonomy turns out to be at first sight a power with no clear regulatory impact on either artistic or political practice. in from ledoux, kaufmann interpreted autonomy with explicit reference to kant,8 and defined it as a form of self-determination that brooks no sociocultural constraint. crucially, kaufmann claimed that such autonomy is manifested in a pure abstraction of creative mechanisms in architecture. in that regard kaufmann’s interpretation of the ‘transcendental’ version of autonomy in architecture might be accused of opening the way for isolating architecture from society. a typical case of this isolation might be, for instance, kaufmann’s description of ledoux’s project retour de chasse: at first glance, the [ledoux’s] hunting lodge [...] seems to be baroque in its general layout. but on closer view we note significant changes. the composition lacks in binding power. although the building masses seem to be grouped in a manner very similar to baroque disposition, and, although the main house rules over the outlying buildings, each block is independent from the other, and from its natural setting.9 in other baroque buildings types, such as a monastery or a palace—where differentiated volumes like the church, the cloister, or dependencies should be articulated—some correspondence between the parts was established, although they could be detached. on the contrary, for kaufmann, ledoux imposes in his projects a ‘repetition’ criterion: as we can see, the pavilion structure is repeated in the three volumes without any alteration, despite the additional volume overlapped onto the central pavilion. supported by a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of kant, kaufmann emphasizes the exemplary nature of the retour de chasse (figures 1 and 2) as an illustration of the transitional figure that ledoux represents between pre-revolutionary and revolutionary architecture. from ledoux, free association of independent elements (against baroque unity) would become the ultimate compositional mechanism. this is what kaufmann called the pavilion system or later the new individualism:10 a configuration where compositional mechanisms such as ‘repetition’, ‘antithesis’, and ‘multiple response’ dominate.11 in other terms, it is an abstract and supposedly autonomous mechanism insofar as for kaufmann these compositional mechanisms emerged in architecture from an internal logic beyond sociocultural constraints. 67 isparchitecture.com figure 1: hunting lodge, perspective view. vue perspective d’un retour de chasse, sheet 110 from claude nicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurset de la législation (paris: h. l. perronneau, 1804). figure 2: hunting lodge, elevation. elévation d’un retour de chasse, sheet 111 from claude nicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurset de la législation (paris: h. l. perronneau, 1804). ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 68 r ub io g a r r id o 2. kant against kaufmann, two: expression as a bond with society architecture, however, holds an inner corrective mechanism against kaufmann’s thesis. and, in fact, this resistance of architecture to ‘selfdetermination’ was explicitly referred to in kant’s critique of the power of judgment. firstly, it is not true that kant proposes a theory of art as disengaged from the social, as kaufmann suggests, in its own interest.12 more precisely, for kant, the underlying content of artistic experience is the relationship between fundamental ideas of metaphysics and morality—above all, the foundational notion that the will can be freely determined by the principle of morality.13 in addition, as kant put it in his ‘analytic of the beautiful’, in the case of architecture a building’s suitability to its purpose is a preliminary condition to any subjective aesthetic judgment. consequently, it is impossible to aesthetically appraise or ‘judge’ architecture without the intervention of reason to evaluate its suitability for purpose, which reveals an inherent and inevitable restriction of architecture’s autonomy. that is why kant illustrated his conception of ‘adherent beauty’ with architectural examples: the beauty [...] of a building (such as a church, a palace, an arsenal, or a summer-house) presupposes a concept of the end that determines what the thing figure 3: pacifère, sheet 40 from ledoux, l’architecture (1804). 69 isparchitecture.com should be, hence a concept of its perfection, and is thus merely adherent beauty [...]. one would be able to add much to a building that would be pleasing in the intuition of it if only it were not supposed to be a church.14 hence, the expression of ‘aesthetic ideas’— as representations of the imagination that give cause for the free interplay of the powers of the soul—should be restricted to (or, at the very least, by) morally significant ideas as in any form of art. however, in architecture, these ‘aesthetic ideas’ must be compatible with the orientation of architecture towards an objective end.15 since what might be called the ‘kantian revolution’ in aesthetics of architecture, the combination of beauty and purpose remains influenced by the expression of moral ideas, taking the aesthetics of architecture beyond classicist theories. with kant, architecture’s primary task is no longer to imitate past perfections (as classicist theories adduced) but its social comprehensibility, which is ultimately the measure of its inseparable bond with society. by ‘aesthetic idea’ kant means: that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible.—one readily sees that it is the counter-part (pendant) of an idea of reason, which is, conversely, a concept to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.16 if boffrand and blondel17 epitomized the vanguard of this shift, ledoux constitutes a paradigmatic and especially elucidative case for the crudeness of tensions present in his work. and yet, when referring to ledoux’s ‘revolution’ in architecture, did kaufmann use a correct interpretation of kant’s major claims isolated above? did kaufmann correctly assume (which is central here) kant’s implied imperative of ‘comprehensibility’ in architecture, a cornerstone of kant’s transcendental order applied to this discipline? let us see what kaufmann stated about (what one could call) ‘the for kant, the underlying content of artistic experience is the relationship between [...] metaphysics and morality “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 70 r ub io g a r r id o requirement of expression’ in ledoux’s work with another example, the pacifère: the massive walls of pacifère and panarétéon do not even allow a guess at the disposition of the interior. the ideal of geometry has got the better of the baroque principle of animation [...]. the exterior of the baroque château clearly expresses the differentiation between the lordly grand salon, the private apartments, and the mezzanine of the servants. the blocks of the revolution are mute. as soon as the architects will renounce the petty devices of “narrative” architecture, the purposes of their structures will no longer be reflected in the outside.18 this assumption of muteness in the pacifère (figure 3) is far from a minor premise in kaufmann’s proposal, as we shall see immediately, although it clearly contrasts with what ledoux himself wrote about the pacifère: if the artists wished to follow the symbolic system that characterizes their production, they would acquire as much glory as the poets; they would elevate the ideas of those who consult them, and there would not be a stone in their works which would not speak to the eyes of persons passing by.19 kaufmann justifies this symbolism in ledoux (evident too in maison des directeurs de la loue or maison des cercles) by relying on two hypotheses: it should be understood as surrender to the rising romanticism or—even worse—as the persistence of baroque criteria. the new trend that can already be identified in ledoux is the paucity of the discretion, in contrast to the baroque culture or romanticism, which led him to “show his feelings openly and often in excess”. for kaufmann, then, expression in architecture is linked to both preand post-revolutionary narrative to the extent that “the purposes of their structure” (or construction) are reflected on the outside. or, in other terms, the identity between the figure 4: prison in aix-en-proence. extracted from vues perspectives du palais du gouverneur et de la prison, sheet 189 from claude-nicolas ledoux, architecture de c.-n. ledoux: collection qui rassemble tous les genres de bâtiments employés dans l’ordre social, ed. daniel ramée (lenoir éditeur, 5. quai malaquais. paris, 1847). 71 isparchitecture.com internal narrative of this architecture with its outer appearance becomes the communicative value of that architecture, as opposed to examples from (in kaufmann’s nomenclature) the revolutionary period, a period whose buildings in his view “are mute.” evidently buildings’ muteness collides with ledoux’s main purpose in developing a ‘symbolic architecture’, in which “there would be no stone in their works [artists’ whose works follow the symbolic system] which would not speak to the eyes of persons passing by.” 3. the empire of the symbol apart from the fact that kaufmann is demonstrably mistaken in refusing to attribute expressive content to ledoux’s architecture, kant’s ‘aesthetic ideas’ theory seems insufficient to take account of this particular interpretation of autonomy in ledoux’s work. in point of fact, with kant it is possible to explain the imperative of expression in architecture, but what is to be expressed remains indeterminate in his philosophy.20 this communicative motivation of art was recovered in the second sense of autonomy formulated by schiller, which indirectly explains the drifting of the concept of autonomy in its reception in architecture. this second conceptualization counteracts the perception of human fragmentation that characterizes modernity. for schiller, autonomy in art would be the precondition for establishing a new utopian alternative to an ailing society.21 this premise—distinct from what kaufmann terms ‘the revolutionary’ and its ideas—focuses all its efforts on the transformation of the material conditions of society and inaugurates the critical aesthetic device based on a negative relationship between art and society. in this way, art is provided with both diagnostic and proactive capabilities based on schiller’s concept of ‘heautonomy.’22 similarly, enlightenment critical rationality is transferred to architecture through a commitment to improving society. in france, such authors as laugier, boffrand, and blondel put criticism into the prison in aix-en-provence [...] clearly transmits threat and ruthlessness. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 72 r ub io g a r r id o action by adopting a firm attitude to intervene in artistic practices in order to promote certain social orientations. as schiller made evident, this renewal should go hand-in-hand with the symbolic role of art through the identification of beauty and truth.23 thus, a great deal of revolutionary efforts revolved around the elaboration of a discourse based in selfdetermination that could transmit an emancipatory message. the link between proportions and feelings or blondel’s theory of caractère responds to the need to establish an identity between the created objects and creation as an autonomous action. indeed, ledoux establishes a symbolic expression inside the process of constitution of the form, with the particularity, unlike his contemporaries, that he moved towards a utopian creation of a new social order, like, for instance, in the prison in aix-enprovence (figure 4), which clearly transmits threat and ruthlessness. the symbol in architecture thus acquires a role, which depends on the work’s functional orientation, beyond its former decorative or formal repertoire. in other words, an explicit function replaces the implicit one of symbolism in previous periods. in this regard, we can draw at least two major implications. firstly, the attempt to create a utopia through figuration plunges the process into a deep paradox. on the one hand, the acknowledgment of the inadequacy of resources for the fulfillment of an ideally conceived future stimulates the utopia. but on the other hand, as in ledoux’s architecture, the wish to present materially such an unattainable future at that very historical moment associates the ideal world with reality, and thus acquires an absolute character that ultimately overrides all alternatives. figure 5: vue perspective de la ville de chaux, sheet 15 from ledoux, l’architecture (1804). 73 isparchitecture.com these aspirations of universalism in ledoux’s architecture are evident in the projects where future becomes a chimera (figure 5). on the one hand then, this brand new expression of a utopia through architecture provides hope for a promised land, while on the other, assumes its unattainability. secondly, precisely because of the legitimation of this universal value of architecture, nature acquires a redemptive character, though not in sense of rousseau—whereby the immersion in the natural cycle would immunize humans against their inner corruption—but in the kantian sense of autonomy. therefore, the return to a mechanism of mimesis with regard to natural processes collides with the intent to break with tradition, launching a new type of determination. as a result of this process, the symbol in architecture was presented in a markedly closed nature, where the signifier (figuration) is identified with the signified (utopia), confirming the enlightenment’s mechanism of particularizing abstract universals. thus addressed, the attempt of reconciliation with society and nature reveals its ultimate reversal process of mythologization, bringing both society and nature back to the realm of what humanity can dominate and manipulate. this reactive movement can be seen in jeannicolas-louis durand or louis-ambroise dubut’s postulates, whose work once captivated kaufmann. the naïve emancipatory impulse became mere ideology on which to support a no longer renovating program. the truth is that, specifically in architecture, the two necessary correctives that schiller puts forward to protect kant’s principle of autonomy from the functional orientation of art—that is, ‘immunity’ and ‘indifference’24—may not be present in a practice that is inseparable from society and its needs. without these correctives, architecture acquires a hegemonic overtone in its messianic positioning, something evident in ledoux’s architecture. as an internal corrective to the tendency to isolation of autonomous art, kant showed what in schiller [t]he symbol in architecture thus acquires a role [...] beyond its former decorative or formal repertoire. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 74 r ub io g a r r id o summons the threat of the mystifying absoluteness, aggravated by the heteronomous nature of architecture, which brings closer (and even equates) morals and aesthetics, expression and utopia. hence, adorno’s critique of schiller,25 perhaps precipitated in the exclusively aesthetic level, becomes extremely relevant in the case of architecture. 4. enigma and social commitment for adorno, all references to the exteriority of art—such as its legitimacy through commitment to society or its compressibility—must be articulated from its immanence as an object. that is why he insists on the need for autonomy “as imprisonment of aesthetics to the realm of aesthetics.” this is, in fact, a requirement to make negative dialectics in art feasible. as opposed to sovereign aesthetics (schiller’s proposal), he states that negativity beyond aesthetics is powerless against social conditions. the work of art must be autonomous to fulfill its function as social criticism. the autonomy of art must account for the status of aesthetics demanding its own rules without compromising its mission of transgressing its own limits, which would constrain its sovereignty. it is not only art that must meet the requirement of autonomy, but the work of art itself should also follow general discourse: “by crystallising in itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as ‘socially useful’, it criticizes society by merely existing.”26 derived from this antinomy of the autonomy in art with a critical purpose, one of the first renunciations that art—and architecture insofar it is a form of art—must accept is communication in its heteronomous sense. adorno harshly criticized the alleged social role of art as communicability; namely, the thesis that art becomes social as soon as it provides an accessible meaning.27 in this there is an evident risk, adorno claimed, for communicative art to grow ideological. art cannot claim both its sovereignty in society and its autonomy. it must present itself as criticizing society by evidencing society’s contradictions. its mere existence constitutes a critique of society by standing against the prevailing codes, instrumentalization being chief among them. art should be art in itself and it should not depend on alien instances of legitimation to be autonomous. in turn, art must be autonomous to preserve in itself a remnant of its social nature. in short, adorno considered autonomy and emancipation as two counteracting dialectical poles. and in this sense, he claimed the independence of all reality, which kant had cast doubt on by placing art in a pre-rational place. yet, at the same time adorno vindicated the truthful content of the work of art, externalizing autonomy in the object: the work of art, then, opens a space of denial as long as it can be presented as another self, something outside historical constraints, providing an alternative in this regard. his aim is to prevent autonomy from becoming 75 isparchitecture.com an accomplice of instrumental rationality, as indeed is the case in ledoux insofar as he sets a new utopia crystallized in his projects under the premises of “welfare” or “progress.” in this sense, the cornerstone of adorno’s argumentation lies in the location of a space of freedom that simultaneously accounts for art’s renunciation of any external commitment and for its integration with reality. in an adornian sense, the lack of functionality in art, alienated and insular, endows it with an internal consistency that, in its autonomy, manifests itself to reality as something impossible to be instrumentalized. art has to pursue the restructuring of life without imposing any structures on that life. it intervenes as a reflection of society, projecting what is denied on who denies it, returning unacknowledged internal contradictions to the source of these contradictions. in this regard, with the theoretical support provided by adorno, the enigma as an epistemological content—opposed to the truth understood as adaequatio—acquires an internal moral status which dissolves the aporia faced by aesthetic modernity and opens the way for the possibility of an autonomy in architecture without compromising architecture’s inherent nature. what explains this ‘inherent nature’? and what is its relation to the enigmatic? i will answer these questions in reverse order, effectively delegating treatment of the first question to section 5. adorno refers to the epistemological status of the enigma in art in many passages of his aesthetic theory, due both to its importance and its complexity. for instance: [t]he need of artworks for interpretation, their need for the production of their truth content is the stigma of their constitutive deficiency. artworks do not achieve what is objectively sought in them. the zone of indeterminacy between the unreachable and what has been realized constitutes their enigma. they have truth content and they do not have it.28 art has its own truth content, but it does not pass through empirical verification, nor through realization of the concept in hegelian sense, as adorno’s critique of schiller [...] becomes extremely relevant in the case of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 76 r ub io g a r r id o both represent an identity theory. there is a truth of art that lies in the formal constitution of the work; that is, an autonomous truth. a recent study by ferris, entitled “politics and the enigma of art,” explains the passage’s likely intent as follows: [p]recisely because art does not affirm any meaning claimed on its behalf, it remains, in a word adorno emphasizes, an enigma […]. this tendency of art to express its uncertainty by asserting a function that would seem to carry all the certainty of self-evidence becomes the sign of art’s inability to recognize its own inmost tendencies.29 ferris highlights how adorno’s stance of art as enigma30 effectively resists kant’s obligation for comprehensibility. this, however, does not leave adorno—or a philosophy of architecture built on his foundations— bereft of communicative potential: in the end, all roads lead to this enigma in adorno. why artworks have and do not have a truth content is because the enigmatic character of art, as adorno defines it, requires that artworks ‘say something and in the same breath conceal it’. their truth content is a saying that does not say what it says, but does say that it says. the content of the artwork is consequently tied to its form by this enigma. as a result, the enigmatic is what constitutes form as constitutive of art. what this means is that, if form is how art is mediated as art, form cannot represent an object. this is because art, for adorno, resists objectification in its very concept. as a result, whatever content art has must be a content that takes away such an object even as it affirms it. this is the task of the enigmatic.31 as we can see here, understood aright, adorno does not challenge so much as modify kant’s obligation for art to be ‘comprehensible’: he alters the demands of what art needs to communicate, and how it does so, to enter meaningful relations with society without lapsing into an identity theory (for adorno, the source of modern instrumentalization). and this, in turn, explains how we can endorse, as my argument urges we should, an analogous demand for art to be enigmatic (in adorno’s sense) also in architecture. that ledoux halfway meets kant’s obligation in just this way was precisely argued above. where this leaves architecture and autonomy more widely remains to be seen. to this we turn next. 5. autonomy and modernity in architecture clearly, for adorno the very possibility of art as enigma did not arrive in literary and musical composition until the avant-garde with beckett and schönberg. in fact, for adorno a pure and rigorous concept of art should be just music32 and, in that sense, (especially) architecture assumes an inner limitation as a specific art: its dependence on function determines in some degree a dialectic between form and matter.33 yet it is also true that adorno never explicitly refused to include architecture among modern arts. moreover, in his analysis of functionalism he assumes that 77 isparchitecture.com architecture and art in general share the same challenges, quoting scharoun’s philharmonic as an example of architecture’s capacity to overcome such challenges.34 adorno’s insistence on the radical defense of the autonomy of art—a defense that motivates inquiry into the enigmatic in the first place—aspires to be an antidote against the specific totalitarian movements (whether from fascism or from the culture industry) that prevailed throughout the first half of the twentieth century. persisting in the separation of spheres and avoiding absolutism is part of adorno’s resistance against regression. this was under the premise of taking the unavoidability of modernity in its emancipatory impulse without thereby obviating the danger of radical isolation. thus interpreted, the avant-gardes evince in their inner struggles the tension between the real and the loss of human identity. from within modernity and in their deepening in the criticism of modernity, the various avant-gardes provide the scale of the insufficiency of their internal project of emancipation. this liberating surge, even in a negative sense, is perhaps the most indelible contribution of the avant-gardes, to such an extent that not even the mannerisms of the 1960s and the attempts to overcome postmodernism have managed to unseat it. the successive crises of modernity merely confirm the relevance of modernity, to the extent that it appears as an unavoidable project.35 even today—and probably more than ever—the recognition of dissatisfaction with what currently exists prevails to the extent that the project of modernity has not been reversed. modernity leads to a perpetual attempt to establish a solid foundation despite the intimate awareness of its futility. this is the case of the avantgarde and it was also at the heart of ledoux’s work. with the dissolution of the classical categories, architecture had to face the new dialectics between rational and sensitive, ideal and real, without any solid anchors. and it is precisely to the extent that architecture cannot abandon its commitment the impossibility of autonomy in architecture transforms its project into a paradigm of modernity. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 78 r ub io g a r r id o to social needs, given its internal heteronomy, that it turns out to be prefigurative for the rest of the arts: in the movement toward the selfabsorption of art that modernity brings with it, architecture paradoxically becomes a different social self. internalizing the antinomy of adorno’s autonomy in architecture, the impossibility of autonomy in architecture transforms its project of autonomy into a paradigm of modernity, which thus becomes exemplary for the other arts. the radical shift represented by the avant-gardes and, in particular, its problematization of the autonomy of art, soon revealed the reverse commitment in architecture, which could be illustrated in ledoux’s work. today, the avant-garde’s vindictive nature is perceived in a heteronomous sense: its integration into the canons of dominant logic invigorated its immunity and expanded its domain. adorno retrieves this internal tearing of modernity and incorporates it into art through its negativity. any attempt of positivity, either from social commitment or the defense of the ideal of progress, would precisely encourage the false expectation of its realization. reconciliation is only possible by experiencing the impossibility of envisaging the way forward. adorno channeled the aspirations of the enlightenment towards confrontation with the world, and in that sense, art becomes indispensable. it is precisely because autonomy belongs to this modern movement that it holds the very paradox of modernity: the foundation of concepts, possibilities, promises, etc., encompasses the threat of their loss. along with the idea of an autonomous architecture, the possibility of a struggle for emancipation and freedom vanishes, as so does the possibility of its total dissolution, as architecture may not find the way to become immediately social. alienated from its original social function and provided with a critical role against society due to its autonomy, a sense of free humanity feeds architecture, while, by its own autonomy, architecture has to deny society the access to that refuge of humanity. or, as adorno would say, as an autonomous art, architecture has to negate society for the sake of a promise of a different society. but, as an intrinsically heteronomous art (as a functional art), architecture must serve society.36 in this sense, claude-nicolas ledoux’s work may be seen to presage the antinomies of autonomy which architecture would face during the avant-garde: the paradox that architecture imposes on its social milieu a hegemonic order which ultimately leads it to abandon its social commitment. although only intuitively, we can say that the situation of architecture during the nineteenth century with regard to the revolutionary period finds its parallel in its present situation since the avant-gardes. to find again its role in society, architecture should regain its social commitment with a new problematization of its autonomy in response to the actual changing paradigms (as could be the consolidation of globalization: there is nothing 79 isparchitecture.com outside modernity, the collapse of the keynesian ideal, the problem of political representation, etc.). the capacity of architecture to meet new challenges involves the dilemma of whether architecture can actually still be considered a modern art—that is, an autonomous art—or whether, on the contrary, we should assume its pre-modern nature and embrace unproblematically the reconciling essentialist paradigms or even the explicitly reactionary ones, as the diatribe between kaufmann and sedlmayr illustrated.37 since the enlightenment, architecture has simultaneously experienced its period of greatest prominence in society and the intimate conviction that it can no longer change anything. modernity bequeathed to architecture an uncertainty which remains unresolved. this uncertainty is likely to contain some modern values as long as it remains indefinite and calls us back to this kind of radical question. we either accept this, or accept that architecture is essentially a pre-modern art. endnotes 1. the historical dictionary of philosophy opens its entry on “autonomie” with a warning of sorts, entitling its opening section “the problematic history of the concept.” see joachim ritter, karlfried gründer, and gottfried gabriel, eds., ‘autonomie’, historisches wörterbuch der philosophie (basel: schmabe, 2007), 431-479. 2. see emil kaufmann, von ledoux bis le corbusier: ursprung und entwicklung der autonomen architektur (vienna: r. passer, 1933). no english translation of this book exists, but fragments thereof surface in english translations of walter benjamin’s (nearly contemporaneous) arcades project. see walter benjamin, the arcades project, trans. howard eiland and kevin mclaughlin (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2002). 3. a ‘collision’ well documented in the papers by coleman, owen, and others presented at the international society for the philosophy of architecture conference in 2014, and now published in architecture philosophy. see nathaniel coleman, “the myth of autonomy,” architecture philosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 157-178 and graham owen, “whatever happened to semiautonomy,” architecturephilosophy 2, no 1. (2016): 6-20. 4. cf. jonathan i. israel, democratic enlightenment: philosophy, revolution, and human rights, 1750-1790 (oxford: oxford university press, 2012). 5. see ernst feil, “autonomie-heteronomie,” in antithetik neuzeitlicher vernunft: “autonomie-heteronomie” und “rational-irrational” (göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 1987). 6. in his groundwork for the metaphysics of morals (1785), kant formulates the moral law with the help of the concept of autonomy (the so called formula of autonomy): ‘‘the idea of the will of every rational being as a will giving universal law’’ (g 4:431; cf. g 4:432) or ‘‘not to choose otherwise than so that the maxims of one’s choice are at the same time comprehended with ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 80 r ub io g a r r id o it in the same volition as universal law’’ (g 4:440; cf. g 4:432, 434, 438). see immanuel kant, groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, ed. and trans. allen w. wood (new haven and london: yale university press, 2002). 7. i follow here the cambridge edition of the works of immanuel kant and, more precisely, paul guyer’s edition of critique of the power of judgment. see immanuel kant, critique of the power of judgement, ed. paul guyer, trans. paul guyer and eric matthews (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001). 8. early in his monograph, kaufmann draws a parallel between the autonomous morality established by kant and the autonomous architecture he wants to defend in (that is, with respect to the work of) ledoux. see kaufmann, von ledoux, 12. 9. emil kaufmann, “three revolutionary architects, boullée, ledoux, and lequeu,” in transactions of the american philosophical society 42, no. 3 (1952): 525. 10. the evolution of these terms is clearly explained in detlef mertins, “system and freedom: sigfried giedion, emil kaufmann, and the constitution of architectural modernity,” in modernity and ideology, 212231. despite this, it is possible to identify even in kaufmann’s later works the same interpretation of autonomy as a formal configuration (which section i identified as central). 11. as kaufmann states in architecture in the age of reason: baroque and postbaroque in england, italy, and france (cambridge: harvard university press, 1955). 12. recall from section i that kaufmann uses kant’s concept of autonomy in order to justify a new architecture, that of abstract mechanisms that operate autonomously, regardless of any sociocultural constraint. in that sense, this interpretation of the transcendental version of autonomy might have been accused of paving the way for the isolation of architecture from society. 13. see paul guyer, kant and the claims of taste (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997), 60-227 and paul guyer, “the harmony of the faculties revisited,” in values of beauty: historical essays in aesthetics (cambridge university press, 2005), 77-109. 14. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §16, 114-115. 15. function and form in a successful architecture intensify each other more than being just added. see paul guyer, “free and adherent beauty: a modest proposal,” the british journal of aesthetics 42, no. 4 (2002): 357366. 16. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §49, 192. 17. throughout this paper, i intend the ‘younger’ of the two blondels, jacques-françois (1705-1774). 18. kaufmann, “three revolutionary architects,” 520. 19. claude-nicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des 81 isparchitecture.com moeurset de la législation (paris: h. l. perronneau, 1804), 115. the original french reads: “si les artistes vouloient suivre le système symbolique qui caractérise chaque production, ils acquéreroient autant de gloire que les poètes; ils éléveroient les idées de ceux qui les consultent, et il n’y auroit pas une pierre qui, dans leurs ouvrages, ne parlât aux yeux des passants.” 20. this is the main thesis of paul guyer, “kant and the philosophy of architecture,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 7-19. 21. friedrich schiller, kallias, oder, über die schönheit: fragment aus dem briefwechsel zwischen schiller und koerner; über anmut und würde (stuttgart: p. reclam., 1971), letters v-vi. 22. against what he stated in kallias, in letters upon the aesthetic education of man, schiller disclaims nature as a source of artistic impulse in order to link autonomy of art with a utopian reconciliation. in order to establish an “ästhetischen staat,” schiller undertakes a project of objectification of the concept of beauty and finds its ontological foundation—and the foundation of aesthetical autonomy—in appearance and play. see friedrich schiller, letters upon the aesthetic education of man (whitefish, mt: kessinger, 2004). 23. see luigi pareyson, etica ed estetica in schiller (milan: mursia, 1983), 6070. 24. see schiller, letters, letters 9 and 26. 25. adorno rejects tout court schiller’s impulse towards the transcendence of art beyond its aesthetic realm. the identification of an area of freedom in art, thus legitimizing its existence through commitment to society counterfeits a totality unreachable from its singular rationality. the idea of freedom, akin to aesthetic autonomy, was shaped by domination, which it universalized. this holds true as well for artworks. the more they freed themselves from external goals, the more completely they determined themselves as their own masters. because, however, artworks always tum one side toward society, the domination they internalized also radiated externally. see theodor w. adorno, aesthetic theory, trans. r. hullot-kentor (london: athlone, 1997), 17-18. 26. ibid., 229. 27. see the example of van gogh’s paintings as the end of identity between narrative content and meaning in artworks. for more details, see the sections entitled “enigmaticalness, truth content, metaphysics” and “coherence and meaning,” in adorno’s aesthetic theory. ibid., 118-162. 28. adorno, aesthetic theory, 128. 29. david s. ferris, “politics and the enigma of art: the meaning of modernism for adorno,” modernist cultures 1.2 (2005): 192-208: here 195. 30. adorno’s german term is ‘rätsel’ and designates for instance the type of riddle the sphinx used in its attempt to snare odysseus. the meaning and intent of her riddles are, to the discerning eye, both opaque and visible. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 82 r ub io g a r r id o 31. ferris, “politics,” 204. the quotation within the quotation is to adorno, aesthetic theory, 120. 32. theodor w. adorno, minima moralia: reflections on a damaged life, trans. e. f. n. jephcott (new york: verso, 2005), §143. 33. this is why, for instance, hilde heynen has argued that adorno ultimately regarded architecture to be unsuitable for entry into modernity and modern art. see hilde heynen, architecture and modernity: a critique (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1999), 198-200. 34. adorno, aesthetic theory, 44. 35. in this sense, kaufmann’s most significant contribution may be the hypothesis of continuity between the enlightenment and modern architecture, thus taking a broad sense of modernity. see kaufmann, architecture in the age of reason. most pressingly, ledoux raises the issue of how we date the entry point of modernity in architecture itself, but i leave this matter for elsewhere. for discussion, see not only kaufmann’s works cited earlier, but also joseph rykwert, the first moderns: the architects of the eighteenth century (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1983). 36. see theodor w. adorno, “functionalism today”, oppositions 17 (1979): 31-41. 37. see sedlmayr’s assessment of kaufmann’s from ledoux in: hans sedlmayr, verlust der mitte: die bildende kunst des 19. und 20. jahrhunderts als symptom und symbol der zeit (salzburg: otto müller verlag, 1951). sedlmayr located precisely in the french revolution’s visionary architecture the origin of the lack of rootedness and authenticity in modern architecture. following his analysis, architecture had reached its autonomous status with loos and le corbusier at the cost of losing its sense of responsibility with the culture and society, and reduced to an empty ideal geometric formal suit. _goback monism and pluralism: the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of architecture paul guyer part i of this essay appeared in vol. 1, no. 1 of architecture philosophy. in part i we observed several examples of how the one-sided cognitivism of german idealist aesthetics led to reductionist conceptions of architecture and in turn to negative assessments of the value of architecture. in part ii, i now turn to one nineteenth-century treatment of architecture that is pluralistic rather than monistic and thus in at least some ways points to the possibility of a more satisfying aesthetics of architecture. i refer to the theory of architecture adumbrated by john ruskin in the seven lamps of architecture, which even though it must be shorn of some of the romantic assumptions long ago pointed out by geoffrey scott,1 nevertheless offers at least a model for (what part i identified as) a synthetizing rather than separatist approach to architecture. 3. a pluralist approach to architecture: ruskin the seven lamps of architecture, first published in 1849, thus three decades after schopenhauer’s world as will and representation and the commencement of hegel’s lectures on aesthetics in berlin, is notorious for its conclusion that there are only four styles suitable for contemporary architecture – the pisan romanseque, the early gothic of the western italian republics, the venetian gothic, and the i want to suggest that we can interpret the lamps of power and beauty as ruskin’s versions of the beautiful and the sublime. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 232 gu y er english earliest decorated.2 this is hardly the aspect of the work that i wish to discuss, let alone defend. a fortiori i have no intention to defend his even more restrictive remark in the preface to the second edition of the seven lamps that “i have now no doubt that the only style proper for modern northern work, is the northern gothic of the thirteenth century, as exemplified in england, pre-eminently by the cathedrals of lincoln and wells,” let alone to defend the even more strident remark of this preface that “there are only two fine arts possible to the human race, sculpture and painting,” so that “what we call architecture is only the association of these in noble masses, or the placing them in fit places.”3 i cannot reconcile this last remark in particular with ruskin’s statement in the original text that “perfect sculpture may be made a part of the severest architecture; but this perfection was said at the outset to be dangerous.” ruskin continues: [t]he moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the imitated portions, there is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. and then he is lost. his architecture has become a mere framework for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had better all be taken down and put into cabinets. it is well, therefore, that the young architect should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of grace in language; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of purpose, meaning, force, or conciseness, yet, indeed, a perfection -the least of all perfections, and yet the crowning one of all…4 here ruskin makes it clear that the merits of sculpture, which might certainly include their cognitive significance as imitations, should only be part of the larger complex of aims in architecture, which, like language, can please us through formal properties like conciseness and emotional impact or force as well as through its semantic content. a passage like this suggests that ruskin’s fundamental position is that we should take a synthesizing rather than separatist approach to architecture, seeing it as involving our cognitive powers in play as well as work and engaging our emotional and conative powers as well. a statement like, “it has been my endeavour to show [...] how every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the polity, life, history, and religious faith of nations,”5 also suggests that ruskin takes a multivalent approach to the pleasures of architecture. i do not want to take this statement too literally, but to take it as exemplifying the attitude that the experience of architecture is complex, not restricted 233 isparchitecture.com to a single form of cognition as the german idealists had just argued, but involving and at best fusing a wide range of human values and sources of pleasure. in particular, i want to suggest that ruskin’s seven “lamps” – sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience – can, without too much distortion, be associated with the three sources of aesthetic pleasure identified in the course of the eighteenth century – cognition as such, the free play of the mental or cognitive powers, and the experience and expression of emotion – all three of which were synthesized in a complex account of aesthetic experience by at least a few authors, such as kames (whose elements of criticism remained a common textbook in american colleges throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, although i cannot say if that was true for ruskin’s oxford in the 1840s). specifically, i want to suggest that we can interpret the lamps of power and beauty as ruskin’s versions of the beautiful and the sublime, both of which from a kantian point of view involve freely playing cognitive powers, the former imagination and understanding, the latter imagination and theoretical and practical reason; that the lamps of truth but even more those of life, memory, and obedience bring out elements of straightforward cognition rather than the free play of cognitive powers in the experience of architecture; and that the lamps of sacrifice but also life, memory, and obedience highlight emotional dimensions of the experience of architecture.6 throughout the discussion of the seven lamps, i suggest, ruskin’s tacit argument is that all of these lamps are sources of pleasure in the experience of architecture, and that there is no reason to restrict our experience – or the buildings that produce it – to any one or any proper subset of these lamps. ruskin introduces both the lamps of power ruskin’s tacit argument is that all these lamps are sources of pleasure in the experience of architecture, and that there is no reason to restrict our experience. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 234 gu y er and beauty at the start of the chapter explicitly devoted to the former, stating that in [...] reverting to the memories of those works of architecture by which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will generally happen that they fall into two broad classes: the one characterised by an exceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which we recur with a sense of affectionate admiration; and the other by a severe, and, in many cases mysterious, majesty, like that we felt at the presence and operation of some great spiritual power.7 ruskin signals the association of his two lamps with two basic eighteenthcentury categories in the very act of stating that his understanding of them also goes beyond the simple distinction between the beautiful and sublime: the difference between these two orders of building is not merely that which there is in nature between the beautiful and the sublime. it is, also, the difference between what is derivative and original in man’s work: for whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from natural forms; and what is not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon arrangement and government received from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed.8 these statements are rich in historical resonances. the initial claim that beauty is something delicate to which we respond with affection while the sublime is something powerful to which we respond with awe is, of course, reminiscent of the way edmund burke distinguished between them ninety years before the seven lamps.9 the claim that beauty consists in the imitation of natural forms of course reminds one of batteux’s thesis that the single principle of all the arts is imitation, but i think a more proximate antecedent for ruskin would have been archibald alison’s essays on the nature and principles of taste of 1790, reissued in 181110 and thus presumably still in circulation when ruskin was young,11 the thesis of which is not that similarities between works of nature and works of art are important because they allow the latter to be a means of cognition of the former, but rather that we enjoy “associations” between art and nature that allow the pleasures of the latter to be carried over in non-rule-governed ways to the former; in other words, alison’s theory of the associations between art and nature is a version of the scottish idea of free play, published in the same year as but entirely independently of kant’s version of the theory of free play, according to which the mind freely plays back and forth between art and nature. i think that this free, associationist rather 235 isparchitecture.com than strictly cognitivist interpretation of artistic and architectural beauty is evident in ruskin’s following chapter on beauty when he states that “i do not mean to suggest that every happy arrangement of line is directly suggested by a natural object; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the external creation; that in proportion to the richness of their association, the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help, must be more closely attempted.”12 meanwhile, ruskin’s account of the lamp of power, namely that we enjoy powerful works especially because of their suggestion of the power of the human mind or minds behind their creation, stands in a tradition going back to thomas reid, who asserted, although about beauty, that “it is in the moral and intellectual perfections of mind, and in its active power, that beauty originally dwells; and that from this as the fountain, all the beauty which we perceive in the visible world is derived,”13 and before him to shaftesbury, who held that our pleasure in the outward forms of objects is grounded in “the forms which form, that is, which have intelligence, action, and operation.”14 but in this case, too, it seems to me, ruskin is not arguing that we appreciate sublime works of architecture because they give us actual knowledge of the intentions of the human minds that created them, but because they suggest the power of the human mind in a more general way. in both the cases of power and beauty, then, it seems to me that ruskin is arguing that we enjoy suggestions and intimations rather than determinate cognition, and so these two lamps can be associated with the eighteenth-century theory that in the beautiful and the sublime we enjoy the free play of our cognitive powers rather than actual cognition, perhaps especially with the associationist version of this theory. in both the cases of power and beauty, then, it seems to me that ruskin is arguning that we enjoy suggestions and intimations rather than determinate cognition. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 236 gu y er the lamp of truth, by contrast, would seem to suggest a more straightforwardly cognitivist account of aesthetic pleasure: if truth is adequatio rei et intellectus or correspondence between representation and object, we would enjoy a true representation because of the information it gives us about its object. here, however, we have to proceed with some caution, because ruskin’s suggestion seems to be more that we enjoy truthfulness rather than truth in architecture, sincerity rather than information15: “that indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. we resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue.”16 ruskin’s thesis is not that we should dislike architecture that misinforms us of some truth, conversely that we should like architecture simply because it correctly informs us, but rather that we should dislike architecture that intentionally deceives us, above all about its own materials and structure, because we dislike being intentionally deceived, and conversely enjoy architecture that deals with us honestly, because we like to be dealt with honestly. this is the premise of ruskin’s thesis that we should condemn architecture that disguises the nature of its materials: not because we need to acquire from architecture some information about the nature of its materials or the natural forces that govern them that we do not otherwise have (as schopenhauer’s account might suggest), but simply because we dislike being handled dishonestly. and this premise is important because it is what allows for the distinction that ruskin makes between deception and imagination, his claim that “a communicated act of imagination” is “no lie,”17 and the allowance he makes that for non-exhibition of underlying structure in what we recognize to be intended as a work of imagination rather than a piece of information, thus his claim that “the architect is not bound to exhibit structure” but that if, in gothic vaulting, “the intermediate shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to look like the rest, – this would, of course, be direct deceit, and altogether unpardonable.”18 ruskin’s distinction between imagination and deception would also allow, i think, for some common ground between him and geoffrey scott, who defended the use of stucco to mask the underlying brick in renaissance architecture against ruskin’s preference for the honest display of stone in gothic architecture on the purely aesthetic ground that it allows for pleasing patterns of line and light that could not otherwise be achieved19: if a building can be understood as intended as a work of imagination rather than a presentation of fact, then there is room for the enjoyment of decorated rather than displayed structure on ruskin’s as well as scott’s 237 isparchitecture.com account; indeed, here ruskin’s otherwise outrageous suggestion in the preface to the second edition of the seven lamps that architecture must ultimately exploit the means of painting or sculpture could be used in his defense. ruskin’s discussion of “the lamp of truth” also includes his notorious argument that even in his own nineteenth century an architecture of wood, stone, and masonry is preferable to one of iron. he writes that the art of architecture: having been, up to the beginning of the present century, practised for the most part in clay, stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and the laws of structure have been based [...] on the necessities consequent on the employment of those materials; and that the entire or principle employment of metallic framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from the first principles of the art. abstractedly there appears no reason why iron should not be used as well as wood; and the time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction [...] . [but architecture’s] first existence and its earliest laws must depend [...] upon the use of materials accessible in quantity, and on the surface of the earth, that is to say, clay, wood, or stone: and as i think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use [...] it will be felt right to retain [...] the materials and principles of earlier ages.20 on the one hand, this seems like sheer conservatism, adequately confounded by, for example, the accomplishment of mies van der rohe in works like the illinois institute of technology campus and the seagram building in finding incomparable elegance in the structural forms of steel (and glass). on the other hand, ruskin’s comments suggest that we find a genuinely cognitive pleasure in architecture as a if building can be understood as intended as a work of imagination rather than a presentation of fact, then there is room for the enjoyment of decorated rather than displayed structure on ruskin’s as well as scott’s account. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 238 gu y er form of history, as giving us insight into the past, and that this should not be entirely forgotten in the face of other sources of pleasure. this leads us to “the lamp of memory,” which can also be understood at least in part as an expression of the cognitive aspect of architectural experience.21 the lamp of memory seems like the most straightforward expression of a cognitivist aspect in ruskin’s conception of the sources of architectural pleasure. specifically, ruskin argues that architecture is a medium for knowledge of the human past. “architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. we can live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her [...] there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, poetry and architecture.”22 but ruskin’s conception of the cognitivist function of architecture as a vehicle for memory differs from that of the german idealists in several key ways. unlike hegel, ruskin does not conceive of architecture as a – doomed – vehicle for metaphysical knowledge, nor, like schopenhauer does he conceive of it as a – not necessarily doomed – vehicle for knowledge of the fundamental forces of non-human nature; he conceives of it specifically as a vehicle for knowledge of human history. and then it should also be noted that architecture serves human memory in several ways, partly intentionally but also partly unintentionally. ruskin begins his discussion of the “lamp of memory” with the case of buildings whose decorations are “animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning,”23 buildings whose ornamentation is thus intended to carry a message about a people and their present and past to the future. but he also argues that buildings are witnesses to history in ways that could not have been intended by their original builders, that the glory of a building may be: in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity [...] it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering [...] that its existence [...] can be gifted with [...] language and life.24 here ruskin claims that buildings are witnesses to the human deeds that play out within and before them, much of which of course cannot have been foreseen by the original builders and may even undermine their intentions in all sorts of ways, and that we who come later can read this 239 isparchitecture.com history in the buildings as they stand, well-preserved or ruined or in between, before us. ruskin also notes that can get a sense of non-human history from buildings as well, from the “superinduced and accidental beauty [...] of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man.”25 buildings thus yield us knowledge of the general processes and specific events of both non-human and human history. now ruskin’s last remark about the universally beloved color and form that are produced by natural processes suggests that in actual experience the cognitive significance of architecture cannot be separated from what might have been thought of as its purely aesthetic dimension; and since it would also be artificial to separate the historical significance of architecture from our emotional response to human history, the argument of “the lamp of memory” suggests that all three aspects of the experience of art distinguished in eighteenth-century aesthetics are in fact fully merged in the experience of architecture as ruskin conceives it. but before i turn to the emotional dimension of the experience of architecture, let me just mention that there are cognitivist aspects to ruskin’s accounts of the lamps of “life” and “obedience” as well. ruskin uses his chapter on “the lamp of life” to begin the argument that he will continue in the famous chapter on “the nature of gothic” in the stones of venice that we love the evidence of the creativity of all involved in the creation of a work of architecture, the stonecutters as well as the master mason or architect, as itself the product of the various lives of all these people, their “accidental carelessnesses of measurement” ruskin’s conception of the cognitivist function of architecture as a vehicle for memory differs from that of german idealists in several key ways. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 240 gu y er as well as their “proposed departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of perpetually variable fantasy.”26 but there is another, or perhaps more general argument here, that “no inconsiderable part of the essential characters of beauty depend [...] on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjection to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless”; the “vivid expression of the intellectual life which has been concerned”27 in the production of architecture is one instance of this, but so might be the evidence of organic but non-human life in, say, the limestone used in a building. the presupposition of ruskin’s argument is that of course we must in some way understand the expression of life in any of its forms in architecture before we can respond to it in other ways. a similar assumption underlies ruskin’s argument in his final chapter on “the lamp of obedience.” his argument here is that architecture can be an expression of freedom, as opposed to mere chaos, only if it is an exercise of “restraint” within a style28 – it is in this context that he makes the claim earlier mentioned that there are only four styles suitable for modern building.29 but of course to work within a style, even to innovate within it and test its limits without exceeding them, the architect has to understand the style and its laws; so freedom in design and construction, which might be associated with the eighteenth-century idea of free play, also has to be associated with knowledge. the necessity of connecting rather than separating free play and knowledge is also on display in this passage, which begins the penultimate section of the final chapter of the seven lamps of architecture: it is almost impossible for us to conceive [...] the sudden dawn of intelligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing sense of power and facility, and, in its proper sense, of freedom, which such wholesome restraint would instantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts. freed from the agitation and embarrassment of that liberty of choice which is the cause of half of the discomforts of the world; freedom from the accompanying necessity of studying all past, present, or even possible styles; and enabled, by concentration of individual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the architect would find his whole understanding enlarged, his practical knowledge certain and ready to hand, and his imagination playful and vigorous [...].30 here knowledge is argued to be a necessary condition of free play. that might mean that knowledge is not a source of pleasure in its own right, but only a means to the pleasure for both architects themselves and 241 isparchitecture.com the audiences for their work over time that comes from the playful and vigorous imagination. but, as we have seen, the knowledge of both history and the laws of non-human as well as human nature that we can get from architecture is also, in ruskin’s view, a source of pleasure in its own right. so there is no danger that knowledge will be reduced to a mere means for the pleasure that comes from free play: both are sources of architectural pleasure in his view. finally, i return to ruskin’s recognition of the emotional dimension of our experience of architecture. as i already suggested, it would be entirely unnatural to separate our emotional response to human deeds and for example “suffering” from our cognition of them, and likewise artificial to separate our emotional response to manifestations of human freedom from our knowledge of the laws or style or other laws that furnish the constraints within which freedom can be meaningfully exercised; so the emotional aspect of the experience of architecture is implicit throughout ruskin’s treatment of its cognitive dimensions in the lamps of memory and obedience. it would be equally implausible to leave out the emotional aspect of architectural experience from “the lamp of power,” ruskin’s version of the sublime: his statement there that, in the edifices of man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue [...] but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thought, with the work of his own hand [...].31 the presupposition of ruskin’s argument is that of course we must in some way understand the expression of life in any of its forms in architecture before we can respond to it in other ways. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 242 gu y er makes clear the emotional impact of the sublime in architecture on the author, but on the author only as a representative of us all: we cannot think of “the works of god upon the earth” and “the dominion over those works which has been vested in man” as “intellectual lamps of architecture” without also experiencing a profound emotional response.32 but the emotional dimension of architectural experience has been on display since the outset of ruskin’s book, beginning with the first “lamp of sacrifice.” this refers to the “spirit which offers” especially for “devotional and memorial architecture” “precious things, simply because they are precious; not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to ourselves desirable.”33 through using precious materials in our – public rather than merely private – buildings, we “exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline”34 – and express our need to honor, for ruskin of course specifically our need to honor god.35 the need to express self-discipline and honor must be grounded in our feelings or emotions, not just our desire for pleasure but in a wide range of other, first-order emotions. and in response to works of architecture that express such feelings in their creators similar feelings may be and surely often are expressed in subsequent spectators of those works, even those who do not share the beliefs of the original creators – even one who does not share the belief-systems of their creators cannot fail to be stirred by the chartres or the suleimanya of sinan or the st. matthew passion of bach, although of course the experience of such a spectator can hardly be identical to that of the original creator of the work or its originally intended audience. as ruskin concludes “the lamp of sacrifice,” the creators of such works, “have taken with them to grave their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration,”36 that is, their emotion, which we, for all our differences, with them and amongst ourselves, cannot but at least to some degree agree with. so ruskin actually begins his work with an emphasis on the emotional dimension of our experience of architecture and by implication of aesthetic experience more generally. but we have seen that as his argument unfolds, he equally emphasizes the pleasure of sheer cognition through architecture as well as of the vigorous play of the human imagination in architecture, and further the ways in which all three of these dimensions of aesthetic experience are not merely intertwined but are also interdependent. so i conclude that ruskin’s seven lamps is a paradigmatic expression of a 243 isparchitecture.com synthesizing rather than separating approach to aesthetic theory in general and architectural theory in particular, and that although a century and threequarters on, we can hardly feel constrained by his particular stylistic dictates, an enduring benchmark for the complexity of aesthetic ambitions we should have in architectural practice as well. endnotes 1. geoffrey scott, the architecture of humanism, first edition 1914, second edition 1924 (new york: scribner’s, n.d.), especially chapter v, “the ethical fallacy.” 2. john ruskin, the seven lamps of architecture, introduction by sir arnold lunn (london: j.m. dent & sons, 1907), p. 213. 3. ruskin, seven lamps, p. xxii. 4. ibid, p. 137. 5. ibid, p. 203. 6. my interpretation of the seven lamps thus differs from that offered by cornelis j. baljon in “interpreting ruskin: the argument of the seven lamps of architecture and the stones of venice,” journal of aesthetics and art criticism 55 (1997): 40114. baljon argues that all seven “lamps” are forms of associations of ideas, thus that the work stands entirely within the tradition of eighteenth-century scottish “associationism,” represented above all by the 1790 work of archibald alison (see p. 403), while ruskin then broadens his approach to architecture in the stones of venice. without controverting baljon’s claim that ruskin’s philosophical knowledge was (proudly) confined to the british tradition and excluded german aesthetics from kant to hegel (p. 401), i would suggest, indeed already have suggested in my comments about the work of kames, that the british or even the scottish tradition is broader than ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 244 gu y er associationism alone, and that ruskin’s work is more fruitfully read against the background of the threefold division of cognition, play, and emotion that i have suggested. 7. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 69. 8. ibid, p. 70. 9. see edmund burke, a philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublme and beautiful (1757, second edition 1759), edited by j.t. boulton (london: routledge & kegan paul, 1958), especially part one, sections vii-xi, xix. see also baljon, p. 403. 10. archibald alison, essays on the nature and principles of taste, 2 vols. (edinburgh: bell & bradfute, 1811). see baljon, p. 403. 11. baljon goes beyond this weak statement and calls alison’s work, “a particularly rich source of inspiration,” for ruskin (p. 403). 12. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 104. 13. thomas reid, essays on the intellectual powers of man (1785), edited by derek r. brookes (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2002), essay viii, “of taste,” p. 602. 14. shaftesbury, the moralists, part iii, section ii, in characteristicks, vol. ii, p. 107. 15. for a general discussion of this distinction, see bernard williams, truth and truthfulness (princeton: princeton university press, 2002). 16. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 30. 17. ibid, p. 33. 18. ibid, p. 35. 19. see scott, architecture of humanism, chapter iv, “the mechanical fallacy,” e.g., pp. 103-7. 20. ruskin, seven lamps, pp. 39-40. 21. baljon suggests that ruskin thought iron architecture lifeless and thus should have included his argument against it in “the lamp of life” (p. 403). this overlooks ruskin’s argument for our historical attachment to stone rather than iron construction, which would suggest that if his argument against iron architecture should have been included anywhere other than in “the lamp of truth,” then it should have been in “the lamp of memory.” but had he done that, ruskin would have spoken too soon: riding now across a great late nineteenthor early twentiethcentury railroad bridge such as the hell’s gate in new york or the firth of forth bridge in scotland is certainly an experience redolent with historical significance. 22. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 182. 23. ibid, p. 182. 24. ibid, pp. 190-1. 245 isparchitecture.com 25. ibid, p. 197. 26. ibid, p. 160. 27. ibid, p. 150. 28. ibid, p. 205. 29. ibid, p. 213. 30. ibid, pp. 213-14. 31. ibid, p. 71. 32. ibid, p. 70. 33. ibid, p. 9. 34. ibid, p. 10. 35. ibid, p. 11. 36. ibid, p. 28. the architecture of ethics: stanley tigerman emmanuel petit chicago-born jewish architect stanley tigerman wouldn’t mind to be portrayed as a sort of freethinker and even libertine of the architectural discipline while, paradoxically, constructing himself as the defender of ethics in architecture. he is somebody who insists that what architects do with physical architecture is important but that ultimately the architecture of the ‘here and now’ is a mere scaffold to support ideas that exceed the sphere of art and that lie beyond the expressive possibilities of architecture. philosophy has institutionalized a series of major figures—the positive philosophers—who constitute the foundation of the field as we have come to define it: plato, kant, hegel, and the like; but it also draws its vitality from their dialectic counter-parts: the anti-philosophers—socrates, kierkegaard, bataille—i.e. those thinkers, who don’t play by the rules, and who (some would claim) have no business being counted as a part of the discipline of philosophy. these anti-philosophers, however, are indispensable to making philosophy move. if given the choice, tigerman would certainly side with the anti-philosophers ... constructing himself as a sort of anti-architect, who cannot leave the discipline because it is what fuels his resistance— the resistance to all these fantasies of perfection, synthesis and performance—of “do-good-ism” in the world. he insists that he wanted to become an architect when he read ayn rand’s fountainhead. it made him furious! if your hope is to save the world, build the largest shelter for homeless people, like stanley did with his pacific garden mission in he wanted to become an architect when he read ayn rand’s fountainhead. it made him furious! “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 44 pe ti t chicago, or found a school for socially responsible and environmentally conscious design (like he did with eva maddox when they founded archeworks in chicago in 1994). but do not expect an invitation into the architectural hall of fame for it. for that, you need other techniques: you need a theory of anti-architecture. tigerman provides something of that sort. he has all the credentials to master the subject of architecture; but in spite of that, his real “subject” never ceased to be the human being, while architecture was, for him, a sort of stage or dramatic space within which to choreograph the dialogues and encounters between humans. his long-lasting friendship with the late dean of the cooper union school of architecture, john hejduk, was largely based on this common interest: didn’t hejduk also fathom architecture as an arena for the poetic and ineffable meeting between humans, as well as for the empathy between human subjects and the subject of architecture? while hejduk designed cities “populated” with architectural characters on their journeys from venice to berlin and to prague, and from riga to vladivostok, tigerman liked to draw his own autobiographical dream cities set against the backdrop of non-realist environments in the spirit of joan miró’s “carnival of harlequin” (1924-25) and the “garden of earthly delights” by dutch painter hieronymus bosch, which was filled with literal renditions of certain proverbs of the day. the so-called architoons were always colonized with the fragments and anecdotes of tigerman’s personal, eclectic architectural memory—from greek caryatids, to mies van der rohe’s buildings, to tectonic details of the chicago balloon frame, concentration camp barracks and their steaming chimneys, the temple of solomon, the chicago street grid, and tigerman’s own buildings and paper projects. this imaginary cosmos was animated by little frogmen or cherubim in the tradition of françois rabelais’s grotesque carnival characters in gargantua and pantagruel—which the literary theorist mikhail bakhtin had rediscovered as the epitome of an “open” or “polyglossic” text in his rabelais and his world: carnival and grotesque from the mid1960s.1 tigerman’s cartoon figures seemed to protect his personal and plural oikos of memories as much as they guarded the disciplinary book of architecture—which was at risk of turning abstract, inert, and static in the hands of the second and third generation modernists under whom tigerman was trained (i.e. the generation of paul rudolph). one of the architoons portrays one such cherub (a.k.a. an architect), who is torn in a janus-faced reality between the “archaeological” gravity of the discipline and his spirited need to escape into another world of personal, idiosyncratic creativity: he is stepping on top of an architectural column which breaks underneath his feet while at the same time he stretches and reaches up to 45 isparchitecture.com hold on to the umbilical cord of one of his creative offsprings, the phallus-shaped daisy house (porter beach, indiana, 1975-78), which took flight on top of a cloud. his interest in the exchange between “subjects” is the reason tigerman kept being drawn to ethical philosophy and the theories of dialogism, from aristotle to emmanuel lévinas—lévinas, the philosopher and talmud-scholar who was also formative for jacques derrida’s attentiveness to the alterity of writing, and who was close friends with the anecdotalist of the unknowable, maurice blanchot; and then to martin buber, who published his book ich und du (i and thou) in 1923, in which he cogitated about the nature of the true encounter with the other. buber maintained that the genuine meeting between i and thou could not be premeditated (or “composed”), but that it was utterly serendipitous and, hence, revelatory. in a sense, the sublime spontaneity and transience of the principle of “dialogue” as described by buber has been at odds with the tradition of architectural production where thorough planning, notation, and representation preceded the actualization of the project. in buber’s terminology, such a “structured” confrontation with the world treats that world as a the daisy house ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 46 pe ti t collection of objects. when the subject “plans” the world in this way, however, he can no longer encounter subjects, but all his relationships are reflections of his own ideas: ich-du turns into ich-es (i-it). as one of the ills of modernity, dialogue is turned into a monologue, and alterity is suppressed. in tigerman’s view, by the 1960s, architectural modernism had turned into a monologue only accessible to the narrow circle of architectural cognoscenti. he hoped, nevertheless, that his career as an architect could be a journey to discover otherness in architecture, and, as the title of his 1982 book versus: an american architect’s alternatives suggested, to track down “other” stylistic and ideological attitudes in architecture. to this end, he made a point of remaining a sort of outsider to the orthodox teachings of the discipline.2 like buber, lévinas, and derrida, tigerman’s jewishness has played a determining role for this desire for alterity. he was introduced to the study of the torah by his grandfather, a self-taught talmudic reader, and has subsequently always affirmed his jewishness. with it, he has cultivated a compassion for the oppressed and the persecuted. in architecture, this empathy translated into a skepticism towards establishment doctrine, from which he liked to distance himself. his book architecture of exile from 1988 thematized the “exilic” relationship the hebraic culture entertained with the hegemonic, greek or “hellenic” tradition of architecture as manifested in the candid structure of the parthenon. the book also made a case for the liaison and convoluted dialogue between the (visible) realm of architectural aesthetic with the more ethereal spheres of ethics and the sacred—between presence and absence. as a jew, tigerman continues to relish the existential “drift” between the contrasting sentiments of alienation and belonging to the city of chicago—a predicament saul bellow had so captivatingly described in his adventures of augie march; the bildungsroman begins with the famous sentence “i am an american, chicago born—chicago, that somber city—and go at things as i have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. but a man’s character is his fate, says heraclitus... .”3 at the time tigerman tried to launch his architectural career in chicago, he felt that a certain strand of modernism had besieged architectural discourse while the experimentalism of younger architects was pushed aside. in order for the discipline to stay energetic and lively, however, the “minimal palette” of the modernist canon had to open up and accept certain “contaminants” into its stern aesthetic, stringent utopianism, and ideological catechism. tigerman challenged all claims 47 isparchitecture.com that architectural study was “ontological” in nature, i.e. that the discipline had to devote itself to some stable conceptual “synthesis” or inner “being,” which theory was called to uncover. instead, he alleged that architecture had an “inability to define itself inherently”4 and that, therefore, it needed to transgress its cherished myths of purity and perpetuity (e.g. the clarity of tectonic and functional principles, the permanence of proportional systems, the synthetic nature of typological partis, a.s.o.). instead of propagating the modern myths of stability, tigerman fathomed architecture as the rift or space, which inserts itself in-between incongruous temporalities: “the gestalt of art lies in that intersection of one’s own epoch and eternity.”5 one of his missions became to disclose the heterogeneity of chicago’s architectural heritage and reveal alternative directions to the legacy of the “heroes” of modernist chicago—of louis sullivan, daniel burnham, frank lloyd wright, and, most of all, ludwig mies van der rohe. mies had come to chicago following the close of the bauhaus by the nazis, as part of what tigerman called the “german invasion”6 of chicago modernism. appearing as a sort of european aesthetic arbiter and ideologue, mies was able to give something to the united states that none of the other modernist forefathers could: unlike le corbusier, who was perceived as too intellectual to fill this role, tigerman argued, or walter gropius, whose theories lacked paradigmatic clarity, mies’s architecture, “was not unnecessarily demanding on the functional or intellectual levels,”7 and was thus able to convey a sense of ureuropean taste, permanence and democracy. while tigerman praised mies’s early role in america, he rejected the subsequent pervasive dissemination and banalization of his architecture by his many followers, particularly c.f. murphy and skidmore, owings and merrill, who adjusted mies’s ideas to the corporate context and made of his architecture like buber, lévinas, and derrida, tigerman’s jewishness has played a determining role for this desire for alterity “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 48 pe ti t the official canon. tigerman’s relationship with mies and miesianism has been complex to say the least; he invokes mies in most of his texts, where he makes of him a kind of straw figure or vodoo doll of modernism. while the acolytes had turned mies into their “object” of contemplation, study, and imitation, tigerman fathomed a more subjective (buber’s ich-du) encounter with mies — mies as an imaginary father figure and mentor. nine years after mies’s death, in 1978, tigerman addressed an open letter to him in which he reported that, “here in chicago everything appears to have remained much the same as it was ten years ago”8; he then wrote a postscript to that letter in 1986, in which he deplores “that americans, by and large, still consider you [mies] as a commercial paradigm rather than as a philosophic role model.”9 tigerman did see in mies’s abstractionism a philosophical stance: because the german emigré had inaugurated a radically “other” vision in architecture, he could figure as the epitome of the liberal freethinker. in tigerman’s mind, to imitate mies did not imply that one had to repeat his abstract aesthetic, it meant to make oneself different from anyone else so far ... including mies. in architecture, mies could function as the model for the individualist.10 much of tigerman’s own architecture can be read as a dialogue with mies’s “matrix,” which nevertheless is traversed and warped by another, more “supple” geometrical logic: the composition of tigerman’s oakbrook residence from 1976-77, for example, seemed to emulate the paradoxical meeting of the miesian grid with a more fluid, flexible, and lyrical geometry. similarly, some of tigerman’s early oil paintings, which directly borrowed from another german-born artist, josef albers, also evidenced an interest in the close alliance between rational line geometries and the quasi-figural presence a slight disturbance of geometry can engender. tigerman’s part real, part imaginary exchange with the german expatriate was intentionally concocted as a psychoanalytically charged relationship, which culminated with tigerman’s creation of an ambivalent collage in 1979, entitled “the titanic”; the work showed mies’s crown hall at the illinois institute of technology precariously floating (or possibly sinking) in the ocean against the backdrop of a clouded sky. “the titanic” illustrated the nachleben of the ambivalent encounter between tigerman and mies—immersed in an oneiric and unstable milieu of the clouds and the deep water. with it, tigerman demanded that the baton be passed to a (then) young generation of architects in chicago, who felt a bloomian anxiety of influence from their modern antecedents.11 in 1976, tigerman turned his personal discontent with the architecture 49 isparchitecture.com scene into a more collective disagreement when he co-founded a group of self-declared “individualists” and “freethinkers”: the chicago seven included tom beeby, larry booth, stuart cohen, james ingo freed, james nagle, ben weese; in 1977, the group expanded to eight to include helmut jahn, the “baron von high-tech.”12 the first formal event of the seven was an exhibition the group organized for the cooper union in new york, and later took to illinois. the participants of the exhibition conceived of “chicago architects” as a sort of salon des refusés, which was scheduled to be on display at the richard gray gallery simultaneously with the “official” and “canonical” retrospective of chicago architecture at chicago’s museum of contemporary art, entitled “a hundred years of chicago architecture: continuity of form and structure.”13 the new york opening of the show was to give it legitimacy before it would go back “home” to chicago. in order to communicate their insurrectionist intent, facing up to the official tenet of chicago modernism, this group of architects was named after its political homologue in chicago, also called the chicago seven around social right activists abbie hoffman, jerry rubin, david dellinger, tom hayden, rennie davis, john froines, lee weiner and bobby seale, all of whom had been arrested and put to trial for conspiracy and for instigating to riot at massive protests against the vietnam war at the 1968 democratic national convention.14 seale had to appear again at hearings in 1970 as one of the new haven nine during the new haven black panther trials. during these trials, the architecture school of tigerman’s alma mater, rudolph’s art and architecture building at yale, fell prey to a mysterious fire, although no arson was revealed. both the chicago seven and the new haven nine were all finally found not guilty of conspiracy, yet tigerman was well aware of the cultural stir these conspirators had provoked—not least because tigerman knew weiner. beyond the ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 50 pe ti t name of the political precedent, some of its street-fighter terminology was also adopted by the architectural seven; one of its members explained that “what mies did is that he thought of it as a war for saving our souls or the battle for the saving of architecture. late in his life he once said, “i’ve showed them how to do it. i am winning the war for architecture.”15 the seven rose up against becoming the foot soldiers of a war they did not endorse. the seven also positioned themselves in rivalry with two groups of architects on the east coast, one of which had declared a shared interest in the autonomy of the discipline of architecture in the context of the case study groups in the late sixties.16 as an outcome of one of these meetings held at the museum of modern art in 1969, five of its members published a series of house projects in a book entitled five architects in 1972; the projects were intellectually strung together by a critical essay by historian colin rowe.17 because of his aptitude to provide a connective theory for their ideas, rowe emerged as the eminence grise of the “new york five,” or “whites,” which included peter eisenman, michael graves, charles gwathmey, john hejduk and richard meier. it did not take long until the whites’ interest in le corbusier and the autonomous, abstract syntax of form was challenged by the so-called “grays,” who were mostly associated with yale and pennsylvania universities, and included vincent scully, robert venturi, robert a.m. stern, and romaldo giurgola, among others. the grays promoted the semantic dimension of architectural form, and its ability to “communicate” by connecting to the history and the architectural motives of the western humanist traditions.18 the staged rivalry between the chicago and the new york groups was based on a significant conceptual difference, in that the seven abstained from defining a shared set of aesthetic and theoretical principles, so that every one of its members would preserve his individuality and singularity. tigerman described the seven’s liberal agenda as follows: the new york five thought they had something in common, and they presented themselves as whites: exclusivist, autonomous beings ...they had a certain collective belief in “autonomy.” the grays, which was [romaldo] giurgola, [robert a. m.] stern, and all those people, saw themselves as inclusivists. the guys in l. a., the silvers, saw themselves as studies in extrusion, because of the speed of the automobile. the chicago seven have nothing to do with each other—formally, and now, personally. i don’t even see them. ...it was the only way we could get seven desperate people who had nothing in common, including respect for the other; but one thing we had in common: we needed to penetrate a city that was monolithic, that was miesian.19 51 isparchitecture.com the seven stayed away from delineating a shared aesthetic-formalist code; instead, they were mostly defined negatively, by stating that they did not participate in the established architectural culture of chicago. this strategy of affirming identity through negation and distance was entirely consistent with tigerman’s ironic weltanschauung, which hinged on the possible co-existence of contradictions and unresolved dualities. the seven made this ironic self-understanding into an ideological model for urban cohabitation when, in 1978, they organized the “chicago townhouse” competition at the graham foundation. this event came in defense of a pluralist discipline, and became one of the forerunners of the strada novissima installation at the showcase event for postmodern architecture two years later at the venice biennale, called “the presence of the past.” tigerman’s advocacy of the creative and independent freethinker has to be seen against the background of a determining and officially sanctioned conflict the united states engaged in at the time he developed his project in architecture: the vietnam war. the senseless loss of human life in the worsening war after 1965, and well into the 1970s, presented the american society with an existential puzzle, which destroyed the former confidence in the ability to master and control every aspect of life; moreover, it stirred up suspicions about the ethical value underlying the positivism of the modern and secular lifestyle. when the united states’s official campaign against communism turned into a national disaster, tigerman started to question the relative gain of abstract and universalizing heroism in the face of the individual suffering of the people of both war nations. he was well aware that the emerging existential angst around vietnam did not only affect the collective conscience, as the media in the socially oriented sixties kept suggesting, but it resulted in fears on a very personal level: the national calamity made him ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 52 pe ti t aware of his own finitude and mortality. together with this realization of finitude, tigerman’s simultaneous midlife crisis, only added to his individual disquietude at the time.20 he wrote in 1982 that towards the second half of the 1970s, “i felt the need to reassess the way i wished to live the rest of my life. i became fascinated with the idea that the notions of humor and irony could be regarded as perverse responses to the acknowledgment of death.”21 here, he announced his primordial reason as well as the rhetorical modes of expression of his form of architectural liberalism; the introduction of humor and irony into architecture was to open a space within the discipline’s dense matrix of foundational assumptions, and reconquer within it a territory for individual freedom of expression. in spirit, the double, tragic/comic rhetoric of his architectural writing and design is very close to roberto benigni’s in his 1997 comedy la vita è bella—a daring aesthetic-ethical tour de force about the life in the concentration camps in auschwitz. in view of the western world’s apparent lack of self-doubt and selfcriticism manifested in the u.s. government’s bad judgment around the vietnam war and the war protests, tigerman challenged the “modern” notion of an overarching and synthetic ideology (i.e. the zeitgeist) which was considered to epitomize all aspirations of a people at a particular moment in time. he criticized the collective delusion of endless progress which, more than engrained in the very project of modernity, was also endemic to the post-emersonian, american pioneer ethics and found itself boosted by the economic upswing and the consumer euphoria in the postwar decades. ultimately, he considered the united states’ one-sided confidence in an uninterrupted cultural, social and economic renewal in the 1950s and early 60s immature: “there is something perverse about the reenactment of the desire to remain collectively ‘young.’ it is as if an entire culture rejects its own coming of age because it may ruin that culture’s optimism.”22 the heroic and positivist devotion to this shared belief seemed like a naive conceit of a nation, which failed to understand the true meaning of individual “existence.” vietnam shuttered the illusion that a nation like the united states would or could speak with one voice, and that any attitude of dissent and disagreement should dissolve in the positive spirit of an allegedly unified ideological will of the american society. in the context of these questions raised in the socio-cultural sphere, tigerman was drawn magnetically to the intellectual tradition of existentialism, from socrates to søren kierkegaard and nietzsche, from dostoevsky to kafka, and finally, to mark c. taylor’s (a-)theological 53 isparchitecture.com speculations—themselves based on kierkegaard.23 tigerman liked to think of his own position in architecture as analogous to the place kierkegaard occupied in philosophy: what kierkegaard was to hegel, tigerman thought he could represent in relation to mies. in a sense, hegel and mies both attempted to “systematize” existence through their respective sterile metaphysics, which was in the service of a universal weltor zeitgeist. kierkegaard and tigerman, by contrast, insisted on the importance of the subjective perspective as well as the freedom associated with it. they maintained that singular, contingent acts and reflections were not dictated by any universal will, but instead, belonged to the free initiative of every discrete human being–the sphere of “that individual.”24 along with his disapproval of abstract systemdenken, kierkegaard had expressed his criticism against a fixed, dehumanized, and “spatialized” view of time, and suggested to replace it with the more individualized and transient notion of “life-time.”25 tigerman similarly insisted that space and time were contingent on the mortal existence of a person’s lifecycle; many of his sketches make thematic the idea of the irrecuperable passage of individualized time, as does, for example, the drawing entitled “hinge.” about his phallus-shaped daisy house, tigerman wrote: “the necessity to communicate the finite condition of man in all its ironic nobility was an obvious requirement of [this building].”26 the house’s patron truly epitomized the janusfaced relationship between the very human sentiments of tragedy and comedy: the client was the owner of burlesque show venues in chicago, and was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he approached tigerman to design the house. after turning down the client several times, tigerman finally accepted to design a house for him under the condition that the project would make his patron laugh: “i drew an erect phallus with semen coming out at the end, directed at him, and he laughed. he what kierkegaard was to hegel, tigerman thought he could represent in relation to mies “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 54 pe ti t liked it, and we built it, and he died three months later; that’s the truth.”27 this thoroughly humanized, tragic/comic liaison with other subjects through the medium of architecture has been at the core of tigerman’s critique of modernism, and was, at the same time, fundamental to his own version of “postmodernism.” endnotes 1. mikhail bakhtin, rabelais and his world, trans. by helene iswolsky (cambridge: mit press, 1968). 2. refer to tigerman’s autobiography building bridges to burn, forew. by emmanuel petit (oro, 2011). 3. saul bellow, the adventures of augie march: a novel (new york: viking press, 1953). 4. tigerman, “the ten contaminants” (1991), schlepping through ambivalence: writings on an ambivalent architectural condition, ed. emmanuel petit (new haven: yale university press, 2011), 54. 5. tigerman, “juxtaposition vs. judgment, 1965,” versus: an american architect’s alternatives (new york: rizzoli, 1982), 56. 6. tigerman used the expression “german invasion” to designate mies van der rohe’s arrival in chicago in an interview with barbaralee diamonstein. diamonstein-spielvogel, “american architecture now: stanley tigerman,” diamonstein-spielvogel video archive, duke university libraries, 1984. 7. stanley tigerman, “mies van der rohe: a moral model”; “paradigms in architecture,” perspecta 22, the journal of the yale school of architecture, rizzoli, new york (1986), 118. 8. ludwig mies van der rohe, quoted in tigerman, versus, 30. 9. refer to tigerman’s “p.p.s. to mies,” schlepping through ambivalence, 153. 10. i borrow the idea of the meaning of imitating an individualist from alexander nehamas’s view of socrates, in art of living, where nehamas claims: “to imitate socrates is therefore to create oneself, as socrates did; but it is also to make oneself different from anyone else so far, and since that includes socrates himself, it is to make oneself different from socrates as well. that is why he can function as the model for the individualist” art of living: socratic reflections from plato to foucault (berkeley, los angeles, london: university of california press, sather classical lectures, 1998), 11. 11. in 1973, harold bloom published anxiety of influence: a theory of poetry, in which he argued that because a poet must look for an original poetic vision in order to guarantee his survival into posterity, the overwhelming influence of his precedents provokes a sense of anxiety in living poets. 12. tigerman designates jahn as the “baron von high-tech” in versus, 30. 13. oswald w. grube, peter c. pran and franz schulze, 100 years of architecture in 55 isparchitecture.com chicago: continuity of structure and form (chicago: j. philip o’hara, 1976). 14. the chicago seven were originally eight, but one of their member’s trial (bobby seale’s) was separated from the trial of the other seven because of his blatant disrespect of the court proceedings and the judge. on the chicago seven protests and trials, refer to: j. anthony lukas, “judge hoffman is taunted at trial of the chicago 7 after silencing defense counsel”, new york times, february 6, 1970; david dellinger, from yale to jail: the life story of a moral dissenter (new york: pantheon books, 1993); abbie hoffman & al., conspiracy, introduction by noam chomsky, edited by peter and deborah babcox and bob abel (new york: dell publishing company, 1969). 15. james ingo freed, chicago architects oral history project (chicago, illinois: the art institute of chicago, 2000). 16. on the case study group meetings (conference of architects for the study of the environment), refer to harry francis mallgrave, modern architectural theory: a historical survey, 1673-1968 (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005). 17. five architects: eisenman, graves, gwathmey, hejduk, meier (new york: wittenborn, 1972). 18. for a discussion of the “white/gray” debates, refer to joan ockman, “resurrecting the avant-garde: the history and program of oppositions,” in beatriz colomina (ed), architecture production (new york: princeton architectural press, 1988). 19. conversation stanley tigerman with emmanuel petit, princeton, nj, december 2001; in emmanuel petit, “irony in metaphysics’s gravity: imagination and iconoclasm in architecture 1960s-80s,” ph.d. dissertation, princeton university, january 2006, annex b. 20. ibid., 115. 21. ibid. 22. tigerman, the architecture of exile (new york: rizzoli, 1988), 155. 23. tigerman extracts most of his references to existentialist thinkers from william hubben, dostoevsky, kierkegaard, nietzsche, and kafka: four prophets of our destiny (london and new york: collier macmillan publishers, 1952 & 1962). later, tigerman refers a lot to mark c. taylor’s erring: a postmodern a/theology (chicago: university of chicago press, 1984). 24. the epitaph on kierkegaard’s grave referred to the philosopher as “that individual.” 25. paul bové, “the penitentiary of reflection: søren kierkegaard and critical activity,” boundary 2, vol. 9, no. 1, a supplement on irony (autumn, 1980), 233-58, p. 237. 26. tigerman, versus, 116. 27. conversation tigerman with petit; “irony in metaphysics’s gravity... .” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 56 pe ti t stanley tigerman responds question: the essay by emmanuel petit is talking about your ethics. and in the essay one of the things he says is that your temperament or approach would have more in common with the anti-philosophers like socrates and kierkegaard and bataille rather than the system builders like kant and hegel. is that something that you would agree with or be in sympathy with? answer: i don’t have any feeling about it at all. emmanuel writes what he sees and thinks is correct, and i am, with respect to him, simply an other. so i don’t have any feelings that he’s right or wrong or whatever. q: then he does get in to the struggles that went on in the 1970s and 1980s with postmodernism and your central role there, and at the time, a lot of times it was relegated to being about style, and he brings out the idea that there was a strong ethical incentive or underpinning to your work and your positions at that time, and i was hoping that you might have something to say about that. a: yeah actually i do. architecture is an elitist one. we are the hired guns for the wealthy. or those in power, or kings or princes, or princes of industry, or princes of the art world. we were never about ethical considerations. but its provable in the last fifty years at least, when you could actually explore the phrase “follow the money and you will find architects” so when kings had to build in apartheid south africa, we did. when the kings had to build for the shah of iran we did. when it came time to build for opec money we did. and so today you find major corporate firms stampeding to the ticket counter of overseas airlines to work on projects in countries whose human rights history doesn’t exist. so it still is the same. but in the 1970s on the heels of venturi’s book complexity and contradiction in 57 isparchitecture.com architecture, architects took a second look at their origins. and so there was an attempt, feeble there’s no question of it, stylistic, yes, to get in touch with their predecessors. to find roots as it were—of a rootless people. i wrote a book twenty-five to thirty years ago entitled the architecture of exile, which stipulates that americans are in exile. this is not our land. it belonged to the american indians etc. it was promised by the bible. ashes to ashes, dust to dust but this is not our soil and we are exploitive even as i speak to you, so yes i for a very long time, not that i hold it as a badge of honor, i have been a person who has been involved with ethics, who writes about it, who tries to build about it, etc. yes that’s true. q: what specifically in postmodernism as it was playing out at the time seemed to you to have an ethical imperative? a: well, among other things, you have to remember that you are talking to someone who may be native to chicago, but ultimately it is not my home. i was born here but it is not my home. this is a baptist fundamentalist city. and also was a city that took great care to patronize mies van der rohe. and so it was very difficult in the sixties to come back from graduate school and to find a place in this place which was no place for me. and so we formed something called the chicago seven, with a group who was were antagonistic to an establishment condition, and we tried to make a place for us at the table. around that time, a little bit later, i did that infamous piece about the titanic, about crown hall sinking into lake michigan and it struck a note at the time and it drew great discussion in the then emerging architectural culture in chicago which was really nothing more than two sides battling it out between the traditional, canonical structural constructivist tradition and another group that had nothing in common—the chicago seven—but who felt that a more open, multi-valent condition might be better for all concerned in chicago, and so ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 58 t ig er m a n we battled our way to the table, and there were any number of events— mosh pits or whatever—where we invited others to argue it out with us and they came and we did. that condition no longer exists today. basically, there is no chicago architectural culture. q: what you had in common was an attitude towards multivalence? a: what we had in common was we wanted a place at the table. make no mistake about it. we were all different, one from the other and to find that place took a long time but it did transpire at some point. so yes, you could call it multivalent, you could call it philosophically inclined, but it was really very selforiented and selfish. we wanted respect without the credential of having studied with mies. and it ultimately transpired. in the process, chicago opened itself up to every stripe of ambulance chaser who came to chicago to build. q: i do have one other question i would like to run by you. one of the things emmanuel brings out in the article is about spontaneity. he thinks that cultivating spontaneity with another person through design rather than sort of presenting them with a design—he thinks that spontaneity is something that characterized what you do. do you agree with that? a: again, i don’t know about that. i do know that we in the west fear, as emmanuel levinas put it, the other–the other that stalks the street. we are terrified of looking this person in the eye. we’re terrified of terrorists, forgetting that the tradition of terrorism is rampant in all the countries of the west. think of the french revolution, think about the american revolution—it was filled with terrorists. the british didn’t know if they were going to have a bomb in their pocket. suicide bombers are just an advanced version of the terrorists we were—american, that is. so i think—i’m reading a book right now that is very interesting, called on the muslim question which years ago could have been called “on the jewish question” the jews in america and everywhere else, were never respected, they had to fight for the place and ultimately they had no place even in america. only if you fell into the melting pot and declared yourself an american first—so we don’t take kindly to veiled muslim women or trance-talking muslim males. we could—this country is supposed to be made up of diversified people that are not the same to each other. it’s the only country on earth that has that distinction. we could embrace an other, a foreign person, a person that doesn’t speak like us and who has values other than ours—meaning values established by the koran—as opposed to the judeo-christian bible. but we could, so i’m of the type who believes in that, who doesn’t scare. you know, you go through life with only two ways, with fear or with love. and those who go in fear die 59 isparchitecture.com in fear, and those who go in love die in love. and that’s really all i have to say about it. i mean, i am an architect. i trade, i also read and i write and i draw. i do other things other than making buildings. and i like to think and hope that the buildings i make, make sense. we [tigerman mccurry] don’t market, we don’t brand, we don’t have a marketing director. i’m not interested in branding, i’m not interested in any way in the diminishment of the discipline. but it is being diminished all the time—right now, as we speak. in other words, i’m glad i’m eighty-three and i’m not going to live to see the disaster that’s about to come to architecture. stanley tigerman trying to think in a connected sort of way: part ii andrew ballantyne in conversation with stefan koller part i of this interview appeared in vol. 1, no. 1 of architecture philosophy. question: there seems to be something important to you at the level of pure methodology, regardless of the philosophical content engaged. is that something that you think is peculiar to philosophy or is philosophy one of the disciplines that might bring method to architecture? why is method not already inherent to architecture as an academic discipline? why is the methodological stringing together of content not already inherent to architecture as an academic discipline? answer: it’s not that thinking is especially isolated in philosophy, or in architecture, or in anywhere else. i don’t think that thinking in architecture is necessarily less rigorous than in other places. i think thinking in architecture is very rigorous about certain sorts of things, but equally rather lax, or typically rather lax, in some other ways. that’s probably true of all disciplines, but we have different ways of making use of information, different ways of thinking about things, or coming close to thinking about things. i put things on a scale ranging from common sense at one end of the scale to perhaps something more like logic thought at the other. when you’re dealing with common sense, it’s not philosophical thinking, you’re recognizing a pattern of events and assuming that that pattern of events will repeat itself the way it did when you encountered it the last time. most of the time, that kind of recognition works. so with everyday activities we can deal with common sense and yesterday and today and thinking in architecture is very rigorous about certain sorts of things, but equally rather lax, or typically rather lax, in some other ways. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 247 ba ll a n ty n e tomorrow, are fairly similar and we can go through them in a similar way. not by thinking out the situation afresh but by remembering what we did yesterday and the day before, and in fact we stop thinking about it, we just go through our routine, habitual patterns, and everything is fine and everything continues the way it did. but if we want to change things or we’re faced with a fresh problem, then we have to do a different sort of thinking, which may involve an element of recognizing patterns from what we did before. also, you need to make some sort of analysis, maybe have some sort of creative response to what it is. maybe it’s a matter of logical deduction, but there’s a different kind of thinking that goes on. that’s the kind of thinking that it’s important for me to engage with when i’m writing. i don’t have to do that every day in every way. i wouldn’t get through the day if i did. a lot of things i just do as routine. when it’s a matter of academic work, academic thinking, then you do have to think. philosophy is good at prioritizing that sort of thinking discipline. actually michel tournier described philosophers as the professionals of thought. he studied philosophy as a student alongside deleuze, and it took him completely by surprise when he failed the exams that deleuze passed. he went on to become a novelist and won the prix goncourt, but there’s a wistful tone when he talks about philosophers. thinking is their business and they show you how to do it. there’s other ways of doing it, but philosophy is good, it’s rigorous, and it really makes you think. the other person i really like on that subject is david hume, who describes himself being sent into depression by the isolation that comes with rigorous philosophical thinking. he says that if he needs a remedy for that, it’s easy to find. he just seeks out company – a game of backgammon – and all his philosophical problems disappear. he regains the will to live or whatever it is. he was a sociable person. we’re all sociable people, and we feel good and comfortable with the world if we’re engaged with conversation and so on. that doesn’t get you thinking philosophically. in order to think rigorously and logically, you do have to withdraw and internalize. it’s quite an isolated process. maybe there are philosophers who can conduct socratic dialogues with others, but for me that kind of conversation makes best sense if you think of it as articulating the different voices in your own head. maybe i haven’t met the right people. but i recognize what i do as feeling like what hume describes. so you need to be able to do that and then to function as a human being, you need to come out of it. hume’s punch line is his remedy for the depression that comes with philosophical work is carelessness and inattention. he says, “for this reason i rely entirely upon them.” his method is a method of carelessness 248 isparchitecture.com and inattention, but that’s a method for living, not a method for doing philosophy. q: how extraordinary to bring out the contribution of philosophy in that light when it’s philosophy that kind of temporarily puts ordinary life and common sense on hold, as in hume. nothing ultimately, if you narrowly attend to it, even the collision of billiard balls, makes sense anymore and you have to relapse into custom to even be able to get by. it makes philosophy pull away from common, ordinary life. in one of your most recent works, “architecture, life, and habit” you use the work of some philosophers, or your own philosophical thought, to reorient thinking about architecture from this remote disengaged aesthetic touristic contemplation. towards an understanding that, in dealing with building, we deal with the people that inhabit them, and the life that shapes around them. the work becomes a new pragmatist aesthetics of architecture which looked as if the philosophy pulled a customary architectural historian back into engaging with the life that surrounds these buildings – the common life. a: of habits that become so habitual that you’ve lost sight of them, which become the things that shape your world. q: it seems to run in the opposite direction of the humean relation to philosophy, where philosophy is something that pulls you out of ordinary life. then there’s the wittgensteinian way of pulling you back in and enabling you to engage with it. in a sense that is not everyday in the sense of being common or habitual, but in reconnecting you to something that maybe through habit or academic study or even a design attitude to the built object has removed it from its built, lived reality. a: yes. i’d hoped that one could find a way to aestheticize the everyday activity and find value in it. and enjoy doing everyday things by waking up to them. it may be going against that idea of thinking through withdrawal. it’s withdrawn thinking but turned in on the activity of living and perhaps being more sociable. what lies at the heart of that article, is that in order to think rigorously and logically, you do have to withdraw and internalize. it’s quite an isolated process. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 249 ba ll a n ty n e architectural discussion ought to begin with ordinary things and daily life and branch out from there. i think too much of the time we’re faced with architectural discussion that begins with an admiration of form or something. these things can be quite demanding or difficult or even get in the way of ordinary life. they stand apart from it. they’re special in some way and it’s nice that they’re special, they’re challenging in that sort of way. but for sanity’s sake, there just has to be a way of valorizing things that you have to do anyway. why not make that the substance of what you do rather than something that has to be awkwardly fitted in afterwards? q: does that also entail that you would not follow the distinction that many other writers have tried to make between architecture with a capital “a” on the one hand and mere building (in german, bauen as opposed to baukunst) on the other hand? the second is the vernacular, or the ordinary utilitarian domestic-level but culturally significant building. on the other hand, you’ve got some things that are much closer to the fine arts or architecture at least tries to align itself with the lofty ambitions of the artistic. would you not want to draw a distinction precisely to avoid us having this split attitude? a: i really don’t want there to be that separation. i want it to be a sliding scale – if anything – where you begin with the ordinary things that you have to do and then find special intensifications of those things that makes them out of the ordinary, that makes them more pleasurable, or dramatic, or whatever it is. they’re rooted in something meaningful. they’re not separated. otherwise, you get this split and it starts feeling like there’s a separation between everyday activity and aesthetic sensibility. i really want them to be connected. i want my life to be full of wonderful aesthetic experiences. q: everything you say is the complete opposite of schopenhauer. the reason for that is that you strike me as someone who is very optimistic and cheerful and that means also for you that these aesthetic experiences, especially when they are of buildings, ought to be life-affirming in a broader sense than just having an uplifting experience of contemplation. for schopenhauer the idea is that life is full of woe and suffering and then aesthetic experience of architecture is one of the very few things that enable us to pull out of this life of suffering. so i’m also wondering to what extent these very fundamental decisions and your attitude towards how to approach architecture and ordinary building relates to a larger understanding of human life? because in your work that emerges clearly at several junctures, but where exactly does that come from for you? what’s the entry point of that? is it already the reality of how you encounter the buildings, or is there an independent philosophical view that brought you to this? a: i wonder. it’s a conviction. where do convictions come from? i 250 isparchitecture.com do think that a lot of aesthetic experience is unconscious. a lot of what we do all the time is unconscious and of course philosophical reflection is conscious. if you’re trying to think about everyday experiences and why you feel good about having done something one way or another, what is it you’re dealing with? a lot of the time you’re dealing with something that’s unconscious, at the moment of your decision-making. you’re deciding to sit at this table rather than on that sofa, but why are you deciding that? what are the issues that you’re rehearsing? you’re not entirely conscious of what they are but somehow one is more comfortable, the other feels better adapted to the task at hand. there’s a big element of unconscious stuff going on and what is that? there’s all kinds of things we’ve got to get right before we can start worrying about aesthetic issues in a conscious sort of way. for example, things like heating and lighting, they just have to be dealt with in some way. if you’re in a house that’s too cold to be comfortable then there’s no way you’re going to be dwelling on the elegance of its proportionsfor too long, you’ll be moving on or wrapping yourself up. q: so, it would be like addressing, or talking about concrete building considerations as heating, lighting, and construction more broadly. to what extent do you think philosophy could contribute to our understanding of such things? a: nothing at all. i think that they’re more or less preconditions. if we can’t get enough food to survive, we don’t worry about the meaning of life. the meaning of life becomes very clear: it’s to get food. i don’t think that philosophy would help us to find food in that sort of emergency, but with more leisure and forethought – well, if your job is to teach philosophy then it would be philosophy that was putting food on your table. and then in the most ambitious restaurants there’s certainly room for a philosophy of food, which has quite a lot of it is astounding just how uninformed they are about the actual details, say, of a painting, a piece of music, or a building. “ ” aesthetic content and very little discussion about nutrition. q: what do you think authors, especially young authors, going into architecture philosophy right now should be aware of ? what can they learn from what is currently less than perfect, or just plain bad? a: on the one hand you have philosophers, even aesthetic philosophers whose very business it is to write about art, where it is astounding just how uninformed they are about the actual details, say, of a painting, a piece of music, or a building. on the other hand, you have architecture historians who are greatly accomplished in mopping up every last detail about a work of art, but fall flat when they raise more general issues. admittedly, i have painted the extreme end points on a wide spectrum – but there is a lot of room in between these that is still left unexplored. and that is where i think a great deal of interesting work remains to be done. andrew ballantyne’s books include key buildings from prehistory to the present: plans, sections and elevations, 2012 architecture in the space of flows, 2012 (co-edited by c. smith) deleuze and guattari for architects, 2007 architecture theory: a reader in philosophy and culture, 2005 architecture and experience: radical change in spatial practice, 2004 architectures: modernism and after, 2004 architecture: a very short introduction, 2002 what is architecture?, 2002 architecture, landscape and liberty: richard payne knight and the picturesque, 1997 andrew ballantyne and stefan koller isparchitecture.com contesting wittgenstein”s remarks on architecture jochen schuff as the general concern of this journal issue is the relevance of wittgenstein’s thinking for the philosophy of architecture, i will take the task quite literally. accordingly, the aim of my paper is to explore whether there is evidence for systematic ideas about architecture in wittgenstein. reading culture and value, it may well seem as if architecture ranked among the subjects wittgenstein did think about—at least from time to time. i will provide some context concerning the status of these remarks—as well as that of some others not included in culture and value—in wittgenstein’s work. all things considered, there is not much to be found in wittgenstein’s writing concerning the arts or aesthetics in general. there are, to be sure, some editions of student’s notes of lectures on the subject of aesthetics [1], and numerous opinions reported in correspondences and biographies, but only a few remarks devoted to art both in the single book wittgenstein published in his lifetime, tractatus logico-philosophicus, and among the 20,000 pages of text he left in his nachlass. most of these remarks contain reflections about music, especially musical meaning and understanding. in relation, there is even less wittgenstein specifically wrote on the subject of architecture. the fact may be striking, since wittgenstein, while having temporarily abandoned philosophy, famously took part in designing and building the city mansion for his sister margarethe stonborough-wittgenstein in kundmanngasse, vienna, between 1926 and 1928. he even considered himself an architect by trade all things considered, there is not much to be found in wittgenstein’s writing concerning the arts or aesthetics in general. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 124 sc hu ff during this period. there is much to be said, and in fact much has been said about wittgenstein’s architectural practice, but i do not intend to contribute to that discussion [2]. nor will i make reference to the frequent metaphors from the realm of building that wittgenstein makes use of, for instance in the philosophical investigations or in on certainty. in my mind, the parallels between wittgenstein’s activity as an architect and his being a philosopher, or between his architecture and his philosophy, are often overstated. compared to nana last’s reading of the kundmanngasse house as a bridging between different spatialities in wittgenstein’s thought or roger paden’s interpretation of the house as a manifestation of mysticism, there are more modest proposals. in a recent reevaluation of the links between the house and wittgenstein’s philosophy, for instance, david macarthur nonetheless refers to wittgenstein’s “ideas” or “reflections” on architecture, drawing on culture and value [3]. on closer inspection, though, most of the ideas are actually adolf loos’, serving macarthur as a matrix of interpretation for wittgenstein’s own remarks. my aim, instead, is to focus exclusively on what wittgenstein actually wrote about the subject of architecture, and to determine the philosophical status of these remarks in their own right. in the first section of my paper, i will present a survey of more or less everything wittgenstein specifically (in the strict sense) wrote about architecture. most of these remarks, it will turn out, are no more than sketches or rough ideas. some of them belong to the context of art or aesthetics as wittgenstein conceived of it. this connection will be discussed in the second section. in other cases, wittgenstein uses architecture as an object of analogy, or comparison. in the third section, a commentary on one remark comparing architectural to philosophical practice is provided. section iv will conclude that the value of wittgenstein’s remarks read as contributions to a philosophy of architecture is limited; while wittgenstein’s broader reflections on aesthetics are significant in terms of content and method, if often neglected, the same cannot be said of the scattered paragraphs on architecture [4]. i in his early writings, wittgenstein virtually does not mention architecture at all. as far as we can tell, it is only after having finished the house in kundmanngasse that he starts to write down thoughts about architecture, but there are usually long stretches of time in between. in 1930, he notes: “today the difference between a good & a poor architect consists in the 125 isparchitecture.com fact that the poor architect succumbs to every temptation while the good one resists it” [5]. in this aphoristic remark, we are given no hint as to what kind of temptation wittgenstein could have in mind, or what the difference between a good and a poor architect could have been before today. we can only guess whether wittgenstein is thinking of someone or something particular here. shortly after, there is some criticism of contemporary architecture (as an expression of a culture and civilization alien to the author) in the “sketch for a foreword” dating from the same year, probably written for the big typescript [6]. both comments can be read as fragments of criticism, rather than theory. in contrast, a recurrent aesthetic concept is introduced in 1933; wittgenstein notes: “remember the impression made by good architecture, that it expresses a thought. one would like to respond to it too with a gesture” [7]. consequently, in 1938, in a rather sketchy remark, wittgenstein tentatively thinks about, “phenomena akin to language in music or architecture” [8]. then, in 1942, the motive of gesture becomes explicit again: “architecture is a gesture. not every purposive movement of the human body is a gesture. just as little as every functional building is architecture” [9]. here, the link between architecture and gestures seems even closer. moreover, wittgenstein seems to draw a distinction between mere building and architecture, the distinction being that architecture is a gesture, while mere building is not. in a remark existing in several variations, he writes in 1947: “architecture glorifies something (because it endures). hence there can be no architecture where there is nothing to glorify” [10]. one alternative version mentions gestures, too; it reads: “architecture glorifies something because it is a gesture which endures. it glorifies its purpose” [11]. taking up, perhaps, the thought that architecture is some kind of petrified gesture designed with the purpose of glorification, wittgenstein writes in 1948: “a great architect in a we can only guess whether wittgenstein is thinking of someone or something particular “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 126 sc hu ff bad period (van der nüll) has a quite different task from that of a great architect in a good period. you must again not let yourself be deceived by the generic term. don’t take comparability, but rather incomparability, as a matter of course” [12]. the bottom line in this case, however, is not so much aesthetic as linguistic, since wittgenstein claims that one and the same allgemeine begriffswort (“generic term”) can have two different meanings relative to context, so that the term great architect can attribute different qualities to a person depending on the cultural context she is working in. it is not easy to see, though, why wittgenstein is talking about generic terms here; it seems rather trivial that being called a great architect can rest on different accomplishments, or tasks, for it evidently depends on aesthetic judgments. without any context, the remark is rather mysterious; it would have been interesting to know what wittgenstein takes the task of the great architect in a good or in a bad period to be, respectively. all we can assume is that wittgenstein seems to have appreciated van der nüll’s architecture (the most prominent example of which is the vienna state opera) [13]. almost all of these remarks can be found in the collection culture and value. in german, the volume has been published under the more appropriate title vermischte bemerkungen, calling its content what it is: miscellaneous or mixed remarks, mixed not by wittgenstein, but by his editors, georg henrik von wright in this case. this is what they (or he) found worthy of being published after almost everything remotely resembling a book, say, abandoned publication projects or typescripts and even more or less coherent manuscripts like those that have come to be known as on certainty, had already been published. this is not to say that the remarks thus collected, including those on architecture, are not worthy of attention, but that we should keep in mind that they do not constitute something like a book or coherent body of text that wittgenstein devoted to questions of “culture” and “value,” let alone architecture. some of the remarks on aesthetics and music included, in contrast, can be traced back to comparatively rich sequences of reflections on art in wittgenstein’s later manuscripts. there are good reasons for taking these series of remarks to be serious, if condensed, contributions to philosophical aesthetics. joachim schulte and graham mcfee argue convincingly to this effect [14]. additionally, the published lectures can provide an impression of wittgenstein’s position in aesthetics. this holds even if we leave aside the importance for aesthetics of wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-perception in what has come to be known as the second part of the philosophical investigations. nothing of this sort can 127 isparchitecture.com be said about wittgenstein’s more or less isolated remarks on architecture. apart from quantity and context, another criterion for the importance of a thought is the further use wittgenstein is providing for it within his characteristic working method of writing down remarks, clipping manuscripts, reassembling remarks, clipping again and so forth [15]. now, only in a few cases did wittgenstein copy pertinent remarks about architecture into typescripts. it is apparent that most of these deal with the subject rather indirectly. the following remark from a 1930 manuscript will reappear in the so-called big typescript: “work on philosophy—like work in architecture in many respects—is really more work on oneself. on one’s own conception. on how one sees things. (and what one expects of them)” [16]. i will come back to these lines in the third section. the aforementioned remark saying architecture expressed a thought to which one would like to respond with a gesture reappears in ts 219 (which is part of the process of reworking manuscripts and typescripts leading from the big typescript to philosophical investigations) [17]. in ts 229, published under the title remarks on the philosophy of psychology i, wittgenstein takes up the following manuscript note: “one employment of the concept ‘looking in this direction’ is, e.g., as follows: one says, perhaps to an architect: ‘this distribution of the windows makes the façade look in that direction.’ similarly one uses the expression ‘this arm interrupts the movement of the sculpture’ or ‘the movement should go like this’ (here one makes a gesture)” [18]. and, in the same typescript: his name seems to fit his works. —how does it seem to fit? well, i express myself in some such way. —but is that all? —it is as if the name together with these works, formed a solid whole. if we see the name, the works come to mind, and if we think of the works, so does the name. we utter the name with reverence. the name turns into a [the remarks] do not constitute something like a book or a coherent body of text that wittgenstein devoted to questions of culture and value, let alone architecture “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 128 sc hu ff gesture; into an architectonic form [19]. while both of these remarks seem to be concerned with questions from the domain of aesthetics, if in a specifically conceptual way, architecture surely is not their main focus. note that both remarks mention gestures (one way or the other) in the same breath as architecture. with all of this source material in place, first, the idea (or ideas) that architecture is a gesture, or demands a gesture, is related to wittgenstein’s general, if only adumbrated, corresponding ideas about art and especially music. second, wittgenstein’s comparison between the work of the architect and the work of the philosopher will be revisited when considering the context of this analogy in the big typescript. ii the motive of gesture obviously is the one prominent thread in the remarks quoted, so there is reason to suppose wittgenstein took it seriously—at least to a certain extent. in the remarks taken from the later typescripts, he almost seems to take the motive for granted—while being occupied with different subjects. the second of the quotes from ts 229 seems to equate gesture and architectonic form; both serve to illustrate the relation between name and works. this is the light we should see the notion of gesture in. wittgenstein is mentioning architecture in passages where he is thinking about expressiveness in various contexts, not only in the context of architecture itself. if we consider the remarks taken together, we can discern two reoccurring claims that wittgenstein is putting forth. first, that architecture is a gesture. as a gesture, its relationship to building simpliciter can be compared to the contrast between corporeal gestures and purposive bodily movements. yet, second, architecture also provokes, or demands, gestures. good architecture seems to express a thought, wittgenstein feels—he does not claim that it actually does express thoughts—in a way that one feels compelled to respond to it—the thought? the architecture?—with a gesture. a gesture, understood minimally, is a kind of expressive behavior. it is, characteristically, not only an intentional bodily movement, but a movement that will at least accompany and emphasize, sometimes contradict, a particular utterance, sometimes even replace it [20]. in the latter case, a gesture may appear as the appropriate mode of communication, the right expression for what we want to convey. in this sense, a gesture can be an alternative to verbal language. it may be tempting to think that architecture, or art in general, is to be understood as a gesture in exactly this sense. 129 isparchitecture.com initially, wittgenstein’s intuition seems to be something like that—that works of art express something ineffable in spoken language, beyond its limits—thus the aesthetic quietism in the tractatus logico-philosophicus and continuing in the transitional lectures on ethics [21]. in the philosophical investigations, and even more extensively in his remarks on the philosophy of psychology, he acknowledges different forms of expressiveness in language, in expressive behavior, and still even more in art. he begins to conceive of the relationship between art and language in a more nuanced way: it is the differences as well as the similarities we have to take into account. his later thought about aesthetics tackles the question of the expressiveness of art not in competition with language, but in comparison. the notion of gesture is of importance in this respect [22]. the following provides a closer look at the two directions of wittgenstein’s claims: (1) if architecture is a gesture, while a mere functional building is not, we can suppose that they can be told apart by their expressive potential. both are functional or serve a purpose. but wittgenstein seems to use the concept of architecture as a term of praise. obviously, he is drawing a line between mere building and building as an art, restricting the concept of architecture to the second form. this, by the way, stands in stark contrast to loos’ view that architecture is not an art [23]. in its expressiveness, architecture, as wittgenstein indicates, can be compared to music, and both can be compared to language. in a certain sense, people can and certainly do speak of languages of architecture [24]. but in what sense? there seems to be an obvious difference between their respective communicative potentials. a linguistic utterance can express a proposition, definite content, one might think, while it is far from clear whether music or architecture can do so. yet, we should look at it exactly the other way architecture is a gesture [...] architecture also provokes, or demands, gestures. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 130 sc hu ff around, in wittgenstein’s view. one kind of remark wittgenstein keeps reiterating points to a change of direction necessary to understand the analogy between music and language in the right way. take this passage from the brown book: what we call ‘understanding a sentence’ has, in many cases, a much greater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we might be inclined to think. but i don’t mean that understanding a musical theme is more like the picture which one tends to make oneself of understanding a sentence; but rather that this picture is wrong, and that understanding a sentence is much more like what really happens when we understand a tune than at first sight appears. for understanding a sentence, we say, points to a reality outside the sentence. whereas one might say ‘understanding a sentence means getting hold of its content; and the content of the sentence is in the sentence’ [25]. the problem lies in the model of transfer. it is this model that is misleading—and it is misleading in language as well as in the arts. from the philosophical investigations on, and more specifically in his remarks on the philosophy of psychology, wittgenstein discards the idea that expressiveness can be explained by reference to an inner something, connecting thought and external world, and existing before and independently of its actual expression. this is why wittgenstein, as regards the arts, prefers referring to the non-verbal, bodily mode of communication of gestures. instead of overestimating the role of contents, he thus highlights the understanding of expressiveness in a specific context or situation, as stephen mulhall emphasizes: “in such contexts [of aesthetic judgment] he emphasizes two features of the concept’s grammar: the inseparability of a gesture’s meaning from the gesture itself, and the importance of the context of the gesture in accounting for its impact on us” [26]. (2) this is why understanding a work of art, in wittgenstein’s view, starts with our own immediate reactions or responses to it [27]. the way we understand art as expressive is precisely by reacting to it, with one or the other verbal utterance, emotional response, movement, or, for that matter, gesture. interestingly, the notion of an aesthetic reaction, in wittgenstein’s lectures on aesthetics, is introduced by an example from the domain of architecture (or rather building in general). here, wittgenstein imagines an architect at work, in the process of meticulously judging and altering the dimensions of doors and windows. we can imagine that it is exactly the expressed “thought” or “gesture” of a building, its artistic expression, that is thus altered and improved [28]. the dimensions and placement of doors and windows of a house will, again, evoke particular reactions. these can be put or circumscribed or refined in words if we 131 isparchitecture.com are competent critics, but in many cases they will remain what they are: immediate, bodily responses. music, in the brown book and beyond, is the paradigm case for this kind of connection [29]. we are often inclined to think that a musical phrase says something, that it is meaningful [30]. but, although there are certain rules governing composition, meaning is not determined by them. nor is it fixed by the transfer of an emotion or other content from the artist to the listener. instead, musical meaning lies in the structures of the phrase or piece themselves [31]. drawing on a distinction wittgenstein introduces in the brown book, it has been argued that he conceives of aesthetic expression as well as understanding in an “intransitive” sense [32]. this is to say that expression in these cases, although meaningful, cannot be unraveled by some kind of translation, but only pointed to by calling attention to details or by interpretative comments. grasping the meaning of a work, along these lines, will often find its basic outward expression in appropriate gestures. but these are reactions informed by our understanding of music (as well as other arts) in general; their context is the whole culture we share. understanding music means both appreciating its structure and perceiving it according to the cultural context it is part of, the history and practice of music as well as the other arts [33]. gestures figure on both sides of the equation, so to speak. understanding a work of art builds on ways of retracing or following its respective design. if a work of art is a gesture, its meaning is determined by the context of its being made, while simultaneously the expression is present in the work. this is why the appropriate guide to artistic meaning is our own responses to it, in our being immediately involved with an object (or event). but this, to be sure, is nothing specific to architecture. or, to put it another way, when it comes to architecture, wittgenstein generally seems understanding a work of art builds on ways of retracing or following its respective design. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 132 sc hu ff to model its meaning and its understanding on the case of music. the understanding of architecture he is thinking about is an understanding of architecture as art. the basic understanding of artworks, to him, is an understanding of meaningful configurations in their respective contexts, and it starts as a kind of (somatic) resonance with the features of their design and organization [34]. iii this section returns to the remark quoted in the first section, comparing the work of the philosopher to the work of the architect. in the big typescript, the remark reappears. it is given pride of place there, right at the beginning of the chapter called “philosophy” (which is an obvious precursor of the famous remarks on philosophy in philosophical investigations, § 89-133). the remark is singled out as more than a casual or preliminary thought, but is put to service as an opening of reflections on what philosophy is, or should be. (note that this remark was not included in the “philosophy” chapter of the philosophical investigations, while there are a number of other remarks from the big typescript that were.) the title of this first subsection of the big typescript’s chapter on philosophy is: “difficulty of philosophy not the intellectual difficulty of the sciences, but the difficulty of a change of attitude. resistance of the will must be overcome.” philosophy, for wittgenstein, is serious work, but not solely because of the intellectual challenges it may provide, but because of obstacles concerning one’s attitude. the heading thus opens up two topics: a contrast between philosophy and “the sciences” and the topic of a necessary change of attitude. in a tolstoyan tone, it is this change that is presented as meeting resistance of the will. following this heading, there is the remark about architecture again, in its new context: as is frequently the case with work in architecture, work on philosophy is actually closer to working on oneself. on one’s own understanding. on the way one sees things. (and on what one demands of them.) roughly speaking, according to the old conception – for instance that of the (great) western philosophers – there have been two kinds of intellectual problems: the essential, great, universal ones, and the non-essential, quasi-accidental problems. we, on the other hand, hold that there is no such thing as a great, essential problem in the intellectual sense [35]. for one thing, the second part of the remarks distances philosophy from the (presumably natural) sciences, which is a common thread running all the way through wittgenstein’s thinking [36]. rather than solving, or even conceiving of, problems the way the sciences do, wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy aims—as he puts it here—at a change of perspective, 133 isparchitecture.com at a different attitude towards the puzzles we are confronted with. this different attitude clearly involves the rejection of essentialist intuitions. all philosophical problems, wittgenstein seems to imply, are equally important. now the problems of aesthetics, wittgenstein keeps on stressing (see lectures on aesthetics), are not like scientific problems either. they are not to be solved empirically, by research on causes of reactions, for instance [37]. when we deal with art, in wittgenstein’s words: when we are faced with aesthetic puzzles or conduct aesthetic investigations, we are looking for a different perspective, that is for alternative reasons a work is designed as it is we did not think of before. in this respect, as recently explicated by simo säätelä, aesthetics, in wittgenstein, can be seen as a kind of paradigm of philosophy: “[a]n aesthetic investigation, in wittgenstein’s sense, bears a close similarity to a philosophical investigation (also in wittgenstein’s sense): both aim at putting things ‘side by side’ and change one’s way of perceiving” [38]. this, to be sure, is rather what an art critic will do, not necessarily the work of the artist. yet wittgenstein does not sharply distinguish between performance and reception, nor between artistic creation and criticism. what a competent art critic can do is to persuade us of such a different perspective, to give us reasons for seeing something in a new way. she can help us change our attitude, so to speak. being involved in the creation of a work of art includes such critical processes—in this sense, the artist is her own critic. the architect in wittgenstein’s analogy has to train her perception, her way of seeing things—especially in relation to detail: there is nothing inessential, accidental. this is the sense in which her work is a work on herself, on enhancing her capacities of judging and responding to the features of her work. we can see this as a model of how, for wittgenstein, work on philosophy also contains both aspects, procedures of (self)criticism as a part of finding the right philosophy, for wittgenstein, is serious work, but not solely because of the intellectual challenges it may provide, but because of the obstacles concerning one’s attitude. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 134 sc hu ff expression. why is wittgenstein comparing the practice of philosophy explicitly to the work of an architect, and not, say, to that of a composer or a painter? perhaps because the attention to detail here not only concerns artistic expressiveness as an end in itself, but can simultaneously be a matter of the functional value of a building. in this sense, the comparison could be meant to bring out an existential dimension of philosophizing. if so, this could resonate in wittgenstein’s approval of the stanza from henry wadsworth longfellow’s poem “the builders,” which he considered using “as a motto” (whether for one of his books or for himself as philosopher we are not told): “in the elder days of art, / builders wrought with greatest care / each minute and unseen part; / for the gods see everywhere” [39]. iv having started with a list of wittgenstein’s scattered manuscript remarks about architecture, this analysis ends with a particular analogy between art and philosophy. it is not a coincidence, given the argument of the paper. in his typescripts and book projects, wittgenstein mentions architecture directly only in the context of other subjects he is investigating. in the case of the remark quoted from the big typescript, for instance, he is concerned with the methods of philosophy. the allusion to the work of the architect put to use there has to build on an understanding of the subject either working on general intuitions or developed in detail elsewhere. so, the question remains whether the remarks on architecture noted in manuscripts over the years, as presented here, can be viewed as a serious contribution to a philosophy of architecture. frankly, it does not appear so. in itself, the fact that the remarks are too sparse to constitute a coherent body of thought need not compromise their philosophical potential. yet additionally, they remain far too vague to illuminate the practice of architecture. there is, to be sure, the recurrent motive of architecture being a gesture. although this motive only makes sense in the context of wittgenstein’s general ideas about art and aesthetics, and especially about music, in which the notion of gestures is elaborated much further. these ideas, in turn, should be read in the light of the discussions about rules and linguistic meaning in philosophical investigations and about talk of inner states in philosophy of psychology. in a sense, then, granting wittgenstein’s own, rather idiosyncratic understanding of aesthetics, the practice of philosophy can be better understood by comparing it to the practice of art, especially art criticism [40]. it would be exaggerating to claim any special role for architecture in this regard—music is, for 135 isparchitecture.com wittgenstein, the much more interesting case. his remarks on architecture hardly scratch the surface of whatever one could think of as subject matters of a philosophy of architecture, say, problems of the ontology, function, experience, or appreciation of architectural objects, or questions not only of the aesthetic, but also of the ethical, social, or political character of architecture. this is not to say that aspects of wittgenstein’s philosophy in general and his perspective on aesthetics in particular cannot fruitfully be used for elucidating the practice and understanding of architecture—but wittgenstein himself, as read here, is not a philosopher of architecture [41]. endnotes [1] see ludwig wittgenstein, lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief, ed. cyril barrett (oxford: basil blackwell, 1966). see also g. e. moore, “wittgenstein’s lectures in 1930-33,” mind 64, no. 253 (1955) and ludwig wittgenstein, wittgenstein’s lectures: cambridge, 1932-1935, ed. alice ambrose (amherst: prometheus books, 2001). [2] monographs on the architecture (and, sometimes, “philosophy”) of the stonboroughwittgenstein house include: bernhard leitner, the architecture of ludwig wittgenstein: a documentation (london: studio international publications, 1973); jan turnovský, the poetics of a wall projection (london: architectural association publications, 2009); paul wijdeveld, ludwig wittgenstein, architect (london: thames and hudson, 1994); bernhard leitner, the wittgenstein house (princeton: princeton architectural press, 2000); roger paden, mysticism and architecture: the meanings of the palais stonborough (lanham: lexington books, 2007); nana last, wittgenstein’s house: language, space and architecture (new york: fordham university press, 2008); daniele pisani, l’architettura è un gesto: ludwig wittgenstein architetto (macerata: quodlibet studio, wittgenstein himself, as read here, is not a philosopher of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 136 sc hu ff 2011); august sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins: rekonstruktion einer gebauten idee (vienna: böhlau, 2011). [3] see david macarthur, “working on oneself in philosophy and architecture: a perfectionist reading of the wittgenstein house,” architectural theory review 19, no. 2 (2014). [4] for the contrast between wittgenstein’s own aesthetic perspective and what became known as “wittgensteinianism” in aesthetics see, for instance, noël carroll, “art in an expanded field: wittgenstein and aesthetics,” the nordic journal of aesthetics 23, no. 42 (2012); paul guyer, a history of modern aesthetics, volume 3: the twentieth century (new york: cambridge university press, 2014), pp. 432-450. [5] ludwig wittgenstein, ms 107 230, culture and value, ed. g. h. von wright, trans. peter winch (oxford: blackwell, 1998), 5. my quotations from wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts are taken from the bergen electronic edition of wittgenstein’s nachlass (oxford: oxford university press, 1998). translations are peter winch’s from the 1998 revised edition of culture and value, unless otherwise indicated. [6] wittgenstein, ms 109 205, culture and value, 8. [7] wittgenstein, ms 156a 25r, culture and value, 26. [8] wittgenstein, ms 121 26v, culture and value, 40. [9] wittgenstein, ms 126 29, culture and value, 49. [10] wittgenstein, ms 167 11r, culture and value, 74. [11] wittgenstein, ms 167 10v, my translation. [12] wittgenstein, ms 137 76a, culture and value, 84. [13] for a more extensive interpretation of the remark, see joseph masheck, adolf loos: the art of architecture (london: i. b. tauris, 2013), 213-215. [14] see joachim schulte, experience and expression: wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology (oxford: clarendon press, 1993), 37-45; graham mcfee, “wittgenstein and the arts: understanding and performing,” in wittgenstein, aesthetics and philosophy, ed. peter b. lewis (aldershot: ashgate, 2004). [15] on wittgenstein’s working process, see joachim schulte, “what is a work by wittgenstein?,” in wittgenstein: the philosopher and his works, ed. alois pichler and simo säätelä (heusenstamm: ontos, 2006), 400-401. [16] wittgenstein, ms 112 24r; culture and value, 24. [17] ludwig wittgenstein, ts 219 22. [18] ludwig wittgenstein, ts 229 192, remarks on the philosophy of psychology 137 isparchitecture.com i, ed. g. e. m. anscombe and g. h. von wright (oxford: blackwell, 1980), 5. translations are anscombe’s. [19] wittgenstein, ts 229 269; remarks on the philosophy of psychology i, 68. [20] for a substantial account of gestures and their meaning, see david mcneill, gesture and thought (chicago: university of chicago press, 2005), especially the second chapter. [21] see ludwig wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus (london: routledge and kegan paul, 1961), sections 6.421, 6.522; ts 207. [22] see karlheinz lüdeking, “pictures and gestures,” british journal of aesthetics 30, no. 3 (1990); fabian goppelsröder, “über die gestensprache zur sprachgeste. wittgenstein und die konsequenzen seines alternativen kommunikationsmodells,” paragrana 19, no. 1 (2010). [23] see masheck, adolf loos, 230; david macarthur, “remarks on ‘architecture is a gesture’ (wittgenstein),” paragrana 23, no. 1 (2014). [24] for a quick overview, see edward winters, “architecture,” in the routledge companion to aesthetics, ed. berys gaut and dominic mciver lopes (london: routledge, 2013). [25] ludwig wittgenstein, the blue and brown books (oxford: blackwell, 1958), 167; compare ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, ed. g. e. m. anscombe and rush rhees (oxford: basil blackwell, 1963), § 527. [26] stephen mulhall, inheritance and originality: wittgenstein, heidegger, kierkegaard (oxford: clarendon press, 2001), 169 [27] see simo säätelä, “‘perhaps the most important thing in connection with aesthetics’ wittgenstein on ‘aesthetic reactions,’” revue internationale de philosophie, no. 219 (2002). [28] see wittgenstein, lectures and conversations, 13-14. [29] see lüdeking, “pictures and gestures;” roger scruton, “wittgenstein and the understanding of music,” british journal of aesthetics 44, no. 1 (2004); yves bossart, ästhetik nach wittgenstein. eine systematische rekonstruktion (heusenstamm: ontos, 2013), 213-226. [30] see wittgenstein, the blue and brown books, 166. [31] see ibid. [32] see richard wollheim, art and its objects, (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1980), 73-76; david bell, “the art of judgment,” mind 96, no. 382 (1987), 239-244; kjell s. johannessen, “philosophy, art and intransitive understanding,” in wittgenstein and norway, ed. kjell s. johannessen (oslo: solum, 1994); bossart, ästhetik nach wittgenstein, 195-204. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 138 sc hu ff [33] for an excellent reading of the way wittgenstein comments on two musical examples, see katrin eggers, “‘diese musikalische phrase ist für mich eine gebärde. sie schleicht sich in mein leben ein.’ musik als geste und musikalische gesten bei wittgenstein,” wittgenstein-studien 6, no. 1 (2015). [34] for detailed analyses of the way wittgenstein criticizes and preserves both formalist and expressivist intuitions, especially with respect to musical meaning, see béla szabados, wittgenstein as philosophical tone-poet: philosophy and music in dialogue (amsterdam: rodopi, 2014), especially 87-97; katrin eggers, ludwig wittgenstein als musikphilosoph (freiburg: karl alber, 2011), 203-227. [35] wittgenstein, the big typescript: ts 213, ed. and trans. c. grant luckhardt and maximilian a. e. aue (oxford: blackwell, 2005), 300301. while winch’s translation of the remark differs substantially from luckhardt and aue’s, wittgenstein did not change the wording from the manuscript to the typescript version. the german original reads (in both cases): “die arbeit an der philosophie ist – wie vielfach die arbeit in der architektur – eigentlich mehr eine arbeit an einem selbst. an der eignen auffassung. daran, wie man die dinge sieht. (und was man von ihnen verlangt.)” [36] see for prominent instances wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus, section 4.111; wittgenstein, the blue and brown books, 18; wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, § 109. [37] see wittgenstein, lectures and conversations, 19-23. repercussions of wittgenstein’s view are clearly visible in alva noë’s recent strange tools, not only in the repudiation of scientific approaches in aesthetics, be they of an evolutionary or neuroscientific variety, but also in the proposed model of philosophy as providing “perspicuous representations.” see alva noë, strange tools: art and human nature (new york: hill and wang, 2015), especially 17, 49-71, 120-133. [38] simo säätelä, “aesthetics – wittgenstein’s paradigm of philosophy?,” aisthesis 6, no. 1 (2014), 40. [39] henry wadsworth longfellow, “the builders,” henry wadsworth longfellow, maine historical society, accessed november 18, 2015, http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=118. wittgenstein misquotes the last line of the stanza as “for the gods are everywhere.” i can see no indication of this alteration being intentional. (of course, i cannot rule that out, either.) compare wittgenstein, ms 120 144v; culture and value, 39. 139 isparchitecture.com [40] see kjell s. johannessen, “wittgenstein and the aesthetic domain,” in wittgenstein, aesthetics and philosophy, ed. peter b. lewis (aldershot: ashgate, 2004). [41] i wish to thank eva backhaus, stefan koller, and martin seel, as well as two anonymous reviewers for architecture philosophy, for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 review the driving force behind the corporeal turn in recent philosophy is to overcome what many see as a stultifying reliance on the eye in the western canon of aesthetics for both knowing and appreciating the world. developments in neuroscience would bear-out this effort. knowing is closely tied to the emotions and the emotions are closely tied to the more immersive senses of touch, taste, hearing and smell. by paying closer attention to non-visual ways of perceiving, designers stand to make their work more responsive to desires for a more fully experienced world. contributing to this endeavor, ritu bhatt has convened some of the most wellknown names in the philosophy of embodied aesthetics and in the role of the body in design to bring together the under-theorized disciplines of architecture and aesthetics, and to explore how dissolving certain disciplinary boundaries could help reconsideration of the body in design. while the results of this cross-disciplinary work give encouraging signs of the vitality of this line of inquiry, any such work inevitably leads to questions of the state of the sub-discipline and the identity of the audience. the mostly engaging and well-written essays fall short of providing clear answers to these questions. the book is divided into two sections; the “role rethinking aesthetics: the role of body in design, edited by ritu bhatt new york: routledge press, 2013. isbn 978-0-415-53474 (hbk)/978-0-415-53475-8 (pbk) price $170.00 (hbk)/$49.95 (pbk) reviewed by tom spector ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 r ev ie w 124 of aesthetic response in everyday life,” and “modes of aesthetic response: tacit perception and somatic consciousness.” it begins with well-established pragmatist philosopher richard shusterman’s “everyday aesthetics of embodiment.” since his book pragmatist aesthetics, in which he lays out the concept of “somaesthetics,” shusterman has been a prominent exponent of the embodied nature of aesthetic response. so it makes sense that he would lead-off the essays. but the piece is also a wonderfully clear-headed account of his efforts to sensitize himself to an embodied consciousness—especially of the associated increased sensory participation (perhaps we should call it a renewed aesthetic living) possible to achieve, in his case, by immersion in a zen buddhist school in japan. this essay is followed by mark johnson’s “dewey’s big idea for aesthetics” in which johnson gives a concise explanation of deweyan aesthetics: art reveals, through immediate presentation of qualitative unities, the meaning and significance of some aspect of our world, either as it was, is, or might be…. dewey’s central question here is how art realizes meaning. his answer is that art achieves meaning by enacting in us a heightened awareness of the “pervasive unifying quality” of a given situation.” johnson then argues for a set of implications that follow from a deweyan interpretation of art and aesthetics. most importantly, “pervasive qualitative unity” is what makes an experience aesthetic. furthermore, this unity is the main point of works of art. these two ideas imply the third point that “any aesthetic theory or critical analysis that attends only to selected features of an artwork will necessarily fail to capture what is most important (pg. 42). johnson’s reappraisal of dewey’s relevance provides both a sensitive and well-reasoned set of implications for embodied aesthetics. three more essays round-out part one. sonit bafna provides a worthwhile close reading of an iconic building in downtown atlanta, marcel breuer’s atlanta public library, completed in 1980. while it is delightful to revisit a building that asserted high modernism on a mostly unappreciative town, it is curious that the essay is primarily concerned with the visual in a book emphasizing embodiment. following bafna, remei capdevila-werning’s essay on symbolism in buildings rides a mini-wave of a resurgence of interest in nelson goodman. the author reminds us of the nelsonian ways in which buildings convey meaning through the “main modes” of “denotation and exemplification” and the lesser modes of expression and indirection (pg. 89). but the meanings of these terms get stretched a bit. does the villa rotunda “symbolize harmonic proportions” as the author asserts (pg. 88), or does it enact them and realize them? the further assertion that “there are no true or false interpretations, isparchitecture.com 125 but rather, right or wrong, adequate or inadequate to the work’s symbolic functioning” is perplexing (pg. 94). how could an interpretation be right or wrong if it is completely uncoupled from its being true or false? capdevila-werning would have it that fitness or aptness would suffice, but how could these concepts be stable without some correspondence theory of truth under them? chris abel’s nearly forty-page essay “the extended self ” tells the story of twentieth century architects’ naïve attempts to capture embodiment, the more sophisticated explanations provided by polanyi, and confirmation by more recent developments in neuroscience. the purpose is to provide a convincing argument for the existence in all humans of extensive body maps. these welldeveloped maps, the author hopes, could be used to provide a more psychologically sound basis for teaching design than do current methods that more resemble indoctrination. though they do not directly engage architecture theory, these ideas could surely be the basis for substantial further work. part two opens with galen cranz’s “somatics and aesthetics” which both condenses and builds on her exploration of the near environment provided by her well-regarded book the chair. the essay provides a concise look into somatics – the conceptual fusing of sensation, emotion and knowledge – with examples of its implications for design thinking based especially in the author’s knowledge of the alexander technique. following cranz, yuriko saito’s “the moral dimension of japanese aesthetics” is one of the standout essays in the volume. her main point, similar to the one kant attempted to establish in the critique of the power of judgment, is that aesthetic sensitivity enhances one’s ability to act ethically. her examples drawn from japanese arts provide vivid examples of the relationship between aesthetic and saito’s main point is that aesthetic sensitivity enhances one’s ability to act ethically “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 r ev ie w 126 moral concepts. these examples also seem capable of extension into other cultures. editor ritu bhatt’s own contribution discusses the relevance of both feng shui and christopher alexander’s a pattern language as illustrative of “unconscious relationships with space, day-to-day cognition, and normative frameworks of knowledge” (pg. 183). bhatt wishes, not to promote either concept, but rather to use their persistence as traditional agent-empowering practices to help overcome the seemingly intractable opposition between high modernist presumptions to get at architecture’s essence on the one hand, and post-critical assertions that such theoretical projects are best left alone on the other. while bringing some rapprochement to these conflicting outlooks would be welcome, it is a lot to ask of these two examples. while both feng shui and a pattern language are intimately connected with embodiment in space, it is hard to say what is new that either brings to the discussion. the last two essays, david seamon’s short “environmental embodiment, merlau-ponty, and hillier’s theory of space syntax” and juhani pallasmaa’s “mental and existential ecology” should be seen more as survey pieces suggestive of future areas of inquiry than as presenting a sustained argument. seamon’s straightforward aim is to introduce merlauponty to sociologies of space, place and body. pallasmaa introduces a basketful of concepts: “loss of silence,” mediation between “world and self,” the neurobiological insights of artists, “existential space,” the primacy of touch, the loss of hapticity and how architecture structures not only experiences but our inner world. the essay’s speculative nature makes the reader wonder if it would have been better placed as an introductory piece. perhaps its inclusion at the end of the volume was meant to leave readers with a sense of large vistas yet to come, but those of us who want to know if this new cross-disciplinary effort has direction will not come away with any strong compass points. isparchitecture.com book review philosophy of architecture, by christian illies & nicholas ray london: cambridge architectural press, 2014. isbn: 978-0993053009 price: $20.99 reviewed by stefan koller & tom spector most readers of this journal have probably experienced skeptical responses when trying to explain their interest in the philosophy of architecture. what could such a field consist in? why does architecture need philosophy? why does philosophy need architecture? what are the field’s main topics? if only a brief overview of the field existed (is it a field yet?), then we could hand our interlocutors the book secure in the knowledge that, yes architecture philosophy is a field, it has definable boundaries, and contains distinct subject matter. while we would be justified in doubting whether an overview of the subject is achievable, particularly one that confronts outsiders’ skepticism head on, christian illies and nicholas ray have assembled, in their words, a “little handbook.” the primary task of such a project is always to balance the need for brevity while still doing justice to the subject matter. it is a balancing act illies and ray have accomplished with considerable elegance. philosophy of architecture weighs-in at a right-sized 161 pages (including bibliography) for a handbook. it consists of four chapters plus a lengthy introduction that is divided into three overarching sections: an introductory section surveys the ways in which architecture theory has appropriated “philosophical ideas and world views,” the central section discusses how applied ethics and aesthetics have been harnessed to explicate architectural topics, and the final section delineates “philosophical positions illustrated in architectural practice.” while this last section may be of use to philosophers seeking to better understand how to engage architecture to their areas of ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 84 bo ok r ev ie w interest, it is fair to say that the bulk of the book is aimed at delineating philosophical positions to an architectural audience. the first chapter begins with plato’s theory of forms and its influence on renaissance thinking. this focus on absolutes gives way in the eighteenth century to a more historically-aware philosophy informed by kant and hegel which in turn opens the door for the relativism of nietzsche. on the heels of nietzsche, heidegger’s influence on such late-modern thinkers as christian norberg-schulz, karsten harries, and juhani pallasmaa is traced up to the start of the “post-metaphysical age” exemplified in the cultivation of irony found in architectural postmodernism. the second chapter, on ethics, usefully categorizes and discusses six distinct ways in which the study of ethics and architecture is approached: as professional ethics, as a response to a building’s function, its impact on the natural environment, its impact on humans’ physical wellbeing and on their psychological flourishing, and architecture’s symbolic or cultural role. in the third chapter, the classic problems of aesthetics— beauty’s subjective nature, problems of judgment, questions of artworks’ cognitive content—are discussed in relation to the aesthetic appreciation of architecture. topics of crucial import for architects concerning the implicit conflicts between aesthetics and function and between aesthetics and ethics are introduced so that the novice can grasp the essence of these complex issues. the chapter concludes in a well-rounded discussion of modernism’s ambivalence towards the goal of beauty. in the final chapter, the philosophical commitments of architects louis kahn, rem koolhaas, and alvar aalto are discussed to introduce the more general idea that philosophical positions can have both implicit and explicit components relevant to architectural practice. while the philosophical areas illies and ray’s book most heavily focuses on—ethics and aesthetics—are certainly two bedrock (and intertwining) fields of interest for architecture, the liability of balancing brevity and comprehensiveness is such that, inevitably, some philosophical fields of interest to architects will be left out. we could ask, for example, what of phenomenology? sure it has been in retreat lately, but it has certainly been a subject of some interest. environmental ethics has been such a richly developing area in recent decades that, especially considering the urgency of the situation, it probably merits more than a page and a half. feminism gets no mention at all. philosophy of media is similarly absent. even within analytic philosophy (the authors’ allegiance likely falls here) core areas—like metaphysics and epistemology—with some relevance to architectural questions are left for others to address. in this sense, the book serves as a perfect complement to saul fisher’s recent overview to analytic philosophy of architecture in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: fisher shines in areas where the book is terse, and vice versa. between the two, 85 isparchitecture.com neophytes to analytic philosophy of architecture could hardly wish for easier initiation. hence, for an overview of the more longstanding areas of philosophical interest, as well as some introduction to recent events in those areas, philosophy of architecture does what a good “little handbook” should do: it presents the fields in such a way that a reader with a budding interest in these matters can delve into them further with the confidence that there is, in fact, a field to delve into. the book avoids idiosyncratic readings of historical key figures and unsubstantiated claims of where contemporary philosophy is, and where it ought to be heading—factors that occasionally tempered the credibility and neutrality of a comparable title, branko mitrovic’s philosophy for architects (princeton 2011). given the introductory nature of both books, all three authors feel compelled to largely privilege the (historical) exposition of philosophical views over these views’ philosophical examination. while natural, this choice rings odd when both books proclaim that examination of arguments (pro and contra) for given views characterizes contemporary philosophical practice at its very best. in fairness, initiating an architectural audience into philosophical practice—or indeed a philosophical one to architectural practice—might well be an unrealistic expectation for a 160-page “handbook”. still, as these books have set our expectations otherwise, a sense of lost opportunity lingers. for all its commendable neutrality, a book such as illies and ray’s cannot completely eschew a philosophical stance—and it is here that the book would have most benefited from some real argumentation. towards the end of the book, the authors propose a view that philosophical puzzles on architecture—especially puzzles arising from conflicting theoretic demands leveled at architecture—must come to an end: only the architectural design can effectively ‘synthesize’ and (to varying degrees of success) integrate or harmonize such theoretic tensions. while it may [the] authors privilege the historical exposition of philosophical views over these views’ philosophical examination. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 86 bo ok r ev ie w seem plausible to posit that architecture is uniquely positioned to render moot philosophical puzzles about architecture, the authors’ suggestion is actually stronger than this. with design positioned as “the core human discipline, being the only activity that properly involves the imaginative conception of ideas, leading to artifacts that are realized as actual construction in the world” (145) the authors want to claim the further step that architecture can help resolve philosophical problems in general. one is reminded of wittgenstein’s saying that “explanations come to an end somewhere.”1 however, where wittgenstein envisaged mystical silence or therapeutic expulsion of cravings for explanation, illies and ray intend for design solutions to fill this gap. this is a tall order for architecture to fill—can it deliver? the authors appear confident on this point; indeed, they herald their book’s achievements in exactly those colors on the back cover. such a proposal raises a host of issues, some of which are broached in their new paper in this issue. one, for this provocative reversal of the age old thesis of philosophy as ‘first science’ (aristotle) or ‘handmaiden’ to the theoretic and applied sciences (locke) to attain credibility, readers will eventually want to see an illustration of the thesis, in a concrete building project from commission to execution. how exactly does such a project, especially at execution stage, synthesize and solve philosophical conundrums? what is more, can such a solution receive articulation in anything other than built form (say, in an architect’s report about her building’s achievements to an absentee client)? if it cannot, and especially cannot receive articulation in verbal form (written or spoken), how can we ascertain that a solution has been found? how, in other words, does the authors’ cryptic proposal at this point not collapse into wittgenstein’s early view on ‘the aesthetic’ as being something that cannot be (meaningfully, determinately) spoken of, but rather demands that philosophy instead become the silent one? if the view does so collapse, how do synthesis and silence coincide? what would constitute acceptable evidence that they do coincide?2 the book, then, ends on a highly intriguing note ripe for future investigation. its final proposal allocates to architecture a much greater role in framing and deciding philosophical questions than any (certainly recent) philosophers have been willing to accord it. architects will likely welcome this recognition of their discipline’s contribution to philosophical dialogue. indeed, it can be reasonably hoped that architects, not philosophers, will develop and substantiate the book’s conclusion towards a more satisfactory and compelling stage. philosophy of architecture thus illustrates, rather than anticipates the end of, the many surprising turns philosophy can take: that even in a “little handbook,” fresh questions emerge; questions liable to stimulate future discussion for quite some time. 87 isparchitecture.com endnotes 1. ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, translated by elizabeth anscombe (oxford: basil blackwell: 1953), §1. 2. such questions were raised, and debated in considerable depth, at the 2015 ispa symposium at the wittgenstein house – though not in response to illies and ray’s work, but in relation to wittgenstein’s own purported ‘quietism’ with respect to the aesthetics of, but not only of, architecture. readers interested in, or finding themselves at the receiving end of, such questions are invited to peruse a selection of that symposium’s contributions in the next issue of architecture philosophy, edited by carolyn fahey. _goback isparchitecture.com from autonomy to pragmatism: objects made moral pauline lefebvre introduction this paper departs from a problem that architects often face: do they really have to choose between their interest in the production of built objects (in their shape, their spatiality, etc.) and their commitment to broader social concerns? must architects focus on social concerns at the expense of the built object in order to be morally responsible? these questions touch on the relations between autonomy and criticality which have been fiercely debated in recent architectural theory: does criticality rest on autonomy? after introducing these controversies and disentangling the notion of autonomy at their center, i propose to look into the philosophical tradition of pragmatism as offering a way out. following some recent interpretations of pragmatism, this paper addresses the possibility of an immanent critique, the reconciliation of ethics and aesthetics, the way ethnographies show architectural objects as active participants in design practice, and investigates how a pragmatist view of ecology invites sensitivity to objects’ moral claims. 1. “engaging autonomy”: objecthood and responsibility responsibility is acquainted with everything but the object: its relations, its origins, its use, life and context. a focus on the building and its objecthood and certainly on its form is simply irresponsible.1 sarah whiting used these words to introduce a lecture entitled “engaging autonomy,” which she gave at sci-arc in fall 2013. she presented her talk as “a plea to acknowledging the importance of the must architects focus on social concerns at the expense of the built object in order to be morally responsible? “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 24 le fe bv re object, for them not to be thrown out in the name of responsibility.”2 her words demonstrate a real concern regarding architecture’s autonomy and its relation to responsibility; she wonders how to maintain architecture’s definition as a specific practice, with specific concerns and skills (designing space and objects), without being dismissed as indifferent to larger moral and social concerns. whiting is worried about what she calls the “context-object opposition,” which tends to polarize two opposed postures: the autonomous architect concerned with the production of objects versus the social architect immersed in moral negotiations. these two poles define a scale on which it would be possible to situate every architectural practice, a scale between the object and the context, between forms and procedures,3 between autonomy and engagement, but also between aesthetics and ethics (figure 1). this scale represents the frequently discussed “intractable conflict between an aesthetically autonomous architecture […] and an ambitious social agenda for the built environment.”4 by introducing her position as one that is “engaging autonomy,” whiting attempts to bridge the extremes: she articulates an ambition at the level of the object’s singularity and at the level of its context. however, by assembling such a contradictory pair of terms, whiting does not really escape the opposition she tries to tackle between the autonomy of the object and the architects’ responsibility to engage with its consequences. when looking at whiting’s own architectural projects, one can see that they are highly formal and conceptual, using disciplinary games based on historical references (e.g., the x house based on a distortion of palladio’s plan, figure 2)5 or geometrical variations (e.g., the golden house based on the development of the box-like volume of the entrance hall) (figure 3).6 one can thus wonder with what context these objects are engaged at all. whiting’s assessment does keep the object well to one side, and “its relations, origins, use, life and context” to the other. yet, whiting’s concern needs to be considered seriously: how to maintain objects at the center of architects’ preoccupations without isolating them from moral concerns? opting for a pragmatist perspective, this paper will challenge whiting’s assertion by the following programmatic proposition: responsibility is acquainted with the object only as far as that object is figure 1: diagram of context-object opposition. 25 isparchitecture.com figure 2: x house, (unbuilt). figure 3: golden house, 2010, princeton, new jersey. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 26 le fe bv re dependent on its relations, origins, use, life, and context. actually, dealing with this problem pragmatically implies that we care for the consequences of our propositions. therefore, this issue will not just require that we expand our definition of built objects; it will also rely on a redefinition of the ‘moral’, shifting our understanding of the term from a delineated domain in which (built) objects are occasionally and graciously included, and often are not. 2. critical or not: disentangling autonomy whiting developed the notion of “engaging autonomy” as an answer to the criticisms she had to face after she had been involved in a vast debate about architects’ autonomy and responsibility. in 2002, whiting co-authored with robert e. somol a provocative paper in an issue of the journal perspecta entitled “mining autonomy.”7 the editors wanted the issue to “examine the evolving legacy of architectural autonomy and its relationship to architecture’s potential to act as a critical agent.”8 whiting and somol’s paper proposed to overthrow what was then called ‘critical architecture’ in favor of an alternative posture, which they named ‘projective architecture’. critical architects had chosen to act from within tight disciplinary limits and to take an oppositional posture to the rest of culture, a posture based on distance and negation. they founded their ‘criticality’ on the autonomy of the discipline, which allowed detachment from contemporary phenomena. criticality, autonomy, and responsibility were tightly bound together. instead, whiting and somol proposed to “shift the understanding of disciplinarity as autonomy to disciplinarity as performance or practice.”9 more importantly, they refused to rely upon “oppositional strategy.”10 because they rejected such forms of ‘criticality’, their paper became the target of fierce objections against what came to be known as the ‘postcritical’ generation.11 those objections largely rested on the assumption that criticality is the only safeguard against irresponsibility and is inevitably bound to autonomy: if deprived of the necessary distance, architects end up driven by market-forces, vulnerable to the pressures of contemporary society and unable to serve for better ends. whiting and somol were accused of ‘compromising with the real.’12 because they wanted to engage the contingencies of actual situations, they were doomed to lose any criticality, which was bound up with distance and resistance. the detractors of the postcritical were not ready to envision an alternative view on criticality itself; they refused to consider a responsible position which would not be based on autonomy. whiting uses her expression “engaging autonomy” to deny she has ever been ‘postcritical’: she reaffirms her rejection of a distant posture (she wants to engage fully contemporary phenomena) while saving the 27 isparchitecture.com specifics of the discipline and of the objects produced there. yet, her contradictory expression remains trapped within the dichotomy it tends to escape. a convincing way out of this sterile opposition still needs to be worked out; this paper seeks to contribute to that issue. the discussion above can only be fully grasped if two related ways of understanding ‘autonomy’ are disentangled. first, autonomy relates to the strict delineation of the field of architecture. second, autonomy relates to the distance and resistance that are considered to be necessary conditions for criticality. both are fully modern conceptions, inherited from kant: first, his notion of arts’ disinterestedness; second, his view on morality as a capacity belonging to autonomous intentional beings facing moral laws. in this context, arts and morality are neatly separated domains: aesthetics on the one side, ethics on the other. but both rely on a certain understanding of autonomy.13 consequently, the scale between autonomy and engagement drafted earlier needs to now organize itself around (at least) three poles instead of two: autonomy of the field, autonomy of the critical subject, engagement with the context (figure 3). this triangular shape greatly helps to understand the positions taken in the debate: ‘critical architecture’ builds its moral criticality on the autonomy of the field; whiting reasserts the objections largely rested on the assumption that criticality is the only safeguard against irresponsibility and is inevitably bound to autonomy “ ” figure 3: re-organization of context-object opposition. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 28 le fe bv re specificity of the field (as producing and caring about objects) but not its mission of resistance; the objections against the postcritical (critical practice) reaffirm both the necessity to engage the context and to do so critically, meaning from a position of moral autonomy. yet criticality—and moral responsibility with it—remains bound to autonomy in either case, be it of the field or of the subject. in order to take a position in these discussions about architecture’s autonomy and its relationship to criticality, this paper will examine ways in which some interpretations of the philosophy of pragmatism prove useful to overcome the dichotomies that remain. 3. pragmatism 1: soma-aesthetics for an immanent critique interestingly, this much-commented controversy about criticality in architecture has become associated with pragmatism. at some point, the ‘postcritical’ position and its propositions were indeed grouped under the label “a new architectural pragmatism.”14 this expression relates to pragmatism in the common sense of the word: the young architects involved were reasserting practice over theory and were eager to realize actual buildings. but—more surprisingly perhaps—the ‘postcritical’ has also become associated with american pragmatism, i.e., the philosophical tradition initiated by peirce, james, and dewey in the late nineteenth century and recently revived in various fields of academia. indeed, a few years before somol and whiting’s provocative paper, a major conference was organized in new york, which built propositions for architecture upon the philosophical tradition of pragmatism.15 as this initiative shared a number of the same people and the same issues with the postcritical discussion, it is sometimes considered as a precedent.16 richard shusterman, one of the contemporary pragmatist philosophers invited to the conference, took part in the debate for the very reason that it had been associated with pragmatism. shusterman’s work takes over from dewey’s aesthetic philosophy. shusterman’s position is interesting for the present discussion because he is one among those who picked up dewey’s legacy in order to reconcile ethics and aesthetics. for him, pragmatism has the advantage of opposing the kantian legacy by negating both the idea that aesthetic judgment is disinterested and that ethics is based on general rules of behavior. shusterman considers that art and aesthetic judgment should not be seen as totally distinct from ethical considerations and sociopolitical factors.17 at the conference on architecture and pragmatism, he explains how a pragmatist aesthetics inherited from dewey is closer to the experience of art and how it does not restrict itself to abstract arguments formulated outside of this actual experience. shusterman calls the field that he develops from these assumptions “soma-aesthetics.” nine years later, for a conference at the bauhaus, he elaborates on 29 isparchitecture.com this claim and proposes what it could mean for architecture. he decides to address the postcritical controversy because he believes that a pragmatist insight might prove useful. his view is that somol and whiting’s projective proposition has been abusively called ‘postcritical’ due to the reductive idea that “a critical attitude is supposed to require an external and autonomous position—at the same time detached and disinterested.”18 instead, shusterman’s soma-aesthetics proposes “a model of immanent critique in which our critical perspective does not require one to situate oneself completely outside of the situation at hand, but simply necessitates one to look reflexively at that situation without being absorbed by immediate feelings; this is a perspective where the posture is more decentered than external.”19 his definition of critique is based on the capacity of the body to discriminate among experiences: the body poses critical judgments. he applies this model of “immanent critique” to architecture as he believes—along with the socalled ‘postcritical’—that “[architects] cannot stand outside of what entangles them in the world […] the architect can only be complicit and tangle with it.”20 shusterman thus affirms that pragmatism is far from being incompatible with criticality: it offers a helpful alternative view on criticality. in the same text, shusterman attempts to defend a second aspect of somol and whiting’s projective architecture: their emphasis on the atmospheric quality of architectural production. for shusterman, there is a critical potential in those qualities, which is rarely recognized: “suspicion always weights on these dimensions, which are in principle considered as ungraspable and useless for exercising criticality.”21 this view echoes whiting’s concern that what architects are dealing with (designing objects, spaces, atmospheres) is regrettably not associated with any moral or critical capacity. but shusterman explains why he believes that atmospheric qualities and affective dimensions of architecture do have a critical potential: our attention to these aspects can be practiced; they art and aesthetic judgment should not be seen as totally distinct from ethical considerations and sociopolitical factors “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 30 le fe bv re can become the object of conscious (critical) judgments. for shusterman, the challenge of criticality in architecture is in the development of our sensibility to these somatic perceptions. 4. the problematic conflation of ethics and aesthetics such a reconciliation of ethics and aesthetics features many promises but it still needs to overcome certain objections deriving from the fact that architects are more often accused of confusing ethics and aesthetics than they are of keeping them separated. they often pretend to deal with ethical issues directly through the aesthetic dimensions of their oeuvre. they do this by assimilating good aesthetics with morality, by attributing moral virtues to tectonics and forms. in a book that takes the form of a pamphlet against architecture’s autonomy, jeremy till denounces this fact because “ethics are thus detached from their essential condition of being worked out through shared negotiation and instead are situated in a very controlled environment that positions the architect as arbiter.”22 till denies that ethical properties may be attributed to materials or objects or configurations themselves. he denounces the claim that if a brick wall is carefully built, it is not only a source of aesthetic pleasure or technical mastery but also becomes morally valuable. this critique thus brings us back to the ‘object’. till notes that such a conflation of aesthetics and ethics can only happen “in the parallel universe where morals are attached to objects.”23 and he believes that it is a very dangerous conflation, as architects absolve themselves of a part of their responsibility regarding other humans just because they have been faithful to the tectonic properties of the bricks. or even worse, the bricks are made responsible for the consequences rather than those who designed them. that is what happened with modernist social housing, accused on its own of all social troubles, as if the buildings could be detached from those who decide for them, design and maintain them, live in them. till is radical on this topic: “to put it simply: a brick has no morals.”24 he firmly stands on the side of those who upset whiting by stating that “a focus on the building and its objecthood and certainly on its form is simply irresponsible.”25 actually, till’s problem is not with architectural objects in general but with the way they are considered as isolated from their social setting and from their consequences on the human beings affected. the problem with “objecthood” is when it is all about static objects, produced from the inside of an autonomous field of practice, as if they were independent of external matters. what is needed might then just be, as stefan koller notes, “a proper ontology of architecture [which] will individuate architectural entities in a way that accommodates social relations.”26 the question is thus not just about the possible reconciliation of aesthetics and ethics but 31 isparchitecture.com about the way architectural entities are considered. to readdress our moral relationship to objects, we must reconsider the ontological weight we attribute to them. 5. pragmatism 2: ethnography of architectural ‘things’ in the face of that question, yet another pragmatist thread in architecture might be traced. this one appeared under the form of ethnographic accounts of architectural practices. such work consists in attentive depictions of architects at work. ethnographic accounts borrow their methods from similar works conducted in science and technology studies (sts), and their views from the actornetwork theory (ant).27 the main exponent of this thread is albena yaneva, whose first major publication is subtitled “a pragmatist approch to architecture.”28 these ethnographic descriptions of architectural ‘objects’—architecture’s so-called products and tools: buildings, plans, models, etc.—show how far such objects are from being static. by observing how they are mobilized and circulate in a given situation, the ethnographer can point to the fact that objects are acting upon people; they are not only being used. some of these studies focus on the devices used by architects (models, plans, sketches) and depict such devices as active participants in the design process instead of as mere passive tools.29 others show how a building in the making—which has not been built yet and may not be built—does already have a (moral) life of its own as it gathers lots of concerns around it: following the proactive powers of architectural projects to mobilize heterogeneous actors, convincing, persuading or deterring them, buildings will be tackled here as becoming social (instead of hiding behind or serving the social), as active participants in society.30 these ethnographies show how poorly architects are armed to understand the situations they are in and which involve humans as well as nonhumans, in strangely symmetrical ways. usually, nonhumans are neatly separated from humans: they are considered to readdress our moral relationship to objects, we must reconsider the ontological weight we attribute to them. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 32 le fe bv re as static and passive, they are at best useful, at worse constraining; and if they show any traces of activity at all, it is only in support of humans’ projections. together with bruno latour, yaneva regrets that the object is always detached from the concerns it actively provokes: a building is always a ‘thing’ that is, etymologically, a contested gathering of many conflicting demands. […] and yet we either see the uncontested static object standing ‘out there,’ ready to be reinterpreted, or we hear about the conflicting human purposes, but are never able to picture the two together!31 these descriptions of architectural practices offer a radical perspective on nonhumans and the way they engage moral problems posed to architects at work. the authors, however, do not suggest any form of programmatic ambition, except for a methodological agenda. yet, new ways of representing the practice ‘as it actually is’ can result in surprising accounts for practitioners themselves, who might have to reevaluate their practice. these precise (and potentially powerful) descriptions will hopefully nourish more conceptual (more philosophical) and more speculative works in architecture.32 indeed, when ethnography starts to “repopulate” social sciences with nonhumans,33 it opens many philosophical and moral questions: let us admit these beings do play an active role; are they to be considered ‘moral’ as well? once their claim to be taken as such is heard, the contours of the moral itself are redrawn, precisely along these claims. 6. pragmatism 3: an ecology of things several works in moral and political philosophy address these questions from a pragmatist perspective. two of them seem particularly relevant here: emilie hache’s “propositions pour une écologie pragmatique” and jane bennett’s “a political ecology of things”. both opt for a pragmatist approach departing from empirical descriptions of problematic situations on which they then build their moral or political philosophy. their approaches and concepts are based on a double pragmatist legacy: that of the ‘founding fathers’ (mainly james’s moral philosophy and dewey’s political theory) and that of bruno latour (his pragmatist sociology as well as his pluralist empiricism). although they are not dealing with architecture at all, they address our responsibility regarding ‘things’ when their ability to claim is recognized. they might thus serve as sources for further developments in architecture, regarding the problem addressed here. emilie hache’s work provides a pragmatist account of moral responsibility in the face of the present ecological crisis. hache opts for a version of responsibility that is ‘heteronomous’. it is not based on the autonomy of the moral subject who must be responsible for her actions. on the contrary, responsibility is understood as ‘responsiveness’, meaning that one has to respond to claims that are pronounced by others. and with the 33 isparchitecture.com ecological crisis, more and more things start to make claims. also, things—which used to be mute—are much louder when their existence is threatened; humans also become more attentive when they understand that they are directly concerned. hache borrows this idea from latour’s work in political ecology, where he describes the ecological crisis as “a general revolt of the means”34: more ‘objects’ or ‘nonhumans’ require to be considered as ends; they impose themselves as such. their claims impinge on human beings in the form of concerns: glaciers are becoming moral, as they gather concerns around them. opting for a pragmatist perspective, there is no point saying that glaciers are moral as such. for dewey, values are not prior abstract principles; they are not definitely inscribed into things either; instead they manifest themselves in the way we care for things.35 things thus become moral in situations, to the extent that moral concerns gather around them. but it is unfair to consider them as mere material stuff unable to claim: they have their own path of existence, which is now in danger, and which comes into calling for our attention. a pragmatist ‘heteronomous’ responsibility thus allows us to consider things as being made moral. but their morality is not imposed upon them— projected on them—by human beings, who choose once and for all what can be declared moral or not. instead, moral responsibility lies in the relationship one maintains with things. “the moral dimension comes from a certain way to be well treated by another, from the way one addresses another.”36 an idea of morality built on pragmatist philosophy is thus relational: no one and no thing is moral on its own; the question is always about “becoming moral together.” responsibility relies on the attribution of unforeseen competences to another, forming attributes that did not preexist the relation. an answer to our initial problem starts to appear here: architects’ responsibility also depends on the attribution of moral capacities to ‘objects’ as far as we interact with them. also, it becomes clear that it is not a matter of definitely inscribing ‘objects’ into architects’ responsibility also depends on the attribution of moral capacities to ‘objects’ “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 34 le fe bv re the realm of moral, even under certain conditions; the realm of the moral itself is redefined in a pragmatist way. as william james notes, there is no moral in vacuo and there can be no definition of moral outside of given situations where concerns emerge.37 jane bennett’s work follows arguments close to hache’s and she is very explicit on the agenda this entails. she affirms that “the ethical task at hand here is to cultivate the ability to discern nonhuman vitality, to become perceptually open to it.”38 despite of all the similarities with hache’s pragmatist moral philosophy, bennett’s appeal to “vital materialism” introduces more than a difference of vocabulary. by insisting on things’ vitality or vibrancy, vital materialism tends to attribute to things a certain degree of life which is independent from their relation with humans. yet, bennett situates our ethical responsibility in the “assemblages in which we find ourselves participating,”39 and thus also insists on the relational aspect of responsibility. by defining ethics as “a cultivated discernment of the web of agentic capacities,”40 she insists on the responsibility which a pragmatist moral philosophy imposes on every practitioner: an inquiry on all beings concerned, characterized by an increased attention to their demands to be heard, and followed by the obligation to respond to them. 7. conclusion: considering objects otherwise all these pragmatist insights provide a promising answer to the issue raised by whiting’s concern that “responsibility is acquainted with everything but the object: its relations, origins, use, life and context”. this problem matters and requires a proper answer: can we care for objects and still be morally responsible? would it be possible for architects not to be forced to choose among these concerns, not to consider them as mutually exclusive? as formulated, this problem may lead us to seek moral attributes in objects themselves, in order to include them in the definition of a moral domain populated with moral beings. the question then becomes: under what conditions can an object be considered moral? but this question cannot be asked nor answered in general. it is not enough to reverse whiting’s sentence and argue that ‘responsibility is acquainted with the object, only as far as it is dependent on its relations, origins, use, life and context.’ responsibility is a matter of considering objects otherwise,41 recognizing their agency, hearing their ability to claim, and acting in the face of their consequences. but, opting for a pragmatist perspective, the aim is not to define objects as moral once and for all, to include them in the realm of moral, while leaving the moral domain untouched. indeed, following william james, the moral has nothing to with a delineated domain where some things are included while others are excluded. according to him, situations become moral as soon as claims emerge, because they imply 35 isparchitecture.com obligations to be dealt with. thus, pragmatism does not allow philosophy to decide which objects are generally to be considered moral or not. instead, morality is a matter of situation; the philosopher can only inquire on ever more ways of being moral, ways which are always situated. consequently, morality requires those who are involved in a given situation (designers among others) to note how objects claim and to invent ways to make them matter. it is in this sense only that whiting’s sentence can be reversed, and experimental answers can be tried with in architectural practice. endnotes 1. sarah whiting, “engaging autonomy,” sci-arc media archive (presentation, public lecture series, sci-arc, los angeles, ca, november 7, 2013), accessed august 23, 2013, http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/sarahwhiting-engaging-autonomy-2. 2. ibid. 3. hashim sarkis, “on the line between procedures and aesthetics,” in the pragmatist imagination: thinking about “things in the making”, ed. joan ockman (new york: princeton architectural press, 2000), 92–103. 4. tom spector, “pragmatism for architects,” contemporary pragmatism 1, no. 1 (2004): 133–149. 5. “x house,” ww architecture, accessed august 23, 2013, http:// wwarchitecture.com/projects/x%20house/x%20house.html. 6. “golden house,” ww architecture, accessed august 23, 2013, http://wwarchitecture.com/projects/golden%20house/ golden%20house.html. 7. robert somol and sarah whiting, “notes around the doppler effect and other moods of modernism,” perspecta 33 (2002): 72-77. 8. michael osman et al., “editor’s statement,” perspecta 33 (2002): 7. 9. somol and whiting, “notes around the doppler effect,” 75. 10. ibid. 11. georges baird, “‘criticality’ and its discontents,” harvard design magazine 21 (2004): 16–21. 12. roemer van toorn, “no more dreams? the passion of reality in dutch architecture...and its limitations,” harvard design magazine 21 (2004): 22–31; reinhold martin, “critical or what? toward a utopian realism,” harvard design magazine 22 (2005): 104–109. 13. cf. nathaniel coleman, “the myth of autonomy,” architecturephilosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 157-178 for a more precise portrait of the autonomist project in architecture. my own ‘disentanglement’ of the senses of autonomy, however, differs from coleman’s. 14. william s. saunders, ed., the new architectural pragmatism: a harvard ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 36 le fe bv re design magazine reader (minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 2007). 15. joan ockman, ed., the pragmatist imagination: thinking about “things in the making” (new york: princeton architectural press, 2000). 16. a. krista sykes, constructing a new agenda: architectural theory 19932009 (new york: princeton architectural press, 2010). 17. richard shusterman, “the convergence of ethics and aesthetics: a genealogical, pragmatist perspective,” in the hand and the soul: aesthetics and ethics in architecture and art, ed. sanda iliescu (charlottesville: university of virginia press, 2009). 18. richard shusterman, soma-esthétique et architecture : une alternative critique (genève: haute école d’art et de design, 2010), 35. (translated by the author) 19. ibid., 36. 20. ibid., 34. 21. ibid., 46. 22. jeremy till, architecture depends (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 2009), 176. 23. ibid., 174. 24. ibid., 177. 25. whiting, “engaging autonomy.” 26. stefan koller, “architects on value: reducing ethics to aesthetics?,” in ethics, design and planning of the built environment, eds. claudia basta and stefano moroni (new york: springer, 2013), 61. 27. albena yaneva, “understanding architecture, accounting society,” science studies 21, no. 1 (2008): 3–7. 28. albena yaneva, the making of a building: a pragmatist approach to architecture (oxford: peter lang, 2009).2009 29. sophie houdart, “des multiples manières d’être réel,” terrain 46 (2010): 107–122; albena yaneva, made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2009). 30. yaneva, the making of a building, 18. 31. bruno latour and albena yaneva, “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move: an ant’s view of architecture,” in explorations in architecture: teaching, design, research, ed. reto geiser, (basel, switzerland: birkhäuser, 2008), 86. 32. bruno latour’s work is exemplary of such a continued enterprise: departing from a series of ethnographic inquiries into modern practices (science, law, economics, etc.), the anthropologist lately turned into a philosopher: his inquiry into modes of existence turns the empirical material collected into the ontological project of pluralizing modes of existence. 37 isparchitecture.com see bruno latour, an inquiry into modes of existence: an anthropology of the moderns, trans. catherine porter (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2013). 33. olivier thiéry and sophie houdart, humains, non humains: comment repeupler les sciences sociales (paris: la découverte, 2011). 34. bruno latour, politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy, trans. catherine porter (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2004). 35. john dewey, la formation des valeurs (paris: les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2011). 36. emilie hache, ce à quoi nous tenons: propositions pour une écologie pragmatique (paris: les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2011), 32. (translated by the author) 37. william james, “the moral philosopher and the moral life,” international journal of ethics (1891), reprinted in william james, the will to believe (new york: longmans, green & company 1897). 38. jane bennett, vibrant matter: a political ecology of things (durham and london: duke university press, 2010), 14. 39. ibid., 37. 40. ibid., 38. 41. in a way, my proposition follows david leatherbarrow’s when he proposes an “architecture oriented otherwise,” an architecture “oriented beyond itself,” which would accommodate forces beyond the architect’s control. but only in a way, because leatherbarrow’s notion of orientation focuses more on the way architectural objects inscribe themselves or distinguish themselves from their physical surroundings, and less on the way the physical environment can be taken into account and thereby be made moral. see david leatherbarrow, architecture oriented otherwise (new york: princeton architectural press, 2008). _goback isparchitecture.com some have said that it was fire and water which were initially responsible for bringing men together into communities, but we, considering how useful, even indispensable, a roof and walls are for men, are convinced that it was they that drew and kept men together. 1 these remarks on architecture’s social function are taken from giovanni battista alberti´s de re aedificatoria, in which he searches for underlying principles behind the architectural categories and concepts of vitruvius. this passage expresses both an underlying principle of social life and awards architecture a unique role in relation to society: because four walls and a roof bind a group of people together they are a force that fashions a society. alberti, however, bases society also on a strong notion of the individual human being; and thus for him, architecture’s second, and equally important focus must be the individual. this focus is, as he emphasizes, a necessary precondition for the socially important varietas (variety) of the city. in the beginning of the fourth of his ten books, dedicated to the scrutiny of “works of a public nature”, he writes: it is obvious that buildings were made to serve man. […] buildings were designed for life´s necessities, others offer themselves for practical requirements, while still others are for occasions of pleasure, […]. yet, when we look around at the quantity and the variety of buildings, it is easy to understand that […] the range of different works depends principally on we [...] must begin here, by considering human variety in greater detail “ ” the need for a philosophical anthropology of architecture martin düchs & christian illies ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 95 ed it or ia l the variation within human nature. if we wish to give an accurate account of the various types of buildings (as was our intention) and of their constituent elements, our whole method of investigation must open and begin here, by considering human variety in greater detail; since buildings arose on man´s account, and for his needs they vary; so that they may be dealt with more clearly by distinguishing their individual characteristics.2 for alberti, only if the individuality of human beings is taken as the starting point, can architecture fulfil its social role; and only then do we understand the task of architecture properly.3 good architecture and good cities care for both society and individual human beings; but the individual must come first. alberti was inspired by the ideals of early modernity which celebrated the re-birth (re-naissance) of individual accomplishment. it was a time when man became a self-aware individual as jacob burckhardt famously stated in the civilization of the renaissance in italy in 1860—at the same time proposing alberti as a true renaissance-man (uomo universale).4 alberti set the tone for subsequent thinkers up to the modern period. the 20th-century’s concern about the role of architecture for society is like a distant echo of his thoughts, but in a lopsided way. modernity often focuses too much on society. equality becomes the prime value and for some the collective gains absolute priority over the individual. not much has changed when we reflect on the digital revolution and other major transformations relating to architecture in the 21st century. debates are largely dominated by ideas and texts of architectural modernity and its tradition that remains biased towards the collective over the individual. for le corbusier or hannes meyer5 and other heroes of this tradition, the individual human plays a subordinate role, despite occasional contradictory utterances (for example in the athens charter).6 to be sure, this is a somewhat simplified picture that forces at least three reservations: first, architectural modernity is not a homogenous movement. one can distinguish at least five strands of early architectural modernity at the beginning of the 20th century: constructivism, functionalism, rationalism and biomorphic and sculptural architecture.7 and especially within biomorphic architecture we can find architects like hugo häring who take the biological functionings of the single human being as their starting point.8 despite this variety of approaches it seems fair to talk about architectural modernity in a more general sense to identify its predominant form (sometimes called “international style” or “neues bauen”), promoted by walter gropius, hannes meyer and le corbusier as dominant figures who sought to tie modernism to social change. second: since world war two, additional varieties in the form of postmodernism or deconstructivism have 96 isparchitecture.com emerged. these movements can be defined as reactions to modernity. however, in retrospect, they did little to challenge its basic precepts. third: several outstanding modernist architects did place the single human being in the centre of their (mostly practical) efforts. alvar aalto, for example, stressed the importance of individual human beings (as nicholas ray has pointed out9). in his address to his old school, the jyvaskyla lyceum, aalto says that in order to make a “cultural contribution” one needs an “unwillingness to ‘move with the stream,’” that can ultimately be transformed into a “love with a critical sensibility […] it is a love that lasts, as it rests on a critically tested foundation. it can result in such a love for the little man that it functions as a kind of guardian when our era’s mechanized lifestyle threatens to strangle the individual and the organically harmonious life.”10 ralph erskine and aldo van eyck embody other prominent examples who consciously aimed to balance concern for both society and the individual as alberti demanded. but these architects are to be regarded as exceptions from the rule. their works are explicitly judged as “humane architecture” in order to distinguish it from the mainstream,11 which means that the latter is obviously seen as somehow less humane and— again—one reason for this is that in general social considerations are regarded as more important than “considering human variety in greater detail.” thus, we can grant the architecture of modernity is more complex than our initial remarks might have suggested while continuing to assert a dominant discourse biased in favour of the social. there are at least three reasons for this bias. first of all architectural modernity continues to derive much of its impetus as a political project that aims at improving the structure of modern societies by architectural means.12 industrialization had brought about modern mass societies, migration to the cities, and diverse social problems of all sorts; and the focus on improving society and the collective is a trademark of the 20th century, not only in architecture but cross post-war intellectual life. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 97 ed it or ia l there was an increasing need to respond to them–socialism, incorporated in architectural modernity, became the most prominent attempt to do so. this impetus continues today in architecture’s insistence that it be part of the solution to global warming and to homelessness. secondly, the dominant architects of the modernist socialism subscribed to the idea that the individual s a product of society and not vice versa. the individual’s reality is an “ensemble of social relations,” as marx famously remarks. as a consequence, architectural modernism understood itself as part of the project to create a better human being, via creating a better architecture for a new society without, for example, unjust privileges. this orientation also explains why equality became the dominant aesthetic guideline for this project. equality, however, can often be mistaken for sameness, and an architecture exclusively guided by this idea tends to create over-homogenous environments. finally, the focus on improving society and the collective is a trademark of the 20th century, not only in architecture but also across post-war intellectual life. most humanities, but philosophy in particular, have replaced the “paradigm of the epistemic subject” (that dominated 18th and 19th century philosophy) by the new “paradigm of inter-subjectivity,” as karl-otto apel famously calls it.13 language is the grand topic of the early 20th century, the age of the linguistic turn; and since language is, by its very nature, a social not individual reality, the turn pushes philosophical reflection towards society. wittgenstein’s “form of life”, habermas’ “discursive community,” or even heidegger’s critique of the modern subject are prime examples of the new paradigm. inspired by nietzsche and heidegger, foucault has even claimed that there is no such thing as the human being: “as the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. and one perhaps nearing its end. […] one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”14 alternative approaches that emphasize the individual human had a short life in the 20th century. most notably, the so-called philosophical anthropology, a school of thought between 1920 and 1960, did not have a lasting influence. its main representatives, max scheler, arnold gehlen, helmuth plessner, ernst cassirer, and hans jonas (the two latter being both members of the tradition in a wider sense), tried to conceptualize what it means to be an individual, yet also a group-oriented social being, in an age of modern science. this movement was never given much attention by anglo-saxon philosophy and stopped rather abruptly on the continent when people like jonas and cassirer had to emigrate and then philosophers 98 isparchitecture.com and sociologists of the frankfurt school began to dominate the philosophical discourse. in a famous paper from 1958, habermas tellingly argued that philosophical anthropology should be entirely replaced by sociology because there is no relevant notion of the individual outside society–and it took him decades to moderate his conviction.15 and this still seems where architectural theory stands today. we find plenty of debate on formal questions, but when it comes to what architecture is about (or what building is for), most discussions focus on society. the topics of the venice biennale for architecture over the last 20 years provide ample evidence: except for the “fundamentals” exhibition in 2014 (rem koolhaas) and partly the exhibitions “out there: architecture beyond building” (aaron betsky 2008) and “next” (deyan sudjic 2002), all of the biennales dealt with either societal or formal problems: “reporting from the front” (alejandro aravena 2016), “common ground” (david chipperfield 2012), “people meet in architecture” (kazujo sejima 2010), “cities, architecture and society” (richard burdett 2006), “metamorph” (kurt w. forster 2004), and “less aesthetics more ethics” (massimiliano fuksas 2000). and so alberti’s second criterion for good architecture and good cities, a focus on the wellbeing of the individual, is still unjustly neglected. a research field that would continue the tradition of philosophical anthropology and apply it to architecture simply does not exist.16 do we need any such endeavour? we believe that it is as much required for any profound philosophy of architecture as for architectural figure 1: venue of the 3rd international ispa-conference “the human in architecture and philosophy”. bamberg: villa concordia ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 99 ed it or ia l theory. alberti can still remind us why architectural sociology, or a philosophy of architecture that focuses on society while neglecting the individual will always be insufficient. on a theoretical level, the relationship between the individual and society seems much more complex than much 20th century sociology and philosophy has assumed. evolutionary and developmental psychology, amongst others, have shown that there are innate individual human needs, desires, and tendencies that have some correspondence in society, but are not simply their product. if architecture wants to respond adequately to this complex interactive relationship between society and the individual, it will have to develop more individualistic and flexible theories than mainstream modernism has been able to supply. environmental psychology has shown that our relationship with buildings is both personal and individual. that is why a traditional sociological theory of architecture will not do. the problem is sharpened by the two conflicting tendencies that characterize our globalized world: one tendency towards multi-culturalism and the other towards an atomistic, uniform consumerism. both tendencies dissolve traditional, more homogenous societies. they demand new architectural strategies of community-building and of guarding people against an overwhelming standardisation and enforced conformism. all of that speaks for an important role of architectural philosophy: it should pave the theoretical way for a more balanced view by adding a practical focus on the individual and the possibilities of creating space for all her needs and desires, thus for the good life within a community. this new research field might be called philosophical architectural anthropology. there is already a research-field called “architectural anthropology” in the anglo-saxon world, but as yet, it is more a sociological or ethnological endeavour than a philosophical. what we need is an investigation that is at least supplemented by philosophical considerations. this is something that is also argued for from within the already existing field of architectural anthropology: the anthropology adjectivized as architectural should be a critical, ethical anthropology that keeps asking fundamental, philosophical questions about what being human and communicating through culture mean and what is best for humans in terms of what is habitable. therefore, anthropology should add to interdisciplinary roots and evolutionary interests—characteristics that accompanied its birth a century ago—an ethical dimension that will provide a new set of questions to evaluate the huge ethnographical and archaeological corpus of information on the diverse human habitats created over the years.17 a first step towards a philosophical architectural anthropology was 100 isparchitecture.com made at the 3rd international conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture from july 19th to 23rd 2016 at bamberg university, germany, with the topic “the human in architecture and philosophy.” some papers have already been published in 2018 in a special issue of architecturephilosophy (apj, vol. 3 no.1/2017); this is the second selection of papers that come out of the conference. we open with gerald adler’s “architecture is concealed unto itself: helmuth plessner and his influence on twentieth-century architecture.” adler presents the architectural implications of german philosopher helmuth plessner’s philosophical anthropology. plessner (1892-1985) saw the human being as characterised by an “excentric positionality,” because humans, unlike animals, are able to self-distance, to be “out of their centre.” having simultaneously different perspectives on oneself constitutes the conditio humana, according to plessner. he specified this ex-centric positionality in the form of three anthropological laws that are also in the centre of gerald adler’s analysis: the law of natural artificiality, the law of mediated immediacy (or immanence and expressivity, the law that is most interesting for the philosophy of architecture,) and the law of nothingness and transcendence, which “drives man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects.”18 buildings are obvious examples of such objects, produced within each society’s architectural culture. adler’s assessment of the importance of plessner’s thought for architecture not only introduces a much-neglected twentieth-century philosopher to an english-speaking audience, but also provides reflections that lie at the very heart of what we call a philosophical architectural anthropology. following adler, we continue our focus on the individual, this time, however, on the individual this new research field might be called philosophical architectural anthropology “ ” creator with aleksandar kostić’s “aporia in architectural design.” an aporia, the experience of irresolvable internal contradictions, emerges when a designer, presented with apparently contradictory requirements, is unsure how to proceed further with her design, and finds that striking out in a new direction is necessary to overcome her perplexity. thus, an initial source of a designer’s dismay becomes both the occasion and demand for creative problem-solving. but, the resolution of this kind of puzzlement in architecture can only arise if the designer understands the conundrum and is fully engaged with the aporia. to explain the creative potential of aporiai, kostić draws on the accounts that plato and aristotle give us in their works before moving into a detailed account of a classic aporia in architecture where the ionic order must turn a corner. he then generalizes from this example to suggest that “aporia has intrinsic value for design and therefore that it should somehow be present in the more abstract subject matter of design itself.”19 graham owen’s paper, “the anthropology of a smoke-filled room: ethnography and the human at oma,” moves us decisively back to a contemporary situation by employing the conceptual tools of bruno latour’s actor network theory and the participant-observation work of albena yaneva to dissect the labour practices and ensuing working conditions of the celebrated dutch architectural office. the article contrasts the relative absence of discussion of issues of labour and working conditions in other studies of oma with their prominence in recent work by observers of architectural education and by activist academics such as peggy deamer, paolo tombesi and mabel wilson. a clearly ethical concern with the well-being of individuals underlies this discussion, not of architectural objects, but of potentially abusive processes which give rise to architectural objects. the last two papers derive from keynotes from the 3rd international ispa-conference by two great figures in the philosophy of architecture who, not at all coincidentally, happen to be two champions of the human individual in architecture. they have consciously kept their oral style. in his reflections on “ut architectura philosophia? questioning the relationship of architecture and philosophy”, karsten harries considers the mutual inspiration of philosophy and architecture, their relationship and their mutual contributions to one another. to look at philosophy’s contribution to architecture more closely, harries begins by asking what it means that architecture should build for humans. by reference to observations by vitruvius, hegel, and le corbusier, harries argues that “the requirements of human dwelling resist their reduction to the need 102 isparchitecture.com for physical shelter or functional frames for certain activities. not only the body, the spirit, too, needs shelter, shelter especially from the terror of time.” he then considers how architecture might influence philosophy. harries looks at heidegger, his important source of inspiration, and focusses on the need of humans to dwell and find a place—physically but also self-reflectively, thus philosophically. in his the ethical function of architecture (1997), a classic of the heidegger-based phenomenological tradition of the philosophy of architecture, harries had argued for the power of buildings to interpret the most fundamental truths of human existence, and to give humans a place and thus ethical orientation. does that assertion still hold or is our modern society un-representable by architecture? harries renews his earlier position powerfully by focussing on the challenges of modernity that seem to refuse a dwelling-place. consequently, our world is most adequately represented by the decorated shed (a term popularized by robert venturi), a functional building with a superficial aesthetic addition. this shed becomes a “potent figure for the spiritual situation of this age, which tends covers up the spiritual poverty that is the price of our objectification of reality, with an often borrowed aesthetic veneer.” but we are in need of more, he argues. humans still have to find a meaningful place. to what extent architecture, or even reasonbased philosophy, might still be able to provide the much needed orientation, must remain somewhat open. while karsten harries is a founding father of contemporary phenomenological philosophy of architecture, roger scruton’s the aesthetics of architecture (1979) plays the same role for the entire analytic tradition of philosophy of architecture. the title of his keynote from the bamberg-conference, “aesthetic education and design,” indicates his central contribution to a philosophical architectural ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 103 ed it or ia l anthropology: we need a fundamental architectural education, scruton argues, “in which pattern, composition, and the idea of fit are given a proper place, and in which function and utility are regarded as the consequences of beauty and not prior requirements that must be independently fulfilled.” only such an education can work as an “antidote” to the kind of “depersonalised madness that had possessed the schools of architecture and town planning in the wake of the second world war.” its desire has been and still is, he critiques, a “total solution” and thus a “total control in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying whole settlements and cities.” since this madness is inhuman, to fight it via education (and in keynotes) becomes a moral obligation. the new education must “transmit a culture that embodies shared conceptions of life and discovered solutions to life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how to live at peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you dislike them.” given scruton’s well-known public engagement for re-establishing beauty in the public space, it comes to no surprise that his keynote turned into philosophie engagé, a passionate philippica for a new education and for beauty as a primary goal in architectural design. and since few escape the vigour of his pen and voice, his keynote obviously provoked critical responses at the bamberg-conference. this provides an excellent basis for a debate about his theses. in a future issue of architecture philosophy we would like to present several responses to scruton’s plea for changes to architectural education and his attack on the apparent failure of most architectural modernism. we hope in this way to further a stated goal of the journal to provide a forum for ongoing discussions and continue these exchanges in subsequent issues. next to contemplation, engaged argumentation, debates and disagreement are the elixir of philosophical life. according to thomas kuhn, strong debates and heavy disagreements can also mark the crisis of an existing paradigm and the search for a new one. it seems fair to argue that architecture is currently in a crisis and struggling about what sort of answer it can provide in the modern world shaken by environmental, societal and political crisis, in which the over-challenged, homeless individual still has to find his or her place to dwell. and this place must be built. we hope that a flourishing philosophical architectural anthropology will contribute to it being a good one. martin düchs and christian illies isparchitecture.com endnotes [1] leon battista alberti, on the art of building. in ten books, translated by joseph rykwert, neil leach and robert tavernor (cambridge, mass, london: mit press, 1988 [1452]) prologue, 3. [2] ibid., book iv, chap. 1, p.92. [3] hanno-walter kruft, a history of architectural theory. from vitruvius to the present. (new york: princeton architectural press., 1994), 49. [4] see: jacob burckhardt, the civilization of the renaissance in italy (new york: modern library, 2002 [1860]). [5] the writings of the former bauhaus director (1928-1930) hannes meyer are probably the most striking example for the ideas mentioned. in his essay “die neue welt” from 1926 he states for example as follows: „die gemeinschaft beherrscht das einzelwesen. […] das sicherste kennzeichen wahrer gemeinschaft ist die befriedigung gleicher bedürfnisse mit gleichen mitteln. das ergebnis solcher kollektivforderung ist das standardprodukt.” hannes meyer, „die neue welt“ in: das werk 13 (7, 1926), 205. online: http://www. cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/autoren/meyer/ meyer1926.htm. [6] see especially the §87 of the athens charter of the ciam. le corbusier, the athens charter (new york: grossman publishers 1973), 101. [7] see: jürgen pahl, architekturtheorie des 20. jahrhunderts (münchen, london, new york: prestel, 1999), 54. [8] see peter blundell-jones, hugo häring. the organic versus the geometric (stuttgart: ed. axel menges, 1999). [9] nicholas ray, aalto (new haven: yale university press, 2005). [10] quoted in göran schildt, ed.: alvar aalto in his own words (new york: rizzoli international, 1998). ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 105 ed it or ia l [11] see: mats egelius ed., ralph erskine: the humane architect. ad architectural design vol 47 (11-12, ad profile 9. london, architectural design, 1977). see also: winfried nerdinger, ed.: alvar aalto. toward a human modernism (munich, london, new york: prestel, 1999) [12] le corbusier concludes his seminal book toward an architecture from 1923 with considerations about architecture as the key to solve societal problems: “c’est une question de bâtiment qui est à la clé de l’équilibre rompu aujourd’hui : architecture ou révolution.” le corbusier, vers une architecture (collection de “l’esprit nouveau”. paris: éditions crès, 1923) [13] see: otto apel, „die kommunikationsgemeinschaft als transzendentale voraussetzung der sozialwissenschaften,“ in transformation der philosophie, (vol. 2, 1972), 220–263. [14] michel foucault, the order of things. an archaeology of the human sciences. (london routledge, 2006), 442. [15] jürgen habermas, “philosophische anthropologie“ in alwin diemer und ivo frenzel, ed., fischer lexikon philosophie (frankfurt a.m.: fischer, 1958), 18–35. [16] there is social or cultural anthropology of architecture, but these sciences dwell upon different issues and mostly place, again, society in the centre. [17] mari-jose amerlinck, “the meaning and scope of architectural anthropology,” in mari-jose amerlinck, ed., architectural anthropology (westport, ct: bergin & garvey, 2001), 1–26. [18] helmuth plessner, die stufen des organischen und der mensch: einleitung in die philosophische anthropologie (berlin: de gruyter, 1928), reprinted 1975 (berlin: de gruyter), sammlung göschen 2200. [19] the quote is taken from aleksandar kostić’s paper in this volume. the image in power: vilém flusser and the craft of architecture felipe guimarães de souza fernandes loureiro the use of 3d renderings – computergenerated images which can look very realistic, some of them being easily mistaken for photographs – is widespread in both architectural practice and education. at first glance, these images seem to be incredibly useful for the communication between architects, clients and the general public, since they appear to offer a very clear and detailed vision of the final ‘product.’ however, my experience as a practising architect led me to believe that this apparent accuracy is misleading, and that it can actually be counter-effective. the realism of these images forces architects to be highly precise about aspects that were only supposed to come up at later stages, and they can also trick clients into approving a “beautiful picture” instead of a clearly expressed architectural idea. in addition to these concerns, the indiscriminate use of these images seems to reinforce the idea that a building – or space, in broader terms – is mainly something to be experienced visually, and that a good building or space is one in which our eyes are constantly looking at ‘good pictures.’ this picturesque understanding of architecture not only neglects the haptic experience of space, flattening volumes into surfaces and space into perspectives, but it also reduces the work of the architect to the composition of pictures. as an architect, i cannot feel at ease with this reduction, and this unsettling led me to pursue a deeper understanding of the way we experience architectural images. in his 1985 book ins universum der technischen bilder,1 czech philosopher vilém flusser presents, this picturesque understanding of architecture… reduces the work of the architect to the composition of pictures. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 215 lo ur ei r o “a model of cultural history” consisting of five rungs that symbolize different moments, each one being defined by a specific medium which prevailed in, “the task of transmitting information crucial to society and to individuals.”2 at first, we could only express ourselves and transmit any kind of knowledge through our actions. then, through the creation of objects, we could perpetuate these actions, leaving their imprints in artifacts which could still speak for us when we were no longer present. these objects have thus created culture, and were the first medium for transmitting and perpetuating it. later on, images which depicted or symbolized objects and actions became even more relevant than the objects themselves. these images, such as cave paintings, are what flusser calls traditional images. they were eventually supplanted, around 4000 years ago, by linear texts, which explained images, creating what he calls the “historical level.” much more recently, texts have collapsed, “into particles that must be gathered up. this is the level of calculation and computation, the level of technical images,” or images created by apparatuses such as cameras, computers and tv sets.3 this model gives us an image of a linear process in which man is constantly stepping back from the direct experience of the world, going deeper and deeper into abstraction. however, though new rungs are added, the previous ones are not lost or forgotten – they are simply different worlds, created and shaped by different media. figure 1 is an attempt to sum-up and illustrate flusser’s model. figure 1: flusser rungs. 216 isparchitecture.com flusser calls the fifth rung, shaped by the prevailing of technical images, “a new, dimensionless level, one to be called, for lack of a more positive designation, ‘posthistory.”4 the term “posthistory” rises from the notion that history was created by writing, whose linear logic shaped the dominant ontology of an era, and that the prevalence of technical images – which are non-linear, but rather two-dimensional – marks the end of history. today, the logics of linear writing no longer apply to the way we experience culture, and this experience influences the way in which we perceive reality as a whole. regarding the production of images, for instance, technical images are made by envisioners, whereas traditional images were created by image makers. the gesture of the envisioner is directed from a particle toward a surface that can never be achieved, whereas that of the traditional image maker is directed from the world of objects toward an actual surface. the first gesture attempts to make concrete (to turn from extreme abstraction back into the imaginable); the second abstracts (retreats from the concrete). the first gesture starts with a calculation; the second starts with a solid object.5 photographers, for instance, work through an apparatus – a camera – and they, “can only desire what the apparatus can do. any image produced by a photographer must be within the program of the apparatus.”6 the apparatus is itself a kind of medium through which the envisioner works and thinks, since, “not only the gesture but also the intention of the photographer is a function of the apparatus. […] a human intention works against the autonomy of the apparatus from the inside, from the automatic function itself.”7 photography provides us with a great example of how we work through and with apparatuses in order to create technical images, but it also gives way for a confusion regarding the essence of these this model gives us an image of a linear process in which man is constantly stepping back for the direct experience of the world “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 217 lo ur ei r o images. photographs can be seen as snapshots of reality, which arise, “through the capturing and holding of approaching particles or waves from the environment,” but these depictions are essentially different from those made through traditional images.8 this can be easily understood if we consider their essential similarity with computer-generated images: the photographer visualizes a house as houses seems to be in the outside, objective world. then he takes an apparatus in hand to “grasp” (with concepts such as “perspective” or “shutter speed”) what he has visualized. the apparatus calculates these concepts automatically, and the photographer presses a button to release the machine to carry out these calculations, making the vision of the house into an image. the computer operator visualizes an airplane as one might be found in the outside world. then he takes an apparatus in hand […] to “grasp” what he has visualized […]. the apparatus calculates these concepts automatically, and the computer operator presses on the keyboard to make the apparatus carry out these calculations, making a visualization of an airplane appear on the screen. the same power to envision is at work in both cases, that of the photographer and of the computer operator, only it is more evident with the computer operator, who is more conscious than the photographer of this power.9 at first, these two kinds of images seem to be very different: the photograph of the house can be seen as a depiction, while the airplane drawing could be understood as a model. however, they are both models. in the example above, flusser is talking about an activity which was created by an apparatus – there were no photographers before there were cameras – and another which already existed, but that was re-created by the use of an apparatus. architects and designers have always worked with handmade drawings, and now most of them use computers for drawing. we can say that the handmade drawings were traditional images, and that they were depictions of what the designer or architect had in mind – they were depictions of visions, and these image makers knew how to build these images. on the other hand, anyone can take a picture without understanding how a camera works, and how photographs are built. the camera is what flusser calls a black box – a mysterious apparatus that blindly, “transforms the effects of photons on molecules of silver nitrate into photographs.”10 it is opaque, impenetrable. referring to his own work process, flusser describes the functioning of his typewriter, which can be clearly understood and seen as an extension of his fingers: “i can watch as each pressed key sets a hammer in motion that strikes the intended letter onto the page and how the carriage moves to make way for the next letter.”11 the typewriter is transparent, and flusser seems to believe that this transparency makes it adequate for the craft 218 isparchitecture.com of writing: “when i write, i write past the machine toward the text.”12 this happens because the typewriter is not a medium, but only a tool. the medium is linear text, which can be handwritten, typed, carved in stone, etc. the act of typing was obviously created by the typewriter, but apparently writers learned to use it as instinctively as their predecessors used their hands and tools. writers have not become ‘typists.’ on the other hand, an opaque apparatus does something, which we do not understand, in a way that is invisible to us. its working has no connection or resemblance to human actions, only its interface can be recognizable. analyzing the development of human-computer interfaces, bill verplank argues: piaget described three stages of learning. we are born with enactive or kinesthetic knowledge; we know how to grasp and suck. at a certain age we pay more attention to how things look; our iconic thinking is mistaken for example by a tall glass as “more.” only at a certain age do we understand conservation; then we are ready for symbolic thinking. […] the development of human-computer interfaces has followed the opposite path. the first interactive computers used teletypes (tty) and the style of interaction was a dialog of symbols; i type and the computer types back at me. […] with the invention of mouse and bit-map display, the iconic graphical “direct manipulation” interface became the dominant style. this progression suggests that the next stage is enactive interfaces.13 it is interesting to see that flusser’s model for cultural history is quite similar to piaget’s model for human development, and how human-computer interfaces apparently developed in the opposite way, becoming increasingly intuitive. with touchscreens and gesture recognition, this interaction seems much closer to the way we interact with concrete objects, but the process has become even more opaque, since we do not even have to know how the camera is what flusser calls a black box […]. it is opaque, impenetrable. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 219 lo ur ei r o to operate the apparatuses – they can read us, understand our gestures, decode and compute them. the apparatus offers a field of possibilities, through which we can browse by repeating recognizable gestures – thus, to a certain extent, it is the apparatus which operates us. it can capture and translate our apparently instinctive gestures, but we have to ‘speak’ its language. the ‘direct manipulation’ interface is still dominant, and the opaqueness of the apparatuses is transferred to the images they generate. flusser states that technical images can never be true nor false – they can only be regarded as probable or improbable. this notion becomes quite clear if we consider how easy it is to manipulate technical images. with photoshop and other similar software, photographs can be edited in a radical but imperceptible way. we can only tell that a photograph was edited when the editing goes too far, making it look improbable. this reveals how the “reality” of technical images is misleading, which led flusser to state that “the basis for the emerging universe and emerging consciousness is the calculation of probability. from now on, concepts such as ‘true’ and ‘false’ refer only to unattainable horizons, bringing a revolution not only in the field of epistemology but also in those of ontology, ethics, and aesthetics.”14 this revolution has surely affected architecture in many different ways. in his 1982 essay architecture as drawing, alberto pérez-gómez describes the development of architectural drawing throughout history, focusing on the renaissance notion that architectural drawings were images of an architectural idea, “implying ‘look’, ‘semblance’, and ‘form.” while the traditional builder, a primeval poet (from the greek poiesis, to make) made his thoughts into building through the implementation of an operational geometry (in the original sense of giving human dimension to external reality), the renaissance architect articulated the necessarily “abstract language” of walls, openings, and columns in architectural drawing, by means of plans (ichnographia), elevations (orthographia) and profiles or sections.15 these drawings were never understood as pictures of the future building – they represented an idea, “to be fulfilled in the building.” since most architects were deeply involved in the construction process, they were also responsible for turning this idea into reality. thus, architectural drawings formed, “an autonomous realm of expression,” somehow independent from architecture itself but always aiming for it. during the 18th century, the development of descriptive geometry allowed architects to elaborate geometrically precise drawings. architects could then distance themselves from the building site, drawing, “universal 220 isparchitecture.com projections that could […] be perceived as reductions of buildings, creating the illusion of drawing as a neutral tool that communicates unambiguous information, like scientific prose.”16 we can thus say that descriptive geometry is the “mother” of photography, since these drawings created the same illusion created by photographs – that of an impartial, direct depiction of reality. these “realistic” drawings have freed architects from the craft of building, turning them into “efficient designers.” thus, the craft of the architect changed from conceiving an architectural idea – that could be communicated through the abstract language of drawings – and getting it built, to conceiving and creating drawings that illustrated how parts of a building should be built. this is why, following the development of descriptive geometry, architects like boullée and ledoux created another meaning for architectural drawings: their drawings constituted a set of theoretical projects that they assumed to be true architecture, in opposition to their actual buildings. not surprisingly, both architects felt that architecture was deeply akin to painting. thus architecture became primarily the making of the drawing (or the model), the same poetic act that has always magically revealed the truth of reality.17 the emphasis on this relation between architecture and painting may signal an attempt to keep the craft of architecture close to traditional imagery, protecting it from the proto-technical images created through descriptive geometry. thus, at this point, we can say that there were two kinds of architectural drawings: instructional drawings made for the construction site and poetic drawings made for the expression of “true” architectural ideas. although the poetic drawings to which pérez-gómez refers illustrated utopian, sometimes “unrealistic” buildings, actual buildings were still conceived through similar images, that is, from images of architectural ideas. flusser states that technical images can never be true nor false – they can only be regarded as probable or improbable. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 221 lo ur ei r o if we compare them with those made by renaissance architects, the only difference would be that these images were now developed and divided into a set of instructional drawings which would guide the construction process. today, most architectural drawings are made through apparatuses, and even handmade drawings are inserted into a world dominated by technical images. figure 2 below combines the process described by pérez-gómez with the model presented by flusser. the visualization of this combination seems to highlight the fact that the current role of architectural images does not seem to be quite clear. in a 1990 lecture held in budapest, flusser states: the idea was that image should document politics. but, in the first half of the xx century, and more strongly after the second world war, this relationship began to change. all of the sudden, politics were made in order to get into an image. the purpose of politics was an image – the purpose of the arabs hijackers of airplanes was to be taken in television. politics is aimed at being taken in an image.18 to a certain extent, the same inversion happened to architectural images. figure 2: timeline of architectural drawing. 222 isparchitecture.com now, it is the picture that generates the building. photo-realistic 3d renderings “look” real, as if they were photographs taken in the future, after the building is complete. thus, these images are “models for photographs,” and not depictions of architectural ideas. while most architectural drawings aim to represent a building which will only exist in the future, these images try to represent photographs that can only be taken in the future. in a new york times article on the role of renderings in the real estate market, elizabeth a. harris states that “the real purpose of these drawings is not to predict the future. their real goal is to control it.”19 this idea of controlling the future by providing an apparently objective vision of it can be traced back to the 18th century architectural drawings, and has reached its peak with the apparent photorealism of computergenerated images – which look even more objective and ‘neutral.’ however, to a certain extent, these images only exist as instructions to be interpreted by apparatuses. they have the same logic of the instructional drawings which made possible the creation of industrial design – they are a set of instructions, the numerical description of a composition. this is the logic of programming, the internal logics of the apparatus which is, at the same time, tool, surface, and frame. becoming envisioners, architects have lost the connection to the craft of image-making. this affects the expression, representation and communication of architectural ideas, and also the construction of the ideas themselves. descriptive geometry created the theoretical background for the emergence of photography, and technical images as a whole, since its “neutral” depiction is something like an apparatus; it is a system that is already somehow “outside” of the architect’s mind, and through which he must work, keeping himself inside a limited field of possibilities. the same inversion happened to architectural images. now, it is the picture that generates the building. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 223 lo ur ei r o the role of the architect, like we usually see it now, is still the one forged in the 18th century. by working through and with descriptive geometry, architects are almost like industrial designers, the main difference being that construction has remained a much less automated process. industrial design, including not only the design of industrial products but of the machines themselves, was only possible after the creation of descriptive geometry – and, if we see it as a “mental apparatus,” we can say that this apparatus has created industrial designers, as much as the camera has created photographers. after all, how could one conceive a machine to manufacture a product without being able to predict and translate the shape of the product with extreme precision? the machine had to be programmed. following the process described by pérez-gómez, we can sketch a progression that starts with the traditional builder, the primeval poet who worked directly on the building itself, develops into the role of the builder/ artist/intellectual of the renaissance, who worked with abstract drawings while still being deeply involved with building, and moves forward to the efficient-designers of the enlightenment, who made instructional drawings in their studios, detached from the construction site. figure 3 demonstrates a growing separation between thinking and building, which was mediated by drawing. now, we give instructions to an apparatus that “draws” instructional images, which will then be interpreted by the builder. however, with 3d printing, another apparatus is responsible for the production of the figure 3: architecture’s increasing abstraction. 224 isparchitecture.com object itself. in this case, a software – which can be the same the designer uses for drawing – decodes and transmits instructions for the apparatus which is going to mold, cut, or sculpt the object. thus, there is no need for dialogue between different people – architect and builder, or designer and production engineer; the dialogue happens between apparatuses, and it is obviously opaque to us. all the designer needs to do is to give instructions to the software. thus, we can say that this technology frees designers from having to create instructional drawings – they can focus exclusively on the creation of the object, of its form. in a fairly near future, 3d printers may become widespread, so that anyone will be able to design and print (build) objects. thus, no instructional images will be needed at all. would anyone need designers then? or should we expect designers to be the ones creating the best conceptual models for printing? the dialogue between apparatuses may free architects and designers from the need to create instructional images, but can this freedom be demeaning to their practices? bill verplank believes that the development of enactive interfaces can bring us closer to the objects we shape, like the traditional builder mentioned by pérez-gómez: this direct engagement with the materials, producing immediate results, is what makes for a craft tradition. there is no time to step back and plan or abstract and analyse. we need no principles, textbooks or classrooms, only studios. masters pass on their practices to apprentices; the only learning is by doing. the introduction of architecture and engineering as distinct from construction and manufacture made explicit the role of drawings and design. are we returning to craft and forgetting design? 20 verplank seems to consider craft as a practical skill learned through imitation and repetition, and design as an intellectual activity for ‘anticipation and reflection.’ many of us may share this notion, the dialogue happens between apparatuses, and it is obviously opaque to us. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 225 lo ur ei r o only using the word “craft” when talking about a hands-on activity such as woodworking or shoemaking. these craftsmen use different tools and different gestures, whereas computers are now the main – if not the only – tool for intellectual work. architects, engineers, lawyers and accountants work in similar workstations – desks with computers – and repeat the same gestures – typing and clicking. thus, in physical terms, these activities have been leveled. these professionals work with different software, which provide different possibilities, but they are all envisioners. their work is seen as a set of intellectual activities that can be reduced to the logics of programming – to information processing, to computation. thus, while working, they can only imagine what was already imagined by the programmer, and this limitation can be really damaging to the poetic dimension of creative work. brazilian philosopher olavo de carvalho has developed the “theory of the four discourses,” which consists in the idea that “human discourse is a unique potency which can be actualized in four different ways: poetics, rhetoric, dialectics and analytics (logic).”21 this theory is based on his interpretation of the overall structure of aristotelian philosophy, considering that the differences between the four discourses lie in the human intentions behind each one of them. like flusser, carvalho also provides a model in which different eras were created by the prevalence of one of these discourses, which had, at the time, a recognized authority figure 4: three models. 226 isparchitecture.com over the other three. this model also illustrates an increasing abstraction, a distancing from concrete experience which follows towards an analytic worldview, “scientific reason emerges as the supreme fruit of a tree which has poetic imagination as its roots, planted in the soil of the sensible nature.”22 this does not mean, however, that we live in an analytical age devoid of poetic discourse. in fact, this gradual movement from the poetic imagination all the way to logical ‘certainty’ pervades all creative work. carvalho argues that “poetics correspond […] to the ‘first level’, to the connection between the data captured by the senses and the universe of discourse. the bridge between ‘world’ and ‘discourse.”23 thus, when we are creating, we are turning our impressions of the world into discourse, that is, into something that can be thought and communicated. this is why carvalho states that “poetry belongs, therefore, to the genre of mimesis, it is a form of imitation, and its specific difference is that it does not imitate what has happened (like history, for instance), but what is possible. the imitation of the possible is the definition of poetic work.”24 we can then say that all creative work begins with the imitation of the possibilities in which the work will develop. architects and designers begin their work not by envisioning images or manipulating form, but by discovering and selecting possibilities in which – and with which – to work. we can only discover possibilities by imagining them, and everything that can be imagined can become a possibility. when working with black boxes, we can surely use our imagination to discover possibilities inside those provided by the apparatus, but we are necessarily limiting our imagination, which was open to the whole of reality – as captured by our sensitive nature – to the program of the apparatus. when we draw through apparatuses, we are when we are creating, we are turning our impressions of the world into discourse “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 227 lo ur ei r o necessarily creating a gap between thinking and drawing. actually, we are not really drawing, but only giving instructions to an opaque, mysterious black box which will draw for us. even though enactive interfaces can make this process more direct and intuitive, there is still this gap, this barrier – we are still losing something along the way. pérez-gómez refers to the platonic concept of chora, which is, “both cosmic place and abstract space, and is also the substance of human crafts. […] it is the ‘region’ of that which exists.”25 when we design through apparatuses, the computer is not just a substitute for the pencil – it is actually a substitute for the pencil, the paper and, ultimately, a “virtual” substitute for chora. apparatuses try to create a virtual chora, an immaterial region for that which exists – but only exists as information, as numbers which can be rearranged into images. its hidden functioning emulates the aura of mystery that one can sense in the dimension of the possible, but it cannot really emulate the complete realm of possibility, the reach of the imaginable. in any creative work, the process of imagining never stops, and it is actually made not only through thinking, but also through testing and prototyping. architects and designers draw to visualize what they imagine, and to test possibilities. these drawings are not “printed ideas” – snapshots of what they are envisioning in their minds – but part of the process of imagining, of unraveling possibilities. irish architect john tuomey, for instance, draws inspiration from the ‘constellations’ of drawings made by carlo scarpa, who filled pages with small conceptual sketches in which he tested many variations of the same solution. scarpa stated: “i want to see things, that’s all i really trust. i want to see, and that’s why i draw. i can see an image only if i draw it.”26 palladio’s sketches for the reconstruction of the baths of agrippa, for instance, are of the same nature. these drawings have 400 years between them, but their similarities allow us to believe that the process behind them was fairly the same. at least in this conceptual stage, palladio and scarpa worked in a very similar way – they were not thinking and drawing, but thinking through drawing. computers and 3d printers may seem to free us from a secondary activity which is – or at least was – part of the intellectual activity of design. however, this activity is not secondary – it is actually what makes design a craft. there is no design without drawing, especially without the kind of drawing which works as a way of thinking, “imagining, shaping, seeing, all at the same time.”27 this kind of drawing can never be delegated to apparatuses, since these black boxes can never be poetic in the sense of making reality transparent to us. architecture does this in a deep and direct way, by shaping the world in which we live. 228 isparchitecture.com the emergence of parametricism may lead us to believe that, in the future, the work of an architect can actually be reduced to just inserting data into a software, which will then create forms.28 however, architecture cannot be reduced to a set of choices, to data processing. any creative work develops in what jorge luis borges calls, “the ambiguous time of art,” or, “in real time, in history, whenever a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates and loses the others. such is not the case in the ambiguous time of art, which is similar to that of hope and oblivion. in that time, hamlet is sane and is mad.”29 architectural design is a creative, poetic activity based on reflection and synthesis, and achieved through drawing and visualization. apparatuses can surely be very useful for architects, as long as they do not let themselves be “tricked” by the apparently unbiased, objective outputs made by these devices – and they also should not use them for tricking others. as flusser puts it: “from the standpoint of so-called common sense, technical images are objective depictions of things out in the world. the critical project is to show that in defiance of common sense, they are not mirrors but projections that are programmed to make common sense appear mirror like.”30 architecture is indeed a craft, responsible for creating a connection between our lived-world and our culture, making some aspects of reality transparent to us. its scope is that of the imaginable. this scope should not be reduced, and it just cannot be programmed. endnotes 1. vilém flusser, into the universe of technical images (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011). 2. ibid., p. 5. 3. ibid., p. 7. 4. ibid., p. 15. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 229 lo ur ei r o 5. ibid., p. 21. 6. ibid., p. 20. 7. ibid., p. 20. 8. ibid., p. 42. 9. ibid., p. 43. 10. ibid., p. 16. 11. ibid., p. 24. 12. ibid., p. 36. 13. bill verplank, “interaction design sketchbook”, p. 22, accessed august 09, 2014, http://www.billverplank.com/ixdsketchbook.pdf 14. flusser, into the universe of technical images, p. 17. 15. alberto pérez-gómez, “architecture as drawing”, jae, vol. 36, no. 2 (winter, 1982): 2-7. 16. ibid. 17. ibid. 18. “vilém flusser television image and political space in the light of the romanian revolution”, youtube video, 24:32, posted by “klenov vasiliy”, may 31, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qftay2u4nvi 19. elizabeth a. harris, “idealized or caricature, architectural renderings are weapons in real estate”, the new york times, august 26, 2013, accessed august 09, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/nyregion/ architects-renderings-as-a-weapon-in-real-estate.html?hp&_r=1& 20. bill verplank, “interaction design sketchbook”, p. 2, accessed august 09, 2014, http://www.billverplank.com/ixdsketchbook.pdf 21. olavo de carvalho, aristóteles em nova perspectiva: introdução à teoria dos quatro discursos (são paulo: é realizações, 2006), p. 26. translation by the author. 22. ibid., p. 43. 23. ibid., p. 105. 24. ibid., p. 137. 25. alberto pérez-gómez, “chora: the space of architectural representation”, in chora volume one: intervals in the philosophy of architecture, edited by alberto pérez-gómez and stephen parcell (montreal: mcgillqueens university press, 1994), pp. 1-34. 26. carlo scarpa, in carlo scarpa. the complete works, edited by francesco dal co and giuseppe mazzariol (new york: rizzoli, 1985), p. 230 isparchitecture.com 164. cf. john tuomey, architecture, craft and culture (london: gandon editions, 2008), p. 14. 27. bill verplank, interaction design sketchbook, unpublished ms. dated december 1, 2009, retrieved august 09, 2014, from http://www.billverplank. com/ixdsketchbook.pdf. 28. see patrik schumacher, “the parametricist manifesto”, presentation at the 2008 venice biennale, retrieved august 10, 2013, from http:// archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=4623. 29. jorge luis borges, “the false problem of ugolino,” in selected non-fictions. volume 1 (new york: viking penguin, 1999), pp. 277-281. 30. vilém flusser, into the universe of technical images (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011), p. 49. isparchitecture.com should architects refrain from designing prisons for long-term solitary confinement? – an open letter to the architecture profession tom spector, aia, with craig borkenhagen, mark davis, carrie foster, jacob gann, tou lee her, aaron klossner, evan murta, ryan rankin, maria cristina rodriguez santos, connor tascott,sarah turner, and spencer williams in a profile in the november, 2012 issue of the magazine architect, activist-architect raphael sperry, a founder of the group architects planners & designers for social responsibility (apdsr) discussed his petition to amend the aia’s code of ethics and professional conduct to include a figure 1: pelican bay state prison prison ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 82 sp ec to r e t. a l. prohibition on “the design of (prison) spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 this issue is both serious and timely. it deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. the purpose of this letter is to provide the the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action mr. sperry advocates. after review and consideration, we are persuaded that mr. sperry’s proposal does merit action by the aia. far from the prison system’s causing architects to perpetuate injustice, the design of incarceration facilities is a building type showing real creativity and concern for prisoner rehabilitation. the article in architect mentions several firms engaged in such work but many others can be found to impress the observer with the variety and vitality of this specialty.2 thus, while certainly not without its structural deficiencies, charges that the american justice system is incorrigible and that it can only corrupt architects’ best intentions do not withstand scrutiny and should not form the basis for any aia calls to action. the proposal promoted by apdsr, however, is more targeted than this. specifically, mr. sperry is asking aia members to foreswear designing facilities for long-term solitary confinement and for the administration of the death penalty on the concept that these punishments amount to human torture, and that architects cannot make themselves part of any torture apparatus. approval of the sperry proposal, then, depends on two important assertions: that long-term solitary confinement is torture, and that architects, by virtue of their professional roles, have a special responsibility in this situation to oppose policy enacted by democratically elected state and federal governments. to maintain the focus and brevity of this document, the controversies surrounding the death penalty will not be addressed. we will only take up the case against solitary confinement. prison design for long-term solitary confinement—also called disciplinary segregation—in the united states can be traced back to the philadelphia prison of 1829. though much studied and even emulated in europe at the time, the practice fell into disrepute in the early twentieth century. it was only revived in the late twentieth century during the great rise in imprisonment and consequent boom in prison construction. in the u. s., more than 80,000 inmates live in some form of disciplinary isolation.3 approximately 25,000 of these are housed in what has come to be known as “supermax” prisons.4 though conditions differ from prison to prison, a widely accepted definition of solitary confinement is “the physical and social isolation of individuals who are confined to their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day.”5 typically, prisoners do not enter long-term 83 isparchitecture.com solitary confinement from initial sentencing. they are placed in solitary as a quick fix to end a variety of disruptions they cause within the prison system. even teenagers are regularly placed in solitary for extended periods.6 humans are fundamentally social beings. much of our sense of reality, of emotional stability and sense of self derives from fairly constant interactions with other people. thus, it comes as little surprise that, deprived of this crucial source of reality, people who are already displaying adjustment difficulties would quickly become even more unhinged from reality in disciplinary segregation. the permanent psychological impact of solitary confinement is well-documented.7 even those who enter disciplinary segregation with an apparently strong and stable sense of self will begin to experience a constellation of psychiatric problems in a short period of time. isolation panic and delirium are but two manifestations of “confinement psychosis,” a medical condition typified by “psychotic reaction characterised frequently by hallucinations and delusions, produced by prolonged physical isolation and inactivity in completely segregated areas”8 symptoms of psychological distress can begin in only a few days. a report to the united nations proposed 15 days “as the limit between solitary confinement and prolonged solitary confinement.”9 stuart grassian found in his interviews of 49 inmates of the pelican bay “supermax” prison in northern california that “seventeen were actively psychotic… in urgent need of hospital treatment, and twentythree others suffered serious psychopathological reactions to solitary,”10 surely, we feel compelled to conclude, a disciplinary system which results in most of its prisoners suffering severe psychological trauma is indistinguishable from torture. we are far from alone in this conclusion. the inter american court of human rights has similarly stated in several cases that prolonged ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 84 sp ec to r e t. a l. solitary confinement, in itself, may violate article 5 of the american convention on human rights: “prolonged isolation and deprivation of communication are in themselves cruel and inhuman treatment, harmful to the psychological and moral integrity of the person, and a violation of the right of any detainee to respect for his inherent dignity as a human being. such treatment, therefore, violates article 5 of the convention...” the un human rights committee has objected to “... the practice of solitary confinement which affected the physical and mental health of persons deprived of freedom and which amounted to a cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” perhaps the most comprehensive statement against solitary confinement was expressed by the istanbul statement on the use and effects of solitary confinement, adopted on december 9, 2007 at the international psychological trauma symposium, istanbul. it has been convincingly documented on numerous occasions that solitary confinement may cause serious psychological and sometimes physiological ill effects. research suggests that between one third and as many as 90 per cent of prisoners experience adverse symptoms in solitary confinement. a long list of symptoms ranging from insomnia and confusion to hallucinations and psychosis has been documented. negative health effects can occur after only a few days in solitary confinement, and the health risks rise with each additional day spent in such conditions. individuals may react to solitary confinement differently. still, a significant number of individuals will experience serious health problems regardless of the specific conditions, regardless of time and place, and regardless of pre-existing personal factors. the central harmful feature of solitary confinement is that it reduces meaningful social contact to a level of social and psychological stimulus that many will experience as insufficient to sustain health and well being.11 despite the united states’ ratification in 1994 of the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment passed by the united nations in december 1984,12 the u. s. supreme court has steadfastly refused to engage the issue of solitary confinement as torture. in cases involving solitary confinement, it has in modern times repeatedly reasserted the state’s interests over those of prisoners and the right of the prison administration to institute whatever punishment deemed necessary, including solitary.13 thus, its use is still sanctioned by the high court making its torturous features a continuing issue here.14 the frequent use of disciplinary segregation, its predictable effects on inmates’ psychological states, and its resulting identification with torture poses a dilemma for professionals whose work engages the american 85 isparchitecture.com penal system. medical professionals, who are charged with safeguarding individuals’ well-being, are wholly unable and unwilling to certify who is and who is not able to withstand the psychological stresses of solitary confinement. though in some cases, such medical intervention might be a blessing, singling out individuals as too psychologically fragile for solitary implicitly certifies the rest as fit to withstand its rigors—and this is simply antithetical to physicians’ ethics.15 as a result, such decisions are left for prison administration solely. similarly with architects. the aia code of ethics’ ethical standard 1.4 specifies that “members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.” since any mainstream interpretation of human rights includes the right not to be tortured, and since long-term solitary confinement can be counted on to inflict substantial psychological pain, a recognized form of torture, the logic behind asking architects to forego design of prison facilities for long term solitary confinement appears to be a straightforward extension of the aia’s existing code of ethics. we recommend that the aia adopt mr. sperry’s proposal. it is a stand that is long overdue. endnotes 1. karrie jacobs, “prison break,” architect. nov 2012. 134-141. 2. jim lewis, “behind bars…sort of,” new york times magazine, june 10, 2009. see also: http:// weburbanist.com/2011/09/23/not-just-jail-12modern-futuristic-fascinating-prisons/ (november, 2012). 3. angela brown, alissa cambier and suzanne agha, “prisons within prisons: the use of segregation in the united states,” federal sentencing reporter, v24n1, october 2011. 46. 4. daniel p. mears, “evaluating the effectiveness of supermax prisons,” urban institute justice policy ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 86 sp ec to r e t. a l. center, march 2006, 4. 5. united nations general assembly department of public information, “special rapporteaur on torture tells third committee use of prolonged solitary confinement on rise, calls for global ban on practice,” ga/ shc/4014, october 18, 2011. 6.“the new york city department of corrections, for example, reported that in fiscal year 2012, which ended in june, more than 14 percent of all adolescents were held in at least one period of solitary confinement while detained. the average length of time young people spent in solitary confinement at rikers island was 43 days.” –“us: teens in solitary confinement” human rights watch, october 10, 2012. www.hrw.org/ news/2012/10/10/us-teens-solitary-confinement 7. stuart grassian’s report on his career study is perhaps the most complete: “psychiatric effects of solitary confinement,” journal of law and policy, v22, n325 325-383. for other studies on the health effects of solitary confinement, see peter scharff smith “the effects of solitary confinement on prison inmates. a brief history and review of the literature” in crime and justice vol. 34, 2006 (pp. 441-528); craig haney “mental health issues in long-term solitary and ‘supermax’ confinement” in crime & delinquency 49(1), 2003 (pp. 124-56); stuart grassian “psychopathological effects of solitary confinement” in american journal of psychiatry 140, 1983 (pp. 14504). even attempts to justify solitary appear not to stand up to scrutiny. see november 29, 2010 “aclu and experts slam findings of doc report on solitary confinement.” www.aclu-co.org which criticizes a report written by maureen o’keefe et al. entitled “one year longitudinal study of the psychological effects of administrative segregation,” denver: state of colorado, october 31,2010. 8. scott, g. & gendreau, p. “psychiatric implications of sensory deprivation in a maximum security prison.” canadian psychiatric association journal, v14, 1969: 337-341. 338. 9. united nations general assembly department of public information, “special rapporteaur on torture tells third committee use of prolonged solitary confinement on rise, calls for global ban on practice,” ga/ shc/4014, october 18, 2011. 10. grassian, 349. 11. available at: http://www.univie.ac.at/bimtor/dateien/topic8_ istanbul_statement_effects_solconfinment.pdf 12. part 1 article 1 of the un convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment states: “for the 87 isparchitecture.com purposes of this convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. it does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.” http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_ doc.asp?symbol=a/res/39/46 13. hilary mcconnaughey, “punishment narratives: tracking supreme court jurisprudence concerning solitary confinement,” colgate academic review, v8, fall 2010. mcconnaughey concludes, “in sum, the supreme court expanded the concept of solitary confinement so that it is warranted for a variety of infractions and can be an expected part of a person’s sentence.” (99). 14. recent supreme court attitudes toward solitary confinement reverse, somewhat, the opinion expressed in the nineteenth century, when it observed that solitary confinement “was an additional punishment of the most important and painful character,” in re medley, 134 u.s. 160 (1890) http://laws.findlaw.com/us/134/160.html 15. jeffrey l. metzner md and jamie fellner esq. “solitary confinement and mental illness in u. s. prisons: a challenge for medical ethics,” journal of the american academy of psychiatry and the law online, v38n1 104-108. march 2010 isparchitecture.com an aesthetic deontology: accessible beauty as a fundamental obligation of architecture 1 christian illies and nicholas ray introduction recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the intersection of ethics and aesthetics, especially pertaining to literature, cinema, and now architecture. the idea of an ‘intersection’, especially when construed as ranging over ‘values’, while fruitful, has perhaps limited the field. this paper presents an alternative view, grounded in the idea of a general deontology, with moral and aesthetic duties forming discrete but interconnected parts of such a deontology. more concretely, we argue for an “obligation to accessible beauty.” after having clarified what architectural beauty amounts to (section 1), we will outline the argument for such an obligation (section 2). it will be based upon the moral demand to respect human beings and thus to serve their basic needs, and the need for beauty is one of them. the obligation is strengthened further by the fact that architecture is in the public realm (and therefore unavoidable for people). the notorious subjectivity of beauty does not count against this argument because it is agnostic towards any one ideal of what a beautiful building consists in. it only requires that the architect give beauty due consideration in her design deliberations. while the obligation to accessible beauty is universal to humanity, its satisfaction can be local for any culture. to conclude, we will discuss how this aesthetic while the obligation to accessible beauty is universal to humanity, its satisfaction can be local for any culture “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 64 il li es & r a y obligation can be compared and weighed against other moral demands (section 3). obviously, the suggested obligation to accessible beauty is not a recipe for the avoidance of moral conflict. but by seeing this aesthetic demand to be commensurate with other moral demands, the design problem becomes more tractable. we conclude that apparently irreconcilable demands have to be resolved by appeal to aesthetic solutions. a building’s design is always a synthetic response to varying requirements. thus, when it comes to reconciling conflicting moral and practical demands in architecture, beauty, not morality has the last word. we explore further architectural consequences of this view in our recent work, the philosophy of architecture.2 here, however, our concern is primarily with solidifying the philosophical foundation of this project. 1. the beauty of buildings 1.1 beauty as the prime distinction of architectural design we begin with a claim that what distinguishes architecture from mere building is an intention to go beyond meeting a functional brief or solving a problem. nikolaus pevsner famously declared that a bicycle shed was a building, whereas lincoln cathedral was a work of architecture, which implies that a mundane building could not be beautiful, or, beautiful in the same sense as a cathedral.3 against pevsner, we agree with the generally held view that a distinction should not be based on scale, or on the modesty of a building’s purpose. whenever the craftsperson makes something with especial care, we claim, there is and should be an intention, even if unacknowledged consciously, to make something that others can recognize as beautiful.4 there are several kinds of beauty in architecture, and a simple utilitarian building might well share some, though not all, qualities with much more elaborate and considered structures. an overriding task of the act of building with this particular care might be described as that of enabling people to feel ‘at home in the world’. this might entail a careful consideration of the nature of the context of a building—its setting in a landscape, or in an existing village, town, or city. we are simply not satisfied with mere functionality; we expect architecture to aim at ‘more’. and it seems that fulfilling exactly this task, if this is accepted, is the underlying purpose behind the various types of beauty, described below, which we regard as the aims of architecture. 1.2 varieties of beauty in architecture when we talk about “beauty” in architecture, we must be aware of its complexity—there are different varieties of beauty one can legitimately attribute to or expect of architecture. we make no pretense to replicate the enormous literature that has accrued on those varieties: our purpose is to build the basis for a larger argument.5 65 isparchitecture.com for convenience we might distinguish the following five types. there is formal beauty which accounts for what moves us when architects manipulate volumes to create memorable spaces—such as the pantheon in rome, which is based on a sphere, and which few visitors are unaffected by. related notions of architecture as a spatial art, or as primarily the plastic manipulation of form (as le corbusier sometimes claimed), and the careful articulation of surfaces enter here.6 formal, or compositional, beauty can be found in other works of art, such as sculptures and pictures, but functional beauty is a quality found in the design of useful products, such as implements, and architecture. such objects, and those of (engineering) design, sometimes have a beauty inherent in their efficient workings.7 when buildings and urban spaces serve functional criteria in elegant ways (such as the beautiful drainage system in st mark’s square in venice), they give a particular satisfaction not achieved by purely decorative objects devoid of use. formal and functional beauty can be found in many non-architectural artifacts. but architecture is almost always related to a particular location: it is situated in a context, which renders it capable of exhibiting contextual beauty. architecture theorists speak of the “murmur of a site,”8 of architecture as an ‘art of the ensemble’, and more. the ways that effective architecture relates to its setting, whether urban or rural, and whether by seeking to blend in with it or stand out from it, is one of its most obvious characteristics, and most often a cause of criticism when people feel a wrong decision has been made. put positively, contextual fit (especially with regard to cultural context) can co-account for a building’s beauty.9 there is also time related beauty. given the endurance of much architecture, the way in which a building succeeds in doing so can be a factor in the satisfaction it gives. its age can bestow aesthetic pleasures; materials may display weathering effects when it comes to reconciling conflicting moral and practical demands in architecture, beauty, not morality, has the last word. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 66 il li es & r a y in pleasing ways, and so on.10 finally, there is intellectual beauty. just as elegant solutions are accomplished in mathematics or in the fugues of j.s. bach, architecture can give rise to aesthetic pleasure because it exhibits the solution to a complex set of technical problems. this also pertains to the considered deployment of proportional systems, as in lutyens’s liverpool cathedral and war memorials.11 buildings are complicated artifacts, and some of them can be admired as intellectual achievements over and above their formal beauty. furthermore, some would claim the pantheon is an aesthetically moving work of architecture not just on account of its satisfactory form, as noted above, or its intellectually satisfying geometry, but because as a work it reflects deep trans-cultural meanings: the building’s volume represents the world. this is perhaps a spiritual rather than intellectual type of beauty.12 the different types of beauty can be in correspondence, but they also create a tension. it would seem that it is quite possible to have a formal beauty that is not functional, or particularly rigorous intellectually: this would be evident in a sculpturally compelling structure that was maybe not very useful, such as zaha hadid’s fire station for the vitra organization. buildings can also be formally beautiful, and work well, without being particularly satisfying in the third way: these might be “romantic” works, such as neuschwanstein, the castle built by ludwig ii, that depend to a certain extent on the associations that are summoned up. but a building such as neuschwanstein can be criticized if it is not also skilfully composed— in such cases, it degenerates into mere kitsch. and a laboratory building that was rigorously worked through as a design, and also functioned well, would not necessarily be beautiful formally, even though at various periods architects have argued that we ought to find such buildings beautiful. any building aspiring to beauty must represent some kind of reconciliation of these different types of beauty. this aspiration to beauty is what architects should aim at, or so we will argue. 2. aesthetic deontology 2.1 the obligation to beauty we began by claiming that the intention to make something beautiful is what distinguishes architecture from mere building, even though some have argued that aesthetics should have nothing to do with architecture. hannes meyer, who succeeded gropius as the director of the bauhaus, famously stated that architecture is a “technical, not an aesthetic process.”13 according to meyer, architecture can do without beauty: its essence is the creation of a functional space, its worth is merely ‘what it does’ and how well it does that. here, beauty is a luxury, not a demand. alternatively, beauty might arise naturally, or even necessarily, as functionalists claimed, if the functional aspects are satisfied. 67 isparchitecture.com in contrast to either of these two positions, we argue that beauty, in the senses described above, is the prime goal and obligation of architectural design. we shall refer to this claim, and the moral obligation behind it, as the ‘obligation to beauty.’14 there are different ways to argue for this claim, depending on the kind of ethical theory one presupposes. in aristotelian mode, any human practice aims at some result, this being the implicit goal of the activity. we practice the flute in order to play it better; we make each sculpture not only for itself, but also in order to improve as sculptors. similarly, the result of good artistic practice, that is to say the practice of the art or craft of being an architect, will be a product with aesthetic quality. and if it is the aim of architects to practice their craft to the highest standard they are able to achieve, then architects must strive for aesthetic quality. otherwise it would remain opaque as to why we should regard an aesthetically successful building as ‘good architecture’ in a wider sense. but the obligation to beauty can also be supported by a moral argument of a different variety, one motivated by a concern for human well-being. if we (morally) must promote human well-being, then this includes all human needs and desires.15 after all, that is why buildings should be functional— because as vulnerable, dependent animals, we need a safe and warm and healthy place to live. but we need more: we also have a fundamental need for a pleasing place where we can happily live. as the 20th century dutch architect aldo van eyck put it: “architecture need do no more, nor should it ever do less, than assist man’s homecoming...”16 while it is conventionally thought of as supplemental, beauty is (on this view) actually essential to human wellbeing, for our emotions and our feeling at home, otherwise it would be inexplicable why most people spend so much time and money decorating their homes. the simplistic anthropology of an architect like hannes meyer, with his list of ‘motives’ from 1928, is ludicrously reductive.17 humans need humans need more: they deeply long for beauty. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 68 il li es & r a y more: they deeply long for beauty, a desire that is probably genetically embedded.18 any appropriate notion of well-being will therefore support the claim of beauty being a necessary goal of architecture. 2.2 the obligation to accessible beauty if we endorse this second moral argument, and if the aesthetic quality, or beauty, of a building responds to a moral requirement for promoting well-being, then something important follows: the beauty that the architect must strive for must be accessible. not only do people have strong views about building, they also articulate them forcibly, and this gives us reason to believe that they understand what it is that they object to and what they enjoy.19 architecture’s status as a public art entails moral requirements not adherent to other art forms. whereas we do not have to pick up a prize-winning novel, or listen to a highly-praised piece of music, it is impossible to avoid the buildings all around us. thus people will always be confronted by architecture and their desire for beauty will be frustrated if the architecture they experience is banal or ugly. (to be sure, there are many ways of satisfying the human need for beauty but because architecture is in an important way inescapable, any ugly architecture will be a frustration of this need, whether or not we are able to experience beauty in other areas.) there is therefore an onus on architecture to communicate in a way that, while it may be appreciated on many levels, is accessible, rather than conceived in a private language that only the cognoscenti can appreciate. architects frequently tend towards forming sub-cultures that find certain forms and materials (like bare concrete) beautiful, which the general public may find ugly and unfriendly. but to the extent that buildings are a form of public art, used and seen by many, they must also be capable of satisfying the aesthetic desires of many. an exclusively elitist concept of beauty would not do so and is thus not the morally required beauty. as fontaine’s fable tells us, we need to ensure that people with a variety of capabilities can enjoy the good food we prepare.20 yet, such accessibility needs a pinch of salt. what is accessible is not simply given. it often seems that it is a part of architects’ obligation to beauty to expand the aesthetic expectations of their clients. if they did not do so, people could be condemned to a banal repetition of conventional buildings. thus the best architecture might well assist in a re-definition of what we generally call the beautiful. the idea of an accessible beauty can therefore be seen as a dialogue between the architect, or her building, and the public: whilst it is arrogant for architects to say that people must learn to understand their buildings, it is clear that public taste develops and moves on, so that inspiring works of architecture broaden the area of acceptability for the general public. it is a principal moral task for 69 isparchitecture.com architects, therefore, to judge carefully the aesthetic accessibility of the buildings they propose, and this is applicable for each of the five different types of beauty we identified above. 2.3 challenging the obligation to beauty is there really an aesthetic obligation of the variety we propose? some would claim that the requirement that architects should create aesthetic quality (let alone beauty) in their designs is pointless, impossible, or even dangerous. here are four objections. firstly, one might object that our characterization too easily subscribes to the formalist conception of the aesthetic sense and does not accurately record how people experience a building. much of the way we experience architecture is intuitive. we are “enveloped” in the experience of a work of architecture, as walter benjamin observed21; we do not usually stand in front of it analyzing its divisions into coherent and incoherent parts. in this sense, experiencing a group of buildings is like a walk through a forest, or the exploration of a cave, and could more readily be subjected to psychological analysis than conventional aesthetic descriptions. secondly, even if there can be some objectivity in the differing experiences people have of buildings, the way buildings are appreciated is inevitably culturally conditioned: members of certain castes in india may be more likely to enjoy the rich texture and overwhelming detail of a hindu temple, whereas europeans of an analogous class prefer the plain abstraction of mies van der rohe’s barcelona pavilion. the attempt to find universal qualities of beauty (desirable intricacy, or perfection of proportion) would therefore be quite futile. thirdly, our appreciation is not only conditioned by cultural origin, but also by time. as our technology progresses, forms which were previously impossible or uneconomic to construct become possible. in the past, for example, only limited spans were achievable, so intermediary columns were necessary, and it was natural to adopt some it is a principal moral task for architects [...] to judge carefully the aesthetic accessibility of [their] buildings. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 70 il li es & r a y conventions to decorate them. but now, we might not need columns (in a traditional sense) at all. structures could arise, and warp and twist like a piece of landscape, and the conventions of architectural form are revealed for what they always were—products of the technological limitations of their time. we can also, fourthly, raise the more fundamental objection whether we should aspire to make beautiful buildings at all. isn’t cultural beauty a dangerous camouflage of a rather grim reality? it might be more truthful to the purposes that they serve, and the conditions of their production, that buildings should be ugly. in his analysis of the relationship between aesthetics and political interests, theodor adorno argued that all cultural products, including architecture, were extended instruments of capitalism, necessarily putting those who experience them into the position of passive consumers. “beauty” in this reading is particularly dangerous, because it obscures the brutal face of reality, that is a system of capitalist exploitation and instrumentalization. “ugly” art, in contrast, will be a more truthful revelation of the real conditions of society. his observations of 1944 anticipate the feelings of many in the last seventy years.22 these objections are paradigmatic for the aesthetic debate on architecture and aesthetics. they correspond to fundamental philosophical theories: aesthetic subjectivism would claim that any aesthetic experience remains subjective and no general judgements can be made about aesthetic qualities. aesthetic culturalism is the basis for the second and third objection; it sees aesthetic judgements as being cultural in origin and shaped by an epoch or time. again, any promotion of beauty seems futile from this perspective, at least if it aims at more than the preferences of a group at a certain time. the fourth critique is a variation of ‘ideology-critique’ that the frankfurt school developed; here theories are debunked according to the motives or interests that they serve implicitly or explicitly. let us turn to the first objection. it is obvious that a universal demand for architectural beauty like the one above only makes sense if a generally shared understanding of what beauty amounts to is possible.23 thus at least a mild form of aesthetic objectivism is presupposed by our argument. following kant, we hold that “judgements of taste” can make a claim to general (kant would say “universal”) acceptance—in face of a building like the pantheon, we consider some aesthetic judgements as the ones everyone should make.24 this objectivism seems to go hand in hand with an aesthetic cognitivism, i.e., the view that aesthetic judgements can be (more or less) correct or wrong and that we can meaningfully reason about whether they are. after all, even an analysis of types of beauty as suggested above only makes sense if the aesthetic is not entirely outside the reach of reason. however, this does not mean that aesthetic judgments are entirely independent from the subject and its way of experiencing the 71 isparchitecture.com world. in his defence of objectivism, frank sibley25 rightly points out that aesthetic judgements cannot be inferred directly from non-aesthetic features of an object, but require response-dependent features, that is properties which need the response of the experiencing subjects for being instantiated: “taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity, of aesthetic discrimination or appreciation” lie at the heart of aesthetic judgments.26 for example, we cannot talk meaningfully about the ‘harmonious proportions of the pantheon (or its color) without some experience of this harmony (or color). we will therefore base our argument on a moderate objectivism that includes the foundational role of experiences. following elisabeth schellekens’s distinction between an aesthetic perception and an aesthetic judgement, we presuppose that aesthetic perceptions provide “the experiential grounding of an aesthetic judgement,” but that aesthetic judgements are the result of a “rational process” which “relies on the possibility of appealing to an object’s salient features in order to check whether our aesthetic perception is well grounded.”27 the essential role of the subject’s experience explains why aesthetic subjectivism and the reference to individual intuitions will always have a strong appeal. aesthetic subjectivism is right in emphasizing the possibility of irreducibly subjective aesthetic experiences or intuitions—we only have to remember peter eisenman’s notable dislike of chartres cathedral28—but regarding aesthetic judgements merely as subjective expressions of preferences explains too little. aesthetic subjectivism leaves many aspects of these judgements, like the striking convergence of aesthetic judgements over time and between cultures, underdetermined. a “reasonable objectivism” (to use schellekens’s term) will have to allow for subjective perceptions and even for impenetrable idiosyncrasies. but it will also acknowledge (at least some) aesthetic features of buildings and other artifacts that more generally evoke aesthetic appreciation. furthermore, reasonable objectivism finds empirical support by isn’t cultural beauty a dangerous camouflage of a rather grim reality? “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 72 il li es & r a y many psychological experiments that contradict the strong subjectivist claims. there seem, for example, to be hard-wired preferences for certain facial features. there is also a striking cross-cultural agreement (at least amongst so-called “informed” and “educated” people) about the aesthetic quality of many artworks or buildings. to be sure, any reasonable objectivism has to account for a great variety of aesthetic preferences— but it will do so within a framework of generally acknowledged aesthetic qualities. and it is these qualities, their analysis and promotion, with which we are concerned. the second and third objections are based upon the observation that the understanding of beauty is neither homogenous amongst people nor unchanging over time. in renaissance times, medieval architecture was derogatorily baptized “gothic” by classicizing italians who blamed gothic tribes for having sacked rome and having created a barbarian style of building—while a.w.n. pugin and other romanticists of the 19th century celebrated its beauty and dreamt of a (neo)gothic world. if ‘beauty’ is an ever-changing concept, does it make sense to demand the design of ‘beautiful’ buildings? indeed it does, and the arguments above support the demand to strive for architectural beauty within the given cultural context. this culturally specific notion of beauty is implied by a practice which is always part of a cultural context (like building a railway station for a society with a certain infrastructure, tradition, life-form, etc.). similarly, when we ground the demand for beauty on the promotion of human well-being, the aesthetic experiences of a culture and time must be taken into account; it is an essential part of people’s identity, and thus well-being, to be situated in a certain culture and tradition. that is why we specified the aim as an accessible beauty. in other words: the demand indicates an ideal whose realisation can look rather different in different situations. some features of a building will be required in most contexts (such as a careful design of details), others will be specific for a certain culture and time (such as the use of a certain style), and others can be highly specific to the situation (the “murmur of the site”). the demand to strive for beauty does not come with an elaborated list of forms that must be globally applied, but asks for sensitive artistic reflection about what constitutes beauty in a particular case. this will include an anticipation of the aesthetic responses of the beholders. but because of the (intended) survival of most buildings over time, the architect should aim at those forms that transcend the fashions of the day and are likely to be accessible for users and beholders of generations yet to come.29 (not an easy task, but then, good architecture is a demanding art and not a simple craft.) let us turn to adorno’s objection. is there something vicious about creating beauty in an ultimately ugly world? obviously, one might question his marxist absolutism about capitalism and doubt whether we can simply 73 isparchitecture.com identify the free market as inherently evil (especially if we cannot easily point to a compellingly successful alternative). but we can accept his political analysis here, for the sake of argument, and look at his fundamental thesis about the intention behind the creation of beauty and about the way the experience of beauty affects us. both seem highly speculative. there’s evidence that even in the most straightened circumstances people aspire to decorate their dwellings. if the lights of (robert venturi’s) las vegas, as much as the skyline of beijing, were created to manipulate people’s feelings, it is by no means obvious why beauty must always be a strategic move to deceive others. but although there are situations in which it serves to encourage the acceptance of an unjust political situation, aesthetic experiences can equally well produce an increased level of awareness or sensibility to the world and, for example, its fragility. it can thereby increase our ability to change it for the better. friedrich schiller famously argued that art and the aesthetic impulse allow the individual to transcend inner and outer constraints, thus increasing his or her freedom. there is no compelling reason why we should let adorno’s single-sided ‘ideology-critique’ delegitimate the desire for beauty. in summary, these more general objections, according to which an obligation to beauty presupposes a questionable aesthetic objectivism, or even promotes a dangerous ideology, do not seem to carry much weight. the subjective/ objective debate is only a marginal concern to the aesthetic deontology that is outlined in this paper. most importantly, the obligation to beauty is not committed to a single version of beauty—even as a universal imperative it allows us to embrace some particularist insights. 3. in search of a prime imperative of architecture if beauty is one moral obligation for architects, we can certainly identify others: we briefly turn to this expanded field of moral duty, before examining deontic conflicts (that is, conflict among the the demand to strive for beauty does not come with an elaborated list of forms that must be globally applied “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 74 il li es & r a y ‘expanded field’ of moral and aesthetic duties for architecture) and their possible resolutions. we will end this section by searching for a prime imperative of architecture that might help to solve these conflicts. 3.1 moral obligations and conflicts building entails a complex set of activities, involving many agents and artifacts, and ranges from design and construction to a completed edifice that may remain as continuous reality. without any claim to finality, this creates (at least) the following reasonable moral demands30: (1) duties arising from professional behavior; (2) duties arising from what a building is (designed) for, and pertain to its use, good architecture, independently from the moral discourse31; (3) moral duties pertaining to the impact of the building on individual users: their health, safety, and general well-being, including their psychological well-being; (4) moral duties arising from the impact of the building on the natural (non-man made) environment; (5) moral duties pertaining to the influence on human behavior, individually and collectively; (6) the cultural or symbolic meaning that buildings express and communicate, by means of choices in form, materials, colors, aesthetic style, and the like. to this we would add (7) moral imagination—that is the faculty which anticipates moral answers to complex challenges by portraying a possible and better life-form, society, or world. moral imagination requires an abstraction from one’s particular situation, an awareness of the values and principles on which one currently acts—as much as an openness to change and the anticipation of different and new ways to deal with current and upcoming challenges (e.g., a library that suggests an ideal of scholarship, a chamber for debate which supposes a society to which we aspire).32 this demand is different from the others in that it is not an obligation but, rather, a luxury (or technically supererogatory): although not all buildings need to inspire our moral imagination, some buildings must do so. again, buildings might satisfy some, and not all, of these moral demands, and often the satisfaction of one moral demand will be in conflict with another. to give an example: environmental concerns or even safety can clash with the cultural meaning of a building.33 this typology might make it easier to analyze questions (and demands) of moral relevance; however, for several reasons things are more complicated. first, things are more complicated because we have to distinguish between what is objectively good or bad and what is subjectively moral or immoral. the first relates something to a universal ethical standard; in this sense slavery was always as wrong as it is now. when we talk about the subjective morality of the agent, however, we contextualize his or her knowledge of norms and values. even an antique slave-owner could then have been a subjectively moral person, simply because he could not have known better 75 isparchitecture.com at the time. that difference is relevant for both the brief and design areas: we can ask whether a brief is acceptable (objectively right) and also whether the architect was justified (subjectively moral) in accepting it. as we have illustrated above, we can ask the same question in the area of design. the answers in both cases can be different and the historical context will become relevant in helping come to appropriate judgements. secondly, things are so complicated because clashes often occur between different types of demands, like aesthetic, moral or functional ones. they sometimes cohere without conflict (it is, for example, as much a moral, a legal, and a functional requirement that engineers design structurally stable buildings). but often they pull in different directions. for example: we might ask whether the gates between the first, second, and third class passengers on the titanic were morally acceptable, though they were demanded by the etiquette of its time. it is therefore no surprise that some of the finest buildings (that respect the obligation to beauty) are erected by blatantly ignoring some fundamental moral demands. 3.2 the difficulty of a reconciliation a well-known difficulty of any clash of normative demands is that there are quantitative issues, which are calculable with reasonable precision, and qualitative issues, which are not amenable to the same kind of measurement. how these demands should be balanced against each other is hard to decide, in particular if the very idea of “balancing” is biased towards quantifiable issues. this is a general problem, but is endemic for architecture because it is partially an art form and partially a functional thing—which makes it particularly open to expectations from both the measurable and the unmeasurable sides. and even within the same type of demand, for example the aesthetic one, we have measurable and unmeasurable components. whereas visual comfort, or the use of materials that are warm to the touch, may be matters that can moral imagination [...] anticipates moral answers to complex challenges “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 76 il li es & r a y be quantified, whether the aesthetic quality of a conjunction of particular sets of forms is quantifiable remains questionable.34 in a similar way, we could say that it is easy to measure whether we have or have not met some ethical demands; but there are others that are less objectively measurable. we are therefore faced with a complex of categorically different criteria even within the same type of demands. these demands are not hierarchically ordered in an obvious way: we cannot simply argue that only those buildings that perform satisfactorily in all measurable ways get themselves into the category where they can be judged in incommensurable ways, because we can all think of buildings that fail in some measurable way, but are nevertheless highly regarded for good reasons.35 that a building is successful technically, on the other hand, is no guarantee that it is going to be of a high architectural standard. what makes things even more complicated is that there can be conflicting demands of other types. we have seen that the obligation to beauty is a moral demand, but morality demands a respect for multiple demands. budgetary prudence, for example, could be a reasonable criterion for a client commissioning architects, and the constraints that lead to that demand could be quite precisely measured—if the client is a charity, say, with a limited budget. to complicate matters even more, full moral obeisance is not guaranteed to be the best course of action. at least in hindsight, we know that many acknowledged masterpieces were only achieved because architects were in some sense irresponsible with their client’s money in the service of a greater ideal—namely creating a work of architecture that transcended its immediate context—which we would find hard to quantify. so the resulting picture is highly complex: we have tensions between different types of demands (moral, aesthetic, economic) and between the quantifiable and unquantifiable. because the different demands are deeply interwoven, we cannot even have a trade off on the level of quantifiable demands, because there can be (more or less) quantifiable moral demands to obey unquantifiable normative demands of other types (e.g., to be economically responsible)—and unquantifiable moral demands to obey quantifiable demands of other types (e.g., for flexible buildings). architecture has not come up with a timeless solution to the tensions between different demands and their clash seems an ongoing theme of architectural self-reflection.36 few areas of human activity face so many and such different demands—and that is possibly the reason it is particularly hard in the case of architecture to find truly unifying, wellbalanced reconciliations rather than biased compromises that give too much weight to some demands at the expense of others. 77 isparchitecture.com 3.3 in search of a prime obligation for architecture if ethics can neither reconcile different demands a priori, nor hope for an objectifiable trade-off, what could do this work? it is tempting to attempt to prioritize the different types of demands. what, in the end, is the highest obligation? one the one hand, it seems that much, or even all demands have a moral basis. remember that the strongest argument for the architect’s obligation to create beauty is itself a moral reason. and moral demands can also be seen as grounding other types of requirements, for example functional ones: to build efficiently, safely, and economically is also a way of respecting other humans, their resources (or the resources of future generations), and so forth. however, it is not clear what exactly follows for this priority in time; in particular, it does not imply that the obligation to beauty must, in the end, be sacrificed for other moral demands. on the other hand, architecture can be regarded as a way of overcoming normative tensions by suggesting an ultimately aesthetic solution. it must always result in a particular design that in some way or other bridges between conflicting demands. and a successful resolution to conflicting duties will be, as stated in the beginning, an intellectual achievement that can give (intellectual) beauty to a building. thus, when it comes to reconciling conflicting demands in a building, beauty, not morality, seems always have the last word. to put it another way, apparently irreconcilable demands have to be resolved by appeal to aesthetic solutions. the purpose of this essay has been to identify accessible beauty as a fundamental obligation of architecture. our argument could point towards the stronger thesis that this is in some way the prime obligation of architecture. though we would not claim to have reached that conclusion, which would require much more than this paper can contain; nevertheless, we hope to have indicated its possibility. architecture can be regarded as a way of overcoming normative tensions “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 78 il li es & r a y endnotes 1. this paper is a revised and condensed version of our “why architects should design beautiful buildings,” in the design turn in applied ethics, eds. thomas pogge, jeroen van den hoven, and seumas miller (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2012/2016), and builds on christian illies, “schön ist gut! ästhetisches bauen als ethische forderung,” (presentation, symposium, basel, switzerland, march 7, 2013). we are grateful to stefan koller and tom spector for very helpful comments. 2. christian illies and nicholas ray, the philosophy of architecture (london: cambridge architectural press, 2014). reviewed by stefan koller and tom spector below. 3. nikolaus pevsner, an outline of european architecture (london: penguin, 1943). 4. by this phraseology, we recognize that, though this is a common and perfectly proper approach, it is not necessary to believe in “beauty” as an essence, or some kind of platonic ideal. we can equally well say, in a somewhat aristotelian mode, that the product of good architectural practice should be buildings that people would conventionally find beautiful. 5. for an introduction to those issues, see graham gordon, “architecture,” in oxford handbook of aesthetics, ed. jerrold levinson (oxford: oxford university press, 2006), 561-569. see also saul fisher, “philosophy of architecture,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. edward n. zalta, september 9, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/architecture. 6. goethe, who was acutely sensitive to architecture, emphasized its haptic nature in a conversation with humboldt. see johann wolfgang von goethe, gedenkausgabe der werke, briefe und gespräche. bd 22 (goethes gespräche), ed. ernst beutler (frankfurt: artemis, 1964), 241. the classic text exploring the various ways in which architecture can affect us is steen eiler rasmussen, experiencing architecture (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1959). 7. see david pye, the nature and aesthetics of design (oxford: berg 3pl, 2002) for a full discussion of functional beauty in product design. 8. see rafael moneo (presentation, anywhere conference, yufuin, japan, 1992). re-printed in el croquis 20/64/98: rafael moneo 1967-2004 (2004): 635-641. see also francisco gonzález de canales and nicholas ray, rafael moneo: building teaching writing (new haven, ct: yale university press, 2015). 9. how contextual fit (and its relation to architectural beauty) is to be spelled out precisely is an open question. for a spirited defense of a highly partisan position, see roger scruton, beauty (oxford: oxford university press, 2009), 8-14. 10. see mohsen mostafavi and david leatherbarrow, on weathering: the 79 isparchitecture.com life of buildings in time (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1993). 11. see dennis radford, and douglas cawthorne, “unlocking lutyens: a gateway to the hidden legacy of john pell and sir christopher wren” in architecture research quarterly 12, no.1 (2008): 69-85. 12.this could therefore constitute a further category. others would claim this is an overarching category transcending aesthetics, within which every other category is subsumed. the phenomenology of merleau-ponty and the hermeneutic approach of gadamer can be read in this way. see kenneth frampton, a genealogy of modern architecture: comparative critical analysis of built form, ed. ashley simone (zurich: lars muller, 2015), 1827. 13. hannes meyer, bauen und gesellschaft: schriften, briefe, projekte (dresden: verlag der kunst, 1980). 14. for a similar argument for beauty as a moral obligation see martin düchs, architektur für ein gutes leben: über verantwortung, moral und ethik des architekten (münster: waxmann, 2011), 232-235. 15. given such an inclusivist delineation of ‘well-being’, this proposal differs from the first one, which (at most) relates to aristotle’s more specific notion of human well-being or ‘flourishing’ (eudaimonia). that said, the present argument could be reformulated for that restricted notion, though we do not pursue this eudaimonistic variant here. 16. aldo van eyck quoted in herman hertzberger, aldo van eyck, eds. addie van roijen-wortmann and francis strauven (amsterdam: stichting wonen, 1982). 17. meyer’s list is as follows: pure construction is the basis and the characteristics of the new world of forms. 1. sex life 2. sleeping habits 3. pets 4. gardening 5. personal hygiene 6. weather protection 7. hygiene in the home 8. car maintenance 9. cooking 10. heating 11. exposure to the sun 12. services these are the only motives when building a house. meyer was quite optimistic that this would allow for a scientific process of design: this functional, biological interpretation of architecture as giving shape to the functions of life, logically leads to pure construction: this world of constructive forms knows no native country. it is the expression of an international attitude in architecture. internationality is a privilege of the period. […] we examine the daily routine of everyone who lives in the house and this gives us the functional diagram – the functional diagram and the economic programme are the determining principles of the building project. for meyer’s list and commentary, see hannes meyer, “building,” bauhaus year 2, no. 4, quoted in programs and manifestos on 20th-century architecture, ed. ulrich conrads, trans. michael bullock (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1975), 119. 18. christian illies, “the evolution of autonomous beauty. sexual ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 80 il li es & r a y selection versus natural selection,” in the many faces of beauty, ed. vittorio hösle (notre dame, in: notre dame press, 2013), 133-168. 19. in technical terms this presupposes an “internalist” position for people’s belief formation and justification. subscription to “acceptance internalism” would seem a relevant position to hold where the judgment of a ‘public art’ like architecture is concerned. this question could be examined in greater detail, no doubt, as stefan koller has pointed out to us. 20. vicious mister fox’ serves a delicious soup on a flat plate to miss stork. and though she is hungry, she cannot eat it with her long beak. 21. walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” in illuminations, ed. hannah arendt, trans. harry zohn (london: pimlico, 1999). 22. including nathaniel coleman, “is beauty still relevant? is art? is architecture?,” architecture philosophy 1, no. 1 (2014): 81-95. for adorno, see theodor adorno and max horkheimer, “the culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception,” marxists internet archive, last modified february 2005, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm. 23. here we get close to, without endorsing, an analogue in the aesthetic domain to a ‘categorical’ imperative in the moral domain. (on the difficulty of pushing such an analogy too far, bernard williams, philippa foot, and john mcdowell have written eloquently.) but as we now go on to explain, we steer clear of brute categorization by recognizing cultural context. contextualization to cultural specifics also endows a principled deontological framework with the means to absorb some of the explanatory appeal of what is presently known as moral ‘particularism’. 24. for a thorough discussion of kant’s aesthetics, see paul guyer, kant and the claims of taste (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997). 25. f. n. sibley and michael tanner, “symposium: objectivity and aesthetic,” proceedings of the aristotelian society, supplementary volumes 42 (1968): 31-54. 26. frank sibley, “aesthetic concepts,” philosophical review 68, no. 4 (1959): 421. 27. elisabeth schellekens, “towards a reasonable objectivism for aesthetic judgements,” british journal of aesthetics 46, no. 2 (2006): 175. 28. christopher alexander and peter eisenman, “contrasting concepts of harmony in architecture,” lotus international 40 (1983): 60-68. 29. we say ‘most’ because many forms of architecture—paper architecture and exhibition architecture like the weissenhofsiedlung—can legitimately evade any obligation to enduring aesthetic relevance. 30. most of these categories are worked out in more detail in illies and ray, the philosophy of architecture. the seventh category is a new addition. 81 isparchitecture.com for categories of moral relevance see also warwick a. fox, “architecture ethics,” in a companion to the philosophy of technology, eds. jan kyrre berg olsen, stig andur pedersen, and vincent f. hendricks (oxford: blackwell, 2009), 387-391. 31. it should be added that the intended function does not have to be the function that the building realizes; see don ihde, “the designer fallacy and technological imagination”, in defining technological literacy: towards an epistemological framework, ed. john r. dakers (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006). 32. for the importance of moral imagination see melissa lane, ecorepublic: ancient thinking for a green age (new york: peter lang publishing, 2011). see also jane collier, “moral imagination and the practice of architecture,” in architecture and its ethical dilemmas, ed. nicholas ray (new york: taylor & francis, 2005). 33. see nicholas ray, “the cambridge history faculty building: a case study in ethical dilemmas in the twentieth century” in architecture and its ethical dilemmas, ed. nicholas ray (new york: taylor & francis, 2005). 34. for a discussion of proportional systems, which sometimes make this claim, see p. h. scholfield, the theory of proportion in architecture (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1958). the finnish architect alvar aalto said his wooden furniture was more functional than the furniture designed by his contemporaries in the bauhaus, which was metal-framed and cold to the touch. but he acknowledged that scientific analysis “gave out” at some point: “the demands that the chair failed to meet – excessive reflection of sound and light, high thermal conductivity – are actually merely the scientific names of the elements that together make up the mysterious concept of ‘comfort’.” see alvar aalto, “rationalismen och manniskän” (presentation, annual meeting of the swedish society of industrial design, may 9, 1935), reprinted in alvar aalto, alvar aalto in his own words, ed. goran schildt (new york: rizzoli international, 1998). 35. le corbusier’s famous villa savoye would be an example: it is impossible to waterproof it. 36. taylor and levine for example, claim that the study of the intersection of architecture and ethics enables one to “achieve a more comprehensive understanding of architecture and ethics than traditionally conceived by either moral philosophers or architectural theorists (particularly phenomenologists) alone.” the authors want to see aesthetic issues as an integral part of the function of a building: it would be impossible therefore to design a war memorial that was aesthetically successful if it could also be seen as endorsing an immoral politics. but as we have observed there are well-known instances of (what most people would consider to be) significant works of architecture that were designed to serve autocratic regimes, or contain uses that we would hardly sanction today: the alhambra, ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 82 il li es & r a y or the coliseum, or terragni’s casa del fascio at como. according to the authors, the prospects for philosophical investigation are limited, in any case, since they “question the effectiveness of philosophical enquiry, as commonly practised, for understanding moral values in relation to the built environment.” see william m. taylor & michael p. levine, prospects for an ethics of architecture (abingdon: routledge, 2011), 78. isparchitecture.com monism and pluralism: the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of architecture part i paul guyer i. monism and pluralism in the early history of aesthetics one way to think about the history of aesthetics since its inception as a properly named subdiscipline of philosophy in the early eighteenth century is to think of it as a debate about the right way to understand the relations among the terms of the neo-platonist triad comprised by the true, the good, and the beautiful: do these terms designate three separate domains of human interest, the theoretical, the practical and moral, and the aesthetic, the boundaries between which must be sharply defined and maintained, or do they designate three aspects of human experience that can and should be fused in practice, indeed do they suggest that the distinctive function of art among human activities is precisely to fuse our natural love of beauty with our theoretical and moral concerns, to provide a kind of unity in human experience that we otherwise do not find?1 immanuel kant might be thought to be the foremost of separatists rather than synthesizers in the modern history of aesthetics: his definition in the “analytic of the beautiful” in the critique of the power of judgment of the “judgment of taste” as “aesthetic,” where that means that it is neither cognitive nor practical, that on the one hand “in order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition”2 and that on the other hand “the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good...designate three different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure,” that “one can ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 26 gu y er say that among all these three kinds of satisfaction only that of the taste for the beautiful is a disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, neither that of the senses nor that of reason, extorts approval,”3 seems to assert that the experience of beauty has nothing to do with knowledge of truth or with practical interest of any kind, whether merely prudential interest in the gratification of the senses or a more elevated moral interest of some kind. by contrast, an author like anthony ashley cooper, the third earl of shaftesbury, seems to assert an underlying identity or at least continuity among the true, the good, and the beautiful when he says things like “the most natural beauty in the world is honesty, and moral truth. for all beauty is truth,”4 and “since for our parts, we have already decreed that ‘beauty and good are still the same’”;5 in fact, we do not even have to add these two statements together to get a threefold equation of truth, goodness, and beauty, for although shaftesbury continues the first of these statements by saying that “true features make the beauty of a face; and true proportions, the beauty of architecture; as true measures that of harmony and musick. in poetry, which is all fable, truth still is the perfection,”6 which might suggest that shaftesbury has in mind some formalist conception of truth, perhaps as coherence in the case of faces, architecture, and music, and correspondence in the case of poetry, his opening statement had made it clear that he also considers honesty as a kind of truth, and thus does seem to think of all truth as having a moral dimension, thus of the true, the good, and the beautiful as truly coextensive or unified. kant’s position in aesthetics is actually more complicated than these opening remarks suggest: they are part of an initial analysis of the simplest experience of beauty, but by no means a complete statement of his account of art, a fortiori of architecture. but before i say anything more about kant, i want to announce the thesis of this paper, which is that the history of modern thought about architecture is marked by the same kind of tension between separatist approaches on the one hand, which locate the value of architecture or even define it by a single aesthetic possibility, and synthesizing approaches on the other, which find in architecture the possibility of satisfying in a unified way a variety of human interests. and my further claim will be that even though there seems to be a powerful human tendency to prefer simplicity to complexity, not just in academic philosophy but in thought in general, there is rarely a good argument to be made for a separatist or reductionist approach as opposed to a synthesizing one: to put it simply, why should we ever prefer an impoverished to an enriched form of experience, at least as long as the latter does not simply become chaotic and overwhelming? 27 isparchitecture.com my plan for this paper, which will appear in two parts, is as follows. in the remainder of this section, drawing on my recently published a history of modern aesthetics,7 i will show how three different conceptions of the source of aesthetic value were introduced in the eighteenth century that were only partially synthesized by kant, although they were more fully synthesized by several others, but separated again, in favor of a purely cognitivist approach to aesthetics, in the hands of german idealists such as hegel and schopenhauer (only to be fully synthesized again by a few figures at the end of the nineteenth century, such as george santayana, and then again by a number of the most interesting aestheticians of the twentieth century, such as richard wollheim, although i will not have room to discuss either of these figures here). in the second section, i will show how the separatist tendency of idealists such as hegel and schopenhauer manifested itself in their thought about the specific case of architecture. in the final section of the paper, which will appear as part two, i will consider the synthesizing rather than separatist approach to architecture of john ruskin in the seven lamps of architecture (1849), although to be sure to be of continued use to thought about architecture today ruskin’s views must be modernized in certain ways, some of which he himself at least grudgingly foresaw. my general claim about the history of modern aesthetics goes like this. although the field was only named by alexander gottlieb baumgarten in his 1735 master’s thesis philosophical meditations on some matters pertaining to poetry,8 and the new name was not received into english until the early nineteenth century,9 this was an adult baptism: in some ways at least the field is as old as philosophy itself, beginning with aristotle’s response in the poetics to plato’s attack upon the arts in the republic, or even with plato’s own, perhaps anticipatory response in the symposium to the argument of the republic. in the history of modern thought about architecture is marked by the same kind of tension between separatist approaches .... and synthesizing approaches “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 28 gu y er the republic, plato argued, in the name of socrates but no doubt going well beyond anything the historical socrates had held, that the arts should be largely (although not entirely) excluded from the education of the future rulers of the well-ordered states, because they are cognitively worthless, being at three removes from the truth, and morally deleterious, because without a sound cognitive content they do nothing but exacerbate emotional tendencies that the guardians instead need to learn to control.10 in the symposium, by contrast, whether or not hewing more faithfully to the thought of the historical socrates, plato had argued that the appreciation of beauty in earthly things is the first step toward knowledge of the form of the beautiful itself,11 and in the poetics aristotle famously defended the cognitive import of art by stating that “poetry is something more philosophic and of greater import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”12 my thought is that this cognitivist justification of the value of art, the thought that the experience of beauty is actually the experience of something of the greatest cognitive import, perhaps the experience of a kind of truth that is not given to us otherwise than through the experience of beauty or is at least not given to us in such a palpable and moving form by anything other than the experience of beauty, remained the central idea of aesthetics throughout subsequent antiquity, the middle ages, and the renaissance, and continued to be a powerful presence throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and even twentieth centuries, where it remained the foundation of the very different aesthetic theories of, for example, martin heidegger and theodor adorno. the cognitivist approach to aesthetics manifested itself in the eighteenth century in several forms. one form was the view that the essential function of art is imitation, with the underlying assumption that the function of imitation is information. that all fine art could be reduced to the single principle of imitation was of course the thesis of charles batteux, who argued in his work of 1746 whose very title promised the reduction of fine art to a single principle that “it can be shown from the inner nature of the human understanding that the imitation of nature is the common object” of all the arts “and that they are not distinguished from one another by anything except the means they apply toward the execution of this imitation,”13 and who explicitly opposed plato’s worry that imitation could have a deleterious effect on morals with the argument (appealing to the authority of horace) that from imitations the best manners and morals can also be learned.14 but before batteux, the german christian wolff had illustrated his idea that pleasure arises from the sensory perception of perfection with the case of painting, the perfection 29 isparchitecture.com or function of which consists in imitation: “if i see a painting that is similar to the object that it is to represent, and contemplate its similarity, then i take pleasure in it. the perfection of a painting consists in its similarity” to its object. “for since a painting is nothing other than a representation of a certain object on a tablet or plane surface, so is everything in it harmonious if nothing can be distinguished in it that one does not also perceive in the object itself.”15 wolff ’s follower baumgarten might also be thought to have taken an essentially cognitivist approach to aesthetics, in spite of his subtle transformation of wolff ’s formula “sensory perception of perfection” into the formula “perfection of sensory cognition as such,”16 which might seem to foreground the representation or medium of a work of art over its object or content, when he begins his great unfinished work the aesthetica, the first philosophical treatise to be so entitled, with the topic of the “beauty of cognition,” and lists as the first of the beauties of cognition the wealth of material or content in a work of art, ubertas aesthetica.17 it is this aspect of art that is reflected in baumgarten’s conception of a poem or other work of art as a cognitively dense representation, one that is “extensively clear”18 or packs a great deal of content into a pregnant image rather than separating content into its constituents as scientific analysis does. a fuller reading of the aesthetica, however, shows that baumgarten was not just even a subtle follower of wolff, but that he had integrated into his outlook a second major approach to aesthetics, one that overtly rejected plato’s suspicion of the arousal of emotions through the arts and instead saw the arousal of emotion as the essential aim of art. an early but influential advocate of this new approach was the french abbé jean-baptiste du bos, who in his widely read critical reflections on poetry, painting, and music of 1719 asserted that “the soul hath its wants no less than the body; and one ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 30 gu y er of the greatest wants of man is to have his mind incessantly occupied,”19 or to avoid ennui, and then argued the arousal of our passions by affecting works of art, such as tragedy, is so to speak the most cost-effective way to avoid boredom, because art, unlike say gambling, as a result of which we usually end up losing our money, excites only “artificial passions, sufficient to occupy us while we are actually affected by them, and incapable of giving us afterwards any real pain or affliction.” “painters and poets,” du bos says, “raise...artificial passions within us, by presenting us with the imitations of objects capable of exciting real passions,”20 and indeed the only difference between “artificial” and real passions is that the former do not have the same after-effects and costs as the latter. baumgarten then quickly took this idea up by arguing that since what really moves us to pleasure or displeasure is passions, poems or other works of art are most effective when they offer not just cognitively dense images but dense images of affecting objects: “since affects are noticeable degrees of displeasure and pleasure, so are their sentiments those that represent something as good and bad,” although in the “confused manner” of the cognitively dense rather than analytically separated. “hence it is poetic,” he continues, “to arouse affects.”21 from the age of twenty-one, then, baumgarten’s approach to art was actually to synthesize the idea that art is a vehicle for a pleasing form of cognition with the idea that art is also a vehicle for a pleasing arousal of our emotions. yet a third approach to aesthetic experience in the eighteenth century is the one that we typically associate with kant but which was actually introduced in scotland, especially by alexander gerard in his prize-winning 1759 essay on taste, the idea, namely that aesthetic experience is a pleasing form of the free play of our mental powers with our representations, even ones with cognitive and emotional significance, where however the primary source of our enjoyment is the mind’s play with those ideas and not their contents. gerard shares du bos’s idea that the mind must be occupied, but begins from the idea that it can be pleasingly occupied by its own activity and does not need either emotional arousal or cognitive payoff to enjoy its activity. thus the first of the “simple principles” of taste that he enumerates is our enjoyment “of the sense or taste of novelty,” the “pleasant sensation” we have “whenever the mind is in a lively and elevated temper,” to be had especially when it overcomes “moderate difficulty, such as exercises the mind, without fatiguing it” and thus gives “play to our faculties.”22 this was the idea that was then taken up by kant in the argument of the “analytic of the beautiful” that the state of mind that could satisfy the dual constraints inherent in the idea of a judgment of taste, that it be based on a subjective experience of pleasure on the 31 isparchitecture.com one hand yet speak with a “universal voice” on the other, that is, postulate or even demand consent from all, is not the state of actual cognition but the state of the free play of our cognitive powers of understanding and imagination, a state in which “no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition” but which is nevertheless a state of the “animation of both faculties...to an activity that is indeterminate but yet, through the stimulus of the given representation, in unison” or “harmonious” (einhellig).23 but the “analytic of the beautiful” is only kant’s analysis of the logic of the judgment of taste and the experience of beauty that makes such judgment possible, not his theory of fine art. that comes later, presented (following baumgarten) in the form of a theory of the artist, that is, the genius, and when it comes it actually represents a synthesis of the new theory of free play with the traditional cognitive approach to art: kant’s idea is that the “spirit” of a work of art, whatever its medium, comes from “the presentation of aesthetic ideas,” representations that “one the one hand... strive toward something lying beyond the bounds of experience, and thus seek to approximate a presentation of concepts of reason (of intellectual ideas),” to which, “on the other hand...because no concept can be fully adequate to them,” can only be intimated by “a representation of the imagination that...by itself stimulates so much thinking that it can never be grasped in a determinate concept, hence which aesthetically enlarges the concept itself in an unbounded way,”24 a representation, in other words, that stimulates a free play of our cognitive powers. thus kant’s theory of fine art represents a synthesis of the traditional idea of beauty as a form of cognition of the highest things with the new theory of beauty as that which occasions a free play of our mental powers. indeed, one might ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 32 gu y er suggest that because kant assumes that the ideas presented by works of art are morally fraught ideas such as “rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc., as well as...death, envy, and all sorts of vices, as well as love, fame, etc.,”25 ideas that are ordinarily accompanied with great emotional impact, he must be on his way toward a synthesis of all three approaches, the traditional cognitive approach to art, the new theory of free play, and the idea of the emotional impact of art, which baumgarten had synthesized only with the first but not the second of these approaches. however, since kant is throughout at such pains to argue that any genuinely aesthetic experience is disinterested and produces only a simple feeling of pleasure but not any more particular emotion, i count him as someone who was willing to countenance only a twofold synthesis of approaches to aesthetics, not a threefold synthesis: he was willing to combine the traditional theory of cognition through art with the new theory of mere play with our cognitive powers, but always strove to keep the emotional impact of art at arm’s length. perhaps a better model for a thoroughly synthetic rather than separatist approach to art in the eighteenth century is the 1762 work by another scot, henry home, lord kames, modestly entitled elements of criticism, not “the elements of criticism,” to signal that the arts offer us numerous possibilities of pleasure, which cannot be reduced to a single avenue or even exhaustively enumerated.26 kames begins with what seems like an emphasis on the free play and emotional impact aspects of aesthetic experience: his first chapter concerns “perceptions and ideas in a train,” and argues that “we are framed by nature to relish order and connection”27 even when perceived without overt regard to truth, while his second, very large chapter concerns “what power the fine arts have to raise emotions and passions,” and argues that “the principles of the fine arts, appear in this view to open a direct avenue to the heart of man.”28 but there is a cognitive dimension to both of these as well: in the first chapter kames argues that “every work of art that is conformable to the natural course of our ideas, is so far agreeable; and every work of art that reverses that course, is so far disagreeable,”29 which suggests that we enjoy not just the orderly play of our ideas but correspondence between those suggested by art and by nature, or between representation and object, which is the essence of cognition; and kames continues our quotation from the second chapter by stating that “the inquisitive mind beginning with criticism, the most agreeable of all amusements, and finding no obstruction in its progress, advances far into the sensitive part of our nature; and gains imperceptibly a thorough knowledge of the human heart, of its desires, and of every motive to action,”30 thus implying 33 isparchitecture.com that the arousal of emotions by works of art is enjoyable not just in its own right but as a source of self-knowledge. kames goes on to enumerate many more “principles” or sources of pleasure from art: beauty, grandeur and sublimity, motion and force, novelty, resemblance and similitude, uniformity and variety, congruity and propriety, dignity and grace, and more, a list that suggests that art offers us the possibility of free play with formal aspects of its objects, e.g., uniformity and variety; of emotional and moral response, for example to propriety and dignity; of cognitive discovery, e.g. of novelty, and so on. there is no suggestion that these need be separated from each other, let alone that any one is more important to the other; on the contrary, the suggestion is always that the more “elements of criticism” a work of art affords us, the fuller and more pleasurable our experience may be -though at the same time, kames never makes an argument that the pleasures in these different dimensions of art are strictly additive, that a work of art that exploits more of these dimensions is always more pleasurable than one that exploits fewer. the list of elements of criticism is not intended as a rule of addition. yet this qualification being noted, it seems safe to say that kames offers a richer model of the possibilities of aesthetic experience than kant’s merely twofold synthesis does. both kames and kant raise the question of how architecture, with its inescapable concern for the intended function of its products, is to be fitted into an account of art that stresses any combination of cognition, free play, and emotional impact, none of which are overtly connected to functionality. they both remain within the vitruvian tradition of combining utilitas and venustas (in my opinion, two ends to be supported by an underlying foundation of firmitas as a means) by seeing the intended function of a structure as providing constraints within which the other aesthetic goals identified by their theories for all arts can also be pursued: as kant famously kant was willing to combine the traditional theory of cognition through art with the new theory of mere play with our cognitive powers, but always strove to keep the emotional impact of art at arm’s length “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 34 gu y er says in his account of “adherent beauty,” “one would be able to add much to a building that would be pleasing for the intuition of it if only it were not supposed to be a church”;31 but that also implies that there is much that can be added to a building -on kant’s theory, the expression of an aesthetic idea -that is consistent with its intended function as a church. but i am not going to expand on this point here,32 for what i now want to argue is that what followed the period of kames and kant was not a continuation of their synthesizing strategies, but a return to a singleminded cognitivism in the aesthetics of german idealism that took the better part of the nineteenth century to recover from within philosophical aesthetics, and, in a very general way, with however one major exception, perhaps even longer within architectural theory and practice. ii. a monistic approach to aesthetics and architecture: german idealism one might have thought that, particularly with the example of the syncretic or even eclectic approach to aesthetics of kames before them, the response of kant’s successors to the twofold synthesis of cognitivist aesthetics and the aesthetics of free play represented by his theory of “aesthetic ideas” would have been to lift his ban on the emotional impact of art and give that its proper due. indeed, it might even be argued that the germans had a domestic model for that in the versions of kantian aesthetics developed by friedrich schiller and the lesser known karl heinrich heydenreich,33 the latter in his own system of aesthetics34 published in 1790, the same year as kant’s third critique, and schiller in his unpublished “kallias letters” of 1793 as well as the letters on aesthetic education of 1795.35 however, the german idealists instead rejected kant’s theory of the free play in order to focus exclusively on the intellectual content of art: in other words, they largely removed from kant’s concept of aesthetic ideas the element that he thought was distinctively aesthetic and returned to the cognitivism of aristotle’s response to plato, or perhaps better, given the pronouncedly metaphysical character of their conception of the content of art, to the response of plato’s symposium to his own republic. this turn also had pronounced results for their treatments of architecture. i will illustrate this development with the cases of hegel and schopenhauer who make the platonic and therefore cognitivist affinity of their thought explicit. hegel asserted that “the beautiful is...the pure appearance of the idea to sense”36 without accepting the idea that the mind of the subject of aesthetic experience can play freely with the form of the sensory appearance of the idea or with the indeterminate relation 35 isparchitecture.com between the form of appearance and its content. for this reason hegel can say that “fine art [is] truly art, and...only fulfils its supreme task when it has placed itself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringing to our minds and expressing the divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit.”37 this might sound like a ringing endorsement of the enduring importance of all forms of art, but in fact it is the premise that leads directly to hegel’s notorious thesis of the “end of art,” the thesis that “art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past,”38 because hegel’s view is that art is actually competing with religion and philosophy to express the same content, but is doomed by the indeterminacy of its means of expressing this content: art is essentially cognitive but essentially inadequate as cognition. thus for a philosophical enlightened age such as hegel’s own, art is doomed to irrelevance, doomed to serving as a reminder of our more primitive past but as nothing more. and architecture is hegel’s poster-boy for this argument. hegel is actually responding to a fact that has been emphasized in some of the best recent writing on architectural theory, namely that the existence of determinate sets of forms within some architectural styles, such as the existence of the columnar orders in classical and neo-classical architecture, cannot justify the interpretation of architecture as a language, because without any determinate semantics for reference to ideas outside of itself, the use of such forms to organize the design of structures cannot really count as a linguistic syntax;39 for hegel, architecture is the paradigmatic art of the earliest phase of art, the “symbolic” phase, in which the idea that “in itself...is still abstract and indeterminate”40 seeks expression in forms that, as symbols, would in any case be too indeterminate to express even a more both kames and kant raise the question of how architecture, with its inescapable concern for the intended function of its products, is to be fitted into an account of art that stresses any combination of cognition, free play, and emotional impact, none of which are overtly connected to functionality “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 36 gu y er determinate content, the more fully developed understanding of the spiritual nature of reality that hegel means by “the idea.” hegel’s view is that it is the essence of a symbol that it “should not be wholly inadequate to its meaning” but that “still conversely, in order to remain a symbol it must not be made entirely adequate to that meaning”; in symbolic art “the content remains also indifferent to the shape which portrays it, and the abstract determinacy which it constitutes can equally well be present in infinitely many other existents and configurations,”41 and conversely “the look of a symbol as such raises at once the doubt whether a shape is to be taken as a symbol or not, even if we set aside the further ambiguity in respect of the specific meanings which a shape is supposed to signify amongst the several meanings for which it can often be used as a symbol through associations of a more remote kind.”42 hegel then illustrates this thesis with such examples as the pyramids43 and labyrinths44 of egyptian architecture, which are forms too abstract to express any very definite ideas about divinity, or the attempt of indian architecture to represent the “procreative force” of the absolute through buildings in the shape of “generative organs” with numerous “solid phallic columns.”45 and what we might have thought would count as one of the pinnacles of architectural accomplishment, the greek temple, is in fact nothing more than the form of an ordinary house46 writ large as a house for the statue of a god: it is only in the statue that it houses and not in the structure that houses it that art can make manifest “the free spirit” as “spiritual individuality equally determinate and inherently independent,” only the representation of a god in human form that “constitutes the centre and content of true beauty and art”47 —although on hegel’s account the classical representation of divinity in strictly human form will also turn out to be inadequate. thus architecture plays a strictly supporting role in housing a form of the representation of the spirit that will itself turn out to be inadequate and that needs to be superseded by a purely philosophical rather than artistic understanding of reality. that there might be other values in housing as such, independent of the function of housing a god, plays no role in hegel’s assessment of architecture. architecture therefore enjoys a very lowly place in hegel’s strictly cognitivist hierarchy of the arts, which themselves enjoy only a lowly place in the hierarchy of forms of cognition more generally. schopenhauer’s cognitivism takes a different form than hegel’s, but results in an equally lowly status for architecture. schopenhauer’s aesthetics might be thought to be a development from kant’s conception of the disinterestedness of aesthetic experience and the judgment of taste, but schopenhauer has no more room for the idea of free play than 37 isparchitecture.com does hegel,48 and looks to the experience of art only for a momentary release from the frustration of the ordinary life of the will, comprised as it is either by desires that go unsatisfied or that, even if satisfied, soon lead to more unsatisfied desires. for schopenhauer, aesthetic experience is an intuition in which the individual “has lost himself ” and become “the pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of cognition,” and this state is induced by the contemplation of an object, or the artistic representation of one, that has lost its own individuality and manifold connections to the world of will and use, and become only “the idea of its species.”49 by contemplating the essences of the species of things — in schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the characteristic forms of the different degrees of the “objectification of the will” that underlies all reality — or what he calls “platonic ideas,” notice, not “aesthetic ideas,” the human subject becomes detached from her own individuality and its woes, and enjoys if not positive pleasure then at least momentary respite from pain. “in this state, pure cognition draws towards us, as it were, to deliver us from willing and the stress of willing...but only for a moment: we are always torn back again from peaceful contemplation by willing, by the memory of our personal aims,”50 and ultimately need to turn from art to ethics to achieve a more enduring transcendence of our own painful individuality. thus in schopenhauer’s philosophy, as in hegel’s, the value of art and aesthetic experience as a whole is subordinate to that of a form of philosophy, although in this case to ethics rather than metaphysics. and even within the sphere of the arts, the value of architecture is minimal, because within schopenhauer’s cognitivist aesthetics what architecture represents is the most elementary forces of nature, but nothing about the human will, which is our only real clue to the ultimate character of reality. “the only intention we can attribute to” architecture is hegel’s posterboy for the argument that art is doomed to irrelevance, doomed to serving as a reminder of our more primitive past but as nothing more “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 38 gu y er architecture, schopenhauer argues, “is that of bringing some of the ideas at the lowest levels of the objecthood of the will more clearly into intuition, namely: gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, these universal qualities of stone, those first, simplest, and dullest visibilities of the will, the sounds of the ground bass of nature; and then, alongside these, light, which is in many respects their opposite.” 51 for schopenhauer, architecture does not attempt, as a symbol, to give us knowledge of the spirit, but fail at that; rather, through its structure, its solids and voids, through light and dark, it offers us platonic ideas of natural forces, but these forces are only the “ground bass” of nature, and do not seem very important. in particular, while no contemplation of platonic ideas can release us from pain for very long, architecture is decidedly inferior to music, where, paradoxically, we get the greatest release from the painful demands of our individual wills by contemplating as directly as we can the essential forms of willing as such.52 on schopenhauer’s account, architecture does give us some genuine knowledge, but not very important knowledge; and if knowledge is the only source of value in art, then architecture is not very important —“the objective significance of what architecture reveals to us is relatively small.”53 indeed, schopenhauer does not merely ignore other sources of potential value in architecture, its value for housing a variety of human functions, as does hegel, but specifically rejects such “other, practical purposes” of architecture as “foreign to art itself.” the “great merit of the architect consists in carrying through the purely aesthetic goals” of architecture, the exhibition of platonic ideas of gravity, rigidity, and so on, “in spite of their subordination to foreign ones.”54 schopenhauer must argue this, because on his theory of human willing in general, the attempt to fulfill specific practical purposes through architecture, as in any other way, is doomed to lead to failure and frustration in either the short or long run: either the work will fail to achieve its intended purpose, and thus frustrate anyone involved with it, whether directly or even only sympathetically, or even if it does fulfill its intended purpose, that will either just lead to satiety and boredom or else to other, frustrated desires. functionality can never be an enduring source of pleasure in schopenhauer’s pessimistic view of human existence, so whatever value architecture might have has to be in spite of its functionality, not in addition to or in conjunction with its functionality. we now have some examples of how the one-sided cognitivism of german idealist aesthetics led to reductionist conceptions of architecture and in turn to negative assessments of the value of architecture. i think 39 isparchitecture.com it could readily be shown that many twentiethcentury conceptions of architecture, particularly the linguistic models of architecture so effectively attacked by richard hill and edward winters but also forms of structuralist rather than programmatic functionalism, to borrow a distinction from violletle-duc,55 are versions of this one-sided cognitivism; and even if they have not led to overtly negative evaluations of architecture of the sort we have found in hegel and schopenhauer, they have at least sometimes led not only to simplified theories but to unsatisfying architecture. but rather than pursuing that argument, i will, in part two, turn to one nineteenth-century treatment of architecture that is pluralistic rather than monistic and thus in at least some ways points to the possibility of a more satisfying aesthetics of architecture. i refer to the theory of architecture adumbrated by john ruskin in the seven lamps of architecture, which even though it must be shorn of some of the romantic assumptions long ago pointed out by geoffrey scott,56 nevertheless offers at least a model for a synthetizing rather than separatist approach to architecture. part ii of this essay will appear in vol. 1, no. 2 of architecture philosophy. endnotes 1. frederick c. beiser stresses the importance of the neo-platonic triad, what he calls the “classical trinity,” to what he considers the rationalist tradition in eighteenth-century aesthetics in diotima’s children: german aesthetic rationalism from leibniz to lessing (oxford: oxford university press, 2009), pp. 41-44. 2. immanuel kant, critique of the power of judgment, edited by paul guyer, translated by paul guyer and eric matthews (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2000), §1, 5:203 (p. 89). 3. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §5, 5:209-10 (p. 95). within schopenhauer’s cognitivist aesthetics what architecture represents is the most elementary forces of nature, but nothing about the human will, which is our only real clue to the ultimate character of reality “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 40 gu y er 4. anthony ashley cooper, third earl of shaftesbury, sensus communis, an essay on the freedom of wit and humour, part iv, section iii, in characteristicks of men, manners, opinions, times, edited by philip ayres (oxford: clarendon press, 1999), vol. i, p. 77. 5. shaftesbury, the moralists, a philosophical rhapsody, part iii, section ii, in characteristicks, vol. ii, p. 112. 6. shaftesbury, sensus communis, part iv, section iii, in charackeristicks, vol. i, p. 77. 7.paul guyer, a history of modern aesthetics, 3 vols. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2014). 8. alexander gottlieb baumgarten, meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus/philosophische betrachtungen über einige bedingungen des gedichtes, edited and translated by heinz paetzold (hamburg: felix meiner verlag, 1983); reflections on poetry: alexander gottlieb baumgarten’s meditationes philosphicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, translated, with the original text, by karl aschenbrenner and william b. holther (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1954). the discipline of aesthetics is defined in §cxvi of this work as episteme aisthetikē, the logic of aisthetá or the objects of the senses. 9. the earliest occurrence of the word “aesthetics” recorded in the oxford english dictionary is in an 1830 entry in the penny cyclopedia (i.156), where it was defined as “the designation given by german writers to a branch of philosophical inquiry, the object of which is a philosophical theory of the beautiful.” 10. the argument for the cognitive worthlessness of art is made above all in book x of the republic, where it provides a foundation for the exclusion of most poetry from the education of the guardians previously developed in books ii and iii (376d-403c). alexander nehamas has discussed the connection between plato’s argument in book x, which is overtly concerned with painting, with the case of poetry in “plato on imitation and poetry in republic x,” in his virtues of authenticity (princeton: princeton university press, 1998), pp. 251-78, and stephen halliwell has demonstrated that plato’s argument in books ii and iii is really directed against allowing the young guardians to perform roles that exemplify the kind of emotional abandon that they will have to learn to control; see the aesthetics of mimesis: ancient texts and modern problems (princeton: princeton university press, 2002). 11. see socrates’s recounting of what he was told by diotima at symposium 201d-212c. 12. aristotle, poetics, chapter 9, 1451b5-7; translation by ingram bywater in the complete works of aristotle, edited by jonathan barnes (princeton: princeton university press, 1984), vol. ii, p. 2323. 13. my translation from charles batteux, einschränkung der schönen künste auf einen einzigen grundsatz, translated by johann adolf schlegel (leipzig: weidmanns erben und reich, 1770), p. 8. 14. batteux, einschränkung, pp. 34-5. 41 isparchitecture.com 15. christian wolff, vernüftige gedancken von gott, der welt, und der seele des menschen (1719), fourth edition (halle: renger, 1751), §404. 16. my translation from alexander gottlieb baumgarten, ästhetik (1750-58), translated into german with facing latin text by dagmar mirbach, 2 vols. (hamburg: felix meiner verlag, 2007), §14, vol. i, pp. 20-1. 17. baumgarten, ästhetik, §115, vol. i, pp. 92-3. 18. baumgarten, meditationes, §xvii. 19. jean-baptiste du bos, critical reflections on poetry, painting, and music, translated by thomas nugent, 3 vols. (london: john nourse, 1984), part i, chapter i, vol. i, p. 5. 20. du bos, critical reflections, part i, chapter iii, p. 22. 21. baumgarten, meditationes, §xxv, pp. 24-5. 22. alexander gerard, an essay on taste (london: a. millar, and edinburgh: a. kincaid and j. bell, 1759), part i, section i, pp. 3, 7. 23. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §9, 5:217, 219, pp. 102, 104. 24. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §49, 5:314-15, pp. 192-3. 25. kant, loc. cit. 26. henry home, lord kames, elements of criticism, sixth edition (1785), edited by peter jones, 2 vols. (indianapolis: liberty fund, 2005), original introduction, vol. i, p. 19. 27. kames, elements of criticism, chapter i, vol. i, p. 26. 28. kames, elements of criticism, chapter ii, vol. i, p. 32. 29. kames, elements of criticism, chapter i, vol. i, p. 27. 30. kames, elements of criticism, chapter ii, vol. i, p. 32. 31. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §16, 5:230; p. 115. 32. i have discussed this issue in “kant and the philosophy of architecture,” journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69 (2011): 7-19. for a more general discussion of kant’s concept of “adherent beauty,” see “free and adherent beauty: a modest proposal,” british journal of aesthetics 42 (october, 2002) 357-66, reprinted in my values of beauty: historical essays in aesthetics (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005), pp. 129-40. for another recent discussion of the implication for kant’s aesthetics to the theory of architecture, see edward winters, aesthetics and architecture (london: continuum, 2007), especially chapter 2, “modernism,” pp. 25-37. 33. on schiller, see my kant and the experience of freedom (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1993), chapter 3, pp. 116-30, and “the ideal of beauty and the necessity of grace: kant and schiller on ethics and aesthetics,” in walter hinderer, editor, schiller und die weg in die moderne (würzburg: königshausen & neuman, 2006), pp. 187-204. on heydenreich, see “the perfections of art: mendelssohn, moritz, and kant,” in kant and the experience of freedom, pp. 13160, at pp. 144-7, and “heydenreich, karl heinrich,” in michael kelly, editor, the encyclopedia of aesthetics, 4 vols. (new york: oxford university press, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 400-1. ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 42 gu y er 34. karl heinrich heydenreich, system der ästhetik (leipzig: göschen, 1790), facsimile edition with an afterward by volker deubel (hildesheim: gerstenberg verlag, 1978). 35. see friedrich schiller, “kallias or concerning beauty: letters to gottfried körner,” in j.m. bernstein, editor, classic and romantic german aesthetics (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003), pp. 145-83, and on the aesthetic education of man in a series of letters, edited and translated by elizabeth m. wilkinson and l.a. willoughby (oxford: clarendon press, 1967). 36. georg wilhelm friedrich hegel, aesthetics: lectures on fine art, translated by t.m. knox, 2 vols. (oxford: clarendon press, 1975) (based on the posthumous edition of 1835 by h. hotho), vol. i, p. 111. 37. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 7. 38. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 11. 39. see richard hill, designs and their consequences (new haven and london: yale university press, 1999), chapter 5, “meaning,” especially pp. 109-116, and winters, aesthetics and architecture, chapters 5-7, especially chapter 7, “architecture and semantics,” pp. 84-91. 40. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 300. 41. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 305. 42. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 306. 43. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, pp. 354-6. 44. hegel, aesthetics, vol. ii, p. 647. 45. hegel, aesthetics, vol. ii, p. 641. 46. see hegel, aesthetics, vol. ii, pp. 662-3. 47. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 432. 48. for documentation of this, see my “back to truth: knowledge and pleasure in the aesthetics of schopenhauer,” in alex neill and christopher janaway, editors, better consciousness: schopenhauer’s philosophy of value (chichester: wiley-blackwell, 2009), pp. 11-25. 49. arthur schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, volume i, translated and edited by judith norman, alistair welchman, and christopher janaway (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2010), third book, §34, pp. 201-2. 50. schopenhauer, world as will and representation, third book, §51, p. 277. 51. schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §43, p. 239. 52. see schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §52, pp. 282-95. 53. schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §43, p. 241, 54. schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §43, p. 242. 55. see winters, aesthetics and architecture, pp. 40-1. 56. geoffrey scott, the architecture of humanism, first edition 1914, second edition 1924 (new york: scribner’s, n.d.), especially chapter v, “the ethical fallacy.” isparchitecture.com book review: ugliness and judgment: on architecture in the public eye by timothy hyde princeton architectural press, 2019 223 pages, hardcover $35.00 reviewed by mark jensen ugliness and judgment is a delightful and frustrating book. timothy hyde’s project lies at the intersection of history, architecture, aesthetics, and public policy. by focusing on britain, or more specifically on a series of ugly moments in british architectural history, hyde goes part of the way toward narrowing what would otherwise be an unwieldy project. his aim is to answer the question, “…how does architecture participate in societal judgment?” especially judgments of ugliness (2). along these lines, he explains: …architectural ugliness must be explored not along a philosophical plane, but along the horizon that composes the difficult reality of architecture, which is not necessarily the material reality of buildings…but the realities of the norms, institutions, and standards of expectation that precede architecture. (8) in other words, hyde supposes that judgments of ugliness in architecture are not made from the standpoint of the dispassionate art critic, but instead from the standpoint of the people who must live, work, and play in and around the structures in question. organizationally, the book is divided into two book review ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 122 bo ok r ev ie w parts: (i) stones and (ii) persons. the three chapters that concern stones are “improvement,” “nuisance,” and “irritation,” wherein hyde works through a set of structures—one prominent structure per chapter—in which he explores judgments of ugliness as these judgments attach to specific types of socio-political engagement with architecture. “improvement” concerns the architect john woods’s attempt to improve the aesthetics of the city of bath using neo-classical elements; “nuisance” concerns the reconstruction of parliament with building materials that were becoming tarnished by pollution before the project was complete; and “irritation” concerns the south bank arts centre—a reviled example of 20th century brutalism in central london. together, these three chapters present a picture of interplay between buildings, architects, clients, and the public, where this interplay includes judgments of ugliness as well as attempts by parties to respond to these judgments. in persons, hyde takes up the topics of “incongruity,” “the architect,” and “the profession.” here, he is focused primarily on the persons rather than the buildings, especially the interrelations between architects, city planners, and society at large. “incongruity” is concerned principally with libel: criticisms of architecture in 18th and 19th century britain were met with libel suits by the architects, which only emboldened public engagement with aesthetic judgments of the architects work. “the profession,” concerns the relationship between particular architects, e.g., ludwig mies van der rohe, organizations like the royal institute of british architects, and the public. “the monarch” focuses on prince charles’ interventions, presumptively (on his part) on behalf of the public and in rendering judgments on architectural projects that he (speaking for the people) took to be especially ugly. the delight of the book is its engagement with very specific episodes in the history of architecture and the social and political consequences of architecture in britain, especially london. it seems to me that when the literature and philosophy of architecture abstracts from context—and not just the context of buildings, but also the social, political, geographic, and historical contexts in which buildings are built—it quickly becomes dry, unengaging, and boring. hyde’s book avoids these interest-killing abstractions: the discussion is immersed in the details of buildings, episodes, architects, commissions, courts, etc., that serve not only to bring ugly buildings into hideous life, but also to establish the context in which their hideousness can be put on full display. the english themselves are half of the delight, being at once both earnest and silly: earnest in their legal actions to protect buildings, in 123 isparchitecture.com their legal defenses of the reputation of professional architects, and in the attempt of the royals to prevent the construction of ugly buildings. they are silly in the architectural and planning choices that public officials and professionals make, in the juxtaposition of diverse architectural styles that span centuries, in the variety of social, civic, and political organizations who intervene in these affairs, and even in the names that they have given to their organizations, places and buildings: “ugly face club, “consistory court,” “mansion house square, “isle of dogs,” and “no. 1 poultry.” the delights of the book give way to a bit of a worry, which is this. it might be that the episodes in question fail to serve as paradigmatic examples or key representatives of broader trends in architecture, politics, and history. it may be instead that britain is unique: it is characterized by a deep-seated conservative culture and it lacks an overall architectural style. when parts of london were destroyed in wwii, large-scale rebuilding was required, which put these two characteristics into conflict. as a result, it may be especially difficult to draw any overall lessons from the history of ugliness in british architecture. to be sure: hyde is careful to point out that he is not undertaking an analysis of ugliness or ugly buildings or even judgments of ugliness as we find them in british cases. but one has a sense that hyde is attempting to draw overarching conclusions about way ugliness shows up in public discourse. at the end of the book, he writes: the judgment of ugliness signals the participation of architecture in a social circumstance in which resolution is not achieved by aesthetic means; instead, the aesthetic dimension of architecture, precisely because of its insufficiency, is transferred into other instruments of social consequence. ugliness, therefore, is the judgment of an irresolution and an insufficiency, but the discussion is immersed in the details of buildings, episodes, architects, commissions, courts, etc., that serve not only to bring ugly buildings into hideous life, but also to establish the context in which their hideousness can be put on full display. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 124 bo ok r ev ie w additionally is the instantiation of that insufficiency into social technologies, into concrete processes, customs, and institutions. (184) what he means to say, i think, is that the judgment that a building is ugly is a composite reflection of the aesthetic qualities of the building, the broader social and political context in which the building is built, and the background assumptions of the people making the judgment. but as noted above, it is far from clear that he has a sample of the size and type that would justify this judgment. perhaps insufficiency and irresolution are features of british culture that spillover into its architecture, rather than intrinsic features of architecture itself. another frustrating aspect of the book, evident in the quotation above, is hyde’s prose, especially when he attempts to draw broader conclusions. he tends toward a kind of theory-speak that obfuscates the points that he wants to make. this is frustrating not only because he will scare away educated but non-technical readers interested in the concept of the ‘ugly’ in architecture, but also because he is clearly on the right track—despite the idiosyncratic nature of his evidence—in thinking that the judgment that a building is ugly serves multiple aesthetic, social, and political purposes. he is also right in refusing to be caught up in the ideological or reductivist games of providing the definition of ugly architecture and then justifying this definition through cherry-picked examples. admirably, hyde instead uses his examples to demonstrate the enormous conceptual, social, and political range of the judgment of ugliness. some clarity about the concept of ugliness emerges in the discussion of specific buildings, such as his description of the ugliness of the south bank arts centre: …the ugliness of the south bank arts centre consists of an intrusive, situated dissonance. this dissonance results not merely from infelicities of function, from a building not adequately serving its programmatic demands, or from insufficiencies of symbolic or associational legibility. it manifests from a third register of ugliness, not within the shape or material of architecture, but that consists of the relation between the architecture and the person who encounters it... (80) as he goes on to explain, the third register is one of feeling: ugly architecture can evoke disgust, irritation, or antipathy. this passage is as close as hyde comes to stating succinctly that judgments of ugliness in architecture are matters of form, function, and 125 isparchitecture.com feeling. however, when properly qualified by individual, social, and political contexts, one will find that this is the view that he defends in the book. we might forgive hyde’s lack of concision in light of two broader truths. one is the old aristotelian proverb that we can only expect as much precision as the subject allows. given the range of disciplines in view, it would be a mistake to expect much here. but second, the british case, with its unique dispositions and history, invites hosts of qualifications. this is a nation-state lacking a distinctive, unique, and celebrated architectural style. its architecture is a bit like its cuisine, but quite the opposite of its music and literature and theater. in other words, it is easier to write about shakespeare and the beatles than it is to write about british architecture. building plans as natural symbols rafael de clercq at present, there are no hotly debated topics in the philosophy of architecture. one could take this as evidence of the dreariness of the discipline, but one could equally see it as a sign that the discipline has not been caught up in its own internal dialectic and thereby lost touch with issues that matter outside of philosophy. after all, when a (philosophical) discipline lacks a compelling internal dialectic, there is every reason for researchers in the field to look beyond its boundaries, to other, neighboring fields. in the case of the philosophy of architecture, these neighbors include architectural history, architectural theory, architectural criticism, and, last but not least, the practice of architecture itself. it should come as no surprise, then, that the topic of my paper is an entirely self-selected one from the field of architectural history and theory. more specifically, i will focus on a claim about building plans that can be found in the work of architectural historian carroll william westfall. the claim has received little attention, perhaps because it is considered implausible, or because it is made by someone whose taste in philosophy (aristotle) and architecture (jefferson) seems all too classical. whatever the case may be, in what follows i will try to argue that the claim is not implausible. i will, however, give my own interpretation to it, one that may not match entirely what westfall had in mind.1 still, the claim is supposed to remain sufficiently strong under the proposed interpretation to make it far from trivially true. there are buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds (e.g., ‘temple’, ‘dwelling’, ‘shop’) whose plans are natural symbols of the activities accommodated by those buildings “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 62 de c le r cq i. westfall advanced his thesis about building plans in architectural principles in the age of historicism, a book co-authored with robert jan van pelt in 1991.2 here are some relevant quotations from westfall’s chapter on building types:3 here it is argued that a building imitates a type which is timeless. the type provides a symbol of the purpose which the building embodies… the particular building is a conventional sign within which is embedded the natural symbolism of the type (van pelt & westfall 1991, p. 156). in this sense, [the type] is a natural symbol of the political purpose it accommodates. in both the most simple and most complex way, then, the type’s character is embodied in its plan diagram, and that plan diagram is about a purpose… (ibid., p. 160) each purpose has a corresponding building type with a characteristic plan diagram. the type embodies the continuity between the present and the past. it is that which endures because it is true. because it is true, it exists outside the time marked by history, and it has symbolic value—it symbolizes some particular political purpose (ibid., p. 166). the claim i wish to extract from the above quotations can be stated as follows: there are buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds (e.g., ‘temple’, ‘dwelling’, ‘shop’) whose plans are natural symbols of the activities accommodated by those buildings. it may not be immediately clear why this claim is extracted from the quotations. first of all, in the quoted passages, westfall is not saying that activities are symbolized; he says that purposes are symbolized. however, activities and purposes are not clearly distinguished in van pelt & westfall 1991 (e.g., on pp. 156, 1612). moreover, as we will see in section iii, the explanation of the symbolic relation may be roughly the same regardless of whether purposes or activities are symbolized. in other words, the plausibility of the central claim does not depend on which of the two interpretations is preferred.4 another interpretative issue arises from the fact that westfall does not say that building plans are symbols; he tends to say that building types are symbols. however, since, according to the second quotation, “the type’s character is embodied in its plan diagram” it does not seem too extravagant to take him as claiming that building plans are symbols or, if one prefers, that buildings symbolize by virtue of their plan. indeed, more recently, westfall writes that (particular) buildings “based on” building types are 63 isparchitecture.com natural symbols (unpublished, p. 14). in any case, my interpretation of the claim will henceforth focus on two expressions: ‘plan’ and ‘natural symbol’. my discussion of the claim’s significance—in particular, how it differs from similar claims—will have to wait until the conclusion, when a clear interpretation has been provided. ii. the plans that are supposed to serve as natural symbols are not diagrammatic representations of horizontal sections (these are “conventional signs”), but the horizontal sections themselves. moreover, they are the horizontal sections of particular buildings, for example, a horizontal section of the ground floor of the houses of parliament in london. however, if we follow westfall, these plans or sections are able to serve as natural symbols only because they exemplify a certain abstract shape; in other words, because they are tokens of a certain type. westfall identifies six basic types: the tholos, the temple, the theatre, the regia, the dwelling, and the shop. (for our purposes, we can regard a basic type as one whose symbolic significance does not derive entirely from its being an instance of another, more general type.) the activities symbolized by the tokens of these types are, respectively, venerating, celebrating, imagining (or “aspiring”), governing (or “exercising authority”), dwelling, and sustaining (or “trading”). the diagrams in figure 1 represent the abstract shapes the tokens have in common in virtue of being tokens of the same type. when introduced in this way, the list may strike one as somewhat arbitrary, and indeed westfall does not explain in detail how he arrived at it. he says little more than the list is based on, “[e]xperience with historical building and reflection about the historic within that experience as well as the knowledge available to us through our life in the present” (p. what distinguishes natural from non-natural symbols is the way the connection is established between the symbol and what it stands for “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 64 de c le r cq 156). nonetheless, it seems to me that the list cannot be rejected out of hand as based on someone’s parochial (say, western) experience. this may be evident in the case of the dwelling and the shop, but even the peculiarlooking tholos is exemplified by religious structures around the world such as mosques and chinese altars and pagodas. the apparent universality of the types is of course due to the fact that they are very general and leave many features undetermined, for example, dimensions of rooms, the placing of windows and doors, etcetera.6 however, such indeterminacy does not empty westfall’s list of significance as long as the shapes, and the corresponding activities, are recognizable and recognizably different from one another.7 that is enough for westfall’s list to be refutable. moreover, westfall leaves open the possibility that a different (and presumably, equally correct) list can be produced on the basis of a “different understanding of the way political life is given conventional form in constitutions and a different interpretation of the activities that constitute political life” (p. 157). however, in what follows, i do not want to defend even the thesis that westfall’s list is a correct enumeration of basic types. all i want to argue is that some such list (perhaps a much longer one) may be correct. that is enough for the claim under investigation to be plausible or at least worthy of further investigation. the claim extracted from westfall’s chapter makes reference only to horizontal sections. in principle, one could also take vertical sections into account. the word ‘plans’ in my formulation of the main thesis would then have to be replaced by something like ‘horizontal and/or vertical sections’. this should not affect (what i take to be) the substance of the claim, although it may make it more plausible. in what follows, however, i will largely ignore vertical sections; in part to remain as close as possible to westfall’s text, in part to keep things as simple as possible.8 for the same reasons, i will ignore complexities arising from the fact that part of a building may exemplify a type without the building itself exemplifying that type. iii. the expression that is bound to cause most puzzlement is ‘natural symbol’. in the sense that is relevant here, a symbol is an object (or an action or an event) that stands for something valued within a community such as a deity or the nation.9 two additional clarifications may make this definition a bit more helpful. firstly, an object stands for something valued only if it (i) has the capacity to call it to mind and (ii) in virtue of that capacity, is the object of attitudes normally directed towards the 65 isparchitecture.com valued thing (for example, reverence and respect). secondly, what a symbol stands for usually is not itself an object or at least not an object of sensory experience: it can be a past event, a supernatural being, a non-perceptual property, a disposition, and so on. in the present case, it is (the purpose served by) an activity of a very general kind such as venerating, celebrating and dwelling. what distinguishes natural from non-natural symbols is the way the connection is established between the symbol and what it stands for. in the case of a non-natural symbol, the connection is established by a convention such as the convention that x is a monument for y or that x is the flag of y. in such cases, the connection is arbitrary in the sense that a different convention would have resulted in a different connection. in the case of a natural symbol such as an icon or a relic, the connection is not the result of a convention, but of something figure 1: westfall’s alphabet of building (p. 160): (1) regia (2) tholos (3) temple (4) dwelling (5) theatre (6) shop. hatched areas represent solid forms. 5 ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 66 de c le r cq outside our will such as striking resemblance and/or spatiotemporal contiguity (contact). note that the difference lies in how the connection is established – by convention or not – not in how it is maintained. even if the connection between a symbol and what it symbolizes was established by convention, a change of convention may not result in a change of connection. for example, a country may adopt a new flag without the old flag thereby losing its symbolic significance. evidently, this raises the question how the ‘natural’ connection is established between building plans of a given type on the one hand and kinds of activities on the other hand. westfall does not explicitly address this question, but, as we will see, there is an answer that is compatible with what he says and which seems defensible. one may think that spatiotemporal contiguity can explain the symbolic connection between building plans and activities. after all, the symbolized activities (for example, dwelling) may take place in close proximity to the horizontal sections of buildings. however, on the face of it, this cannot be the whole explanation. the reason is that spatial contiguity can establish a connection only between items that have a location in space and time, for example, between a particular – locatable – building and a particular – dateable – activity that has taken place within it. but the connection that westfall needs is one between building plans of a given type and certain kinds of activities. because types and kinds are abstract objects, which do not have a location in space, they cannot stand in a relation of spatiotemporal contiguity to one another. one might think that it is enough to have spatiotemporal contiguity between tokens and instances in order to have a connection between the corresponding types and kinds. in other words, if activities of a certain kind always take place in buildings of a certain type, or vice versa, if buildings of a certain type always accommodate activities of a certain kind, then will this not be enough to establish a symbolic connection between the two? to be sure, this seems closer to the truth. it certainly is true that the actual use of a plan may enhance its symbolic value. by having a certain history of use, a plan may be better able to call to mind what is symbolized, for example, through recollection. however, it does not follow that such constant association can create symbolic value or that it creates it in every case. at least in our present case, it seems that other factors may be involved. in fact, in order to find out whether there are other factors, it may be worth investigating why certain types of plan have come to be associated with certain kinds of activity. for example, it may be worth asking why veneration often takes place in tholos-like forms. 67 isparchitecture.com an obvious answer is that this type is experienced as suitable or appropriate. this then suggests the following answer to our initial question: a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of a kind of activity y because x is (especially) appropriate for the accommodation of y. or, if one prefers the interpretation under which purposes rather than activities are symbolized: a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of purpose y because x is especially appropriate for the accommodation of an activity that serves y. one may ask what is more important, whether a building plan is experienced as appropriate or whether it really is appropriate? i think the latter relation is more fundamental, and in any case, in greater need of clarification (to be provided soon). nonetheless, it is obvious that appropriateness alone does not suffice to confer symbolic significance on a building plan. the appropriateness has to be recognized if it is to make the building plan stand for a particular purpose or a particular kind of activity. in other words, only manifest appropriateness explains symbolic significance. similarly, a piece of clothing cannot function as a relic unless it is believed to have belonged to a particular person. the idea that certain types of plan are appropriate for certain kinds of activity is one that occasionally shows up in the literature, for example, when it is said that variations on a plan and/or section occur in the history of building types until the ‘appropriate’ form has been found. to quote just two examples: in a healthy building culture, tradition and innovation are not contradictory but complementary concepts. in both cases, [a] building type is allowed to take on the most appropriate form (davis 2006, p. 153; italics omitted). a type represents the organizational structure of a building in plan and section. a type evolves until it ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 68 de c le r cq achieves its basic (i.e. its rational and logical) form… [t]he fact that airport terminals are everywhere in a state of permanent reconstruction demonstrates the fact that shelter and function have not yet found a suitable type. (krier 2007, p. 42) although ‘suitable’ and ‘appropriate’ seem to be used here in their everyday meaning (of ‘right’), it may be useful to spell out the idea a little bit more. echoing nelson goodman’s theory of rightness (see, for example, goodman & elgin 1988, p. 158), one might say that a type of plan is appropriate for an activity if and only if using it for the accommodation of that activity works; in other words, if using the type for that purpose helps to create a successful building, where ‘helps to create’ can be understood as designating a causal relation. nothing much hinges here on a particular view of what a successful building is, but it seems reasonable to demand – in addition to the vitruvian criteria of firmness, commodity, and delight – that a building be adaptable and in harmony with the existing environment.10 if using a type for the accommodation of a particular activity works, then at least part of the explanation must be that the use of the type fits into a larger building culture which itself works.11 as goodman and elgin say, “working tests fitting” (ibid., p. 159). for example, architects and building users unfamiliar with a type of plan may have no clue as to how a building based on it can accommodate the activity it is supposed to accommodate, and they may find it difficult to fit it into an existing context. in the building culture to which they belong, using the type may not work.12 when confronted with such a case, one should not jump to the conclusion that there is something wrong with either the type or the culture. one may just be confronted with a lack of fit between the two. nonetheless, the possibility of a deficient building culture should be borne in mind, especially when criticisms of the culture are widespread and persistent. this seems to be the case with our present building culture, whose shortcomings have been foregrounded by an ever-growing number of critics, including architects (e.g., bruce allsop, léon krier, paul rudolph), engineers (e.g., malcolm millais), architectural critics (e.g., peter blake), architectural theorists (e.g., brent c. brolin, howard davis), architectural historians (e.g., david watkin), philosophers (e.g., roger scruton), sociologists (e.g., nathan glazer), writers (e.g., jane jacobs, tom wolfe), and the prince of wales (charles).13 according to these critics, our present building culture is not very good at producing successful buildings in the sense that has just been made half-precise; in other words, it does not work very well. 69 isparchitecture.com the notion of a successful building, then, turns out to be essential to spelling out the relation of appropriateness between building plan and activity (which relation is essential to explaining the symbolic significance of certain types of building plan). of course, this makes the relation partly normative. from a hermeneutic point of view, this is a desirable consequence, since westfall often calls his types ‘normative’. however, westfall’s types are normative in a stronger sense: they are not just appropriate forms, they “provide the basic character of what the plan of the finished building must be if it is to serve its purpose” (p. 161; my italics). moreover, it seems that, in westfall’s view, the only condition that can get one exempted from the requirement of using the form for a particular activity is one in which it is (practically) impossible to use the form for that activity: “while the building types suggest how certain purposes ought to be accommodated by a building, circumstances do not always allow it to be so” (p. 161; italics in original). this may be overly strict. nonetheless, it is worth noting that, according to westfall, the requirement to use a certain building plan applies only to certain kinds of building. for example, he claims that it does not apply to farms and libraries, and for reasons to be given soon, one may suppose that it does not apply to factories either. moreover, the issue of whether the types are normative in a strong or in a weak sense (i.e., whether they are mandatory or merely appropriate) has little bearing on the main issue, that is, how building plans can function as natural symbols of certain purposes or activities. after all, if a building plan is required in a given context – if one “must” use it – then, a fortiori, it is appropriate to use it in that context. the normativity imparted by the notion of a successful building may seem to be incompatible with the claim that building plans are ‘natural’ symbols. however, the distinction between natural and non-natural symbols is not supposed to be an ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 70 de c le r cq instance of the metaphysically puzzling distinction between the descriptive and evaluative, causes and reasons, and so on. rather, the distinction was supposed to be a metaphysically innocent one between items whose symbolic significance is based on a convention and items whose symbolic significance has a different basis. (by ‘symbolic significance’ i mean an item’s standing for something valued.) in sum, ‘natural’ has to be understood as ‘non-conventional’. even if an item’s symbolic significance is not the result of a convention, there is still a potential for cultural variability. to see this, consider that, according to the explanation given above, appropriateness is a matter of working, and that working is a matter of fitting within a culture of building. as a result, instances of the same type of building plan may not stand for the same thing, or even anything, in every culture. it does not follow (from the fact that working is a matter of “fitting within a culture of building”) that there is no fact of the matter as to what is a working building plan or even a working building culture. compare: from the fact that different types of medicine work for different kinds of people, it does not follow that there are no absolute standards for therapeutic effectiveness. moreover, although i have again departed from what westfall suggests – like jungian archetypes, his basic building types seem to have universal symbolic significance – our disagreement (again) has no implications for the main thesis. as said, there is room for variability across cultures with respect to what a building plan stands for. however, within a culture, a building plan cannot stand for a completely heterogeneous collection of activities, even if those activities happen to be all instances of the same kind of action. in other words, there have to be constancies in the form the activities take (p. 158). otherwise there cannot be a type of plan that suits them all, and which can therefore serve as a symbol of the kind. if this line of reasoning is correct, it may explain why the activities of production and transportation do not seem to have associated types of building plan: there is just too much variation in the form that such activities can take. in other words, even if there is a type suitable to railway stations (cf. krier 2007, p. 51), there is no type suitable to all of the following: railway stations, bus stations, ferry piers, airports, rocket launchers, and so on. of course, this raises the question of when certain activities are too heterogeneous to be appropriately accommodated and hence symbolized by a particular building type.14 it seems to me that this question is best answered a posteriori, by examining the building types that have actually been developed. to be sure, certain expectations are reasonable on a 71 isparchitecture.com priori grounds. for example, it seems reasonable to expect that activities which are defined in highly general terms and which, at the same time, are highly reliant on technology (for example, transportation, production, and research) will not find appropriate accommodation in a single type or even in a plurality of types. in such cases, the appropriate form of accommodation is likely to depend on the nature of the technology and the stage of its development. however, it seems that such a priori reflection on the relationship between building types and activities can easily lead one into paradoxes. consider, for example, the apparently contradictory statements which the prominent art historian james s. ackerman issued about the villa (on what seem to be a priori grounds). one the one hand, ackerman writes: this makes the villa unique: other architectural types—the palace, the place of worship, the factory— have changed in form and purpose as the role of the ruler, the character of the liturgy, the nature of manufacture have changed, frequently and often radically. but the villa has remained substantially the same because it fills a need that never alters, a need which, because it is not material but psychological and ideological, is not subject to the influences of evolving societies and technologies. the villa accommodates a fantasy which is impervious to reality (ackerman 1990, p. 9). on the other hand, he writes: there is hardly a moment in the history of architecture when villas were less innovative than other architectural types… the villa is less fixed in form than most other architectural types because the requirements of leisure lack clear definition (ibid., p. 18). on the face of it, this seems inconsistent. how can the villa, and the activity or “need” it is supposed to serve, simultaneously be more stable and less fixed compared to other building types?15 one may try to resolve this apparent contradiction by saying that in the case of a natural symbol such as an icon or a relic, the connection is not the result of a convention, but of something outside our will such as striking resemblance and/or spatiotemporal contiguity “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 72 de c le r cq certain elements of the villa remain unchanged while others are subject to change. but how could the villa be “unique” in this respect? unless reference is made to particular elements, the statement that some of the villa’s elements change, while others do not, borders on triviality. of course, the only way one could reasonably make reference to particular elements is by investigating the matter empirically (that is, a posteriori). eventually, this is what ackerman does by distinguishing two types of villa that have survived from ancient times: the ‘compact-cubic’ type, which is regular (cubical) in shape, and the ‘open-extended’ type, which is irregularly shaped and more integrated with the natural environment (ibid., pp. 18-26). iv. the hypothesis put forward in the previous section is that a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of a kind of activity y because x is (especially) appropriate for the accommodation of y. alternatively, a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of purpose y because x is (especially) appropriate for the accommodation of an activity serving y. in brief, appropriateness explains symbolic significance. however, it seems that the two factors can be regarded as mutually reinforcing, since the reverse—symbolic significance explains appropriateness—is also true. when a building plan comes to stand for a certain activity, it becomes all the more appropriate to use it for the accommodation of that activity. this is of course most clear in the case of buildings accommodating ‘serious’ activities such as monuments, government buildings and churches. in such cases, it may be found awkward and even desecrating if the building plan calls to mind another, less serious activity; similarly, an ordinary dwelling or shop may be found pompous or pretentious if its plan calls to mind a more serious activity. furthermore, a configuration of buildings wearing their purposes ‘on their sleeves’ is more likely to constitute a meaningful whole. after all, we do not experience a configuration of buildings as an abstract configuration of shapes and colors any more than we experience an individual building in such a way. our knowledge of the actual purpose of a building inevitably informs our perception of it. if that purpose does not correspond to its apparent purpose, then this can be easily picked up as an oddity in an individual case, which may even enhance the significance of the whole. however, if such incongruence occurs on a larger scale, then our attention will tend to drift away from the whole to the individual buildings making up the whole. what we are left with, then, is no longer an environment properly speaking, but a sequence of buildings whose true 73 isparchitecture.com significance is to be deciphered. finally, if a building plan’s symbolic significance is somehow local—a possibility mentioned in previous section—then that may make it again more appropriate because it may create the ‘sense of place’ that is so much desired nowadays.16 v. this paper took its starting point in a claim attributed to carroll william westfall, namely: there are buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds whose plans are natural symbols of the (purposes served by the) activities accommodated by those buildings. my aim was to give an interpretation to this claim that makes it plausible and yet not trivial. moreover, the interpretation was supposed to remain close enough to westfall’s text to be able to count as an interpretation. in order to demonstrate the plausibility of the claim under the proposed interpretation, i explored the idea that certain types of building plan are appropriate for certain kinds of activities. my claim was that such appropriateness can explain the natural (i.e. non-conventional) symbolism of building plans, and can also be reinforced by it. now that an interpretation of westfall’s claim has been provided, it is possible to say something about its significance. to be sure, westfall is not the first to ascribe symbolic value to building plans. for example, rudolf wittkower (1998[1949]) already argued that the circular plan of certain renaissance churches symbolized divine attributes and even god himself. in eastern traditions of architecture, such symbolism seems more entrenched. for example, indian temple and palace plans were often based on cosmological diagrams called ‘mandalas’. similarly, in the temple of heaven complex in beijing, circular and square plans were used to allow for the worship of (a round) heaven and (a square) earth respectively (steinhardt 2002). to some extent, westfall’s is a generalization of such claims, since it on the face of it, this seems inconsistent. how can the villa, and the activity or “need” it is supposed to serve, simultaneously be more stable and less fixed compared to other building types? “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 74 de c le r cq ascribes symbolic value to the plans of buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds: religious structures, but also, for example, houses and shops. moreover, under the interpretation given in this paper, the significance of westfall’s claim extends beyond the art-historical. after all, on this interpretation, the symbolic significance of building plans does not depend on anything contentious. in particular, it can be reasonably doubted that the circle resembles god or heaven, but it seems much harder to doubt that certain forms are appropriate for certain activities, let alone that such activities exist. in other words, the circular plan symbolized something for renaissance architects (if wittkower’s interpretation is correct) and for 15th century chinese people, but the plans westfall has in mind can symbolize something for everyone capable of recognizing their appropriateness, which basically means… everyone. in short, westfall’s claim is not so much an interpretation of a particular (historical or regional) architectural practice, as an interpretation of architectural practice tout court. whether it is a correct interpretation of that practice has not been decided in this paper, but, hopefully, it now looks a little bit more credible. the previous paragraph may, however, invite an objection. in particular, westfall’s claim may seem to be not just a generalization of earlier claims about the symbolic significance of floor plans; it may seem to be an overgeneralization. to understand why, it may be worth recalling two necessary conditions for being a symbol: (i) having the capacity to call to mind something valued (ii) in virtue of that capacity, being the object of attitudes (e.g., reverence, respect) normally directed towards the valued thing. now it may be obvious how these two conditions can be met when what is symbolized is god or one of his attributes. if we are believers, such ‘things’ automatically command our respect. but what if the thing symbolized is, as in (one interpretation of) westfall’s theory, something banal like trading or dwelling? my inclination is to say that these, too, command our respect, although it may be less obvious precisely because they are so commonplace. nonetheless, there are times when the importance we attach to them becomes manifest. mircea eliade, for example, reminds us of the rites that accompany “the passing of the domestic threshold” (eliade 1959, p. 25) and the settling in a new house (ibid., p. 57). in a similar vein, john ruskin points to the “sanctity in a good man’s house which cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruin” (ruskin 1990[1880], p. 179). such remarks are difficult to understand if dwelling is considered trivial and devoid of intrinsic value. acknowledgments 75 isparchitecture.com thanks to paisley livingston, yu-ping luk, and especially caroll william westfall for helpful comments and suggestions. references ackerman, j. s. (1990) the villa: form and ideology of country houses. london: thames & hudson. allsopp, b. (1974) towards a humane architecture. london: frederick muller. blake, p. (1977) form follows fiasco: why modern architecture hasn’t worked. boston: little, brown. brolin, b. c. (1976) the failure of modern architecture. new york: van nostrand reinhold company. charles, prince of wales (1989) a vision of britain: a personal view of architecture. new york: doubleday. davis, h. (2006) the culture of building. oxford: oxford university press. de clercq, r. (2011) ‘modern architecture and the concept of harmony’, british journal of aesthetics 51, pp. 69-79. eliade, m. (1959) the sacred and the profane: the nature of religion. translated by w. l. trask. new york: harcourt, brace & world. glazer, n. (2007) from a cause to a style: modernist architecture’s encounter with the american city. princeton: princeton university press. goodman, n. & c. z. elgin (1988) reconceptions in philosophy and other arts and sciences. indianapolis, indiana: hackett publishing company. hamlin, t., ed. (1952) forms and functions of twentiethcentury architecture. volumes iii & iv. new york: columbia university press. jacobs, j. (1992) the death and life of great american cities. new york: vintage books. krier, l. (2007) architecture: choice or fate? london: papadakis publishers. the plans westfall has in mind can symbolize something for everyone capable of recognizing their appropriateness, which basically means… everyone “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 76 de c le r cq millais, m. (2009) exploding the myths of modern architecture. london: frances lincoln. pevsner, n. (1976) a history of building types. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. rudolph, p. (2008) writings on architecture. new haven, ct: yale university press. quincy, quatremère de (1999) the true, the fictive, and the real: the historical dictionary of architecture of quatremere de quincy. translated by samir younès. london: papadakis. rossi, a. (1982) the architecture of the city. cambridge, mass.: mit press. ruskin, j. (1990[1880]) the seven lamps of architecture. new york: dover publications. scruton, r. (1994) the classical vernacular: architectural principles in an age of nihilism. new york: st martin’s press. steinhardt, n., ed. (2002) chinese architecture. new haven: yale university press. thadani, d. a. (2010) the language of towns and cities: a visual dictionary. new york: rizzoli. van pelt, r. j. & c. w. westfall (1991) architectural principles in the age of historicism. new haven: yale university press. watkin, d. (2001) morality and architecture revisited. london: john murray. westfall, c. w. (unpublished) ‘the formal leg’, chapter 20 of the architecture of american liberty. wolfe, t. (2009[1981]) from bauhaus to our house. new york: picador. wittkower, r. (1998[1949]) architectural principles in the age of humanism. london: academy editions. endnotes 1. at least occasionally, i will allow myself to deviate from westfall’s terminology and metaphysics. for example, i will not always heed his fine distinction between ‘functions’ and ‘purposes’, and i will remain neutral on the ontological status of types. 2. henceforth, all references will be to this book (van pelt & westfall 1991) unless indicated otherwise. 3. the term ‘building type’ is used ambiguously in the literature, as quatremère de quincy’s historical dictionary (de quincy 1999) already makes clear. although de quincy did not make the different senses 77 isparchitecture.com much clearer (pace rossi 1982, p. 40, who claims that de quincy “gave a masterly definition of type”), it seems possible to distinguish at least the following two senses in the current literature. on the one hand (see, for example, hamlin 1952 and pevsner 1976), ‘building type’ is used to denote the functional kind to which a building belongs: factory, monument, train station, church, hotel, town hall, concert hall, school, prison, museum, shop, and so on. on the other hand (see, for example, davis 2006 and krier 2007), ‘building type’ is used to denote the structural kind to which a building belongs, as determined by its plan and/or section: centralized versus linear, greek-cross versus latin-cross, single-story versus multistory, row versus detached, with or without courtyard or loggia, and so on. westfall seems to use the term in the second sense, and so will i. of course, it is possible two combine the two senses, for example, when one speaks of the dumbbell tenement or the danish row house as a type. 4. more recently, westfall writes that “[t]he presence of the building idea type within the diagram and then the plan allows the building to signify, or better, to express, the activity it serves and therefore to connect it to the purpose that the institution or arrangements serves within the civil, religious, or cultural order” (unpublished, p. 12; my italics). this suggests that building types symbolize certain purposes by symbolizing (“expressing”) activities serving those purposes. 5. in personal communication, westfall pointed to a minor inaccuracy in the diagrams included in van pelt & westfall 1991 (p. 160). the diagrams in this paper should better match his intentions. 6. according to westfall (personal communication), these specifications “enter with the conventional configuration that the [plan] diagrams have taken within a time and a place and with attention to the actual functions that serve the purposes”. 7. by ‘recognizable’ is meant ‘recognizable in their instances’. in other words, it must be possible to sort particular buildings according to the types. for example, bramante’s tempietto in rome can be classified as an instance of the tholos type, which means that the type is recognizable. 8. westfall does not ignore the vertical dimension. however, in his view, differences along that dimension (e.g., elevation) do not help to differentiate types of building, but merely regional versions of types (see, for example, pp. 162-7). westfall does not ascribe natural symbolism to such versions, in part because he seems to equate ‘natural’ and ‘universal’. as will become clear, this is one respect in my reconstruction may differ from the original view. 9. “signs point to particular meanings such as functions and the relative ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 78 de c le r cq importance of similar things, while symbols embody the larger purposes that enliven the aspiration to live the good life of justice and nobility” (p. 156). 10. for an analysis of architectural harmony, see de clercq 2011. however, harmony can be understood here in a wider sense, including environmental friendliness. 11. building cultures are usefully analyzed in davis 2006, where the term ‘building culture’ refers to “the coordinated system of knowledge, rules, procedures, and habits that surrounds the building process in a given place and time” (davis 2006, p. 5). members of the culture include contractors, clients, architects, building users, bankers, and so on. 12. brolin 1976 provides several examples illustrating how the acceptability of a floor plan may depend on social customs and cultural values (e.g., pp. 42-3, 66-7, 99). 13. references are in the bibliography. 14. here ‘building type’ is used in the structural or structural-cumfunctional sense. see footnote 3. 15. ackerman acknowledges the tension by concluding that the villa “poses a cultural paradox” (p. 34). 16. the connection between architectural types and local character is stressed in davis 2006 (several places) and in thadani 2010 (p. 694). rafael de clercq responds question: if we must admit to some cultural variation for the view of natural kinds to hold plausibility, does then that recognition require us to accept that culture itself is a natural kind to preserve the argument? in other words, if, as many think, culture is significantly dependent on conventions to function at a high level, then haven’t conventions crept in through the back door? answer: the argument in the article does not imply that building types are natural kinds; only that they are non-conventional symbols. so let me rephrase the question as follows: if building plans symbolize by virtue of their appropriateness, and if their appropriateness depends at least in part on culturally variable elements such as customs, then how can it be claimed that building plans are non-conventional symbols? my short answer is that, although the appropriateness of building plans depends on the presence of conventions, it is not itself a conventional property. rather, it is a causal property (cf. “one might say that a type of plan is appropriate for an activity if and only if … using the type for that purpose helps to create a successful building, where ‘helps to create’ can be understood as designating a causal relation”). perhaps the following example can help to understand how a property can depend on conventions without being itself conventional. in western societies, handshaking is among the conventions for greeting. as a result, refusing to shake hands may cause someone to feel offended. when this happens, the relation between the refusal and the feeling is causal, but it is also dependent on the existence of a particular convention for greeting. q: what does an analysis of architecture as captured by symbolism or type do or speak to, within the philosophical or architecture discourse? for example, the westfall concept you argue for could be seen as a potential support for the traditionalists— leon krier, prince charles, and their fellows—in their struggles with modernists. do you agree and is this how these ideas apply? a: i am inclined to think that the main argument in the text—plans symbolize activities by virtue of being appropriate for these activities—is neutral between modernism and traditionalism. nonetheless, it is a fact that traditionalists tend to be more concerned with building types, as can be gleaned from my references. moreover, there is another argument in the text that may provide some support for traditionalism, namely, where it is said that “[w]hen a building plan comes to stand for a certain activity, it becomes all the more appropriate to use it for the accommodation of that activity”. for various reasons, local building traditions tend to contain types with considerable symbolic significance, and this is a reason for drawing on them if the quoted sentence is true. q: kant’s distinction between free and dependent beauty bears a relationship to what you discuss here. for kant, the beauty of architecture was decisively dependent on its functioning as intended. yet ultimately he opted for the idea that it wasn’t function per se, but instead a concept of functioning that determined the harmonious play of mental faculties that created an aesthetic experience of architecture. this idea has led ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 80 de c le r cq richard hill, for example, in his designs and their consequences, to argue that “we do not need actually to use a building in order to respond aesthetically to it: it will be enough that we see those aesthetic ideas that are incorporated into its design.” could you respond to this more indirect, or perhaps once-removed sense of utility as an alternative? a: i certainly agree that we do not need to use a building in order to experience it aesthetically. but the question probably is how, or to what extent, a building’s aesthetic or architectural value is determined by its symbolizing a certain activity or purpose. it is difficult to answer this question in a general way. for example, in some cases, symbolizing a certain activity may be a function of the building, in other cases, it may not be. similarly, in some cases, the symbolized activity may be one that the building was designed to accommodate; in other cases, it may be one that the building ended up accommodating; and there are still other possibilities. the notion of function enters here in different ways, and accordingly, there will be different answers to give for the different cases. in another paper (‘reflections on a sofa bed: functional beauty and looking fit’, journal of aesthetic education 47:2 (2013)), i argue that not all functions are equally important from an aesthetic point of view; for example, i argue that acquired functions are less important than original functions. if this claim is correct, then it is has implications for how the above question is to be answered. but in any case, i think there is no doubt that symbolization of activities is aesthetically relevant. this much is already implied by the sentence quoted in response to the second question, namely, “[w]hen a building plan comes to stand for a certain activity, it becomes all the more appropriate to use it for the accommodation of that activity”. isparchitecture.com wittgenstein’s architectural idiosyncrasy august sarnitz ludwig wittgenstein was deeply embedded in viennese architectural modernism, culturally as well as personally. his assimilation in recent historiography to existing trends within the local architectural movement—namely loos—are based on aesthetic and intellectual simplifications. the simplifications eclipse the distinctive contribution wittgenstein’s palais stonborough makes to architecture, to viennese modernism, and perhaps to philosophy. the present paper seeks to rectify this constellation by re-situating wittgenstein as an architect in his own right by re-sensitizing us to the idiosyncrasy of wittgenstein’s architecture [1]. the paper begins by looking at the wider biographical background setting the foundation wittgenstein’s involvement with architecture in vienna. it scrutinizes his own as well as the family’s wider personal connections to key figures in viennese modernism, with special focus on josef hoffmann and adolf loos. as will be shown, wittgenstein’s relation to these architects is, in stanford anderson’s terms, one of critical conventionalism [2]. wittgenstein builds on the conventions of pre-modern and modern viennese architecture, but re-interprets and re-appropriates each in a highly transformative and critical manner. the house’s design draws from the local design tradition of vienna and wider austria, making it historical without being historicist. the historical qualities of his architectural engagement are highlighted throughout the paper, particularly in part two, where a critical discourse on the architectural and interior qualities embodied in the wittgenstein ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 142 sa r n it z house is proffered. the significance of doing so is to demonstrate that wittgenstein rejects not only ornament and opulence, as comes to define the modern movement, but that he stands apart both aesthetically and intellectually from other modernist architects practising in vienna at the time. this paper will explore the lineage of aesthetic meaning as evidenced by architectural details in the house, with the assumption that these details reveal something of wittgenstein’s underlying rationale. wittgenstein’s relation to loos on monday, july 27th, 1914, one day prior to the outbreak of world war i, wittgenstein and adolf loos met in the elegant and ornately designed café hotel imperial [3]. loos was already well-known in vienna as an avant-garde architect, had gained prominence through his writings (such as the 1908 essay “ornament and crime”), and for his controversial work, such as the 1909-1911 house on the michaelerplatz. the house implemented many of the ideas published in “ornament and crime,” and serves as amongst the first haute buildings rejecting opulence. initially the building was poorly received, and among the critics was wittgenstein’s sister and future client, margaret stonbrough. the house was described as having naked façades and as having material opulence, with marble, mirrors and wood paneling interiors. importantly, it still lacked ornamentation, in the sense defined and decried by loos. the lack of such ornamentation dissociated loos and other modernists from questions of use. thus, loos stood out in vienna for his radical thinking and his work, leading him to recognition across europe and the modernizing world. loos’ difference from others in the viennese context must have made an impression on wittgenstein, who until this meeting with loos had engaged only mechanical engineering and logic as fields of inquiry. the impact of meeting loos’ distinction is apparent as after meeting loos, wittgenstein returned home—a five-minute walk—to his parent’s house. his family’s city palace had interiors much like those of the hotel imperial —and like that hotel, would have likely been rejected by loos’ ideals of simplicity and austerity. the juxtaposition between the contemporary and opulence of empire and monarchy—even for the business elite—was stark and evidently present in wittgenstein’s everyday reality. the next day, austria-hungary declared war on serbia. eleven days later wittgenstein volunteered to serve. during the war, wittgenstein met and befriended paul engelmann to whom he was introduced by adolf loos, and who he would later work with on the wittgenstein house. 143 isparchitecture.com also in the war period, wittgenstein worked on his tractatus, the only work published in his lifetime. he completed the text during the summer of 1918, between july and september during a break from the front. in november 1919, after the end of the war and his release from captivity in august, wittgenstein returned to vienna. within just two weeks, wittgenstein left for a meeting with his friend adolf loos full of expectation, but he was appalled by loos and his ideas about a kunstamt (a state office or ministry for art). wittgenstein writes: a few days ago i looked up loos. i was horrified and nauseated. he has become infected with the most virulent bogus intellectualism! he gave me a pamphlet about a proposed ‘fine arts office’, in which he speaks about a sin against the holy ghost. that surely is the limit! i was already a bit depressed when i went to loos but that was the last straw […] [4]. the episode suggests the end of wittgenstein’s friendship with loos as a person. true to his word, wittgenstein would never meet loos again. his relationship to loos’ aesthetic and architectural ideas, however, is more complicated. while living in the remote reaches of norway between 1912 and 1914, wittgenstein went to great troubles to receive subscription copies of die fackel. the viennese cultural newspaper edited by karl kraus regularly reported on loos and other mainstays of viennese intelligentsia. while rejecting the radical changes in loos’ thinking after world war i, wittgenstein’s attempts to develop a nuanced response to loos’ earlier work, both written and built, continued to interest him. the lingering interest in the development of viennese architectural modernism is manifest in the house as wittgenstein’s entrance hall in the palais stonborough resembles loos’ design decisions at the michaelerplatz. the hall of the wittgenstein [wittgenstein] was appalled by loos and his ideas about a kunstamt “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 144 sa r n it z house has four prominently placed columns and overall meticulous regard for precise dimensions, which demonstrates both resemblance departure from loos’ surface detailing in other regards. looking to kraus’ 1930 summary of loos appearing in die fackel, parallels between wittgenstein’s later writing and the contemporary thought of viennese designers are found: adolf loos and i […] have done nothing more than to show that there is a difference between a urn and a chamberpot. it is in this difference that culture is given a space to play itself out. the others, those with positive knowledge, however, divide themselves between those who would use the urn as a chamberpot and those who would use the chamberpot as an urn [5]. similar remarks are found in wittgenstein’s student recorded lectures on aesthetics a year or two later in cambridge. he observed a deterioration (a verfall in loos’ terms) in the culture and craft of architecture [6]. in doing so, wittgenstein targets the increasing failure of architects and patrons to differentiate a room and its furnishings, which he believed should be differentiated according to their proper use and place [7]. we now, he said, live in an age where dining-room chairs are put up in drawing-rooms and vice versa, with no understanding of what is inappropriate or incorrect about that practice—correctness being, for wittgenstein, a central term of aesthetic commendation, rather than a descriptor of appearance such as beautiful [8]. wittgenstein states: a picture of what happens in architecture […] when thousands of people are interested in the minutest details [, as opposed to a] picture of what happens when a dining-room table is chosen more or less at random, when no one [any longer] knows where it came from. ([…] a period in which everything is fixed and extraordinary care is lavished on certain details […]. a great number of people are highly interested in a detail of a dining-room chair. and then there is a period when a dining-room chair is in the drawing-room and no one knows where this came from or that people had once given enormous thought in order to know how to design it.) [9]. the parallels the above lines to kraus’ and loos’ reflections on urns and chamber pots are rather pronounced and the intellectual genealogy clear. moreover, wittgenstein’s use of the term ‘detail’ may relate to its use in craftsmanship. in craftsmanship the term is used to denote precision and adequacy to resolve design problems, specifically of an architectural character. in light of detail’s meaning for wittgenstein, the term certainly plays a role in wittgenstein’s own architecture. for at the built level, wittgenstein’s own architectural decisions at palais stonborough fully reflect the 145 isparchitecture.com distinctions of spatial use, dictated by a refined understanding and appreciation of propriety, both social and aesthetic, his later lectures on aesthetics reflect upon. the alleged austerity of wittgenstein’s interiors, for instance, is the result of historians’ interpretations of photos of the house preor postuse as wittgenstein’s architecture in its intended state [10]. when furbished by his sister margaret, the house’s furnished interior fully reflected the dictates of good taste and propriety wittgenstein eminently desired and demanded for his architecture, as he expressly wrote to his sister later on: only yesterday i had to think of the house in the kundmanngasse—i don’t know why—and of how pleasingly and pleasantly you have furbished it. in these matters we’re on the same wave length [11]. in contrast to loos, who regarded the wall and the finishes the prerogative of the architect, wittgenstein left such matters at the discretion of the client. margaret, the client in this case, furnishes the house in a manner that is both independent from ludwig’s design intentions and which is in contrast to the loosian standard in vienna at the time. she is particularly expressive with her furnishments on the upper floors where she has her private spaces, and which she adorns with tapestries and furniture that are textured and warm. thus, the standard historical characterizations of the house’s apparent austerity as an aesthetic preference—or preference for the naked wall—appears misconstrued. margaret breaks, ludwig follows: from loos and hoffmann to wagner and perco between 1914 and 1919, a great deal transpired in the wittgenstein family. shortly before the first world war, ludwig’s closest sister margaret bought the villa toskana in gmunden on lake traunsee in austria’s unofficial lake district, the salzkammergut. over nearly two decades, margaret dedicated her the standard historical characterizations of the house’s apparent austerity as an aesthetic preference [...] appears misconstrued “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 146 sa r n it z energies to the renovation and modernization of the historic building. the process concludes in 1925 and is immediately followed by her next architectural project: the palais stonbrough (1926-1928) [12]. with the exception of his time during the war, ludwig would spend every summer in the increasingly modernized villa toscana, and would follow the building’s transformation closely down to the minutest of details. to get the renovation under way, margaret contracted a relatively little known young architect, rudolf perco—and not, as is often suspected, hoffmann [13]. margaret’s choice of perco over the family architect hoffmann (see below) indicates an emancipatory act on her part, and certainly foreshadows her analogous decision to contract paul engelmann over the established radicals like loos. perco’s significance as an architect resides in part in his discipleship with otto wagner, and wagner’s ground-breaking efforts in modernizing viennese architecture. as head of the architecture school at the vienna fine arts academy, wagner in fact founded a school. perco became a star pupil, and perco’s own architectural output at gmunden and beyond demonstrates his wagnerian tutelage [14]. in its orientation, wagner’s program pursued a new orientation in the training and practice of architectural design, one we could dub constructive jugendstil. that is, while wagner’s aesthetics was partly informed by art noveau sensitivities, he sought to anchor his visual design choices in the rationale of construction and function. in his famous postal savings bank (1905), for instance, wagner aesthetically elevates the duct work responsible for the building’s ventilation and heating to aesthetic details. the duct work is designed to look like stelaes, stylized columns and do not recall their function directly, as standard artifacts like radiators do (see figures 1 & 2). here, the building systems hold aesthetic significance and meaning. whereas in hoffmann’s work, it is carefully hidden away under, or under what may be interpreted as surface ornamentation. perco followed wagner’s example in the villa toscana and turned the radiators into aesthetic elements of the architectural interior. as would, in turn, wittgenstein in the palais stonborough’s use of radiators (see figures 1 and 2). so there is a clear lineage, not simply of an aesthetic decision or a built detail as such but also its underlying rationalization. if ludwig’s future engagement with architecture is prefigured by the villa toscana, so is margaret’s. in contrasting perco, margaret acted in favor of a decidedly modernist architect. she takes a difficult step forward in that she contracts out the work to a relatively untried-and-tested architect. she invests her money, free time, and potentially her own reputation on their promises. margaret sets the building agenda as the primary client 147 isparchitecture.com where there is a set of knowns or facts there is a basis for clarity “ ” figures 1 & 2: (top to bottom). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 148 sa r n it z which determines the (re)programming and aesthetics of the informal spaces in both building projects. just as importantly, she departs from hoffmann’s influence. the departure is significant as hoffman was the architect of her fully furnished berlin flat, a wedding gift from her father. hoffmann never worked with, but only for, margaret. margaret in turn would later emancipate herself aesthetically after her father’s death, by nearly entirely leaving behind the wedding gift of a house. except for two pieces of furniture, one of them designed by hoffmann, margaret left everything behind in berlin when re-locating to vienna to the palais schönborn [15, 16]. the viennese architects hoffman and wagner are as important to our understanding of margaret’s future choices (as a patron) as they are to our understanding of wittgenstein’s architectonic idiosyncrasy. let us first discuss wittgenstein’s relation to josef hoffmann’s work. returning to the biographical narrative at wittgenstein’s 1914 horrific and nauseating break from loos, wittgenstein spends ten days at his parents’ lavish country home. the building was partially remodeled by hoffmann, founding member of the wiener werkstätte and member of the secession. hoffmann presented, in many senses, an antithesis to loos both artistically and intellectually. hoffmann realized numerous architectural projects for the wittgenstein family in close cooperation with ludwig’s father and was responsible for his sister margaret’s first apartment in berlin in 1905. hoffman was a major proponent of the gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) where the artist delivers the complete package deal for the client. a building, interior furnishes, cutlery, crockery, and even jewelry are tailormade to perfectly cohere in the total ensemble. the pieces are assembled by the architect, having solicited nothing from the client’s own aesthetic inclinations. the client willingly signed up for the total treatment, wherein the architect designs their entire domestic realm. wittgenstein would later reject the gesamtkunstwerk position—leaving all furnishing and other household objects to the discretion of the house’s patron and tenant. he was morally open to a collaged or unplanned mingling of objects in his house, provided they bespoke a certain quality and contextual propriety. in this rejection of gesamtkunstwerk, he is in keeping with loos’ idea and remaining critical of hoffman that architecture would be confined to what was necessary from a use perspective. the confinement of aesthetics and design to use was not just critical of hoffman, but restricted aesthetic universalism and excess. so much so that aesthetic universalism and excess is banished from the architect’s scope of work. 149 isparchitecture.com wittgenstein viewed loos’ aesthetic confinement not simply as the boundaries of architectural aesthetics, but further as the limits of an architect’s role in building. the limits of the architect’s role is the design of the house, leaving the inhabitants to develop its interior aesthetic as they choose. the demarcating the architect’s scope of work runs parallel to wittgenstein’s position in his earlier writings in the tractatus. wittgenstein views the factual or what is the case, that which one can speak about clearly. his valuing of the factual translates directly into the way he approaches building and the design questions associated with it, such that one might argue that the wittgenstein house has a certain clarity of expression itself. for him, where there is a set of knowns or facts there is the basis for clarity. transitioning beyond the knowns, or the basis for clarity, is otherwise a transition into the mystical. wittgenstein famously critiques attempts to express the mystical, arguing that one must remain silent, at least if one is to speak philosophically. for wagner, some facts manifest from a design brief that the architect cannot merely design around but rather has to expressively accommodate —he called this sachzwang. though wagner had introduced the notion of sachzwang to viennese architecture at the close of the century, wittgenstein’s practice in architecture is complimentary to wagner’s position to a certain extent [17]. indeed, there are architectural echoes to wagner in wittgenstein’s house. looking to wagner’s 1912-1913 lupus sanatorium, there is a precision in the placement of the main columns and cross-beams hitherto absent in viennese architecture, and taken up only again later in wittgenstein’s. regarding both wagner and hoffmann, there is a nuanced taking over of pre-existing viennese ideas that wittgenstein adapted to meet his own situation and goals. at the same time and in contrast wittgenstein apparently saw no reason to copy any other of the renovated villa’s detailing “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 150 sa r n it z to loos, wittgenstein had no personal or biographical confrontation with hoffmann or wagner. while wagner’s early death in 1918 may explain this, regarding hoffmann this is all the more extraordinary since wittgenstein would spend many a summer in the visually opulent interior of a hoffmann design during his summers, at the family’s hunting lodge. nor do we have records of written commentary on hoffmann’s design stance. arguably, wittgenstein was not compelled to articulate his reaction to hoffman’s work in that it did not provoke as loos’ later musings would [18]. at the built level, however, traces of commentary and reaction to both architects exist. without sharing hoffmann’s predilection for jugendstil ornamentalism, wittgenstein carefully observed and copied architectural details of interest to him. traveling to another family-owned building, the villa toscana in gmunden rudolf perco had renovated, wittgenstein recorded a couple of technical details. the details would then re-appear in his own house, especially regarding heating elements, including the famous radiators and window mechanisms. perco’s pioneering contribution was to introduce the so-called french or parisian windows into austria. parisian windows are more generously dimensioned than typical parapet viennese windows, in that they extend from the floor level upwards. vienna’s harsh winter climate and lack of proper interior heating technology had previously disinclined vienna’s architects to use parisian windows. wittgenstein, observing perco’s introduction of parisian windows at villa toscana, would now bring them to his vienna project, and employ parisian windows on all levels (which not even loos had done). finally, perco had deliberately used a fitting that connected each window’s two metal panes, which was an odd choice of materials at the time (see figures 3 and 4). wittgenstein took over perco’s distinctive fitting design and his choice of materials, deviating from loos’ approach which included wooden window fixture. at the same time, wittgenstein apparently saw no reason to copy any other of the renovated villa’s detailing—confirming once more his eclecticism towards the reservoir of viennese modernism and traditionalism. or again, in the palais schönborn-batthyány wittgenstein’s sister previously lived in, wittgenstein observed a built detail then common in viennese architecture of the period—that the first interior door would rest, not on the floor, but on the first step of the short set of stairs leading up to the second interior hall (see figure 5 and 6). (the same was true of the family’s vienna palais at alleegasse 16, now known as palais wittgenstein.) again, this was not purely an aesthetic choice but served utilitarian 151 isparchitecture.com figure 4: view of perco’s window stop fitting. figure 3: interior view of perco’s windows from a distance. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 152 sa r n it z ends—here, to ensure that any residual muck or moisture accrued from rain or storm water would not tarnish the door or seep into the interior. wittgenstein takes over that detail, stripped of all period ornamentation of the preor jugendstil era, in his own house—in a manner, and like so much else of the house, an historical ostension without being historicist. for, as he says in his 1938 lectures on aesthetics, deterioration in architecture occurs “when you get imitations,” that is, wholesale copying of details with no understanding of “where this came from” i.e. what original use or purpose was behind the design detail [19, 20]. in this sense, and with regard to other built details already discussed (and to be discussed below), wittgenstein builds levels of meaning into his architecture, and operates on indirect ostension rather than explicit copying, in line with his later discussions of ostensive explanation in the philosophical investigations [21]. these ‘levels of meaning’ operate on, and their discernment accordingly relies on, an understated familiarity with local viennese architecture, elements of which wittgenstein used with great ease as they were part of the everyday life he was immersed in. to later art-historical interpreters, especially those visiting the house (and indeed town) for a brief period only, wittgenstein’s points of reference will seem elusive, as they must, for anybody not sharing his form of life and cultural frame of reference [22]. finally, points of contact to his (later) philosophical reflections, such as ostensive explanation, need not indicate causal relations of influence—where an idea in architecture ‘leads wittgenstein to’ having an idea in philosophy [23]. rather, wittgenstein exercised a similar stance or orientation in both domains, leading to similar though not necessarily overlapping (let alone, identical) outputs in architecture and philosophy. before investigating the results of wittgenstein’s engagement with architecture, his path toward that engagement will be briefly examined. wittgenstein’s path to architecture with the villa toscana completed in 1925, margaret decided to build a city mansion in a viennese suburb. she approached paul engelmann, a project architect who had frequently worked with loos, but he had a limited oeuvre on his own. around the same time, wittgenstein returns to vienna after an unsuccessful and badly concluded attempt at becoming an elementary school teacher [24]. he writes to a trusted friend and future colleague at cambridge university—none other than john maynard keynes—in late 1925: i have decided to remain [a] teacher, as long as i feel that the troubles into which i get 153 isparchitecture.com figures 5 & 6: view of the palais wittgenstein (above) in contrast to the wittgenstein house (below). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 154 sa r n it z that way, may do me any good. […] if i leave teaching off i will probably come to england and look for a job there, because i am convinced that i cannot find anything at all possible in this country. in this case i will want your help [sc. to secure a job in teaching] [25]. seven months later, a major incident with a student forces wittgenstein to resign as a teacher and exposes him to federal court hearings, which solidifies his grim prediction as to his future employability in austria— certainly where the public sector educational institutions were concerned. in these circumstances, his sister’s offer that same year to act, not just as architectural patron but, as de facto employer for her compromised brother must have appeared as the only reprieve short of exile. margaret’s offer of employment further coincided with the family’s alleged attempts at the time to hush up wittgenstein’s humiliating court case [26]. these are the circumstances in which wittgenstein finds himself architect of a house. wittgenstein’s foray into architecture, in that light, cannot simply be attributed to a purely vocational decision on wittgenstein’s part, but was forced on him by external circumstances. the circumstances shed new light on wittgenstein’s remark that he regarded work on architecture as work on oneself [27]. he may have argued that working on architecture is working oneself, because in his own case, he worked on himself through his engagement with architecture [28]. in 1926 ludwig becomes involved in margaret’s project to build a city mansion at the express invitation of both his sister and engelmann. from this point on, wittgenstein described himself as an architect, and no longer as a teacher, as documented by his paperwork re-establishing his residency in vienna. rather than merely supporting the project at a distance, ludwig gradually takes over the entire design process his friend paul engelmann had already begun. by may 1926, wittgenstein was living in vienna again and had started his new two-year long stint as an architect. wittgenstein’s involvement in the design process at this relatively late stage can be seen as a reaction of sorts to the project’s earlier stages. the sister, having rejected loos and hoffmann alike (the first two ways to approach the project), and then having contracted perco (the third way), now finds a fourth way to approach the building project. ludwig helps to furnish an architectural mantle on which to pin her own ideas. margaret wittgenstein, well embedded in the highly cultured viennese upper class, knew what she would have received from loos and hoffmann. it was chic at the time to contract one of the two architects. collectors of klimt paintings leaned toward hoffmann, who frequently worked with klimt, and 155 isparchitecture.com collectors of schiele leaned toward loos. though well-versed in the aesthetic trends championed by the liberal viennese upper class, margaret wittgenstein deliberately side-stepped them as a patron—and made her brother to understand that she expected likewise of him as her architect. that is, margaret was not just wittgenstein’s immediate reason for engaging architectural design, but served as an ally in a departure from the established norms of viennese modernism. the finished house was to overcome both the architectural and cultural conventions of its time while additionally reflecting the growing emancipation of its owner. the remaining paper inquires as to whether and how the building itself achieves the siblings’ rogue ambitions. architectural analysis, 1: floor plan the building’s floor plan, particularly the ground floor, is complex and dense. wittgenstein faced the problem of creating a flexible world to accommodate the public and private lives of his sister. it was necessary the plan allowed for ready re-interpretation and re-appropriation while also allowing for the following of strict social and cultural expectations. above all, the spatial program reflects margaret’s family and social life. there is social gathering space for her absentee husband, two sons, two foster sons, as well as domestic staff. the plan’s resulting modernity and unconventionality, particularly in the viennese context, emerges as follows. the main floor combines public and private areas. one of the doors in the large semi-public hall opens directly into margaret’s living and sleeping area labeled living room on wittgenstein’s floor plan. an alcove opposite the window contains a niche for her bed, which also served as a couch during the day. the adjacent dressing area, misleadingly [ludwig] served as an ally in a departure from the established norm of viennese modernism. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 156 sa r n it z labeled bedroom on wittgenstein’s plan, is hidden behind a screen. the main floor served as a stage on which margaret lived her life. it was the focal point of her activities, private and public, within the house. the other floors were reserved for her husband, children, and domestic staff. the building is viewed as consisting of two houses: a spatially organized object and a use-object. wittgenstein himself insisted that, for all the plan’s strictness, the house would allow for multiple uses and furnishings, as long as overall strictures on quality and correctness were observed [29]. in terms of spatial organization, the building is understood as an elementary and structural envelope, as a sequence of spaces— of autonomous spaces with defined proportions. the use of concrete furnishes a strikingly abstract background, a basic spatial envelope which draws its characteristics from the precise use of proportion, light, rhythm and tactility. (the characteristics of material use receives special focus in details with an overt relation to mechanical engineering, wittgenstein’s original subject at university: metal doors, metal windows, radiators, sliding elements and elevators.) the distinguishing features between wittgenstein and loos’ approach to building design is perhaps most apparent in the spatial sequence. there is neither a spatial plan nor a central living hall as favored by loos, nor an open plan with free spatial transitions. rather, there is a ceremonial progression of sorts created by a variety of doors and thresholds. wittgenstein designed, with great precision, a sequence of door types that vary subtly at the level of transparency and opacity. there are doors with clear glass, opaque glass, and without glass altogether (see figures 7-9). further, the ground floor living room of wittgenstein’s plan is visually separated from the staircase and thus differs markedly from the type of grand living hall that loos placed prominently in his domestic architecture for vienna’s upper class. finally, wittgenstein’s internal spaces are completely devoid of material padding where loos’ celebrated the sensual and haptic use of materials such as natural stone, colored marble and granite, timber-paneling, leather and other wall coverings (cut and faceted glass and, later, color as a consciously-used spatial finish). architectural analysis, 2: building volume and façade looking at the house, one is primarily struck by the strong plastic appearance of the building, which has a cubist-like form unusual for vienna in 1928. the sculptural effect of the house is comparable only to the contemporary building by adolf loos, the moller house, but which 157 isparchitecture.com figure 7: ground floor plan of the wittgenstein house. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 158 sa r n it z is markedly more reserved. viewed in perspective, the projections and recesses of the building volume result in an apparently random window arrangement. the orthogonal drawings of the façades, on the other hand, reveal axially arranged windows, which enjoy a particularly complex relationship with the interior spaces. the fenestration as a result offers no clues about the sort of room located behind each window. unlike in the work of adolf loos, bathrooms and small ancillary spaces are not represented on the façade by small windows. wittgenstein’s façade is not a functional illustration of the various spaces but rather a composed whole which works with axes and rhythms. on the main floor, there is an unwavering use of virtually identical glazed metal doors on the façade and throughout the internal spaces. the door’s use clearly demonstrates a design decision that cannot be reduced to functionalism and that does not feature in the architecture of adolf loos. the metal and glass double doors are arranged like viennese casement windows. in one instance, the fenestrations are arranged in the form of french doors to the terrace and another as french doors to the hall. the hall is transformed into the external element of the internal space, a sensitively interpretation of the spatial hierarchy and the public and private characters of the rooms. internally, the large living room or library and margaret stonborough-wittgenstein’s living room are the only two spaces whose internal double doors have no glass and consist entirely of metal. by controlling the amount of light passing through the glass doors, wittgenstein directs movement through the house. upon entering the house, the visitor’s attention is drawn to the light to the left of the entry (the glass wall to the terrace) and eventually toward the dining room and the small breakfast room. to the right, the large living room or library can also be entered via glass doors. the programmatic sequencing of the entrance doors and terrace doors continues in the same manner throughout the house. it generates highly deliberate diagonal lines of sight that would have, for instance, allowed margaret to discretely view visitors in the hall from her sleeping area in the curious alcove. the particular line of sight is permitted only when the doors were left open, providing a vantage point from which margaret could oversee the central activities of the house. the sequence of spaces creates an almost cinematic spatial and temporal chronology of uses which is expressed in the diagonal nature of the visual axes: the glass doors establish visual axes from the dining-room, through the hall and into the large living room (library) and from the small living room (margaret stonborough’s salon), through the music room and into 159 isparchitecture.com figure 8: ground floor plan of the wittgenstein house, drawn by emila bruck and doris scheicher. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 160 sa r n it z the hall. as a result we have many intersecting and parallel visual axes, axes that are both linear and diagonal, axes that are both real and (in a sense) virtual. when the doors are open in certain arrangements, the building prevents its viewers to take in the unfolding scene all in a single glance. instead, one has to take in the happenings in discrete visual moments and perspectives, and arrange one’s experience of the house sequentially—as one would, for instance, view a film, one scene at a time, without being able to take in everything at once. architectural analysis, 3: interiors the interpretation of wittgenstein’s interior design is separate from the building’s volume and envelope. the interiors have a fundamental and elementary quality virtually untouched by the furniture. the simplicity of the interiors embodies the greatest difference between wittgenstein and his architectural contemporaries who opposed the separation of architecture and internal finishes. each of their positions were represented on the vienna architecture scene. for josef hoffmann, architecture—the dwelling in particular— should be determined by the artistic predilection of the architect. the predilection could go as far as determining everyday objects such as kitchen utensils, appliances, and textiles. in contrast, loos argued that the walls belonged to the architect, but not such moveable elements as chairs, dining chairs and armchairs. his approach yielded the design of in-built furniture, wall cladding and chimney-nooks. by consciously choosing such objects, loos developed his own closed aesthetic. he had no difficulty incorporating inherited items of furniture or oriental carpets into a new architectural design. his interiors were sometimes characterized by the use of ornamental oriental carpets because the objects were effective status symbols of the bourgeois. wittgenstein gave instructions and guidelines to his sister margaret regarding the furnishing of her own house. the guidelines and restrictions were severe. she was to use neither carpets, curtains, nor chandeliers. his position stands in distinct contrast to loos’ pupil paul engelmann, who would have wanted a loosian interior for margaret but was complicit with ludwig who preferred an autonomous one. wittgenstein’s absolute position regarding carpets and curtains is, however, easy to explain. his architecture had already addressed the functional issue of the curtain—the ground floor windows incorporated vertical black-out elements that were parked at basement level during the day. the anthracite-black artificial 161 isparchitecture.com m: 1:50 viktoria schandl figure 9: axometric of the ground floor of the wittgenstein house. drawing hightlights the column placement in the main hallway. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 162 sa r n it z stone floor with the detailed joint pattern was part of the design in which the reflection of the black stone de-emphasizes the material qualities of the perfectly polished floor, in turn creating the sensation that the floor itself dematerializes. laying a carpet on the floor would have interfered with the dematerialization effect. the laying of carpets on the floor in this example would have would have been inconsistent with the floor’s design, which does something to explain why wittgenstein was strict in his instructions and guidelines for the house. wittgenstein’s approach to the issue of artificial light was similar. the qualities and characteristics of a space are heavily determined by how much and by which route light comes into a room. a room appears differently with light from just one window on one wall, and differently with a floor to ceiling window wall. wittgenstein’s austere decision to have a single unadorned 200 watt bulb at ceiling level allowed for an evenly distributed light in all directions at even intensity; unlike the uneven distribution of shaded lamp shades. wittgenstein’s lighting design, one could argue, is objective, given its neutrality and impartiality to an observer’s relative position in the house. in contrast, all further lighting sources would be induced by candles or standing lamps, were thus highly situational and subjective, and could be adjusted by the owner and guests to suit specific occasions. architectural analysis, 4: level of use furniture itself was not a matter for wittgenstein the architect. here, he allowed his sister—the user of the house—complete freedom. wittgenstein was familiar with his sister’s furniture and art collection because he had often been her guest in her belétage in the palais schönborn-batthyany. he knew how his sister’s house operated at the social level. one cannot escape the feeling and suspicion that wittgenstein saw furniture, users and visitors as merely temporary, and in relative terms, less significant events in an absolute space, which served as a stage. his sister and the furniture changed continuously and yet this elementary space remained unchanged. during a social event the house functioned differently from times when only the family was present. his architecture was to be equally appropriate for both situations: hence the dark, almost black floor, which levels out the objects placed upon it—enveloping them in a world of continuity. margaret stonborough’s visitors, furniture and works of art inhabit the wittgensteinian space almost as if they are egalitarian guests of the building. the approach reveals the radicalism of a modernism, 163 isparchitecture.com which simultaneously takes up elementary and autonomous qualities of the building itself. here, wittgenstein’s artistic intention reveals itself as an abstract creative will triggered by the architectural debate about the viennese modus vivendi. conclusion wittgenstein’s late philosophy urged against understanding our interpersonal communication in language in too fragmented a manner. only by contextualizing our verbal exchanges against a shared and highly specific forms of life can their full meaning or significance be brought to the fore. urging a contextualist position of sorts may hold validity in our engagement with and communication across material culture as well as architecture. this contextualism can fruitfully inform our reception of wittgenstein’s own architecture. informed by a deep affinity to the material culture surrounding him since his earliest childhood, as wittgenstein’s own engagement with architecture undoubtedly was, engaging wittgenstein the architect is not primarily a lesson for us so much as a challenge—a challenge to contemporary historiography [30]. our own understanding of the full genesis and denouement of viennese modernism is still too fragmented for us to understand wittgenstein’s own place in it, and frequently deters us to allocate him such a place at all. wittgenstein’s being at home and ease with a specific culture and its manifold reference points concomitantly accounts for the work’s inaccessibility to those not sharing in the form of life that informed the house’s gestation. in a sense, wittgenstein’s own house may explain why the canonization of buildings in disregard to their highly specific forms of life frequently make for awkward histories and reluctant exclusions. the resilience toward canonizing the house may be rooted in the house’s stubborn refusal to explain itself or render itself into a code easily deciphered wittgenstein’s own house may explain why the canonization of architectural works [...] frequently makes for awkard histories and reluctant exclusions. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 164 sa r n it z by those outside its immediate context. this refusal may account for the continued relevance of not only wittgenstein’s own architecture but of our ongoing attempts to come to terms with it as a site of cultural transfer and transformation. acknowledgments i thank carolyn fahey for probing questions and edits that greatly improved this paper and led me to expand my existing research in new directions, and stefan koller for help with the philosophical content. endnotes [1] the present work builds on my earlier publications: august sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins: rekonstruktion einer gebauten idee (vienna: böhlau, 2011); august sarnitz, “reconstructing wittgenstein as an architect: ludwig wittgenstein and margaret stonboroughwittgenstein—defining and designing a new interior,” in private utopias, ed. august sarnitz (berline and boston: de gruyter, 2015), 106-123. [2] stanford anderson, “architecture in a cultural field,” princeton university, 5 march 1988), stanford anderson archives, disk princeton/ zürich, rev. 20 april 1988. the intended meaning of critical conventionalism is well conveyed by a quote from loos provided by anderson: “tradition is no more the enemy of development than the mother is an enemy of the child. tradition is a reservoir of strength from countless generations, and the firm foundation for a healthy future” (22 n. 15). a comparable dialectic between tradition and transformation in wittgenstein’s philosophical work is discussed by stephen mulhall, inheritance and originality: wittgenstein, heidegger, kierkegaard (oxford: oxford university press, 2002), 27 ff. [3] the encounter is referenced in a letter of wittgenstein’s to ludwig von ficker, as discussed by burkhardt rukschcio and roland schachel, adolf loos: leben und werk (wien: residenz verlag, 1982), 195. see further brian mcguiness, young ludwig: wittgenstein’s life, 1889-1921 (london: penguin, 1988), 209; and sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 145-146. [4] ludwig wittgenstein to paul engelmann, 2 september 1919. (cf. sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, p. 148). the english translation provided here is owed to marjorie perloff, wittgenstein’s ladder: poetic 165 isparchitecture.com language and the strangeness of the ordinary (chicago: university of chicago, 1996), 224. [5] karl kraus, “festschrift zum 60. geburtstag,” for adolf loos (vienna: loecker verlag, 1930), 27. [6] ludwig wittgenstein, lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology, and religious belief, ed. cyril barrett (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1967), 9-10. the lectures on aesthetics date to 1938. the similarities between wittgenstein’s writings and (some of) loos’s are well documented in john hyman, “the urn and the chamber pot,” in wittgenstein, theory, and the arts, eds. richard allen and malcolm turvey (london: routledge, 2011), 137-153. hyman’s architectural assessment seems overstated, however: “the design of the house in the kundmanngasse would have been inconceivable without the example of loos’s work, and the influence of his ideas” (137). [7] ibid., 7, n. 2. [8] ibid., 8. cf. hyman, “the urn and the chamber pot,” 137. hyman states: “the emphasis wittgenstein places on technical correctness in design and his readiness to talk about clothing, hairdressing and architecture in the same breath are surely due, at least in part, to loos’ influence.” on loos’ own ideas on daily (fashion) objects of use, see in particular the essay collection on loos, adolf loos, spoken into the void: collected essays, 1897-1900, trans. j. o. newman and j. h. smith (boston: mit press, 1987), with an introduction by aldo rossi. [9] ibid., 7, n. 2. [10] thus hyman writes: “if we compare the stonborough house with loos’ domestic architecture, its austerity and refinement appear a little overwrought.” from hyman, “the urn and the chamber pot,”146. similarly, david macarthur, “working on oneself in philosophy and architecture: a perfectionist reading of the wittgenstein house,” architecture theory review 19, no. 2 (2015): “with regard to the matter of ornament, wittgenstein applies loos’ ideas more systematically and scrupulously than loos himself. wittgenstein’s interiors are, in sharp contrast to those of loos, characterised by an overwhelming impression of austerity, simplicity, and stillness.” [11] ludwig wittgenstein to margaret stonborough, letter dated to circa september 1949, in wittgenstein. familienbriefe, eds. brian mcguiness, m. c. ascher, and o. pfersmann (vienna: hölder-pichler-tempsky, 1996), 200. cf. sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 82. [12] for details and documentation (including floor plans and building permits) of the villa toscana, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 166 sa r n it z 43-44; for a photo of wittgenstein in the building, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 71. [13] e. prokopp, magarethe stonborough-wittgenstein, böhlau, wien, chapter on the villa toscana: the drawings of rudolf perco are very similar to those of josef hoffmann of the same period. the author holds the same opinion. perco’s drawings look “hoffmanesque.” [14] perco’s architectonic contributions were (and, to this day, remain largely) overlooked by architecture historians. within austria, perco regained recognition with the publication of otto antonia graf, die vergessene wagnerschule (vienna: jugend und volk, 1969). see also ursula prokop, rudolf perco 1884–1942. von der architektur des roten wien zur ns-megalomanie (vienna: böhlau, 2001). [15] the two items of furniture include a post-art deco table by dagobert peche. peche, at the time relatively little known, later became a highly sought-after designer: testimony to margaret’s own impeccable taste wittgenstein would later speak so highly of (see letter, quoted above). for photos of the furniture, and traces thereof in margaret’s own drawings, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins 62, 130. [16] for photos of palais schönborn, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins. to confuse the building with palace schönbrunn, as monk does, is tantamount to confusing windsor with buckingham palace; had margaret already lived in anything like the latter, transitioning into the later palais stonborough would have conveyed an immense loss in socioeconomic status. [17] see stanford anderson, “sachlichkeit and modernity, or realist architecture,” in otto wagner: reflections on the raiment of modernity, ed. harry francis mallgrave (los angeles: the getty center, 1993), 323361 as well as august sarnitz, “realism versus verniedlichung: the design of the great city,” in otto wagner: reflections on the raiment of modernity, ed. harry francis mallgrave (los angeles: the getty center, 1993), 85-113. on a related note, loos critiqued imagination as a source of architectural ideas, since imagination (for loos) is dissociated from cognition of the realities of fact and use. see adolf loos, “der sattlermeister,” der sturm 1, no. 3 (1910). [18] as an author, wittgenstein was keen to record disagreements, especially when they were egregious (such as on the subject of weininger’s misogynism), and less keen to record agreements or mild disagreements. cf. ludwig wittgenstein, preface to tractatus-logicophilosophicus (london: kegan paul, 1922), 23. wittgenstein states: “what i have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and 167 isparchitecture.com therefore i give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what i have thought has already been thought before me by another.” [19] wittgenstein, lectures, 7. [20] ibid., 7. n. 2. [21] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, ed. and trans. elizabeth anscombe (oxford: blackwell, 2001), §7. [22] what complicates the issue is that the historiography of austrian modern architecture has been shaped by the necessarily selective nature of synoptic studies, frequently composed from an outsider’s perspective, such as carl e. schorske, fin-de-siecle vienna: politics and culture (new york: alfred e. knopf, 1981); or allan janik and stephen edelston toulmin, wittgenstein’s vienna (chicago : ivan r. dee, 1973). these works arguably create too limited a frame of reference for us to understand the diversity and nuance in architectural modernism that wittgenstein and others before him (cf. otto antonia graf, die vergessene wagnerschule) responded to. see further the conclusion below. [23] the causal reading is critiqued by christopher long, “[review of] nana last. wittgenstein’s house,” review of wittgenstein’s house: language, space, and architecture, by nana last in estetika: the central european journal of aesthetics xlvi, ii (2009): 230-233. [24] cf. alexander waugh, the house of wittgenstein: a family at war (toronto: random house of canada, 2010), 148-149. [25] ludwig wittgenstein to j. m. keynes, 18 october 1925, in wittgenstein in cambridge: letters and documents 1911 – 1951, ed. brian mcguiness (oxford: blackwell, 2012), 157. italics added. [26] waugh, the house of wittgenstein, 162. [27] ludwig wittgenstein, ms 112, dated to 14 october 1931, posthumously published in vermischte bemerkungen, eds. georg henrik van wright, heiki nyman, and alois pichler (stuttgart: suhrkamp, 1994), 52. [28] while many details surrounding wittgenstein’s transition into architecture are beyond historical verification, wittgenstein’s oldest sister, hermine, later confirmed that, in her own assessment, margaret seemed ‘psychologically compelled’ to help out her younger brother with the architecture commission, which seems to corroborate the impressions from wittgenstein’s own correspondence. these unpublished family memoirs are preserved in the brenner archives in innsbruck, austria (cf. sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 230). hermine wittgenstein’s relation to the house is of further importance: we owe to her surviving pastel ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 168 sa r n it z drawings the only documentation of margaret’s original furbishing of the house in the 1920s and 1930s (sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 129). during world war ii, the house had been used as a military hospital and it would never be re-instated to its pre-war interior state. [29] see the earlier discussion on the place of ‘quality’ and ‘correctness’ in wittgenstein’s aesthetics. [30] see accounts on wittgenstein’s place in viennese modernism and the fin de siecle vienna, such as that of allan janik, roger paden, and paul engelmann. isparchitecture.com the space of the lacerated subject: architecture and abjection sean akahane-bryen and chris l. smith introduction in powers of horror (1980),1 the psychoanalyst julia kristeva presented the first explicit, elaborated theory of ‘abjection,’ which she defines as the casting off of that which is not of one’s “clean and proper”2 self. according to kristeva, abjection is a demarcating impulse which establishes the basis of all object relations, and is operative in the lacanian narrative of subject formation in early childhood via object differentiation. (i am a subject: me. that is an object: not me.) abjection continues to operate post-oedipally to prevent the dissolution of the subject by repressing identification with that which is other, and particularly that which is only tenuously other: the abject. though kristeva’s theory is braided into problematic freudian premises, this essay will argue that abjection remains operative independent of the oedipal model. the focus of freudian psychoanalysis has largely been on the anxieties of being extracted from other subjects, usually the mother. it has concerned itself far less with the anxieties of extracting oneself from the blankets, nursery walls, and doors which were equally a part of the real of infancy. we follow kristeva and georges bataille in asserting that the necessary differentiations which occur between selves and other subjects in early childhood (especially the mothers and fathers and psychoanalytic fixation) also—or first—play themselves out in the differentiations of selves from objects (our blankets, nursery walls, and doors). in doing so, we contest the centrality of the oedipal family triangle in subject formation, and recognise ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 10 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h a more general and parsimonious model of subjecthood implied by the theory of abjection—a model in which architecture necessarily plays a more substantial role, as both an object and instrument of abjection. the subject ‘en process’ though kristeva may be described today as poststructuralist, her early work on abjection is in keeping with lacan. in powers of horror, abjection is introduced as a preface to lacan’s account of the genesis of the subject. according to that account, object relations emerge in the mirror stage, when an infant mistakenly identifies with a reflection of herself—in a literal mirror, or some other mimetic representation—and begins to imagine herself as an object which might be viewed from another perspective. kristeva accepts this, but recognises that the oedipal model, even as revised by lacan, cannot account for the whole progression of consciousness from an experience of undifferentiated sensation to that of a self discerning objects and other subjects. instead, kristeva asserts that the mirror stage is a secondary repression preceded by abjection, a “primal” repression3 which makes difference (differentiation) itself possible and “sets in motion, or implicates, the entire freudian structure.”4 kristeva goes as far as to say that the freudian narrative is “exploded by its contradictions and flimsiness”5 without abjection to precede it. nevertheless, she declines to abandon the narrative altogether, leaving its linear progression of stages intact and only placing her account of the development of subject/object differentiations before it in time. significantly, kristeva credits georges bataille as the first philosopher to have “specified that the plane of abjection is that of the subject/ object relationship (and not subject/other subject).”6 as such, the earliest beginnings of the subject involve an extraction not from other subjects, but what will become objects: do we not find, sooner (chronologically and logically speaking) [than the mirror stage], if not objects, at least pre-objects, poles of attraction of a demand for air, food, and motion? do we not also find, in the very process that constitutes the mother as other, a series of semi-objects that stake out the transition from a state of indifferentiation to one of discretion (subject/object)—semi-objects that are called precisely “transitional” by winnicott?7 according to winnicott, a paediatrician and psychoanalyst, an infant still in a state of indifferentiation experiences subjective “omnipotence,”8 believing that her own desire produces what is desired. the security blanket is a ‘transitional object,’ an infant’s first ‘not-me’ possession which eases 11 isparchitecture.com the disillusionment of omnipotence and mediates the transition from undifferentiated sensation to the discernment of ‘me’ and other ‘not-me’ objects. the transitional object already operates symbolically, standing in for the “object of first relationship”9 (traditionally the breast). winnicott suggests that the symbolic operation of the transitional object belies an antecedent repression: when symbolism is employed the infant is already clearly distinguishing between fantasy and fact, between inner objects and external objects, between primary creativity and perception. but the term transitional object, according to my suggestion, gives room for the process of becoming able to accept difference and similarity. i think there is use for a term for the root of symbolism in time, a term that describes the infant’s journey from purely subjective to objectivity; and it seems to me that the transitional object (piece of blanket, etc.) is what we see of this journey of progress towards experiencing.10 to kristeva, abjection is that “root of symbolism in time.” it is the repression which must occur before anything can operate symbolically, the first recognition of difference in that traumatic moment when that which threatens the definition of the ‘clean and proper body’ (le corps propre) is cast off (ab-jected)11 by the animal impulse to protect the budding cognitive edifice that is the subject. “even before things are—hence before they are signifiable—[the not-yet-subject] drives them out, dominated by the drive as he is, and constitutes his own territory, edged by the abject.”12 the casting off is traumatic because in a state of undifferentiation, what is abjected is necessarily also the self. i expell myself, i spit myself out, i abject myself within the same motion through which “i” claim to establish myself. … during the course in which “i” become, i give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. mute protest of the symptom, shattering violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in i expell myself, i spit myself out, i abject myself within the same motion through which ‘i’ claim to establish myself “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 12 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. it abjects.13 from here, kristeva follows lacan to a conclusion which poststructuralist philosophers vehemently eschew—that the object relation is, as it was put by lacan, “a means of masking, of parrying the fundamental fund of anguish.”14 a “desiring quest,”15 doomed to anguished failure, for what lacan called the objet petit a, the unattainable ‘object-cause of desire.’ in kristeva’s words: the abjection of self would be the culminating form of that experience of the subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural loss that laid the foundations of its own being.16 this acceptance of the premise of primordial lack is a focus of much criticism of kristeva’s philosophy.17 in contrast, poststructuralist philosophers and psychoanalysts such as gilles deleuze, félix guattari, and (anachronistically) georges bataille18 generally posit a plenitude out of which subjectivity is folded.19 to properly address this debate—in particular, to discern the extent to which the dispute is rooted in style of articulation rather than in fundamental disagreement—is beyond the scope of this essay. perhaps it will suffice to say that some ‘desiring quest’ for that which would destroy the subject as we know it if reclaimed (reunion with the mother, the world) is necessary to render abjection an operable concept. in fact, the theory of abjection appears to be entirely consistent with at least bataille’s conception of subjecthood—abjection being, in this case, an impulse which limits our access to the plenitude from which we emerged: the first labor established the world of things, to which the profane world of the ancients generally corresponds. once the world of things was posited, man himself became one of the things of this world, at least for the time in which he labored. it is this degradation that man has always tried to escape. in his strange myths, in his cruel rites, man is in search of a lost intimacy from the first.20 bataille and kristeva recognise abjection and the accession to the symbolic (language, discursive logic) as necessary preconditions of culture, but also that the repression is not so total that it cannot be undone. far from it, kristeva argues that the subject is always ‘en process’—by which is meant both ‘on trial’ and ‘in process.’21 the chaos of the undifferentiated real is always lapping at the edges of the self. “we may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it—on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.”22 the abject clings to the subject, lacerating it, necessitating the constant defensive action 13 isparchitecture.com of abjection. it is both horror and a siren’s song. tellingly, kristeva observes that the abject is “edged with the sublime,” which “has no object either.”23 it is the gallows humour which underlies all humour, and the reason eroticism shares so much territory with degradation and death.24 to kristeva, the spectre of the undifferentiated real is first and foremost a danger which threatens to bring about the death of the properly constituted subject. bataille also recognises the subject as fragile and contingent, but is more motivated to remind us that a great ocean of ecstatic experience remains dammed up around us while subject/object relations remain ‘properly’ constituted. he reminds us that “[c]oitus is the parody of crime.”25 no subject without a space it is not so, contrary to what is generally meant by the word ‘abject’ (filthy, low, wretched), it is not hygiene, according to kristeva’s definition, that determines what is abject. rather, the abject is that which “does not respect borders, positions, rules,”26 and threatens the legibility of a system. here, kristeva draws on the pioneering work of the anthropologist mary douglas (chiefly in purity and danger of 1966)27 on pollution avoidance in ‘primitive’ cultures. douglas is careful to distinguish between purification and hygiene (modern germ theory): if we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. this is a very suggestive approach. it implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. where there is dirt there is a system.28 … i have tried to show that rituals of purity and impurity create unity in experience. so far from being aberrations from the central project of religion, they contrary to what is generally meant by the word ‘abject’ (filthy, low, wretched), it is not hygiene, according to kristeva’s definition, that determines what is abject “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 14 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h are positive contributions to atonement. by their means, symbolic patterns are worked out and publicly displayed.29 the insight that symbolic systems are “worked out” (not just “displayed”) and ritually maintained by expelling dirt lends support by analogy to kristeva’s theory that subjecthood is established and shored up by abjection. to kristeva, not only is there a system wherever there is dirt, the impulse to expel the dirt preceded and inaugurated the system. the corpse is the ultimate abject—just as death is the ultimate elision of the subject with the world—not because it is infectious, and neither because it is a symbol of death (yet), but because it “show[s] me what i permanently thrust aside in order to live.”30 perhaps more importantly, douglas’s work affirms the hypothesis that abjection is at work at every scale, across bodies and non-bodily objects: … [a]ll margins are dangerous. … matter issuing from [the orifices of the body] is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind. spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body. … the mistake is to treat bodily margins in isolation from all other margins.31 in fact, there would seem to be nothing in the infant’s experience of undifferentiated sensation to categorically privilege the mother’s nipple as the first object of abjection, and so as the symbolic locus of post-oedipal abjection. abjection, then, is general to the subject’s intimacy with the world. this implies that architecture is a potential object of abjection—a potential abject.32 the artist victor burgin goes as far as to describe first abjection as a “demarcation of space,” and engages the dictum: “no space of representation without a subject, and no subject without a space it is not.”33 a burning cathedral the abjection of space presents a troubling corollary. in reverse, it reveals architecture to be not only a potential abject, but also the instrument or vector of abjection. just as blood, tears and come are abject to bodies, traitors, scapegoats, and parvenues are abject to bodies politic. just as shit and slough are flushed away and occluded by architecture, it is architecture again which surveils the suitably constituted subject and excludes or imprisons the category-transgressing other. social and subjective abjection “follow the same logic, with no other goal than the survival of both group and subject.”34 unfortunately, writes kristeva, “the absorption of otherness proposed by our societies turns out to be inacceptable by the contemporary individual, jealous of his difference—one that is not 15 isparchitecture.com only national and ethical but essentially subjective, unsurmountable.”35 the complicity of architecture in this problem is perhaps obvious after foucault, but it is bataille, as ever, who cleaves to the deepest root of the problem. bataille problematised architecture by writing on the prison (among other typologies). but bataille’s prison has nothing to do with foucault’s panopticon, and is instead, in denis hollier’s words, “an ostentatious, spectacular architecture, an architecture to be seen.”36 the prison is both the display of the general condition of the human subject and the “generic form of architecture … primarily because man’s own form is his first prison.”37 hollier writes: the greatest motive for bataille’s aggressivity towards architecture is its anthropomorphism. the article “architecture” describes it as an essential stage in the process of hominization, as a sort of mirror stage that might be called in a parody of lacan’s title “the architecture stage as formative function of the we, man’s social imago.” in this sense, even though he seems to denounce the repression exercised over man by architecture, bataille is really intervening against the catachresis requiring that man only take form with architecture, that the human form as such, the formation of man, be embedded in architecture.38 that is, bataille’s animus towards architecture is rooted in his fundamental revolt against the operation of abjection in the accession of the subject to culture. architecture is at once formative of the subject/society and that through which the subject/society generates its norms. in the cited article, bataille describes architecture in general: it is clear, in any case, that mathematical order imposed upon stone is really the culmination of the evolution of earthly forms, whose direction is indicated within the biological order by the passage from the simian to the human form, the latter already displaying all the elements of architecture. man would seem to represent man would seem to represent merely an intermediary stage...between monkey and building “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 16 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h merely an intermediary stage within the morphological development between monkey and building.39 the declination to acknowledge the distinction between living bodies and buildings is not merely a provocation. if the prison is the generic form of architecture, the cathedral must be the most profuse and comprehensive imposition of “mathematical order … upon stone,” and the culmination of the “morphological development” encompassing humanity and architecture. considering the cathedral in the context of what bataille calls the ‘general economy’ of mediaeval european life reveals a mode of abjection which cuts across stone and flesh. a salient characteristic of the gothic cathedral at its highest development was its fractal scalelessness, or the quality of being governed at every scale by the same repertoire of geometric rules, such that a singular order could be observed in the smallest baldachin as in the tallest tower—an order exhibiting only a tenuous, grudging relationship with the dimensions of the human body. every detail from the general arrangement of the plan to the profile of mullions might be derived procedurally, through the scaling, tessellation, rotation, and superimposition of polygons believed to be numinous. in principle, a single module (such as a square defining the width of a choir) could underlie the whole cathedral, rotations or divisions of which would determine the size of every element. so comprehensive and predictable was this craftlore that the historian françois bucher suggests, “to exaggerate one might say that a single finial preserved from a crumpled tower could suffice for a reasonably close reconstruction of the total structure, provided its position within the system were known.”40 except for logistical purposes, it was not necessary until the moment of construction to assign a measure to the module of the cathedral, which in theory could be infinitely large and infinitely detailed. with no change whatsoever to the logic of its design, a cathedral could be expanded to absorb any surplus. what bataille finds objectionable in the cathedral is only an exaggeration of the bad faith he finds in all architecture—indeed in all work, or what he calls ‘icarian’ projects. these are organised teleological acts which result in the ‘deferral of living to later’ (la remise de l’existence à plus tard). according to bataille, icarian projects circumscribe us in closed, ‘restricted’ economies which blind us to the real of the ‘general economy.’ restricted economies are the economies of accountancy; posed in the zero-sum terms of equilibrium, of profit here equated with loss there. they are also the economies of much psychoanalysis founded on the corresponding notions of a stable subject, developmental progression, and primordial 17 isparchitecture.com loss. the remit of the general economy is wider than the field of traditional economics: economic science … restricts its object to operations carried out with a view to a limited end, that of economic man. it does not take into consideration a play of energy that no particular end limits: the play of living matter in general, involved in the movement of light of which it is the result. on the surface of the globe, for living matter in general, energy is always in excess; the question is always posed in terms of extravagance. the choice is limited to how the wealth is to be squandered.41 figure 1: jan van eyck, saint barbara (1437) saint barbara, out of scale with the building site behind her, is enlarged to indicate her numinous importance. the measure of the human body is incidental to the scheme of the cathedral, which is perpetually under construction. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 18 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h bataille insists that because in general, energy and wealth are always in excess, some share of it must be consumed without profit, or ‘sacrificed’ according to his use of the term. the fundamental problem of political economy then, is how to sacrifice the surplus so that living is not deferred to later. for bataille, this requires the removal of the surplus from circulation in the realm of exchange values—an extravagant consumption which is a means to no end, which burns brightly like “the sexual act … in time,” like a “tiger in … space.”42 this ‘useless’ consumption nevertheless has the use value of briefly restoring intimacy with the real. in fact, a failure to sacrifice the surplus leads to ruination: these excesses of life force, which locally block the poorest economies, are in fact the most dangerous factors of ruination. hence relieving the blockage was always, if only in the darkest region of consciousness, the object of a feverish pursuit. ancient societies found relief in festivals; some erected admirable monuments that had no useful purpose … their existence in excess nevertheless (in certain respects) has perpetually doomed multitudes of human beings and great quantities of useful goods to the destruction of wars.43 the cathedral is one of many modes of sacrifice available to society, some more ruinous and ethically bankrupt than others. the enormous cost of a cathedral cannot all be held against its account, since some portion of that spectacular consumption was necessary to avoid even worse ruination. (better a cathedral than a crusade.) perhaps this is why bataille does not attack the cathedral head-on as an instrument of theocracy, but instead uproots it, and all architecture with it, by locating the problem in something like abjection. fundamentally, what is objectionable is the repression of the sovereignty of the subject exercised by its idealism, its presumption of an a priori ideal form for matter. as hollier emphasises, this is only an ossification of the anguished relation human subjects already have to abjects, as architecture is ‘anthropomorphic.’ architecture, like all symbolic practices, is a “frock coat”44 of form and meaning thrown over the unassimilable real. but the cathedral is particularly egregious because it is totalising (claims total moral authority) and monist (establishes a system of infinitely regressive geometries capable of assimilating all matter, all difference, at any scale). in this sense, the cathedral is the icarian project par excellence. a canon of seville is said to have uttered, in 1402, “we shall build so large a cathedral that those who see it in its finished state will think that we were mad.”45 not by accident, one of the events which turned bataille towards contemplating the limits of human experience was the shelling of notredame de reims, where he received baptism in the summer of 1914 amid 19 isparchitecture.com a crowd of soldiers.46 (he would later recognise his conversion as bad faith.) german artillery arrived within range of reims and soon after, on the 20th of september, the cathedral burned. by then bataille and his mother had evacuated reims, ‘abandoning’47 his blind, paralytic father to apparent doom. bataille recalls the “filthy, smelly state to which [his father’s] total disablement reduced him (for instance, he sometimes left shit on his trousers).”48 the abjected real father, as it were, put the lie to the name-of-the-father. “still,” remembers bataille, “i believe he faced up to it, as always.”49 joseph-aristide bataille’s immanent sovereignty, it might have seemed to his son, was analogous to a perpetually burning cathedral—a cathedral in the grip of a violent sacrifice which put the lie to the word of the father, which left only a father with shit on his trousers. the ghost of his father was no doubt on bataille’s mind when he fixated on the man with figure 2: hans bellmer, the woman at the cathedral, 1948, reprinted by permission. the woman and cathedral are equals in the composition, but this time because the cathedral is foreshortened. the cathedral and woman are elided, both constituted through the force of abjection imposing itself on the hypergraphic horror vacui of the real. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 20 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h shitty breeches in salvador dalí’s painting, the lugubrious game, seeing in him an emasculation fundamental to the human condition.50 andré breton and the surrealists (including dalí himself) were disgusted by and rejected the interpretation, exposing themselves to criticism by bataille as being ‘icarian’ themselves. to bataille, their surrealism only served to exchange one restricted economy for another which happened to privilege creative inspiration in dreams. bataille’s revolt was more total, and general to abjection. base materialism thankfully, bataille points us to a “loophole”51 in the symbolic which promises to restore the sovereignty of the subject, if only momentarily. it is a narrow path “traced by the painters,”52 which might also apply to architects: nothing is more common than for a painter to accept the reduction of his being to painting. living in a world in which to paint is one possible function, he chooses it as his limit. […] from this moment he defines this means as an end, for he must deny his servility. […] nevertheless, it is not as futile as it seems at first. this domain of means at least offers a loophole. all traditional means are asserted as a law which one can possibly breach, and this painter, attached as he is to his scorn for what painting is not, finally comes out of by means of a negation of the limit he wanted to uphold. at this moment his passion ceases to be painting, and becomes liberty …53 a sovereign architecture ought to be, in hollier’s words, a “bastille in no way different from its own storming.”54 the paradox may be a rhetorical simplification. (we recall that the native american potlatch is “at once a surpassing of calculation and the height of calculation.”)55 a sovereign architecture, though still an icarian project, is an architecture which ‘negates the limit the architect wants to uphold.’ it is a cathedral which perpetually burns, a wall which perpetually crumbles, just as the abject perpetually clings to and tears at the frayed edges of the subject. in the oedipal narrative of subject formation, the revolt begins with a matricide (the objectification of the mother) and culminates in a single event, the patricide. but to bataille and kristeva, revolt is a part of the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of the subject. revolt serves to subvert and perhaps reform the symbolic order it ruptures through, and is the implicit goal of art which exploits the potential of non-sense 21 isparchitecture.com and non-meaning—including, as hollier observes, bernard tschumi’s parc de la villette. tschumi writes, “good architecture must be conceived, erected and burned in vain. [our italics] the greatest architecture of all is the fireworker’s: it perfectly shows the gratuitous consumption of pleasure.”56 both bataille and kristeva prescribe revolt—a confrontation with the abject, which bataille spoke of in terms of ‘low’ or ‘base materialism,’ and which imogen tyler described critically as “affirmative abjection.”57neither bataille nor kristeva were the first to observe that the accession to culture entailed a concomitant denial of our base material, or to suggest its (temporary) undoing. hollier observes: in april 1929, emmanuel berl published his pamphlet, the death of bourgeois thought. the death of bourgeois morality followed a few months later. its conclusion, entitled ‘defence of materialism’, proposed a materialism that deserves bataille’s label of base materialism, a materialism of an aggressive vulgarity which berl presents as the proletarian weapon par excellence, the only ideological weapon of any weight against the bourgeoisie.58 but bataille in particular was aware that this weapon of the proletariat cuts both ways. every explicit attempt at affirmative abjection either fails as it were to consummate its revolt, ultimately reinforcing the symbolic order it was designed to subvert, or simply reverses the hierarchy to establish another. abject art, so-called, usually succumbs to the first pitfall. in response to an exhibition of such artworks, hollier asks, “what is abject about it? everything was very neat; the objects were clearly art works. they were on the side of the victor.”59 the problem is not of course that the artworks were insufficiently repulsing, but that in exhibiting them, they were constituted as objects rather than abjects, and inscribed in a particular closed political economy. presumably the artworks were to be viewed from a ... a cathedral which perpetually burns, a wall which perpetually crumbles “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 22 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h distance rather than licked. conclusion it may be that affirmative abjection is definitionally futile. culture cannot be sustained outside the symbolic order, and a project to escape project is still a project. but we infer from bataille that architecture may be incited to do, at the very least, a little more. doesn’t its deep complicity in fact render it a singularly suitable instrument for material political action attenuating the cruelties of abjection—if only because it is most guilty? drawing further on bataille, we pose an alternative inflection to the project of affirmative abjection. lacan suggested that the conscious subject is structured as text, just as the structuralists established the intellectual habit of reading buildings as texts. whereas a text might be persuasive, teleological, or metaphorical, a document is, in theory, according to hollier, “aggressively realist,”60 something which “cannot be invented.”61 documents expose “the radical incongruity of the concrete: all at once, the most ordinary beings resemble nothing at all, cease to be in their places.”62 a building which is a document would be one which declines to wear its frock coat—one which aggressively negates symbolic operation, so that what is formless, different, or meaningless cannot be appropriated, cannot be commodified. (a cathedral, we might say, is absolved of symbolic operation when it burns.) such a building, so designed (or ignited) as to frustrate its own operation as an instrument of abjection, might be a venue for sacrifice, for the “gratuitous consumption of pleasure.”63 but unlike the parc de la villette, which may be analogous to the avant-garde non-sense poetry kristeva once championed (but has since cooled on), a building which is a document would not so much carve meaning out of its signifying containers (a kind of surrealist project), but rather expose the wounds of abjection which it already bears. a building which is a document might be a space for the kissing of bared wounds. endnotes 1. kristeva, julia. powers of horror: an essay on abjection. translated by leon s. roudiez. new york: columbia university press, [1980] 1982. 2. (propre) “usually, in expository prose, the context removes the ambiguities that poetic language thrives on. kristeva is not averse to using polysemy to her advantage, as other french theorists like derrida and lacan have also done. the french word propre, for instance, has kept the meaning of the 23 isparchitecture.com latin proprius (one’s own, characteristic, proper) and also acquired a new one: clean. at first, in powers of horror, the criteria of expository prose seemed to apply, but in several instances i began to have my doubts about this. when i asked kristeva which meaning she intended the answer was, both.” leon s. roudiez, translator’s note to powers of horror, by julia kristeva (new york: columbia university, [1980] 1982), viii. 3. kristeva, powers of horror, 10. 4. ibid, 33. 5. ibid, 32. 6. ibid, 64. 7. ibid, 32. 8. winnicott, d. w., playing and reality (london: routledge, [1971] 2010), 15. 9. ibid, 12. 10. ibid, 8. 11. kristeva, powers of horror, 13. abject: ab-ject, from the latin roots ab (away) and iacio (to throw). 12. ibid, 6. 13. ibid, 3. 14. lacan, seminar of 1956-57, quoted in kristeva, powers of horror, 33. 15. ibid, 35. 16. ibid, 5. 17. the problematic gendering of kristeva’s model of abjection has also been criticised. see for example: tyler, imogen. “against abjection.” feminist theory 10, no. 1 (2009): 77–98. doi: 10.1177/1464700108100393. 18. “there is something anachronistic in associating bataille [1897–1962], a writer who died even before people started to talk about structuralism, with poststructuralism.” denis hollier, against architecture: the writings of georges bataille, trans. betsy wing (cambridge, ma: mit press, [1974] ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 24 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h 1992), ix. 19. the spatial aspects of the philosophies of kristeva, deleuze and guattari are compared in: west-pavlov, russell. space in theory: kristeva, foucault, deleuze. amsterdam: rodopi, 2009. 20. georges bataille, the accursed share: an essay on general economy, trans. robert hurley, vol. 1, consumption (new york: zone books, [1967] 2007), 57. 21. ‘process’ is an english loan word (see note 2). 22. kristeva, powers of horror, 9. 23. ibid, 11, 12. 24. on laughter and the kristevan abject: john limon, stand-up comedy in theory, or, abjection in america (durham, nc: duke university press, 2000), 73–75. 25. georges bataille, “the solar anus,” in visions of excess: selected writings, 1927–1939, ed. allan stoekl, trans. allan stoekl et al. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008), 5. 26. kristeva, powers of horror, 4. 27. douglas, mary. purity and danger: an analysis of concept of pollution and taboo. london: routledge, [1966] 2009. 28. ibid, 44. 29. ibid, 3. 30. kristeva, powers of horror, 3. 31. douglas, purity and danger, 150. 32. for example, the symptoms of abjection in architecture have already been theorised in terms of the erotic and unheimlich by architectural theorist anthony vidler’s discussion of roger callois’ theory of “dark space” and “legendary psychasthenia.” anthony vidler, the architectural uncanny: essays in the modern unhomely (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1992), 173. 33. victor burgin, in/different spaces: place and memory in visual culture (berkeley: university of california press, 1996), 52. 34. kristeva, powers of horror, 68. 35. julia kristeva, strangers to ourselves, trans. leon s. roudiez (new york: columbia university press, 1991), 2. 36. denis hollier, against architecture: the writings of georges bataille, trans. betsy wing (cambridge, ma: mit press, [1974] 1992), x. 37. hollier, against architecture, xii. 25 isparchitecture.com 38. ibid, xi–xii. 39. georges bataille, “architecture,” in encyclopædia acephalica, eds. robert lebel and isabelle waldberg, trans. ian white et al. (london: atlas, 1995), 35. the passage originally appeared in the journal documents (no. 2, may 1929), co-founded and later solely edited by bataille. 40. françois bucher, “medieval architectural design methods, 800–1560,” gesta 11, no. 2 (1972): 41, doi:10.2307/766593. 41. bataille, the accursed share i, 23. 42. ibid, 12. 43. ibid, 24. 44. georges bataille, “formless,” in visions of excess: selected writings, 1927–1939, ed. allan stoekl, trans. allan stoekl et al. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008), 31. this passage originally appeared in documents no. 7, (december 1929). 45. quoted in the frontmatter of: erlandebrandenburg, alain. the cathedral: the social and architectural dynamics of construction. translated by martin thom. cambridge: cambridge university press, [1989] 1994. 46. the cathedral was the subject of bataille’s first published text, written some time before 1920 when he apostatized. see: hollier, against architecture, 14–19 (in which the text is reproduced). 47. georges bataille, story of the eye, trans. joachim neugroschal (new york: penguin classics, [1928] 2014) 78. 48. ibid, 72-73. 49. ibid, 78. 50. georges bataille, “the lugubrious game,” in visions of excess: selected writings, 1927–1939, ed. allan stoekl, trans. allan stoekl et al. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008), 24–30. 51. georges bataille, “andré masson,” in the absence of myth, (london: verso, 2006), 180. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 26 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h 52. bataille, “architecture,” 36. 53. bataille, “andré masson,” 179–180. 54. hollier, against architecture, xi. 55. georges bataille, the accursed share: essay on general economy, trans. robert hurley, vol. 2, history of eroticism (new york: zone, 1993), 47. 56. bernard tschumi, “fireworks” [1974], extract from a space: a thousand words, (london: royal, 1975). cited in: bernard tschumi, architecture and disjunction (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1994), 262. 57. tyler, “against abjection,” 77-78. 59. denis hollier, “the use value of the impossible,” in bataille: writing the sacred, ed. carolyn bailey gill (london: routledge, 1995), 147. 59. denis hollier quoted in: martin jay, “force fields: abjection overruled,” salmagundi no. 103 (summer 1994): 244. 60. denis hollier, absent without leave: french literature under the threat of war, trans. catherine porter, (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1997), 141. 61. ibid, 140. 62. ibid, 139. 63. tschumi, “fireworks,” 262. isparchitecture.com presence or meaning in architecture pau pedragosa 1. the davos debate ernst cassirer and martin heidegger met in 1929 for a public debate in the town of davos in the swiss alps.1 over time the debate took on a legendary character and has become a key episode in the european history of ideas. cassirer and heidegger defended two antithetical images of the human being, which are also two antithetical images of culture and hence of architecture. the davos debate was a great cultural antagonism of the weimar republic. on the one side cassirer, heir of kant and goethe, a humanist of the enlightenment and a cosmopolitan jew. on the other side the anti-humanist and provincial heidegger. four years later, heidegger embraced the nazi revolution and cassirer was forced into exile.2 it is tempting to draw political conclusions from both philosophies (and we will draw some conclusions at the end of this paper), but to contemporaries of the 1929 debate, the confrontation was philosophical, not political.3 heidegger’s thinking implied a radical break with and destruction of the past, but this break had not yet received the political form he gave it in 1933.4 in general terms the davos debate involved the clash of two different conceptions of philosophy: between humanist philosophy and the existentialist, non-humanistic philosophy of the new era. what heidegger criticized during the 1920s were the ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 26 pe dr a go sa humanist ideas of progress and freedom. in a direct encounter with cassirer, the most eminent representative of neo-kantian “rationalism,” heidegger presented himself as the author of a fundamentally new kind of philosophy destined to replace the remaining “rationalist” tendencies in husserlian phenomenology as well.5 heidegger in fact “won” the debate against cassirer and the young students at davos agreed with his revolt against the “rationalism” of the neo-kantian tradition.6 heidegger gave voice to the generation struck by the violence of the first world war, which was seen as a huge break with tradition.7 this perspective of a new generation led some toward fascism and others toward communism, while others, like cassirer, stood for the democratic parliamentarian politics of the weimer republic. cassirer was not only one of the most eminent representatives of the classical liberal intellectual tradition in germany, he was also a representative of modern political republicanism. he owed his academic career to the weimar republic, because he was offered a professorship at the newly founded university in hamburg in 1919. he defended weimar in the university on the occasion of the tenth anniversary celebration of the republic in august 1928. against the popular view that the weimar republic was “un-german,”8 he argued that the idea of a republican constitution had its origin in the german philosophical tradition.9 the confrontation in davos turned on the interpretation of kant’s philosophy. yet the debate was more enduring and broader than the technical matters of philosophical interpretation, and touched on the central issue of what it is to be human. their essential disagreement was that, for cassirer, the human being is essentially a being endowed with a capacity for creation. for heidegger, the essence of the human being is a special kind of receptivity by virtue of which the human stands within the “openness of being.” where cassirer puts activity, creativity and freedom, heidegger proposes passivity and receptivity.10 the disagreement between them defines two opposing anthropological conceptions: the human capacity for world-construction against the human receptivity for world-interpretation. 2. ernst cassirer from 1919 until his exile in 1933 (the whole period of the weimar republic), cassirer held a chair in philosophy at the newly founded university of hamburg, located in one of the most liberal towns in germany. it was during this period that he brought out the three volumes 27 isparchitecture.com of the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume one: language, 1923; volume two: mythical thought, 1925; volume three: the phenomenology of knowledge, 1929. with this mature work, cassirer distances himself from the neo-kantian marburg school to which he belonged. this is not to deny the continuities between cassirer and neo-kantianism. the essential philosophical position of the entire neo-kantian tradition, also shared by cassirer, is transcendental idealism, which states that we only understand of the world what we put into it through our own reason, concretized by kant as applying concepts spontaneously to what is passively received by the senses. it requires the dualism of intuitions and concepts. kant’s copernican turn means that nature is not something we experience passively, but something to which we ascribe concepts in order to understand it. we understand what we put in nature, rather than what nature gives us. cassirer points this out: what is true for us is only what we ourselves have created.11 both the neo-kantian marburg school and cassirer reclaim science as an essential transcendental creation of human reason. but cassirer distances himself from kant and neo-kantianism by relaxing the scientism of the marburg school in favour of a more pluralistic theory of cultural expression, including a historical variation to the fixed kantian a priori. cassirer takes a new and original step from the critique of reason to a critique of culture. cassirer defines the human being by his special capacity to create, in complete freedom, worlds of meaning. these worlds become the objective culture of myth, religion, art, language, and science. he terms these objective cultural worlds “symbolic forms.”12 for cassirer, to be human is to be an animal symbolicum, an animal distinguished by the spontaneous capacity for symbolic expression. this the davos debate involved the clash of two different conceptions of philosophy “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 28 pe dr a go sa capacity has developed historically: as the human being passes from the mythic to the modern-scientific understanding of the world, it undergoes a process of enlightenment, an emancipatory awakening to its role as creator of its own symbolic reality: the history of human culture is “the process of man’s progressive self-liberation.”13 even though cassirer understood the sequence of symbolic forms as a historical narrative from myth to science, during the 1920s and by the time of the davos debate he defended a pluralistic approach and tended to see mythical thinking and rational thinking as co-existing forms of reflection and of approaching reality. it was only after the third reich that he became much more critical about mythical approaches (mainly in his last book, the myth of the state.) he then argued that the mythic symbolization of reality had to be overcome by scientific reason in order to prevent philosophical and, much more dangerous, political irrationalism. as we will see at the end of this paper, cassirer interpreted heidegger’s philosophy and nazism as such irrationality. both were made possible the irruption of myth in modern times. 2.1 from substance to function this narrative of human beings’ historical emancipation was already in place in cassirer’s previous work of 1910, substance and function,14 in which cassirer explains two ways of concept formation: the traditional and the modern one. cassirer begins by discussing the problem of concept formation and by criticizing, in particular, the “abstractionist” theory on which concepts are arrived at by ascending inductively from sensory particulars. this is the traditional manner of concept formation, the aristotelian logic of genus and species. any science based on this theory of concept formation can only be descriptive and classificatory, and proceeds by abstraction, forming ever-higher generic concepts (ascending from the sensory particulars to ever higher species and genera). this theory is also an expression of realism, where reality is thought to exist in itself, and the concepts “mirror” or “copy” nature as the realm of things conceived as substances. the substance is the fixed and ultimate substratum of changeable qualities. from this results a metaphysical “copy” or mimetic theory of knowledge, according to which the truth of our sensory representations consists in a relation of pictorial similarity between them and the ultimate things or substances lying behind our representations.15 cassirer is concerned to replace this mimetic theory with the 29 isparchitecture.com “constructivist” theory: in opposition to the logic of the generic concept, which, as we saw, represents the point of view and influence of the concept of substance, there now appears the logic of the mathematical concept of function. however, the field of application of this form of logic is not confined to mathematics alone. on the contrary, it extends over into the field of the knowledge of nature; for the concept of function constitutes the general schema and model according to which the modern concept of nature has been moulded in its progressive historical development.16 with the new concept of function, we achieve the truth of an object, not by picturing a realm of metaphysical substances constituting the enduring substrate of the empirical phenomena, but rather in virtue of an embedding of the empirical phenomena into an ideal formal structure of mathematical relations.17 this is the modern manner of concept formation, which is not descriptive and mirroring but constructive. this type of concept formation constructs concepts and thereby things. what are constructed in this method are relations of things. the relations are not in the world, but constructed by pure thinking. they are logical relations and nothing existing in nature. this concept-formation defines the logic of scientific knowledge in modernity: the new symbolic language of mathematics and physics, which is totally formal.18 metaphysics of substance implies a mindindependent reality, which imposes its conditions on conceptualization. the theory of function, on the contrary, is totally a conceptual abstraction or symbolization to which reality adapts. 2.2 symbolic forms cassirer’s theory of scientific development therefore ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 30 pe dr a go sa presupposes the gradual desubstantialization of reality and its replacement by a symbolized, purely conceptual theory of relations. science gradually breaks free from a substantive conception of reality. just as the functional theory replaces the “copy” theory of knowledge, so does the more general theory of meaningful representation developed in the philosophy of symbolic forms. we overcome the mimetic theory of knowledge by the insight that science must work up our sensory impressions into freely created theoretical structures. similarly, all symbolic forms must subject the mere sensory given to the free creative activities of the transcendental subject.19 in the third volume of the philosophy of symbolic forms, the phenomenology of knowledge, cassirer explains the plurality and historically evolving symbolic forms according to three main symbolic capacities or functions of the transcendental subject: the expressive function20 (ausdrucksfunktion), the representative function21 (darstellungsfunktion) and the significative or meaning function22 (bedeutungsfunktion.). these functions give rise to three main world-presentations: the mythical world, the intuitive world, and the theoretical world. the more primitive ones give birth to the more sophisticated ones.the most basic and primitive type of symbolic meaning is expressive meaning, which is the product of the expressive function. the experience of events in the world around us is charged with affective and emotional significance, as desirable or hateful, comforting or threatening: [t]he world of mythical experience is not grounded in either representative or significance-giving acts, but in pure experiences of expression. what is here present as ‘reality’ is not a complex of things provided with determinate ‘marks’ and ‘characteristics’, on the basis of which they can be recognized and distinguished from one another; rather, it is a manifold and profusion of originally ‘physiognomic’ characters.23 the following symbolic meaning, the representative meaning, is the product of the representative function of thought that takes us out of the original mythical world and into the stable and enduring world of substances, identifiable and distinguishable as such. it is in natural language that this symbolic meaning of representation is most clearly visible.24 through natural language we construct the intuitive world of ordinary sense perception. we distinguish the enduring substance, on the one side, from its variable manifestations from a different point of view and on different occasions on the other, and we thereby arrive at the fundamental distinction between appearance and reality.25 31 isparchitecture.com the third and final meaning of the symbolic forms is the product of the significative or meaning function of thought and consists in the pure relational concepts characteristic of modern mathematics, logic, and mathematical physics that are finally freed from the bounds of sensible intuition.26 the language of mathematical-physical theory transcends all expressive and representative meaning exhibited in the mythical and intuitive worlds, and we thereby finally attain the stage of pure signification of the theoretical world. the purely logical relations replacing all “picturing” of a substantial reality finds their most precise and exact fulfilment in modern mathematical logic.27 3 meaning or presence in architecture 3.1 function or substance: hans blumenberg’s interpretation of the davos debate in order to draw some consequences from cassirer’s as well as heidegger’s philosophy for architecture we will follow the suggestive and, for our purposes, very fruitful interpretation of the davos confrontation given by the great german historian of philosophy hans blumenberg. this philosopher interprets the debate using cassirer’s categories of “substance” and “function”: “against the distinction between the concepts of ‘substance’ and ‘function’ which had already been introduced by cassirer in 1910, heidegger decided, with luther, in favour of substance as the first and the unique category, against the functional propagation of categories into ‘symbolic forms’ – and in favour of […] the conventions of the realists.”28 according to blumenberg, cassirer sides in favour of “function,” “meaning,” and “idealism” whereas heidegger favours “substance,” “being,” and “realism.” for cassirer, modern science has transformed reality into a symbolic order, which is not the reality in itself, but only its signifier. our for cassirer to be human is to be an animal symbolicum, an animal distinguished by the spontaneous capacity for symbolic expression. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 32 pe dr a go sa capacity to create symbols consists in creating meanings or signs that point to reality but they are not reality itself. heidegger, by contrast, understood philosophy not as the study of our capacity to create meaning, but as the phenomenological description of that which “shows itself.” what shows itself is reality,29 not just a symbol or a sign of it. cassirer’s preference for the “functional propagation of categories into symbolic forms” presupposes the primacy of human agency, whereas heidegger’s decision “in favour of substance as the first and the unique category” and his study of what shows itself presupposes the primacy of human receptivity. following this thread of interpretation we can distinguish two types of architecture that, together with both images of the human being, underlie either creativity, meaning, function and abstraction or receptivity, reality, substance and presence. the first one, in cassirer’s guise, is internationalist and trusts in the human capacity for world-construction. architecture is conceived as a materialization of new and creative meanings and the architect is a free agent for the construction of new worlds. the second, more heideggerian, conceives architecture as environment-interpretation. architecture is here understood as world disclosing, a world that is always already there, and the architect as the interpreter of that world or environment as it shows itself. in the first case architecture proposes new ways of living, buildings are the bearers of new meanings, and the emphasis is in the meaning that buildings convey. in the second case the building just shows itself; it is an irreducible presence of itself that opens up the environment. where cassirer emphasizes the creation of new meanings oriented toward the future, heidegger opposes with the priority of the origin; the interpretation of what is already there. he emphasizes paying attention to the presence of what is there and shows itself before proposing new constructions. 3.2 architecture as meaning we now try to draw some consequences of cassirer’s philosophy for architecture. our task is to apply cassirer’s philosophy to architecture, beyond what he in fact said about this kind of art. the reason for this application is that cassirer includes architecture in the symbolic form of art: [w]e can interpret certain spatial forms, certain complexes of lines and figures, in one case as an artistic ornament and in another as a geometrical figure, so endowing one and the same material with entirely different meanings. the spatial unity, which we build in aesthetic vision and creation, in painting, sculpture 33 isparchitecture.com and architecture, belongs to an entirely different sphere from the spatial unity, which is represented in geometrical theorems and axioms. in the one case we have the modality of the logical-geometric concept, in the other the modality of artistic imagination –in the one case, space is conceived as an aggregate of mutually independent relations, as a system of “causes” and “consequences”; in the other, it is conceived as a whole whose particular factors are dynamically interlocked, a perceptual, emotional unity.30 but our claim is that, when dealing with modern architecture, we have to take into consideration technology as well. modern architecture seems to require a convergence of the symbolic forms of art and technology. as far as we know, cassirer himself did not study this convergence but he prepared the theoretical ground for such study. in that sense cassirer’s philosophy has much in common with modern architectural theory and, in particular, with the bauhaus, the great school of design and architecture whose history and final fate of exile runs parallel to that of cassirer and to the weimar republic itself. cassirer’s philosophical orientation is best expressed by the neue sachlichkeit (the new objectivity), a social, cultural, and artistic movement committed to internationalism and to a more objective and scientific organization of architecture and the social life through the project of uniting art and technology.31 this convergence of both symbolic forms, art and technology could be termed “functional aesthetics”32 or described by the familiar motto “form follows function.” that form follows function means that forms are not based on imitations or on mimetic qualities of a substantial reality as produced in traditional paintings, sculptures, and architectural ornamentation, but rather that form is the result of constructing relations, that is, form is the result of function in cassirer’s sense of “function,” as opposed to “substance”: functional forms are an ” the spatial unity, which we build in aesthetic vision and creation, in painting, sculpture and architecture, belongs to an entirely different sphere from the spatial unity, which is represented in geometrical theorems and axioms. “ ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 34 pe dr a go sa aggregate of different elements mutually related. the works of the artists, designers, and architects of the bauhaus are above all a realisation of the functional aesthetic approach. as an example, consider marcel breuer’s furniture and walter gropius’s lights in the bauhaus’ dessau building. both breuer’s and gropius’ designs show modular pieces of furniture and lamps as industrially produced series that create what we might call a functional space. a functional space is based on relations among parts according to repetition and variation. this kind of design allows the construction of furniture (tables, chairs, lamps) and the arrangement of space by fitting together the pieces in different ways. there is not only one way—say one substantial, “real,” way to relate the pieces—but rather different users have many equall valid possibilities for combining the pieces and creating their own spaces by sliding the modular elements. design is not mimetic of a “real being” because the same elements (tables, chairs, or lamps) related otherwise would create a different space. we can understand this kind of industrial design (or, more generally, functional aesthetics, and the slogans “form follows function,” “art and technology: a new unity,” “new objectivity”) as a functionalized symbol or as a sign without a real signified. it is a sign in the sense of cassirer’s citing of helmholtz’s theory of signs to explain scientific theories: this tendency [explaining objectivity in terms of “pure formal relations”] appears especially pregnantly in helmholtz’s theory of signs […]. our sensations and representations are signs, not copies [abbilder] of objects. for one requires of pictures [bilder] some or another kind of similarity with the pictured object […]. the sign, by contrast, requires no substantial [sachlich] similarity in the elements, but solely a functional correspondence in the two-sided structure. what is established in this structure is not the particular intrinsic character of the designated thing, but rather the objective relations in which it stands to other similar [things].33 philosophically considered we cannot interpret the production of such designed objects within the framework of the metaphysics of substance or the mimetic or pictorial theory of knowledge because the object and the space are the result of relations and combinations, and they open up the possibility of freedom to change, improve, and transform the space. the space is thus constructed rather than determined by conditions already existing. functional space is the result of first bringing together independent parts. the space designed is therefore not holistic but rather mechanic—functional—because the part (the modular piece) is prior to 35 isparchitecture.com the whole. before considering the second type of architecture, let’s take a brief look at heidegger’s philosophy. 4. martin heidegger in 1927, two years after cassirer published the second volume of the philosophy of symbolic forms, dedicated to myth, heidegger published his first important work, being and time. for heidegger, to be human is to be gifted with a special sort of receptivity or openness to the world that heidegger calls the “disclosedness” or “unveiling” of being. the phenomenon of disclosedness is deeper than our rationality and practical action. heidegger calls “dasein” the human being as capable of this opening capacity. for heidegger, human beings are defined by finitude, which is to say we discover ourselves in the midst of conditions we have not created and cannot figure 1: bauhaus, dessau ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 36 pe dr a go sa hope to control. my having been born in a particular year, in a particular land, to particular parents—everything that heidegger designates as the “thrownness” (geworfenheit)34—is no mere accident that can be overcome. the contingencies of history and the everyday cannot be transcended in such a way as to reveal some underlying essence—like the transcendental symbolic capacity of cassirer’s subject—but rather constitute me from the ground up. 4.1pragmatic world and existential space heidegger begins his philosophizing with the analysis of the everyday situations in which the human being is involved.35 in such situations the world disclosed to human beings is not the world of scientific explanation (the symbolic form of modern science, in cassirer’s terms) but instead the “environment” (umwelt). the environment shows itself in our practical involvement or dealing (umgang) with the things. in such involvements the things of the environment appear not as objects but rather as thingsin-use, as equipment or tools (zeug). heidegger’s basic thought is that the human relation with worldly things is primarily a relation of practice and concern, and not a theoretical one. we understand things not as objects of theoretical analysis, but rather as they first appear within a context of practice. to reinforce this idea, heidegger introduces the famous distinction between the “ready-to-hand” (zuhanden) statuses of things as understood in an equipmental fashion versus the “present-at-hand” (vorhanden) manner of being of entities as they are disclosed for perceptual cognition, theoretical inspection, and consideration.36 the ready-to-hand is our everyday understanding, and that understanding is the primordial way things appear to us, while the presentat-hand is a consequence of theoretical dissociation from the more basic relation. the theoretical cognition of the merely “present-at-hand” is a derivative mode of dasein, a modification of the more basic, essentially pragmatic mode of involvement with the “ready-to-hand.” equipment appears always in a context of interconnections. this context is a totality within which each tool has a sense. the totality thereby assumes a transcendental status in that the whole is a condition for the possibility of understanding any one of its parts. the environment is a holistic structure of concern, in which objects are always understood in a context, before the explicit knowledge of any discrete item we may pick out for inspection.37 for heidegger the whole is prior to the part. the functional designs of breuer and gropius mentioned earlier run counter to this holistic space of the everyday since the part (the modular furniture) 37 isparchitecture.com exists prior to its arrangement. the holistic character is of great importance for understanding the kind of space that belongs to our everyday, or, as heidegger puts it, our “existential spatiality.”38 this existential spatiality is a series of environmental regions where dasein realizes its concerns, plans, and expectations, and it is fundamentally different from and prior to, its scientific understanding as functional space. existential spatiality is fundamentally different from the cartesian notion of extension or its more developed scientific-functional version. this conception of space does not apply to a being whose primary relation to the world is one of involvement because cartesian space always places things at a measurable distance, whereas existential spatiality determines distances in terms of dasein’s context of significance.39 existential spatiality is the precondition for our understanding of cartesian space, because the former is an existential condition for understanding at all. whatever formalized structures of measurement we might create, such structures were themselves merely a way of “thematizing” the spatiality of dasein’s everyday existence. there can be, therefore, no breakthrough from existential spatiality to space, because an existential condition is by definition constitutive and could not be abandoned. of course heidegger does not deny the possibility that one could develop a purely mental representation of formalized space. but this representation is not something more real than the existential spatiality. heidegger saw the existential structure of human understanding as constitutive rather than, as with cassirer, evolving toward scientific abstraction. 4.2 authentic and inauthentic existence: existential time if we conceive dasein not as primarily theoretical or cognitive but rather as oriented for heidegger, human beings are defined by finitude “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 38 pe dr a go sa towards pragmatic engagement and projects, then our conception of time (of “existential time” as well as the conception of “existential space”) is not just the thought of the line of time, and temporal finitude is not just the thought of an eventual limit to this line of time. finitude is rather dasein’s concern with its own death, the radical possibility that the on-going pragmatic projects will cease to be.40 in facing existentially such possibility, the pragmatic subject is removed from the context of pragmatic involvement that defines the everyday understanding of himself. in “being-towards-death,” dasein is revealed to him for what he is: as thrown into the world. in the normal course of events, dasein takes the context of its projects and practical activities for granted, a framework that is fixed and simply given. in “being-towards-death,” dasein steps out of this given context, which is then recognized as neither fixed nor given. dasein recognizes that its normal or everyday context is simply one possibility among others, one that is thereby subject to his own free choice. facing death thus opens up the possibility of an “authentic” existence in which dasein’s own choices rest on no taken for granted context at all. in “inauthentic” existence, by contrast, dasein operates unquestioningly in its everydayness as a context of projects taken as given. heidegger describes the inauthenticity of everydayness in terms of the “others” as “they” (das man): in utilizing public transportation, in the use of information services such as the newspaper, every other is like the next. this being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own dasein completely into the kind of being of “the others” in such a way that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, disappear more and more. in this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the they unfolds its true dictatorship. we enjoy ourselves and have fun the way they enjoy themselves. we read, see, and judge literature and art the way they see and judge. but we also withdraw from the “great mass” the way they withdraw, we find “shocking” what they find shocking. the they, which is nothing definite and which all are, though not as a sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness.41 facing death singles out my existence as my own and makes possible the withdrawal from the uniformity of the “they,” from the “great mass.” it is thus on the basis of “being-towards-death” that the distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” existence is defined.42 5 architecture as presence we can now distinguish a second type of architecture, inspired by 39 isparchitecture.com heidegger; this kind of architecture goes against its modern conception as the construction of functional spaces or as the fusion of art and technology; it is less concerned with construction and more with the origin and the questioning of building. heidegger wrote about architecture in the essays “the origin of the work of art” and “building dwelling thinking.” but our purpose is not to follow this or that work but the essential core of his thought that we find relevant for architecture, as it is expressed in being and time in the terms we have just explained. the main points relevant for architecture are the difference between a holistic and a functional space; and the difference between authentic and inauthentic existence, where authenticity means questioning the taken-forgranted assumptions and contexts of our everyday projects. if the kind of architecture that exemplifies cassirer’s position was the bauhaus-inspired modernist design, then we can propose a more recent architectural project, one critical of modernity, as an example to illustrate heidegger’s thought: anne lacaton and jean-philippe vassal’s 1996 project for the place léon aucoc in the city of bordeaux, france. the place léon aucoc is a triangular village space lined with trees, benches and a place to play. the house facades lining the place were a good example of sober collective housing. lacaton and vassal said: the question was: how is it possible to make an embellishment of the square? and the answer after three or four months of working research was to say: there is nothing to do. and our project is to do nothing. it’s our project and please, you have to do it like we want. and it has been done like that.43 the architects decided to exclusively carry out simple maintenance tasks: changing gravel, cleaning facing death singles out my existence as my own “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 40 pe dr a go sa more often, taking care of the trees, slightly modifying the circulation, and so on, with the aim of improving the way people meet. this kind of passivity is not indifference but rather an active non-intervention. lacaton and vassal say: what does the idea of “embellishment” boil down to? does it involve replacing one groundcover with another? a wooden bench with a more-up-to-date design in stone? or a lamp standard with another, more fashionable, one? nothing calls for too great a set of changes. quality, charm, life exist. the square is already beautiful.44 the architects’ choice of non-intervention is existentially “authentic” in the sense that this decision rested on not taking for granted the architect’s professional context at all. in “inauthentic” existence, the architect operates unquestioningly in the everyday professional work in which the construction of “something” is taken for granted. this project both shakes and radically subverts architecture’s customary state of affairs by implying a step backwards towards questioning before constructing. we can understand this architectural project as a questioning of what building is and of what architecture is. these radical questions depended on a fresh interpretation of the place: what the place requires rather than what the architect’s freedom wants. of course, the place and the programme may require the construction of a building but it just as easily may not. this radical project by lacaton & vassal exemplifies a broader attitude in architecture, one which consists in opening up to a given environment, in listening to place, to its sheer presence, and responding to it. the holistic character of the environment is of great importance for understanding this kind of architecture. the whole of the environment is a condition for the possibility of understanding any one of its parts that the architect might build. and these parts open up this whole through different ways and architectural strategies. this totality should not be understood just in terms of physical environment but in a much broader sense, which includes culture and the existential human situation as such. architecture “mimics” this whole. whereas for cassirer architecture as functional space is a new construction rather than determined by conditions already existing, for heidegger, on the opposite extreme, architecture is determined by these preconditions; that is, it “mimics” or responds to the priority of the whole or of “reality.” heidegger expresses this whole and its architectural response in these terms: the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its own places – sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated 41 isparchitecture.com distinctively in terms of changes in the usability of what the sun bestows. […] the house has its sunny side and its shady side; the way it is divided up into “rooms” is oriented towards these, and so is the “arrangement” within them, according to their character as equipment. churches and graves, for instance, are laid out according to the rising and the setting of the sun – the regions of life and death, which are determinative for dasein itself with regard to its own most possibilities of being in the world.45 6 cassirer versus heidegger on myth heidegger’s description of the holistic character of the environment, of our everyday space, is shockingly similar to cassirer’s description of mythical space: there is no cosmology, however primitive, in which the contrast of the four main directions does not in some way emerge as the cardinal point of its understanding and explanation of the world. […] the east as the origin of light is also the source of life – the west as the place of the setting sun is filled with all the terrors of death. and this opposition of night and day, light and darkness, birth and death, is also reflected in countless ways in the mythical interpretation of the concrete events of life.46 despite their surface similarities,47 the use of these conceptions is radically different. in these radically different conceptions of myth resides the final explanation of the philosophers’ opposing visions of architecture and of human culture in general. figure 2: place léon aucoc ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 42 pe dr a go sa the description of myth is very important for cassirer since it reveals not only the primitive stage that was reached many centuries ago but also the unmediated experience of perception. myth embodies the concreteness of life before the categorization of theoretical consciousness. myth is the lowest and most primary form of symbolic existence and it is the ground of any other form of culture. all other symbolic forms only come into existence by working through myth. cassirer is convinced that in the history of human culture the rise of conceptual abstraction is a welcome progress. he is committed to philosophical modernism and understands modernity, and thus modern architecture, as the triumph over, and a displacement of, myth. as we said before, cassirer holds this view during the 1920s but in a moderate way, accepting the plurality of symbolic forms. it was only after the nazi seizure of power that he became critical of mythical thought: to move from myth to higher forms of symbolic consciousness is a demand placed upon human beings; it is the call to work oneself—as an individual, as a civilization—out of myth and to come to light, to enlightenment, as living a life in culture.48 it is a demand to keep the forces of myth at bay. heidegger’s primordial space, by contrast, cannot be overcome but only concealed or forgotten. such forgetting is symptomatic of what heidegger calls the “fallenness” of dasein. the scientific calculation and objectification of space robs the world of its “worldhood” and transforms the existential space into functional space. heidegger wishes to return us to a purer and more authentic state of being, one located not in some mythic past but under the surface of everyday life. for heidegger mythical existence is a simplified model of the human existential structure but essentially remains the same. whereas for cassirer the path from myth to science is an inevitable and welcome progress of mind, and the culmination of the human capacity to create worlds, for heidegger this process is rather more like a lapse, a regrettable breakdown in the otherwise constitutive structures of human being. the functionalist symbolization of reality that cassirer sees as a high achievement is, for heidegger, a historical impoverishment in human understanding. in fact, heidegger says that such a break from existential space to a modern scientific one is not progress but a loss and an alienation from both the world and individual existence. what heidegger calls thrownness and passivity is for cassirer a primitive and mythical conception of humanity that denies both its responsibility and emancipation. what cassirer calls freedom and creativity is for heidegger an old metaphysical misconception that hides the essential human finitude. 43 isparchitecture.com 7 final consideration on politics we have seen the antagonistic understandings of cassirer and heidegger on both architecture and on culture broadly considered. it is not our intention to decide which one is preferable because only together do they define the complete image of the human being and how it shapes its place in the world. if we compare metaphorically human beings’ life and history as a play in two acts, the night from which culture springs and the day that overcomes the night, we can say that cassirer draws attention to the second, the day of culture, and heidegger to the first, the night from which it springs. one looks at what has flourished, the other at its roots.49 human culture involves both. that said we would not like to finish this paper without a last commentary on politics. cassirer’s continuous confrontation with heidegger, in the context of the weak parliamentarian politics of the weimar republic, had more than purely philosophical motivations; they were at opposite ends in social and political terms as well. in his last work, the myth of the state, written in his american exile, cassirer writes: in all critical moments of man’s social life, the rational forces that resist the rise of the old mythical conceptions are no longer sure of themselves. in these moments the time for myth has come again. for myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. it is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity.50 from his exile cassirer interpreted the irruption of nazism as the irruption of myth in modern times and judged heidegger’s philosophy as encouraging myth’s staying power. cassirer’s philosophy helps us to prevent political radicalisms such as xenophobia and radical nationalism that today, when europe is again in crisis, threaten our societies. i would like to conclude by saying that cassirer was overall a moderate humanist and defender in these moments the time for myth has come again. for myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. it is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 44 pe dr a go sa of the enlightenment, and even though he thought that science is the highest stage in human consciousness, he rejected the reductionist views of scientism on the one side and of myth’s irrationalism on the other. in the early twentieth century, these two reductionisms appeared in the guise of positivism and lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life). cassirer condemned both because they elevated a single symbolic form into an absolute conception of the world, presenting a partial truth as though it were total. this is something we can learn today at the beginning of the twentyfirst century from the debate that took place early in the twentieth. endnotes [1] for a thorough understanding of the davos debate see the excellent book by peter e. gordon, continental divide. heidegger, cassirer, davos (cambridge and london: harvard university press, 2010.) see also michael friedman, the parting of the ways. carnap, cassirer, and heidegger (chicago and la salle: open court, 2000), 1. friedman writes: “davos, switzerland; march 17–april 6, 1929. an intensive “international university course,” having the express purpose of effecting a reconciliation between frenchspeaking and german-speaking intellectuals, was sponsored by the swiss, french, and german governments. the high point of the occasion was a series of lectures presented by ernst cassirer and martin heidegger, followed by a disputation between the two men.” [2] edward skidelsky, ernst cassirer: the last philosopher of culture (princeton and oxford: princeton university press, 2008), 196. [3] see deniz coskun, “cassirer in davos: an intermezzo on magic mountain (1929),” law and critique 17 (2006): 1-26. [4] skidelsky, the last philosopher of culture, 196-197. [5] friedman. the parting of the ways, 3. [6] peter gay, weimar culture: the outsider as insider (new york and london: w.w. norton & company, 1968). gay explains that one of the main tensions during the weimar republic was the generational conflict between fathers and sons. this conflict was represented in davos by the figures of the old philosopher cassirer and the young heidegger. [7] skidelsky, the last philosopher of culture, 196-197. [8] jeffrey herf, reactionary modernism: technology, culture, and politics in weimar and the third reich (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1984). 45 isparchitecture.com the author explains how the right-wing intellectuals of this period, the so called “reactionary modernists,” argued that the enlightenment tradition was un-german. the enlightenment belongs to “civilization,” a term used to characterize the tradition of nations such as france and the united kingdom while german is defined by kultur, term understood as the opposite of zivilisation. [9] friedman, the parting of the ways, 4. [10] gordon, continental divide, 7. [11] sebastian luft, the space of culture: towards a neo-kantian philosophy of culture (cohen, natorp, and cassirer) (oxford: oxford university press, 2015), 45. see also friedman, the parting of the ways, 99. [12] gordon, continental divide, 13. gordon writes: “the philosophy of symbolic forms represents the effort to interpret all of human creativity after the transcendental model. culture is an ever-expanding and pluralistic field of symbolic expression, which obeys certain laws of formation, the a priori principles of human spirit.” [13] ernst cassirer, an essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture (new haven: yale university press, 1944), 228. [14] ernst cassirer, substance and function & einstein’s theory of relativity (chicago: open court, 1923). for a commentary on this work see friedman, the parting of the ways, 94. see also luft, the space of culture, 157-161. [15] cassirer, substance and function. for cassirer’s treatment of substance and the realist position see part i, “the concept of thing and the concept of relation” and chapter i, “on the theory of the formation of concepts,” 3-9. [16] ibid. 21. [17] friedman, the parting of the ways, 95. [18] luft, the space of culture, 157-161. for example, the atom, as a concept, is not a name for a thing, which one could identify in nature, no matter if one had the most powerful microscope. the atom is a name for an idea, a theory, for the relation of different elements that make up reality. the thing “atom” is a construction in the framework of a theory. [19] friedman, the parting of the ways, 103-109. [20] ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume three: the phenomenology of knowledge. (new haven: yale university press, 1957). see part i, “the expressive function and the world of expression.” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 46 pe dr a go sa [21] ibid. see part ii, “the problem of representation and the building of the intuitive world.” [22] ibid. see part iii, “the function of signification and the building up of scientific knowledge.” [23] ibid. 68. [24] ibid. 119. see also friedman, the parting of the ways, 104, 105. [25] cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms, 142. [26] ibid. 284. [27] ibid. 46. [28] hans blumenberg. “afinitäten und dominanzen” in ein mögliches selbst-verständnis: aus dem nachlass (stuttgart: philip reclam, 1996), 161168. see gordon, continental divide, 349: blumenberg reprises and old theological controversy that took place 400 years earlier between martin luther and ulrich zwingli, over the character of christ’s presence in the eucharist. the confrontation was between the orthodox view that the body of christ is really present in the bread and wine, and the unorthodox view according to which christs’s embodiment is merely an illusion, that the bread and wine only signify his body and blood though they are not literally so. [29] for a discussion of the realism of heidegger see the crucial §44 of heidegger, “dasein, disclosedness, and truth,” in being and time (new york: harper and row, 1962). see also the arguments given by friedman, the parting of the ways, 54-58. friedman says that heidegger “rejects (in §44) the “copernican revolution” in favor of an apparently “direct realist” conception of truth.” from friedman, the parting of the ways, 54. friedman also writes that “heidegger is a “direct realist” in so far as he begins with the idea of “being-in-the-world.” we do not start with a cognitive subject together with its contents of consciousness, but rather with a living practical subject necessarily engaged with its environment.” from friedman, the parting of the ways, 55. [30] ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume one: language (new haven: yale university press, 1955), 96. see also ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume two: mythical thought (new haven: yale university press, 1955), 166. here cassirer directly links art and architecture together. [31] we can also find a close bond between the modernist architect adolf loos and cassirer. in ornament and crime, (adolf loos, ornament and crime: selected essays. riverside: ariadne press, 1997). loos writes: “i 47 isparchitecture.com have discovered and given to the world the following notion: the evolution of civilization is synonymous with the elimination of ornament from the utilitarian object.” we find a parallelism between the historical narrative of the elimination of the ornamental with cassirer’s historical emancipation from myth and religion in order to achieve the enlightenment of reason and science. according to this interpretation, architecture should be freed form ornamentation in the same way that philosophy should be emancipated from myth. see peter galison, “aufbau/bauhaus: logical positivism and architectural modernism,” critical inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 726. the author compares in this article the bauhaus theory of design and architecture with the philosophy of logical positivism. even though cassirer criticised the scientism of the logical positivists, there are some points in common between both. [32] birgit leitner, “ernst cassirer and (?) the bauhaus: the question of functional aesthetics,” proceedings of the european society for aesthetics 3 (2011): 167. [33] cassirer, substance and function, 304. [34] heidegger, being and time, §29. [35] for the following discussion of the everyday pragmatic situations in which dasein is involved see heidegger, being and time, §15-16. [36] for the conversion of the “ready-to-hand” to the “present-at-hand,” see heidegger, being and time, §16 [37] gordon, continental divide, 221-224. [38] heidegger, being and time, §§22-24. [39] ibid. §18. [40] ibid. §§46-60. for the analysis of “being-towards-death” and the possibilty of “aunthentc” existence. [41] ibid. §27, 119. [42] friedman, the parting of the ways, 50-51. [43] https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=37# [44] ibid. [45] heidegger. being and time, §22. [46] cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume two: mythical thought, 98. [47] in 1925, while heidegger was working on the manuscript of being and time, the deutsche literaturzeitung sent him a copy of the second volume ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 48 pe dr a go sa of the philosophy of symbolic forms dedicated to myth. it is certainly a possibility that cassirer influenced heidegger. see skidelsky, the last philosopher of culture, 205. [48] luft, the space of culture, 164. [49] rudiger safranski, un maestro de alemania: martin heidegger y su tiempo (barcelona: tusquets, 1997), 226-227. [50] cassirer, the myth of the state (new haven: yale university press, 1944), 280. 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter isparchitecture.com on the use and abuse of historical monuments for life: nietzsche and confederate monuments roger paden the practice of preserving various parts of urban landscapes for historical purposes raises a variety of normative, metaphysical, and conceptual questions that invite philosophical analysis. the normative questions are particularly interesting. why should we preserve historical sites? what sites are worth preserving? how should they be preserved and interpreted?1 in this essay, i apply nietzsche’s theories of history and culture as found in the first two untimely meditations to provide a fresh critical framework to some normative questions raised by a particularly difficult instance of historical preservation; namely, the preservation of confederate monuments. this framework allows me to argue that some monuments should be removed from their prominent public sites, while others should be retained and reinterpreted. nietzsche on the advantages and disadvantages of history nietzsche’s work might seem to be a strange place to look for ideas concerning historical preservation. he wrote very little about cityscapes (and what little he did write is largely confined to an early work, the first meditation on david strauss; and he wrote nothing at all about historical preservation.2 his most systematic writing about history is found in the second meditation, “on the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” which begins with a rather unpromising quote from goethe: “i hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 48 pa de n activity.”3 as the study of history is rarely thought invigorating, it might be supposed that nietzsche would be an opponent not only of the study of history, but of historical preservation, as well; but this supposition would be mistaken as he immediately goes on to argue that, if history does not invigorate, it is a costly superfluity and luxury [which must be hated by us] because we still lack even the things we need and the superfluous is the enemy of the necessary. [however,] we need history ... but we need it ... for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away from life and action.... we want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value the study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate... 4 in fact, nietzsche held that history is essential to a well-lived life, but that only some approaches to history can serve life, while others are always dangerous to it. moreover, he believed that any approach can become dangerous if relied upon exclusively. the point of the second meditation is to show how history – and what kinds of history – can be useful. in that meditation, nietzsche argues that humans differ from other animals, not because we are essentially rational while they are not; rather, we differ because we have far better and more complex memory. this seemingly small psychological difference, however, has great consequences: humans are “historical animals,” while other animals, lacking a sense of history, live entirely (and happily) in the present. it also follows that these other animals are incapable of significant historical action and cannot grow or change as a species in historical time, while humans live in a world with both a past and a future and, consequently, can plan alternative futures. at the limit, humans can make a project of themselves: unlike animals, they can engage in historically-significant, transformative action. nietzsche argues that, to live historically-significant lives, our lives must contain both “historical” moments that involve remembering history and “unhistorical” moments that involve forgetting or ignoring history. to plan, we must be aware of our situation and this requires knowledge of our past, but, to act and create, we must forget – even dismiss – parts of that past. thus, the “historical and the unhistorical are necessary in equal measure for the health of an individual, of a people, and a culture.”5 however, because he believes that the modern age suffers from “an excess of history,”6 he focuses his argument on the claim that too much remembering is dangerous; that “there is a degree of ... historical sense which is harmful and ultimately fatal.” 7 nietzsche distinguishes several approaches to history. two unnamed approaches, which are wholly harmful to life, are described in the first 49 isparchitecture.com and second meditations, and when he criticizes “the oversaturation of an age with history,” i believe that it is these two unnamed approaches that he has in mind.8 the first—and less important of the two— i will call “scientific history.” on nietzsche’s view, scientific historians are “idler[s] in the garden of knowledge,” “pedantic micrologists,” “who stand aside from life so as to know it unobstructedly.”9 but, because the facts they seek are objective, isolated historical facts, unrelated to life and action, they can only be a harmful distraction. i will call the second, more important, approach, “teleological history.” as daniel breazeale points out in his introduction to the untimely meditations: though the second untimely meditation is sometimes read as a blanket rejection of “historicism,” this is far from the truth. what nietzsche rejects ... is not the basic thesis that every aspect and expression of human life is unavoidably conditioned by history, but rather, the progressive or whiggish consequences that are typically—albeit, in nietzsche’s view, quite illicitly—drawn from this thesis. it is not historicism per se to which he objects..., but rather the unexamined teleology that usually accompanies it.10 since hegel and the neo-hegelians took such a teleological approach to history, throughout the second meditation, nietzsche repeatedly criticizes their views, which present history as the inevitable unfolding of a pre-established and providential plan. especially dangerous versions of this history, on nietzsche’s view, portray this unfolding as essentially complete, as having arrived at what hegel called, “the end of history.” nietzsche criticizes this approach on a number of grounds. most important, he claims that “it implants a belief … in the old age of mankind, the belief that one is a latecomer and epigone” who believes he or she is living at the end of history.11 since, in this approach, this belief is accompanied both by the notion that “as things are they had to nietzsche held that history is essential to a well-lived life, but that only some approaches to history can serve life “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 50 pa de n be, as men now are they were bound to become, [and] none may resist this inevitability”12 and by the notion that the present age possesses “the rarest of virtues, justice, to a greater degree than any other,”13 epigones are led to the belief that new, historically-significant action is both impossible and undesirable; and this, in turn, leads to “the total surrender of the personality to the world-process”14 thus, as a teleological approach comes to dominate a person or a society, “the instinct for creation will be enfeebled and discouraged”15 and will be replaced by a “cynical ... prudent practical egoism, through which the forces of life are paralyzed and at last destroyed.”16 epigones seek “self-contentment,” while avoiding disturbing “enthusiasms”; indeed, “stupefaction is ... the goal” of those who take this approach.17 this self-satisfaction, however, is purchased at a great cost: because epigones are incapable of historically-significant action, they are condemned to an a-historical, animal-like existence. in the second meditation, nietzsche explicitly discusses three approaches toward history that, unlike the first two, are useful or even “necessary for life.”18 the first is “antiquarian history.” the antiquarian turns to history to “preserve and revere.”19 the advantage of antiquarian history is that it can help create a community by presenting it as the result of a whollypositive history and, in doing so, it can give its members an identity. the antiquarian can look back to whence he has come, to where he came into being, with love and loyalty.... by tending with care that which has existed from of old, he wants to preserve for those who shall come into existence after him the conditions under which he ... came into existence.... the history of his city becomes for him the history of himself; he reads its walls, its towered gate, its rules and regulations, its holidays, like an illuminated diary of his youth and in all this he finds again himself.... here we lived, he says to himself, for here we are living; here we shall live, for we are tough and not to be ruined overnight. thus, with the aid of this “we,” he looks beyond his own individual transitory existence and feels himself to be the spirit of his house, his race, his city.20 nietzsche holds that this “antiquarian sense of veneration of the past is of the greatest value when it spreads a simple feeling of pleasure and contentment over the modest, rude, even wretched conditions in which a man or a nation lives.” it not only gives “less favored generations and peoples” the courage to endure, but it “restrains them from roving abroad in search of something they think more worth having,” thereby dissipating their energies and abandoning their identity.21 it protects a people from being unfaithful “to its own origins and ... given over to a restless, cosmopolitan hunting after new and ever newer things.”22 51 isparchitecture.com antiquarian history can have certain disadvantages, however. it does not make distinctions as all parts of the antiquarian’s history are equally revered and, because nothing is criticized, nothing is understood. more important, by undermining the power of judgment, antiquarian history undermines continuing and especially higher life..., [as it] no longer conserves but mummifies.... for it knows only how to preserve life, not how to engender it; it always undervalues that which is becoming.... thus it hinders any firm resolve to attempt something new [and] paralyzes the man of action...23 the second form, “critical history,” is adopted by “a being who suffers and seeks deliverance.”24 nietzsche argues that if, “he is to live, man must possess and from time to time employ the strength to break up and dissolve a part of the past: he does this by bringing it before the tribunal, scrupulously examining it, and finally condemning it.”25 this approach remembers the past only in order to condemn its evils. it provides several advantages to its practitioners: it supplies an antidote to antiquarian history, but more important, it frees people from the past and opens up an unbounded future. but it also has several disadvantages. because “every past is … worthy to be condemned, for that is the nature of human things, [this approach to history suggests that] it would be better if nothing existed.”26 but by rejecting too much of the past, it leaves critical historians without a horizon to orient their actions: it rejects the existing, historically-grounded self and replaces it with a new one that is so weakly grounded that it turns to mindless cosmopolitan consumption.27 the third approach, “monumental history,” is adopted by those who wish to “act and strive.”28 focusing on great individuals and their struggles, this approach makes use of the past to inspire: it finds greatness there and argues that we, too, can be great, if only we “flee from resignation” (the belief ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 52 pa de n that historically-significant action is not possible) and use “history as a specific against it.”29 this approach has several advantages: it can give us the courage to act in historically-significant ways; it can distance us from our current situation; and it can bring about a new world in which lesser individuals can lead happy lives. but it also has certain disadvantages. the past is always different from the present and the historical analogy on which this approach depends is false. more important, monumental history, on its own, cannot guide us and does not lend itself to planning. thus, it can lead to great mistakes and pointless destruction. nietzsche claims that each of these three approaches has a role to play in a well-ordered life and society. we need antiquarian history to help ground us in that which is valuable in our lives; critical history to distance ourselves from our mistakes; and monumental history to inspire us to significant action. but, we need to balance each approach against the others. if monumental history dominates, change can become irrational and may lead to disaster. if critical history dominates, we can lose both identity and community. if antiquarian history dominates, we can lose our ability to face the challenges of the present effectively. in order to understand nietzsche at this point, it is essential to understand what he means by “life” and why he values it; and to do this it is necessary to read the two meditations together as they develop parallel distinctions that are central to understanding that concept. in the second meditation, nietzsche contrasts cosmopolitans with people who understand and properly use history, while in the first, he contrasts “cultural philistines” with “geniuses,” who understand and properly use culture.30 in each pair, the second term denotes someone who lives life well, while the first denotes a person who does not. the descriptions overlap to a great degree. nietzsche claims that epigones inevitably become cosmopolitans who live for the present moment (understood to be the last historical moment) and seek pleasure through the satisfaction of immediate felt needs. as such, they are “given over to a restless ... hunting after new and ever newer things ... thought more worth having.”31 given nietzsche’s contrast between historical and a-historical beings, cosmopolitans are a-historical beings who live less-than-human lives in which the “forces of life are paralyzed and at last destroyed.”32 the cultural philistine is described in similar terms. these philistines “devised the concept of the epigone-age [in which they think they are living] with the object of obtaining peace and quiet.”33 they do this to reject the life of the restless, searching genius; and then repress even the memory of that rejection. desiring only “selfcontentment,” they declare that “all seeking [for a truly better life] is at 53 isparchitecture.com an end.”34 characterized by “a lack of style or a chaotic jumble of all styles,”35 both cosmopolitans and philistines reject self-transformation, and this rejection paralyzes and destroys their life force. this notion of self-transformation is central to nietzsche’s concept of life. he describes life as a “plastic power” and claims that the greatness of “a man, a people, or a culture” can be measured by the degree to which they possess it.36 this plastic power is inwardly-directed, as it names “the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, [and] to replace what has been lost...”37 this notion of life is connected to nietzsche’s notion of culture, as he not only believes that a good life requires a vital connection with true culture, but his notion of life is modeled on the idea of culture: it is the epitome of a good life as it involves a continuous transformation which aims at a “unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people”; at “a stylistic unity within which the manifold phenomena which characterize it are harmonized.”38 while nietzsche points out that this stylistic unity cannot be attained through systematic and oppressive exclusion, he nevertheless thinks that it can be attained only through struggle, as we always find ourselves in states of partial disunity and disorganization. this “grand style originates [only] when the beautiful carries off the victory over the monstrous”; only when life creates a new order out of existing disorder.39 a good life is one that seeks to create an integrated beauty from a chaos of existing forms. pursuing this project requires many things. negatively, it requires the rejection of the “modern” all-consuming search for pleasure; it requires the rejection of the life of the cultural philistine or cosmopolitan.40 positively, what it requires can be determined by reference to the three ways in which history can be useful to life. as emphasized by this notion of selftransformation is central to nietzsche’s concept of life “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 54 pa de n antiquarians, we (as individuals, peoples, or cultures) need a stable and valued foundation in our identity.41 as emphasized by the critical historian, we need to be able to consider and devalue parts of our history and identity. finally, as emphasized by the monumental historian, we need the courage to reject a life of pleasure so as to pursue “life.” historic preservation in the united states oddly, given our self-conception as a future-oriented society with little time for the past, the united states, like nietzsche’s germany, seems “oversaturated” with history – and with the wrong kinds of history. this can be seen in the many political battles that are fought over the proper interpretation of our history, in which each side – rather than seeking to promote “life” in nietzsche’s sense – attempts to “use” history to support its political program, while charging the other side of “abusing” history when it does the same. in these battles, american preservationists have typically adopted two approaches toward history described by nietzsche. the dominant approach has been teleological; a secondary approach, antiquarian. serious preservation work began in the u.s. during the early nineteenth century with attempts to preserve mount vernon and independence hall. these projects were undertaken by members of upper-class eastern society, and the approach they took to historical preservation—in which they sought to preserve those sites and structures that played important roles in the development of the nation—still dominates the practice. according to william murtagh, “patriotism fueled the energies of nineteenth-century preservationists to the excluding of any other interest.” preservationists adopted this approach because they believed that “it is good policy in a republican government to inculcate sentiments of veneration for those departed heroes who have rendered service to their country in times of danger.” to achieve this goal, they sought to protect the houses of worthy political or military figures, along with important political buildings and battlefields, treating them as “shrines or icons.” the dominant theme of these efforts has been a “secular pietism” which sought to preserve buildings thought “worthy of attention for transcendent [i.e., nation building] rather than intrinsic reasons.”42 such an approach to preservation fits particularly well with the historically dominant self-conception of the united states that understands the country through phrases drawn from a religious context: our county is like a ‘city on a hill’ with a unique ‘manifest destiny.’ this approach is clearly teleological in nature, but as the united states achieved 55 isparchitecture.com hegemonic status, this approach increasingly took what nietzsche thought its most pernicious form, which portrays us as living in “an epigone-age” or, as a best-selling book of a few years back put it, as living at the end of history.43 according to nietzsche, both these approaches, but especially the latter, would have the effect of producing a cynical, self-satisfied cosmopolitanism that would make self-transcending actions (“life”) increasingly difficult for both individuals and cultures. beginning in the early twentieth century, a second form of preservationism took an antiquarian approach toward history and should be understood as part of a wider project to raise the status and power of the post-civil war south. central to this project is “the myth of the lost cause,” which attempts to put the south’s defeat in the civil war in the best possible light. it does this by arguing for a set of mythical ideas including the idea (1) that slavery was a benign institution; (2) that slavery was an institution in decline; (3) that slavery was not the cause of the south’s secession; (4) that, in the face of demographic and industrial differences, the south could not have won the civil war; (5) that lee was one of the greatest generals in history, who bravely fought for a “lost cause,” while grant was an incompetent brute; and (6) and that southerners and southern society were morally superior to their northern counterparts.44 partisans of this myth have adopted a preservationist program similar to that of the dominant culture. they have sought to preserve the mansions and plantations of important political figures, but they have placed a relatively greater emphasis on military sites, placing statues of confederate generals in public places, and displays featuring confederate battle flags. as nietzsche notes about antiquarian approaches to history in general, this project can help preserve the antiquarian’s identity, but it does so at some cost. david lowenthal has argued: oddly, given our selfconception as a future-oriented society with little time for the past, the united states, like nietzsche’s germany, seems ‘oversaturated’ with history “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 56 pa de n in recoiling from tragic loss or fending off a fearsome future, people the world over revert to ancestral legacies. as hope of progress fades, heritage [nietzsche’s “antiquarian history”] consoles us with tradition.... [however, this search for historical justification is] oppressive, defeatist, [and] decadent.... breeding xenophobic hate, it becomes a byword for bellicose discord. perverting the “true” past for greedy or chauvinist ends, heritage undermines historical truth with twisted myth. exalting rooted faith over critical reason, it stymies social action and sanctions passive acceptance of preordained fate.45 and indeed, southern antiquarian history has helped perpetuate racism, while stifling education and economic growth. a nietzschean, however, would reject the myth of the lost cause for a different reason, namely, that like all antiquarian histories, southern antiquarian history undermines “higher life” and “paralyzes the man of action.”46 as lowenthal put it: “miring us in the obsolete, the cult of heritage immures life within museums and monuments.”47 the myth of the lost cause, like most antiquarian histories, does not aid “life.” moreover, contrary to what nietzsche argues, this antiquarian history has not protected the south from consumerist cosmopolitanism as its partisans have adopted the same practical egoism that nietzsche thought the most reprehensible consequence of cosmopolitanism. the myth of the lost cause gives some southerners a relatively shallow identity and explains their supposedly-unjust relative poverty, powerlessness, and cultural subordination, only to allow them to more easily pursue their consumer interests. indeed, the only difference between this antiquarian history and the more dominant teleological history is the dating of history’s end: both present us as epigones, living at the twilight end of meaningful history; both produce “stupefaction”; and both make historically-significant, transformative action difficult. on the use and abuse of confederate monuments following the 2016 murder of nine black parishioners at the emanuel ame church in charleston sc, the debate over the preservation of confederate monuments intensified. several photos of the murderer with a confederate battle flag led to protests at public sites featuring this flag, particularly at the state house in columbia, and these protests raised questions—and inspired further protests (and counter-protests)— concerning the many confederate monuments located on public sites. perhaps the most significant of these protests, which occurred in charlottesville, va in 2017, was triggered by the city council’s decision to remove a statue of confederate general robert e. lee and to rename 57 isparchitecture.com the park where it stood. this decision attracted the attention of a number of white supremacist groups who, seemingly with president trump’s blessing, protested against the statue’s removal. one of these white supremacists killed a counter-protestor. the issue ostensibly at stake in most of these controversies is whether such statues should be kept in place, removed to other sites, or simply destroyed.48 from a nietzschean perspective these controversies reflect two approaches to history: southern antiquarians seek to preserve the statues in place, while their opponents, who have adopted a critical approach, call for the statues to be removed or destroyed. antiquarians offer several arguments in favor of their position. first, they argue that attempts to remove these statues amount to an attack on “southern” heritage and identity. note, for example, how the intentionally provocative phrase chanted by neo-nazi protestors, “jews will not replace us,” reflects nietzsche’s antiquarian who asserts that “here we lived, here we are living, and here we shall live, for we are tough and not to be ruined overnight.”49 in addition, southern antiquarians argue that removing these statues amounts to an attempt to “erase history” and is, therefore, an attack on truth. critical historians who favor removing these statues respond that these statues are monuments and, as such, do not simply record history (as the erasure charge implies); instead, they memorialize it. monuments commemorate; they celebrate, honor, or valorize events, often by depicting a person who played a significant role in them. these figures are valued for the role they played in these historically-important dramas; their personal character is of secondary importance. statues of lee, for example, are erected, not because he was an especially virtuous person, but rather because he was a noteworthy confederate general. moreover, by expressing value judgments, monuments serve ’miring us in the obsolete, the cult of heritage immures life within museums and monuments’ “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 58 pa de n the needs of contemporary politics. this service can be seen in the history of confederate monuments raised during the jim crow period so as to refashion contemporary southern society around a fixed, fundamentalist identity looking favorably on slavery and most at home when surrounded by racist institutions and practices. when this identity was again challenged during the civil rights era, these monuments were given legal protection to make their removal difficult, thereby adding a new layer to the institutional racism associated with this identity. given that the purpose of these statues is to valorize particular historical events in support of a specific southern identity associated with existing oppressive institutions, attempts to remove them are best understood, not as attempts to erase history, but as attempts to oppose these institutions.50 southern antiquarians try to respond to this argument with a reductio ad absurdum: if monuments valorize and if slavery is evil, then we should remove all statues that celebrate slave owners, including those of washington and jefferson and, if this is true, we would soon have to remove all memorials. the objection to this slippery-slope argument is obvious: these statues valorize washington and jefferson, not as defenders of slavery, but for other, highly significant, historically-transformative actions. putting this objection aside, however, note how the antiquarian’s argument reflects nietzsche’s claim that critical history is problematic because, since every past is worthy of condemnation, it soon rejects all history. but nietzsche, unlike the southern antiquarian, makes this claim in support of a broader point; namely, that, since the critical approach tends to sever all connections to history, it is dangerous to life: “men and ages which serve life by judging and destroying a past are always ... endangered men and ages.”51 the real problem with the two approaches to history that have shaped the controversy over confederate statues is that neither approach “serves life.” at best the antiquarian approach might preserve, or “mummify,” a (particularly unacceptable and vexed) form of life and identity, while critical history, because it destroys its own historical horizon, tends to produce a weakened personality that itself cannot tolerate criticism. but these criticisms raise two questions: first, philosophically, how should history be approached? and second, how can these philosophical criticisms help solve the essentially historical/architectural controversy over confederate statues? as to the first question, at the end of his critique of critical history, nietzsche writes: for since we are the outcome of earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations ... and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is not possible 59 isparchitecture.com wholly to free ourselves from this chain. if we condemn these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alter the fact that we originated in them. the best we can do is to confront our inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge, and through a new, stern discipline combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a new second nature, so that our first nature withers away.52 it would seem that, here, nietzsche is arguing that these two approaches need to be combined, if they are to support life; that it is necessary to both criticize one’s history and to ground oneself in it. we must understand not only that our identity grows out of our past but also that it cannot simply be identified with it. in addition, we need the courage to take on the task of developing a new identity out of our history—of bringing unity to the historical manifold—and this, nietzsche argues, is only possible with the aid of monumental history. in addition, we must separate the notion of growth and development from the teleological notion of inevitable fate: we must incorporate notions of inescapable struggle and contingency into our history. but how can such a complex approach to history be represented in an urban landscape? how can monuments help us accomplish this task? consider another example: the appomattox memorial in alexandria va is a bronze statue of an unarmed confederate soldier standing on a stone base with inscriptions on four sides. modeled on a painting by john elder of a soldier viewing the appomattox battlefield after lee’s surrender, the statue portrays a soldier standing with crossed arms, equipment hanging from one shoulder and one hand holding a hat. (figure 1) his head is bowed, his eyes look down. his expression is often described as “somber” or “contemplative.” the inscriptions state that the memorial was “erected to the memory of confederate dead of alexandria by their surviving critical history is problemmatic because, since every past is worthy of condemnation, it soon rejects all history “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 60 pa de n comrades” and, claiming that “they died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed,” list 100 names. the memorial is set at the center of an intersection where, at the beginning of the war, local troops assembled in advance of an invading union army to march south to join lee, and the soldier looks south along the path they took. originally set on a broad median, the site of the memorial was greatly reduced to accommodate the construction of a new parkway, eventually named after jefferson davis. on the intersection’s southwest corner stands the lyceum, alexandria’s history museum.53 the memorial was erected by the robert e. lee camp of the united confederate veterans (ucv) in 1889, early in the jim crow period. realizing that the statue would be controversial, the ucv successfully petitioned the virginia house of delegates to protected it from being removed and, indeed, although it was thought a fine work of public art when in was erected, it has long been controversial. this controversy came to a head in late 2016, following the charleston murders, when the city council voted to remove the statue to another location and rename the adjacent parkway.54 as with other recent controversies, this controversy took the form of a debate between antiquarians and critical historians, and conventional alternatives would have us choose between the antiquarian preservation of the statue as is, or its critical removal. a third approach that nietzsche’s thinking opens us to—one that “serves life”—would be to incorporate the existing memorial into a larger work of art by taking advantage of the remaining, narrow landscaped median immediately south of the memorial. this median should be the site of two low panels displaying friezes visible to passing pedestrians and motorists. the western (southbound) side of these panels should contain scenes of slaves being marched south from the auction houses of alexandria, home to one of the largest slave-trading operations in the country. the eastern side of the panels should contain scenes showing self-emancipated slaves traveling north on the underground railroad, an important route of which ran through alexandria. to the south of these panels, in the middle of the next intersection, a new statue should be erected showing members of the 29th and 31st brigades of “u.s. colored troops,” who helped defeat lee’s army at appomattox. an account of alexandria’s role in both the slave trade and the civil war, and an account of history of the statue and these recent changes, should be available at the adjacent lyceum, and at the alexandria black history museum, a few blocks north. this new work of urban art avoids the pitfalls of dichotomous thinking that contributed to the debacle in charlottesville by weaving 61 isparchitecture.com together nietzsche’s three approaches to history so as to make a complete monument that serves life. critical history would be served by the low panels showing slaves being marched south. these panels would make the evils of slavery visible, and their presence near the soldier would indicate the cause of the war. as could be made clear at the nearby museums, their height and orientation, relative to the soldier, and delayed construction would gesture at their ‘invisibility’ perpetuated in repressive bad faith by the myth of the lost cause. antiquarian history would be served by retaining the contemplative look of the soldier. pondering his loss in this cause, he might now be understood as realizing that the ‘duty’ which he “faithfully performed” was embedded in a controversial identity, shaped and imposed by economic interests that may have differed from his own. he now faces the future with a new task: mummification or the development of a new, more vital identity based on a more complete understanding of history. monumental history would be served by the statue of the black soldiers at the southern end of the ensemble, by the slaves emancipating themselves as they travel north on the railroad, and, possibly, by the confederate soldier figure 1: appomattox memorial, alexandria, va ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 62 pa de n now given an opportunity for a new identity. this new memorial would also reject the teleological history of most memorials by showing that the conflict at the heart of the memorial is not yet fully resolved: the myth is still with us; the soldier has not yet begun his new life. the task of forging a new american identity rooted in the crimes and ideals, the struggles and the values of the past is not yet complete, nor is its outcome clear. the purpose of the new monument is to lead people to contemplate these ideas. of course, this statue possesses several unique advantages (its emotional qualities and location) that make it easy to re-purpose. other statues would be more difficult to redesign and some are best taken down. in some cases, there may simply be no room to add new materials. in others, the statues might simply be too caught up in the myth of the lost cause, too antiquarian, or too racist to be successfully transformed. public artists can be very creative people and may be able to salvage many existing statues, but in judging their proposals the important question to ask is: “does this proposal transform this monument in such a way that it serves life?” if not, it should be removed or destroyed.55 nietzsche’s theories of history and culture can help us understand that cities need to incorporate history into the urban fabric and that both historical preservation and memorialization have central roles in the urban design. memorials can fulfill this role, but only if they aim at engendering the life goal of vital, unified, and beautiful identities. as the united states continues to ponder the role of confederate monuments in its urban spaces, nietzsche’s life-serving approach to history provides a useful alternative to the debilitating stand-off between subservience to history and cosmopolitan forgetfulness. endnotes 1. william j. murtagh, keeping time: the history and theory of preservation in america (hoboken, nj: john wiley and sons, 2006), p. 5; see also charles b. hosmer, presence of the past (new york: putnam, 1965). 2. friedrich nietzsche, “david strauss: the confessor and the writer,” in friedrich nietzsche, untimely meditations, edited by daniel breazeale. translated by r. j. hollingdale. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997): 1-55. hereinafter, “strauss.” [3] friedrich nietzsche, “on the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” in nietzsche, untimely meditations: 57-124, p. 59. hereinafter, “history.” 4. nietzsche, “history,” 59. 63 isparchitecture.com 5. nietzsche, “history,” 63. 6. nietzsche, “history,” 67, 7. nietzsche, “history,” 62. 8. nietzsche, “history,” 83; and nietzsche, “strauss,” 30-35. 9. nietzsche, “history,” 59, 68, and 117. 10. daniel breazeale, “introduction.” in nietzsche, untimely meditations: vii-xxxiii, p. xv. 11. nietzsche, history, 83. 12. nietzsche, “history,” 107. 13. nietzsche, “history,” 83, 14. nietzsche, “history,” 107. 15. nietzsche, “history,” 95. 16. nietzsche, “history,” 83. 17. nietzsche, “strauss,” 10-11. 18. nietzsche, “history,” 75. 19. nietzsche, “history,” 67. 20. nietzsche, “history,” 72-3. 21. nietzsche, “history,” 73. 22. nietzsche, “history” 74. 23. nietzsche, “history,” 75. 24. nietzsche, “history,” 67. 25. nietzsche, “history,” 75-6. 26. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 27. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 28. nietzsche, “history,” 67. 29. nietzsche, “history,” 68. 30. nietzsche, “strauss,” 11. 31. nietzsche, “history,” 73-74. 32. nietzsche, “history,” 83. 33. nietzsche, “strauss,” 10. 34. nietzsche, “strauss,” 10-11. 35. nietzsche, “strauss,” 6, 36. nietzsche, “history,” 62. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 64 pa de n 37. nietzsche, “history,” 62. 38. nietzsche, “strauss,” 7-8. 39. friedrich nietzsche, “the wanderer and his shadow,” in friedrich nietzsche, human, all too human. translated by r. j. hollingdale. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1996): 301-395, p. 334. 40. william arrowsmith, “introduction,” in friedrich nietzsche, unmodern observations. edited by william arrowsmith. (new haven: yale university press, 1990), p. xi, quoting “history,” 60. 41. nietzsche, “history,” 63. 42. murtagh, keeping time, pp. xxvii, xxviii, and 11-24; also see hosmer, presence of the past, pp. 298-303. 43. francis fukuyama, the end of history and the last man, (new york: free press, 1992). 44. edward h. bonekemper, the myth of the lost cause: why the south fought the civil war and why the north won (washington, dc: regnery history, 2015); and caroline janney, remembering the civil war: reunion and the limits of reconciliation, (chapel hill, university of north carolina press, 2013), pp. 251-254. 45.david lowenthal, “the heritage crusade and its contradictions.” in max page and randall mason, giving preservation a history, (new york: routledge, 2004): 19-43, p. 19. 46. nietzsche, “history,” 75. 47. lowenthal, “the heritage crusade,” p. 19. 48. monica hesse, “a quandary set in stone,” washington post, 5/9/2016, c1; christopher phelps, “removing racist symbols isn’t a denial of history,” the chronicle of higher education, jan 29, 2016, pp. 48-51; sarah fenton, “the confederacy, its symbols, and the politics of public culture,” aha today, 1/9/2016. 49. nietzsche, “history,” 73. 50. in fact, the erasure charge is more accurately applied to the attempts to preserve these statues, as these monuments materialize an ideology that attempts to erase the history of slavery. this is consistent with another of nietzsche’s criticisms of antiquarian history; namely, that it “possesses an extremely restricted field of vision” (nietzsche, “history,” 74). 51. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 52. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 53. office of historic alexandria, “the confederate statue,” https://www. 65 isparchitecture.com alexandriava.gov/ uploadedfiles/historic/info/brochures/ confederatestatuebrochure.pdf/, accessed 5/12/2015. 54. sullivan, patricia, “alexandria will seek to move confederate statue and rename jefferson davis highway,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ virginia-politics/alexandria-will-seek-to-move-confederatestatue-and-rename-jefferson-davis-highway/2016/09/17/ fec35310-7b53-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html?utm_ term=.1b5f0e67d0e7rnon/ accessed 9/26/2017. 55. the controversy surrounding the confederacy memorial carving at stone mountain, georgia that gained prominence during the 2018 governor’s race between a white male and a black female candidate may be one such example admitting of no life-serving solution. isparchitecture.com this volume of architecture philosophy derives from the 4th biennial conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture held for two days at the united states air force academy in colorado springs, colorado in july, 2018. the conference theme “building as service: people, politics, and governance,” and the three keynote speakers, attracted a wide variety of papers including presentations on state architecture, representations of power, and symbols of politics from 30 additional presenters. the papers also ranged geographically: case studies from architecture in nazi germany to informal cities in south america were presented. one of the chief attractions for conferees was the opportunity to explore the grounds of u.s. air force academy: itself one of the 20th century’s distinguished achievements in state architecture. the academy is notable for coherence and completeness as an exemplar of international modernist style. its lead architect, walter netsch, and his firm skidmore, owings, and merrill, were at the forefront of this movement. netsch’s vision was built almost entirely as he intended and it was finished in less than 10 years: the academy was created on april 1, 1954 and the last building of the initial plan; the celebrated academy chapel, was completed in 1962. amazingly, the academy still functions largely in accordance with its original design plan, thus netsch’s vision, together with the air force’s intent for the campus, continues to inform the life of the institution today—some modernism, theyargue, poses special challenges to accepted historic preservation values “ ” editorial: building as service mark jensen & tom spector ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 6 ed it or ia l 60 years later. in addition to exploring the buildings themselves, visitors observed the ways in which cadets, faculty, and other personnel pursue their institutional objectives in concert with the supporting architecture. conferees were treated with a tour of the campus led by the air force academy’s resident architect, duane boyle, who knew netsch personally (netsch died in 2008) and who shared details of both the architect’s thinking and intent in designing the campus. the conference was convened in the newest addition to the air force academy, polaris hall which opened in 2016, also designed, like the rest of the main campus, by som. polaris hall houses both the academy’s center for character and leadership development and serves as a conference center just outside the secure boundaries of the “cadet area,” where cadets live and learn and train. its signature element is its skylight tower, which telescopes toward the pole star. the conference opened with a keynote from one of polaris hall’s lead architects, frank mahan, whose contribution, fittingly, opens this volume of architecture philosophy. in their piece, “the future of modernism,” frank mahan and collaborator van kluytenaar discuss the architectural challenge of restoration in the context of restoring modernist buildings. modernism, they argue, poses special challenges to accepted historic preservation values according primacy to a building’s “literal materiality,” first theorized by ruskin and morris, when a modern building is more driven by the “fathomless depths of its concept,” better served by the idealistic preservation values of viollet-le-duc. drawing on the resources of merleau-ponty, they argue that plans for restoration and reuse must be recognizably continuous with the narrative behind the building or else risk losing important, albeit less material, qualities that make the building what it is. they illustrate this theory with a discussion of three case studies: lever house, manufacturers hanover trust, and polaris hall itself. it will not be lost on conference participants that these exact issues are at stake in the restoration of cadet chapel. in his piece, “design-politics: how buildings mean,” the conference’s final keynote lawrence vale develops a set of distinctions first proposed by nelson goodman to examine the gap between what a building means and how it communicates its meaning to its audience. through a series of case studies, vale undercuts the possibility of a simple relationship between the meaning of a building and what it communicates. he points out that notable historic events, digital media, and temporary installations add layers to what it communicates that are not directly mappable to the meaning of the building itself. this recognition leads him to conclude that contemporary design cannot hope to slide underneath the political 7 isparchitecture.com dimensions of life: public buildings are not just neutral backdrops for political contests but actually part of the contests themselves. in the next essay in this volume, “koolhaas’ revision of foucault’s panopticon,” andré patrão explores the relationship between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy through koolhaas’ apparent, yet denied, appropriation of foucault’s philosophy in his proposal for a renovated panopticon prison. the panopticon, originally designed by jeremy bentham, is a prison in which the cells are arranged around a central guardhouse such that the prisoners are always under the impression that they are being watched, even though the guards themselves are unobserved, e.g., by means of one-way glass. foucault uses the panopticon as a metaphor for the destructive power of the feeling of constant surveillance. koolhaas, on the other hand, is faced with a real opportunity to renovate an actual panopticon prison. he proposes to eliminate the central guard tower and makes other changes that will contribute to the humanization of the prisoners inside. it would seem that foucault must have had an influence on koolhaas, but as patrão argues, the genealogy is not straightforward. foucault is never mentioned by koolhaas in connection with the proposal and yet its aims are consistent with a serious appreciation of foucault’s widely disseminated critique. patrão employs this case to examine the question: can we, should we, to what degree and for what end assert intellectual influence when ideas are “in the air”? rick fox’s “useless speculation: architectural obsolescence and the micro-parcels of gordon matta-clark’s fake estates,” uses the work of artist gordon matta-clark to draw attention to the situatedness of buildings inside a public geography that may be marked by disorganization, confusion, and incoherence. in the 1970s, mattaclark acquired 15 very small parcels of land in new york city at public auction. that these parcels even vale undercuts the possibility of a simple relationship between the meaning of a building and what it communicates “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 8 ed it or ia l existed was an indication of errors in surveying, zone, and land contracts. some of these parcels were completely surrounded by private property and hence inaccessible to the owner without the permission of an adjacent property owner. while matta-clark never constructed an art installation around his land parcels, fox reconstructs the underlying critical perspective fake estates intended to make about the waste and obsolescence endemic to contemporary architecture and city planning. in our final essay, “constructing a common world: architectural craftsmanship and public responsibility,” hans teerds reconfigures hannah arendt’s distinction between work and action for the architectural enterprise. for arendt, work is the act of building something; action is civic and political engagement. yet contemporary trends in architectural production towards the seeming objectivity provided by machines and algorythms tend to place the architect at an increasing remove from both. true engagement, he contends, must be found in subjectivity. while work is the natural home for architectural activity, teerds argues that architects must be attentive to action as well, insofar as action takes place in the context of the buildings that architects design. drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, teerds describes the interplay between the design and craftsmanship of the architect in the world of work and the contested and deliberative environment of action. architects today must design and construct in partnership with their clients and stakeholders—a community that, in the world of action, may not be coherent. in this way, the judgment and work of the architect today is inescapably political. our volume concludes with a review by mark jensen of timothy hyde’s new book, ugliness and judgment: on architecture in the public eye. hyde’s book provides both a delightful and frustrating tour through hundreds of years of british architecture, city planning, and the public and political responses to the series of poor design choices and ugly buildings that these architects and planners have produced. unfortunately for the philosophical reader, hyde does not supply an analysis of ugliness that might be of use to architects and planners alike in order to avoid despoiling the urban landscape. we hope that, in this volume of architecture philosophy, you will find the variety, nuance, novelty, and interest that we have all come to expect at the intersection of architecture, design, philosophy, and politics. the next biennial conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture will be held in monte verita switzerland. we hope to see you there! 9 isparchitecture.com air force academy cadet chapel, 2018 ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 10 ed it or ia l isparchitecture.com ut architectura philosophia? questioning the relationship of architecture and philosophy karsten harries 1 this conference has been organized by the international society for the philosophy of architecture. our topic is “the human in architecture and philosophy.” it raises the question: just what is the relationship between philosophy and architecture? what do they have to contribute to each other? what does architecture have to contribute to philosophy? and what does philosophy have to contribute to architecture? i shall return to both questions. that both are concerned with the human, with the ways human beings relate or should relate to each other and to the world that environs them seems obvious enough. in that sense both would seem to have an ethical significance. and both would seem to engage in work of construction, work that presupposes some sort of space, the space of everyday life in the case of architecture, a spiritual or logical space in the case of philosophy. philosophers have thus frequently invoked architectural metaphors, have liked to speak of laying foundations, of raising conceptual edifices, of the architectonics of some philosophical system. think of descartes, who likened himself to an architect, his philosophy to a chapel raised on firm foundations. but what work do such metaphors really do? are they not at bottom dispensable? yet especially in recent years it has once again become fashionable to think the philosopher in the image of the architect, if now often in a critical just what is the relationship between philosophy and architecture? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 191 ha r r ie s key, to think of him as a would-be builder, someone who seeks to edify. the very word “edify” should make us think: once it meant simply to raise a dwelling or structure, later it came to mean “to improve morally or spiritually” — kierkegaard thus wrote edifying discourses — but today it tends to carry a negative connotation: philosophers should not attempt to be edifying. that shift in meaning invites attention. the word “edify” thus invites us to think about recent attacks on both traditional architecture and systembuilding philosophy: what, for example are we to make of invocations of georges bataille’s stance against architecture, where architecture, both material and spiritual, stands for an order that by assigning us our place threatens to imprison us and should be destroyed, even if such destruction threatens chaos? the kind of thinking that here makes the prison the paradigmatic work of architecture, a kind of lens through which to look at all architecture, is of the sort that lets dostoevsky’s man from the underground call twice-two-makes-four a piece of impudence and celebrate twice-two-makes-five as the ultimate refuge of a freedom that, resisting placement, dreams of labyrinth and chaos. was nietzsche perhaps right to claim that “if we willed and dared an architecture according to the kind of souls we possess (for that we are too cowardly!) the labyrinth would have to be our model”?1 consider, for example, the influential exhibition deconstructivist architecture, curated by mark wigley und philip johnson in 1988. the catalogue spoke of the emergence of a new sensibility, fascinated by possibilities of contaminating, disrupting, violating, subverting architecture. that sensibility led to an architecture that self-consciously calls traditional architecture into question, that is to say, an anti-architecture, which in today’s architecture world, both in theory and practice, has played a significant role in the work of frank gehry, zaha hadid, peter eisenman, daniel libeskind, rem kohlhaas, and coop himmelb(l)au, the architects celebrated by that exhibition. although perhaps claiming something like an ethical significance, such attacks on architecture as traditionally understood are also attacks on ethics in its usual sense, which does seek to edify, i.e. to raise a spiritual architecture that would help human beings find their proper place. freedom resists such placement. but should every spiritual architecture that would thus place us be challenged? what, for example, are we to make of the vogue enjoyed by the word “deconstruction” and all it stands for, the word itself an architectural metaphor of sorts, embraced not just by philosophers and literary critics, but also the name of an architectural practice that challenged what one had 192 isparchitecture.com come to expect from architecture, a practice that in extreme cases has led to attempts to blur what would seem to separate so obviously the philosopher from the architect: i am thinking especially, but not only, of derrida’s collaboration with bernard tschumi and peter eisenman, a collaboration that threatened to make of deconstructive discourse a strangely cerebral kind of architectural ornament. but does architecture, taken in its usual sense, really belong with ethics in that it, too, has by its very nature an ethical function, seeking to help orient individuals by providing more than just physical shelter, by interpreting their place in the world, especially in the community, the polis? or is just this understanding of architecture as having as a central task the representation of a community’s shared values or divinities something that we moderns, who in so many ways have left behind the ancient polis, should resist as incompatible with the world we live in, with the values that inform it, first of all with the value placed on the individual and on freedom? that was the charge mark lilla directed against my the ethical function of architecture: “it never seems to occur to harries that modern society is not re-presented in modern architecture for the simple reason that it is un-representable. that, indeed, was the point, or at least the result of the revolution in modern politics.”2 this criticism claims that the ethical function of architecture, as i presented it in that book, lies behind those who are truly of this modern age. and if such an ethical, and this means inevitably also a political function, was indeed, as hegel thought, once part of the very essence of architecture in what he took to be its highest sense, must we who are truly of today not resist all such architecture, which, when attempts are made to realize it in this modern age, invites disaster: think of the architecture of totalitarian governments, say of the architecture of ludwig troost, who had been charged by hitler to ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 193 ha r r ie s transform munich’s königsplatz into a worthy setting of a new national cult. the buildings that provided this cult with a stage were then widely celebrated as an enormous success, applauded by the party ideologue alfred rosenberg as “the first attempt to realize the ancient greek ideal” and praised by the architectural critic wilhelm lotz for showing for the first time in the modern age that “a deeper meaning can dwell in a city-square” as long as it has its origin in a spiritual principle and not in a desire for aesthetic variety in the built-environment or in a merely decorative intention. we should note the rejection of an architecture that would be no more than an aesthetic dressing up of functional buildings. the transformation of the königsplatz was supposed to have shown that it was still possible to create an architecture that emerges from inner principles of dedication and value instead of being derived from external contingencies of use.3 did architecture here not achieve that repetition of the greek in the modern of which nietzsche and also heidegger in the origin of the world of art dreamed? it is more than an historical accident that heidegger first gave this lecture on november 13, 1935, just four days before hitler was to give in munich a powerful demonstration of what such a repetition of the greek in the modern might mean in the 20th century.4 this unhappy conjunction needs to be confronted by anyone who, drawing on heidegger, wants to claim, as i do, an ethical function for architecture. has walter benjamin not taught us to associate such an aestheticized politics with fascism—and with kitsch and bad faith, with the myth of the twentieth century? countering mark lilla’s claim that modern society is not re-presented in modern architecture because it is un-representable, i want to insist that buildings cannot but re-present the ethos presiding over their construction. but that ethos all too often invites critique. despite a stream of mostly positive, but sometimes also critical responses, i have not seen a need to change my position in any fundamental way. but circumstances have changed; the world has changed, demanding a reconsideration of aspects of some of the central issues that i neglected. more especially, the way we today relate to space has changed and continues to change. two developments here seem to me to be particularly significant. one is the way an ever developing technology, and today especially the digital revolution, have opened up our everyday existence in ways that will continue to change our lives in ways we cannot quite foresee. we are open today to the world, to the universe, and to imaginary, virtual spaces as never before. this revolution has transformed the way architects do their work, but, and even more importantly, it has changed our sense of 194 isparchitecture.com distance, place, and space, and inseparable from it, our way of life, our sense of freedom, and that is to say also our way of dwelling, which should have consequences for our way of building. the other, in a sense opposite, but perhaps even more important way in which our world is changing has to do with the way the inevitably limited resources provided by this small planet have to collide with a still increasing humanity and its ever increasing demands for a higher standard of living. not just air and water, even space is becoming an ever scarcer, and all too often contested resource. much that gets built today wastes space in ways that i find irresponsible. these developments call for a reconsideration of what i had worked out in the ethical function of architecture. 2 let me return to the suggestion that the philosopher and the architect are both builders, to be sure, using very different media. just how is the bond between architecture and philosophy to be understood? hence the title of my lecture with its question mark: ut architectura philosophia? the latin obviously makes reference to the horatian ut pictura poesis, “as is painting so is poetry.” poetry here is said to be like painting in that it, too, represents reality. painting, to be sure, addresses itself to the eye, relying on visible figures, poetry to the ear, relying on words. the horatian dictum was thus famously called into question by lessing in his laocoon. lessing insisted on the gulf that separates eye and ear, percept and concept, arts of space and arts of time. and should the kind of considerations advanced by lessing not call into question even more decisively any attempt to obscure what so obviously would seem to separate buildings cannot but re-present the ethos presiding over their construction. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 195 ha r r ie s the architect who deals with matter from the philosopher who works with concepts, a distinction self-consciously blurred by some recent writing on architecture? should they not call into question, to give just one example, a work such as mark wigley’s the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt? 5 to be sure, philosophers like kant or descartes have liked to invoke architectural metaphors, have liked to speak of laying foundations, of raising conceptual edifices, of the architectonics of some philosophical system. but, to repeat the question, are such metaphors not at bottom dispensable? or is there indeed a deeper bond between the two that awaits adequate exploration? the organizers of this symposium, we are told, were inspired, by two observations and two questions: 1) many architects, contemporary and historical, claim to focus on the needs of human beings. the resulting architecture, however, often does not meet the needs and desires of the people who live there. for whom should architecture actually build? 2) architecture, traditionally, has played a negligible role in our philosophical understanding of human beings (as also for our sociological, psychological, and other anthropological analyses). although it has always been generally acknowledged that human beings need built dwelling places, more careful analysis of this need is surely necessary. what does it say about human beings that they depend upon the buildings they construct for their own habitation? the first observation points out that architecture often fails to meet the needs of those whom it supposedly serves. it is impossible to disagree with that observation. but it raises the obvious question: just what are these needs and why should architecture so often have failed to meet them? a first, albeit all too reductive answer, is implied by an observation made by adolf loos, who, many years ago standing before an alpine lakeside villa, thought that an architect who designs such a building ought to feel ashamed. confronted by today’s macmansions, i share his sentiment: everything breathes beauty and peace. what’s this then? a false note disturbs this peace. like an unnecessary screech: among the peasants’ houses, which were not made by them but by god, there is a villa. the work of a good architect, or a bad one? i don’t know. i only know that peace, rest, and beauty have fled. before god there are neither good nor bad architects. in towns, in the realms of beelzebub, there may be fine distinctions, as there are even in kinds of crime. and i therefore ask: why is it that every architect, whether he is good or bad, harms the lake-side? 6 196 isparchitecture.com hyperbolically, invoking god and the devil, the atheist loos here suggests that it is architecture itself that is the problem. his idealized peasant builder is thought as so in tune with his environment that his buildings have somewhat the same necessity as the shelters animals construct to protect themselves from an often hostile environment. this allows loos to claim that his peasant houses were made, not by his peasants, but by god. they answer to and belong to their environment. such houses do not strike us as the work of some particular builder. satisfying the needs they were meant to serve as best they could, they do not mean to be works of art. precisely that gives them their look of inevitability. with the work of the architect the city is said to invade the countryside, to destroy the harmony visible in the peasant houses, a harmony today equally visible, loos thought, in the work of the engineer, who, understanding his task, the available means, and the forces of nature, is not concerned to create an aesthetic object. loos’ remark suggests that we should draw a distinction between the kind of building that raised houses such as those built by his peasants and the work of the engineer, on the one hand, and the work of an architect, on the other. it is of course possible to use the word architecture, as i have done so far in this lecture, in so broad a sense that it names simply the craft of building, where building would cover a vast range of different structures and approaches. the title of this conference would seem to do so. but the distinction between mere building and architecture does seem to have an obvious sense. however we finally may want to draw it, we have no difficulty making sense of the distinction loos makes in the quoted passage. his peasants, like his engineers, are attuned to the order of nature and thus in harmony with something that transcends them. their buildings reflect this. with the work of the architect, be he good or ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 197 ha r r ie s bad, other concerns enter. the city is said by loos to invade nature, to violate it, where the city would seem to be understood by him here as a place of artificial, unnecessary needs. at issue is the way human beings relate to their environment. architecture, loos suggests hyperbolically, answers to unnatural needs. we are reminded of the way the book of genesis opposes the shepherd abel to the city building cain. a suspicion of architecture has indeed attended reflections about architecture from the very beginning, inevitably tied to thoughts of a mode of dwelling that had gone astray. think of the tower of babel. behind and buried in loos’s distinction between architecture and building lies the collision of a theocentric and an anthropocentric conception of proper human dwelling, which understood metaphorically, survives the death of god. related would seem to be the distinction that in that darmstädter gespräch in which heidegger delivered his lecture “building dwelling thinking” found expression in the collision of heidegger’s remarks, which bade the assembled architects learn from a black forest farmhouse of the 18th century what kind of building once allowed for an authentic dwelling, with those made by ortega y gasset. were those who built heidegger’s farmhouse really at home in their world, content with themselves and their world? was this what heidegger wanted to say? ortega, at any rate, speaking at the same symposium, did not want to hear of such contentment; and so he called our discontent “the highest thing the human being possesses, precisely because it is a discontent, because man wants to possess things that he never had.”7 and does this always wanting more, this striving for what is higher, not determine our essence? is it not bound up with our reason, which has to assign to everything real a place in the logical space of the possible and thus lets us ever again compare what happens to be our life-world with other possible worlds, whose temptations and promises seem to render the world to which we have become accustomed sadly deficient? again and again human beings have demanded more. our technology has its origin in such discontent. such discontent bids us create a new world “because, as it is, our world does not fit us, because it has made us sick. this new world of technology is like a gigantic orthopedic apparatus, that you [and here ortega was addressing his audience, the architects present] want to create, and all this technology has this wonderful, but—as is the case with everything human — dramatic movement and quality, to be a fabulous, great orthopedic device”8 is this then how architecture should be understood, as a gigantic orthopedic device? i called the distinction between building and architecture helpful and 198 isparchitecture.com obvious. but how architecture is to be understood here remains in question. just what is the need that architecture, as opposed to mere building, addresses? consider the way nikolaus pevsner begins his an outline of european architecture with this seemingly unproblematic observation: “a bicycle shed is a building; lincoln cathedral is a piece of architecture.” pevsner interprets this distinction for us when he suggests that works of architecture differ from functional buildings in that they are “designed with a view to aesthetic appeal.” most works of architecture are of course also functional buildings. accepting pevsner’s distinction we can say: work of architecture = functional building + aesthetic component. on this view it would seem to be an aesthetic concern that raises the architect above the mere builder, that makes him an artist. works of architecture, so understood, are buildings built to be not just useful, but to have an aesthetic appeal. loos suggests that it is precisely this aesthetic concern that gets in the way of good building. and since philosophers have tended to discuss architecture as one of the arts and the philosophy of art has evolved as aesthetics, philosophy would seem to have contributed to bad building. consider the way the novelist and philosopher william gass praises peter eisenman’s house vi because it presents itself to us as a convincing aesthetic object that pays no heed to practicality: “thank god, i thought. this house has no concern for me and mine, over which it has no rights, but displays in every aspect and angle and fall of light the concern for the nature and beauty of building that is the architect’s trust and obligation.”9 presupposed is that the architect’s primary task is that of creating a beautiful object, as opposed to the mere builder who is concerned with more practical matters. but this opposition of architecture to building raises a host of questions: what needs does building, loos suggests that it is precisely the aesthetic concern that gets in the way of good building. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 199 ha r r ie s so understood, address? there are some obvious answers such as the need to provide protection from an often hostile development or a suitable frame for certain activities. but do these needs exclude the beauty of a building? what need does beauty address? and just how is beauty, and more especially the beauty of a building to be understood? in opposition to the requirements of everyday dwelling? the distinction between building and architecture begins to blur. this returns us to the first question posed by the organizers of this symposium: for whom does the architect build? what need does or should he address? 3 even a brief look at some familiar accounts of the origin of building, such as those of vitruvius, hegel or corbusier, is sufficient to make us question those who would claim that the needs that our building serves are so obvious that there is as little need for philosophical reflection as there is in the case of the need for clothing. one aspect of the vitruvian account of the origin of architecture especially deserves our attention: when vitruvius likens his first builders in their need for shelter to wild beasts, he also insists on what makes them different and he mentions first their “not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendor of the starry firmament.”10 how are we to understand this remark, which links human verticality to the firmament? what does the sight of a splendor that the ancients thought essentially inaccessible, a permanent order open only to eye and spirit, beyond human reach, what does this vision of cosmic permanence have to do with the origin of building? i want to underscore vitruvius’ emphasis on the verticality of human being. to be sure, in sleep or death we return to earth-bound horizontality. but unlike the other animals, he points out, we are not obliged by our bodies “to walk with faces to the ground.” but if the human animal is thus free to look up to the firmament, such freedom is more than a gift of the upright body: “nature had not only endowed the human race with senses like the rest of the animals, but had also equipped their minds with the powers of thought and understanding, thus putting all other animals under their sway.”11 the human body’s verticality signifies spirit. and such verticality possesses a spatial and a temporal significance: their upward 200 isparchitecture.com gaze lets human beings raise themselves beyond the here and now, allows them to look up out of their horizontal temporal condition, that circumscribes the lives of the other animals, to the seemingly ageless order of the firmament. did the sublime spectacle of the starry sky, which the ancients thought to be a perfect sphere, awaken the spirit sleeping in vitruvius’s protohumans, somewhat as the snake’s promise, “you will be like god,” opened the eyes of adam and eve? did it awaken them at the same time to their own subjection to time, to their mortality, even as it allowed them to glimpse in the heaven’s unchanging order possibilities of a more perfect, more spiritual dwelling? is the task of human building to carry something of this promise into this death-shadowed world? or did vitruvius also associate “the splendor of the starry firmament” with the lightand life-granting sun, the hearth of the cosmos, being represented by the warmthgiving hearth of his primitive home? this much at any rate seems clear: by linking the origin of the first house to the awe-inspiring sight of the inaccessible unchanging order of the sky, vitruvius places human building between animal shelter and the divinely ordered cosmos. the human being looks up to and measures himself here by a timeless logos, figured by the firmament. building, too, should be informed by this logos; and so we find vitruvius insisting on symmetry and harmony, prefigured both by the divinely ordered cosmos and the similarly ordered body of the well shaped human being. hegel’s understanding of the origin of architecture points in what is essentially the same direction: it is architecture that pioneers the way for the adequate realization of the god, and in this its service bestows hard toil upon existing nature, in order to disentangle it from the jungle of finitude and the abortiveness of ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 201 ha r r ie s chance. by this means it levels a space for the god, gives form to his external surroundings, and builds him his temple as a fit place for concentration of spirit, and for its direction to the mind’s absolute objects. it raises an enclosure round the assembly of those gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the storm, against rain, the hurricane, and wild beasts, and reveals the will to assemble, although externally, yet in conformance with the principles of art.12 hegel’ builders, too, impose a spiritual, and that means for hegel a truly human order on a recalcitrant material; human beings assert and celebrate their humanity in the face of an initially indifferent environment, when they level the ground, break the stone, raise walls and columns. they defend themselves against nature, not only or even primarily against physical threats, but against its contingency. in this struggle they rely on and exhibit the power of the universal. that is why architecture for hegel is in its very essence not the work of isolated individuals, but of the spirit, and that means of the community: the spirit breaks down the walls that separate individuals. genuine architecture establishes community. and not so very different is corbusier’s account of the origin of architecture: primitive man has brought his chariot to a stop: he decides that here shall be his native soil. he chooses a glade, he cuts down the trees which are too close; he levels the earth around; he opens up the road which will carry him to the river or to those of his tribe whom he has just left. [...] the road is as straight as he can manage with his implements, his arms and his time. the pegs of his tent describe a square, hexagon, or octagon. the palisade forms a rectangle whose four angles are equal. the door of this hut is on the axis of the enclosure—and the gate of the enclosure faces exactly the door of the hut. [...] you may see, in some archeological work, the representation of this hut, the representation of this sanctuary: it is the plan of a house, or the plan of a temple. it is the same spirit one finds again in the pompeian house. it is the spirit indeed of the temple of luxor. there is no such thing as primitive man; there are primitive resources. the idea is constant, in full sway from the beginning.13 a look at the history of architecture supports that impression. from the very beginning the requirements of human dwelling resist their reduction to the need for physical shelter or functional frames for certain activities. not only the body, the spirit, too, needs shelter, shelter especially from the terror of time. 202 isparchitecture.com 4 but let me turn to the second observation made by the organizers of this symposium and to the question it raises. architecture, it asserts, has played no very significant part in our philosophical understanding of human beings. we can grant that. and yet the prevalence of architectural metaphors in philosophical discourse invites reflection: what is the bond that ties philosophy and architecture together and allows such metaphors to make some sense? an answer is suggested by martin heidegger’s already mentioned essay “building dwelling thinking”, which calls our attention to the obvious fact that building serves dwelling, but then in characteristic fashion turns to etymology to unearth beneath the familiar everyday sense of “dwelling” a deeper meaning that is said to have been lost to us: the real meaning of the verb, namely to dwell, has been lost to us. but a covert trace of it has been preserved in the german word nachbar, neighbor. the neighbor is in old english the neahgebur, neah near, and gebur, dweller. the nachbar is the nachgeebur, the nachgebauer, the near-dweller, he who dwells nearby. the verbs, buri, büren, beuren, beuron, all signify dwelling, the abode, the place of dwelling.14 in its origin, heidegger claims, building means dwelling. to really dwell is to be at home in the world. such dwelling presupposes that we experience the world not, as science would have us do, as the totality of mute facts that just happen to be as they are, but as a meaningful order. but is the transformation of mute alien material into a home not the essence of building? and is it perhaps also the essence of thinking? to show how dwelling is to be thought in its original sense heidegger adds: where the word bauen still speaks in its original to really dwell is to be at home in the world. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 203 ha r r ie s sense, it also says how far the nature of dwelling reaches. that is, bauen, buan, bhu, beo are our word bin in the versions: ich bin, i am, du bist, you are, the imperative form bis, be. what then does ich bin mean? the word bauen, to which it belongs answers: ich bin, du bist mean: i dwell, you dwell.15 heidegger sums up his discussion with three propositions: 1. building is really dwelling. 2. dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the earth. 3. building as dwelling unfolds into the building that cultivates growing things [german ackerbau] and the building that erects building. if we accept heidegger’s claim that “dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the earth” this suggests that we can add as a fourth proposition: 4. building as dwelling unfolds also into the architectures that thought erects, more especially the thought of philosophers. this then would yield a first answer to the question: what is the bond that ties philosophy and architecture together and allows such metaphors to make some sense? both can be said unfold in their distinctive ways the essence of building. that brings to mind kant’s famous statement that our reason is by its very nature architectonic, seeking to assign to everything its proper place in some conceptual edifice.16 heidegger would seem to think this in more encompassing fashion, extending it to our being-in-theworld, which always already has assigned to all we encounter its place in a linguistic edifice. heidegger thus calls language the house of being. these remarks hint at a deep connection between architecture and language. the french prehistorian andré-leroi gourhan speaks to this connection: the earliest surviving buildings are contemporary with the appearance of the first rhythmic marks. […] [although] the foundation of moral and physical comfort in man is the altogether animal perception of the perimeter of security, the enclosed refuge, or of the socialization of rhythms: [so] that there is no point in seeking for a scission between animal and human to explain our attachment to social rhythms and inhabited space […] [yet] the little that is known [of pre-homo sapiens habitations] is enough to show that a profound change occurred about the time which corresponds to the development of the control sections of the brain in strains relating to homo sapiens. […] such archeological evidence [as there is] would seem to justify the assumption, that from the higher paleolithic period onwards there was an attempt to control the whole spatio-temporal phenomenon 204 isparchitecture.com by symbolic means, of which language was the chief. they imply a real ‘taking charge’ of space and time through the mediation of symbols: a domestication of them in a strict sense, since it involves, within the house and about the house, a controllable space and time.17 this suggests that we might want to define building in its most fundamental sense as “a taking charge of space and time through the mediation of symbols.” so understood building would include both, the raising of structures that provide both physical and psychological shelter and the use of language to control and feel at home in the world around us. that language and architecture are linked in their origin is hinted at by the story of the tower of babel. 5 let me return to heidegger’s claim that human being is essentially a dwelling. if for us humans to be is to dwell, it would seem that to build anything we must already dwell in some fashion. but does all dwelling not presuppose in turn something like a building? we seem to be moving in a circle. something analogous would seem to hold of the creation of language—think of the story of adam’s naming of the animals. paradise must have presented itself to adam already as rather like a divinely created garden in which everything had its proper place. dwelling, understood in this fundamental sense, would thus seem to imply something like an experience of the world as an order that assigns us as mortals our place on earth, beneath the sky, presided over, heidegger suggests in “building dwelling thinking,” by what there he calls the divinities, where we must wonder whether our modern world still allows us to make sense of heidegger’s divinities. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 205 ha r r ie s consider once more the meaning of “building.” to build is to bound space. how is this space to be thought? genesis begins by having god create the heavens and the earth by bounding the formless. plato’s timaeus offers a similar account. to build is to wrest place from space. that seems uncontroversial. and to think such building is inevitably also to think space as in some sense pre-given and formless. but how are we to think that pre-given and formless space? when we attempt to do so, do we not inevitably give it some structure? think of euclidean space and its three dimensions. is all such thinking not an attempt to domesticate what resists domestication? the meaning of space remains elusive. i want to claim that every human attempt to master space leads us into an antinomy, places us between some finite structure and the infinite. that antinomy, i want to suggest, also haunts our dwelling as it haunts our building and our thinking as the tension between a desire for freedom and a desire to be firmly placed. my introduction of the term “antinomy” calls for comment. when a philosopher thinks of antinomies he is likely to think first of all of the four antinomies kant stated and discussed in his critique of pure reason. and i, too, am thinking here of kant’s antinomies, especially of the first, which concerns the difficulty we face when we attempt to represent our universe as a cosmos, as a well-constructed, bounded whole, as a building in that sense. kant shows that we are unable to understand this cosmos as finite and as having a beginning, as our astronomers and physicists would once again have us do, only to get entangled once more in some version of kant’s antinomy. but kant also showed that we cannot understand it as infinite. the infinite transcends our comprehension. and yet we are in some fashion in touch with the infinite whenever we are open to some thing in its finally incomprehensible materiality. not only infinite space, but every particular thing in its ineffable particularity, transcends whatever our reason is able to construct. as mystics such as meister eckhart or angelus silesius knew, an infinity is buried in every thing. i want to confront heidegger’s metaphor of language as the house of being with a question: is being really at home in that house? architecture raises an analogous question: are buildings without windows and doors that allow access to a reality beyond not prisons? this suggests: openings such as windows and doors provide a key to successful architecture. in using the word “antinomy” i was also thinking of kant’s third antinomy, which concerns freedom. like nature, freedom, too, familiar as it is to all of us, eludes comprehension: we are thus unable to think what we seem to be so familiar with and call “freedom” as either free 206 isparchitecture.com from or as governed by the laws of nature. in the attempt to think freedom our reason once again suffers shipwreck on the reef of the infinite. no more than space and time will freedom be mastered conceptually. once again reason is forced to recognize its limits. but are these limits not also limits that building must respect if it is not to do violence to the demands of freedom and thus of human dwelling? kant’s four antinomies were supposed to prove the necessity of understanding every thing in two very different senses: as an appearance dependent on our human understanding and the architecture it imposes and as a thing in itself, transcending that architecture. the antinomies thus tear open a depth dimension passed over in our everyday dealings with things, open windows and doors in the architecture raised by our architectonic understanding. but why is the opening of such windows and doors, if it can even be understood as such, of existential import? 6 with this let me turn to the question: what does architecture have to contribute to philosophy? at first blush the answer would seem to have to be, despite philosophy’s reliance on architectural metaphors: very little, at least given common ideas of what philosophy is. most philosophers don’t feel a need to concern themselves with architecture. i do feel such a need. so let me approach the question “what does architecture have to contribute to philosophy?” in a more personal way by speaking briefly of the way art and architecture has been important to my work in philosophy. my interest in both art and architecture is far older than my interest in philosophy. as a child i liked to draw, paint, and build. a self-conscious ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 207 ha r r ie s interest in architecture goes back to my first encounter with a rather modest rococo church: when i was seven my mother moved with us children from berlin, which the constant air raids had made rather unpleasant, to the franconian königshofen, some 25 kilometers northeast of bamberg. on the outskirts is a little known, but quite lovely pilgrimage church in the village of ipthausen, consecrated to the birth of mary (1746-54). the landscape, the town, but especially this church spoke to me of a way of life very different from what i had been used to. today i would say that mine was not so much an aesthetic response, but an ethical response, ethical in that broad sense in which heidegger attributes to the greek temple an ethical function when he claims that presenting the world, it establishes the earth, with that difference that i knew even then that the world opened up by this church was one from which i was excluded, that much as i loved it, this was not my world. but it seemed to beckon me to a better world. four years later a teacher in munich’s maxgymnasium took me to the benedictine monastery church of andechs. the visit to that church, too, had a crucial importance. i pay tribute to that teacher in the preface to my book the bavarian rococo church (1983) and placed an image of that church on its back cover. the very fact that i felt a need to write such a book, which has now also appeared in a german version,18 suggests a certain impatience with academic philosophy. i personally do not see a break between this book and my more obviously philosophical work, much of which has centered on heidegger. it touches on many, perhaps all the themes that matter to me as a philosopher, but it does so in a way that pleases me more, that seems to me much more concrete, more likely to get readers to really understand what concerns me, to touch them, than my more purely philosophical essays. let me mention just a few of these themes: 1. as opposed to those who, like the art historian michael fried, oppose authenticity to theatricality, i wanted to exhibit what i experienced as the profundity of an architecture that ever since the enlightenment has often been dismissed as theatrical and superficial, as not really authentic. the artistic culture of the rococo taught me to question the presupposed notion of authenticity and with it the enlightenment faith in reason and to appreciate the profundity of superficiality, of interest in the visible, sensible world, for which nietzsche praised the greeks: “to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, the whole olympus of appearance. those greeks were superficial — out of profundity.” 19 my book on the bavarian rococo church is also a reflection on 208 isparchitecture.com the threshold that joins and separates the rococo from the enlightenment, and that is to say from modernity. there is thus a sense in which this book is also a reflection on our own spiritual culture, on its legitimacy and its limits, a topic that continues to concern me. 2. a reviewer called that book a preamble after the fact of my the meaning of modern art (1968). in a sense he was right. that earlier book called for a step beyond modern art, and not just modern art, but beyond what that modern art presupposed. i spoke there of the need for a new realism. in philosophy, too, there seems to me a need for such a realism. that drew me to phenomenology. 3. with this call for a new realism i meant to challenge the hold of the aesthetic approach to art and architecture that has presided over both theory and practice. as i show in the ethical function of architecture, that approach invites an understanding of works of architecture as decorated sheds in the broadest sense, as functional buildings to which an aesthetic component has been added. but as i have suggested in this lecture: what distinguishes architecture from building is not adequately understood as the addition of an aesthetic component. that calls for further reflection on the requirements of dwelling, and more especially, figure 1: pilgrimage church mariä geburt, ipthausen ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 209 ha r r ie s on what these requirements are in today’s world, marked by the digital revolution and the threatening environmental crisis. 4. but inadequate as it is to the requirements of dwelling, the decorated shed nevertheless presents itself as a potent figure for the spiritual situation of this age, which tends to cover up the spiritual poverty that is the price of our objectification of reality, with an often borrowed aesthetic veneer. in that sense, to call ours the age of the decorated shed is to offer more than just an illuminating caricature. 5. as heidegger points out, building serves dwelling, as it is born of dwelling. to understand the essence of architecture we have to enter that circle. but we cannot enter it successfully as long as we remain on the level of abstract speculation and mere words. our words must have their ground in concrete experiences. we have to return to the things themselves, and that means here first of all to buildings. but the point should be generalized. 7 let me conclude with the question: what does philosophy have to contribute to architecture? it is not the philosopher’s task to tell architects what to do. but perhaps philosophy can help make architecture more responsible by questioning certain assumptions that stand in the way of such responsibility. wittgenstein claimed that philosophical problems have the form, “i do not know my way about.”20 of course, not all problems having this form are therefore already philosophical. to lose one’s way in a strange city is not sufficient to make one a philosopher. nor is failure to understand a new piece of equipment. say my computer misbehaves and i don’t know what to do; i don’t know my way about. such a loss of way does not present us with a philosophical problem. but why not? i would suggest that it fails to do so because in such cases our disorientation is only superficial. thus in the first case i might study a map; in the second i might ask an expert for help. the problem here poses itself against a background of established and accepted ways of doing things to which we can turn to help us decide what is to be done. genuinely philosophical problems have no such background. they are born of a more profound uncertainty. philosophical reflection flourishes thus where traditions disintegrate and as a result human beings are forced to question the place assigned them by 210 isparchitecture.com nature, society, and history, and searching for firmer ground demand that this place be more securely established. in that sense all genuine philosophy is at bottom ethical reflection. that also holds for the philosophical reflection on architecture. if this is accepted, philosophy comes to an end either when it believes to have gained firm ground and to have laid a secure foundation or when it despairs of responsibly addressing the questions that haunt it. there is thus a sense in which science and skepticism may be said to bound philosophy. today science presents philosophy with a challenge that resembles the challenge that in the 19th century photography presented to representational painting. but science itself presents itself today to us as anything but unquestionable. there is a sense in which everyone of us, i suspect, stands in an ambiguous relationship to science and its offspring, technology. on one hand we have to affirm science. technological advances have shaped our life-world in ways that we have to affirm. on the other hand, science cannot know anything of persons or values. this is why the social sciences stand inevitably uneasily between science and what we can call folk wisdom or perhaps philosophy. a compelling account of both the legitimacy and the limits of scientific understanding and that means also of technological thinking seems to me one of the main requirements facing philosophy today. architectural theory and practice, too, seem to me to be in need of such an account. but such an account must be guided by some understanding of where we should be going, where today such an account must be informed by the digital revolution which cannot but shape our understanding of space and even more importantly it must be informed by the growing environmental crisis. does philosophy offer much help here? i continue to be surprised, given all we know, that ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 211 ha r r ie s not more is being done and i am afraid reason has not proven itself very effective in bringing about needed changes. needed is a change of heart. but how do hearts change? traditionally such change has been brought about not so much by philosophers, as by prophets and poets, artists, and also by architects. in his discussion of the greek temple heidegger recognizes thus something of the mythopoeic function of architecture. plato’s republic gives expression to the claim of the philosopher to be in a privileged position to tell human beings what their place should be. the ethical function that art and religion once possessed, comes to be claimed by reason. unfortunately reason has proved unequal to the assumed task. we live today in the ruins of the inherited value system. to support this claim i could point to the history of the past two centuries. i could also show that, notwithstanding the efforts of philosophers from plato to kant and indeed right down to the present, unprejudiced pure reason has shown itself inadequate to this task. such change requires the aid of those able to touch us more immediately. the need for architecture’s ethical function remains. what kind of architecture? temple and cathedral lie behind us. not only has the kind of communal dwelling their building presupposed and reaffirmed been lost, but few of us would wish it to return, for it is incompatible with one of our own ruling myths: the myth of the value of personal freedom. that myth has freed art, too, from its former servitude to religion and state. but if art has thus gained a new freedom, the price of this privatization of art has been its peripheral placement in a world ruled increasingly by economic imperatives. art and architecture have lost much of their former ethical significance. what then is the role of philosophy? a healthy society needs places where it tests what has come to be established and taken for granted. there has to be an openness to the future. one task of philosophy is to open windows in the edifice raised by the ruling common sense. i also have a contrary sympathy. the conservatives, too, are needed in a healthy society, those who insist on the preservation of the inherited. there is inevitable tension between voices pointing in different directions, one forward — challenging, testing — the other backward — wanting to preserve. neither should be so immediately associated with political power that it can translate its views into political reality without being mediated by an ongoing conversation. in this conversation, and more especially in the architectural conversation, the philosopher’s words should be like yeast. perhaps in this way they can contribute in some way towards bringing about that change of heart that just today is so desperately needed. 212 isparchitecture.com endnotes [1] friedrich nietzsche, morgenröthe, 169; werke, kritische studienausgabe, ed. giorgio colli and mazzino montinari (munich, berlin, and new york: deutscher taschenbuch verlag and de gruyter, 1980), vol. 3, 152. [2] mark lilla, “pseuds’ skyscraper,” london review of books, 5 june 1997, 33. [3] robert jan van pelt, “apocalyptic abjection,” in robert jan van pelt and carroll willliam westfall, architectural principles in the age of historicism (new haven: yale university press, 1991), 328-329. [4] see karsten harries, “review: robert jan van pelt and carroll william westfall, architectural principles in the age of historicism,” american historical review, december 1992, 1490. [5] mark wigley, the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt (cambridge, mass. and london: mit press,1993). [6] adolf loos, “architecture,” cited in joseph rykwert, on adam’s house in paradise. the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history (new york: the museum of modern art, 1972 ), 27. [7] josé ortega y gasset, “der mythus des menschen hinter der technik” in otto bartning, ed.: mensch und raum. 2. darmstädter gespräch 1951 (darmstadt: neue darmstädter verlags-anstalt. 1952) 117. translation by k. harries. [8] ibid., 117. [9] william gass, “house vi,” progressive architecture, 58, june 1977, p. 64. [10] vitruvius, the ten books of architecture, trans. morris hickey morgan (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1926), 38. [11] ibid., 40. [12] georg wilhelm friedrich hegel, introductory lectures on aesthetics, trans. bernard bosanquet, ed. and intro. michael inwood (harmondsworth: penguin, 1993), 90-91. [13] le corbusier, towards a new architecture, trans. frederick etchells (new york: praeger, 1960), 65-66. [14] martin heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” poetry, language, thought, trans. albert hofstadter (new york: harper and row, 1979), 146-147. see also the original version: martin heidegger, “bauen wohnen denken” in otto bartning (ed.): mensch und raum. 2. darmstädter gespräch 1951. (darmstadt: neue darmstädter verlags-anstalt 1952) 72–84. [15] ibid., 147. [16] with his antinomies, to be sure, kant showed that this striving can never be satisfied. kritik der reinen vernunft, a 474/b 502. see paula manchester, “kant’s conception of architectonic in its philosophical context,” kant studien. volume 99, issue 2, june, 2008 133–151. [17] andré leroi -gourhan, le geste et la parole (paris 1964), vol. 2., 139140, as quoted in joseph rykwert, on adams’s house in paradise (new york: the museum of modern art, 1972), 21 [18] karsten harries, die bayerische rokokokirche. das irrationale und das sakrale (dorfen: hawel verlag, 2009), [19] nietzsche, the gay science. with a prelude in german rhymes and an appendix of songs. (cambridge: cambridge univ. press 2001). [20] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, tr. g. e. m. anscombe (new york: macmillan, 1959) par. 123. isparchitecture.com the future of modernism: architectural intention and adaptive reuse frank mahan, aia and van kluytenaar prelude what does it mean for architecture to engage an existing building? the pages that follow address the singular importance of intention in the practice of adapting and preserving modernist architecture in the twenty-first century. there is a matrix of forces common to nearly every architectural project that shapes the final built object. financial, programmatic, structural and environmental the preservation of an original design intent requires the extension and maturation of an original idea into a future that both maintains and reinvents the original. “ ” a man is judged by neither intention nor fact but by his success in making values become facts.when this happens, the meaning of the action does not exhaust itself in the situation which has occasioned it, or in some vague judgment of value; the action remains as an exemplary type and will survive in other situations in another form. it opens a field. sometimes it even institutes a world. in any case it outlines a future. history according to hegel is the maturation of a future in the present, not the sacrifice of the present to an unknown future; and the rule of action for him is not to be efficient at any cost, but to be first of all fecund.1 —maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 12 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r constraints along with client objectives and tastes are all meaningful considerations that must inform the conceptualization of a new building. the aged building in need of restoration, however, contains an additional constraint: the need to engage with its unique history. the tradition of storytelling must be employed to synthesize time and place, bridging past and present. the practice of adaptive reuse—the preservation, renovation and reuse of an existing structure for a new purpose—links the building’s past with the contemporary world. it requires understanding a preexisting narrative as well as the crafting of a new narrative, one that both continues and extends the original.2 existing buildings function as complex formal entities that develop over time and space, accumulate human experience and produce unique historical richness. this accumulation of experience must be accounted for in the building’s preservation and reuse. the significance of these experiences must be recognized and acknowledged. the narratives must be sorted and evaluated. should nostalgia, for example, be a protagonist in the historical narrative of a building? did historically significant events take place at the building? did the building undergo alterations over its lifetime? is the building considered significant in the eyes of the architecture or preservation community? does the building occupy a place of pride in its community? a rigorous analysis and deep understanding of these existing narratives and the complexity of experiences they point to must provide the groundwork for the building’s future. this requires research into the building’s history. the historical context, the original design intentions, the building’s programmatic and construction history, its social and cultural associations, all contribute to its existing narrative and must form a fundamental constraint relevant to all adaptive reuse projects. the narrative must be told. and by reimagining this narrative, adaptive reuse links the past with the present. it creates an urban touchstone that is both history and invention. the preservation of an original design intent requires the extension and maturation of an original idea into a future that both maintains and reinvents the original. introduction in 1952, the same year that skidmore, owings & merrill (som) built the watershed lever house skyscraper (fig. 1)—thereby heralding a new synthesis of modernist ideals in architecture—the french philosopher maurice merleau-ponty published “indirect language and the voices of silence,” one of the most important reflections on modern aesthetics 13 isparchitecture.com in twentieth-century philosophy.3 the essay describes the way in which the individual elements of an aesthetic object bestow significance on one another precisely by virtue of their juxtaposition. their rigorous, rule-based arrangement produces a matrix of meaning which corresponds to the lasting quality of the work. strikingly, important aspects of the enterprise of modernist architecture— particularly as expressed in the work of som— invite understanding in terms analogous to those found in merleau-ponty’s thought.4 moreover, this understanding has farreaching implications for what it would mean to preserve the kind of aesthetic objects that modernist architecture sought to produce. these objects—like language itself— bear meaning by means of an interrelationship of parts, the efficacy of which creates a seemingly unending world: we always have to do only with architectures of signs whose sense, being nothing other this efficacy of the object depends primarily on the density of decision— that is to say, intention— inherent in the work’s conception. “ ” figure 1: lever house (prior to renovation) ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 14 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r than the way in which the signs behave toward one another and are distinguished from one another, cannot be posited independently of them.5 and further: it is as if each step taken called for and made possible another step, or as if each successful expression prescribed another task to the spiritual automation or founded an institution whose efficacy it will have never finished experiencing.6 this efficacy of the object depends primarily on the density of decision— that is to say, intention—inherent in the work’s conception. its commanding logic, or grammar, is everywhere present. for merleau-ponty, the lateral relations between elements born from the initial intention produce a world or matrix of almost infinite meaning. in contrast to the importance of the literal material of stone and craft—the literalism that is the theoretical foundation for contemporary theories of preservation—the meaning of modern architecture is found in the rigor of arrangement and relationship of its parts. the juxtaposition and relational positioning of architectural elements give meaning to the work.7 it is thus in the idea of the elements and their interdependence—rather than the materiality of the elements themselves—that modernism finds its value. and it is precisely this kind of value, this modernist ideal, that som sought to produce in the second half of the twentieth century.8 in 1935, three years after henry russell-hitchcock and philip johnson’s “modern architecture: international exhibition” at the museum of modern art in new york city—and as le corbusier visited the united states for the first time—gordon bunshaft was in europe as a rotch travelling scholar, absorbing the ideas of early european modernism.9 less than a year later, louis skidmore and nathaniel owings began a partnership that would become skidmore, owings & merrill and, by 1950, the firm had completed several large projects including manhattan house in new york, the terrace plaza hotel in cincinnati, and the brooklyn veterans hospital. it was the corporate headquarters for lever brothers company on park avenue, however, built in 1952, that was to shape the image of skidmore, owings & merrill as a notable proponent of postwar modern architecture. following the lever house project, som would go on to design a number of the most representative buildings of modernist architecture in the united states including the manufacturers hanover trust building in new york city and the united states air force academy campus in colorado springs. these projects proposed design concepts 15 isparchitecture.com that were grounded in the modernist sensibility of the time. based on rigorous conceptual models, modern architecture no longer found its meaning in the literal materiality of stone and brick, but rather in the almost fathomless depths of its concept. this understanding of the modernist enterprise is particularly significant to the preservation of modernist buildings. the rejection of the literal and the material in favor of matrices of ideas and rules require novel approaches to the practice of historic preservation more adequate to the objects of interrogation. victorian era preservation in 1849 john ruskin published the seven lamps of architecture where, in a section called “the lamp of memory,” he develops his now-famous attack on the practice of architectural restoration: “do not let us talk then of restoration,” he writes. “the thing is a lie from beginning to end.” for ruskin, the act of restoration is primarily an act of destruction: the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay […] but, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! granted. look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. it is a necessity for destruction. accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a lie in their place.10 what is of primary significance for ruskin in his understanding of 19th century architecture is the literal materiality of the structure, the craft of its production and the process of its aging. particularly with respect to medieval stone buildings, ruskin and other english romantics found aesthetic meaning in the material’s weathering and decay, “in based on rigorous conceptual models, modern architecture no longer found its meaning in the literal materiality of stone and brick, but rather in the almost fathomless depths of its concept. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 16 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.”11 as england was in the initial throes of industrialization, it became increasingly fascinated by its preindustrial past. 12 four years after publishing the seven lamps of architecture, ruskin published the second volume of the stones of venice, his three volume treatise on venetian art and architecture. in a section called “the nature of gothic,” ruskin emphasizes the importance of medieval and gothic craft arguing that, in previous epochs, art was the expression of man’s pleasure in labor. it was this sentiment that lead the protopreservationist william morris to reprint “the nature of gothic” in 1892; helping to create the theoretical basis for the contemporary preservation movement. morris described ruskin’s paean to medieval labor and craft as “one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century.”13 both ruskin and morris—the theoretical grounding behind contemporary preservation theory—insisted on the virtues of high quality hand labor, and the importance of the material in considerations of architectural preservation. this romantic response to the industrialization of victorian england took more definite shape in the arts and crafts movement toward the end of the 19th century, heavily influenced by ruskin and morris, which advocated the traditional craftsmanship of medieval arts and architecture. in 1877 morris founded the society for the protection of ancient buildings, an organization that came to be called “anti-scrape” for its insistence that the materiality of historic structures be preserved without alteration. any work on the building was “a feeble and lifeless forgery” and “deaf to the claims of poetry and history.”14 the anti-scrape movement sought to resist all tampering with the fabric of a given structure and to “treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying.”15 this approach, born of an era in which the character found in the literal and the material were of primary importance, indeed remains appropriate and necessary for a premodern architecture. in this context, the preservation of the literal suppresses the precise boundaries of time and place, combining history, memory and architecture to link the discarded and the fragmentary with new beginnings. and while the intended concept remains significant for ruskin, this prioritization of the literal material of the building contrasts sharply with the idea that the significance of modernist architecture lies wholly in its concept, allowing for a preservation approach radically different from that of victorian architecture. postwar modernism, however, requires a preservation approach more adequate to its purpose. while the preservation of premodern architecture 17 isparchitecture.com finds its meaning in the literal and the material, in addition to the idea of the building, the muse of postwar modern architecture is located primarily in the conceptual. and it is this distinction that has extensive and far-reaching implications for the preservation and restoration of modernist architecture. for if, in contrast to the valuing of the literal materiality of the structure, the meaning of postwar modernism is located primarily in the rigor of the concept, its preservation requires an approach radically different from that of ruskin and the victorian romantics who would not have distinguished between the idea of a building and its material execution, understanding one as a mere extension of the other. a notable counterpoint to ruskin’s nineteenthcentury approach is that of his contemporary eugène emmanuel viollet-le-duc whose unique preservation ideas have remained anathema to preservation thinking for nearly two centuries. in contrast to ruskin’s emphasis on the significance of materiality, viollet-le-duc sought to maintain a fidelity to the original design, “to re-establish it to a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.”16 for viollet-leduc, whose work focused primarily on the gothic and romanesque, preservation finds its adequate expression in re-establishing an original idea. such an approach functions as a kind of precursor to the modernist emphasis on the importance of the conceptual. his studies of nineteenth-century iron structures contributed to his interpretation of the gothic as comprised of a rational scheme of skeletal forms designed to bear the weight of increasingly taller vaults. on this view, aesthetic value is to be found, above all, in the visual expression of structural elements—ribs, arches, and vertical supports—that compose the logical structural system. preservation warranted modification to this logical system when, in the example of the vézelay abbey, the changes preserved the appearance of the original structural for violletle-duc, [...] preservation finds its adequate expression in re-establishing an original idea. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 18 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r intention.17 although a relevant precursor to the modernist emphasis on the conceptual in its eschewal of materiality, viollet-le-duc’s attempt to recreate an original intention was often based primarily on an imagined fiction. the emphasis on the conceptual in the preservation of modernist architecture, however, benefits from advances in technology that allow for a more accurate understanding of a building’s original design intent. the greater the understanding, moreover, the more potentially radical the intervention. knowing the entirety of the original design intention allows for a preservation approach that articulates that intention in ways more adequate than viollet-le-duc and more appropriate to the contemporary world. in contrast to ruskin, viollet-le-duc and the victorian belief in the equivalence of ideal intention and material articulation, the meaning of modern architecture is expressed in its idea, thus requiring a radical rethinking of its preservation. lever house consider, for example, new york’s lever house (fig. 1)—an architectural icon heralding “the beginning of a new wave of american skyscraper construction and a new synthesis of modernist architectural ideals”—was restored in 2001 and its famous glass and stainless-steel curtain wall was completely replaced.18 built in 1952 and designated a historic landmark by new york’s landmarks preservation commission (lpc) in 1983, the building is exemplary of postwar american modernism. situated on the west side of park avenue between east 53rd street and east 54th street, lever house is a 24-story glass and stainless-steel clad office building composed of a vertical slab rising above a horizontal base. taking advantage of a unique zoning provision, the project broke the tradition of “shaped tower” skyscrapers that predominated in new york city. its glasssheathed façade and novel design concept became dominant elements of contemporary architecture. its structure consists of two counter-posed volumes, balanced in proportion but contrasting in shape. and in contrast to the traditional commercial lobby, the ground floor is a two-story open plaza with a paneled glass gallery. the project introduced a number of innovations in skyscraper design including an integrally designed windowwashing mechanism and the concept of the ground floor public courtyard. the density or intensity or weight of decision—which is to say intention—in the making of its form is everywhere evident. the work is saturated with traces of artistic intention. and this intention is articulated by the lateral relations among its parts; in the language of 19 isparchitecture.com merleau-ponty, “in the eloquence of arrangement and configuration” that “implants a meaning in that which did not have one.”19 the entirety of the structure articulates a sureness of concept that made it a pioneer in american architecture. to begin, the plan features an open, colonnaded space flowing into the width of the park avenue sidewalk. only one third of the ground floor is indoor space which is primarily enclosed by glass panels. the second floor then hovers over the entire site taking the form of a horizontal slab wrapped around the open courtyard below. the ground floor column grid is set back from the plane of the second-floor façade, giving the second floor slab the appearance of a weightless floating volume. the just 53-footwide tower, a vertical slab set perpendicular to the avenue, is entirely glazed on three facades (as well as the returns on the rear façade) giving the building a crystalline and volumetric quality. its exterior walls are a grid of stainless-steel mullions, anchored to the structural skeleton at each floor, which hold in place large and small panels of fixed glass. the large panels, functioning as windows, are green-tinted heat absorbent transparent glass and the small panels are tinted wire-glass spandrels concealing the floor slabs behind. these darker bands give the structure a horizontal emphasis that provides a delicate counterpoise to the verticality of the building’s columns and metal framing. and this juxtaposition of vertical and horizontal in the facade thematizes the vertical and horizontal volumes of the building more generally. it is the purposeful mutual inflection of elements throughout—its syntax— that gives meaning to the building. that is to say, its meaning is found in the internal consistency of its concept. and it was to the appropriateness of its concept that skidmore, owings & merrill’s 2001 curtain wall replacement sought to respond. in 1952 the building’s glass curtain wall was at the cutting edge of a new technology. almost half a century later, it required restoration. due it is the purposeful mutual inflection of elements throughout—its syntax—that gives meaning to the building. that is to say, its meaning is found in the internal consistency of its concept. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 20 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r to construction material limitations, fabrication limitations, and weather conditions, the curtain wall experienced severe deterioration. the corrosion of the curtain wall resulted in the bowing of the horizontal mullions and thebreakage of most of the smaller spandrel glass panels, as well as some of the larger window panels. the landmarks preservation committee designated the building a historical landmark in 1982— noting it as “outstanding for its spatial clarity, scale and beauty of form”— and allowed for a full replacement, in kind, of the building’s curtain wall assembly.20 this “radical facelift” has significant implications for a theory of the preservation of postwar modernist architecture.21 it suggests that, in contrast to ruskin’s emphasis on literal materiality, certain buildings are characterized less by their physical instantiation than by the concept of the design. and therefore, any attempt to preserve and restore such buildings must determine its original grammar—the rules of its design— in order to preserve the meaning of a given structure. the logic of its rules will determine the appropriate degree to which restoration and alteration can occur without altering the original meaning of the design. thus the entirety of lever house’s literal glass curtain-wall could be replaced with new, updated materials while maintaining the integrity of the initial design. the original tinted wired spandrel glass, no longer manufactured, was replaced with as close to a match to the original as possible. the original steel subframe was replaced with a concealed glazing channel, reflecting a state of the art solution in today’s curtainwall technology. throughout the restoration process, the materials were replaced—either in kind or as closely as possible—so as to reproduce the quality of the idea. manufacturers hanover trust consider also the manufacturers trust company building, the preservation of which goes even further in extending the original design intention. often seen as the very model of modernism (fig. 2), it was built in 1954, two years after lever house, at 510 fifth avenue on the southwest corner of west 43rd street and fifth avenue. it is a steel and glass cube with an unbroken glass façade featuring a seven-foot-wide circular metal bank vault visible from the street. breaking all modes for bank architecture of the time, these elements opened what had been a cloistered world more commonly housed behind masonry walls and produced a novel relationship between architecture and city. evoking the claim that the idea is paramount, architectural forum referred to the building as “the first big building truly to fulfill architects’ immaculate drafting board idea of glass 21 isparchitecture.com as an invisible material.”22 particularly notable is the sense in which the meaning of the design is precisely the appearance of the building’s materiality, rather than its materiality as such. in contrast to the formidable stone and shuddered fortresses of the premodern, the building’s guiding design concept is the impression of an extreme, unparalleled lightness. “if it is characteristic of the human gesture to signify beyond its simple existence in fact, to inaugurate a meaning,” merleau-ponty writes, “it follows that every gesture is comparable to every other. they all arise from a single syntax.”23 almost everything in the syntax, or grammar, of the manufacturers trust building contributes to its meaning, to the unparalleled appearance of lightness. supported by eight interior columns set eleven feet from the fifth avenue building line and twenty feet from the west 43rd street building line, the secondfloor concrete slab cantilevers off the columns and is set back from the clear glass curtain wall façade. accordingly, the main banking areas appear to be contained within one forty-foot-high space and the second-floor slab seems to float. both the concrete slabs and the external metal skeleton were kept extremely thin, particularly notable is the sense in which the meaning of the design is precisely the appearance of the building’s materiality, rather than its materiality as such. “ ” figure 2: manufacturers hanover trust ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 22 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r enhancing the building’s appearance of lightness. finally, cathode tube lights concealed behind thin plastic panels dematerialize the surface of the ceiling producing an impression of weightlessness. a true landmark in the delineation of space—and an arrangement of elements far beyond mere existence in fact—its design completely transformed our concept of the glass wall creating an entirely new relationship between interior and exterior.24 more than a half century after its construction, the building’s striking formal clarity and rich history remain. the evolution of the city, however, has rendered its technical efficiency and programmatic relevance obsolete. 510 fifth avenue was optimized to the standards and ideals of its day. but by 2010, its original owner had closed its bank branch, the building’s technological innovations were long outdated, and it no longer met the standards of contemporary architecture. in 2012 som adapted the building for retail, allowing old forms to meet the demand for new functions. beyond the mere replacement of the structure’s existing materiality, the adaptation required more significant changes that would work within the logic of the original concept. by means of subtle architectural alterations that tailor the space for an alternate purpose, they preserved the formal ingenuity of a unique and historic architecture while simultaneously producing new relationships between architecture and city. drawing on archival research and guided by the original design intentions, som preserved the building’s architectural meaning by preserving or restoring its primary elements including the glass curtain wall facade, the vast luminous ceilings, the bertoia-designed screen, the white marble piers, and the celebrated circular stainless-steel vault door. the renovation and restoration of its glowing ceilings and polished plate glass façade brilliantly maintain the building’s lucid grace and almost complete erasure of the threshold between architecture and city.25 to adapt the building for new uses, the architects integrated entrances into the building’s east façade, divided the first floor to allow for additional tenants, and rotated the escalators to run parallel with the new partialglass demising wall. by preserving the original architecture while adapting certain of its features for programmatic change, the renovation produces a kind of urban monument, one that is simultaneously both retrospective and prospective. on the one hand, the building’s preservation brings forth layers of accrued implication deposited by time and human experience into contemporary urban life—almost victorian in its materiality. on the other hand, the vitality of adaptive reuse lies in its essential engagement with the precise demands of the present. it allows for an architecture 23 isparchitecture.com that takes on new and disparate functions thereby producing new meanings. it directly mediates between past and present in an ever-changing world of shifting values—and, in this instance, it is precisely by virtue of this juxtaposition of past and present that the mutual inflection of elements bestow significance on one another. united states air force academy the idea of preserving architectural intent reached an apex in 2016 with polaris hall, som’s addition to the united states air force academy campus (fig. 3). with a scope far beyond that of lever house or manufacturers hanover trust, the project sought to extend the extreme rigor of the original concept into a completely new structure. it found in the depth of the initial concept the possibility for a building that would preserve the meaning of the original while begetting new meaning, born of the established relationships between already existing elements. this, in extreme contrast to the literalism figure 3: polaris hall ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 24 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r of the premodern romantics, implies a theory of preservation at its most speculative, in which we locate the maturation of a future in the fecundity of the present. its original design concept contained futures within its logic, allowing for precisely the kind of addition conceived almost a halfcentury later. begun in 1954 after the establishment of the united states air force academy by president dwight d. eisenhower, the project is located at an elevation of 6,500 feet along the foothills of the rampart range of the rocky mountains in colorado. given the scope of the project—both a university and flight training academy, nine buildings in total—the concept not only addressed individual buildings but both the natural landform and the interrelationships between buildings.26 by creating artificial terraces at the ridge crest with a series of concrete retaining walls, the plan allows the spaces between buildings to open into the larger landscape, maintaining the expansive character of the site.27 the buildings in the cadet area— sited on the highest ridge and the symbol of the academy to the public— were nestled into the mesa, allowing the structures’ monumentality to be apparent from outside the complex while maintaining a human scale and smaller perceived-size from the pedestrian level. the entire area is based on a seven-foot module that produced the relationships and proportions of the buildings throughout. it produced the sizes of the beams and structural bays in the cadet quarters, as well as the width of the rooms, windows, spandrel panels and the detailing of the facades. delineated rows of marble tile on the terrazzo produce gridlines that reflect the module, a twentyeight-foot organizing grid. the module organized the buildings and the space, but never restricted them resulting in “an extraordinarily sensitive composition of built and natural forms.”28 the corners of the grid were intentionally left open and implied, creating breaks in the horizontal plane that mirror those on the vertical plane, in the upper level loggias and height drops of the academic building and cadet quarters. the lengthwise visual momentum of the buildings—themselves floating on pilotis above open space—elevated above its surrounding terrain produced sensations of expansive soaring. set against this backdrop of horizontality and the dramatic vertical peaks of the rampart range, the cadet chapel—the focal point of the cadet area—is intentionally distinct. visually separated from the court of honor by its unique surface treatment, its wide ramp, and its dissimilar landscaping, the chapel functions as the virtuosic punctum of the composition. a half-century after its opening, the united states air force academy sought an addition to its campus. serving as an education and research 25 isparchitecture.com center and situated opposite and offset from the cadet chapel, polaris hall functions as the new home of the academy’s center for character and leadership development. built in 2016 and designed by som, the addition’s puzzle-like fit is as if the idea of the building were embedded within the concept of the original design. and in a sense, it was. it is a future that grew out of the outline and fecundity of the initial design. it is in this sense that the addition of polaris hall preserves the original, articulating the survival of its concept in another form. given the sensitivity necessary in adding to the sacred ground of the existing academy, the air force proposed a competition between the three principal offices of som: san francisco, chicago and new york. the design jury consisted of air force officials lt. general john regni and lt. general ervin rokke, architecture historian and critic joan ockman, cornell university school of architecture dean kent kleinman, and robert nauman, whose on the wings of modernism is widely considered to be the standard work on the architecture of the air force academy. som began with a site visit and the design process took shape immediately. weaving through the surrounding hills and valleys to approach the existing campus, the buildings came in and out of sight as a kind of dramatic foreshadowing of the intensity of experience induced upon arrival. seen as a kind of ancient citadel recalling a modern acropolis, the monumental scale of both site and architecture produced an almost spiritual effect. the low, long orthogonal lines and overwhelming consistency of the architecture stood in stark contrast to the raised rugged mountaintops and expansive blue sky of the surroundings. significantly, the team noted that the architecture is raised on pilotis throughout to create cinematic, framed letterbox views of thenatural landscape. these framed views, moreover, align with the grid of the campus that is everywhere present, this, in extreme contrast to the literalism of the premodern romantics, implies a theory of preservation at its most speculative, in which we locate the maturation of a future in the fecundity of the present. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 26 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r inscribed in the very ground on which the cadets march. it was this visit to the site—and the attendant recognition of its monumental, quasi-spiritual character—as well as what som saw as the inescapable necessity to engage with the logic of the existing grid, that began the process of conceptualizing polaris hall. the som design team underwent a period of sustained research into the existing architecture of the air force academy as well as the selfunderstanding of the institution it houses. it became clear that the discipline of the existing architecture—the omnipresent grid, the perfect orthogonal lines, the exactness of framing—corresponded in important ways to the discipline of the cadets. and central to the academy’s mission (as to its crest), embedded in its conceptual framework like the buildings in the terraced plinth, was the polaris star. the brightest star in its constellation, polaris is known as the north star, and functions as a symbol of the core values of the academy. som used this guiding symbol as the basis of their design, seeking to embody polaris by means of architecture. the idea to create a structure that emerged directly from the gridlines of the original thickened, rectilinear landscape with a skylight aligned toward polaris came early. the initial design of the campus addition resembled a telescope, a long shaft extending diagonally from the ground toward the sky. to complement the telescopic form, som considered a collaboration with the artist james turrell, with whom som had already collaborated on two other academic buildings. an intermediate design review with air force officials, however, caused a subtle but significant change.29 concerned that the initial design could be too easily read as a military instrument of violence, the design team added volume to the thin shaft, extending its base to encompass the entire form. this allowed for a more iconic, wing-like shape while bringing light and air into the entire space. the logic of the design follows almost naturally from its origin point of north star alignment: its sunken form allows for clear views at ground level, glass demising walls bring the skylight as far as possible into the building, and the structure aligns the existing grid with the diagonal angle of polaris. the final design, a 105-foot glass-and-steel skylight aligned toward polaris—the academy’s metaphorical guiding principle—emerges almost inevitably from the existing landscape. like the academic building and cadet quarters, its auditorium protrudes into the terrace level mimicking the stepped terraces of the original design. it follows the straight lines of the campus, preserves crucial sight lines and adheres to the original masterplan grid. it references the materials of the original campus including the colorful 27 isparchitecture.com murano glass tiles that line the entry walls and the granite for the main exterior stairs which was cut from the same quarry used for the cadet chapel in 1954. its structure, diagonal steel plates composed in a triangular grid calibrated to resist lateral forces, directly alludes to the chapel’s triangular repetition. the meeting and seminar rooms surrounding the central space below the terrace level are comprised of glass storefronts adapted to the campus’s sevenfoot grid. and yet the building provides its own additional metaphors. its protruding skylight works as a metaphorical moral compass, a reminder of the academy’s core values. the size and shape of the oculus align precisely with the north star, signifying the academy’s guiding values. it serves as a source of natural light, and creates a precise optical alignment with the respondent’s seat in the honor board room, where investigations into the cadet honor code take place. the details of the building mirror the logic of continuity and break found in the horizontal momentum of the site plan. shaped like an aircraft tailfin, the building eschews the muscularity of the cadet chapel, preserving the campus’s existing hierarchy of importance. an open, transparent nexus of interaction, the terraced levels of the building accommodate gatherings at a variety of scales and levels of formality. its glass-walled collaboration rooms surround the central space emphasizing and encouraging collaborative, forward-looking research. the entirety of the largely transparent structure is an architectural interpretation of the academy’s moral aspirations more generally, aspirations of communication, transparency, and openness. embedded within the constraints of the original campus design, polaris hall converts morality, sincerity, implicit hierarchies, and guiding principles into physical spatial conditions. revisiting, renovating and adding to architectural icons requires that the original narrative be considered. and the revisiting engenders its own narrative, related to and born polaris hall, however, actively reinterprets the original, extending and adapting the idea of its grid, its hierarchy, and its materiality into a bridge that bonds past and present. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 of—but different from—the original.30 polaris hall, for example, can be seen as a kind of secular corollary to the original cadet chapel; a temple of research and learning more adequate to the cultural mores of the twentyfirst century. in this sense, it is a project that exists in the unique, liminal space between past and present, a portal connecting one to the other. it is this unique condition that the practice of adaptive reuse engages more broadly. its ability to preserve an existing building while replacing materials (lever house), repositioning the program (manufacturer’s trust) or adding to the original (polaris hall), challenges certain widely accepted notions of historic preservation. because of modernist architecture’s unique focus on the rigor of concept, its preservation requires a shift in our understanding of what it means to preserve, which has typically focused on the preservation of the literal. in the case of lever house, for example, the very materiality of the original object was wholly replaced while retaining its landmark status, thereby shifting the framework of what it means to preserve modernist architecture. in a kind of response to theseus’s paradox—the famous thought experiment in which the ship of theseus, the mythical king and founder of athens, has been completely replaced over time thus questioning whether the restored ship is the same object as the original—the renovation of lever house expresses a determinate position. the complete replacement of its curtain wall assembly suggests a radical break in how we approach the historic preservation of modernist architecture. and just as the founder-hero of athens is associated with major cultural transition and the establishment of a new social order, the preservation approach to lever house, 510 fifth avenue and polaris hall heralds a new and radical approach to the practice of preservation more generally. viollet-le-duc’s attempt to recreate an original intention based primarily on an imagined fiction, while a radical approach for its time, foregoes any meaningful connection between past and present, as if existing on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gulf. polaris hall, however, actively reinterprets the original, extending and adapting the idea of its grid, its hierarchy, and its materiality into a bridge that bonds past and present. merleau-ponty claimed that in a successful aesthetic object, its meaning does not exhaust itself in the moment that has occasioned it, but remains as an exemplary type and survives in other situations in other forms and in other times. the united states air force academy does exactly that. the depth and originality of its original conception outlined a future in its origin. the rigor and logic of the design almost included within it the birth of polaris hall. it instituted a world unto itself pregnant with transformations to m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 28 29 isparchitecture.com come. “history,” merleau-ponty reminds us, “is the maturation of the future in the present, not the sacrifice of the present to an unknown future.”31 the air force academy was decidedly not sacrificed to an unknown future. the fecundity of its original design inaugurated an institution. its extreme rigor and depth of intention established a future within the logic of its present; a present that called for and made possible its next iteration. rather than a complete departure from the initial design, polaris hall is the maturation of the original conception of the air force academy campus into an inevitable future. endnotes 1. maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” signs, trans. richard c. mccleary (evanston, ill., 1964), pp. 39-83. the original essay in french, “le langage indirect et les voix du silence,” was first published in les temps modernes in 1952 and was included in merleauponty, signes (paris, 1960). 2. as ada louise huxtable, the dean of american architectural criticism, writes in the new york times in 1968, “what preservation is really all about is the retention and active relationship of the buildings of the past to the community’s functioning present.” ada louise huxtable, “where did we go wrong” in will they ever finish bruckner boulevard? (berkeley: university of california press, 1989), 223. 3. ibid. notably, the work of merleau-ponty is at the heart of some of the most important art criticism of the 20th century, in particular the writing of michael fried whose seminal essay “art and objecthood” was published in artforum 1967. he cites merleau-ponty throughout his writing, and “indirect language and the voices of silence” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 30 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r in particular. see michael fried, “an introduction to my art criticism,” art and objecthood: essays and reviews (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998), 28-31. 4. the paper does not claim that som architects were explicitly reading merleau-ponty’s writing. the claim, rather, is that merleau-ponty’s understanding of how meaning is produced by the interrelationship of parts can help us think productively about the early work of som and what it means to preserve that work today. 5.huxtable, “where did we go wrong,” 223. 6. ibid. 7. so merleau-ponty writes, “the primary operation which first constitute signs as signs, makes that which is expressed dwell in them through the eloquence of their arrangement and configuration alone, implants a meaning in that which did not have one, and thus—far from exhausting itself in the instant at which it occurs—inaugurates an order and founds an institution or a tradition.” ibid. p. 7. michael fried further echoes this sentiment in his description of the english sculptor anthony caro: “everything in caro’s art that is worth looking at—except the color—is in its syntax.” commenting later on these lines, and citing merleau-ponty’s essay in particular, he writes, “i associated the notion of syntax with that of abstract gesture, but what i saw was that the entire expressive weight of caro’s art was carried by the relations among the girders, iand t-beam segments, and similar elements out of which his sculptures were made, not by… the industrial, modern-world connotations of his materials.” fried, “an introduction,” 29. 8. this approach is notably different from the more standard approach to merleau-ponty within architecture which prioritizes merleau-ponty’s writing on phenomenology. for an interpretation of merleau-ponty and the role of phenomenology in the rise of postmodernism, see jorge oteropailos, architecture’s historical turn: phenomenology and the rise of the postmodern, (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2010). 9. bunshaft joined som in 1937 where he remained for more than forty years as lead design partner. he is credited with ushering in a new era of modernist skyscraper design and corporate architecture. 10. john ruskin, the seven lamps of architecture (london: george allen, 1903), 244. 11. ibid., 177. 12. see, for example, charles dellheim, the face of the past: the presentation of the medieval inheritance in victorian england (cambridge: cambridge 31 isparchitecture.com university press, 1982). 13. william morris, “preface,” the nature of gothic (kelmscott press: london 1892, p.i). 14. william morris, philip webb, et al, “manifesto of the society for the protection of ancient buildings,” first published 1877, accessible on the society’s contempoary website: “the spab manifesto” at https://www.spab.org.uk/about-us/spab-manifesto, accessed 10 oct 2019. 15. ibid. for discussion of these lines, see andrea elizabeth donovan, william morris and the society for the protection of ancient buildings (routledge: london 2008), pp. 24 ff. 16. eugene-emmanuel viollet-le-duc, “restoration,” from dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du xie au xvie siècle (1854-1868), english translation as on restoration (sampson low, marston: london, 1875). 17. see, for example, kevin d. murphy, memory and modernity: viollet-le-duc at vézelay (penn state university press, 1999). 18. landmarks preservation commission (november 9, 1982); designation list 161, lp-1277. 19. maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” 67. 20. ibid. 21. suzanne stephens, “the restoration of new york city’s lever house is not so same-old, sameold, as architects som and william t. georgis demonstrate,” architectural record, march 2003, vol. 191, issue 3, p. 122. 22. landmarks preservation commission october 21, 1997; designation list 285 lp-1968. according to nathaniel owings, the designers “were encouraged to come up with whatever popped into their heads, and the history and tradition of banking ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 32 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r be damned. nathaniel a. owings, the spaces in between: an architect’s journey (boston: houghton mifflin, 1973), 103. 23 maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” 68. 24. architectural forum, “modern architecture breaks through the glass barrier [manufacturers trust co. branch, n.y.].” architectural forum 101 (december 1954): 104-11. 25. for additional background and context to this project (510 fifth ave), see evan bindelglass, “lpc chair, top architects review nyc’s adaptive reuse projects”, new york imby (dec 23, 2015), at https://newyorkyimby. com/2015/12/lpc-chair-top-architects-review-nycs-adaptive-reuse-projects. html/, accessed october 10, 2019. 26. robert bruegman, modernism at mid-century. the architecture of the united states air force academy (university of chicago press: chicago 1994), 47. 27. as hegel points out in his aesthetics, “works of art enchant us not because they are so natural but because they have been made so natural.” g.w.f. hegel, aesthetics: lectures on fine art, vol. 1 (new york: oxford university press, 1975), 164. the artificiality of the landscape is yet another articulation of the project as willed intention. architectural forum declared that the architects “shaped the slopes as powerfully as the babylonians, the incas, and the greeks once did.” architectural forum, “the air age acropolis”, architectural forum 110.6 (june 1959), 158-65. 28. bruegman, modernism at mid-century, 53. 29. meeting attendees included lt. general regni, dr. rokke, colonel (ret) tom berry, and colonel ackerman. 30. as nicholas adams writes in casabella, “it respects everything around it and yet it offers something completely original.” nicholas adams, “polaris hall, center for character and leadership development, air force academy, colorado springs, colorado,” casabella 871 (march 2017). 31. the logic of the present unfolds into its future. “it is as if each step taken called for and made possible another step, or as if each successful expression prescribed another task to the spiritual automation or founded an institution whose efficacy it will have never finished experiencing.” maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” 54. isparchitecture.com aesthetic education and design roger scruton in his celebrated letters on the aesthetic education of mankind, schiller argued that to achieve the sense of order and civic virtue our best recourse in the modern world is aesthetic education. kant had marked out a central place for aesthetic pleasure in the life of the rational being, arguing that the judgment of beauty is both disinterested and universal in its scope. in aesthetic judgment, kant wrote, we are ‘suitors for agreement’, and it is a small step from that idea to schiller’s view that the pursuit of beauty is a shared enterprise, with civic virtue as its goal. in aesthetic judgment we view our surroundings as ends in themselves, abstracting from the demands of utility and function. hence aesthetic interest looks for permanent values, rather than transitory functions. it is the one sure guide to getting things right, not just for the here and now of our current interests, but permanently, and for the community as a whole. my aim in this paper is to outline a form of architectural education in which pattern, composition, and the idea of fit are given a proper place, and in which function and utility are regarded as the consequences of beauty and not prior requirements that must be independently fulfilled. schiller believed that education and high culture would release what is best in us, and bring about civic virtue without any particular person taking charge of the process. subsequent history has dented any confidence that we might have had in such a vision. indeed, the experience of the 20th century suggests that the greatest changes come about as a result of particular people and their schiller argued that to achieve the sense of order and civic virtue our best recourse in the modern world is aesthetic education. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 215 sc r ut on influence, and that the most influential people–the ones who have done most to create the world in which we now live–have been mad. this is certainly true in the realm of politics, which was irreversibly changed by lenin, stalin, hitler, mao ze dong, and a host of lesser lunatics. the interesting thing about those madmen is their astonishing ability to recruit a following, to march into the future like the pied piper of hamelin, with an ever-growing crocodile of mesmerised imbeciles following them to destruction. the madness exemplified by the ‘great leaders’ exhibits their shared desire for a total solution, a transition to a new state in which everything has been solved and nothing is left for discussion. but this total solution is the answer to no coherent problem. of course you can invent a problem: the jews, the bourgeoisie, the ‘enemy within’ or (in the case of isis today) the apostate or the infidel. but it is clear to the most casual outside observer that the problem is dictated by the solution, and not the other way round. it is the desire for the total reorganisation of everything, the total destruction of all obstacles and the total transfer of power to me, the leader, that requires the invention of a problem that can be solved in no other way. for this reason the most frequent tale told by modern politics is the tale of an enemy within, whose destruction will open the way to a new order of being. it was thus that the ‘bourgeoisie’ was invented, to play such a remarkable role in the theories of marx, sartre, foucault and the frankfurt school. this feature of modern politics is replicated by modern architecture. here too the most influential people have been mad, expressing their desire for total control in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying whole settlements and cities. like the pioneers of totalitarian politics, corbusier, gropius, lubetkin and their kind wanted a total solution, and they hunted the world for the problem that would justify their aim. thus le corbusier’s total solution for the problem of paris north of the seine involved wiping away the great city of stone and replacing it with an array of concrete towers rimmed by grass verges. as comprehensive a solution as could be imagined. but what was the problem? le corbusier made a few fashionable noises about health, and the conditions of the working class. however, they were improvised around the solution, rather than discovered from the facts. the council of paris put a stop to this nonsense, causing le corbusier to turn his attention to the far more vulnerable city of algiers, where his plans to wipe this excrescence from the map were stopped only by the collapse of the vichy government, which he had persuaded to adopt him as its architectural advisor. 216 isparchitecture.com unfortunately the city council of paris has no power to match that of a president, and when president pompidou, whose wife prided herself on her advanced aesthetic taste, wished to create a monument to himself, a small-scale version of le corbusier’s vandalism was carried out, resulting in the clearance of beautiful residential streets in the lovely lutetian limestone, and their replacement by a vast fun palace of scaffolding in playground colours, designed by richard rogers and renzo piano. this, the centre beaubourg, is perhaps the greatest eyesore in europe, if only because it is conceived entirely as an insult to its surroundings. it is expressly designed not to fit in, and this has been the pattern followed by richard rogers in all subsequent buildings: to create something that stands out from the urban fabric, as though dropped from another planet. but ‘fitting in’ is the primary goal of aesthetic judgment, and it is why schiller connected aesthetic education to his ideal of civic order. i will return to that point, since it seems to me that the art of fitting things together–both internally, within the work you are composing, and externally, within the fabric of a human settlement–is of the essence of aesthetic education in all its forms. and it points us in a certain direction–towards a kind of grammar, repeatability, and the relation of part to part. before exploring that suggestion, however, i want to dwell for a moment on the question of madness. we should make a distinction, i believe, between those conditions, like schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, which stem from a dysfunction of the central nervous system, and those conditions in which perception, cognition and affective states are all normal and functional, but devoted entirely to some goal that cannot be moderated or renounced, and which is immune to rational argument–by which i mean argument that weighs with all of ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 217 sc r ut on us. it is this second condition that i have in mind, when describing the madness of stalin, mao or le corbusier: a kind of inability to give weight to any consideration that does not originate in the over-mastering idea. the mad person is the one in the grip of a vision, who cannot recognize the legitimacy of opposition or adapt his projects to the needs of others. he recognizes no boundaries, and regards reality as a plastic material to be shaped according to his aims. his thought is uni-directional, and he cries ever ‘forward!’ in the face of obstacles. aesthetic education, as i see it, is one part of the broader practice of humane education–the kind of education that transmits knowledge of the human world. its purpose is to teach students how to renounce their obsessions, and to learn the ways of sympathy and compromise. it fosters cooperation with one’s kind. its goal is to transmit a culture that embodies shared conceptions of life and discovered solutions to life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how to live at peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you dislike them. art, music and literature are all part of this culture, embodying pictures, stories and dramas that raise the human condition to a dignity that sets an example in our daily lives. to transmit such a culture involves teaching students to exercise taste, to compare and contrast, to distinguish refined from crude perceptions, and in general to understand the distinction between products that accommodate our shared humanity and products that are to be understood merely as whimsy or self-centred display. the goal is to enhance our dignity, our sympathy and our understanding for our kind. however difficult it might be to express this goal in words, it is straightforwardly manifested in the art, literature and music that we have inherited, and apparent to everyone who has learned how to enjoy those things. and it is manifest too in our everyday judgments about our surroundings and about the behaviour, manners and appearance of our fellows. in everything human we distinguish the harmonious from the dissonant, the thing that fits from the thing that jars. and even if there is a place for the dissonant and the jarring in the scheme of things, we know that they make sense for us only because of the context in which they are resolved. aesthetic education teaches us how to avoid or resolve them, as we teach children to avoid garish colours, rude language and slovenly gestures. any philosophical account of aesthetic judgment must explore its roots in the moral life, and in those aspects of the human condition that lead us to search not only for shared rules of behaviour, but for a shared 218 isparchitecture.com canon of taste. errors of taste and self-advertising defiance of aesthetic norms can be just as offensive as rudeness or public belligerence, and we strive to avoid them not simply for our own pleasure’s sake, but for the sake of the community. if this is evident in no other sphere, it is surely evident in the sphere of architecture. from ruskin’s seven lamps of architecture onwards the question of how our buildings and our cities should look has been treated as a moral question, and one on which much more depends than we are in the habit of supposing. writers have been conscious that faulty aesthetic choices lead to destroyed communities, and this is often announced in the very titles of their books–for example jane jacobs’s the death and life of great american cities (1961), and alexander mitscherlich’s die unwirtlichkeit unserer städte: anstiftung zum unfrieden (1965). both those writers saw themselves as fighting a war on behalf of common sense against madness–no longer, perhaps, the madness of a single person, like the madness of gropius and le corbusier, but a madness that had become programmed into the planning system, dictating outcomes that would leave no room for negotiation. and if you look at the situation against which jacobs and mitscherlich were both in rebellion, you will see that it is one from which humane education–the only known antidote to madness of this kind–had been abolished. a kind of depersonalised madness had possessed the schools of architecture and town planning in the wake of the second world war, with le corbusier and gropius constantly invoked as heroes, and the curriculum purified of all reference to aesthetic values other than those that emphasize originality, innovation, progress and the conquest of space. the ground plan was conceived in purely geometrical terms, as was the city plan of which it was a part. the total conception took precedence over the individual building, and each a kind of depersonalised madness had possessed the schools of architecture and town planning in the wake of the second world war “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 219 sc r ut on element was defined by its function. the city itself was disaggregated into zones, with living, shopping, studying and manufacturing each confined to its own separate area, and the resulting blocks of mono-functional buildings assembled side-by-side and without a heart. the result can be seen in new towns like milton keynes, in derelict american cities like detroit, and in the post-war reconstruction of germany. i think it is right, when witnessing these things, to speak of madness. for here were massive enterprises, producing unwanted and threatening products, but entirely unable to adapt to the desires and opinions of those destined to make use of them. consult the textbooks of architecture and town-planning then employed and you will see this immediately–for example in siegfried giedion’s space, time and architecture (1941), in pevsner’s pioneers of the modern movement (1936), and the madness has been replicated in the many recent manuals devoted to curtain wall construction. (take a look at the current textbooks: for example keith boswell’s exterior building enclosures: design process and composition for innovative facades, or alija aksamija’s sustainable facades: design methods for high performance building envelopes.) here once again are the total solutions without the problems, the comprehensive plans without the human beings who are supposed to require them. and for the most part the education advanced by the schools of architecture and planning either avoids discussion of aesthetic values, or subdues them with the all-justifying ideas of progress and innovation. the fact that the ‘sustainable facades’ and ‘exterior building enclosures’ are to be inserted into the fabric of a living city, in which the aesthetic of the street, the house and the façade has been followed for centuries, is not mentioned. for the madman the ‘total solution’ involves the destruction of all that is. in the face of such madness it seems to me that our first duty is to reaffirm the fundamental principles of the moral life. these principles, i maintain, include the following three: that the other is more important than the self, that conflicts are to be resolved by negotiation, and that opposition must be treated with humility. those principles are of universal application, since they make it possible for people to live at peace, regardless of their individual differences. their relevance to architecture and planning can be seen at once, when we compare the traditional street with the modern housing estate. the high-rise estate, largely the invention of gropius, came to dominate housing projects between the wars and subsequently, since it was a perfect expression of the comprehensive plan. it involved tearing down the streets over a large area, making way for large structures standing in open spaces, which could be designed geometrically 220 isparchitecture.com as ground-plans, and then raised up to the height desired by isometric drawings. no need to worry about fitting part to part, of finding the appropriate window surrounds and doorways, about creating an acceptable façade on a public street: all traditional aesthetic constraints had been abolished. there were to be no more streets, and windows would be distant apertures, many of them hundreds of feet in the air, which had no special relation to the observer outside the building, and with no special relation to the lines and forms of the doors below. furthermore, the high-rise estate was the expression in architecture of a new kind of politics– the politics of total control, in which large projects, initiated by the state and its favoured experts, were imposed on the rest of us without seeking our consent. of course this was the outlook that gave such scope to madmen in politics too–and the near impossibility of mounting effective resistance was the same in both cases. history favoured the new, progressive and total solutions, over the random chaos of the old. so we were taught, and so it was believed. in the end, of course, madmen lose their following, and this is beginning to be true in architecture too. the real question that we confront today is that of restoration: how to return to the genial traditions that endowed our cities with their hearts, and which made them into durable settlements where generations have been at home. sometimes this has been achieved with the help of a comprehensive plan, as at bath. but on the whole the fabric of a city, even if it adapts to a plan, has another source than planning. it is the result of cooperation over many years, between people whose goals may not be shared, but who recognize the boundary between public and private space. the most important feature of the gropius housing estate, one that is copied by all the modernist schemes from corbusier to koolhaas, ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 221 sc r ut on is the dissolution of the boundary. the street disappears, as does the façade that presses against it. walls cease to be private faces onto a public realm, and become featureless curtains between undefined areas, hung on invisible frames. buildings grow upwards indefinitely, with no boundary between the building and the sky. (for that is how we should think of the sky-line, the most precious and vulnerable of the city’s many edges.) doors and windows are no longer ceremonial thresholds, but simply functional apertures, cleaned of their liminal character. and around every building is a blank space, a no-man’s land of discarded rubbish and stunted vegetation, from which the towers rise sheer and formless as though washed up by some primordial flood. among the factors lending themselves to this result–as mitscherlich points out–are the forms of social ownership instituted by the german cities. but even where private property is supposedly sacrosanct, as in america and britain, governments have made use of eminent domain (america) or ‘compulsory purchase’ (britain) in order to embark on the large scale clearances that the housing estates require. hand in hand with this kind of presumption has been the revised image of building, the image forced on us by le corbusier in vers une architecture, and gleefully endorsed by libeskind, foster and piano today. for such practitioners the architect has no need of aesthetic education since his comprehensive plan issues from an integral artistic idea. he is inspired and led by the same ‘genius’ that guides the poet, the composer and the painter. thus is perpetuated the illusion of architecture as a ‘fine art’ rescued by the demands of genius from the obligations of daily life. if we are to understand the role of aesthetic education we must recognize, however, that most buildings are the work of ordinary people who strive to accommodate what they do both to the purpose in hand and to the desires and tastes of their neighbours. genius has no part to play in their decisions, and nothing is more disruptive than the illusion that they possess it. many of the most agreeable parts of our cities, their centres in particular, depend on an urban fabric knitted from humble and unpretentious façades that show the mark of style only here and there and often in their pre-fabricated parts, such as doors and window frames. the ordinary vernacular street may have little to recommend it to those, like libeskind and koolhaas, who prefer to violate its outline rather than to conform to it, but there is no denying that the traditional street illustrates the first principle of aesthetic education, which is the principle of fittingness. the houses in a street must fit side by side along its edge, and in doing so define the boundary between the public and the 222 isparchitecture.com private. they may be of different heights, and using different materials and different pattern-books. but if each façade is internally coherent, and shares the overall posture of other houses in the street, then each house might fit to its neighbour, and play its own particular part in creating the shared boundary which is the edge of the public realm. two observations should be made concerning the relation of fit. the builder who is fitting a house into a street is not looking for the form that fits a particular function. he is fitting a form into its context, regardless of the function. his reasoning is not ‘instrumental’ reasoning, but an assessment of how things look. ever since louis sullivan’s well known adage that ‘form follows function’ architects have felt free to allow the use of a building to dictate its appearance, to build as though there were no aesthetic constraints, and that their task was simply to find the forms best suited to the end in view. hence the emergence of the windowless warehouse as an architectural type. however, no ordinary builder, and certainly no person building or arranging something as part of his own habitat, thinks in that way. the aim is always to make things fit together as they should, with the function conceived as a result and not as a premise of the exercise. in fact there are good utilitarian reasons for not thinking in a utilitarian way. a building that is construed purely as the means to a present purpose will not survive the extinction of that purpose: it will be an un-adaptable feature of the environment, destined for demolition as soon as its function expires. from such buildings no permanent townscape can be constructed, and their ugliness is a vivid symbol of their impracticality, of the fact that there is nothing to be done with them once their present function has gone. this is the principal cause of the dereliction of city centres – namely that they are not centres, but merely the casing if we are to understand the role of aesthetic education we must recognize, however, that most buildings are the work of ordinary people “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 223 sc r ut on around activities that have ceased. detroit is an eloquent illustration of this. much of the city of london is moving in the same direction, and you see, now, a vivid contrast between the functional blocks already marked out for destruction, and the noble buildings constructed according to aesthetic principles which have survived the loss of their original use–like the royal exchange building, now a meeting place and restaurant. this utilitarian argument against utilitarian thinking goes to the heart of our topic, and tells us something about why aesthetic education matters. in a world dominated by instrumental thinking many people imagine that they have made advances in rationality, that they are no longer hampered by irrelevant goals which have no purpose but themselves, that the life of frills and ornaments has at last been left behind. but it is such people who are irrational, since they are denying the kind of reasoning that would enable them to envision the fruition of their projects. let me take a simple illustration of this: the electricity transformer station. when transformer stations were first introduced the instinct of our ancestors was to find an architectural casing for them that would fit in to the surroundings, whether urban or rural. this was not a denial of the great benefits brought to us by electricity, but a way of humanizing those benefits, of making them part of a life lived for its own sake and not just for the sake of consumption. nowadays, under the impact of the instrumentalised worldview, transformer stations are left exposed, hostile, surrounded by barbed wire, outposts of the gulag, whose only meaning is their function. at the heart of islington, london, stands one of the original transformer stations, built in 1905 and modelled on george dance’s design for newgate prison, which had just been demolished. now, after several changes of use, it is a popular arcade of shops and restaurants. here is a building designed for a use, but designed also as an end in itself, and therefore as something that can form the hub of social sentiments in the place where it stands. as a result it has survived the loss of its original use, and been incorporated into the enduring fabric of the city. i don’t say that the islington transformer station is a masterpiece: on the contrary, its not being a masterpiece is one reason why it is so much liked. this is not a building designed to stand out, but one designed to fit in. no genius took charge of creating it, or conceived it as the expression of his individual soul. it is the work of the london county council’s design department, which at the time was composed of unassuming people who had received an aesthetic education of a broadly classical kind, based in drawing, proportion and the orders–people who took delight in 224 isparchitecture.com the appearance of buildings, and in the way that buildings are composed from matching parts. and it has lasted, because it is more valuable than its original function. one very obvious feature of the islington transformer station is that it has firm boundaries – indeed, it consists of boundaries, carefully modulated and composed boundaries which define both the public space outside them and the reserved space within. the modern transformer station does not have boundaries in that sense–certainly not boundaries in which the transition from public to private is articulated or given ceremonial presence. it is surrounded by wire fences whose only message is ‘keep out’–not ‘look at me’ or ‘here i am’ or ‘come stand in my shadow’ but ‘go away!’ reflecting on boundaries, i believe, is a very good way of grasping the significance of aesthetic education generally. in every sphere we depend upon boundaries. we are protected from domination by our rights, which in a civilised society create a sphere of sovereignty around every individual member. we are protected from prurient curiosity by our clothes, which we also use in order to signal the various degrees of approachability that seem appropriate. we are walled round by manners and conventions that bring safety and certainty in the otherwise intimidating life among strangers. some of our boundaries are permeable and expressly designed to offer a welcome, when the welcome has figure 1: islington transformer station ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 225 sc r ut on been earned: so it is with manners and courtesies. other boundaries are firm rebuttals, such as those created by the law. these distinctions have their counterpart in the language of architecture. walls can be forbidding, inviting, permeable or semi-permeable. doorways may be ceremonious or perfunctory. exteriors can be accommodating or severe. and the language here is integral to the way in which a building fits to its neighbours. in this way the art of the boundary, through which we learn to accommodate our desires and places to those of our neighbours, is replicated in the sphere of architecture, and illustrates the way in which aesthetic education and moral education are rooted in the same human need–the need to live in harmony with others, and to reconcile individual ambition with a shared sense of home. creating and managing boundaries is one part of it. just as important is the art of fitting one thing to another so that it looks right. ‘looking right’ does not mean ‘looking right to me’: in this judgment, as kant made clear, we open ourselves to criticism. we are ‘suitors for agreement’, aware that what we do is of interest to others, and that we are creating something that is shared–whether or not with any specific person. grasping this point has always seemed to me to be the most crucial step in understanding the place of the aesthetic in human life. it is a point that wittgenstein, in his own idiom, makes central to his all-too-brief lectures on aesthetics, and it is a point that can be illustrated in a way of which wittgenstein would surely have approved, by studying the ‘natural expression’ of aesthetic choice in the faces and gestures of children. ask children to lay a table or to arrange a room, and at once they begin to attend to the way things look, and to the meaning of the way things look–the meaning for others. is it right to put the napkin on the plate or should it be by the side of it? the emphasis on ‘getting it right’, rather than beauty, is easily understood from examples of this kind. so too is the connection between getting it right and fitting in. the ability to match things to each other is hard to reduce to any more primitive capacity, but it seems to be fundamental to what we are, and to our ways of negotiating our way through social and visual complexities. and it has two aspects. we match one thing to another of the same broad category–for example knife to fork in a given pattern, or a certain style of porcelain to a certain kind of napkin. but we also match objects to moods, life-styles, ways of being and feeling, and in this way make the most farreaching connections between aesthetic judgment and the moral life. the ‘matching’ process can be educated. when a choice is exposed to judgment, the search for reasons begins. we can ask the child why she 226 isparchitecture.com put the spoon to the right of the bowl, and she might well have an answer: because that is what is done, because it looks right, because then you have a nice straight line and a circle. we can teach her to make comparisons–which style of spoon looks best, for example, and why. inevitably the ‘why?’ question, even if it peters out in the declaration that there is nothing further to be said, commits us to comparative judgments, to finding meaning and emotion in the objects that we choose, and to developing a repertoire of forms that go easily and unquestionably together. style is precipitated out from judgment, since it is what gives purchase to a reasoned answer to the question ‘why this, given that?’ style is not the same as syntax, and if we refer to the classical style in architecture we are not, literally, referring to a grammar,–that is, a system of rules for generating complex meanings from meaningful parts. all kinds of misleading analogies arise at this point, and the analogy with language is perhaps the most dangerous of them, since it seems to imply that the rules of style are arbitrary in the way that the grammatical rules of a language are arbitrary. although styles are many and varied, they are rooted in features of the human condition that influence how we perceive and respond to shape, colour, form and mass. no stylistic convention can make a vast featureless hulk like the new linked-in building in san francisco look anything but oppressive and at odds with its surroundings. no stylistic convention can endow one of libeskind’s knife-like assaults on a traditional building with a humane meaning when we are ineluctably led to see the result as a species of architectural murder. this does not mean that the idea of grammar, used as a metaphorical summary of something that we expect a building to exhibit, is entirely inappropriate. on the contrary. it reminds us of the fact that order and harmony, here as elsewhere no stylistic convention can endow one of libeskind’s knife-like assaults on a traditional building with a humane meaning “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 227 sc r ut on in our lives, come about through composition. it is because significant parts are matched to significant parts that we sense the emergence of order in architecture, and forms that elide all parts into a single molten flow as in so much post-modernist ‘gadget’ architecture offend against a primary need. the case is comparable to that of music, which has evolved as an art-form largely through quasi-syntactical conventions, governing key relations, voice-leading and harmonic progressions, and in which we have acquired the pronounced feeling for the ‘wrong note’ and the ‘wrong chord’. if you compose while ignoring those conventions then you risk producing music in which nothing sounds wrong, because nothing sounds right. the features of aesthetic education that i am trying to bring to mind are well illustrated by the classical orders, and especially by those aspects of the orders that have rubbed off on vernacular architecture down the centuries. we should see the orders as summaries of a long process of matching, through which the post and beam structure–the prima materia of functional building–has been embellished and humanised. the textbooks, from vitruvius through the renaissance manuals to chambers, provide rules of proportion and detail, which have all the appearance of a grammar: if you do this, you must do that, and so on. but as with treatises of tonal harmony, the imperative mood is misleading. the real speech-act is not prescriptive but descriptive: these manuals tell us what has been done, with a vague exhortation to respect it. the study of the orders was a training in the matching of parts, and in understanding what constitutes a part rather than a chunk or a section. they taught proportion, by teaching the student how to perceive it. proportion is not a purely geometrical idea. it arises from the relation between measures, and measures exist only where there are parts that begin and end, and the edges that close them. hence proportion is perceivable only where there are boundaries, divisions, and significant details. a building like the linked-in building that i referred to earlier can never be seen as proportionate or harmonious, since it has no details. nothing on the visible surface of this building, is ‘between’ one place and another. no line has closure, no surface detail stands out and nothing begins, ends or moves to a conclusion. in the tuscan doric order the column is wrapped by an astragal just below the capital: a semi-circular moulding which has the effect of tempering the upward thrust of the column, and also introducing a kind of ambiguity as to whether the section of column above the astragal is part of the capital or part of the column. this ambiguity endows the vertical 228 isparchitecture.com with a kind of elasticity, as though it were actively changing places with itself in its determination to push from below. just focusing for a while on this moulding is an education in itself: it illustrates the point that proportion needs measure and measure needs the edge; it exemplifies the idea of a meaningful part, and also shows the way in which such a part is not stuck on like the metopes in the frieze but grows from within the structure–it is an efflorescence of the stone. and it illustrates the way in which lines, edges, and boundaries in architecture are not made of hard materials, but of light and shade. a boundary is perceivable only if it casts a shadow, and there is shadow only where there is light. the study of the orders was a study of the fall of light on a work of stone, and of the ways in which the life of the stone could be coaxed into the surface. students of the beaux-arts school would be required to draw the shadows on a corinthian capital, as these were cast during the divisions of the day. this education is reflected in all successful forms of architecture, from the ordinary use of beading in window and door surrounds, to the supreme refinements of the gothic mouldings, as lovingly set out in f.a. paley’s manual of gothic figure 2: linkedin building ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 229 sc r ut on mouldings, 1841. among the many radical changes that divide modern from traditional architecture two in particular should be noted: the replacement of the vertical by the horizontal as the axis of emphasis, and the disappearance of mouldings. traditional buildings were arranged in a vertical axis, and this is exactly what the orders were used to teach–a vertical section that could be repeated again and again so as to create an upward vector uniting the whole façade. and the edges were folded over, wrapped around shadows and emphasized with parallels, so that vectors came steadily to closure rather than ceasing abruptly. those two features shape the background expectations of building not only according to the orders but in almost all traditional styles. their loss is associated with the rise of the ground plan and isometric drawing, both made possible by curtain wall structures, steel frames and the replacement of the arch and the beam by continuous girders of steel or reinforced concrete. these innovations in engineering, however, were accompanied by no comparable developments in aesthetic education, so that architects entered a realm of aesthetic ignorance, exemplified by the linked-in building discussed above. for a while, it is true, the ordinary architect attempted to pin the vertical order and moulded edges to the façade of a steel frame buildings–as in the wonderful street assemblages of downtown manhattan. even louis sullivan worked in that way. but then came mies van der rohe, the multi-storey tower block in glass and alloy, and the final abolition of light, shade and significant detail. many praised the result as the sign of a new aesthetic; but ordinary opinion has never been at ease with it, for all the reasons that are implied in my present discussion. the kind of aesthetic education that i have been associating with the orders is the property of all who seek to build for others. it is not addressed to the genius, still less to the madman. it is addressed to those humble civil servants who designed the islington transformer station, to the builders of our pattern-book towns, and to those who produced the pattern books. but here we come up against a great difficulty, which is that contained in the concept of genius. the genius is to a great extent a creation of the romantic movement, which presented us with a new idea of the aesthetic endeavour. for kant and schopenhauer genius defined the distinctive condition of the artist, who was not conceived as a diligent craftsman whose endeavour is to find a place for his art in the existing culture. he was the one with a unique capacity to transcend the rules and conventions that govern lesser mortals, and to put before them his inner life in all its shining and redemptive perfection. he was the one 230 isparchitecture.com with the beautiful soul, to use hegel’s language: the soul distinguished by its sublime and unclassifiable apartness. appealing though that idea might be, when considering the great works of poetry, painting and music, it fits ill with the so-called ‘useful’ arts of architecture, clothing and decoration. there are two reasons for this. frist, by the very fact that it is useful, architecture involves pursuing a nonaesthetic aim. even if it is true, as i have argued, that the aim will expire before the building, so that we must make a building that is adaptable to the changes in human interest, and even if it is true that prioritising aesthetic values is the only reliable way to do this, nevertheless the surrender to a purely aesthetic approach, in which nothing matters save the expressive nature of the design, is a kind of denial of architecture. but there is a second and more important reason for disallowing the romantic idea of genius, which is that works of architecture are public, observable to, and imposed upon, all who move in their vicinity. you can escape from the poetic genius by not opening his book, and from the musical genius by keeping clear of concert halls. but you cannot escape from the architectural genius. our cities are being everywhere littered with gadgets whose aggressive refusal to fit in is amplified by their un-composed character, so that they do not fit in even with themselves. yet, we are assured, they are works of genius, innovative gestures that challenge our expectations, forge new paths into the future, break free from the stultifying constraints of etc. etc. it is precisely the public nature of architecture that demands aesthetic education. and the goal of that education is not to open the way to the genius, but to civilize the manners of the ordinary builder, who is no more likely to be a genius than rem koolhaas, even if somewhat less likely to behave it is precisely the public nature of architecture that demands aesthetic education “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 231 sc r ut on as one. this is not to say that there is not such a thing as architectural genius. but it is manifest most of all in the inspiration that finds new ways of fitting things together, and producing adaptable solutions to aesthetic problems. in this connection it is surely right to commend the genius of vignola, palladio, borromini and more recently lutyens, whose war memorials showed how to make plain stone arches stand to mournful attention above the dead. and the inspiration of those modest architects can be felt even in the most modern forms, such as aldo rossi’s city hall at borgoricco, which as it were reaches back to the palladian serenity, while eschewing the classical grammar. i have outlined the way in which aesthetic education plays a part in architecture, teaching ordinary builders how to fit part to part and building to building. this process of fitting is what we mean, or ought to mean, by settlement. all durable cities bear witness to this–not just long-standing cities like siena and florence, but modern cities too. new york has the air of a durable settlement in part because the iron frame vernacular, with its street-friendly facades, and the early sky-scrapers which hovered above genial doorways on the street, created an adaptable city, one in which buildings have been preserved because their aesthetic qualities make them more valuable than their initial purposes. compare detroit, tampa or buffalo, in which aesthetic indifference, combined with gargantuan schemes executed by people without aesthetic education, have created ‘built deserts’, at vast expense, financially, aesthetically and ecologically. it is surely reasonable, in the wake of recent experience, to hope for a new kind of architectural education, which is not simply a matter of teaching how to hang panels onto frames, or to transfer computer-designed doodles onto the townscape, but which begins from inculcating an understanding of the true raw materials of architecture, which are light and shade. isparchitecture.com architecture as participation in the world: merleauponty, wölfflin, and the bodily experience of the built environment brian irwin introduction many discussions of merleau-ponty’s treatment of the bodily experience of space turn to his opus phenomenology of perception, where he most explicitly takes up the theme. yet in merleau-ponty’s own view this treatment, while providing rich and valuable insights into spatial experience, remains unsatisfying: ultimately phenomenology of perception does not escape a dualism that, despite the work’s inestimable contributions to the philosophy of embodied experience, situates it within a flawed tradition running back through husserl, kant, and descartes. as merleau-ponty himself puts it, “the problems posed in ph.p. are insoluble because i start there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction.” 1 only in his later philosophy, particularly with his development of the ontology of the flesh, did he approach the fulfillment of his goal to leave this distinction and all its cartesian corollaries behind once and for all. if we want to derive from his work an approach to architecture that doesn’t recapitulate these cartesian assumptions, that instead seeks to understand architectural practice and experience as important ways in which we belong to the world, then it is to his later philosophy that we should turn. in this essay i want to emphasize in particular that our mode of engaging with the world, in merleau-ponty’s later writings, can be understood as one of participation, as i argue in the first section. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 90 ir w in in considering how this principle might apply to architectural theory in practice, i turn to heinrich wölfflin, whose “prolegomena to a psychology of architecture” suggests a way of thinking about architecture in participatory terms. i conclude with a few remarks about how these ideas may be applied to the contemporary world of architectural theory and practice. drawing out the theme of participation in merleau-ponty’s later philosophy it is a bit ironic that vision figures so prominently, even in the very titles of two of merleau-ponty’s last works —the visible and the invisible and “eye and mind”—considering that in these writings he makes a radical departure from the ocular-centrism that has for so long characterized the western philosophical tradition. in merleau-ponty’s use, though, vision functions as a synecdoche for sensing in general. in the ontology of the flesh, the visual and the tactile are bound up in a general sensing which is embedded in the “flesh of the world,” the term merleau-ponty uses to signify that element in which sensing and sensible, subject and object, occur together, wherein “between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some sort takes place – then the spark is lit between sensing and sensible, lighting the fire that will not stop burning.”2 indeed, the tactile can be taken as primary insofar as it is by means of the tactile that the embeddedness of vision in the world is explicated. the visible “envelops, palpates, espouses the visible things.”3 merleau-ponty asks: what is this prepossession of the visible, this art of interrogating it according to its own wishes, this inspired exegesis? we would perhaps find the answer in the tactile palpation where the questioner and the questioned are closer, and of which, after all, the palpation of the eye is a remarkable variant. … [b]etween my movements and what i touch, there must exist some relationship by principle, some kinship, according to which they are not only, like the pseudopods of the amoeba, vague and ephemeral deformations of the corporeal space, but the initiation to and opening upon a tactile world. this can happen only if my hand, while it is felt from within, is also accessible from without, itself tangible, for my other hand, for example, if it takes its place among the things it touches, is in a sense one of them, opens finally upon a tangible world of which it is also a part.4 compared to vision, the immediacy and density of contact with things through touch better reveals the common dimension of the sensing and the sensed. for the hand that touches is manifestly a thing in the world – a thing we can see, and indeed a thing we can touch (with the other hand). it meets resistance when it slaps against the table in the same way that 91 isparchitecture.com the ball meets resistance when it lands in the palm.5 this commonality of touching and touched – their mutual embeddedness in the place of contact – is what makes it possible for the tactile world to open up to sensing. this phenomenon, in fact, is enough for us to overthrow our naturalistic idea of the thing as object, as essentially separate from ourselves, since we find ourselves suddenly among the world of objects, and this, as he says elsewhere, “results in an ontological rehabilitation of the sensible.”6 this is the crux of merleau-ponty’s later ontology – or not crux but what he terms chiasm: the flesh of the world finds expression in both sensing and sensible as two sides of the same coin. while there is a gap (he uses the term écart) between these two sides, they are nonetheless characterized by “overlapping or encroachment, so that we may say that the things pass into us, as well as we into the things.”7 it is a relation of intertwining, such that there is not an ontological separation between the self and the world, but an emergence of self from the world (and of the world from self). as he says in a working note to the visible and the invisible with the header “the chiasm,” “a relation to being is needed that would form itself within being.”8 the experience of tactility is the best example of this relation because it most clearly depends on our moving about within the world, discovering its resistances and textures through grasping, stroking, or palpating actions, and providing resistances of our own through our acts of touch. given the nature of this bodily engagement with the world, it is very difficult to imagine that we simply represent the world through touch, or that a world of objects is translated by touch into a tactile representation. only once we see this do we see that vision and the visible operate according to the same principle; that, in fact, “the palpation of the eye is a remarkable variant” of the tactile encounter with things, and vision does in fact participate in the sensible world as surely as does touch. for at in the ontology of the flesh, the visual and the tactile are bound up in a general sensing which is embedded in the ‘flesh of the world’ “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 92 ir w in a fundamental level, as the example of tactility demonstrates, this is just what it is to sense: to make contact with the world, to be among things rather than before them. after all, i am visible as a seeing thing, even if by physiological circumstance i am not directly visible as a seeing thing to myself; as merleau-ponty notes, “[i]t is a marvel too little noticed that every movement of my eyes—even more, every displacement of my body —has its place in the same visible universe that i itemize and explore with them.”9 just as it is only by belonging to the world of touchable things that the hand is able to feel, so the eyes can only see by virtue of their being within a visible world. so we see that this sort of belonging is characteristic of sensing in general; that the sensible world is open to us as sensing beings because of our chiasmic relation to it from within—an active participation, a movement that always takes us beyond ourselves in the incessant palpation of our surroundings. and, as actions are carried out by our whole moving, sensing body, rather than merely any isolated sense, the unity of the body is entailed in any sensory experience. the senses interpolate each other, and operate according to each other’s modes. thus we see the tactile qualities and feel the visible qualities of things; or as merleau-ponty puts it “there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible, which is encrusted in it, as, conversely, the tangible itself is not a nothingness of visibility, is not without visual existence.”10 the chiasm, in which sensing and sensible are intertwined, also allows for the intertwining of the senses with each other. as he notes elsewhere, “cezanne said that one could see the velvetiness, the hardness, the softness, and even the odor of objects. my perception is therefore not a sum of visual, tactile and audible givens: i perceive in a total way with my whole being; i grasp a unique structure of the thing, a unique way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once.”11 to “see,” then, is to be intertwined through all our senses with the world around us. vision therefore does not involve rendering a picture or representation of the world, which would entail standing outside of it, at a distance. merleau-ponty takes descartes’ dioptrics as paradigmatic of “thought that wants no longer to abide in the visible and so decides to reconstruct it according to a model-in-thought.”12 on the cartesian view, there is a separation between “the thing itself ” outside us and that which occurs for the mind, “that other thing which is only reflected light rays and which happens to have an ordered correspondence with the real thing.”13 such a conception leads descartes to hold outline and form as most essential in engravings, for they “present the object by its outside, or 93 isparchitecture.com its envelope” in contrast to which coloring is merely incidental decoration.14 but we don’t perceive the world from the outside, we perceive it—and can only perceive it— by participating in it. in being “[i]mmersed in the visible by his body, itself visible, the see-er does not appropriate what he sees; he merely approaches it by looking, he opens onto the world.”15 in contrast to cartesian representationalism, “i do not see [space] according to its exterior envelope; i live it from the inside.”16 for the painting that moves us is not the one that most accurately renders the form of the object, but that which binds us with the things of the world, in which the world has been allowed to express itself through the expressive body of the painter. merleau-ponty quotes klee, who says of artistic expression, “a certain fire wills to live; it wakes. working its way along the hand’s conductor, it reaches the canvas and invades it; then, a leaping spark, it arcs the gap in the circle it was to trace: the return to the eye, and beyond.”17 being expresses itself in a gesture that ties together the individual and the world such that “it is impossible to say that here nature ends and the human being or expression begins.”18 it is in the resonances that leap from the world to inhabit the artist, course through her and emerge back into the world again, that artistic expression is achieved. though the thought is inspired by painting, the principle applies to experience generally: it is through chiasmic participation in the world through moving acts of perception and gestures of expression, that meaningful inhabitation is accomplished. heinrich wölfflin and architecture as participation in the world if we don’t presuppose, as so much of western thought has, a representationalism that places the subject and the world in ontological opposition to each other, and instead start from the we see the tactile qualities and feel the visible qualities of things “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 94 ir w in merleau-pontian perspective that, as fleshy beings, we are part of the world and belong to it, what will be the consequences for how we conceive the built environment? rachel mccann, in applying the lessons of merleauponty’s later philosophy, speaks of architecture as a “carnal echo,” which emphasizes that the power of an architectural work emerges from the intertwining of human beings with their surroundings.19 we can see in the analysis by the 19th century art historian heinrich wölfflin that, in fact, traditional western architecture has been motivated, consciously or not, by a logic of carnality. in “prolegomena to a psychology of architecture,” wölfflin argued that the forms that had defined traditional architecture since classical times reflected the ways in which we relate to the world as embodied beings, especially through what we would now call a proprioceptive sense. what had sometimes been reduced, in wölfflin’s estimation, to a question of being “pleasing to the eye,” was in fact a question of how we relate to structures as motile upright creatures. as he wrote, “physical forms possess a character only because we ourselves possess a body. if we were purely visual beings, we would always be denied an aesthetic judgment of the physical world. but as human beings with a body that teaches us the nature of gravity, contraction, strength, and so on, we gather the experience that enables us to identify with the conditions of other forms.”20 wölfflin is giving expression here to an idea that is consonant with the fact that we do not stand before the world as cognizing observers, but belong to it as participants. for our manner of understanding structures is not purely conceptual; rather, it proceeds from our own experience as fleshy beings with our own mass and weight. as he writes, “we read our own image into all phenomena. we expect everything to possess what we know to be the conditions of our own well-being.”21 we understand the physical world in terms of the categories we share with it; so, for instance, we “have carried loads and experienced pressure and counterpressure, we have collapsed to the ground when we no longer had the strength to resist the downward pull of our own bodies, and that is why we can appreciate the noble serenity of a column and understand the tendency of all matter to spread out formlessly on the ground.”22 this natural experience of weight, of the downward pull that roots us and that is both condition and constraint for our upright, vertical postures, is expressed in traditional architecture not just in the column, but also, for instance, in the use of rustication at the lower portions of buildings. by emphasizing the mass of materials, rustication produces a sense of bottom-heavy stability, a sense that is not just established visually, 95 isparchitecture.com but proprioceptively, involving our own sense of balance, and a sense of movement as well. similarly, arches over doors and windows discharge the weight of materials around the apertures so that they protect movement (entrance and egress of our bodies, or even just of our line of sight) without being oppressive, while elements conveying a freer sense of movement, expressiveness, and even whimsy are typical of the upper portions of buildings built in traditional western styles. this logic is expressed in louis sullivan’s prescriptions for office building design, for instance, which kent bloomer describes as “an expression of taut firmness at the bottom, an expression of efflorescence and ornament at the top,” allowing the building as a whole to express an “upward awakening.”23 for wölfflin, “[o]ur own bodily organization is the form through which we apprehend everything physical.”24 this apprehension, he claims, is a sort of empathy, and it is self-evident in our relations to others: children can’t see someone cry without bursting into tears themselves; people adopt the expressions of strangers around them; a person who is hoarse speaks and we clear our own throats.25 but it extends as well to our interactions with objects, structures, and everything else in our world as a general characteristic of our experience. hence, for instance, an architectural asymmetry “is often experienced as physical pain, as if a limb were missing or injured.”26 there is thus an anthropomorphism that is essential to the meaning of structural forms – an anthropomorphism that is present whether we will it to be there or not.27 we read the relation of height to width in a building, for instance, as a relation between a sense of ascent and repose. this kinesthetic sense in turn connotes a whole personality: an upright orientation is vital, active, dignified. a horizontally-oriented building, on the other hand, may connote restfulness or calm (or there is thus an anthropomorphism that is essential to the meaning of structural forms – an anthropomorphism that is present whether we will it to be there or not” “ ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 96 ir w in perhaps inertia and sloth – and whether the former sense is evoked or the latter we might chalk up to the quality of the design). the perfect square, meanwhile, is distinctive for lacking a clear anthropomorphic orientation: it “is called bulky, heavy, contented, plain, good-natured, stupid… we can not tell if the body is reclining or standing.”28 think of what it means, in this light, to say that a building “faces” the street, or that we stand at the “foot” of the stairs leading up to the entrance, or that, as juhani pallasmaa says, “[t]he door handle is the handshake of the building.”29 structures lend themselves to these metaphors because they reflect us back upon ourselves through a close and profound resonance. a door or window that has a vertical orientation, for instance, frames the upright form of the human body, an effect that may be emphasized through the use of arches or transom windows that extend and emphasize headspace: every aperture is a kind of potential aedicule. the picture windows that became popular in the postwar period, on the other hand, suggest a supine form, and thus bear a sensation of inertness. or think again of how the freest movement of energies—the rhythmic and organic character of foliated ornamentation, for instance—are natural to the upper portions of buildings in traditional architecture, a reflection of the fact that, as wölfflin points out, the most expressive part of the human body is the head.30 if, on the other hand, a design is indifferent with regard to this anthropomorphizing tendency, we may read it as “turning its back on us,” seeming “cold” or “lifeless,” being orientationally “indecisive,” as the form of the square is for wölfflin; that is to say, we imbue the meaning of structures with human characteristics, even if they are only notable for their absence. whatever these characteristics might be, they solicit us to respond in an embodied way, much like a person who engages us in a conversation, with their particular tone and body language and so forth. the question of whether a structure solicits a disposition in us that enhances our sense of bodily well-being is the question of whether that structure is dignifying. we can reflect again on the flesh of the world from the merleaupontian perspective. consider the flesh of buildings: in their weighty mass, their anthropomorphic form, and not least their function as places of human inhabitation, they are chiasmically intertwined with our own flesh. they are organic in this sense, and organic in this specifically human way: as products of thought and language (which are themselves expressions of bodily capacities, from the merleau-pontian perspective), they express human ideas, the carnal existence of those ideas made manifest in the material world, and made manifest precisely for the sake of our 97 isparchitecture.com own inhabitation in the world. for this reason, the flesh of architecture perhaps gives clearest expression to what it means to belong to the world, to participate in it, to continue into it and to be a continuation of it. the architect peter zumthor describes architecture as “a kind of anatomy... really, i mean the word <body> quite literally. it’s like our own bodies with their anatomy and things we can’t see and skin covering us— that’s what architecture means to me and that’s how i try to think about it. as a bodily mass, a membrane, a fabric, a kind of covering, cloth, velvet, silk, all around me. the body! not the idea of the body – the body itself! a body that can touch me.”31 zumthor conceives of architecture as an extension of our bodily organization into the world. (figure 1) but architecture is also the manner in which the world draws us to inhabit it. and in this intertwining of body and world is the possibility of a certain kind of expression, an elevation of the experience of inhabitation as such. concluding remarks the chiasm, merleau-ponty says, is “an exchange between me and the world, between the phenomenal body and the ‘objective’ body, between the perceiving and the perceived,”32 and the flesh is the “element”33 in which the chiasmic intertwining between the body and the world takes place. such an ontological perspective lends credence to wölfflin’s analysis of the bodily logic of traditional western architecture: if our bodies participate in the world from within, rather than across the distance that would separate an ontologically distinct subject and figure 1: wachendorf feldkapelle interior, by peter zumthor ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 98 ir w in object, then it would make sense to understand architecture – the practice of providing the means of inhabitation for human bodies – as expressing the “basic conditions of organic life;”34 that is, as being organized according to the same principles as those by which our bodily experience is organized. moreover, when wölfflin’s treatment of architecture is cast in terms of merleau-ponty’s later ontology (a philosophical project which, of course, he antedates by more than half a century), it can help us to conceive just what it would mean to think about – and do – architecture from such an ontological orientation. this orientation can help to diagnose a particular peril of contemporary architectural practice: the emphasis on the conceptual over the concretely material. pallasmaa has argued that over the last century, architecture has increasingly become “an art form of instant visual image.”35 in adopting this purely visual disposition, we are rendering our structures “repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, unreal.”36 this disposition is expressed especially in a commitment to abstract form, an uncanny echo of the cartesian “model-in-thought” that merleau-ponty criticizes.37 the overemphasis on the visual, absent a synesthetic engagement with the other senses, is emblematic of a dualistic separation between the object outside of us and our mental experience of that object. what leads descartes to regard outline and form as the most essential elements in engravings also leads architects toward the supremacy of the purely visual. consider, as an example of the trend, rafael viñoly’s comment that his recent prominent addition to the new york skyline, 432 park avenue, (figure 2) is based on “the purest geometric form: the square… the body of 432 park avenue remains abstract and radical – a pure product of the grid.”38 the elevation of geometrical abstraction as an aesthetic ideal stands in telling contrast to wölfflin’s characterization of the square as “bulky, heavy, contented, plain, good-natured, stupid.” what appeals to viñoly from a perspective of intellectual abstraction is indecisive and “stupid” when considered from a perspective of embodied engagement. this tendency is exacerbated by something loureiro has pointed out: that the technologies employed in architectural design have increasingly subsumed the creative and poetic craft of the architect in such a way as to elevate the visual image of the architectural work above the built work itself. “now,” he writes, “it is the picture that generates the building. photo-realistic 3d renderings… are ‘models for photographs,’ and not depictions of architectural ideas.”39 meanwhile, rob imrie has found that discussion of the body is all but absent in architectural education, and in the thinking of many contemporary architects.40 99 isparchitecture.com but if we regard the human body as participating in the flesh of the world, and thus as intertwined with things, including architectural works which are so essential to our experience of inhabitation in the world, we will acknowledge that this intertwining occurs through all the senses, and that these senses seek out, in wölfflin’s phrase, “the conditions of our own wellbeing.”41 we might find the conditions for well-being in ornament, for instance, which can play such an important role in the kinesthetic sense of an “upward awakening” in a building, to use bloomer’s phrase. we might find it, as well, in the use of natural materials which integrate a haptic sense; as pallasmaa says, “stone, brick, and wood… allow the gaze to penetrate their surfaces and… enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter.” the textures of these materials are of the natural world. they have a depth that is lacking in concrete and glass: “natural material expresses its age and history as well as the tale of its birth and human use.”42 these materials take us beyond the visual, beyond the bird’s-eye view of the tabletop architectural model and the flat forms of geometrical abstraction, into that synesthesia that characterizes our sense of belonging as participants in the world. of course, wölfflin was writing in the 19th century, and could speak of the principles of western architectural design as adhering to a generally continuous tradition going back to classical times. figure 2: 432 park avenue, new york ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 100 ir w in but i am not sugggesting that the lesson to draw here is that architecture needs to return to its traditional forms to recoup a sense of multisensory engagement and of participation between human beings and the built environment. if the various modernisms and post-modernisms that have arisen since wölfflin’s time have tended toward obliviousness with regard to this function of architecture, by ceaselessly challenging convention they have also opened up the field to as many new architectural possibilities as can be imagined. architects like pallasmaa, zumthor, steven holl, and many others have found in this realm of possibilities new ways of giving expression to the idea of architecture as participation in the world. as varied and heterogeneous as embodied experience is, these possibilities will surely never be exhausted. so, finally, we might find the conditions for our well-being by asking a new range of questions. rather than asking what a work of architecture represents, we can ask: what spirit of participation in the world does it elicit, and how does this relate to the purpose of the structure? how does it engage us through all of our senses? what ideas are expressed through the body? to ask such questions is to ask how architecture performs its essential function: to structure our inhabitation of the world. it is also, notably, to acknowledge an ethical dimension intrinsic to architecture. for if architecture is properly attentive to this function, then it is attentive to producing well-being for every human. there could be no more ethical a task. endnotes 1. merleau-ponty, maurice. the visible and the invisible, alphonso lingis, trans (evanston: northwestern university press, 1968), 200. 2. merleau-ponty, maurice. “eye and mind,” in the merleau-ponty aesthetics reader, johnson, galen a. and michael b. smith, eds. (evanston: northwestern university press, 1993), 125. 3. ibid., 133. 4. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 133. 5. perhaps we only understand the notion of resistance in things in the world because we experience it as bodies. merleau-ponty describes the body as an “exemplar sensible, which offers to him who inhabits it and senses it the wherewithal to sense everything that resembles himself on the outside” (merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 135). these comments suggest a kind of bodily logic which we extend or project onto the world, and by which we come to understand the world, an idea that resonates with wölfflin’s theories on architecture. 101 isparchitecture.com 6. merleau-ponty, maurice. “the philosopher and his shadow,” in signs. (chicago: northwestern university press, 1964), 166-7. 7. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 123. 8. ibid., 215. 9. ibid., 134. 10. ibid. 11. merleau-ponty, maurice. “the film and the new psychology,” in signs, richard c. mccleary, trans. (chicago: northwestern university press, 1964), 49-50. 12. merleau-ponty, “eye and mind,” 130. 13. ibid., 131. 14. ibid., 133. 15. ibid., 124. 16. ibid., 138. 17. ibid., 147. 18. ibid. 19. mccann, rachel. “entwining the body and the world: architectural design and experience in the light of ‘eye and mind’,” in intertwinings: interdisciplinary encounters with merleau-ponty, gail weiss, ed. (albany: suny press, 2008), 267. 20. wölfflin, heinrich. “prolegomena to a psychology of architecture,” in empathy, form, and space: problems in german aesthetics 1873-1893, harry francis mallgrave and eleftherios ikonomou, trans. (new york: getty center for the history of art and the humanities, 1994), 151. 21. ibid., 152. 22. ibid., 151. 23. bloomer, kent. the nature of ornament. (new york: w. w. norton & company, 2000), 83. ironically, the modernists’ cri de coeur that form must follow function derives from sullivan’s declaration that “shape, form, outward expression, design, or whatever we may choose of the tall office building should in the very nature of things follow the functions of the building” (sullivan, louis. “the tall office building artistically considered,” in kindergarten chats and other writings, (new york: ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 102 ir w in dover, 1979), 208.). sullivan’s point was that visual functionality could be enhanced by ornament, not that any expression that wasn’t structurally necessitated ought to be suppressed. 24. wölfflin., “prolegomena,” 157-8. 25. ibid., 156. 26. ibid., 155. so ubiquitous is the desire to find symmetry in things, wölfflin observes, that in the case of that rare object that on the face of it defies symmetry – the one-handled mug – we unconsciously treat the handle as the “back” of the mug, so that a lateral symmetry is maintained (ibid., 164). 27. this anthropomorphism extends to other objects as well, and even to geographical regions: yi-fu tuan notes that cities give the impression of having a front and a back, and “[m]ost people in the united states probably regard the northeastern seaboard as the nation’s front” (tuan, yi-fu. space and place: the perspective of experience. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1977), 42). 28. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 168. 29. pallasmaa, juhani. “an architecture of the seven senses,” in questions of perception: phenomenology of architecture, steven holl, juhani pallasmaa, and alberto perez-gomez. (new york: william stout, 2006), 33. 30. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 176. 31. zumthor, peter. atmospheres, 11. accessed july 11, 2015. http://ebookbrowsee. net/gdoc. php?id=466463785&url=982c587b925fe3103a612676616e5bd. 32. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 215. 33. ibid., 139. 34. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 160. though wölfflin is concerned with western architecture, it would be interesting to apply his insights to nonwestern traditions. 35. pallasmaa, juhani. “hapticity and time,” architectural review 207 (2000). see also his argument in eyes of the skin (london: academy editions, 1996). 36. pallasmaa, “seven senses,” 29. 37. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 134. 38. garutti, francesco. “rafael viñoly/432 park avenue/new york,” abitare, june 2013. 39. loureira, felipe guimarães de souza fernandes. “the image in power: vilém flusser and the craft of architecture,” architecture philosophy 1(2) (2015): 222. 40. imrie, rob. “architects’ conceptions of the human body,” environment and planning d: society and space, 21 (2003), 47-65. 41. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 152. 42. pallasmaa, “seven senses,” 29. isparchitecture.com designing for imprisonment: architectural ethics and prison design dominique moran, yvonne jewkes, and colin lorne introduction architectural ethics has only begun to consider in earnest what it means, in a moral sense, to be an architect.1 the academy, however, has yet to adequately to explore the ethical problems raised,2 to evaluate the types of moral issues that arise, and to develop moral principles or moral reasons that should guide decisions when encountering these moral issues inherent in certain project types. this is the case despite the practice of architecture entailing “behaviours, our choices of which may be illuminated by ethical analysis.”3 although distinguishing practice from product allows ethical critique of the practice involved in designing buildings, and recognises the significance of the architect’s moral agency, there remains very little empirically-based understanding of how the figure 1: hm low moss prison ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 68 m or a n e t. a l. architect, once identified as a moral agent, operates as such, and still less about the circumstances in which ‘professional’ conduct may be at odds with ‘ethical’ behaviour. architects encounter moral dilemmas in everyday practice, in designing buildings to address clients’ briefs. although they may undertake moral consideration when accepting or declining commissions, analyzing this process is in its infancy in architectural and ethical scholarship, consequently little is known about how architects balance moral concerns against the need for profitable work. although mcneill has characterised the architects’ refrain ‘if we didn’t design it, someone else would’ as a “worrying abdication of ethical responsibility,”4 it could alternatively be viewed as exhibiting direct moral concern, that if they themselves do not undertake a particular commission, another architect (or possibly nonarchitect) would, and possibly with much worse consequences, under what wisor has termed the “moral problem of worse actors.”5 prison design, as a building type, thrusts the ethical role of the architect sharply into focus. design is a key element in prison modernisation programmes, and a staple for many firms. but architects’ involvement is not without controversy. the problematic nature of prisons themselves, (their questionable effectiveness in deterring criminal behaviour or enabling rehabilitation, and the ethically dubious practices which may take place within them), has meant that the legitimacy of incarceration is continually debated. as physical objects of the carceral estate, prison design offers a compelling ‘test case’ for how the role of the architect can be legitimately conceived as ethical. it seems little progress has been made since banham registered his concern that the architecture profession acts as a “black box,”6 drawing and making objects rather than designing in relation to social and ethical issues. although the profession readily assumes responsibility for aesthetic design of buildings as commodity-objects, as well as legal obligations surrounding delivery, architects as professionals are more uncertain about their moral responsibilities towards those who inhabit or are affected by their buildings.7 to counter the ‘black box’ mentality jeremy till has called for architects to deploy architectural intelligence as responsible agents concerned less with the production of abstract objects, and more with their role in enabling wider social processes, thereby engaging their ongoing complicity with the social consequences of their actions.8 the ethics of architecture and the built environment considering what sorts of conceptions about architectural ethics might 69 isparchitecture.com prove effective in allowing us to gain some perspective on the ethics of prison design requires us to review previous thought on this topic. thomas fisher argued that in his continental ethics, karsten harries treated architecture “primarily as a product, not a practice,” resulting in an ethical perspective “that attaches moral values and their realisation to buildings, not to the people who build them”9(our emphasis). although the relationship between ethics and aesthetics has long preoccupied scholars of architectural ethics, as evidenced by wasserman et. al.’s assertion that “a building’s aesthetic embodiment is a part of its virtue, its ethical value,”10 in creating buildings which are aesthetically pleasing, there may be a tendency to equate their beauty with notions of their healthiness, sociability, democracy, sustainability and social justice, just as there is sometimes an assumption that buildings which are less aesthetically pleasing are somehow ‘worse’ on these counts. however, fisher described the attachment of moral value to buildings as a form of “mysticism;”11 a building might be “inhumane in that it is bleak and uninhabitable. it does not follow, nor is it intelligible to suggest, that the building itself has inhumane values.”12 it is, he argued, on the basis of this misassignment of values that harries offered an ‘impossible vision’ of artefacts reflecting values without the moral input of the individual (moral) agents who created them. fundamentally, harries’ approach failed to recognise the significance of the architect’s moral agency in the practice of architecture. fox concurred that the built environment is not an appropriate focus of moral concern; the “non-rational, non-sentient, non-living, non-self-organising, non-self-renewing, built environment is not... of moral consequence in its own right.”13 he continued: “questions regarding built environments should only enter into moral discussion in so far as these environments are considered to matter to, impact upon, or in some way affect, those kinds of beings or entities fisher described the attachment of moral value to buildings as a form of ‘mysticism’ “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 70 m or a n e t. a l. in respect of which we think we have direct moral obligations.”14 this urge to focus on architectural practice and the moral agency of the architect points up an important distinction between ‘architecture’ and the practice thereof, with both fisher and fox having argued that philosophical ethicists have not yet adequately explored the ethical problems posed by architectural practice. instead, most of the attention has been confined to such legal considerations as intellectual property and to responsibilities to clients; core elements of business ethics for the design of any building, not just a prison, and equally applicable to architects, building contractors, and any other professionals involved in design and construction. fisher, however, claimed that architecture merits its own branch of applied ethics, arguing that it has special issues as a consequence of the idiosyncrasies which distinguish it from the arts, sciences and social practices. previous attempts to address architectural ethics have, he argued, failed to produce worthwhile outcomes. the way to identify architectural ethics, he contended, is to “place architectural practice, and thus the architect as moral agent” and not just legal or professional operator, at the centre of focus15 (our emphasis). as carroll put it, “there can be no question that architects as designers of built environments can use their skills for good or ill, morally speaking.”16 the identification of architectural practice, rather than product, as the location of ethical agency is a useful philosophical advancement, but the practical operation of this agency is opaque. professional architectural codes of conduct or of ethics, such as those introduced by the royal institute of british architects (riba), or the american institute of architects (aia), are relatively ineffectual in relation to the architects’ moral obligations.17 these codes of conduct represent general guiding principles and rules of conduct which express the considered opinion of the profession primarily on business ethics, in part to protect the profession against liability problems. in the main, they focus on business, fiduciary, insurance or liability functions. as codes of conduct, these stipulations are rigid and do not facilitate individual, flexible ethical choice. motivation for obedience is driven by compulsion, membership requirements and punishment for violation. these codes of conduct tend to focus on protecting the client (the person who procures the services of the architect) and as a result they often appear deficient as vehicles for advancing the greater good. clients’ priorities, however, may be short-term, exploitative, commercial, and detrimental to user wellbeing or to environmental concerns. in this case, serving the client through fulfilling this kind of code of conduct may be highly antithetical to achieving these worthwhile goals. while codes 71 isparchitecture.com contain platitudes towards the environment and the public, they contain little incentive beyond telling architects to act within the law. thus, till’s assertion that acting professionally is different from acting ethically, and that the two operate according to different parameters, makes sense here. professional conduct is determined by adherence to various codes, whereas ethical conduct addresses the wider responsibilities of the architect, to those “in respect of which we think we have direct moral obligations”18 including those beyond the immediate client. the omission of these wider responsibilities towards others who stand to benefit or suffer from architects’ buildings gains particular poignancy when applied to consideration of those who have little say in the matter of whether or not they want to inhabit them. thus, ethically motivated architects must, at minimum, concern themselves with a social ethic extending beyond the short term fiscal exchange of architectural commissions. as till pointed out, “a client may argue that they are not paying for an architect to address these broader ethics, and an architect may say that the whole idea of wider responsibilities smacks of idealism”19 the point is though, that issues of social ethics are inherent in the design of any building, and just to ignore them does not mean that they will go away. better then to face up to them, and in this way deal with the tension between the values and priorities attached to the professional codes and those implicit in social ethics. 20 by ‘social ethics’, till meant the ethics concerned with social context and social implications, and which pertain to a collective vision of a ‘good’ society in contrast to ethics which focus on the on the more contractual concerns regarding what we owe to one another. although till did not refer here to any particular circumstance of architectural commissioning in which professional conduct with philosophic study of... the design of prisons, is embryonic “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 72 m or a n e t. a l. clients was at odds with ethical behaviour in the social sense, the role of architects in designing prison buildings can be beneficially examined in exactly these terms. in the remainder of the paper we therefore consider prison design as a test case for the social ethics of architectural practice. architects’ social ethics of prison design if the ethics of architecture is a nascent philosophical field, then the philosophical study of the practice of architecture within the correctional field, namely the design of prisons, is embryonic. philosophical discussion of architectural ethics rarely focuses on any particular type of building, in line with taylor’s assertion that buildings themselves cannot be the targets of moral criticism: “moral criticism presupposes moral agency, and so is only appropriately applied to people and their actions, not to inanimate objects.”21 although judging it appropriate to critique of the practices of the people involved in designing buildings, he argued that buildings as inanimate objects are morally innocent. having said this, taylor hints, in his demonstration of this point, at the ethically questionable nature of prisons; “a building constructed for an evil purpose, such as a dungeon, might later be used for a good purpose, such as an exhibition space or a chapel, and vice versa.”22 (our emphasis) if for taylor a dungeon serves an ‘evil purpose’, then he is in accord with retired architect and writer arthur allen, who surveyed the history of architectural scholarship as it pertains to imprisonment. allen found that “the provision of architectural service to institutions that aggravate rather than resolve the problems they are asked to manage is a complex issue arising in the operation of confining buildings.”23 in a survey originating with the idealism of nineteenth century penal institutions, he observed that there was no published architectural concern on the subject of the suffering caused by prisons until a discussion in 1973 in the magazine architectural forum, which urged that “architects consider withdrawal from design of prisons for non-violent inmates.”24 allen argued that the “proposition that architects can and should consider the record of success or failure of their clients’ intentions and operations is at the heart of this problem.”25 in narrowly observing their internal professional codes of conduct, in terms of integrity, honesty and diligent design in matters of structural safety and so on, some architects still, he argued, pretend innocence of the conflict between professional and social ethics in their work. in 1977, allen began publishing about the moral agency of architects with respect to incarceration. he questioned the architect’s “traditional 73 isparchitecture.com obedience”26 in the case of prison building, noting that although they built them, architects seldom wrote about or discussed prisons. encouraging architects to be more attuned to the prison debate of the time, he argued that …if [the prison debate] concludes that imprisonment is unavoidable, then i can agree that decent architecture will have its place. if prisons, however, are found to be ineffective instruments of misery, then architects must question their part in the prison business.27 addressing the moral agency of architects, he later wrote that “the architectural profession is unusually silent, even evasive, concerning the moral character of its clients;”28 and considering the language architects use to discuss clientele, and architecture’s apparent isolation from social debate, he argued that: if architects design prison cells, which in their dreadful simplicity are designed for solitary confinement, then surely architects and architecture are implicated in the mental and physical destruction which occurs in these cells. if there is any doubt about the cruelty of solitary confinement, or of imprisonment, i suggest that architects read social, rather than architectural, criticism.29 he effectively argued that by using a technical jargon to describe buildings, architecture creates a professional mystique which avoids making reference to the moral or political character of the patrons of architecture, contributing to what he described as “a wide language gap between architects and writers on the issue of imprisonment.”30 terms such as ‘good design’, ‘pure, crisp and clean design’, and ‘visual logic’, enabled the architect to refrain from “comment on the moral and ethical character of captives and captors,” and to “flatter the institution with limited moral and ethical comment on the nature of its prison designs.”31 he also argued that euphemistic language is used by architects in public relations terms, in deflecting that the ethics of the practice of architecture within the correctional field has thus far been largely overlooked by the academy strikes us as remarkable. “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 74 m or a n e t. a l. attention from troubling issues; for example in architectural designs where groups of cells are called ‘villages’ and corridors between ‘villages’ are called ‘walks’ or ‘streets’ – labels, through the use of which, he posited “we are only fooling ourselves.”32 he concluded that: if architecture continues to support questionable institutions and movements, and to defend them with euphemistic and specially constructed ethical languages, then the profession’s part in deception and its self-centred indifference to moral and ethical issues cannot be defended on moral and ethical grounds.33 that the ethics of the practice of architecture within the correctional field has thus far been largely overlooked by the academy strikes us as remarkable. in 2004, adpsr (architects/designers/planners for social responsibility) launched a prison design boycott for alternatives to incarceration in the united states, asking architects and allied professionals to refuse prison work. it asked architects to decline death chamber and supermax prison commissions on the grounds of human rights violations. supermax prisons are considered to inflict torture through long-term solitary isolation and the carrying-out of death sentences, which are considered to be prima-facie torture. this pledge campaign was not specifically aimed at the american institute of architects [aia], but it asked the aia to amend its code of ethics and professional conduct to prohibit the design of these facilities. later, in 2013, adpsr added a separate petition campaign asking aia to amend their code of ethics to specifically prohibit the design of spaces intended for killing, torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” is a key human rights standard widely held to include solitary confinement of the kinds currently used within the united states, including but not limited to supermax prisons. the campaigns triggered intense media debate but in december 2014, the aia rejected the proposals. although dialogue between aia and adpsr continues, the aia position is essentially that ethical decisions rest firmly with architects’ practices, and with individual architects . in narrowly observing their internal professional codes of conduct, architects can, allen argued, pretend innocence of the conflict between professional and social ethics in their work. his suggestion of pretended ‘innocence’ perhaps invites an unwarranted scapegoating of architects, hence we argue for a better understanding of the contextual nature of the constraints architects face in acting in accordance with the moral values they may hold. although we may speculate about these constraints, very little is understood of the socially embedded nature of ethical stances in relation to architectural practice, and the contextual nature of these 75 isparchitecture.com stances, for example, in relation to prevailing punitive philosophies. punitive sentiment (i.e. the attitudes towards imprisonment widely held in a given context), and the nature of the processes through which prisons are built (e.g. privatisation, private financing, design and build contracts, competitive tendering) may predetermine the role of the architect and the nature of his or her involvement in prison design. in the highly incarcerative settings of the us and uk, architects’ reluctance to address these issues may be due to the lucrative nature of projects generated when imprisonment is used politically to placate public anxiety. in essence, challenging public authorities and fellow professionals on substantial moral issues may damage business. the commissioning of prison buildings varies in different contexts, shaping the capacity for architects to introduce design creativity into the process, and defining the nature of their involvement. in order to design with a concern for social ethics in mind, architects will need early involvement in a building project to creatively engage with and query the client’s brief, rather than adopting a narrower technical role in relation to predetermined plans. such an approach allows architects to include the client as part of the commission, rather than focus only on the building itself, thus enabling consideration of architecture’s social ethics. the potential for such an approach, given the various financing and contracting processes in place in different contexts, may have profound implications for architects’ deployment of moral agency in relation to the social context of imprisonment. in the uk, for example, the private finance initiative process means that consortia of contractors and architects tender for prison projects whose basic design has already been determined prior to the tender being offered by the ministry of justice, thus minimising architects’ creative in the highly incarcerative settings of the us and uk, architects’ reluctance to address these issues may be due to the lucrative nature of projects generated “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 76 m or a n e t. a l. input, and perhaps also assuaging their sense of responsibility for the built outcome itself. this process only allows architects to participate as providers of an efficient process with predetermined outcomes. in the lower incarceration setting of denmark, by contrast, tenders for prison commissions ask bidders to deliver their own designs for the prison, ab initio, with the result that architects have a much freer hand, and with it, a concomitant sense of responsibility. at the state level in the us, the design ab initio system prevails, but designs which appear too ‘lenient’ will not be successful: “at the end of the day, my clients are my clients. we’ve been told we can’t make it look too good, because the public won’t accept it.”34 it seems only reasonable to assume, then, that architects operating in different commissioning environments will see their moral responsibilities—as well as their options—differently. in other words, architects’ ability to introduce more ‘humane’ elements into prison design in denmark may act to assuage the ethical concerns felt by their counterparts in the u. k. if architects’ ethical concerns are assuaged in this way, we believe that it is not necessarily through a form of the ‘mysticism’ of attaching moral value to a building so roundly critiqued by fisher but through the anticipation of genuine improvements in people’s lives that accrue because of architects’ actions. thus, the case of prison design suggests that concern over the ethics of not only architects’ actions, but also the products of those actions due to their long-term consequences over peoples’ lives is not at all misplaced and should be part of an ethicallymotivated architect’s deliberations. even the usually ethically-neutral subject of aesthetics becomes morally relevant in the case of prisons. it may be the case that restrictions imposed by clients on the design of prisons (e.g. predetermined plans offered for tender, issues of ‘public acceptability’ of designs, tight build budgets, preferred/cheaper layouts and finishes) may reduce the appeal of prison design to architects seeking to deliver humane, aesthetically pleasing buildings. conversely, it is possible that architects focus on prison aesthetics to the detriment of concern for the lived experience of prisoners. through the aesthetics of their prisons, architects communicate the purpose of imprisonment and the relationship between prisons and the community.35 aesthetically bland, functional, and rather nondescript exteriors of recently built uk prisons, for example, may be read as indicators of a loss of public empathy for prisoners. conclusion: prison design as architectural ethics in practice architecture still lacks its own branch of applied ethics, in which 77 isparchitecture.com architectural practice, and the architect as moral agent, are focal. whilst these issues are usually considered in rather abstract terms, we argue that prison design brings them more clearly into focus, enables advancement of discussion of the ethics of architecture, and enhanced understanding of the ethics of architectural practice. it does so in the context of the transition from ideal to nonideal theory in ethics and political philosophy, describing principles for the design of institutions and the conduct of persons in a moral and political order that is realistic, rather than utopian, and that asks how long-term ideal goals might be achieved, or worked toward, in ways that are morally permissible and politically possible as well as likely to be effective.36 with the exception of mcneill, there are few studies which consider how the architect, once identified as a moral agent, thinks and operates as such, and accordingly we know little about the moral issues arising from architecture’s idiosyncrasies. professional codes of conduct are generally expected to address these issues but, operating largely to protect the consumer procuring architects’ services, and the profession against liability, they address business ethics rather than issues that arise out of architects’ design function. learning the declarative form of the professional codes of conduct cannot address the complex ethical demands of architectural practice.37 ethical conduct addresses social context, which exists beyond the short term fiscal exchange of architectural commissions, and involves longer term vision. negotiating these commissions is not straightforward. the need to make a profit may compromise architects’ ability to act on ethical concerns, compelling them to explore nonideal situations, the ways in which these dilemmas are addressed and worked through in relation to actual commissions accepted or declined, as well as any derivative duties discharged. even the usually ethicallyneutral subject of aesthetics becomes morally relevant in the case of prisons. “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 78 m or a n e t. a l. it is clear that some architects grapple with these questions and are fully aware of the ethical dilemmas they face. indeed it seems that prominent architects debate this point – for example, at a recent discussion about conscience in architectural practice, audience members commented that “beautiful things can do ugly things”38 and “architects are whores of the arts, we have a conscience as long as clients want it.”39 in his summing-up the chair stressed the importance of social value in design, and another speaker stated: “we serve. it is our job to decide who we serve, and how.”40 clearly, the appetite exists for giving due consideration to the effects of our actions. we opened with a question about architects’ negotiation of their moral roles. tracing the nascent development of the philosophical field of architectural ethics, it is clear that philosophical discussion locates social responsibility with the individual architect as a moral agent--a stance confirmed both by the comments of professional architects, and by the reluctance of the aia to assume any responsibility for the ethical conduct of its members beyond the standard professionalism of business ethics. we argued here that taking prison design as a ‘test case’ enables a more grounded understanding of architects’ navigation of ethical dilemmas beyond professional business practice, dilemmas which require them to address their wider responsibilities and to decide to whom, beyond the immediate client, they consider themselves to have obligations. in our view these obligations extend to both the prisoners who inhabit their buildings and suffer incarceration individually, and to a society which bears the collective burden of the economic and social costs of imprisonment. as professional architects’ discussions of conscience make clear, architects’ ethical roles beyond their professional responsibilities remain underexplored, as evidenced by the lack of academic debate over the ethical role of the architect in prison design, and despite longstanding discussion of the ethics of imprisonment itself. endnotes 1. see, for example, harries, karsten, the ethical function of architecture. cambridge, mit press. 1998. wasserman, barry, p. j. sullivan, & gregory palermo, ethics and the practice of architecture, john wiley & sons, 2000. fox, warwick, (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000. spector, tom, the ethical architect: the dilemma of contemporary practice. princeton architectural press, 2001. matteson, j. t. & donovan, m. z., “ethics and the architect,” architectural record, (10), 2002, 96. taylor, w. m., & levine, m. p., prospects for an ethics of architecture, routledge, 2012. 79 isparchitecture.com sadri, h., “professional ethics in architecture and responsibilities of architects towards humanity” turkish journal of business ethics, 5 (9), 2012, 86-96. schrijver, laura, “architecture as an object of research: incorporating ethical questions in design thinking” in basta, c. & moroni, s. (eds.) ethics, design and planning of the built environment, springer, 2013, 79-9. stein, s. m. & harper, t. l., designing for meaning: the designer’s ethical responsibility in basta, c, & moroni, s (eds.) ethics, design and planning of the built environment springer, 2013, 143-166. 2. see, for example, mcneill, d., “globalization and the ethics of architectural design,” city, 10(01), 2006, 49-58. till, jeremy, architecture depends. mit press, 2009. lagueux, maurice, “ethics versus aesthetics in architecture,” the philosophical forum vol. 35, no. 2, 2004, 117-133. fisher, s., “how to think about the ethics of architecture” in fox, w. (ed.). ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182. koller, stefan, “architects on value: reducing ethics to aesthetics?” in ethics, design and planning of the built environment 57-75, springer, 2013. basta, c. & moroni, s., (eds.) ethics, design and planning of the built environment (vol. 12) springer, 2013. spector, tom, c. fahey & s. koller “why architecture philosophy?” architecture philosophy 1 (1), 2014, 5-8. 3. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.). ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182. 4. mcneill, d “globalization and the ethics of architectural design,” city, 10(01), 2006 49-58, 57. 5. wisor, s., “the moral problem of worse actors,” ethics & global politics, 7 (2), 2014, 47–64. 6. banham, reyner, “a black box: the secret profession of architecture,” in m banham, p barker, l sutherland & c price (eds), a critic writes: essays by reyner banham. university of california press, 1996, 351. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 80 m or a n e t. a l. 7. awan, n., schneider, t., & till, j., spatial agency: other ways of doing architecture. routledge, 2013. 8. till, jeremy, architecture depends, mit press, 2009. 9. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182.175. 10. wasserman, barry, p. j. sullivan, & gregory palermo, ethics and the practice of architecture, john wiley & sons, 2000, 86. 11. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182, 175. 12. ibid. 13. fox, warwick, (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 207. 14. ibid. 15. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182, 177-8. 16. carroll, noel, “architecture and ethics: autonomy, architecture and art” in architecture philosophy 1(2), 139-156, 140. 17. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182, 177-8. 18. fox, warwick, (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 207. 19.till, jeremy, architecture depends. mit press, 2009, 182. 20. ibid. 21.taylor, n., “ethical arguments about the aesthetics of architecture,” fox, w (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 193-206, 194. 22. ibid. 23. allen, arthur, “architecture and confinement , an open letter to the profession of architecture,” 2014, https://www.academia.edu/11115882/open_letter_at_3_to_the_profession_of_ architecture, 3. 24. allen, arthur, “architecture and confinement , an open letter to the profession of architecture,” 2014, 81 isparchitecture.com https://www.academia.edu/11115882/open_letter_at_3_to_the_profession_of_ architecture, 4. 25. ibid. 26. allen, a., “prison design and the architect,” the canadian architect, july 1977 https://www.academia.edu/7214030/prison_design_and_the_ architect, 1977, 1. 27. allen, a., “prison design and the architect,” the canadian architect, july 1977 https://www.academia.edu/7214030/prison_design_and_the_ architect, 1977, 2. 28. allen, a., “the language of architecture,” the canadian architect, july 1981, 26, 1. h t t p s : / / w w w . a c a d e m i a . e d u / 7 2 1 4 0 4 6 / the_language_of_architecture 1981, 2. 29. ibid. 30. allen, 1981, 5. 31. ibid. 32. allen, 1981, 6. 33. allen, 1981, 7. 34. architect jeff goodale, quoted in the new york times 10.6.2009). 35. jewkes, y. & d. moran, “should prison architecture be brutal, bland or beautiful?” scottish justice matters, 2(1), 2014, 8-11. 36. simmons, a. j., “ideal and nonideal theory,” philosophy & public affairs, 38(1), 2010, 5-36. 37. for example, cobb, henry n. (1992) “ethics and architecture,” harvard architecture review, 8, 1992, 44-49. boyer, e. l. & mitgang, l. d., (1996) building community: a new future for architectural education and practice. the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching, 1996. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000. spector, tom, the ethical architect: the dilemma of contemporary practice. princeton architectural press, 2001. saint, andrew, (2005) “practical wisdom for architects: the uses of ethics,” in ray, nicholas, (ed.), architecture and its ethical dilemmas, taylor & francis, 2005, 7-22. fox, w. a., “architecture ethics,” in j. k. b. olsen, s. a. pedersen & v. f. hendricks (eds.), a companion to the philosophy of technology, ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 82 m or a n e t. a l. wiley-blackwell, 387-391. till, jeremy, architecture depends. mit press, 2009. fisher, thomas, ethics for architects: 50 dilemmas of professional practice. princeton architectural press. 2010. chan, j. k. h., “teaching ethics in architecture: contexts, issues and strategies.” journal of the nus teaching academy, 3(3), 2013, 85-99. 38. spoken by richard woolf as reported in intelligence ribaj120 series/ collective conscience article “only way is ethics?” by eleanor young, riba journal published 1.11.2013, 68. available at https://darkroom.ribaj. com/ 39. spoken by peter tompkins, ibid. 40.spoken by maxwell hutchinson, ibid. isparchitecture.com aporia in architectural design aleksandar kostic introduction in this paper, i will be looking at the notion of aporia, as traditionally understood, and how it may apply in the field of architectural design. first, i will explain what aporia is and then clarify its role in inquiry, as originally conceived in plato and aristotle, emphasizing its way of searching by encountering an impasse and articulating and formulating an intractable puzzle. in book beta of his metaphysics, aristotle says: “those who search without first engaging with aporiai are like people who don’t know where they need to be going; moreover, they do not even know whether or not they have found what they are searching for. for the end [of a search] is not clear to such a person, but it is clear to the person who has first raised aporiai.”1 if we accept aristotle’s claim that aporia is indeed necessary for inquiry and if design is a form of inquiry, then it is reasonable to expect to find aporia in design. in section two i consider the domain for the emergence of aporia which will show us where to look for aporia in design. i will also indicate laws of thought that traditionally apply in the setting of this domain. not all laws of thought are universally accepted in contemporary logic, and some relevant distinctions must be noted. it is important to note that the domain includes classical and formal logic extended to modal logic, but excludes paraconsistent logical systems. setting aporia’s domain will allow me to identify both the source and necessary conditions for the emergence of aporia and, in ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 137 k os ti c turn, the necessary conditions for finding aporia in design. section three presents a clear case of aporia in architectural design. i will show that, given the initial distinctions and certain rules that apply, any problem with clearly defined design intention would present a good enough source to demonstrate this type of puzzle in architecture. the conflict inherent in cornering the classical ionic order presents such an example of aporetic reasoning in architectural design. aporia, therefore, can be shown not only to be useful and routinely used, it is also of instrumental value in the practice of architectural design. section four investigates whether aporia is also intrinsic to design theory. if it is the case that aporia has intrinsic value for design, then it should somehow be present in the more abstract subject matter of design itself. its existence might be revealed within an attempt to establish the foundations of a design theory. after making a distinction between dilemmas and aporiai, one of these attempts will be examined to determine if the question of the subject matter of design and its unclear ontological status may indeed produce an aporetic situation. if this proves to be the case, it shows that design is intrinsically aporetic. an ancient myth of prometheus tells us that the “wisdom of the arts,” such as house building indeed have something intrinsically aporetic. in protagoras’s speech given by plato in his dialogue protagoras,2 human beings receive gifts from the titan prometheus (the fore-thinker),3 namely fire, and, often forgotten, the arts (τέχνη). this was a compensation for the lack of other human abilities, since these had already been distributed to other living creatures by his twin-brother, epimetheus (the afterthinker).4 for our purposes, it is important to underline two aspects here. firstly, this story explains to us some of the fundamental tensions of the human condition; in our actions, we seem to be spread between planning and reflecting upon our plans; in our emotions, we are sometimes split between desire and fear; and in our thoughts, we are often torn between thinking ahead and an afterthought. but more importantly, this story is relevant as prometheus himself seems to be in perplexity, in the state of aporia.5 out of his aporia he reasons out and finds a solution: fire and arts are to be given to human kind. both the “wisdom of arts” and fire (which, in plato, is an image of knowledge or insight) were instilled in human kind. thanks to this, people invented house building and many other crafts. in some, perhaps remote sense, both human access to knowledge and the human condition are related to aporetic states of mind as their original source. 138 isparchitecture.com 1. what exactly is aporia? aporia is a greek word, and it literally means “no passage” or “no way out” (‎a-, “a-”=no, without) + πόρος ‎(póros=“passage”).6 plato, committed to the method of dialectic, never spells out an exact definition of aporia. he rather demonstrates aporiai through conversations between the interlocutors in his dialogues. some of the dialogues begin with aporia, some are centred on it, while others end in it. on the other hand, aristotle provides a few definitions of aporia: one in metaphysics, quoted above;7 and another one in his topics, when he defines aporia as a state of mind caused by “equality of opposite reasonings.”8 plato strictly distinguished knowledge from opinions in his republic.9 his elaboration on the poverty of the senses in the myth of the cave10 comes after the distinction between the realm of opinions from the realm of knowledge in the famous divided line analogy.11 the realm of reality which is accessible to the senses, the apparent world, is subjected to experiential opinions, while the intellectual, or, for plato, the only real world, is accessible through knowledge (figure 1).12 the only entities that really exist are universal forms or ideas. thanks to their high ontological status, these forms represent the only possible object of knowledge, as only what is perfectly real can be properly known. in the divided line analogy, a clear hierarchy of cognitive capacities (παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς) and their corresponding objects is established. images, shadows and reflections of things are less real than things themselves; images of forms are more real than things, but less real than forms themselves, and so on. in addition, each cognitive capacity has its own mode of cognition and way of searching. the lower end of cognitive capacities, concerned with sensible particulars, is reserved for imagination (εἰκασία) and belief (πίστις). these two capacities are based on observation and together form an aporia—the state of being perplexed, puzzled, lacking resources, or being at a loss “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 139 k os ti c opinion (δόξα). the higher end (intellect) is also split into two cognitive capacities—between thinking (διάνοια) and reasoning (νοῦς). the unchangeable objects, corresponding with thinking, are representable in the physical world (by use of drawings, numbers, etc.) and sometimes are referred to as mathematicals or as intermediaries. discursive thought, with the use of a hypothesis (assumed to be true), is its mode of cognition. the commonly used example to describe this way of searching is mathematics, or plato’s favourite—geometry. our highest cognitive capacity, which is reasoning (νοῦς), has forms (ideas) as its object of searching; it reaches towards the highest realm of knowing (ἐπιστήμη), and it searches through dialectic. it is precisely dialectic that puts the “mind’s eye” in a position to access and “see” the puzzles within this highest realm of reality. the capacity to recognise how exactly a particular puzzle becomes the source of aporia belongs to a “considerable dialectical ability.”13 aporiai are therefore resolved by means of dialectical investigation. it is traditionally accepted that aporia in plato has a purifying effect. supposedly, aporia purifies the inquirer from the pretence of knowledge on the subject of investigation. often, socrates’s interlocutor, faced with a socratic demand for definition, presents an account about the matter of figure 1: plato’s divided line. see plato, republic, vii, 509d-511e. 140 isparchitecture.com inquiry, typically based on personal experience or belief. after socrates has refuted him, or at any rate put his belief to the test, the interlocutor, having no other alternative, doesn’t know how to proceed and is in a state of aporia. the immediate effects of the aporetic state of mind are speechlessness and inarticulateness, but, as politis points out,14 these are only adding to the overwhelming feeling of uneasiness and distress15 or lack of resourcefulness and a strong sense of intellectual incompetence.16 generally, the way the interlocutor responds to this disclosure largely depends on his character, but it also points at his intellectual limitations. if the interlocutor exhibits anger and remains paralysed, his chances to progress in dialectics are quite limited. if, on the other hand one accepts one’s own lack of knowledge, only then it will be possible for one to progress further in the search. besides this cathartic role, more importantly, aporia has also a searching (zetetic) function.17 namely, aporia is not only a mental state of puzzlement but is indeed a puzzle about the matter of inquiry. the essential property of such a puzzle is the co-existence of two sides, seemingly opposed. the apparent contradiction is present in an aporia when two propositions both seem to be true, but are mutually exclusive. apparently, when two propositions are contradictory, at least one of them must be false. this is precisely what constitutes aporia—seeming logical impossibility. the decisive move then, in order to resolve aporia, consists in searching for the possibility to eliminate contradiction (e.g., by arguing that both sides of aporia are true). let us now look at a classic example of socratic aporia and its resolution, which incidentally is about socrates’ own wisdom: “what can the god possibly mean and why does he speak in riddles? for i am only too conscious that i have no pretence of wisdom, great or small. so what can he mean when he [apollo] says that i am the most wise? for surely ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 141 k os ti c he does not utter falsehoods; that would not be proper for him.”18 in analysis of this passage politis suggests two seemingly contradictory propositions (both apparently true, but mutually exclusive): “(1) ‘i know that i am not wise in any way’; and (2) ‘the god, who does not lie, pronounces me the most wise.’”19 he points out that socrates’s “immediate response is to ask what this apparent contradiction can possibly mean, that is how both its sides can be true.”20 politis goes even further, proposing that this way of posing the problem is also a model of at least one way of solving an aporia—by drawing a distinction.21 2. necessary conditions for emergence of aporia it is now established that the essential property of aporia is the apparent contradiction between two attractive propositions. i will next set the domain and elaborate the conditions for the emergence of aporia, bearing in mind differences between standard and non-standard logical systems. in classical logic, a proposition can have only one out of two truthvalues at any given time and in any given sense—these values are true or false: either socrates is wise, or he is not. aristotle’s law of non-contradiction (lnc) maintains that it is impossible to hold the same thing to exist and not to exist; or for the same thing to have and not to have the same property; or for the same thing to have a property and a contrary property.22 aristotle argues that this principle cannot be strictly demonstrated (for any demonstration presupposes it and makes use of it), but also that it is the firmest of all basic principles.23 however, some non-standard logical systems partially or in whole reject this principle of non-contradiction (figure 2). for example, in the logic of łukasiewicz a proposition can have three distinct truth-values—true, false, and unknown (“neither true nor false”).24 in probabilistic and fuzzy logic a proposition can have an infinite number of different truth-values.25 any paraconsistent logical system (fuzzy logic, intuitionist logic, or dialetheism) are not of interest here not only because the topic of this paper deals predominantly with the notions of aporia in plato and aristotle, which in time greatly precedes the emergence of these extended systems of logic in the twentieth-century, but also because classical and standard logic as well as modern science and contemporary thinking are still vastly depending on the truth-values in a traditional sense and have 142 isparchitecture.com figure 2: classification of logic, based on the inclusion of the principles of reasoning (id, lc, lm), use of quantificators and formal language, and, finally, domain of truth-values (standard 2-valued logic systems including modal logic; paraconsistent logic systems including 3-value logic system of łukasiewitz, gödel’s finite-many value logic, and infinite-many value logic (fuzzy logic). ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 143 k os ti c no tolerance for inconsistency within the system.26 furthermore, any form of many-valued logic systems must be excluded here, because where the tension between opposing truth-values is downplayed (fuzzy logic), or largely non-existent (dialethism), due to the presentation of another one or many other options (besides true and false), the notion of aporia, which rests on precisely this tension between the equality of reasoning on opposing sides simply would not apply or even make much sense in any such inquiry.27 in fact, if there is another way out, besides the two apparently mutually-exclusive propositions being true, the impasse, which is a key feature of aporia, will simply not arise. the aporia also cannot arise when the principle of non-contradiction is excluded from the logical system simply because it wouldn’t be possible to distinguish between a contradiction and a non-contradiction, let alone to make a distinction between the apparent and the real contradiction. to further refine the conditions under which aporiai can arise, a distinction must be made between (1) contradictory claims, which can give rise to aporia, and (2) the situations where opposing sides of reasoning are only contraries or sub-contraries, in which case they cannot give rise to aporia. let us remind ourselves of the difference between the contradictions and contraries in traditional propositional and predicate logic. two propositions are contradictory when the truth of one implies the falsity of the other, or when the falsity of one determines the truth of other. according to johnson, “contradictories have exactly opposite truth-values. if a is true, then o is false, and vice versa.”28 for example, in propositional logic, the negation of the proposition “socrates is wise” would be “it is not the case that socrates is wise.” this forms a contradictory opposition between the propositions. in standard logic, these two propositions are (1) mutually exclusive, which means that only one of them can be true, and (2) mutually exhaustive, which means that nothing else is possible. it becomes clear that if and only if it is the case that two propositions are at least apparently contradictory, then aporia can arise. if the law of excluded middle (lem)29 is invalidated (as in intuitionistic logic),30 then two propositions do not fulfil the second condition—they cannot be mutually exhaustive. there would be a middle ground between the two. hence aporia cannot exist in such systems. for example, let us look at a slightly different formulation of the two propositions: “socrates is wise” and “socrates is unwise.” it may be tempting to hold this new pair of propositions as also contradictory. however, that is not the case. they are only contrary. propositions are contrary when they cannot both be true (socrates cannot be both wise and unwise in the same sense and 144 isparchitecture.com at the same time), but there is a possibility for both of the propositions to be false (socrates being neither wise nor unwise). the latter means that the propositions are not mutually exhaustive; namely, the pressure of apparent contradiction (that is, only one of the otherwise plausible propositions can be true) does not arise as there is a possibility of both propositions to be false. hence, with merely contrary propositions, aporia cannot arise. the outcome is the same in predicate logic. predicate logic extends propositional logic by including the quantifiers (ɐ and ꓱ) which determine whether subject (x) of the categorical proposition is respectively universal or particular and includes two types of assertions—affirmative and negative. this results in four types of propositions—universal affirmative (all men are wise), universal negative (no man is wise), particular affirmative (some men are wise) and particular negative (some men are not wise). there are also four possible types of relationships between these propositions. the relationship between each type is shown on the classical square of opposites in the diagram (figure 3), which originates from aristotle, but also figures in modern times, especially in boolean algebra and in fregean logic. as in propositional logic, categorical propositions are contrary when they cannot both be true (all men are wise and no man is wise), but there is a possibility for both of them to be false (it may be the case that neither everybody is wise nor that nobody is wise), namely, there is a possibility of the middle ground (perhaps only a few men are wise). this means that aporia cannot arise in the case of the contraries, simply because there is a passage away from the mutual exclusion of propositions. the situation is similar with propositions which are sub-contrary. this is the case when it is impossible for both categorical propositions to be false (some men are wise and some men are not wise); however, ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 145 k os ti c there is a possibility for both of them to be true. if both propositions can be true, then the mutual exclusion, which was a primary condition for the emergence of aporia, is removed and together with it also the pressure of finding a way out of the impasse has disappeared. it can be concluded that in none of these cases does aporia arise. therefore, aporia has bearing only in cases of apparently contradictory propositions, both of which (or sets of which) appear attractive, but neither the tension nor the attraction have been properly investigated or understood. it has been demonstrated that aporiai apply directly within the domain of at least propositional and predicate logic. it naturally follows that aporia will also have bearing in all forms of standard and modern logic that extend the field of classical logic, but retain the laws of thinking such as the law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle. such cases not only automatically apply to boolean mathematical logic but also, perhaps more interestingly for designers and architects, to the non-classical logical system of modal logic. the application of modal logic in design and architecture is significant because it relates to what necessarily follows and to what might or ought to follow in deductive reasoning. therefore, modal logic encompasses design propositions (with respects to certain rules or styles) and it is useful in design predictions. figure 3: traditional square of opposition. 146 isparchitecture.com now that the domain and the source of aporia have been clarified along with its nature, we can look more closely into how aporia applies to architectural design. 3. aporia in architectural design an actual design situation may reveal a particular reference of aporia in design. in architecture, the well-known corner conflict inherent in the employ of the classical ionic order provides a good example of aporetic reasoning in architectural design. the ionic order’s sensual spiralling volutes that cushion the architrave provide an enduring source of difficulty for designers needing a colonnade to turn a corner—for the traditional volutes only face forward. traditionally, in greek and roman architecture, the corner capital in the ionic order is different to other capitals as, for example, on the external corner of palladio’s basilica in vicenza and in piranesi’s study (figure 4). the corner problem with the ionic order arises due to the requirement for each capital (including the one on the corner) to appear the same in all elevations. because of the lateral position of volutes, the corner capital in the ionic order cannot be the same if the appearance of the capital is to be equal for all capitals on both front and side elevations. that constitutes a clear case of aporia in design. in the case of the corner capital conflict, aporia can be clearly represented with the following two, apparently contradictory, propositions: figure 4: sketch after opere di giovanni battista piranesi. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 147 k os ti c (1) all volutes are positioned in the same manner in all elevations, and (2) some volutes (namely corner capitals) are not positioned the same. one is invited to compare these propositions to the previously given examples in propositional and predicate logic (figure 3). it is obvious that this example forms an apparent contradiction in the first-order predicate logic and its representation as an aporia clarifies the design challenge that must be addressed. one may elect to confront the aporia in various creative ways or try to avoid the contradictory situation by eliminating the columns altogether from the side elevations, as in palladio’s villa capra (la rotunda) shown in figure 5. however, once aporia is engaged, two alternatives are possible. the first alternative is when the apparent contradiction is not resolved and hence it becomes prominent as in the temple of fortuna virilis or palladio’s villa foscari (figure 6). some cases, such as the exposed inside corner capital in palladio’s palazzo barbaran porto (figure 7), reveal the unresolved puzzle in greater detail. figure 5: villa capra (la rotunda), palladio, 1567. figure 6: villa foscari (la malcontenta), palladio, 1560. 148 isparchitecture.com the other alternative is when the apparent contradiction is resolved and contradiction removed by adjusting the architectural element or the way it is used. one of the resolutions of the ionic capital corner conflict can be found in the work by palladio’s contemporary architect vincenzo scamozzi. the evidence for this can be found in his book the idea of a universal architecture, where he proposes a new capital for the ionic order with diagonally positioned volutes.31 scamozzi’s drawings (figure 8) and writings on the ionic capital conflict testify that, not only was he fully engaged with this particular aporia, he also proposed a way of resolving it. it is important to note that the solution to this puzzle was independent of the level of craftsmanship applied. the resolution depended only on an architect’s ability to recognise the aporia and engage with it through design. i will now show the plan and elevation of another ionic capital that is partly copied from antiquity, partly based on vitruvius and for the rest is a design i have invented and used. to this day it remains different from any other [ionic] capital ever invented because of the concave profile of the abacus and the corner volutes that look the same whether they are figure 7: palazzo barbaran da porto, palladio, 1569. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 149 k os ti c viewed from the front or the side, which is not the case when capitals have volutes at the front… it is the kind i have used most frequently in my buildings.32 figure 8: sketch after scamozzi’s drawing of ionic capital, l’idea della architettura universale. 150 isparchitecture.com 4. aporia in design theory for architects and planners it is quite possible to confuse the state of perplexity which comes from aporia with the perplexity which is a result of a wicked problem. rittel and webber, in the classic essay “dilemmas in a general theory of planning,” described planning problems as wicked problems, which can always be recontextualized in terms of other problems and which therefore admit an utter lack of stopping rules or ‘solutions’ in the mathematical sense.33 for efficiency, a distinction between the two is drawn on the relevant points and summarized in a table below (figure 10). besides perplexity, the other similarities between the two are that of the possible paralyzing effect of both aporiai and wicked problems and the fact that an aporia may as well remain as unresolved as the wicked problem. it seems that the only intrinsic link between the two is that some wicked problems can indeed turn out to be aporiai, but never the other way round. ‘wicked problem’ aporia impossible to solve sometimes possible to solve cannot be formulated can be formulated solutions cannot be true or false solutions can be true or false caused by another problem caused by apparent contradiction figure 9: the distinction between rittel and weber’s wicked problems and aporia. . ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 151 k os ti c in what seems to be an outline for a framework of a coherent design theory, per galle identifies two “dilemmas of references” as he calls them. basing his case on the presupposition that design is related to predictions (of a certain artefact as its product), and on the fact that designers sometimes in their predictions refer to things, or entities, whose ontological status is at best unclear, galle proposes two questions as a starting point in search for the common ground of a coherent design theory: (1) “if the singular terms of design predictions do not refer [to an entity], how and in what sense can the predictions be true or even meaningful?” and (2) “if those terms do refer [to an entity], to what category of entities are they referring?”34 even though galle recognises this situation as a “puzzlement,” and presents this problem as a challenge to design theorists, he appears to think that this seeming contradiction in questions of fundamental importance to design is a sort of an embarrassment for designers. in a way, he seems to suggest that these “dilemmas of references” at hand are practically a problem of choice, closely associated with ready-made philosophical world views: nominalism and realism. moreover, theorists of design are invited to untangle this conundrum by selecting a world view from which to create a coherent design theory. galle claims that this sort of a problem has a more general, philosophical context and that other “philosophical disciplines” might help in resolving it.35 but, instead of philosophy generally, galle proposes to use philosophy of language to engage with this fundamental puzzle in design—that is: what exactly is the subject of design? i agree with galle that, as sciences got philosophy of science and languages got philosophy of language, perhaps design needs to get philosophy of design. however, i propose that a fundamental philosophical question about design can be addressed through philosophy directly and, likewise, that question about the merits of philosophy in design should be addressed through design itself. i propose that the problem at hand here is more fruitfully treated, not as dilemma as suggested by galle, but as an aporia. in order to demonstrate this with clarity, an important distinction must first be drawn between the notions of aporia and dilemma.36 despite the fact that both dilemmas and aporiai can produce a state of indecisiveness and perplexity, they are also profoundly different. dilemma is commonly used in everyday speech to describe a problem of choice, where none of the two given options (not necessarily propositions) are desired or preferred (but not necessarily with any truth value at all). it is sometimes used in rhetoric, as a persuasive device. however, in formal, propositional logic, dilemma 152 isparchitecture.com is a form of valid argument always leading to the same conclusion (true), regardless of the truthvalue in either of the propositions. in a dilemma we are presented with a choice, none of which may be appealing to us, while in aporia, as we have seen, we are faced with two equally plausible propositions in an apparent contradiction, effectively producing a lack of choice. the troubling case of design entity ontological status cannot be a dilemma, or a problem of choice in any way, as that would mean that there would be no problem in reasoning correctly. the only problem would be to select one of the options. however, both of the “references” seem to be true, and it is obvious that they are mutually exclusive. namely one cannot assert that both of them are true at the same time and in the same sense. that means these assertions are in apparent contradiction. let us look closer and see if these two sides are indeed in an apparent contradiction. first of all, we need to disburden ourselves of the pretence of knowledge, and at least for the moment assume without false pretence, that we truly do not know what the nature of the subject matter of design is. hence, i propose to re-formulate galle’s questions into these two propositions: (1) during the design process, artefacts that are being designed must refer to an entity that exists, for they are in the process of being designed, we can refer to them (even in space and time), and they are not purely imaginary. (i shall argue for the plausibility of this presently). (2) during the design process, artefacts that are designed must refer to an entity that does not exist, for if they did exist that would entail that they have already been designed. these two propositions are apparently equally true, but opposed and mutually exclusive, therefore ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 153 k os ti c seemingly contradictory. the propositions are also mutually exhaustive as there is no other conceivable option offered to a designer. there seems to be no middle ground left to settle, and an inquirer is under pressure, left without any easy and obvious way out. this is what constitutes an aporia by its definition. now an inquirer is ready to engage with aporia and its zetetic (searching) function by, ideally i suggest, answering the question— what is required for both of these propositions to be true at the same time? it might be objected that the first side of the aporia has no real attraction. why, it may be said, not simply suppose that the object of design is purely imaginary, just like fictional objects? unlike mere phantasies and purely imaginary objects, a key capacity of an architectural designer is to create not only meaningful, but accurate and reasonable predictions with respect to objects designed.37 the main attraction of this side of aporia is in that a designer can provide accurate predictions about those objects. consequently, we should not be satisfied with a general theory of imaginary or fictional objects as suitable for either articulating or gauging the attractiveness of this side of the aporia. this example is explicated here in order to demonstrate that aporia is necessarily a part of inquiry into the consistency of a design theory. the way one reasons out of aporiai in design is, in part, a subject of this whole project, and it would take us a lot more space to attempt its resolution here. therefore, unless curious readers engage themselves with this particular aporia on the subject matter of design, they are asked to suspend their judgements and remain puzzled. if it is indeed the case that a world view on design theory can be grown out of these “seed questions” as galle proposes, then one must be first fully engaged with them by recognising the aporia.38 i agree with galle that these questions are “not to be shrugged off ”, as he says.39 furthermore, it seems to me that they are fundamental for any design theory. in other words, if one wishes to establish a consistent design theory, it is necessary for one to engage with this particular aporia in one way or the other. for how can we otherwise give an account for the subject matter of design itself ? any design theory must either reject at least one of the propositions and embrace the other, or find a way to embrace both. an informal thinker may indeed find more compelling evidence why one proposition is more acceptable to him or her than the other. but, as we have seen, unless one rejects the principle of non-contradiction, it is difficult to find a firm ground on which one can dismiss one and embrace the other proposition as they both seem to be plausible. one way forward 154 isparchitecture.com could be to find a way in which both propositions can be true, namely, explore the possibilities that are required in cases where both of these propositions are true at the same time. that means engaging in aporia. the only alternative to that is to find a justification to abandon reasoning on the subject matter of design altogether and conceive of design as a craft-like activity and accept that design is fully exhausted through practice alone like any other techne. however, if we indeed do that we will resemble people who are not engaged with aporia and as aristotle says, don’t know where they need to be going in their inquiry. in that case it is difficult to see how design can be understood as a form of inquiry, and a form of enquiry grounded in design theory. for those willing to engage the aporias that present themselves, architectural design does indeed become a form of inquiry. this conception of architecture that is engaged with aporia opens up the possibility of removing the experiential limits sometimes imposed on design and to realign architectural design within the classical division of knowledge in such a way so that all cognitive capacities are engaged in design—from experiential to higher, intellectual capacities.40 i have not attempted to resolve this aporia— this is for another occasion. what i have done is argue that, if we want to take seriously the idea of design as a form of inquiry, and a form of inquiry grounded in design theory, then we must engage with and try to resolve this (and similar) aporiai. i want to end by drawing attention to one condition for a successful resolution of this aporia—which is, i believe, a core aporia in design theory. for, as we saw in our response to galle, there is a danger here that grand philosophical views—be it this, that, or the other philosophical position—be hauled in ready-made to do the job of resolving an aporia that, if it is at all genuine and worth taking seriously, is specific to and rooted in aporia is indeed rooted, not only in general philosophical considerations about design theory, but also in the process of design itself. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 155 k os ti c design and design theory. this, i believe, has to be resisted. for if this is what we do to engage with and try to resolve the aporia, then we are in effect admitting that the aporia is not specific to or rooted in design and design theory: since its resolution will not make use of any tools or idea that are specific to design or design theory. in that case, however, one would be forgiven for wondering why design theory should worry about this aporia and not simply leave it to the philosophers. nonetheless, we have shown that aporia is indeed rooted, not only in general philosophical considerations about design theory, but also—and, for us designers and design theorists, primarily—in the process of design itself. acknowledgments i would like to thank the (guest-)editors, martin düchs and christian illies, as well as tom spector, the managing editor of the journal architecture philosophy for their help, constructive criticism, and inspiring challenges posed in the various drafts they reviewed. i am also very grateful to the anonymous referees for their influential comments and valuable suggestions. very special thanks i owe to the people at the plato centre at trinity college dublin, especially to professor of philosophy vasilis politis for many stimulating discussions on the subject and philosopher brendan o’byrne for unreserved support. endnotes [1] aristotle, the basic works of aristotle (new york: random house incorporated, 2001), metaphysics, iii. 1, 995a34-b1. [2] see plato, protagoras, 321c. extract from protagoras’s speech: prometheus arrived to examine his [epimetheus] distribution, and saw that whereas the other creatures were fully and suitably provided, man was naked, unshod, unbedded, unarmed; and already the destined day was come, whereon man like the rest should emerge from earth to light. then prometheus, in his perplexity [ἀπορία] as to what preservation he could devise for man, stole from hephaestus and athena wisdom in the arts together with fire—since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any—and he handed it there and then as a gift to man. [3] the meaning of the word prometheus can be translated as “forethought.” 156 isparchitecture.com [4] the meaning of the word epimetheus can be translated as “afterthought.” [5] plato actually uses the word aporia to depict titan’s mental state. see plato, protagoras, 321c2. [6] ἀπορία = aporia—the state of being perplexed, puzzled, lacking resources, or being at a loss. [7] aristotle, the basic works, metaphysics, iii. 1, 995a34-b1. [8] aristotle, posterior analytics topica, ed. loeb classical library (london and new york: harvard university press, 1960), 145b17. [9] if not stated otherwise, in this paper i have generally relied on cooper’s edition of plato’s complete works. see plato, complete works, ed. john m. cooper, (indianapolis and cambridge: hackett publishing company, 1997). [10] plato, republic, 514a-519a. [11] ibid., 509d-511e. [12] see plato, republic, vii, 509d-511e. illustration by aleksandar kostić. [13] vasilis politis, “aporia and searching in the early plato,” in remembering socrates: philosophical essays, eds. lindsay judson and vassilis karasmanēs (new york: oxford university press, 2006), 101. for the place of aporia in plato’s philosophy, see especially politis, the structure of enquiry in plato’s early dialogues (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2015), part ii. [14] ibid., 88-110. [15] plato, laches, 194a-b. [16] plato, meno, 80a-c. [17] politis proposes that besides being a mental state, “aporia is [also] zetetic: [its aim is] to generate particular searches, defined and directed by the puzzle and problem at hand.” see politis, “aporia,” 108. [18] plato, apology, 21b3–7. [19] politis, “aporia,” 88–110. [20] ibid. [21] ibid., 98. [22] aristotle, the basic works, metaphysics, iv, 1005b24. [23] ibid., 1011b13–14. [24] graham priest, an introduction to non-classical logic (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001), 119. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 157 k os ti c [25] susan haack, deviant logic, fuzzy logic: beyond the formalism (chicago: university of chicago press, 1996). [26] the belief that it is possible for a single proposition to be at the same time both true and false, without inferring that this leads to any and every proposition being true is called dialetheism. however, this view fails to define a negation, as it is difficult to grasp what a concept of disagreement would be in the world where a proposition can be both true and false at the same time. another important and undesired consequence of dialetheism is the principle of explosion. namely, if we hold both propositions p and ¬p to be true, then it follows that for any statement q both p˅q and ¬p˅q to be also true, which means any and every proposition q is true. [27] a passionate read on many-valued logic can be found in graham priest’s an introduction on non-classical logic, cited above. [28] robert m. johnson, a logic book: fundamentals of reasoning (belmont: thomson wadsworth, 2007), 63. [29] the law of excluded middle (lem) is the third law of thinking in traditional logic and it simply means that besides true or false there is no other available option for truth-value. [30] intuitionistic logic invalidates the law of excluded middle. this rejection has “far-reaching consequences.” (see joan moschovakis, “intuitionistic logic,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. edward n. zalta, spring 2015 edition, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logicintuitionistic/.) one of those consequences being that the principle of elimination of double negation also becomes invalid and, perhaps more importantly, intuitionistic logic becomes “axiomatically incomplete.” for our purposes, it is important to note that rejection of the lem practically disables the condition of the principle of mutual exhaustion (i.e., there is a middle ground available, hence aporia is not possible). [31] vincenzo scamozzi, the idea of a universal architecture, volume vi (amsterdam: architectura & natura press, 2008). [32] ibid. [33] horst w. j. rittel and melvin m. webber, “dilemmas in a general theory of planning,” policy sciences 4 (1973): 155-169. [34] per galle, “candidate worldviews for design theory,” design studies 29, 3 (may 2008): 279. [35] ibid., 280. [36] some philosophers consider a notion of dilemma that is closely related 158 isparchitecture.com to aporia. for example, karamanolis uses the term “dilemmatic structure” to describe weighing various possibilities or ways out of the aporia. (see george karamanolis, “the aporetic character of plotinus’ philosophy,” in the aporetic tradition in ancient philosophy, eds. george karamanolis and vasilis politis (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017), 250.) others hold that the reasoning leading to an aporia need not take the form of dilemma. (for example, see john palmer, “contradiction and aporia in early greek philosophy,” in the aporetic tradition in ancient philosophy, eds. george karamanolis and vasilis politis (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017), 9.) gelber maintains that a particular type of aporia, in cases where we are presented with equally impossible options (i.e., ‘negative aporias’), can present itself in a form of dilemma, but also that some aporiai do not have “the appearance of dilemma at all” and so on. (see jessica gelber, “uses of aporiai in aristotle’s generation of animals,” in the aporetic tradition in ancient philosophy, eds. george karamanolis and vasilis politis (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017), 164-165.) i am considering the notion of dilemma here in the context of galle’s proposition (seed questions) to distinguish between problems of choice and aporiai. [37] to describe the predictions architects make, galle gives an example of an architect designing an opera who points “to one of his drawings, saying ‘every seat on this balcony has an unobstructed view of the stage.’” galle rightly emphasizes that “if we could not rely on such design predictions as largely true, we should hardly be able to make artefacts at all.” see galle, “candidate worldviews for design theory,” 278. [38] galle, “candidate worldviews for design theory,” 267-303. [39] ibid. [40] for plato, architecture is indeed a form inquiry leading to true knowledge. in the statesman, when plato makes a distinction concerning the highest kinds of knowledge, he specifically uses the example of an architect to depict the highest level of knowing (γνωστικὴ ἐπιτακτικὴν), which is removed from practical experience and belongs to higher cognitive capacities. see plato, statesman, 260d. isparchitecture.com we build for humans—for the most part. temples, zoological gardens, and multi-story car-parks seem to be exceptions. they are built for gods, animals, or cars. but then, even they are indirectly for humans. they are meant to be used by humans who worship there, gaze at giraffes, or park their cars. so in the end, architecture will always have to consider human beings as its recipient, observer, and user. architects simply cannot avoid thinking about the human being. after all, it makes a big difference, what characteristics and needs, necessary life circumstances and life forms, what expectations of privacy or ideal social life, and even what emotions, hopes, fears, and visions we take as central for human beings. our understanding of human beings will be the focus for entirely different architectural forms and ways of building. but to reflect upon ourselves and who we are is, essentially, a philosophical question. according to kant, “what is man?” is even the central question of philosophy. therefore, to think about the human being is an ineliminable concern for architecture and philosophy of architecture alike. but it is also a concern which has not been addressed very often in the last decades. that is why it has been the topic of the 3rd international conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture. from july 19th to 23rd 2016 we invited some 100 scholars from all over the world to bamberg university, germany, to think about and discuss “the human in architecture and philosophy.” architecture has raised the question about the concept and the place of the human being in its in the end, architecture will always have to consider human beings “ ” the human in architecture and philosophy: steps towards an “architectural anthropology” martin düchs & christian illies ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 2 ed it or ia l efforts in many ways. contemporary architecture is very often based upon the explicit claim to have put the human being at the centre of designing and building. and this is by no means new as architectural history and theory show. to take just a few examples: le corbusier and the ciam wrote within their athens charter that, “architecture must once again be placed in the service of man,”1 and even the sharpest critics of ciam-inspired modern architecture seemed to search for the human being in architecture. the austrian artist friedensreich hundertwasser, for example, wrote a manifesto “give the houses back to the human beings.”2 many houses or even the works of some architects are marked as especially “humane.” alvar aalto is praised for being on his way “toward a human modernism.”3 the british-swedish architect ralph erskine is widely recognized as someone who designed humane buildings and is even called “the humane architect.”4 but although a lot of people would agree with this judgement, we can hardly tell exactly why his or aalto’s architecture are regarded as more humane than other members of team x--such as peter and alison smithson. they too tried to make a more humane architecture but somehow are widely perceived as having come up short.5 last but not least, one could point to the fierce discussions concerning the rightful interpretations of rudolph wittkower’s architectural principles in the age of humanism.6 the claim that architecture is made for human beings seems simultaneously obvious and in need of justification. what is the relevance and what is the content of architects’ claims about building for human beings? for whom do and did we build if not for human beings? in the service of which concept or idea of human beings should architecture be placed (e.g., for sober rational beings, for creatures with emotional needs, for more atomistic or social beings)? and rather generally: what does it mean to build for humans? is judging a work of architecture to be humane expressing anything more than a personal preference? there are so many questions and no easy answers. it might seem surprising that all these questions have no obvious philosophical answer because it has long been central to philosophy to answer exactly kant’s question “what is man?”7 many subsequent philosophers have tried to take up the challenge and to give answers. in the mid-twentieth century, even a veritable branch of philosophy called “philosophical anthropology” emerged in germany that has been entirely dedicated to the study of the kantian question. philosophers such as max scheler, arnold gehlen, and helmut plessner (partly also ernst cassirer and hans jonas) wrote their most important works about us humans and our characteristics. they tried to combine the results not only of modern evolutionary biology, ethology, and sociology but also 3 isparchitecture.com of history, cultural anthropology, psychology, and ethnology with the classical conceptions of humans as free and rational beings.8 but the heyday of philosophical anthropology seems to have gone. the latter half of the twentieth century was dominated by philosophical thought that dismissed such attempts at elucidating the essence of mankind as hopeless. such thinking denies the existence of a fixed human identity that we can grasp, understand, or even talk about. there is no human essence; only history. instead, we should look at what sociology, cultural anthropology, or evolutionary biology could tell us about the human condition.9 this thinking takes several forms. some antimentalists suspect an outdated essentialism or idealism that is based upon an entirely wrong metaphysics. radical naturalists agree, though with other arguments—for them there is no independent entity, like humans, and natural science has the last word (as quine claimed at some point). others take a dualistic stance according to which the realm of nature and of our cultural (socio-political) sphere have nothing in common and are to be looked at separately. for them, the only interesting questions about humans are attempts to locate them in (and explain them from) political or sociological conditions. all philosophical anthropology has to become sociology, as habermas famously claimed.10 others, like wittgenstein, look for linguistic questions or forms of life as the basis for philosophical refection on humans. and some, following heidegger, would even argue that it is dangerous to ask about “the” human being because he or she is essentially open and un-definable. everyone is simply what he or she makes out of himself or herself. any attempt to encapsulate the human being (or human nature) would only serve to limit him or her and to miss what we really are.11 the radical openness of humans as self-constructing beings does not allow for any characterisation of human beings as such, they claim.12 these are it has long been central to philosophy to answer exactly this question: what is man? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 4 ed it or ia l just some philosophical positions of the twentieth century—but they all agree that we cannot ask what we are and expect meaningful answers. the absence of anthropology from most contemporary philosophy creates a rather tricky situation. on the one side, contemporary philosophy tells us that all attempts to define what is characteristically human will fall short. but on the other side, we deal with humans every day and should know what that means (and actually do have some idea of it). furthermore, architects have to create buildings for beings of some description—a task which comes to seem altogether paradoxical if humans are, for us, a kind of black hole or invisible phantom that no one can possibly catch. building for a phantom is an otherworldly challenge. philosophy, it seems, cannot get off the hook of the kantian question. it is, after all, the paradigm human practice of reflecting on fundamental questions and challenges and thus of giving orientation to people. who else should do it? simply to run away (“catch me if you can!”) and to argue that humans are no possible object of reflection cannot suffice. the pertinence of the challenge demands better, even if we never get a final answer to the big question. that is probably also why some philosophers like noam chomsky in very recent years dare to ask again: “what kind of creatures are we?”13 that is why the 3rd international conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (see the call for papers at http://isparchitecture.com/events/3rd-international-conference/) has turned to human beings in architecture. it is, as we might say, an approach to the big question by the side entrance. our philosophical focus is not human beings as such, or human nature, but humans at home: human beings as those for whom we design and build houses which they use and where they stay. at the conference, this side entrance has turned out to be a rather successful door. even if the conference did not answer the big question—unsurprisingly—the papers and discussions showed us a wide range of fascinating facets of the human being in architecture and philosophy. on the one side, it helps us to formulate more clearly what architecture is meant to do. on the other side, it contributes to an important aspect of philosophical anthropology, namely that humans are beings that build houses. we need some kind of shelter, but houses are almost always more than a merely functional hut. they are deep expressions of our being and of our aspirations, what we belong to and how we conceive individual life and the life of a community. although it has always been generally acknowledged that human beings built dwelling places, more careful analysis of this need is revealing a lot about us. issues 3.1. and 3.2 of architecture philosophy contain a selection of papers developed out of the conference that did most to reveal its many facets. 5 isparchitecture.com we have selected them on the basis of their originality and quality, but we have also aimed at illustrating the variety of methodological a p p r o a c h e s . “ a r c h i t e c t u r a l anthropology,” as we might call it, is a field very much in the making and it seems too inappropriate to determine one kind of approach as the only possible one. that is also the reason why we are grateful to be able to include a dialogue at the outset between karsten harries and sir roger scruton about this fundamental question; namely on how to conceive of a philosophy of architecture and architectural anthropology. the two founding fathers, or at least great inspirers of two different schools of architectural philosophy (a more analytical orientation from scruton and a more phenomenological tradition from harries) rightly deserve to have the first word in this debate. true to form, we find that scruton approaches architecture as a demand on its justification, while harries begins with questions of home and of place. yet, should we be surprised to find that, starting from oblique angles to one another they find much convergence? this dialogue leads naturally to a paper that takes its starting point from another encounter of two great philosophers. pau pedragosa scrutinizes the discussion between ernst cassirer and martin heidegger about philosophy and the human being that took place in davos (switzerland) in 1929. figure 1: bamberg university ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 6 ed it or ia l his paper’s title, “presence or meaning in architecture,” encapsulates the fundamental oppositions in that debate that can be drawn from heidegger’s and cassirer’s ideas about the human being. drawing on the two philosophical giants’ different philosophical anthropologies, pedragosa argues for cultivating two different ways of understanding culture and, hence, architecture. cassirer‘s and heidegger’s antithetical conceptions of the human being can be described as the human activity for worldconstruction against the human receptivity for world-interpretation. finding merit in both conceptions, pedragosa follows cassirer to propose an understanding of architecture as a symbolic form that constructs new meanings; that buildings are the bearers of meaning. but he also finds much to recommend in heidegger’s approach; that architecture is less concerned with construction and more with the origin and the questioning of building; that the building is an irreducible presence of itself that opens up the environment. pedragosa argues that, while at the time of the debate it was widely perceived that heidegger had won, in the hard-won wisdom of the ensuing century, a more balanced appraisal is warranted. the exchange between two established philosophers and pedragosa’s paper examining established philosophic controversy surrounding the human in architecture are followed by selections that seek to expand the possible approaches to our topic. how important to our sense of home is the simple expectation that our architecture outlive us? mari hvattum’s paper “on durability” looks at how time is inscribed in human artefacts. starting with the sensible observation that architecture, in most cases, lasts longer than the people building it she makes a case for considering that in an age when the extremes of the ephemeral and the eternal are cultivated in equal measure, there may be reason to look again at the particular kind of durability pertaining to the human-made. this involves studying, not so much works, as work: how human making, as both gottfried semper and hannah arendt have reminded us, transforms ephemeral acts into (relatively) durable worlds, and how the past, whether we know it or not, inhabits the present. she does this by drawing on the specific example of the destruction and reconstruction of the famous bridge of mostar, bosnia; employing it as something of a case study for discussing how architecture provides essential touchstones for temporal beings. even though humans may not have a static nature, our relation to nature itself—that is to say, the world that goes on without us—is too important a topic to go unaddressed. henry dicks, in his paper “from anthropomimetic to biomimetic cities: the place of humans in 7 isparchitecture.com cities like forests,” observes that even though in recent years biomimicry has emerged as a powerful response to the problem of sustainability and today exerts an important influence on both architecture and urbanism, its implications for the humanities have been largely overlooked. taking a historical approach, the first key argument of this article is that throughout western history the dominant model for the polis, qua both city and state, has been the human being and that it was also this basic model that underlay traditional understandings of the place of humans in cities and states. with the transition to biomimetic cities and states, the key model of which is the forest ecosystem, the question of the place of humans arises once again. in response to this question, dicks proposes a speculative philosophical anthropology based on a combination of heidegger’s thinking of the clearing and recent insights from the study of human evolution and prehistory with a view to grounding a new model of the polis not simply on the forest, but rather on the forest and the clearing. his invocation of the heideggerian forest and clearing in this regard is likely to spark future debate. we then conclude the first volume with marion roussel’s “towards a post-human era? digital architects and the future of mankind,” which looks at possible futures. roussel believes that in this age of unprecedented technological progress, we can no longer ask “what is man?” without examining what we think man will become. in the field of architecture such an examination necessitates considering both what and for whom we will be building in the decades to come. looking at the future world visions from the commentary of digital architects from the 1990s to the present day, this paper aims to show how these architects have already been imagining the future of mankind. it attempts to shed light upon our present state of evolution and the expected outcome of that evolution. taken together, we believe these papers illustrate that addressing the question of what we mean now by the human in architecture can and must run the full gamut of humans’ time on the planet; from the prehistory of the clearing in the forest to the strange possible futures made possible by modern technology. it is a question as relevant ever. endnotes [1] le corbusier, the athens charter (1943), §87. based on studies undertaken at the congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (ciam) in athens, 1933. accessed on moderist architecture, https://modernistarchitecture. wordpress.com/2010/11/03/ciam%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9ctheathens-charter%e2%80%9d-1933/. [2] our translation. for the original, see friedensreich hundertwasser, gebt den menschen die häuser zurück (münchen: pattloch, 2003). [3] alvar aalto, toward a human modernism, ed. winfried nerdinger (new york: prestel, 1999). [4] mats egelius, “ralph erskine: the humane architect,” architectural design profile vol. 9 (london: architectural design, 1977). [5] team 10 meetings: 1953-1984, ed. alison margaret smithson (new york: rizzoli, 1991) and alison margaret smithson and peter smithson, the charged void: architecture (new york: monacelli press, 2001). [6] rudolf wittkower, architectural principles in the age of humanism (new york: norton, 1971); geoffrey scott, the architecture of humanism. a study in the history of taste (london: architectural press, 1980); and alina alexandra payne, “rudolf wittkower and architectural principles in the age of modernism,” journal of the society of architectural historians 53, no. 3 (1994): 322–342, doi: 10.2307/990940. [7] immanuel kant, “logik,” akademieausgabe band ix (berlin: 1900ff.), aa ix s.25. [8] for an extensive view on the tradition of philosophische anthropologie see joachim fischer, philosophische anthropologie: eine denkrichtung des 20. jahrhunderts (freiburg im breisgau: alber, 2009). some of the most important books include max scheler, die stellung des menschen im kosmos (bonn: bouvier, 1991); arnold gehlen, der mensch. seine natur und seine stellung in der welt (bonn: athenäum, 1962); helmuth plessner, die stufen des organischen und der mensch. einleitung in die philosophische anthropologie (berlin: de gruyter, 1965); and ernst cassirer, an essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture (new haven: yale university press, 1992). [9] michael tomasello, a natural history of human thinking (cambridge: harvard university press, 2014). [10] cf. jürgen habermas, “anthropologie, philosophische,” in das fischer lexikon: philosophie, ed. alwin diemer and ivo frenzel (frankfurt am main: fischer, 1958), 18–35. [11] martin heidegger, über den humanismus (frankfurt am main: klostermann, 2000). [12] ibid. [13] noam chomsky, what kind of creatures are we? (new york: columbia university press, 2015). 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter isparchitecture.com useless speculation: architectural obsolescence and the micro-parcels of gordon matta-clark’s fake estates (1973) rick fox “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.” --mark twain introduction more often than not, architecture is created to bolster the express beliefs and ambitions of those who sponsor it. individuals, groups, and institutions in power tend to promulgate symbols of their own prestige. architecture is thus understood as a tool of the powerful and by the powerful. real estate speculators are undeniable agents of change; they possess genuine power to transform both natural and built landscapes. many aspects of the change they promulgate are public and highly visible; others much less so. processes such as title transfer, subdivision, lot merger, covenants, deed restrictions, dedications, and easements vary greatly in their degree of public visibility. while the twin pillars of real estate economics—market value and investment performance (and their shadow features of irrational exuberance and obsolescence)—do not figure prominently in most academic literature on architecture, these topics have become unavoidable for today’s practitioners. an exploration of the ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 80 f ox broader philosophical implications of an economically speculative architecture created, bought, and sold by a surprisingly small number of financial elites is highly relevant for anyone wishing to be on the side of fairness of opportunity in the context of today’s staggering wealth inequality.1 the work of soho-based american artist gordon matta-clark is particularly instructive in this regard for two reasons. first, architecture is simultaneously the subject matter and the medium of much of his creative output. second, he challenges many cherished beliefs about the production of architecture. my point of departure in this essay will be an exploration of one of his lesser known but more conceptually-oriented works, reality properties: fake estates (“fake estates”). this work has been largely overlooked by critics eager to comment on his more famous building-cuts. additionally, fake estates was a work conceived at a time in the 1970’s when new york city was teetering on the verge of municipal bankruptcy, while at the same time promoting massive urban renewal schemes that clearly favored rapacious real estate speculation. these twin circumstances proved fertile ground for matta-clark in his work generally, and fake estates in particular. in this paper, i argue that this specific work offers us valuable architectural and philosophical lessons if we view it as a reductio argument that: 1) exposes several contradictory values that underpin real estate speculation; and, 2) highlights potential pitfalls in the architect-speculator relation. genealogy of reality properties: fake estates in late 1973 and early 1974 gordon matta-clark, best known for his building-cuts splitting (1974) englewood, n.j, and conical intersect (1975) paris, purchased fifteen surplus parcels of land sight unseen for between $25 and $75 each from the new york city real estate department at two separate public auctions. fourteen of the parcels are located in queens, and one on staten island. the parcels are tiny odd-shaped fragments ranging in size from a 27 square foot triangular sliver to a 355-foot long strip. the complete inventory of parcels is diagrammed in figure 1. if all fifteen parcels were somehow aggregated their total area would be 3,264 square feet, not even enough to make a tiny residential lot in queens. subsequent to their purchase, matta-clark collected all the relevant legal documents including notarized grant deeds, legal descriptions, sales 81 isparchitecture.com contracts, and parcel maps, along with numerous black & white photos he took during various site visits. the discrete works we know today as fake estates were assembled posthumously, in 1992, by his widow jane crawford, prompted by the urging of corrine diserens, a curator from the institut valencià d’art modern (ivam) in valencia spain who was researching a matta-clark retrospective, using the original materials he collected. while crawford named the individual works, i.e. “little alley” block 2497, lot 42 (1974); “jamaica curb” block 10142, lot 15 (1974); “maspeth onions” block 2406, lot 148 (1973); and “sidewalk grass” block 1107, lot 146 (1973), it was diserens who, in her retrospective, named the full collection reality properties: fake estates. the original materials themselves have an interesting provenance that is relevant here. matta-clark gave the materials to his friend norman fisher who agreed to hold them after fisher agreed to pay the property taxes that matta-clark was repeatedly ignoring. when fisher died in 1977, his executrix tina girouard became custodian who then returned the materials to crawford sometime in 1979 or 1980. matta-clark died in 1978, but around 1980 crawford began receiving what to her were mysterious delinquency notices from the city that the parcels were being confiscated for nonpayment of taxes. apparently, at the time crawford was unaware of her husband’s purchases. the eventual foreclosures are ironic given that he had purchased these lots at tax-foreclosure auction. in the case of “staten island” block 1224, lot 12 (50.34 square feet) the unpaid quarterly tax for fiscal 1974 amounted to $1.83. as of 2003 only four of the parcels had been purchased by private entities; the other eleven remained in administrative limbo. curiously, crawford elected not to include the tax bills in the assembled collages deeming them, “no longer relevant to the works”2 perhaps because she earnestly endeavored to present matta-clark’s it only takes a small surveyor’s error to change a perfect rectangle into an off-kilter trapezoid with an unaccountedfor surplus sliver. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 82 f ox work in the best possible light—in its purest form. in hindsight, her decision is unfortunate for two reasons. first, given that fake estates is a posthumously presented work, the record is incomplete (or deceptively oversimplified) without the follow-on story of the aftermath of mattaclark’s purchases because this story tells us a great deal about his collaborative networking method as an artist and social activist. second, for our purposes of architecture philosophy the eventual disposition, ownership, and transference of the parcels is relevant as an additional object-lesson consistent with the overall import of his intended project. the fact that eleven of the fifteen parcels appear to remain in administrative limbo is of no small consequence to matta-clark’s critique of property ownership as well as to my argument as to its importance. what we know of matta-clark’s intentions with respect to the fifteen parcels comes from numerous and fragmentary sources. interviews with his contemporaries produce incomplete and contradictory recollections about his intentions. as one commenter put it, “...the story of fake estates is both mythologized and full of holes.”3 by other accounts he purchased the lots without a clear intent as to what he planned to do. according to manfred hecht, his friend and building-cut collaborator, matta-clark lost interest in the properties and it was hecht who ultimately ended up owning them. one of the clearest expressions of matta-clark’s intentions comes from new york times reporter dan carlinsky writing a humor piece about the city’s real estate auctions. when asked by carlinsky after the auction what he planned to do with the lots, an effusive 28-year old mattaclark told the reporter he planned to use them in works of art he would soon be creating. making reference to one of the parcels that had no access to it from the public right-of-way (“maspeth onions”, block 2406, lot 148) he remarks, “that’s an interesting quality; something that can be owned but never experienced. that’s an experience itself.”4 what the total record of recollections, interviews and manuscripts reveal is that at the time the complete work he envisioned consisted of three parts: 1) a written documentation of the parcel including exact dimensions and location, and “perhaps a list of weeds growing there”5; 2) a full-scale photo of the property; and 3) the land itself. he intended that parts 1 and 2 would be included in a gallery exhibition, and that purchasers would acquire title to the land as part of their art purchase. thus, part of his reasoning for buying slivers becomes more obvious in that he regarded these parcel sizes to be “manageable” objects in a gallery setting where, for example, he might hang from the wall a 1-foot x 95-foot rectangular, or a 6-foot isosceles triangle-shaped photograph. neither the full scale photos 83 isparchitecture.com figure 1: micro-parcel inventory ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 84 f ox nor the gallery exhibition ever materialized. for a young soho artist of insufficient means struggling to find affordable housing and cheap gallery space the cultural mythology of a gentry class buying an estate in the economically devastated new york city of the mid-1970’s is an irony too rich to ignore. in the early 1970’s new york city had become a bleak, violent and dilapidated city in decline. the steady loss of manufacturing jobs as industry moved out of the city combined with a general flight to the suburbs left the city with countless empty buildings. abandoned tenement buildings and dilapidated side streets were commonplace throughout the city. the bronx borough alone lost one-third of its population in the 1970’s. the brooklyn neighborhood known as ‘dumbo’ remained uninhabited throughout most of the decade. in lower manhattan the world trade center site was being constructed while deteriorating neighborhoods burned. from 1970-1975 there were 68,456 fires in the bronx alone.6 arson, as a percent of all city fires rose from 1% in the 1960’s to over 7% in the 1970’s.7 landlords would occasionally burn down their own buildings to collect insurance money when they could no longer afford to maintain them. by mid-decade new york city, the global epicenter of capitalism, was sliding inexorably towards municipal bankruptcy. the absurdity that these parcels were all undevelopable—too small, odd-shaped, poorly situated, literally inaccessible from the public rightof-way—as homesteads, estates, or other meaningful forms of human inhabitation while they maintained their apparent exchange value is crucial to the ethos of fake estates. matta-clark was fascinated by the description of these surplus lots as “inaccessible.” from a 1974 interview with liza bear for avalanche, he says: what i basically wanted to do was to designate spaces that wouldn’t be seen and certainly not occupied. buying them was my own take on the strangeness of existing property demarcation lines. property is so all-pervasive. everyone’s notion of ownership is determined by the use-factor.8 an example of what matta-clark might have meant by ‘use-factor’ is offered to us by a story told by one of his colleagues. betsy sussler who accompanied him on one of his 1975 site visits to the queens parcels, that included a 2.55-foot wide strip of land in a 355-foot alley that neighbors had to cross over to enter into their private garages (block 3398, lot 116), remarks that matta-clark: …understood quite well the psychological and political factors involved in walking onto a person’s property to inform them that his 85 isparchitecture.com [matta-clark’s] piece of forgotten land he’d bought was in fact part of their driveway.9 as far as anyone knows matta-clark never enforced his property right to exclude his would-be trespasser neighbors. collectively, these fifteen micro-parcels are important reminders of how the urban world is dissected by an underlying system of property ownership, and the laws and regulations governing their transfer. it is tempting to blame senseless bureaucrats for the existence of these land slivers, but that would be misleading. these parcelfragments are the physical and conceptual residue of the rational machinations of a socially-legitimate process. the name of the collected works given to us by diserens simultaneously highlights the vicissitudes of property ownership in an urban environment where every patch of dirt, no matter how small, is assumed to be a commodity, and it captures the juxtaposition of the real fragmented new york city with the unreal unified new york city of popular imagination. matta-clark was fascinated by the prospect that the mistakes of surveyors and architects might be the genesis of his micro-parcels. after all, it only takes a small surveyor’s error to change a perfect rectangle into an off-kilter trapezoid with an unaccounted-for surplus sliver. while it is tantalizing to consider that professional errors and incompetency might be the source of these land fragments the truth is more telling. and the “error” he points to is much larger than a drafting mistake, or simple math error. contemporary investigations into the title history reveal that these micro-parcels did not come about by accident but instead were the outcome of an intricate system of change in use and ownership—subdivisions and mergers, easements and dedications, road widenings, municipal projects, rural farmland conversions—both public we are brought face-to-face with what are squarely philosophical questions: what exactly is the bearer of value? what is the genuine object we are buying and selling. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 86 f ox and private. matta-clark was equally fascinated with the north american collective imagination about land speculation these parcels signify. the reasons other buyers offered to the new york times reporter carlinsky for buying surplus parcels included: 1) a virginia man who purchased a few small parcels as investments for his children; 2) a man who purchased 20 square foot adjacent to the tiny parcel he already owned in the hopes of selling both to his next door neighbor for a garden; 3) a new york city planner who bought three lots just because he wanted to own a piece of the city he loved; and 4) another man who purchased several parcels as christmas gifts for his friends.10 given these diverse motivations, we are brought face-to-face with what are squarely philosophical questions: what exactly is the bearer of value? what is the genuine object we are buying and selling: is it the actual land with weeds, trees and fences, or the legalistic paraphernalia of title transfer? or is it participation in a cultural process (verging on myth) that supposedly grounds our self-worth? or perhaps it is, as matta-clark seems to have intuited, only as art in the full 1:1 scale gallery photographs he conceived but never executed. by any conventional measure of use the land itself has no real value; its token value is the mere residue of a conceptual framework of ownership to which buyers and sellers are deeply committed. the three-part nature of the work matta-clark envisioned offers important guidance. the ontological distinction between a discernible piece of the earth’s surface and a commodified chunk of “real estate” is crucial. without physical markers such as a surveyor’s benchmark, a flagged property corner, a fence post, or some other naturally occurring thing, we only know that a discernible patch of the physical landscape exists as a “parcel” because of the legal-bureaucratic artifacts that record its existence and location. as frances richard so aptly puts it, “one can stand on a micro-plot and not know it is there.”11 in this scenario, we can own something but not experience it; exchange it but not inhabit it; delineate it but not occupy it; locate it but not enjoy it. with fake estates, and matta-clark’s purchase of micro-parcels useless for any meaningful development, “the absurdity of real estate is laid bare as a bad pun.”12 by engaging in purchase and ownership of these micro-parcels mattaclark sensitizes us to certain absurdities of speculation. namely, 1) the process of buying and selling in the hope of continuously escalating exchange-value is regarded as authoritative even when it produces an irrational or dubious result; and, 2) the process of parcelization is a useful fiction about democratized economic power that helps prop up 87 isparchitecture.com cultural beliefs about value, and about self-worth. the supposition that a normalized process always produces its intended results (“everybody gets a piece of the action”), combined with a slavish adherence to an algorithmic procedure founded (in part) on contradictory assumptions, is the essence of matta-clark’s reductio argument. ontic insecurity: matta-clark’s exquisite corpus as a work of conceptually oriented art fake estates has strong implications for architecture philosophy insofar as it challenges the security of our ontic commitments to what constitutes the ground of possibility whereupon works of architecture are situated. a useful perspective on the theme of ontological insecurity in matta-clark’s work is offered by pamela lee. in object to be destroyed, she argues that his work presupposes the eventuality of its own destruction. extending this idea of ontic insecurity to fake estates is an important step to expanding our understanding of the implications of his acquisition of these micro-parcels. lee’s overall line of argument that matta-clark’s work is best seen through the lens of expenditure or waste rather than destruction or violence is compelling. even though he referred to his principle activity as ‘un-building’, we are not obligated to view it as inherently violent. he did not “destroy” for the sake of destruction, or because he found the world empty of value. mattaclark was no nihilist. through his constant striving to make sense of his surroundings he resisted the notion that we live in a purposeless present. in this regard, jeffrey a. kroessler, in his essay “gordon matta-clark’s moment,” offers the useful insight that matta-clark was an artist re-imagining urban decay and finding the inspiration needed to be an agent of positive transformation.13 because he was fascinated with processes of change, and things that embraced their own fake estates has strong implications for architecture philosophy insofar as it challenges the security of our ontic commitments to what constitutes the ground of possibility whereupon works of architecture are situated. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 88 f ox outmodedness, it is tempting to read matta-clark’s creative output as a monument to entropy. in his early work he explored senescence and decay, and recorded the process and effects of disintegration. yet, he is not making a fetish of a ruinous state. he does not valorize it for its own sake. on the contrary, decay, waste, and disintegration are integral to becoming. contingent circumstance and shifting temporalities characterize his entire output—his work does not lay claim to permanence. his creative practice is not about object-making, or even object-destruction, rather it is about process-intervention. he transformed architectural refuse into reminders of the deeply contradictory impulses of urban development with its deep schism between use-value and exchange-value. seeing the long arc of matta-clark’s creative practice as an intervention into collective practices of waste positions us on a path of resistance that in turn points towards some problems of architectural obsolescence that characterize both fake estates and the building-cuts for which he is most known. fake estates further sharpens our understanding of the difference between inhabited space, the space of social praxis, and abstract space (the universalized “zoned” commodity) at the same time it performs a wonderfully wry commentary on kant’s disinterestedness thesis by taking an object of such intense desire as new york real estate, stripping it of use-value, repackaging it as useless art, and then completing the circle by seducing the gallery-goer for a second go-round with the offer to sell the art. matta-clark’s animus the social geography of an urban place finds its expression in the architecture if we look close enough. as a result of his building-cut work matta-clark had acquired considerable skill in the manual labor of dismantling buildings, working with building materials, and re-capturing architecture-based resources; skills he came to see as relevant to the underserved communities of new york city. in 1977, the year before his untimely death, he was awarded a guggenheim grant for a resource center and environmental youth program for ‘loisada’, the name given to the lower east side by its spanish speaking residents. he used the proceeds to purchase a building on the lower east side. the resource center functioned (1) as a community salvage yard where materials and equipment could be recycled or sold, and (2) as a neighborhood youth training program that taught youth how to renovate and maintain buildings for community use. after his death the center completely disbanded. while matta-clark is remembered for the ethical qualities of 89 isparchitecture.com his dynamic activist persona—his sociability, exuberance, inclusiveness, and tireless engagement—the aesthetic-political qualities of his overt architecturally-themed projects are restive, impatient, stubbornly dissatisfied, vociferous, and uneasy. some of this schism may be due to the deep and abiding animus matta-clark harbored against the architecture profession. even though he was originally trained to be an architect, attending cornell’s school of architecture (1963-1968), matta-clark’s chief aim, according to critics such as yve-alain bois, is to negate the cultural prestige of architecture.14 this view is borne out by mattaclark himself. in a 1976 interview with donald wall in arts magazine, when wall asks what reaction matta-clark got from splitting, his reply is unequivocal: i don’t think most [architects] practitioners are solving anything except how to make a living. architecture is a lackey to big business. it’s an enormously costly undertaking and therefore, like government, comes equipped with its entire panoply of propaganda. i think monolithic idealist problem solving has not only failed to solve the problems but created a dehumanized condition at both a domestic and institutional level.15 one way for us to make sense of matta-clark’s animus would be to view it as his worry that the profession as a whole, at the time anyhow, did not possess a well-formed social conscience. or at least not a conscience he considered relevant to addressing the pressing problems that surrounded him. in one of his written fragments he writes, “empty and neglected structures were a prime reminder of the ongoing fallacy of renewal through modernization.” 16 in his view then, the derelict condition of new york city’s land and buildingstock is emblematic of the state of the profession as a whole, and like so much of capitalist cultural he is not making a fetish of a ruinous state [...] on the contrary, decay, waste, and disintegration are integral to becoming. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 90 f ox production architecture is destined to become waste. so in this way, it is the means of producing architecture, rather than architecture as artifact (glorious, exalted, banal, or otherwise) that is the precise focus of mattaclark’s critique. xavier wrona offers a useful amplification. he writes that for matta-clark, “architecture is not the building but the system that produces a particular kind of building—the order imposed on buildings, not the buildings themselves.”17 fake estates explicitly raises questions about what it means to be a propertied person, to own property, to possess it, to occupy it, to abuse it, to glorify it, to transmogrify it, to transfer it, and to dispense with it as one sees fit. in spite of his personal acquisition of real estate he nonetheless harbored a deep resistance to ideologies of private wealth. he viewed private property and the human isolation he believed it engenders as increasingly unsustainable states, telling donald wall: what i am talking about is the very real, carefully sustained mass schizophrenia in which our individual perceptions are constantly being subverted by industrially controlled media, markets, and corporate interests.18 matta-clark was not enamored of american capitalism, laissezfaire real estate developers, disengaged policy makers, or uncaring slum lords who stood idle while deterioration progressed inexorably to demolition and then to the “solution” of redevelopment. nonetheless, he viewed abandoned buildings through the political lens of liberalism as symptomatic of a socio-political system: (1) that doesn’t look after its everyday citizens by caring for those who cannot care for themselves; (2) that favors the elite at the expense of the general population; and (3) where wealth accumulation is valorized as an end in itself rather than a means to something more worthwhile. instead, to the greatest extent possible, he focused his own efforts on empowering marginalized citizens to take ownership of their neighborhoods. in his words, an urban site ought to be “responsive to the expressive will of its occupants.”19 no doubt, the abstract urban grid is a tool for converting raw land into a commodity. as evidenced by fake estates in which the earth’s surface is reduced to a series of complex abstract and interconnected legalistic property descriptors, an otherwise rational process can, with successive iterations, yield an irrational or dubious outcome. yet, the occasional anomaly is not what obsesses matta-clark. rather, his two-fold reminder is that the usability of a piece of land is necessarily tied to abstract processes of demarcation, ownership, and transfer. second, the rapacious drive 91 isparchitecture.com to accumulate wealth disengages exchange value from the utility of a piece of land. and hence, the ground of architecture is rendered precarious. as lee, rightly observes, “for property is not so much considered a thing at all but a right: a relationship between object and subject structured around terms of personality and consumption.”20 in our era, property has become more than an extension of who we are—it now threatens to define us. this threat continues to deepen, and deepen unevenly across the wealth divide. architectural obsolescence: the eye of the speculator fake estates, far from being a curious leftover sideproject to matta clark’s more well-known building cut projects, is one tent-pole for expressing his overarching concerns with the related ideas of waste and obsolescence. matta-clark’s chief concern with the obsolescence paradigm is that it creates its own set of mythic beliefs by transforming complex cultural processes into ones that seem self-evidently natural, unchangeable, and universal. the false claim that “the new” naturally supersedes “the old” is a longstanding criticism of capitalism. the argument that capitalism sustains itself by promulgating emotional and psychological discontent is another familiar grievance. other commonplace grievances include: everlasting transience; endless replacement; continuous forced supersession; and, rapid and sudden fluctuations in valuation. while the narrative of relentless devaluation and expendability eventuates in waste, it is precisely this narrative of perpetual change the capitalist entrepreneur needs in order to expand consumer demand for the “new now,” and the “next now.” joseph schumpeter, the austrian economist and ardent defender of capitalism, who in 1942 defined capitalism as “creative destruction,” unapologetically embraced the idea that obsolescence is fundamental to ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 92 f ox capitalism. according to schumpeter, entrepreneurial innovation is the vital force behind the progress and instability of capitalism thus explaining boom and bust cycles. creative destruction is thus understood as one of the “iron laws” of capitalism. while capitalist enterprise and its critics have moved beyond schumpeter’s mid-century pronouncements, it seems clear to me that what links matta-clark’s fake estates and his building-cut projects is that both are caught up in this net of “iron laws.” thus, his critical perspective on capitalism remains relevant along with its impact on us. in his recent book obsolescence: an architectural history daniel abramson is succinct, “architecture and its history have lessons to teach about coming to terms with capitalism.”21 he cogently argues that in the united states the idea of architectural obsolescence was birthed by the real estate industry around 1910. since its advent in 1913 when it was created by the 16th amendment to the u.s. constitution, the u.s. tax code tax deduction for asset depreciation has served to reify the abstract concept of obsolescence into dollars and cents. in the dissociation of economic life-span from natural durability, economic obsolescence runs faster than physical decay and this is by design. the life-span tables in the tax code are politically and economically driven to benefit capital. they are not obtained from empirical building science data as to durability and structural integrity of the underlying architectural asset. so, the cycle of real estate investment, disinvestment, and reinvestment operates entirely independent of naturalized obsolescence. unlike most material objects and consumer goods, land and works of architecture while easily neglected, abandoned, or de-valued are not easily discarded. the invention of architectural obsolescence normalized capitalism’s inclinations and offers a convenient tidy rationale for the chaotic changes it tends to foster. though matta-clark is not the first artist to recognize problems with the myth of obsolescence and its implications for the production and consumption of architectural objects, he is certainly the first to attack it with crowbars and power saws. physical mortality is relatively predictable, whereas de-valuation arising from highly contingent market circumstance is not. to be sure, the impermanence of the built environment is the condition of possibility for virtually all of matta-clark’s creative output including fake estates. while he purchased these micro-parcels amidst the wholesale abandonment of erstwhile usable land and buildings it is precisely this conceptual framework—that architectural change necessarily requires wholesale or widespread expendability—that matta-clark wants to criticize in all his 93 isparchitecture.com projects. waste and obsolescence in architecture while i think it is clear that matta-clark understands (if only inchoately so) the distinction between value-extraction and value-creation, and he rightly identifies many of the problems associated with value-extraction, he under-appreciates or misapprehends the potential pitfalls associated with value-creation as a tool for architectural change. these potential pitfalls also have important implications for the architect-speculator relationship. since the early decades of the twentieth century the architectural community’s response to obsolescence runs the gamut from denial through resistance to reluctant acceptance to enthusiastic embrace. throughout most of architectural history the temporal horizon for works of architecture was characterized by gradualism—the desire for permanence but acceptance of gradual change as inevitable. the past was always present and time passed slowly. beginning with the twentieth century fixity, permanence, and gradualism began to recede. abramson puts it this way, “only in the twentieth century did a place of unending ceaseless change in the built environment come to be understood as the new normal.”22 whether, and under what circumstances, the political question of whether land parcelization is reversible gets overlooked and remains undertheorized in fake estates. though a man of strong politics, matta-clark’s work wants to get at the existential assumptions concerning ownership, value and, use underlying the political. similar to archeological data, loss of information about the past is one of the pitfalls of real estate speculation as it endeavors to create economic value. costs associated with these pitfalls are scarcely accounted for in development proformas or financial balance though matta-clark is not the first artist to recognize problems with the myth of obsolescence and its implications for the production and consumption of architectural objects, he is certainly the first to attack it with crowbars and power saws. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 94 f ox sheets. few real estate speculators factor ‘externalities’ such as the loss of historical-architectural data into their economic calculations. from an ontological perspective, obsolescence is a species of impermanence whose discourse asks us to actively disengage from pastbeing while encouraging us to privilege incipient, emergent-being. since their economic power is recorded temporally in architectural obsolescence, the speculator in essence presents us with a bogus historical narrative that is a false dichotomy: either passively acquiesce to the relics of an ossified dysfunctional past, or aggressively seek economic advantage over others for control of a would-be prosperous future. although we in the architectural community are loath to admit it, and at times quick to justify it, the profession’s incessant drive towards novelty, experimentation, and the pursuit of ever-more dramatic three-dimensional form helps fuel architectural obsolescence. our prevalent talk of the ‘relevant’ with its emergent-minded focus on ‘the germane’, ‘the immediate’, ‘the topical’, ‘the fresh’, ‘the cutting-edge’, ‘of the moment’, infuses our theory with enticing rhetoric, and inflects practice towards their seductions as mattaclark intimates. to the extent that we in the architectural community accept this false dichotomy by embracing a speculatively-driven obsolescence narrative, then yes, we are part of the problem. those of us in the architecture philosophy community working to foster awareness of social justice issues need to sharpen our attitudes about the temporal composition of the future, the present, and the past. this implies the abiding necessity for a genuine understanding of the temporal processes that constitute the milieu in which we think and act. there is of course, the perennial uncertainty about what future generations will deem relevant. we can never know with certainty just what it is that our future selves will value that our present selves do not. under the influence of disembodied market forces, architectural obsolescence would appear to transcend politics, state influence, and individual subjective interest. it is as if human worth is being judged entirely by “objective” external standards not of human construction. in short, under speculation human dignity is relegated to the sidelines. this should not be the case. it is a mistake to portray what is essentially a complex series of interconnected value judgments as if they are disembodied objective quantifiable natural laws, because this caricature wrongly masks the essential human agency of the ones doing the judging—we the living. it is of just this sort of disempowerment that matta-clark warns. fake estates is simultaneously comic and tragic. tragic because the notion of a propertied estate as the summative expression of human worth propels the 95 isparchitecture.com continued squandering of natural and architectural resources, and the splintering of the social space that grounds such worth. comic—comically absurd— because the process of speculation continues to generate more of the same. endnotes 1. les leopold offers an abundance of empirical data on the accelerating u.s. wealth gap in runaway inequality: an activist’s guide to economic justice, new york: labor institute press, 2015. 2. richard, frances. “mythology: the evolution of fakes estates, part ii,” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard, 51-61. new york: cabinet books, 2005., p. 53. 3. richard, frances. “space between places: the evolution of fake estates, part i,” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard, 38-50. new york: cabinet books, 2005. p. 40. 4. carlinsky, dan. “ ‘sliver’ buyers have a field day at city sales,” new york times. october 14, 1973. http:// www.nytimes.com/1973/10/14/archives/ sliver-buyers-have-a-fieldday. (accessed january 6, 2018). 5. ibid. 6. bessa, antonio sergio and jessamyn fiore. gordon matta-clark: anarchitect. new york: the bronx museum of the arts, 2017., p. 10. 7. see, http:// “all-that-is-interesting.com/1970snew york photos”, (accessed july 5, 2018) and https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/ nyregion/30books.html (accessed july 5, 2018) 8. richard, frances. “remove your house: gordon matta-clark’s physical poetics,” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard, 62-71. new york: cabinet books, 2005. p. 65. 9. richard, frances. “space between place,” p. 47. 10. carlinsky, “ ‘sliver’ buyers have a field day at city sales.” 11.richard, frances. “remove your house,” p. 66. 12. lee, pamela m. object to be destroyed: the work of gordon mattaclark. cambridge, ma: mit press, 2000., p. 103. 13. kroessler, jeffrey a. “gordon matta-clark’s moment.” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard. new york: cabinet books, 2005. p. 37. 14. bois, yve-alain and rosalind e. krauss. formless: a user’s guide. new york: zone books, 1997, p. 120. 15. diserens, corrinne. ed. gordon matta-clark. new york: phaidon press, 2003., p. 188. 16. lee, p. 94. 17. wrona, xavier. “urbanism and revolution: 2 or 3 things about gordon matta-clark and georges bataille.” in gordon matta-clark: anarchitect, ed. antonio sergio bessa and jessamyn fiore, new york: the bronx museum of the arts, 2017, p. 96. 18. diserens, gordon matta-clark. p. 182. 19. johnson, cara m. “directing energy: gordon matta-clark’s pursuit of social sculpture.” in gordon matta-clark: anarchitect, ed. antonio sergio bessa and jessamyn fiore, new york: the bronx museum of the arts, 2017, p. 52. 20. lee, p. 109. 21. abramson, daniel m. obsolescence: an architectural history. chicago: university of chicago press, 2016, p. 7. 22. abramson, p. 14. m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 96 isparchitecture.com those of us who had given up on talk of essences, because they always seem to depend on some inaccessible, mystifying core, are in for a pleasant reawakening. essence(s) is(are) back. in retrospect, this turn was inevitable. continential philosophy’s militant perspectivalism, starting with nietzsche, was bound to invite a backlash. meanwhile, an influential cohort of architects has become frustrated “that architecture is increasingly justified solely by its relations and not by its own particular and autonomous qualities.”1 that is to say, to the degree that architecture is justified by its performance, it recedes into the background as a mere tool, as ‘equipment’ in heideggerian terms, and it loses its potential as a foreground element in the process. concerns for architecture’s autonomy usually emanate from economic recessions, but, interestingly, not this time. times are good in the profession, architects have plenty of work, and yet their ambitions for their work are still frustrated. this suggests that something else is afoot. that something else may be the sheer oppressive weight of performance expectations these days: climate, social betterment, profit motives, work productivity, context, and more besides that coalesce to crowd out conceptions of what architecture can be by those of what it facilitates. those pushing the performative aspects of architecture think that giving up a little autonomy for a lot more relevance is well worth the trade. but it is a question of degree. thus, architecture and philosophy have found editorial: essence and architecture tom spector ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 6 ed it or ia l new common ground. each author in this volume approaches the topic of essence uniquely in order to demystify what they see as a thoroughly useful concept. the opening essay, benjamin bross’s essentialism and spatial (re) production, argues that the essence of space and place does not have to be approached holistically but can be usefully analyzed into component parts without losing the overall in the process. so, for example, a door: it’s formal properties are an obvious source of its essence. but also, what is its final cause--what was it brought into the world to do? what is its efficient cause--who creates it and how do they do this? and what are its temporal properties both in its production and its use over time? taken together, he thinks, these properties tell us the door’s essence in a way that becomes normative. that is, they help us tell a good one from a bad one. clearly, bross is attempting an essentialism quite different from the one the pragmatist tradition sought so strenuosly to put to bed. pragmists disliked essences because they seemed to presume a metaphysics of objects beyond all human intentions that in turn required a complicated epistemology merely to explain how we come to know of these essences. bross’s project is perhaps better thought of as determining an object’s functional essence—a much more tractable problem. his ultimate purpose is to identify the “essential parts (that) can contribute to the continuation and innovation of spatial production.” in ashley woodward’s explanation of jean-françois lyotard’s thoughts about architecture, it is the keenly felt absence of what at one time, and in a more hospitable context, were the essential boundaries of domesticity and of the town that drive his thinking about architecture. in the face of an example such as southern california, woodward explains, lyotard is dismayed that “space is no longer between a ‘here’ (home) and ‘elsewhere’ – the border zone seems to have expanded indefinitely, such that ‘there is nothing left but surroundings.’” dismayed, and yet simultaneously (and so typically lyotardian) he is suspicious that nostalgia for those idealized enclosures may lead to violence against perceived others. certainly, recent refugee crises at the u. s. border with mexico and across europe testify to the reality of such suspicions. since idealizations of cities are inherently suspicious in his view, architects should eschew projects that trade in such wishful thinking in favor of “non-projects” born out of an attitude of non-domination over others. in case object oriented ontology (ooo), as promoted by graham harman and others, has passed underneath the reader’s attention, the conversation here transcribed between harman and simon weir will 7 isparchitecture.com serve as a good introduction to the thought of sciarc’s distinguished professor of philosophy (and more recently, the school’s liberal arts coordinator.) among the tenets of ooo is that objects have qualities, but they cannot be reduced to their changeable qualities, hence they have an essence. humans are also objects--a realization that should lead to collapse of the subject-object distinction and towards a de-anthropocentric outlook. harman recognizes the roots of these ideas in aristotle, but also that he departs from aristotle. “i emphasize the inaccessible elusiveness of real objects, and while aristotle has more awareness of that than many people realize, he does not emphasize the gap between the mind and the object to the same extent that ooo does (coming as we do after both kant and heidegger).” an important interest in ooo for architects should come from its promise of restoring a degree of non-instrumental dignity to buildings. although created by humans and for humans, once created, buildings have their own trajectories that are impossible to reduce to the intentions of any particular human constituency. as harman asserts, “you just can’t reduce any object, including an architectural one, to its backstory as a project.”as mark foster gage observes of the attraction of ooo: “that architecture and discrete buildings are connected to the larger world is not in dispute, but whether buildings can be legitimized as architecture by these relations should be.”2 take, for example, a building’s leed score, carbon neutrality or other measures of its environmental performance. no level of environmental sensitivity it exhibits could actually justify its existence, because the ultimate environmental sensitivity is to not exist in the first place. the reasonable conclusion to draw then, is that a work of architecture must justify itself qua architecture—assuming we understand and can defend what that means. because a work of architecture’s essence exceeds (or withdraws from)all harman recognizes the roots of these ideas in aristotle, but also that he departs from aristotle. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 8 ed it or ia l attempts to definitively encapsulate it, including attempts by its creators, it is suggested that architects do well to allude to what it might be. a further aspect of the interest in ooo for architecture, however, is not so much in the building objects themselves, but in what harman postulates happens when two objects collide or otherwise make contact. a sensual object functioning as an intermediary emerges from these collisions. architects are dreamers of both types of objects. to round out this foray into the thought of graham harman is a book review of a volume edited by joseph bedford on the relevance of ooo for an architectural audience entitled is there an object oriented architecture? engaging graham harman. taken together, the pieces in this issue begin to explore both the benefits and hazards, what is potentialy gained and what may be lost, when architecture deals in essences and when essentials are applied to architecture. while each essay chips away at the mystique that often accompanies talk of essences, and in the process allays some concerns, what is not yet settled, however, is whether those concerns can be dispelled altogether. this issue, 5.2, with fewer essays than past issues, has given architecture philosophy a chance to experiment with longer-form pieces. it’s production also crosses paths with the 5th biannual ispa conference (postponed one year by covid) held at monte veritá overlooking lake maggiore in ascona switzerland. despite travel restrictions and other uncertainties, the conference was an impressive demonstration of both ispa’s staying power and its creativity. by the time this issue is in print, work will have begun on readying the thoughts and ideas for print emanating from that successful event. endnotes 1. mark foster gage, “killing simplicity: object-oriented philosophy in architecture,” log 33. 2015, 95. 2. gage, 100. isparchitecture.com we are living through a radicalized, unsettling moment in western politics as what seemed the drift of history towards democracy, greater individual freedoms, increased fairness and greater international cooperation is at least temporarily reversed. as we finished production of this issue, ispa was also concluding its 4th biennial conference at a most overtly political venue— the united states air force academy—which is simultaneously a mecca for modern architecture lovers as well as an indisputable seat of the projection of american power. this fact was underscored as our philosophical discussions were occasionally interrupted by fighter jets buzzing the campus. thus, it should make sense that even in the slow-moving world of applied philosophy, the times would lead us to produce this most overtly political issue. this development was not by design but rather by accretion—but one we eventually embraced as a legitimate extension of the exploration of the conjunction of architecture and philosophy. the issue begins at a broadly theoretical level but gradually becomes more pointedly critical culminating in a first-ever (for architecture philosophy) open letter to the architecture establishment. to begin, sean akhane-bryen and chris l. smith take up the concept of abjection in “the space of the lacerated subject.” as theorized by julia kristeva, abjection is the necessary demarcation process, one that begins in infancy, of distancing oneself from what is not true and proper to the individual. but this process is susceptible to cooption. architecture can be pressed into the our philosophical discussions were occasionally interrupted by fighter jets buzzing the campus “ ” architecture and the political tom spector ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 6 ed it or ia l service of abjective strategies to banish difference or conversely, to create totalizing environments that serve power. architecture, they argue, is not only a “potential abject, but also the instrument or vector of abjection.” bataille’s writings on architecture and abjection are employed to craft an alternative to bad abjective strategies. in a related vein, matt waggoner discusses adorno’s solution to the problem of living in a system of unfair power relations as the imperative “how not to be at home in one’s home.” adorno made no real distinction between the problems of dwelling and morality. waggoner argues that, for adorno, “the proper relation (to property in an age of inextricable entanglement with illegitimate power relations is)…to refuse the logic of possession and of exclusive habitation by assuming the status of a visitor in one’s own home.” given the many truly awful immigrant and refugee crises across the world, this imperative applies at least as pointedly to the dilemmas of international immigration as it does to making room for strangers in more intimate settings. given loos’ famous assertion that “only a very small part of architecture belongs to the realm of art: the tomb and the monument” we thought it both appropriate and, given events in charlottesville, virginia in 2017, timely, to include roger paden’s thoughtful proposals for the treatment of confederate monuments in american towns in “the use and abuse of historical monuments for life.” here, paden resources nietzsche, perhaps an initially unlikely choice, to help him propose a way out of the dichotomy presented between the antiquarians (who engage history as connoisseurs) and the revisionists (who advocate removal of such monuments altogether) with an approach that “serves life” by incorporating such monuments into larger works. while the apdsr (architects planners and designers for social responsibility) has urged the american institute of architects to take an ethical stance against the design of prisons for solitary confinement and capital punishment, the institute has resisted getting drawn into what it sees as a divisive issue. for dominique moran yvonne jewkes and colin lorne, this situation is just another example of architects’ aversion to moral introspection. “designing for imprisonment,” discusses the current state of architects’ capacity for moral leadership by using the controversy over prison design as centerpiece. in the spirit of their essay, the open letter to the american institute of architects following moran’s essay written by one of the editors and a group of his students makes a moral case that the institute should come down decisively against the design of prisons for the torturous practice of long-term solitary confinement. the intention of this piece is not to create a litmus test for readers but to explore 7 isparchitecture.com legitimate implications of moral philosophy applied to architecture. we hope it opens new avenues for reader response. following this plea to the architecture profession, brian irwin’s “architecture as participation in the world: merleau-ponty, wölfflin, and the bodily experience of the built environment” brings the essays back to a more serene, hope-filled tenor as he invites the reader to consider the renewed possibilities for participating in, instead of visually consuming, architecture by combining insights by the great phenomenologist with those of the great architectural historian. the issue concludes with two book reviews: a review of david wang’s the philosophy of chinese architecture by thorsten botz-bornstein and a review of steven vogel’s thinking like a mall. taken together, these essays make a case for the benefits of the philosophical consideration of the political dimensions of architecture. they also form something of a bridge between the bamberg essays in volumes 3.1 and 3.2, focussed on the human in architecture, and the next planned volume emanating from the colorado springs conference. they have certainly helped demarcate new areas from which to explore the conjunction of architecture and philosophy. tom spector taken together, these essays make a case for the benefits of the philosophical consideration of the political dimensions of architecture “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 8 ed it or ia l semiotic naturalism in architecture theory reidar due this paper seeks to present a kind of skeptical, and, in an indirect way, wittgensteinian perspective upon purpose and meaning in architecture. the argument presented here revolves around the two notions that, first, there are different categories, which we have available for making architecture seem intelligible to us, and, second, that there are distinct historical discourses in which architecture has been made intelligible in specific ways. the implication of this discourse argument will be a skepticism regarding the prospect of an encompassing theory of architecture, or a theory that would fully and adequately capture the purpose and significance of individual buildings. this skeptical argument will build around a distinction i will make between what a rational subject can perceive and what can be said about it—a distinction based on gilles deleuze’s distinction between the visible and the sayable. it is argued that there are four categories of things that can be said about architecture: construction, style, use, and ideology, and that a difficulty of architecture theory is the possible unification of these categories. the problem of unity, it is argued, has been obscured by the tradition of architecture interpretation originating in hegel, and which implies that there is an unproblematic semiotic relationship between construction, style, and meaning such that construction serves the purpose of style and style serves the purpose of embodying the collective aspirations of a community. thinking through this problem in terms of wittgenstein’s philosophy of language will allow us to defamilarize the problem of unity ... has been obscured by the tradition of architecture interpretation originating in hegel “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 192 du e ourselves from the notions that there could be a natural relation between style and meaning in architecture and that there could be an encompassing discourse on architecture such that all the categories of what can be said about buildings would be articulated within a unifying concept. the following paper thus presents the reasons one might have for being skeptical about a theoretical discourse concerning architecture that would do justice to its totality of significance. this discourse skepticism is, it must be said, at one remove from descriptive or prescriptive statements about particular buildings or building styles. thus, unlike, tafuri for instance, philosophy is not claimed (or a theoretical argument grounded in philosophy) is not claimed as assuming the normative power of grading the merits of individual buildings according to general criteria. the relevance of the skeptical program for architectural practice and architectural practitioners is thus indirect. that is not to say, this skepticism about meaning is without consequence for architectural practice. to say it more bluntly, it is believed that modernism and its avatars—functionalism, deconstruction, and the ‘iconic’ style of building—have overstated the power of theory within building practice. the modernist program of the early twentieth century and its continuation in architecture theory of our time can be defined as the effort to provide an aesthetic rationale for an industrial process of production and then to amplify this aesthetic program within a fitting social ideology: concrete is an industrial construction tool. concrete produces an anti-ornamental aesthetic. the anti-ornamental aesthetic is egalitarian. this would be the basic pattern of argument. this theoretical assertiveness and this trajectory from construction—through style to ideology—relies on a conception of the unity between style and meaning, which is herein called semiotic naturalism and which, it is argued, is problematic. meaning skepticism in wittgenstein wittgenstein exhorts us to be skeptical about the notion that there is, or that there must be, some such entity as meaning in order for language to be meaningful [1]. for language to make sense, does not in turn mean that there is a sense which language makes and which we, the linguists or philosophers, could subsequently isolate and study as if it were a selfcontained mental object. it is not clear from wittgenstein’s texts, or from the scholarly interpretations of his texts, what the implication would be of holding this skepticism about meaning. the pragmatic and anti-theoretical stance pervading the philosophical investigations sits uncomfortably with the extraordinary ingenuity of wittgenstein’s thought experiments and search for candidates that purportedly should satisfy justificatory or foundational 193 isparchitecture.com criteria, but which under his skeptical scrutiny always collapse [2]. this painstaking search reveals something other than mere opposition to particular theoretical positions, conceptions of meaning, or conceptions of consciousness. it reveals an attitude of puzzlement or bewilderment regarding that which seems natural. it is true, of course, that wittgenstein’s puritanical sensibility would lead him to search for a higher, simpler, or more essential naturalness in which our thoughts about language would contain nothing superfluous [3]. this sensibility is evident in different ways in both the tractatus and the investigations, but in the latter text, his own method of skeptical scrutiny runs counter to the ideal of simplicity. the significance and purpose of a building is similar to meaning in wittgenstein’s sense in that within a natural, non-skeptical attitude we may think that there is a purpose or a significance that we can isolate intellectually and think about. it is argued that just as wittgenstein encourages us to be skeptical about meaning as an isolated ideal entity, we should also problematize the notion of purpose as a unifying meta-category within the architecture discourse. this problem is addressed in terms of distinct categories and with reference to distinct discourses in which architecture has been made intelligible, or in which one has sought to make architecture intelligible. the semiotic principles at work in these efforts at making architecture intelligible are questioned and problematized. hegel and the semiotics of architecture in studying modern architecture theory, one cannot fail to notice that particular assumptions are made again and again regarding the purpose of architecture. these assumptions are semiotic. the philosophical origin of the semiotic assumptions appears to be hegel’s theory of architecture in his lectures on aesthetics as embodying collective modernism and its avatars ... have overstated the power of theory within building practice “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 194 du e beliefs [4]. the legacy of hegel is rooted in the thought that buildings are meaningful because they are bearers of shared, historically specific aspirations, which make up their purpose and their meaning. within the hegelian perspective, purpose and meaning appear identical, or at least convergent. the hegelian legacy is referred to as ‘semiotic naturalism’ because it consists in taking for granted that buildings convey meaning and that these meanings can be clearly and univocally determined. for instance, in historical research the following is a common thought formation: there is here a natural, that is, non-problematic relationship between a presupposed cultural signified and the concept of the building as signifier. this way of thinking leads us to a view in which style choices such as choices of ornamentation, referring to the three orders of antiquity, or choices concerning internal spatial disposition between rooms, or choices of materials, or even the relation of a building to its surroundings, can be reconstructed as having been made for reasons that are culturally transparent. the building may not be a sign in the sense of a message or a tool of communication, but it appears as a depository of cultural meanings. the cultural meanings can be of various kinds: religious, political, social, etc. the argument for a distrust in this semiotic principle will be given in the last section of this article, where the ideological positions taken in alberti’s theory of architecture are discussed. if the assumption of cultural continuity between construction, style, and ideological meaning is broken, so is also the idea of a building’s cultural intelligibility and transparent readability. one may also say that this skeptical approach to ideology is directly opposed to the marxist social and contextual reading proposed for instance by tafuri. when hegel writes about religious medieval architecture he is inspired by winckelmann’s idealization of greek civilization on the one hand, and guided, on the other, by his own notion that the european middle ages was a spiritually saturated period [5]. his idea of churches summing up the spirit of a community subsequently became influential in architecture theory as a basic semiotic premise. the premise was taken to mean that buildings are constructs made within, for, and in some cases, by a community. that buildings are successful to the extent that they express the beliefs of that community. one follower of this hegelian perspective is the twentieth century architecture historian christian norberg-shulz. in his synthesis, meaning in western architecture, he presents architecture as a cultural response to a given environment. according to this model, the succession of civilizations 195 isparchitecture.com presents different solutions to the question of how to create, and articulate a meaningful space. he describes how, in other words, to appropriate the natural environment and integrate it into forms of construction, that are not merely monumental and not entirely aloof from their surroundings. a less idealistic, more empirically historicist, but also implicitly marxist, account of meaning in architecture is tafuri’s analysis of post-war italian architecture [6]. the analysis is committed to a normative idea of social progress, which is used as a benchmark and tool of distinction for evaluating and comparing social building projects. some buildings are good because they have a style, which implies a commitment to modernity, while other buildings imply a more muted position. tafuri also evaluates projects in the context of a wider historical narrative. in tafuri’s account of italian architects’ ideological responses to urbanization, he envisaged architectural and urban design as embodying rival propositions around the notion of progress. in hegel, norberg-shulz, and tafuri we arrive at the position that buildings are made for ideological purposes and that, in this, they carry meaning. for hegel, buildings are meaningful when they embody religious beliefs. for norberg-shulz, buildings are meaningful when they articulate and appropriate a space. for tafuri, buildings, or design projects, are like actions according to jean-paul sartre: buildings take sides in an ideological battle between progress and reaction [7]. the different approaches to architecture from a historicist, phenomenological, and marxist perspective shares the assumption that the relationship between architectural style and architectural construction—as well as the relationship between these two and whatever can be said about the meaning or significance of a building—is obvious. it is obvious, according to hegel, that aesthetic form expresses a moral ideal. within the hegelian perspective, purpose and meaning appear identical, or at least convergent “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 196 du e it is obvious, for tafuri, that design choice expresses a stance with regard to the opposition between modernity and reaction. it is this obviousness or naturalness of meaning that is problematic and which wittgenstein helps us to think of as problematic. the assumption that buildings and building design must have a cultural meaning is not self-evident. at least, this is what this paper goes on to argue—but in doing so it will be helpful to return to wittgenstein. wittgensteinian dialectic to approach the assumptions and the semiotic naturalism of certain kinds of architecture theory, it is useful to return to wittgenstein to draw from another more specific trait of his thinking in the investigations. the trait of interest is a methodological trait. rather than putting forward views directly and systematically, his thought moves dialectically in relation to a number of putative theories presented in rudimentary form—the most famous of which is the so-called private language argument. the movement through, or via, alternative and rival theoretical scenarios has the obvious advantage over a straightforwardly systematic discourse in that it avoids, or at least postpones, the petition of principle inherent in any dogmatic statement of a systematic set of propositions: as soon as there is a starting-point, something must have been assumed which is not quite explicit in the self-justification of the system. at the outset, the position will not be argued from the plane of a specific conception of architectural meaning. in itself, the argument from potential scenarios has the advantage of bringing into play, simultaneously, different theoretical possibilities and thus to highlighting the element of choice in the formulation of a theory. in this paper on semiotic naturalism, and an alternative to semiotic naturalism, a non-natural and less obvious, less straightforward understanding of the meaning relation in architecture is unfolded, one that is manifest in a certain kind of architecture history. next, semiotic naturalism as consisting of a set of potential scenarios, or theoretical propositions, indirectly addressing a certain semiotic question of intelligibility is considered. categories of architecture discourse we can now think of the hegelian tradition of semiotic naturalism as consisting of alternative theoretical propositions. these are all predicated on the assumption that the problem of how to articulate intellectual and visible space has already been solved, or that it need not emerge. in order to analyze these assumptions closely, we need to consider the categories within 197 isparchitecture.com which we speak about architecture. for architecture is only, and can only become, intelligible in terms of the things which we can say about it. anything we may predicate belongs to some kind of category. the question would be, therefore, what are the discourse categories relevant to architecture? does architectural discourse, that is, the kind of language which seeks to make architecture intelligible, possess its own distinct categories or does it employ categories that are common to architecture and art, architecture and the city, architecture and society, and so on? before suggesting an answer to this question, one can take as an example of a category problem, the concept of modernity. now, we may think of many different sorts of things as modern, for instance, in no apparent order: the modern state, modern lifestyle, modern painting, modern technology. it is clear that within a general historical narrative, all these different phenomena could somehow be related. it is further clear that by doing so the historian will have to make certain fundamental methodological choices regarding the relationship, for instance, between society and politics, between science and society, or between the social and the aesthetic. these are precisely category questions. all of the examples above further present a relevance to the question of architecture discourse in that architecture could be said to have something in common with all of them. one could write monographs on the relationship between the modern state and modern architecture or on the relationship between modern lifestyle and modern architecture. the issue of modernity and the category questions it immediately raises are thus apt at bringing out the precarious ontological status of the phenomenon of architecture as it exists somewhere between art and society. the ontological precariousness is another problem for the naturalist semiotician, for it gives rise to semiotic the assumption that buildings and building design must have cultural meaning is not self-evident “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 198 du e problems of classification. if architecture is like painting, if le corbusier is like picasso, one set of questions concerning meaning will arise. if on the other hand architecture is technology, if mies van der rohe is the apogee of the historical development that produced high speed trains and motorways, another, entirely different set of meaning questions will ensue. the precarious ontological status has to do with the relationship between the primary categories within which we can talk about buildings: construction, style, ideology, and use. it is difficult to conceive of anything that can be said about buildings that does not belong within any of these four categories. it is also difficult to think of a principle according to which we could identify their unity. if we think of the development of architecture theory since the renaissance we find a gradual shift in the relationship between these categories and their relative importance. we also find different efforts at identifying a unity between them. alberti’s work is often considered as marking the beginning of modern architecture theory and his primary focus is construction—but he also introduces the notion of the importance of architecture for human life. the notion is referred to as ideology so in order to distance this analysis from tafuri’s more prescriptive notion of ideology, which is based on a normative battle between socially modern ideas and socially reactionary ideas. at the end of the 16th century, palladio writes about construction in terms of a prescriptive notion of style. in the course of the eighteenth century and in response to the need for domestic houses for a bourgeoisie oriented toward comfort rather than ostentation, architecture theory becomes concerned with pragmatic questions of what is pleasant and practical. issues of style will thus be interpreted in terms of ideological questions concerning use. in twentieth century architectural modernism there is the effort to integrate construction, style, and an ideology of use. le corbusier is famously prescriptive in his ideas of use, and the functionalist school equally presents a formidable unity of construction principles, aesthetic norms, and norms of social life: functions are finite and simple and correspond to a clarity of design, and it is inconceivable that the purpose of a building could be to enhance a messy overlap between many kinds of activities in the manner, say, of a medieval city. the latest modernists, the so-called deconstructionist bernard tschumi and post-modern koolhaas, seek to explore the relationship between construction, style, and ideology while arguing—against functionalism— neither in terms of style nor in terms of use but in terms of a direct relationship between construction and ideology. the ideological principle is in both cases one of freedom of creation. tschumi’s notion that the 199 isparchitecture.com basic grammar of buildings, such as walls and roof, is open to question or his embrace of the principle of the grid in his parc de la villette project implies that construction dictates style and use. koolhaas’ surreal conception of new york as a place designed by the settlers for a future invention and use challenges the functionalist principle that we already know what use is, or should be. this brief sketch of the history of architecture theory and the shifting relations between categories is meant to indicate the motivation behind semiotic naturalism. norberg-shulz and heidegger the grand synthesis of norberg-shulz is based on the idea that the categories of construction and style are inseparable and that both find a common expression in the context of a natural environment, which architecture has the mission to order, manage, structure, in short, articulate. the environmental aesthetic synthesis does indeed make the architecture of different epochs appear purposeful, and in a sense meaningful, as each epoch with its characteristic and distinct style and construction method, appears to offer fresh solutions to the environmental, or one might say anthropological, problem of man’s relation to, and management of, his physical surroundings. norberg-shulz’s theoretical position is referred to here in some detail because it constitutes a particularly explicit and ambitious formulation of semiotic naturalism. with his aesthetic and spatial understanding of heidegger’s phenomenology, norberg-shulz presents a theoretical position that is much more sophisticated and detailed than the vague philosophical reflections on building and living put forward by heidegger himself in his famous article “bauen wohnen denken” from 1951 [8]. in the article, heidegger develops a rhetorical context in which the phenomenon of architecture the precarious ontological status has to do with the relationship between the primary categories within which we can talk about buildings “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 200 du e appears anonymous and traditional, as something objectively manifest—in the way of having already been made—rather than as something planned or invented on the basis of style and construction choices. norberg-shulz, on the other hand, keeps the door open to the perspective of the practicing architect and is attuned, with his flexible concept of articulation, to the element of choice in architectural creation. at the same time, choices appear in retrospect to be culturally coterminous with other contemporary choices: this does not imply that the individual choice is determined by collective beliefs, perhaps, but it at least means that we cannot make sense of the individual choice outside of the context of the culture with which it is contemporary. formulated thus blandly, architecture historians might agree with this principle, but it implies the attribution of a degree of internal coherence to architecture, which is perhaps excessive and which does not do justice to the multiple contingencies of architectural creation. the naturalist assumption norberg-shulz makes is that architecture is successful always or that architecture is identical with successful architecture. there is no reflection upon the relationship between vernacular or folk architecture and stand-alone, deliberately conceived constructions. there is scant reflection on the relation between public and domestic space, since his focus is religious and political architecture: building on a grand scale. in this identification between the general concept of architecture and the narrower, normatively charged notion of successful architecture, norbergshulz turns out to be close to heidegger. for in heidegger we see that the position of normative discrimination between different buildings in terms of their aesthetic merit is problematic. for such a normative aesthetic authority implies that the power of viewing and thinking of an individual subject is somehow higher than the weight of tradition. yet, heidegger would exhort us to think of architecture as a kind of prolongation of the natural environment. buildings and bridges are there in our midst. they impose themselves upon us and create a coherent space and landscape, but they do not offer themselves to judgment. in other words, judgment is not the most relevant attitude that we can have towards them. thus, the aesthetic perspective which privileges style and, on the other hand, the construction perspective, which evaluates craft and technique, are both rendered irrelevant to a large extent within the rhetorical space that heidegger creates for architecture. what heidegger and norbergshulz share is thus a kind of transcendental perspective where the activity of making buildings, on the one hand, and the activity of perceiving and judging them, on the other, are set aside. the phenomenological method consists in part in the transcendental. by putting aside certain 201 isparchitecture.com questions—such as empirical causality—other questions, concerning meaning or the essential properties of phenomena can come into view. in the field of architecture theory, this phenomenological essentialism has the authoritarian implication that aesthetic and ideological discussion will appear irrelevant. architecture appears in its history as a kind of general anthropological phenomenon. it manifests itself outside of the distinctions and disagreements which individuals can make, and which would form the topic of theoretical discussions among architects. cultural intentionality normative or evaluative discussions and reflections appear in the history of architecture in two distinct forms. on the one hand is the discipline of architecture history, which develops as a part of art history, largely in the course of the twentieth century. on the other hand is the kind of architecture theory that is produced by architects. the analysis herein will attend to the former first and come back to the latter at the end of this article. architecture history has been practiced in different rhetorical and methodological modes in different countries, with italian architecture history often being attentive to craft, whereas the german tradition has been predominantly style, and the anglo-american tradition of recent years being positivist and contextualist. the analysis is now primarily focused on the naturalist semiotic assumptions of contextual architecture history. a prominent example of the naturalist semiotic method is ákos moravánszky’s competing visions text devoted to the themes of eclecticism and modernism in large cities of central europe during the early twentieth century [9]. in this work, he reconstructs a complex cultural intentionality underlying the making of individual buildings by the preeminent architects of the time. a normative aesthetic authority implies that the power of viewing and thinking of an individual subject is somehow higher than the weight of tradition “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 202 du e moravánszky’s account keeps alive both the notion of individual creation and the notion of collective belief, a balance which was not achieved in the synthesis of norberg-shulz. he is able to correlate specific choices of ornament or construction with general aesthetic and ideological currents prevalent at the time the building was conceived so as to demonstrate how general trends are taken up and inflected by the personality of individual architects. the architects, moravánszky argues, impose their own personality and idiosyncrasies upon the ideas made available to them in the surrounding culture. the subtle, multifactorial historical approach cannot properly be named simply contextual or positivist, since it is carried by a phenomenological idea, similar to that of norberg-shulz. the complexity of the notion is captured in the title of the book, competing visions. at the horizon of the study is principally the philosophical idea that architecture embodies a vision. the vision is both aesthetic and moral. it is embedded in style and construction. it involves an open question as to what constitutes modernity. it concerns the historical development of large cities and brings into view questions of how one should live in modern society. moravánszky is some senses similar to norberg-shulz in thinking of architecture as a sort of synthesis, but differs from norberg-shulz in that the arena of such a synthesis is neither the appropriation of space nor the articulation of space through choices of construction and style. the arena of synthesis is instead the relationship, that the historian reconstructs, between style and ideology. the relationship, once it is painstakingly reconstructed, can be retrospectively attributed to the agents—the architects and theorists of architecture—so that it appears as the backbone or structure of a complex, cultural intentionality. this ideologically rich intentionality appears as the ground of architectural creation. thus, by placing the focus on ideology rather than construction, while retaining style as a central category, moravánszky is both in continuity with norberg-shulz and decisively different. both start from the assumption that architecture is predominantly a phenomenon of style. yet, norbergshulz interprets style in terms of anthropological needs and moravánszky interprets style in terms of specific ideological commitments. we can elaborate on the divergences between to two thinkers in terms of the four primary categories and the relation between them. in norberg-shulz we find with his concept of articulation a claim that the satisfaction of spatial anthropological needs is simultaneously a feat of style, of construction, and of ideology. for articulation corresponds to anthropological needs and is expressed through style features and construction choices. with 203 isparchitecture.com this anthropological focus on the task of creating spatial articulation, norberg-shulz interestingly downgrades the normative importance of those features of style that are purely ornamental. style is so intimately related to construction through the articulation of space that any style choice would become significant within the context of molding that space. moravánszky’s method, on the other hand, is symbolic rather than anthropological. for him the specific ornamental choices on the façade of a building are ideological signifiers independently of the building’s functionality. thus, with architectural historians such as moravánszky, we find the concrete elaboration of the ontological assumption that buildings are primarily visible, which is to say, buildings are something akin to three dimensional paintings amenable to aesthetic analysis. in a less nuanced version of this type of intellectual history of architecture, such as pelkonen’s book on nationalism and internationalism in alvar aalto, the ideological strand in the argument becomes so dominant that other considerations are clearly subordinate [10]. in moravánszky’s study ideological commitments do not command the analysis [9]. moravánszky’s text deftly and incessantly moves between different types of consideration. it is, however, in the balance and subtlety that the method betrays its semiotic assumptions. for the seamless transition between different categories and apparently effortless integration of different sorts of material is only possible if it is assumed at the outset that style, construction, and ideology cohere and form a necessary unity. the assumption may of course turn out to be the case, but how do we justify such a general, idealistic, semiotic conception of architectural unity? it is this sort of unity that was referred to as a naturalist conception of purpose earlier, that is, an idea of what a building is for. ideologically rich intentionality appears as the ground of architectural creation “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 204 du e architecture ideology the different kinds of theoretical synthesis discussed involve not questioning the possibility of coherence between different categories. these are the categories within which, or at the aid of which, architecture purportedly becomes intelligible in its purpose and significance within the discourse of architecture historians. it is suggested that the synthesis of different categories, which justifies claims for intelligibility within architecture history (and which are referred to as semiotic naturalism) rest upon a denial. or as psychoanalysts might say, foreclosure, of a possible scenario in which the visible and the intelligible might drift apart. such a drifting apart takes place in discourse and is perceivable as a skeptical scenario occurring within the discourse. if that which drifts apart are intelligibility and visibility, there must be also a scenario of something, which is presented to visual perception but which does not immediately fall within the realm of discourse. that being said, the relationship between the primal categories varies greatly both within the history of the discipline of architecture history and in the history of theories produced by architects—which is in some cases distinct from the discipline of architecture history (though not always, as tafuri and norberg-shulz are both examples of). this is the sort of theory now considered in order to argue that it highlights a specific problem of ideology. in its implications, this problem of ideology poses, i will argue, a challenge to semiotic naturalism. as i said, the term “ideology” is used here not in the marxist sense, for instance by tafuri in his discussion of competing stances taken towards urban or social modernity. tafuri attributes definite ideological positions to individual architects and deftly correlates these positions with style and construction choices. my view of architecture is less concerned with positions and choices; it is platonic, rather, in its focus on rival conceptions of the good life or the sort of life that architecture is for or that it should enhance and promote. there may well be many different conceptions of the good life, depending on geographical and historical circumstances. the concept of ideology thus does not come with a theoretical—in tafuri’s case, modernist and social historicist—script, which would provide the ground for identifying individual positions contrastively and contrasting them with others as on a structural grid. ideology, in this context is a conception of life, of what life should consist of, and of how architecture can enhance this good or appropriate life. the ideological conception of life has to be both related to style and construction choices and separate 205 isparchitecture.com from them. alberti’s idea of the good life alberti’s on the art art of building in ten books, which appeared around 1450, pursues a painstaking and detailed reconstruction of everything that the craft of architecture entails as a material process of construction [11]. yet, in doing so, in presenting the meticulous inventory of principles, problems, and prescriptions, alberti also introduces his own presuppositions concerning what matters in life. in short, in the margins of the text we find his ideology. his ideology coheres with his construction principles, but significantly, is not correlated with style, a topic about which he has little to say—and what he says is theoretically bland. alberti’s starting points are climatic and geographical. he shares with machiavelli the notion that place is a category defined by geographical security questions. in alberti’s case, however, it is not only the advent of potential enemies that buildings and towns must be prepared for but also natural disasters, and, more generally, contingencies. in book 3, chapter 7 book 3/7 he thus says, programmatically, about weather conditions: “moreover, it is self-evident, without looking for any less obvious reasons, that the assault of the weather will be responsible for loosening and breaking the bond of anything that has grown or been forced together” [12]. we could of course gloss this statement pragmatically, seeing it in continuity with vitruvian norms of adapting to the environment, but the emphasis here is very different. against the happy common sense of vitruvius, we find here an anxious memento mori, an acute and poignant awareness of the fragility of all things made by humans. there is a kind of existential dimension to alberti’s architectural thinking in which contingency is not far from his mind. the adequate response to contingency in the margins of the text we find [alberti’s] ideology “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 206 du e according to alberti appears to be control—and control is according to him based on knowledge. the required knowledge is by no means limited narrowly to the architect’s craft but includes detailed and specific geographical information. it is a kind of highly specific knowledge which ideally should inform choices of material and hence construction. in book 3, chapter 12 he thus talks about controlling natural conditions when it comes to choosing wood: “the beams should be related if at all possible: that is, they should be of the same type of timber, from the same forest, raised under the same climatic conditions, and felled on the same day, so that by having the same natural strength they will perform their function equally” [13]. there is an elegant slide in this passage from reflections upon conditions to a prescription concerning structure. in fact the arc of alberti’s argument is formed by this integration of control and structure. for construction is for alberti essentially a control of structure. the purpose of this kind of control is a wider sense of control of contingency. hence, in book 3, chapter 14 he develops an analogy between biological organisms and architectural construction with the aim of articulating a concept of structure: “in short, with every type of vault we should imitate nature throughout, that is, bind together the bones and interweave flesh with nerves running along any possible section: in length, breath and depth, and also obliquely across” [14]. his reflections on use and usefulness are similarly climatological and informed by a sense of insecurity and need of protection. in book 5, chapter 2, for instance, he discusses the internal division of private houses: “inside, the dining rooms, storerooms, and so on should be appropriately located where their contents will keep well. where the air is right and they will receive the correct amount of sun and ventilation, and where they can serve their intended uses” [15]. we find a similar climatological idea of usefulness in a reflection on urban planning. in book 5, chapter 7 alberti discusses the location of monasteries in towns: “but i would have any cloister within the city, be it for women or for men, sited in the healthiest possible place, lest emaciation of the body and sleeplessness prevent the inmates from attending fully to their minds, and lest illness make their lives harder than usual” [16]. the running thread of geography and contingency forms the ideological basis of alberti’s thinking. the purpose of architecture is safety. it aims to protect us against decay, illness, natural disaster, weather conditions, and enemies. the ideological conception that he projects and presupposes is that life is precarious, in need of support and security. the good life is essentially one in which one survives. this may be a bleak vision of 207 isparchitecture.com the good life, but it is explicit, articulate, and clear. through his reflections on structure, alberti integrates his ideas of protection and solidity within his precepts on construction. alberti’s aim is to integrate construction and ideology. he thus indirectly problematizes the later programs of categorical synthesis in which style is central, either in relation to construction as in norberg-shulz or in relation to ideology as in moravánszky. returning to wittgenstein, the skeptical conclusion of this comparison between different styles of architectural reflection is that the relationship between the four suggested categories of architecture—construction, style, ideology, and use—is more contested and more controversial than one might think if one starts from the assumptions of semiotic naturalism and the presupposition of coherence. endnotes [1] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophische untersuchungen (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1982). [2] reidar a. due, “at the margins of sense: the function of paradox in deleuze and wittgenstein,” paragraph 34, no. 3 (2011): 358-370. [3] norman malcolm, wittgenstein: nothing is hidden (oxford: blackwell, 1988). [4] g. w. f. hegel, ästhetik (berlin: aufbau verlag, 1965). [5] johann joachim winckelmann, gedanken über die nachahmung der griechischen werke in der malerei und bildhauerkunst (stuttgart: reclam, 2007). [6] manfredo tafuri, storia dell’architettura italiana 1944-1985 (torino: einaudi, 1986). [7] michael scriven, sartre and the media (basingstoke: macmillan, 1993). [8] martin heidegger, vorträge und aufsätze (frankfurt am main: vittorio klostermann, 2000). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 208 du e [9] ákos moravánszky, competing visions: aesthetic invention and social imagination in central european architecture, 1867-1918 (cambridge: the mit press, 1998). [10] eeva-liisa pelkonen, alvar aalto: architecture, modernity, and geopolitics (new haven: yale university press, 2009). [11] leon battista alberti, on the art of building in ten books, trans. joseph rykwert, neil leach, and robert tavernor (cambridge: the mit press, 1991). [12] ibid., 71. [13] ibid., 80. [14] ibid., 86. [15] ibid., 119. [16] ibid., 127. from anthropomimetic to biomimetic cities the place of humans in “cities like forests” henry dicks introduction in biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, janine benyus argued that the key to sustainability is to learn from the 3.8 billion years of “research and development” already carried out by nature.1 since the publication of her book, biomimicry has been heralded as “the mantra for silicon valley and other regions of the techno-sphere”2 and as a “revolutionary concept” capable of underpinning a “second industrial revolution.”3 in keeping with this, biomimicry is also attracting increasing attention from architects and urbanists. the famous architecture critic, charles jencks, has noted that “the basic trend of the time [is] towards biomimesis,”4 and there is a growing tendency amongst both architects and urban theorists to see natural ecosystems—especially forests—as models for the city.5 perhaps the most significant limitation of current thinking in and around biomimicry is that it focuses almost exclusively on technological innovation. turned resolutely towards the future via the concept of sustainability, biomimicry practitioners—usually engineers, designers, architects, or urbanists— typically focus on how basing artificial entities or systems on natural models can provide a coherent response to the ecological destruction wrought by conventional technologies. if biomimicry is as important as its advocates believe, however, then it also raises important questions for the humanities, throughout western history the dominant model for the polis, qua both city and state, has been the human being “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 62 di ck s including such disciplines as urban and architectural history, anthropology, political theory, sociology, and philosophy. if buildings and cities are henceforth to be based on “natural models,” then how is this different from what went on in the past? did architects and urbanists previously design things without reference to models or did they just use different models? if the cities of the future are to be based on natural ecosystems, then what place might humans occupy in these cities and how might the emergence of these cities affect human self-understanding? and, given the important but often overlooked relation between the polis qua city and the polis qua state, what implications might the rise of biomimetic urbanism have for political theory? with a view to responding to these questions, this article will be split into three parts. in the first two parts, i will argue that the traditional model for both the state (part 1) and the city (part 2) is the human being. then, in the third part, i will briefly examine the emerging model of the natural ecosystem, and in particular the forest, before going on to consider—via an articulation of heidegger’s thinking of the clearing with some recent theoretical insights into human evolution—how this new model calls for a radical shift in human self-understanding. 1 anthropomimicry in political and social philosophy the polis of the ancient greeks was both city and state. this is not to say, however, that there was not a certain distinction between the two. for thinkers like plato and aristotle, the community of citizens that made up the state was far more important than the buildings and streets that made up the city; politics was far more important than urbanism. this split between politics and urbanism has been exacerbated in more recent times as the geographical coincidence between city and state eroded and the nation-state became the primary political unity. the result is the almost complete divorce between political philosophy, on the one hand, and architecture and urbanism, on the other. this is not to say, however, that political philosophy and urbanism have followed totally different paths. indeed, ever since the ancient greeks, thinking about the state and thinking about the city have evolved in parallel, conceiving their object in very similar terms: both the state and the city have been conceived via the same foundational model—the human being. the first major manifestation of “anthropomimetic” political philosophy occurs in plato’s republic.6 seeking a response to the question of the nature of justice, plato argues that the ideal state would be composed of three classes—philosophers, auxiliaries, and businessmen—each 63 isparchitecture.com of which corresponds to a “part” of the human soul—reason, courage, and moderation. justice, he goes on to argue, results from each class “minding its own affairs,” for doing so gives rise to that state of harmony and balance between the different parts of the state that plato sees as the essence of justice. harmony and balance between the different parts of the human soul thus constitute a model for the organization of the state and therewith also an answer to the question of the nature of justice. a similarly “anthropomimetic” approach to political philosophy was also common in the middle ages, a famous example being john of salisbury’s policraticus, which drew an extensive analogy between the organs of the body and the organs of the state.7 modern political philosophy was also strongly marked by this approach. hobbes’s leviathan famously opens with the description of the state as an “artificial man,”8 and rousseau’s 1755 article in the encyclopédie on political economy likewise contains an extended analogy between the organs of the state and the organs of the human body.9 moreover, it is also important to note the role played by speculative anthropology in modern political philosophy. the state was conceived in analogous terms to the human individual in the state of nature. as individuals entered the social contract, thus leaving the state of nature behind, the state of nature did not completely disappear but was instead elevated to the international level; the war of all against all would henceforth take place between nations, not individuals. in the wake of the french revolution, as representative democracy fitfully emerged as the dominant form of politics in the west, an important shift occurred in political philosophy away from the nature and role of government towards what hegel and marx called “civil society.” indeed, for marx, all traditional history had focused on the “super-structural” issues of religion, politics, and harmony and balance between the different parts of the human soul thus constitute a model for the organization of the state “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 64 di ck s ideology, thus overlooking the relations and forces of production that make up the economic “base.” the separation of civil society from the state, and therewith also the shift from the “political question” to the “social question,”10 in turn made possible the emergence of sociology. from its very inception, sociology supposed a specific model for society: the physiological one of the organism. grappling with the newfound separation between state and society, saint-simon developed a theoretical understanding of the latter via the concept of “social physiology” (la physiologie sociale).11 in order to understand society scientifically, he thought, it was necessary to use concepts drawn from physiology, an approach which led him to inquire into the various “organs” of the “social body,” while at the same time seeing political economy, law, and public morality as the basic “rules of hygiene” of this same social body. strongly influenced by saint-simon, auguste comte may have abandoned the expression “social physiology” in favour of the neologism “sociology,” thus founding the latter as a stand-alone discipline, but he did not abandon the organismic model.12 for comte, the very possibility of sociology as a positive science depended on seeing society as an “organism,” an approach that led him to import a wide number of key operational concepts—organs, illnesses, etc.—from physiology. likewise, in de la division du travail social, durkheim also took up this physiological view of society, arguing that the division of labour in the “social organism” corresponds to the functional division of the “biological organism” into different members and organs.13 for our purposes, there are three key points to underline regarding anthropomimetic political and social philosophy. the first is that specifically in political philosophy, one finds a strong tendency to focus on the soul or mind of the human individual and its mimetic counterpart at the level of the state. plato, for example, focuses on what he sees as the three different parts of the soul and their mimetic counterparts in the state. likewise, while rousseau’s article on political economy draws an extensive analogy between the parts of the human body and the parts of the state, his political philosophy—as developed most notably in du contrat social—focuses rather on analogies between the mental faculties of human individuals and their corresponding attributes in the state, the most notable example being his invocation of the individual will as a model for the “general will.” the second is that the emergence of sociology in the nineteenth century did not amount to a change of model—away from the “anthropological” one favoured by political philosophers from plato to rousseau and towards a new and different “physiological” or “biological” one—but rather a shift in focus within the same basic model, 65 isparchitecture.com such that the traditional emphasis on the mind, and therewith also on the activities of government and science, was replaced by a focus on the body, and therewith also on socio-economic activity, particularly the work. the third key point is that all the political and social philosophy discussed above sees the political or social community as composed solely of human beings. plato’s state is composed of people, not things. the parts of hobbes’s state that correspond to the different parts or attributes of the human individual (the soul, memory, joints, nerves, strength, etc.) are all people (the sovereign, counsellors, magistrates, etc.),14 hence the famous depiction of the state on the frontispiece of leviathan as a composite of human individuals. similarly, in comte and durkheim’s work, the parts of the social organism that they think correspond to the parts of the biological organism are all different categories of people. in short, human beings provide not just the form but also the matter of the traditional view of the state. 2. anthropomimicry in urban theory the first key manifestation of anthropomimicry in architecture and urban theory occurred in early renaissance italy in the work of such important and influential figures as leon battista alberti, filarete, and francesco di giorgio martini.15 according to the french urban historian françoise choay, the fundamental explanation for this phenomenon lies in what she calls the “scandal of homo artifex.”16 unlike other species, whose constructions follow paths determined by their nature, humans are free to build things however they choose. so, whereas the laws that govern the construction of beehives or ant nests are determined by the nature of the species, humans, as uniquely autonomous agents, must give themselves their own laws of construction. this in turn raises the question of what laws and guidelines they should give themselves. the response, choay ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 66 di ck s explains, was that the construction of artefacts should follow the form of the human body, for the human body was considered the most perfect form in all of nature, primarily on the grounds that it combined the fundamental attributes of all the various different spheres of creation, from the growth of plants and the sentience of animals to the rationality and spirituality of bodiless angels.17 the result was an approach to the planning and design of cities that would dominate western architecture for hundreds of years: the form of the city should follow the form of the human body. there was, however, a complication with this “anthropomimetic” approach to urban planning and design. unlike vitruvius, who saw the human body as a purely formal or aesthetic architectural model, the architects and urban theorists of the early italian renaissance also looked for functional equivalents to the different parts of the human body.18 the complication was that it was not easy to find meaningful points of comparison between internal organs of the human body and corresponding functional parts of the city. there was, as choay notes, a “blank” in the city where the internal organs should be.19 four hundred years later, this blank was eventually filled in. the moment of transition is most clearly visible in the contest between antoni rovira i tras and ildefonso cerda for the renovation of barcelona in the mid-nineteenth century. rovira’s project accepted the basic methodology of the early italian renaissance: the renovation of barcelona was to follow the ideal aesthetic form of the human body. as antonio lopez de aberasturi explains: “[f]rom the head – the forum to the peripheral members, the proportions of its [the proposed city’s] elements are modelled on the proportions of the human body, in conformity with the teachings of the great treatises of classical architecture.”20 (my translation) cerda, on the other hand, introduced a functionalist approach. the city should not have the aesthetic form of the human body, but rather the functional efficacy of the biological organism. the urbanist, in this new framework, takes on the role of both “anatomist” and “doctor” of the “urban organism.” his role is first to dissect the city, to analyse its biological functions—its systems of consumption, digestion, circulation, evacuation of waste, and so on—and then, in the case of pathology, to intervene in such a way that the city may be cured of any “illness.” so, just as auguste comte’s founding of sociology as a positive science required society to be seen as an organism, so the emergence of urbanism as a positive science—which choay traces back to cerda’s teoría general de l’urbanización—likewise required the city to be seen in this same physiological way.21 67 isparchitecture.com but the city, as theorized by the nascent science of urbanism, was not just any old organism. indeed, as the development of urban infrastructures over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has testified, the principal technological developments in the thinking and practice of urban planning and design typically evoked the model of the specifically human or animal organism. for example, the mid-nineteenth century british hygienists, and frederick ward in particular, proposed new forms of centralized urban water systems whose pipes were based on the model of “arteries,” “veins,” and “capillaries,” whose steam-powered pumps used to transport water uphill were based on the “heart,” and whose impermeable paving, which was thought to protect the city from disease, was modelled on the “skin.”22 perhaps the greatest example of this way of thinking, however, is to be found in le corbusier’s urbanisme, which describes the city as a “human organism,” its buildings as “cells,” its roads as “arteries,” its parks as “lungs,” and the urbanist as its “doctor” or “surgeon,” depending on the severity of the treatment required. in the book’s appendix, le corbusier even provides various diagrams of the internal organs of the human body, explicitly referencing them as models on which his practice as an urbanist is grounded.23 in view of the above analyses, it is clear that the evolution of western thinking about both states and cities has followed a similar path. indeed, while some moments in history have given rise to particularly intense moments of activity for the former (e.g., the enlightenment) and others for the latter (e.g., the renaissance), it is also true that there have been periods of strong convergence, most notably the mid-nineteenth century, which saw the simultaneous emergence of both sociology and urbanism, viewed as positive sciences, thanks in large part to a shared grounding in the physiological model of the organism. this is not to say, however, that history does not also reveal significant unlike other species, whose constructions follow paths determined by their nature, humans are free to build things however they choose “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 68 di ck s theoretical differences between the polis qua city and the polis qua state. we have already seen that the mid-nineteenth century marked a change in focus from the enlightenment vision of the human soul or mind as model for the workings of government to the sociological vision of the functional differentiation of the biological body or organism as model for the social division of labour. in the case of urban theory, by contrast, the shift is not from mind to body, but rather from the outward, aesthetic form of the human body to its internal, functional organization. a second major difference concerns the composition of the anthropomimetic state in contrast to that of the anthropomimetic city. whereas the former is composed solely of human beings, the latter is composed rather of houses, temples, fortresses, city walls, market places, and other artificial constructions, though later also infrastructure, most of which was inanimate, as in the case of transport, water, and energy networks, though some of which was composed of living beings, as in the case of the new urban parks, whose creation was justified throughout the western world on the grounds that they constituted the “lungs of the city.”24 3 the biomimetic polis and the question of the human it is not hard to see that modelling cities and states on human individuals is ecologically problematic. viewed ecologically, humans are “consumers.” to base cities and states on the model of human individuals is thus to create urban and socio-political systems whose continued existence depends on the extraction and consumption of vast quantities of energy and materials from their environment and which also generate huge quantities of waste and pollution. conversely, to base cities and states on natural ecosystems would be to create urban and socio-political systems which generate their own usable energies and materials while also recycling their wastes in processes analogous to natural nutrient cycling. to get a brief idea of the power of this new model, let us briefly consider the potential implications of braungart and mcdonough’s motto, “[i]magine a building like a tree, a city like a forest,”25 for sustainable energy systems. according to this model, every building would capture all or almost all of the energy it requires using solar panels, whether photovoltaic or, in the future, using techniques closer to natural photosynthesis. as for distribution, just as in the forest the rhizosphere connects the trees together such that excess sugars may be passed on to mycelium in the soil and thereby also on to other trees, so “energy positive” buildings would pass on their excess energy to buildings that do not meet their own energy requirements via a distributed underground grid. and finally, 69 isparchitecture.com just as in the forest the mobile organisms—the insects and animals—obtain their energy in the first instance from the plants, so in a city like a forest, the mobile elements— cars, trams, drones, etc.— could also obtain their energy directly from the buildings. while it would in theory be possible to develop all sorts of other examples of how forest ecosystems could help us re-think the technological foundations of our cities and states, the key question that the remainder of this article will seek to address is rather the anthropological one of the “place” humans might occupy in the biomimetic polis, and therewith also the issue of how basing the polis on forest ecosystems calls on us to re-think our self-understanding. before developing a response to these questions, it is important to recall two key features of the basic anthropology supposed by modern political philosophers: first, the key opposition that structures this anthropology is that of a body shared with the rest of nature and a mind unique to humans; second, human individuals— qua syntheses of bodies and minds—provide both the form on which the state is modelled and the matter of which it is composed. in this manner, the state provides a place where these dual aspects of the human may find fulfilment: bodily fulfilment may be attained via the activity of consumption we share with animals and mental fulfilment by the intellectual activities—politics, science, art, etc.—that humans alone possess. in view of this, it could perhaps be thought that the biomimetic polis runs the risk of going to the opposite extreme of the anthropomimetic polis (i.e., of excluding the human altogether). if the basic models for the different elements of the state are provided by nature—plants, animals, fungi, etc.—and not by the figure 1: the construction of the city of savannah, georgia in an area of cleared forest ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 70 di ck s human, then what place might the biomimetic polis accord to humans? in response to this question, the key argument sketched out in the remainder of the article is that it is possible to think the place of the human in “cities like forests” via the development of a speculative philosophical anthropology that combines heidegger’s ontological thinking of the “clearing” with various anthropological insights that have emerged from the study of human evolution and pre-history. 4 the clearing in anthropology and philosophy in “the end of philosophy and the task of thinking,” heidegger describes the clearing as “the open region for everything that becomes present and absent.”26 this becoming present, he thinks, depends on humans’ unique ability to understand being (i.e., the “as”), for it is “as” things—as tools, as other humans, as animals, as gods, etc.—that beings show up in the clearing. it is widely assumed in the secondary literature on the subject that the clearing in the forest is ultimately just a “metaphor” for this uniquely human ability to understand the “as.”27 on this reading, the clearing in the forest is simply a figurative representation of beingin-the-world, and in particular of its spatiality. in what follows, we will see that it is possible to draw on contemporary interpretations of human evolution and pre-history in order to interpret the clearing not as mere metaphor, but rather as a literal and insightful description of the “there,” understood as the space where the “as” reveals itself. for the first four or five million years since our hominid predecessors separated from the common ancestor they shared with chimpanzees, the driving force behind human evolution was the thinning out of the tropical forests of africa and therewith also the transition from an arboreal lifestyle to one which increasingly took place in open environments.28 according to the french paleo-anthropologist pascal picq, it was precisely the completion of this transition to open environments—and not an increase in brain size, the generalization of tool-use, bipedalism, language, or any other single factor—that defines the genre homo,29 and therewith also what are widely referred to as “early humans.” the emergence of “modern humans,” approximately 1.5 million years later, again marked a significant shift in our ancestors’ relation to the environment. if “anatomically modern humans” emerged approximately 200,000 years ago, it was not until approximately 50,000 years ago—during the depths of the last ice age—that so-called “modern behaviour” emerged. then, as soon as the glaciers receded some 12,000 years ago, a dramatic increase in the human population came about thanks largely to the widespread practice of 71 isparchitecture.com deforestation, whether to create space in which to dwell, hunt, and gather or to adopt the agriculture and architectural techniques characteristic of the neolithic revolution.30 the clearing, on this view, is not a metaphor for the space where humans dwell, for the genre homo is not only biologically adapted to living in the clearings or open environments opened up several million years ago by climate change, but also, and largely because of this adaptation, has in its most recent incarnation— behaviourally modern humans—constantly sought to clear forests, a practice that has now spread so far and wide that human habitation of clearings goes largely unnoticed.31 but the clearing is not just a physical habitat, an open environment to which members of the species homo sapiens are biologically and culturally adapted, for it must also be seen in heideggerian terms as the space where being “reveals itself,” thus “opening itself ” to understanding. in what follows we will not seek to understand the complex philosophical issue of the “self-disclosure” of being in its entirety, but rather to analyse one important feature of this process that is particularly important for the present inquiry: concomitant with the self-disclosure of the “as” there emerges the possibility of seeing one being “as” or “like” another being. this feature of the self-disclosure of being resonates with the argument put forward by the cognitive anthropologist steven mithen that what ultimately distinguishes modern humans from early humans is “cognitive fluidity.” by cognitive fluidity, mithen means the ability to combine the various different categories of thought and forms of intelligence so as to produce original syntheses.32 so, whereas mithen thinks that the neanderthals had what he calls a “natural history intelligence,” a “technical intelligence,” and a “social intelligence,” each of which was more or less as fully developed as that of modern humans, he also thinks they were unable to combine these various different forms what place might the biomimetic polis accord to humans? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 72 di ck s of intelligence and the categories of thought on which they depend to produce novel syntheses. it is not hard to see that it is this openness of the “as,” this cognitive fluidity, which gives humans the unique ability to blend together their understandings of nature, of technology, and of humanity, that constitutes the ontological ground for the creation of both the anthropomimetic and the biomimetic polis. it is what makes it possible to conceive cities and states based on the model of the human individual, understood as a composite of an animal body and a human mind, just as it is also the ontological ground that allows humans to conceive cities and states based on the model of the forest, understood not just as a natural ecosystem, but also as containing clearings and therewith also the open relationship to the “as” that is unique to humans. with this in mind, it would seem that the transition from an anthropomimietic to a biomimetic model of the polis makes possible a new way of thinking about what distinguishes humans from nature: in contrast to the traditional distinction between the mind and the body, the new distinction would be based instead on the opposition between the forest and the clearing. after the “mind/body” dualism of modernity, which identifies the human with the mental and the natural with the bodily, there may thus emerge what i propose to call an “enlightened naturalism” (naturalisme éclairé), which, as the word “naturalism” suggests, seeks to explain the emergence of the human in naturalistic terms via the study of human evolution, while at the same time also making it possible to think about what is ontologically distinctive about the human—the open relation to being—via the concept of the “clearing” (clairière). conclusion whereas the traditional model for the polis was the “anthropomimetic” one of the human being, the emergence of biomimicry has led to the possibility not only of taking the forest as a model for the polis, but also of understanding the genesis of this model from out of the clearing, understood not only as an open environment, but also as the space where the “as” discloses itself, thereby making it possible to see one thing “as” or “like” another thing. this in turn calls for a radical shift in human self-understanding: rather than seeing ourselves as composites of an animal body and a human mind, we may henceforth see ourselves as former forest-dwellers who have come to dwell in open environments and who, in doing so, have ultimately acquired an open relation to being, hence the possibility of conceiving states as “artificial men,” societies as 73 isparchitecture.com “organisms,” cities like “forests,” and so on and so forth. from this perspective, rather than trying to overcome the much-maligned mind-body dualism of modernity in the name of either reductionist monism (e.g., scientific naturalism) or postmodern pluralism, the task we face is rather to theorize an “enlightened naturalism” (naturalisme éclairé), which articulates naturalistic explanations of human evolution with ontological thinking about the “clearing” (clairière). moreover, as far as the relation between architecture and philosophy is concerned, although heidegger’s significance for architecture has been much discussed,33 the idea that building takes place in clearings and that there may be an important link between clearings in the naturalistic and ontological senses has, to my knowledge, yet to be explored. from vitruvius34 to le corbusier,35 it has commonly been assumed that the first ever buildings were constructed in forest clearings, but this has not been linked to the ontological sense of the clearing, and thereby also to the question of the being of buildings, and in particular to their openness to being seen “as” imitations of the perfect human form, “as” cells in an urban organism, or “as” habitable imitations of the trees that made way for them in the first place. lastly, it is of course also important to consider how the model of the forest may allow us to rethink not just architecture and urbanism, but also the polis in the political sense. could the model of the forest biome help provide a model for the political economy of entire nation states and in particular for their agricultural and industrial production? and, if the forest is the model for the polis, could the clearing perhaps provide a model for the agora, understood as the economic and political space of markets, parliaments, tribunals, and so on, where the essential discussions and decisions of its human inhabitants take place? the emergence of biomimicry has led to the possibility not only of taking the forest as a model for the polis, but also of according humans a place within this model “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 74 di ck s endnotes [1] janine benyus, biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature (new york: harper perennial, 1997). [2] dickson despommier, the vertical farm: feeding the world in the 21st century (new york: picador, 2011), 34. [3] freya mathews, “towards a deeper philosophy of biomimicry,” organization & environment 24, no. 4 (2011): 364-387. [4] charles jencks, the story of postmodernism (chichester: john wiley, 2011), 225. [5] see michael braungart and william mcdonough, cradle to cradle: re-making the way we make things (london: vintage, 2009); luc schuiten and pierre loze, vers une cité végétale (wavre: madraga, 2010); vincent callebaut, paris 2050: les cités fertiles faces aux enjeux du xx siècle (paris: michel lafon, 2015); and maibritt pedersen zari, “ecosystem services analysis: mimicking ecosystem services for regenerative urban design,” international journal of sustainable built environment 4, no. 1 (2015): 145–157. [6] plato, the republic, trans. desmond lee (london: penguin classics, 1974). [7] john of salisbury, policraticus: of the frivolties of courtiers and the footprints of philosophers, trans. cary j. nederman (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1990). [8] thomas hobbes, leviathan or the matter, form & power of a commonwealth ecclesiastical and civill (london: andrew cooke, 1651). [9] jean-jacques rousseau, “discours sur l’economie politique,” in du contrat social, ed. robert derathé (paris: gallimard, 2007), 66. [10] serge moscovici, essai sur l’histoire humaine de la nature (paris: flammarion, 1977). [11] claude henri saint-simon, de la physiologie sociale: œuvres choisies (extraits 1803-1825), ed. georges gurvitch (paris: presses universitaires de france, 1965). [12] auguste comte, leçons de sociologie: cours de philosophie positive (paris: flammarion, 1995), 47-51. [13] emile durkheim, de la division du travail social, (paris: editions norph-nop, 2011). [14] the only significant exceptions to this are money and goods, which hobbes depicts as the “blood” of the “artificial man.” [15] jütte has documented how in late medieval europe houses were often 75 isparchitecture.com conceived by analogy with human beings, but he also notes that it was only with the renaissance that the “boom” in anthropomorphic architecture truly began. see daniel jütte, “living stones: the house as actor in early modern europe,” journal of urban history, 42, no. 4 (2015): 659-687. [16] françoise choay, “la ville et le domaine bâti comme corps dans les textes des architectesthéoriciens de la première renaissance italienne,” nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 9 (1974): 239-251. [17] ibid., 247. [18] ibid., 244. [19] ibid., 246. [20] antonio lopez de aberasturi, “introduction,” in la théorie générale de l’urbanisation d’ildefonso cerdà, trans. antonio lopez de aberasturi (paris: editions du seuil, 1979), 22. [21] françoise choay, la règle et le modèle: sur la théorie de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (paris: editions du seuil, 1996). [22] frederick ward, discours prononcé à la séance d’ouverture du congrès international de bienfaisance, (bruxelles: librairie européenne, c. muquardt, 1856), 9-31. [23] le corbusier, urbanisme (paris: flammarion, 1994). [24] catherine ward thompson, “linking landscape and health: the recurring theme,” landscape and urban planning 99 (2011): 191. [25] michael braungart and william mcdonough, cradle to cradle, 139. [26] martin heidegger, “the end of philosophy and the task of thinking,” in basic writings, ed. david f. krell (oxford: routledge, 1993), 442. [27] see richard capobianco, engaging heidegger (toronto: university of toronto press, 2010), 89; thomas sheehan, making sense of heidegger: a paradigm shift (london: rowman and littlefield, ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 76 di ck s 2015), 20-21. [28] jean-jacques hublin, quand d’uutres hommes peuplaient la terre (paris: flammarion, 2008). [29] pascal picq, au commencement était l’homme (paris: odile jacob, 2009), 99-100. [30] michael williams, deforesting the earth: from prehistory to global crisis (chicago: university of chicago press, 2002). [31] robert harrison, forests: the shadow of civilization (chicago: university of chicago press, 1992), 245. [32] steven mithen, the prehistory of the mind: a search for the origins of art, religion and science (london: thames and hudson, 1996), 203. [33] see miguel de beistegui, thinking with heidegger (indianapolis: indiana university press, 2003); adam sharr, heidegger for architects (oxford: routledge, 2007). [34] choay, “la ville et le domaine,” 239-251. [35] le corbusier, vers une architecture (paris: flammarion, 1995). 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter isparchitecture.com book review: is there an object oriented architecture? engaging graham harman edited by joseph bedford bloomsbury academic, 2020 194 pages, hardcover $103.50 reviewed by tom spector the application of graham harman’s theory of things in the world, given the moniker object oriented ontology (or ooo), is in its nascent period in architecture. is it nascent because people don’t yet know what to do with it, or is the inability to make use of it what keeps it nascent? this is a fundamental question that editor joseph bedford seeks to shed light on with contributions by harman himself, and authors adam sharr, lorens holm, jonathan hale, peg rawes, patrick lynch and peter carl. the authors came together at the swedenborg society event devoted to discussing ooo in 2013. towards this end, much credit must go to the book’s editing and organization which allows for essays interspersed with responses by harman and further give-and-take discussion that does much to clarify what ooo entails and points to how it could be applied. this admirable organization gives the book a pleasant variety and rhythm often lacking in such compilations. harman’s premise is that objects have existences that always exceed our ability to quantify, narrate, use or otherwise apprehend them. this recognition of an existence that always “withdraws” therefore, from human understanding, is supposed to promote book review ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 76 bo ok r ev ie w a certain attitude, a certain humility, towards objects. this humility is born of, he asserts, a rejection of heidegger’s (and his inheritors’) idealism towards the primacy of the human, as opposed to harman’s “realism” which “by contrast, promises to shift the balance between humans and non-humans towards an equitable centre ground, in which philosophy addresses all things in the universe with equal weight and promises a new ethical accounting as a result.” (5) –a pretty tall order. this important realist feature of harman’s outlook also makes it at least somewhat hostile to traditional phenomenology, which may start out from an equally humble wish to take in the world as it presents itself, but tends then to privilege those elements which present themselves to us while neglecting the properties of objects, and their interactions with one another, that are proper to them. harman’s insight regarding objecthood which escapes our human schema is well-placed as a corrective to theories, such as latour’s actor-network theory, which tend to collapse things into effects and relationships. he wants us mindful that the thing has an existence which exceeds effects on other things. this is fine as a critique of philosophy and possibly social theory, but does it promise anything for architecture? while architects will tend to want to try out these ideas on the objects of their infatuation, namely, buildings, harman is quick to emphasize that the concept of an object can span a wide gamut, from buildings, to be sure, to works of fiction, to characters within those works of fiction, to interpretations of those characters within those fictional works, to criticism of those interpretations, and so on, in what clearly risks vertigo of objecthood. to go a bit deeper into harman’s critique and his assertions about ooo, harman thinks that much modern thought makes the mistake of either undermining objects by dissembling them into their most fundamental constituent parts—to the point where they cease to be recognizable, or else they tend to “overmine” them by relegating them to their effects as events, or networks, or power relations. (or sometimes both at the same time.) an object, he concludes, “is simply that which cannot be reduced downward to its pieces or upward to its effects.”(79) these rejections, then, (and a penchant for list-making) form the basis for holding that non-human objects always have a degree of existence that is immune from analysis either as a form of withdrawal from our ability to ensnare them in conceptual schemas or else as a degree of internal, inaccessible finitude. this recognition should be reason enough to strive to overcome anthropocentrism in our relations to objects. anthropocentrism has certainly been a favorite target from a 77 isparchitecture.com variety of philosophical disciplines for some time. environmental philosophers credit it with leading to an instrumentalist attitude towards nature that gives rise to such aporia as global warming. nietzsche liked to emphasize it as the end of ethical certainty. and graham harman has made its rejection a tent-pole of ooo by insisting that the human perception of things not only provides no direct correlation to understanding them but also is only one legitimate perspective among many. but living without some mild form of anthropocentrism is tough, and it’s often worth questioning whether the alternatives aren’t worse than the problem. this is true of nietzsche’s gleeful insistence that humanism provides no moral touchstones or the tendency of anti-anthropocentric environmentalism to lead into a conceptual thicket. in any event, there is a massive difference between normative anthropocentrism which insists that only humans convey value on the world and epistemic anthropocentrism which holds that adopting the point of view of non-humans is at best a guess. how we could know that objects have their own finitude without projecting some good ol’ anthroon them remains unclear. because if we assert that we know, or can observe their independent existence, then bang!-an anthropocentristgenerated concept has just been launched. a more thoroughgoing anti-anthropocentrism would seem to require us to hold that objects may or may not have such finitude, but we can never know for sure. the anthropocentric starting point for knowing things is far from foolproof, far from being able to exhaust the existence of things, and certainly subject to bias, but despite these handicaps is, as best as we can tell, more reliable and less speculative than other starting points. harman sees this as a battle between anthropocentric idealism and objectoriented realism. ooo tends to treat its realism as a hard-won achievement.1 harman believes he has charted a way out of anthropocentric idealism. he thinks that there harman is quick to emphasize that the concept of an object can span a wide gamut, from buildings, to be sure, to works of fiction, to characters within those works of fiction, to interpretations of those characters within those fictional works, to criticism of those interpretations, and so on, in what clearly risks vertigo of objecthood. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 78 bo ok r ev ie w must be more to objects than their constituent parts or their effects, a third way of conceiving them that allows them their own independent, and only partially or indirectly knowable, existence. now, here’s where harman’s theory for some jumps the shark from a reasoned critique of 19th and 20th century philosophy to a normative theory of how we should behave towards things. from the recognition that things have an independent, though largely unknowable existence, he writes, “i think we need to place the human-world relation on the same level as the world-world or object-object relation.” (emphasis his, 20) and by this he doesn’t mean epistemologically only, but also morally. this idea has been attractive to environmentalists, who struggle to overcome anthropocentric instrumentalist views towards nature and want us to value nature on its own terms. one can also see the immediate attraction to architects of such an idea, for now they can assert moral standing to their products independent of those products’ utilitarian benefits for humankind. (the moral standing of artworks, of course, has long been an interesting seam of study between ethics and aesthetics.) but more than that, as adam sharr asserts in his chapter, “the circus, the canon and the house with one wall,” ooo is attractive because its decentering of the human “offers a series of productive fables that allow us to imagine our surroundings differently. this is exactly the kind of storytelling – the production of imaginative worlds – to which architects devote their work lives.” (40) sharr recognizes, however, that “while architects, who deal in the design of things, might be comfortable with a world where objecthood is paramount, this is where harman’s cosmos seems most challenging to many academics,” (44) precisely because of the flattening of ontological and moral distinctions between the human and other objects. nevertheless, sharr applauds the ability of ooo to spark the imagination and enable a “heightened reality.” he writes, if ooo “can help us to sharpen our appreciation of those objects and their effects, then it is certainly worthy of architects’ attention.” (55) lorens holm’s chapter “architecture and its objects” brings up the topic of space as a thing. this topic is certainly well-placed and in need of further explanation in ooo because we architects can think of and employ space in so many different ways: as the absence of things, as the distance between things, as figure-ground, as an axis, as perspective space, as a picture plane within a perspective, or as a thing in itself. but conceiving it as a thing that can withdraw into itself, even under the generous terms harman grants things’ existence, is dilemmatic. did it become a thing when we thought it into existence? did the “thingness” of space exist before a human recognized it? does this way of thinking help us, as sharr would ask, to tell stories around it? perhaps, we might hope, the questioning it generates 79 isparchitecture.com is service enough. but we should resist the urge to assert that, since architecture is vitally interested in space, and harman extensively employs spatial metaphors, we therefore have correspondence and ultimately relevance. ultimately, holm finds ooo at least potentially useful “because if you could understand your allegiance to objects, the ones you are designing for and the ones you are making, and find the integrity of your work in the contemplation of the object as opposed to always having to outside the object, looking over your shoulder to the user, we would probably have a more beautiful world, and more importantly, one that works better for users.” (86)—thus constructing an indirect utilitarian argument for taking ooo seriously. jonathan hale’s “buildings as objects and buildings as ‘tool-beings’” takes a more directly critical approach. he thinks that harman misses something important to architecture in its binary lack of appreciation of the transitions between pure utility or pure sensory qualities on the one hand and the object’s mysterious core on the other. hale thinks much of architecture is appropriately concerned with cultivation of that transitional strangeness—not entirely withdrawn objects, but not entirely reduced to smooth facilitators of utility either. hale doesn’t worry much about the intrusion of usefulness into consideration of objects because, he reasonably proposes, “perhaps this is the closest we can ever get to understanding objects as they are in themselves – by using them and re-using them we continue to explore their inexhaustible depths.” (96) hale also worries that, at least in instances, ooo requires privileging non-human agency over human agency. harman thinks this a non-problem. it only requires “treating them both in the same way ontologically, not politically.” (99) and therefore substantive value judgments have been avoided. but have they? isn’t asserting ontological parity itself a value judgment? can you simply point out the point is to see that architects have always been dealing with objects more urgently than philosophers have. ” “ ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 80 bo ok r ev ie w that things have extra-human existence and then make it a mere factual observation that makes them ontologically on par? for many, deciding to place things on par with humans is itself a value proposition. it is easy to see how this would be so for architects. for many, this question is something worth arguing over. defining it out of existence will seem high-handed. the final three sections, each in their own way, make little effort to directly engage harman’s theory. peg rawes’ “non-human architectural ecologies” opts instead for a feminist outflanking of his approach as lacking the kinds of differentiations feminists bring to the discussion. she cautions that while we may be inclined to think that ooo opens up a multiplicity of voices by allowing all kinds of things their own agency, there may be both good and bad agency. the bad perpetuates universalist assumptions about objects that all too often serve to silence other voices. she thinks we need a triple-o that welcomes and unlocks those other perspectives and notes that “object-oriented practices already” exist in architecture and they are not always forces for emancipation. “as it stands, much environmental architectural discourse, especially, technological, biological and computational forms, perpetuates” the repression of difference. (113) from this essay, it’s not clear that she has actually done much reading of harman, which is a hazard of invited panels. sometimes the panel member is too keen to discuss his or her favorite topics to spend much time on the subject at hand. when rawes observes that the aims and objectives of architecture and philosophy “should not just be mapped onto each other.” (129) the reader may wonder who actually thinks this. harman tries to defuse the argument by replying that “the point is not for a philosopher of objects to force architects to think about objects against their will. the point is to see that architects have always been dealing with objects more urgently than philosophers have. on this point philosophy is the student and architecture the teacher.” gratifying to architects, but to what result? surely it’s a demonstration project with mixed results. both patrick lynch and peter carl in their sections prefer to critique harman’s interpretation of heidegger than directly engage his original thought. lynch objects to conclusions harman draws from being and time, while carl argues that harman’s unique interpretation doesn’t do justice to the thought of such heidgger inheritors as latour. since harman has a large intellectual debt to heidegger, there is some common ground for discussion even though not much opportunity for productive dialogue. in a symposium about harman’s thinking, one wonders why a contributor doesn’t at least try to link his or her prior interests to the topic at hand. it’s perplexing, but this sort of thing does happen at academic conferences. unsurprisingly, neither exchange takes us close to architecture. 81 isparchitecture.com happily, harman gets the last word, actually an “afterword,” that attempts to draw out a few lessons that ooo may hold for architects. works of architecture have depths and connections that cannot be reduced to performance measures nor to relationships because there is always something important remaining after all the relationships have been unearthed and performance measures analyzed. for these reasons, architectural works make paradigm examples of object oriented ontology. further, he thinks that architecture and ooo share an orientation to the renunciation of the distinction between pure thought and material works—there is no priority nor superiority to thought. this may all be both true and interesting. but is this sympathetic orientation enough to generate an architectural difference? i’m not hopeful on this point, but that is the question to be worked out over time. it remains to be seen whether harman successfully “makes the petition for ooo as a practical philosophy and social theory that may provide novel avenues for the ails of our times.”2 endnotes 1. harman calls his position “ardently realist” in manuel delanda and graham harman, the rise of realism. polity press, 2017, 3. 2. steven umbrello, “a theory of everything?” cultural studies review v24 n 2, 2018, 184-86. 186. towards a post-human era? digital architects and the future of mankind marion roussel in this age of unprecedented technological progress, we can no longer ask “what is man?” without examining what we think man will become. in the field of architecture such an examination necessitates considering both what and for whom we will be building in the decades to come. since the expansion of information and communication technologies in the beginning of the 1990s, the most forward-thinking architects have been asking these very questions. more specifically, digital architects have been among the first in the field, if not the first, to become interested in the effects of technological advancements not only on architectural design and the built environment of the future, but also on society as a whole and on our physical, psychological, and cultural evolution. thus they have constructed future world visions often impregnated with post-humanist and transhumanist currents of thought. these future world visions are valuable resources in our quest to grasp and understand the contemporary conception of mankind and of mankind’s possible futures. through such commentary this paper aims to show how digital architects have been imagining mankind’s future from the 1990s to the present. it will attempt to shed light upon our current state of evolution and its expected outcomes, regarding especially how we relate to the natural and to the artificial. we can no longer ask ‘what is man?’ without examining what we think man will become “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 78 r ou ss el these relationships have already been profoundly transformed by new technologies and they will be transformed more and more. from the possibility of new modes of being made possible by cyberspace, which architects dreamed of during the 1990s, to the fantasy of a world populated by a new bio-mechanic species of life and truly living buildings, the statement made by the artist roy ascott that “[w]e are only interested in what can be made of ourselves, not what made us” takes its full meaning.1 cyberspace: the possibility of new modes of being the digital turn in architecture occurred at the beginning of the 1990s as a result of the democratization of personal computers.2 it was contemporaneous with the development of the internet and virtual reality technologies, leading, during the course of that decade, to the theorization of cyberspace. the cyberpunk author william gibson, who popularized the term “cyberspace,” described it as “[a] consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation” and “[a] graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.”3 born around the beginning of the 1980s in science fiction literature, it was depicted as a new level of reality, an entirely new space of living, but an immaterial one which existed in addition to our physical one and was produced by the global interconnection of computers from all over the world. in fact, during all the 1990s, cyberspace provided a basis for reflection on the topic of the transformation of space under pressure of the ict (information and communications technology) and of the hybridization of virtual and physical spaces. moreover, it nourished a new imagination related to a likely transformation of mankind itself as a result of these virtualization processes. in the fields of architectural and urban theory, a number of research papers and publications emerged in this decade. cyberspace: first steps by michael benedikt (1991),4 being digital by nicholas negroponte (1995),5 and city of bits by william mitchell (1996)6 demonstrated the involvement and interest of architects in this emerging digital society and its implications. the publication of the issues of the architectural design review “architects in cyberspace,” in 19957 and “architects in cyberspace ii” in 1998,8 bringing together the contributions of the so-called “cyber-architects” (marcos novak, neil spiller, john frazer, karl chu, etc.), celebrated the “digital turn” in architecture as well as the community of thought that gathered around the topic of architecture, ict, and digital architecture. these works were mostly focused on the issue of dwelling, seeking 79 isparchitecture.com to redefine what it means to inhabit at a time when the virtualization of space was seen as capable of creating a transformation in man. immersion in virtual spaces and, therefore, the mind-body problem, were examined with a view to the future of man (individual, subject, or species) and his technological hybridization. it is not surprising, then, that the architectural design issue “architects in cyberspace” ended with a paper by stelarc entitled “towards the post-human: from psycho-body to cyber-system,” in which the artist announced the obsolescence of the biological body and the entry of the human into a postevolutionary era.9 c r e a t i n g visions of the world to come, reflecting on the evolution of mankind and society, the “cyberarchitects” flirted with trans-humanist currents of thought and definitions of the post-human. d i f f e r e n t i a t i n g itself from philosophical-cultural post-humanism and from technological post-humanism, trans-humanism promotes the enhancement of human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities through techniques such as stem-cell therapy, genetic engineering, psycho-pharmacology, anti-aging therapies, neural interfaces, machines, and other mechanical enhancements.10 by taking control of the evolutionary process and thus liberating the human species from its biological limitations, transhumanists aim to attain a post-human existence whose visions range from the post-human as a figure 1: trans-vitruvian man ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 80 r ou ss el cybernetic organism; a digital, disembodied entity; to even a new biological species.11 in the process, the definition of the human would evolve, perhaps in unpredictable ways. most of the digital architects believed that the emergence of cyberspace would truly transcend everything we know.12 “what would architecture be in this sphere of virtuality?” asked karl chu in 1995, before answering: “no one knows for sure, however one thing is certain, traditional conceptions of territory, of dwelling, of identity, of the phenomenology of existence and being will no longer be the same.”13 thought as a true phenomenological, perceptual, and phenomenal environment, cyberspace opened the possibility of new modes of being, and even of, in michael benedikt’s words, “another venue for consciousness itself.”14 marcos novak, pioneer of virtual reality and algorithmic architectural conception, exemplified this idea with a virtual environment called “dancing with the virtual dervish: worlds in progress” (1991-1994) in which performers were compared to mystic sufis in trance, immersed in a vision, an inner journey, exploring the meanderings of the human mind. generated from musical algorithms and l-systems (a formal and generative grammar used to model and simulate growth in plants), this environment was made up of an increasing number of chambers interconnected on the rhizome model, without any narrative hierarchy or determined development, and without beginning or end, thus leading to ways of being in space totally different from what we experience daily.15 for the british artist roy ascott, in the same spirit, cyberspaceinduced transformations in the concept of inhabiting were considered so important that architecture needed to be fully rethought and urban strategy to be re-conceptualized.16 in fact, according to ascott, new perceptual and cognitive abilities should have emerged from our relation to information and communication technologies, expanding our sensory apparatus and connecting our individual bodies. the ability to be both here and there at the same time, which cyberspace should have permitted, should have enabled new ways of thinking and perceiving. the “post-biological faculty of cyberception,” as called by ascott, should have constituted a true “qualitative change in our being.” he claims, moreover, that: [n]ot only are we changing radically, body and mind, but we are becoming actively involved in our own transformation. […] our consciousness allows us the fuzzy edge on identity, hovering between the inside and the outside of every possible definition of what it is to be a human being. we are all interface. we are computer-mediated and computer-enhanced.17 by the late 1990s, it was conceded that what cyberspace architects 81 isparchitecture.com had dreamed of was nothing but a fantasy. the inspiring word “cyberspace” became a synonym for the more prosaic internet, making it clear that there was no distinct virtual space separated from our physical one. it was also conceded that what happened in the electronic space of data and information networks in fact happened in our daily space, now hybridized by virtual technologies. even william gibson recognized that “[c]yberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. now cyberspace has everted. turned itself inside out. colonized the physical.”18 the installation “trans-ports” presented at the venice architecture biennial 2000 by the dutch artists kas oosterhuis and ilona lénárd, founders of the onl agency, is a striking example of this merging. trans-ports was an experiment in datadriven architecture: its structure was thought as reconfigurable in real-time in actual space as internet users manipulated its online 3d model. concomitantly, data collected in the physical space would also modify the structure, this modification being reverberated online, changing the 3d model. then the connectedness and interdependence between physical and virtual spaces would be made obvious. moreover, the “trans-ports” inner skin was designed as a giant and continuous screen projecting information from websites or webcams, completely immersing visitors in data. this inner skin is conceptually very close to the hypersurface architecture theory developed by stephen perrella during the 1990s, where architecture was conceptualized as a media surface melting the virtual and the built environment into a single hybrid space. even if the fantasy of cyberspace had vanished, the insights developed by roy ascott remained deeply relevant. beyond the traditional naturalartificial debate thenceforth thought as obsolete, william gibson recognized that cyberspace has everted. turned itself inside out. colonized the physical “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 82 r ou ss el what persisted was the idea of an intentionally and technologically directed self-transformation of humankind; and this some years before the german philosopher peter sloterdijk wrote two essays on that very same proposition respectively entitled rules for the human zoo19 and the domestication of being.20 according to sloterdijk, anthropogenesis is the result of anthropotechnics: human beings produce their own identity by means of technics (technological techniques). neither technics nor technology would be “against” man: we would not be dealing with dehumanization by technology. on the contrary, such self-transformation would fully be part of a greater, and genuine, effort to strive for a better humanity. the architect rachel armstrong expressed a very similar idea in 1998. she stated that “all mechanised individuals, regardless of their degree of integration with technology, remain fundamentally human.[...] this transformation of the body is not an artificial process; on the contrary, it is a natural extension of our humanness. our species has elevated itself on the earth by its capacity to use machines, not by its innate genetic programming.”21 yet, due to, for example, the emergence of new species of life, be they digital, mechanical, or bio-mechanical, the place of man on the earth could well change faster than we expect, and in such a radical way that it could lead to the extinction of humankind itself. toward new species of life: toward the death of mankind? in 2002 kas oosterhuis declared that, “[d]igital life may well assimilate us completely in the end, so that we no longer need to pretend that we are the be-all and end-all of evolution.”22 this architect, clearly, shared a theory of personality like that of vernor vinge or ray kurzweil, who popularized the hypothesis of ‘singularity.’ singularity is the idea that we are at the dawn of a ‘technological leap’ determined by the exponential growth of computer power that will result in the emergence of artificial super-intelligences. proponents of singularity believe that, at some point, progress will be the accomplishment of these artificial intelligences only, with humanity becoming obsolete. in the same way, we would no longer be in charge of our own future: the super-intelligences would decide for us; choosing to annihilate us, absorb us, or let us live as they saw fit. this technological post-humanist concept of the post-human is quite different from that of trans-humanism or from that of philosophicalcultural post-humanism. in fact, whereas trans-humanism embraced the project of creating radically enhanced humanity, and whereas in philosophical-cultural post-humanism the concept of the post-human serves as a basis for a new narrative that would not engage “the literal 83 isparchitecture.com end of man but the end of a particular image of us,”23 technological post-humanism envisions the very disappearance of the human species. its project, therefore, is not concerned with the human but with the production of an artificial alterity that would not only be no longer human but would in fact supersede us, leading to a completely postanthropocentric, non-human world. karl chu does not explicitly embrace that singularity idea, but his future world vision seems close to that of technological post-humanism. since the late 1990s he has been announcing the advent of a post-human era which he has termed the ‘hyperzoïc era’. this hyperzoïc era, a “brave new world more fantastic and hyperbolic than anything we have seen in the history of human civilization,”24 would be not unlike the cambrian era—an explosion of diversification and complexity. it would be characterized by “the profusion of a new type of life; the artificial life of abstract machines and architecture, which will be reflected in a new type of bionic economy of the mecanosphere, coinciding with the biosphere.”25 he reiterated the same ideas in 2004: finally, with the convergence of computation and biogenetics, the world is now moving into the so-called post-human era, which will bring forth a new kind of bio-machinic mutation of organic and inorganic substances. […] it is only a matter of time before the world will witness biomachinic mutation of species proliferating into every facet of what so far has been the cultural landscape of humanity. architects take note: this is the beginning of the demise, if not the displacement, of the reign of anthropology, which has always subsumed architecture. […] the potential emancipation of architecture from anthropology is already affording us to think for the first time of a new kind of xenoarchitecture with its own autonomy and will to being.26 the emphasis put on the possibility of creating the world is now moving into the so-called post-human era “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 84 r ou ss el new species of architectural life (that is, living buildings) from scratch, through the use of genetic engineering and synthetic biology, is very interesting. even more interesting is the idea that, in the same way, architecture, which, according to chu, “has always been a subset of anthropology,” “especially from the standpoint of its mythical inception,”27 would no longer be subsumed by anthropology. this idea is not, however, developed further and nothing is said about what could become of human beings in this new environment, except that it “may lead to conditions that are so precarious and treacherous as to even threaten the future viability of the species, homo sapiens, on earth.”28 while also largely adhering to a post-anthropocentric trans-humanist view, marcos novak’s reflection on these issues is more intriguing. according to novak, we would become alien. in 1998, referencing nietzsche, he wrote that if the project of modernity might be characterized by the desire to build the super-man, our (post-modern) time would in turn be characterized by the desire to build what he calls “the alien.”29 in 2002 he stated, again referencing nietzsche and the end of theo-centrism, that the production of the alien, encompassing all aspects and areas of our reality, would lead to the death of mankind. “allocentrism” would then replace anthropocentrism, undermining the traditional definition of the human.30 “the death of mankind” is not intended, however, to suggest some sort of “literal, alarmist, and paranoid apocalyptic fear.” it implies, rather, that mankind is an ongoing project,31 and that this ongoing project, according to the architect, would tend toward the alien. this idea can be linked, first, to what the french philosopher michel foucault claimed in the order of things: that is to say that “man is an invention of recent date. and one perhaps nearing its end.”32 “man is […] a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and […] he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form.”33 thus, to say that mankind is an ongoing project tending toward the alien is to say that our understanding of what is mankind, our conception of man, is shifting. secondly, in order to understand what it means to become alien, the whole conceptual landscape of marcos novak needs to be examined, beginning with its central notion of ‘transmodernity.’ developed in the middle of the 1990s, ‘transmodernity’ refers to the idea that our era is characterized by all that the prefix ‘trans-’ entails: ‘beyond,’ ‘across,’ ‘through,’ ‘so as to change.’ under the pressure of new technologies and hybridization of virtual and actual spaces, all the traditional taxonomies (dead/alive, natural/artificial, human/non-human, etc.) would be erased, giving birth to new conditions, new situations, 85 isparchitecture.com new events, new bodies, and new identities. thus, the main effect of transmodernity would be the “production of the alien.” to sum up, our world would become stranger and stranger, and so would we: “[t]his is no surprise: transmodernity is about becoming: becoming alien.”34 in “speciation, transvergence, allogenesis: notes on the production of the alien,” novak stated that if in the past our interest has been focused on evolution as a continuous process of adaptation (relying on such concepts as fitness), today it is diversity and the discontinuous mechanisms of speciation which might retain our attention. drawing an analogy with biological processes (an analogy which requires, however, further explanation), novak claims that: [t]o say that we are a transmodern culture is thus to say that we have placed ourselves into a period of rapid and intentional cladogenesis. to say that transmodernity is characterised by the production of the alien is to say that our cladogenesis is directed towards what i term allogenesis.35 big bang 2.0: building a brave new world? ‘cladogenesis’ refers to a mode of evolution by branching, in which a parent species splits into two distinct species, the new species then being fed by the same genetic material as the one from which it originated. the neologism ‘allogenesis’ refers to the emergence of new species from every available material—genetic, epigenetic, or even non-genetic. allogenetic processes are more discontinuous than cladogenetic and can lead to the emergence of “alien” species. this does not, however, mean that we would be dealing with a radical rupture but rather that the continuous movement of becoming, now incorporating new technologies, would direct mankind towards exceptionally rapid changes. although intentionally and technologically ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 86 r ou ss el initiated by human design, allogenesis might result in beings which would be impossible to predict. it would moreover concern not only mankind but also the production of other species. as novak announced in 2008: established species were once mutant. there is a deep relationship between how the new is conceived, produced, introduced, and established in nature and how the new emerges in culture […] we have finally developed tools powerful enough not only to represent or describe the processes of development and speciation by which the new enters the world, but to simulate them, and then, beyond that, to actually embody them. we will not stop at simulating the evolution and mechanisms of life; we aim to manufacture new species of life itself.36 novak’s discourse is very similar to that of karl chu. novak and chu in fact worked on similar projects that involved the growing of truly living buildings. one example of this ‘alloarchitecture’ (novak’s term) is the project “allobio” (2001-2004), which is defined as an anticipation of the convergence of the virtual and the actual, the psychological and the cybernetical, the architectural and the biological. it may be one of the first examples of what neil spiller calls ‘post-digital architecture’: not architecture without any digital component, but a synthesis between the virtual, the actual, the biological, the cyborgian, the augmented, and the mixed.37 “allobio” was described as the first specimen of a hybrid singular species, an ‘allo-living’ creature at the intersection of architecture and biotechnology. “allobio” might pave the way for buildings which would no longer be manufactured but would grow as plants or animals grow and would couple the virtual and the actual within reflexive and evolving spaces, fed both by data from computer networks and from events taking place in physical space. allobio might be said to have an awareness, a consciousness, and an intentionality of its own. as truly intelligent architecture, [it] would have evolving personalit[y] that wouldn’t just behave differently in response to our behavior, but would also change and strive to change us. we would not command [it]; rather we would be in dialogue with [it]. sometimes we would persuade [it] to do as we wish; sometimes [it] would persuade us. this statement is indicative of the desire to establish more respectful relationships with our environment, beginning with our buildings. beyond the ecological imperative which guides architects such as dennis dollens, michael hensel, rachel armstrong, and alberto t. estévez,38 there appears to be a desire to create a new world, which is not only our own making but also a product of an ongoing dialogue with these kinds of alien architectures. 87 isparchitecture.com the idea that it might be possible to create a new world, or that a new world might be about to emerge thanks to biotechnology, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and informatics, is not unique to chu and novak. it is also shared by roy ascott. according to ascott a new big ‘b.a.n.g.’ would result from the convergence of bits, atoms, neurons, and genes, hybridizing the dry silicon digital domain of computers and the wet biological world of living systems. the birth of this new world might be so transformative that human identity itself might be pushed to a much more complex level. for ascott the questions “[w]hat is to be human?” and “how do we deal with the responsibility of redefining nature and life itself ?”39 emerge as key questions for our era. both are of equal importance and are deserving of being treated urgently both in scientific and in artistic fields. as ascott wrote: “the artificial is now part of our nature, and nature is in large part artificial.”40 moreover: “in as much as we are a part of nature, we wish now to be consciously involved in its co-evolution, which is to say in our own selfdefinition and reconstruction.”41 the fact that the questions “what is it to be human?” “what will man become?” and “what do we want nature to become?” were addressed jointly merits some attention. now, more than ten years after the publication of ascott’s paper, it is possible to create new species of life almost from scratch with the help of what are called ‘living technologies’ (synthetic biology, genetic engineering, etc.).42 through these technologies nature is in fact compelled to adapt to mankind: “technology, often depicted as the enemy of nature, will bring us closer to it, but it will be a nature entirely re-described, and re-aligned to our post-biological sensibilities.”43 even in the context of ecological crisis, nature is seen as something to enhance so that it can continue to meet our needs. between 2003 and 2014 the genetic the artificial is now part of our nature, and nature is in large part artificial “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 88 r ou ss el architectures research group (which includes alberto t. estévez, dennis dollens, and karl chu) developed bioluminescent lemon trees which could be used for street lighting by implanting in their cells genes extracted from jellyfish which produce a fluorescent protein (gfp). between 2007 and 2010 the same genetic architectures research group led experiments to develop living tissue and cell masses as a building material, allowing living walls to be constructed autonomously, or rather to grow on their own. this latter project is quite similar to that of the new york architecture firm terreform one named “in vitro meat habitat” (2008), which is a prototype of organic architectural skin made of pig cells via 3d printing. in 2015 the american-israeli architect and designer neri oxman presented “mushtari”, a life-support system made for intergalactic travelers and consisting of a prosthetic organ filled with synthetically modified micro-organisms. pointing out that the two bacteria at work in this project never meet in the wild, she said: “think of it as evolution not by natural selection, but evolution by design.”44 this statement is representative of the way living species are instrumentalized. no matter how important the ethical and philosophical questions raised by the possibility of engineering life may be, architects such as amstrong, estévez, oxman, and michael hensel do not seem to be eager to develop critical reflection on their practices. similarly, however ‘alive’ buildings might become, they would not become free from subservience to human beings. significantly, in her book living architecture: how synthetic biology can remake our cities and reshape our lives, rachel armstrong asked: “perhaps our homes could care for us, come to our rescue, or even love us?”45 in other words the end of anthropocentrism which karl chu announced has not yet come. as, as it would seem, our human mindset is not changing, there would seem to be little possibility that we could in fact build a better world. conclusion during the last thirty years avant-garde architects have been working on what and for whom they will build in future decades. during the 1990s architects dreamed of a totally artificial and immaterial world. thus freed from terrestrial anchorage, enabled to become pure information, mankind would have become post-human, as post-biological beings in a computer simulation run by machines (undeniably like the fantasy world of the matrix).46 during the 2000s it was realized that this would not be so. the exponential growth of technologies, new and old, was making everything we know—the artificial, the natural, or the hybridized—more 89 isparchitecture.com and more complex. our gaze therefore turned to the biological realm as the place where we might create new forms of biomachinic life, questioning and subverting our relationships to the world, to nature, and to ourselves. during the 2000s, however, we were not able to produce these new forms of life, and marcos novak’s “allobio” building, for example, remained but an imaginary architecture. as, however, science and technology improve, it may yet be possible to re-engineer the biology of the whole of nature and to build a ‘nature 2.0.’ it would, then, be time to ask important questions— those very same questions which architects have always pondered. what kind of world do we want to live in? what kind of relationship with nature do we want to have? what pathway do we want to follow concerning our own evolution? a new paradigm is needed, as chu suggested, for our role as active agents in the transformation of our environments and, indeed, of our universe at large.47 such as new paradigm is necessary for at least two reasons: firstly, because those who are currently shaping the new world often fail to take stock of their responsibilities, and, secondly (and perhaps more importantly), as pointed out by roy ascott, because what we will do to our environments is part of the definition of what we will ourselves become. while much seems unclear, one thing at least is certain: the way we will transform nature will influence our own evolution. endnotes [1] roy ascott, “the architecture of cyberperception,” architectural design 65, no.11/12 (1995): 38. [2] it must be acknowledged that if the democratization of the personal computer was the condition for the possibility of the digital turn— this democratization permitting every architect and while much seems unclear, one thing at least is certain: the way we will transform nature will influence our own evolution “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 90 r ou ss el every architecture firm to have a computer—the digital turn would of course never have happened without the development of 3d modeling software that allowed architects and firms to design forms on screen that would be impossible to hand draw, even making it possible to add a temporal dimension to the design. see antoine picon, digital culture in architecture: an introduction for the design professions (basel: birkhauser, 2010); and mario carpo, ed., the digital turn in architecture 1992-2012 (london: john wiley & sons ltd, 2013). [3] william gibson, neuromancer (new york: ace books, 1986), 51. [4] michael benedikt, ed., cyberspace: first steps (cambridge: the mit press, 1992). [5] nicholas negroponte, being digital (new york: alfred a. knopf, 1995). [6] william mitchell, city of bits (cambridge: the mit press, 1996). [7] architectural design 65, no.11/12 (1995). [8] architectural design 68, no.11/12 (1998). [9] stelarc, “towards the post-human. from psycho-body to cybersystem,” architectural design 65, no.11/12 (1995): 90-96. [10] hava tirosh-samuelson, “transhumanism as a secularist faith,” zygon 47, no.4 (2012): 716-717. [11] robert ranisch and stefan lorenz sorgner, “introducing postand transhumanism,” in postand transhumanism: an introduction, eds. robert ranisch and stefan lorenz sorgner (new york: peter lang, 2014), 7-8. [12] according to john frazer, however, cyberspace was not the cause but the symptom of this profound transformation: “the parallel world of cyberspace […] is just one manifestation of deep cultural and technical changes which are reshaping our understanding of our world,” he wrote in 1995, stressing that this paradigm shift is characterized by “the shift of perception from an universe of objects to one of relationships.” see john frazer, “the architectural relevance of cyberspace,” architectural design 65, no.11/12, (1995): 76. [13] karl chu, “modal space: the virtual anatomy of hyperstructures,” architectural design 65, no.11/12, (1995): 69. [14] michael benedikt, “cyberspace: some proposals,” in cyberspace: first steps, ed. michael benedikt (cambridge: the mit press, 1991), 124. [15] marcos novak, “dancing with the virtual dervish: worlds in progress,” in immersed in technology, art and virtual environments, eds. marie anne moser and douglas macleod (cambridge: the mit press, 1996), 303-308. 91 isparchitecture.com [16] ascott, “the architecture of cyberperception,” 40. [17] ibid. 38. [18] william gibson, “google’s earth,” new york times (new york, ny), august 31, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/ opinion/01gibson/html?scp=1&sq=william+gibson&st=nyt. [19] peter sloterdijk, “rules for the human zoo: a response to the letter on humanism,” trans. mary varney rorty, society and space 27 (2009): 12-28. [20] peter sloterdijk, die domestikation des seins. für eine verdeutlichung der lichtung (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2000). [21] rachel armstrong, “body machine,” ad architectural design 68, no.11/12 (1998): 92. [22] kas oosterhuis, “yes, we build spaceships,” in architecture goes wild (rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2002), 30-37. [23] ihab hassan, “prometheus as performer: towards a posthumanist culture?,” the georgia review 31, no.4 (1977): 845. [24]karl chu, “the turing dimension,” archilab, published 2000, accessed october 20, 2016, http://www.archilab.org/public/2000/catalog/ xkavya/xkavyaen.htm. [25] karl chu, “x phylum,” domus 822 (2000): 42-45. [26] karl chu, “metaphysics of genetic architecture and computation,” perspecta 35 (2004): 78. [27] ibid. [28] ibid. 76. [29] marcos novak, “alien space: the shock of the view,” circa art + technology supplement 90 (1998): 12-13. [30] see marcos novak, “speciation, transvergence, allogenesis: notes on the production of the alien,” ad architectural design 72, no.3 (2002): 66. novak writes: renaissance humanism, the anthropocentric production of the philosophical notion of man, followed an era preoccupied with the theocentric production of the philosophical notion of god. the birth of man eventually led to the collapse of theocentrism, which nietzsche characterised as the ‘death of god’, thus, i suggest, beginning a series: the production of god (pog) is followed by the production of man (pom); the production of man leads to the death of god (dog); the production of man is followed by the production of the alien (poa), which, in turn leads to the death of man (dom). […] ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 92 r ou ss el in other words, centrifugal allocentrism is now displacing anthropocentrism, just as anthropocentrism displaced theocentrism, with the alien taking the place of the nietzschean overman, and extending itself past all human limits to encompass all aspects of our constructed reality. [31] ibid. 67. [32] michel foucault, the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences (new york: routledge, 2002), 422. [33] ibid. xxv. [34] marcos novak, “transarchitectures and hypersurfaces, operations of transmodernity,” architectural design 68, no.5/6 (1998): 85. [35] novak, “speciation, transvergence, allogenesis,” 67. [36] marcos novak, “alien beauty: immanent design. alloatomic transarchitectures for automutant (allo)selves,” in manufacturing – share festival 2008, ed. bruce sterling (turino: share festival, 2008), 143. [37] neil spiller, “plectic architecture: towards a theory of the postdigital in architecture,” technoetic arts: a journal of speculative research 7, no. 2 (2009): 95-104. [38] marcos novak, interview by alessandro ludovico, neural, published april 2001, accessed october 20, 2016, http://www.neural.it/english/ marcosnovak.htm. [39] for all of them, the artificial life of architecture may be one of the answers to the ecological crisis. on that matter, see denis dollens, “architecture as nature: a biodigital hypothesis,” leonardo 42, no.5 (2009): 412–420; alberto t. estévez, “genetic architecture: new ecologic-environmental architectural design & new cybernetic-digital architectural design,” in genetic architectures, ed. alberto t. estévez (santa fe: lumen books; barcelona: sites books/escola tecnica superior d’arquitectura, 2003), 4-19; rachel armstrong, living architecture: how synthetic biology can remake our cities and reshape our lives (new york: ted books, 2012); michael hensel, “(synthetic) life architectures: ramifications and potentials of a literal biological paradigm for architectural design,” architectural design 76 no.2 (2006): 18–25. [40] roy ascott, “moistmedia, technoetics and the three vrs,” isea2000, published 2000, accessed october 27, 2016, http://www. isea2000.com/actes_doc/01_ascott.rtf. [41] ibid. [42] see mark a. bedau, john s. mccaskill, norman h. packard, and steen rasmussen, “living technology: exploiting life’s principles in 93 isparchitecture.com technology,” artificial life 16, no.1 (2010): 89-97. [43] ascott, “moistmedia, technoetics and the three vrs.” [44] neri oxman, “design at the intersection of technology and biology” (presentation, ted2015, vancouver, canada, march 2015), accessed march 09, 2016, https://www.ted.com/talks/neri_oxman_design_at_ the_intersection_of_technology_and_biology?language=en. [45] armstrong, living architecture. [46] the matrix, directed by lana and lilly wachowski (burbank, ca : warner bros, 1999), dvd. [47] chu, “the turing dimension.” 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter amsterdam (2018) while the importance of public space seems mostly undisputed, much disagreement continues to emerge concerning its purposes, its boundaries, its characteristics, its use, and most importantly the extent of the threats it faces. different visions of public space have taken form in the works of such diverse architectural and urban practitioners, historians and critics, as camillo sitte, kenneth frampton, rem koolhaas, michael sorkin, margaret crawford, and jan gehl, but also of urban sociologists like setha low and lyn lofland, activists such as jane jacobs and mike davis, as well as such influential philosophers and political theorists as henri lefebvre, hannah arendt, jürgen habermas, and chantal mouffe. many of them have read public space from a humanistic, pluralistic, democratic perspective, offering various descriptions of what it might mean in the broader context of a democratic society’s organization. and while their ideals of social interaction and political debate do not necessarily constrain the definition of a public space to a physical location, historically these values frequently find tangible expression in the greek agora, the coffee shop, the city square, the town hall, the parliament, and especially the street. the built environment therefore offers more than just functional areas or aesthetic experiences. it is a force that shapes a world-in-common, grounded on encounter and appearance, discussion and mediation, with all the tension and conflict that implies. today, this ideal of public space must address new challenges and renewed versions of the old, from recent developments in cities and societies public space. the real and the ideal. editorial andré patrão, hans teerds, christoph baumberger, and tom spector ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 6 ed it or ia l such as smart-cities, big data, and gentrification, to such well-established problems as segregation, commodification, and surveillance. the recent history of public spaces finds them increasingly privatized, controlled, monitored, and scripted. they are designed to accommodate leisure and tourism, shopping and sporting, transportation and traveling, often with little regard for the social and political ideal of encounter and exchange, thereby neglecting to make room for the struggles and disputes inherent to it. but, it has turned out, that even in highly controlled spaces social and political life can occur, as shown for example in the 2022 protests in iran, where despite the risk of arrest and even death, people take to the streets to protest against the restrictions to women’s participation in public life. this state of affairs presses the questions: how important is architecture and urban design for public life after all? does design still draw concrete outlines for public life and its socio-political dimensions, or can these be catered for elsewhere? and how does philosophy help elucidate and tackle these problems? these and many other topics concerning public space were discussed at the 5th biennial conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture, organized by eth zürich and the epfl. after a oneyear postponement due to the outbreak of a pandemic and the public health restrictions that ensued – and added another topic of concern to the agenda – the conference met in 2021 at monte verità, a former utopianlike hub of alternative cooperative life in the swiss canton of ticino, standing in the beautiful landscape between the alps and lago maggiore. what followed were four days of lively, varied, intense exchanges between more than eighty speakers, including philosophers, architectural theorists, architects, urban planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and scholars of many other fields. ten contributions, including all four keynote lectures, have been published in this special double issue of architecture philosophy. to prepare the ground for such a sprawling topic, the first article briefly surveys pivotal moments in the history of public space and the ways it has been read, touching upon several of its key themes and recurring philosophical figures. sven-olov wallenstein’s ‘public space: conflicts and antinomies’ moves from the fabricated idea of an ideal greek polis to kant’s constitution of one in the spirit of the enlightenment, a foundational moment for the modern notion of a public political space. the accounts that followed, until this day, have often stressed the rise and looming fall of public space, perceived as perpetually and increasingly under threat. however, public space has also been described as inherently conflictual, not anomalously (divergences to be reconciled) but constitutively (the 7 isparchitecture.com clashes of those divergences are what characterizes public space). these versions do not converge, nor does one exclude the other. as wallenstein states, they “[…] can neither be fused into a common story, nor can we simply choose between them; perhaps they can be said to constitute something like the antinomy of public space.”1 a leading proponent of the conflictual view is chantal mouffe, who made her case in the lecture published here under the title ‘on the political: public space and the possibility of a critical architecture.” liberal philosophical discourses, mouffe claims, react to the antagonist dimension of the political as a problem to be resolved, either through a rational compromise between different interests or a consensus grounded on free discussion. however, “[…] despite what many liberals want us to believe, the specificity of democratic politics is not to overcome this ‘we/them’ opposition, but how to construct this opposition, compatible with the recognition of pluralism.”2 mouffe proposes agonism as an alternative, one which embraces the existence of conflicting interests not by regarding the other as an enemy, as in an antagonistic relation, but as a legitimate adversary. public spaces, therefore, function at their best not as places of accord but of dispute. the construction or challenge to hegemonic political identities also unfolds outside of political institutions, importantly through artistic practices – in which mouffe includes architecture. how do these philosophical ideas play out in the built environment? in ‘the space of appearance within the megalopolis: architectural culturepolitics of são paulo 1957-2017’, kenneth frampton calls attention to the contemporary challenges that arise for public spaces – in their political and constructive senses – with the recent transformation of the polis into the megalopolis. in são paulo, the most populated city in brasil and one of the biggest in the world, he discovers numerous works that open a space of appearance in the arendtian the built environment offers more than just functional areas or aesthetic experiences. it is a force that shapes a worldin-common. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 8 ed it or ia l sense, such as the sesc pompeia by lina bo bardi and marcelo ferraz, the faculty of architecture and urbanism of the university of são paulo by joão vilanova artigas, and the sesc 2017 by paulo mendes da rocha. in these examples, frampton says, one can admire a distinctive paulistaschool “[...] accommodation of socio-cultural and politically progressive programs within the fabric of tectonically articulated, monumental form.”3 many different agents participate in the design and use of public urban spaces besides – though by no means excluding – architects and urbanists. hans teerds’ interview with margaret crawford, ‘a site of struggle,’ explores more contemporary case-studies in the united states, particularly in california. the shopping mall, once the target of crawford’s ineludible critiques on the privatization of public space, reappears in a more favorable light. as she points out, “[…] many people now go to malls more for public interaction rather than to actually buy something. physical shopping can be understood as a positive force shaping public space, as compared to online shopping from home.”4 crawford also commented on recent examples where the use of public spaces turned contentious – antagonistic, even – involving, for example, migrant workers waiting for a ride in front of private stores, street-vendors in los angeles, barbecuers at a public park in oakland, and the black lives matter movement, which crawford labels as “[…] the most important public space development in the last 10 years.”5 each of these particular instances illustrates and reasserts the recurring idea throughout all the keynote speakers of public space as a place of struggle. an influential claim from within this struggle issued decades ago by henri lefebvre – another well-known author in the discussion of public space – was a focal point of saul fisher’s ‘architectural responsibilities and the right to a city.’ he revisits lefebvre’s notion of “the right to the city” so as to renderer it “feasible, generic, and so broadly amenable to many of its adherents,” while illustrating the effects of its denial through several hypothetical scenarios of contemporary life.6 fisher’s crucial question goes even further though: if we are to accept such a right, then what responsibilities does it entail for architects? the question may also be asked of the right to refuge from public space. erika brandl speaks of adequate housing as a basic need in ‘property, necessity, and housing: reconsidering the situated right to a place to be.’ she stresses that the question “‘why must something be done inside and not outside the house?’ is another way of asking ‘why are dwellings so necessary to us?’”7 through the works of jeremy waldron, richard epstein, and alejandra mancilla, brandl demonstrates how political philosophy not only sheds light on architectural problems of domesticity, but also on what architectural practice can do to address them. 9 isparchitecture.com beyond the framework of a dichotomy between the private and the public lays the chinese notion of jianghu, as explained by esther lorenz in ‘anonymity in jianghu: hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis.’ jianghu has come to define a realm deliberately apart from societal and political order. lorenz uses this word, which literally translates into “rivers and lakes,” to better understand a description of the 2019 hong kong protests, a movement inspired by the bruce lee quote “be like water.” through uncontrollable anonymous digital means, protesters coalesced like flash-floods to turn unexpected places like roads and roofs into ephemeral political public spaces. according to lorenz, “[w]hat we witnessed in 2019 in hong kong was the emergence of a contemporary form of jianghu, as a hybridization of digital space, material space, and spatial practices.”8 conversely, even the most stereotypical typology of public space does not guarantee a site for social and political aggregation. stella evangelidou analyzes the design strategy behind an intervention on southern nicosia’s main square, in ‘parametric design in the historic urban domain: the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects.’ parametricism, she argues, operated not simply as a design tool but as an architectural ideology; polemical from the project’s conception and selection to its use after construction. as evangelidou sees it, “[t]he hyper-aestheticized and non-functional forms have displaced political actions from the site. eleftheria square has lost its quality as a topos politikos.”9 the powerful potential of architecture, whether positive or negative, intended or not, upon the social and political dimensions of public space is at the center of margit van schaik’s study of its most symbolic sites. ‘what architecture does – an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment’ considers how the architectural properties of the dutch parliament building affect the manner in which politics is conducted in the the black lives matter movement is the most important public space development in the last 10 years. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 10 ed it or ia l country, but keeps some distance from deterministic claims. as she says, “[…] a window does not determine you look through it, but it does influence what you will see if you do.”10 van schaik grounds her outlook on input from philosophy of mind, psychology and neuroscience, brought together in the theories of embodiment advanced by francisco varela and evan thomson. a different approach to one’s embodied experience of place adopts bernard rudolsky’s sandals as a medium. ‘on foot: embodied atmospheres,’ by andreea mihalache, suggests that “[m]ore than footwear, the sandals are a design manifesto expressing the connection between feet and floors, always in touch through the intimacy of the sole […].”11 against the long-standing dominant formal and sight-centered attitudes in both philosophy and architecture, mihalache urges for the embrace of subjective experience of atmospheres as a design criteria, which has precedent in the two disciplines’ history nonetheless. roaming around houses, strolling down streets, the tactile experience of walking partakes in the finding of one’s ground – literally and figuratively. all ten contributions offer deeply informative, intellectually stimulating, thought-provoking insights. they tackle plenty of topics, engaged from diverse research frameworks, and look at distinct case-studies from multiple times and places, to reach a variety of significant claims which may overlap or conflict, but all contribute to an understanding of the real and ideal characteristics of public space. these results emerge from a historically productive dialogue between two disciplines while thinking together. that long and fruitful tradition continues in this special issue of architecture philosophy. endnotes 1. sven-olov wallenstein, ‘public space. conflicts and antinomies’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 13. 2. chantal mouffe, ‘on the political, public space and the possibility of a critical architecture’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 29. 3. kenneth frampton, ‘the space of appearance within the megalopolis. architectural culture-politics of são paulo 1957-2017’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 45. 4. hans teerds, ‘a site of struggle. an interview with margaret crawford,’ in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 51-52. 5. ibid., 58. 6. saul fisher, ‘architectural responsibilities and the right to a city’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 63. 11 isparchitecture.com 7. erika brandl, ‘property, necessity and housing. reconsidering the situated right to a place to be’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 85. 8. esther lorenz, ‘anonymity in jianghu. hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis’. in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 113. 9. stella evangelidou, ‘parametric design in the historic urban domain. the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 135. 10. margit van schaik, ‘what architecture does. an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 149. 11. andreea mihalache, ‘on foot. embodied atmospheres’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 165. disneyland paris (2021) the world of the shopping mall has become a template for the whole world, margaret crawford, a professor of architecture and urban design and director of the department of urban design at berkeley, concluded in her 1992 contribution to variations on a theme park.1 the book, edited by the architect michael sorkin, offers a collection of alarming articles, investigating how commercial interests, economic principles, and consumerist perspectives shape contemporary cities. sorkin presents it apocalyptically: ‘the end of public space.’ as he announces in his introduction: this is an alarming perspective, as public space is directly related to the issue of democracy, the interaction, the possibility of protests, the proximity of otherness, the existence of fringes.2 crawford’s opening article examines the development and features of malls and mall life. her concluding argument is made up out of the observation that also existing cities and their downtowns, even such classical and medieval cities as florence and rouen, as well as public or cultural venues, like museums, transform according to mall logics. the conclusion fits well in the book, as it underlines the narrative of loss. what if the whole world transforms along the lines of mall principles? crawford is amongst the rare thinkers that are able to publicly rethink and criticize the own conclusions. a few years after her contribution to variations on a theme park, she published an article in the journal of architectural education wherein she clearly distances herself from the narrative of loss which had influenced her work previously. in “contesting the public realm: struggles over public space in los angeles” she writes that this idea of a site of struggle. interview with margaret crawford hans teerds ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 52 te er ds loss is “derived from extremely narrow and normative definitions of both public and space,” while, “the meaning of concepts such as public, space, democracy, and citizenship are continually being redefined in practice through lived experience.”3 in the article she not only propels to approach consumerist spaces less pessimistically, but also writes about other practices of consumption less defined by the principles of capitalism, and closer to an everyday occupation of public life, such as street vending. this perspective she makes even more clear in the important book everyday urbanism, which she edited together with john chase and john kaliski.4 her own contribution to this book, the article “blurring the boundaries,” underlines how everyday spaces are still spaces of struggle, occupation, adaptation, and appropriation.5 as such these spaces still raise important political questions about both citizenship and economic participation. this perspective thus is much more optimistic about the vitality of public space as stage of the political dimension of the world. from “contesting the public realm” onwards, the work of crawford is clearly based on new insight, a new perception of the world which is more hopeful and less pessimistic. in this the following interview, i questioned crawford on this moment of change in her thinking: how does she look back on her contribution to variations on a theme park, why did she change her mind, and how does she read the situation of public space today? mc: the tone of my original article was hugely influenced by michael sorkin. when i was asked to contribute, the working title of the book was variations on a theme park: scenes from the new american city. this was a very non-judgmental title, a survey of what was happening in the american urban landscape. later, the subtitle was changed to the end of public space, a title that did not sit well with me. however, michael encouraged every contributor to have a pessimistic and even a slightly apocalyptic take on what we were investigating. there were two important philosophers who were influencing the debate at the time: jean baudrillard, with his concept of hyperreality, and jürgen habermas, with his idea of the loss of the public sphere. in the article i contributed to the volume, public space does not play an important part. the real contribution of that article to contemporary discourse is the discussion of the financing and organization of mall development. while preparing the article, i went to many shopping malls, pretty much nonstop, for several months. it was at the high point of shopping mall development in the united states and canada, the early nineties were a prosperous decade of consumption in the us. visiting all these 53 isparchitecture.com malls definitely shaped my perception, as well as my conclusion that the mall had conquered the entire world. once you get engaged in this narrative of loss, you don’t see signs that something else is happening. lots of changes were lurking slightly under the surface, and i didn’t see them. but what i recognized in that narrative is that the mall concept, in which scripting and theming played an important role, was also expanding beyond the mall, to other domains of commercial and cultural life. scripting and theming, for instance, became part of the design of museums and airports too. the concern about these mechanisms applied to public space and cultural venues is a concern about authenticity and authentic experiences. but once you start thinking about what is real and what is fantasy, the entire concept of authenticity vanishes. it is actually a moral response, an upper-middle-class concern that they used to differentiate themselves as informed and aware people who don’t go to malls and spurn disneyland, from the rest of the populace, who enjoy them. it is an apparently leftist critique that actually serves to maintain class distinctions. i now read my contribution to variations on a theme park as a response to a particular moment in time, influenced by a particular kind of leftist alarm, a moral panic about what was going on in the built environment. it was written in an ambience linked to inexorable narratives of consumerism, exploding marketing and a constantly expanding capitalism. in this situation, it is assumed that there is nothing you can do, except write critical articles. but soon after my article, the circumstances changed. slowly but slightly, still continuing until today, many malls have become obsolete and have been demolished. new malls are rarely being built. over the past decade, this change has certainly been propelled with the increase of online shopping. however, this trend also has led to a paradoxical new appreciation of the mall, because many people now go to malls more for public interaction rather the actual meaning of the relationship between consumption and public life seems to be changing dramatically. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 54 te er ds than to actually buy something. physical shopping can be understood as a positive force shaping public space, as compared to online shopping from home. so, the actual meaning of the relationship between consumption and public life seems to be changing dramatically. but this does not mean that i am less concerned about the privatization of public space. there are still urban spaces being developed and built where commerce dominates public space. take for instance the hudson yards in new york, or in los angeles, the americana at brand, which are, i would argue, a new typology of shopping mall: open air shopping spaces with housing above the shops. it differs from historic downtown districts or the medieval centers of cities in europe, where people also lived (and still live) above shops in shopping streets. but where these streets are part and parcel of a continuous urban public space, the urban fabric, these new spaces are detached from the surrounding urban spaces. as such, these spaces still follow the mall typology. the residents of the apartments thus are really living within the confines of the shopping mall. their public space is totally commercialized. how do they experience these spaces, i wonder? do they accept it as their own town square? this new typology does show that privatization has not stopped at all. in fact, hudson yards is an extreme example of privatization. ht: this example of the new mall typology shows that the concern about the totalizing impact of commercialization on public space is still valid and urgent. nevertheless, you also maintain that the mall can actually provide a public space, which is meaningful for particular groups in society. how did you change your view upon malls? and how did that also urge you to examine public life and commercial activities in actual streets, outside malls? mc: there were several reasons. one was a critique of my mall article by philosopher marshall berman. he simply said: ‘she’s never been shopping.’ that was not true at all! as i visited malls for professional reasons, i also enjoyed them as a shopper. every time i went to a mall, i came out with a bag in my hand. berman’s critique showed me that my allegedly objective analysis actually discounted my own experience in malls. this led me to think more about different mall experiences. i also read feminist political philosophers, such as nancy fraser. her critique of habermas’s idea of the public sphere emphasizes the existence of multiple publics and the impossibility of a single all-embracing ‘public.’6 this leads to the idea that there is no universal public space, but many publics and many spaces. i realized that malls are different for different groups. some offer a safe space for mothers with children and others are great hangouts for teenagers. 55 isparchitecture.com security and safety are issues of great concern to these groups. the universal, male-oriented concept of public space that is the dominant perspective in variations on a theme park, overlooks and dismisses this important dimension of malls. it also became clear to me that that mall-life cannot be reduced to just consuming. malls offer many different types of publicness. i understood that part of the problem with my previous reading of mall life was the very modernist dichotomy or binary between public and private. but there are many gradations of publicness and privateness. if you accept this spectrum, you start to see how the mall provides a quasi-public space. it has dimensions of publicness, as well as of privateness. the moment you accept the mall as quasi-public space, you can also start to recognize similar quasi-public spaces in the city, outside the mall. right across the street from my house in hollywood at the time, there were people putting rugs on chain link fences and selling them to drivers passing by. this was a very different kind of commerce. it demonstrated very clearly that public space had not ended at all. the problem was too narrow definitions of both public and space. in the meantime, i also started to read french philosophers and theorists, like henri lefebvre, with his formulation of ‘the right to the city’. he believed that ‘everyday life’ was a crucial lens for understanding society. my reading of his work was extremely selective, emphasizing only the positive part and ignoring the rest. but what i saw out there in the city of los angeles was an amazing array of everyday practices. immigrants would take over an empty parking lot after people went home at night, set out tables with checkered tablecloths to serve food like it was their home. i saw how these practices were also political struggles. for example, the day laborers, who stand on the street outside home depot and brico stores. these laborers, mostly mexican and central american immigrants, wait there are many gradations of publicness and privateness. if you accept this spectrum, you start to see how the mall provides a quasipublic space. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 56 te er ds there to be picked up for work. home depot tried to get rid of them, but due to an enormous organizing effort, the jornaleros acquired the right to be there. they carried signs stating ‘the right to work is a human right.’ the stores even had to provide bathrooms and other services for them. for me, this was extremely positive: it showed me that human agency is still possible, and that there are many different politics of public space. at the same time, although there were street vendors everywhere, street vending was still illegal. for the vendors, this meant a constant threat that the police could easily shut them down and take their goods. only two years ago, due to an enormous political effort and organization, which took 30 years, they finally acquired the right to street vending in los angeles! ht: how do you understand this political struggle over the right to street vending with regard to the issue of public space? mc: this, for me, is a clear example of what you can call ‘the right to public space’. this right must include, for me, the right to use public space as an economic space. this goes from the panhandler, who is conducting an economic transaction, to the day laborers standing on the street and selling their labor to vendors. i therefore would describe public space not as a static entity. it is a continuous struggle between different publics and groups, different practices and occupations. this is not something to erase, but rather something to embrace. lately, i have been doing research in china on public space as well. in this totally different context, i recognize the same struggles as in the u.s. i focused on the unique condition of villages in the pearl river delta. these villages are very interesting because they are a bounded urban black lives matter plaza, washington dc (2020) 57 isparchitecture.com type regulated by the government. this condition originates from land rights that mao gave rural villages. as a result, the inhabitants of these villages are the only people in china who can elect their own village leaders and who can build their own houses. they are the only people who can create and control their physical space, although within certain limits. these residents thus have a surprising amount of agency. as you can imagine, this situation results in a contested condition. in these villages, you see a continuous struggle between the government and the people. the government is trying to control the villages and their residents, and impose very stringent regulations on public space. but the people are endlessly inventive in trying to get around those regulations. the kind of interaction between control and evasion of control is fascinating. ht: what are the important struggles over public space today in the united states? mc: most important is the struggle to be different in public. a concentrated group of african americans or latinos in public space is perceived as a threat, while a gathering of white people is celebrated. take for instance the case of a park in oakland around lake merritt. it has become very controversial because numbers of african americans assembled there to barbecue. in a notorious case, a white woman called in to complain that black people were barbecuing. it became a very heated environment, as more and more african americans purposefully came there to claim the space. the situation went on for several months until the city shut it down. such struggles are going on everywhere, all the time. but this particular struggle has changed in an even more dramatic way in the past decade. some groups in our society are denied the right to be in public space, as the killing of trayvon martin, george floyd and many other black people demonstrates. to be in the street as an african american means the right to public space must include the right to use public space as an economic space. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 58 te er ds risking your life. that is the largest challenge to public space in the united states. it is literally a life-or-death issue. african american men, but also women, have not achieved the right to public space, even though the state guarantees it legally. therefore, i consider the black lives matter movement, to be the most important public space developments in the last 10 years. ht: how does these struggles over public space and societal injustices relate to other pressing urban developments, the change of cities through suburbanization, gentrification and segregation? mc: many of these struggles and killings take place in suburban environments or on the highway. trayvon martin was killed in stanford, florida, in a suburban gated community. michael brown was killed in fergusson, missouri, also a suburb. many central cities have been emptied out of african americans and latinos, from places that we might call ghettos, to better housing conditions in suburban locations. simultaneously, central cities have become largely places for wealthier white people. the central city is no longer the central site of struggle over public space. it has become a more exclusive, controlled, and surveilled space. instead, struggles over public space can happen anywhere, in any part of the city or outside it. ht: architecture is often understood as an instrument to mediate between different, conflicting and opposing interests. but if public space is, essentially, a space characterized by struggle, mediating seems not to be lafayette square park, oakland ca, walter hood, landscape architect (1999) 59 isparchitecture.com the proper intervention. how do you understand the agency of architecture with respect to public space? mc: that is an interesting question. one of the goals of everyday urbanism was to point out the physical qualities of public space, and ways of understanding time and space that could actually be useful for designers. my two co-editors, john cage and john kaliski, were both professional urban designers, and they really wanted to link our findings to practice. we formulated what was later borrowed by “tactical urbanism”—the idea that time is as important as space. things can happen in one place at a certain time. but this does not mean that it recurs. my own contribution to the book focused on the physical and experiential qualities of domesticity found in many everyday spaces in los angeles. the qualities of ordinary materials, their softness, ornamentation, and human scale can all contribute to a sense of domesticity in public. this often happens as vendors offer food in homelike settings. in such moments the quality of materials and creative practices support one another, all ideas that designers can use to design public spaces. this is obviously a completely different approach than the designs and theories of someone like jan gehl, who, to me, represents what i would call ‘feel good white person urbanism.’ ht: what do you mean by ‘white person urbanism’? mc: gehl designs the same copenhagen public spaces all over the world, with the same bicycle paths, sidewalk cafes, and pedestrianized streets. he never takes on the issues that are really at stake, such as rights, exclusion or street livelihoods. instead, his designs deal with highly conventional notions of public space as simply pleasurable, satisfying a universal public. along with organizations such as the project for public space, who are also allegedly devoted to public space, he neglects the most serious issues of public space. they approach public african american men, but also women, have not achieved the right to public space, even though the state guarantees it legally. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 60 te er ds space from a highly generic professional perspective. another professional approach might be architects working for a municipality. these designers face other difficulties, with competing demands from different groups of citizens. however, since the municipal architects are very familiar with the places and the publics where they work, they can potentially create new and distinctive public spaces in diverse circumstances. this depends on the designer avoiding already codified ideas and principles, and understanding the users and their concerns. my colleague at berkeley, walter hood, who is a landscape architect, only starts designing parks after carefully observing the neighborhood, aiming to understand what is going on. for an assignment redesigning a park in oakland, he observed that the existing park was used by older men, who stayed during the day and drank together. he decided not to edit that out in his park design. architects, i would argue, necessarily need a similar attentiveness to existing use, to the publics that are already there. but at the same time, you also have to understand that these uses and publics change over time. time is a very important dimension of space. designers also need to be pay attention to circumstances. their designs need to be conditional and circumstantial, and to leave room for occupation and improvisation. most parks in the united states usually have an incredible list of the things you can’t do there, and drinking is usually at the top of it. such lists question the very publicness of these spaces. is this space really public? no! but ultimate publicness does not exist. there are always different kinds of exclusions and restrictions. paradoxically, some private lafayette square park, oakland ca, walter hood, landscape architect (1999) 61 isparchitecture.com spaces are more public than are formal public (in the sense of being owned by the state) spaces. but is this what we mean when we discuss public space? should it be ‘state-owned’? or does ‘public’ mean: accommodating groups of publics? i would argue that to pin the idea of public space down to particular circumstances is a slippery idea. a fixed definition would deny the various struggles over public space, the changing publics, and the assertion of different kinds of rights over the space. all these instances are related to the specificity of the location of a park or square, and what publics make use of it. who owns the space, who can appropriate it, and who has a say? these are the questions to be understood and addressed. however, coming back to your question on what architecture can do, it is hard for designers to mediate between the claims of different publics. i would argue that they should not aim to please everybody. for me, that means acknowledging the issue of struggle. public space is an incredibly complicated issue, since it is constantly changing and contested. my goal in teaching has been to sensitize architects to these challenges, to observe, to understand who is using these spaces, and what they are doing. public spaces are meant for particular publics. nevertheless, we cannot choreograph how and if this public adopts the space. that is up to the public itself. but one of the problems we have in the united states is that architecture is largely a very un-diverse profession. walter hood and many other designers are starting to rethink what public space design can be. their projects, in the era of black lives matter, are reshaping the design profession’s approach to designed public space. so public space has not ended at all! it is always renewing itself, and will continue to do so in the future. endnotes 1. margaret crawford, ‘the world in a shopping mall’, in: michael sorkin (ed.), variations on a ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 62 te er ds theme park. the new american city and the end of public space (new york: hill and wang, 1992). 2. michael sorkin, ‘introduction’, in: michael sorkin (ed.), variations on a theme park. the new american city and the end of public space (new york: hill and wang, 1992), xv. 3. margaret crawford, ‘contesting the public realm: struggles over public space in los angeles’, in: journal of architectural education, vol. 49, no. 1 (sep., 1995), 4. 4. john chase, margeret crawford, john kaliski (eds.), everyday urbanism (new york: the monacelli press, 1999). 5. a clear instance of the political dimension was shown in the rodney king riots in los angeles, which happened shortly after the publication of variations of a theme park in 1992. margaret crawford, ‘blurring the boundaries. public space and private life’, in: john chase, margeret crawford, john kaliski (eds.), everyday urbanism (new york: the monacelli press, 1999), 28. 6. see for instance nancy fraser, ‘rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy’, in: craig calhoun (ed.), habermas and the public sphere. (cambridge mass.: mit press, 1992). isparchitecture.com non-projects for the uninhabitable: lyotard's architecture philosophy ashley woodward jean-françois lyotard remains best known for his association with the postmodern, and in many circles there is little awareness of the significant difference between the way he used this term and other influential uses of it. also little known are lyotard’s writings on architecture, despite some casual recognition of his apparent relevance to this field due to the prominence of postmodernism in architectural theory.1 my aim here is to provide an introduction to lyotard’s practically unknown contributions to architecture philosophy, and to suggest two ways in which his work might be thought to make an original and interesting contribution to the field. first, lyotard critically intervenes in phenomenology, which has had an influential place in the philosophy of architecture. 2 he challenges the values that tend to be accorded to the relations of the body to space in this tradition, celebrating dislocation over location, on the grounds that architecture should be understood as an art and should challenge the body to new experiences. second, lyotard’s understanding of the modern and the postmodern cuts across the way these terms are typically deployed in architectural theory, inviting a fresh perspective through the reorganization of critical categories. ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 34 w oo dw a r d lyotard’s writings on architects and architecture are relatively scant: there is an essay on le corbusier, a couple of pieces on arakawa and gins, an interview, a dialogue with the architect piero derossi, and a short contribution to a group dossier in an architecture journal.3 however, this field is broadened if we also consider reflections on the nature of the city and the built environment in general,4 which we can find in various forms throughout lyotard’s writing career, from his early discussions of the political space of the “ideal city,” through his writings on the notion of the pagus, his reflections on california, and on ideas such as the oikos, domus, and megalopolis. i will focus here, first, on some of these main general ideas about space, the built environment, and human habitation, before moving on to a review of the main ideas which emerge from lyotard’s writings on architecture as an art. these themes will then draw together with the critical comparisons with phenomenology and postmodernism which help to situate lyotard’s reflections on architecture. as with lyotard’s treatments of other arts—most famously, “the unpresentable” of postmodern sublime art5—he signals his point of interest in architecture with privative terms, in particular the uninhabitable and the non-project, for reasons which will be elucidated. spaces: habitus, megalopolis lyotard develops a thesis on the transformation of our lived space, the space inhabited by human beings, broadly consistent with his reflections on postmodernity in its other manifestations.6 this is a transformation from a rural or agrarian way of life and the villages or cities it involves, through the development of modern metropolises, to the postmodern “megalopolis.” lyotard’s primary thesis is that this last is not simply a quantitative extension of the metropolis, but a qualitative transformation. employing a device typical of continental philosophers, lyotard elaborates these ideas using classical terms, drawing out suggested meanings in his own unique way. the value of doing this is that it gives the concepts an ontological status, and resists a simple reduction to the empirical which might be risked by using contemporary language. lyotard conceptualizes a “traditional” way of inhabiting space under the various names of oikos (greek), domus, and habitus (latin). while oikos and domus could literally be translated as “house,” lyotard uses these terms to indicate a manner of inhabiting space, a way of life or being much more general than the term “house” tends to invoke, and which can be understood to apply to spatial situations which are not literally houses. 35 isparchitecture.com we find an evocative description of the way of life indicated by the terms oikos, domus, and habitus (which lyotard tends to use interchangeably) as a kind of domestic idyll in the essay “domus and the megalopolis”: let's suppose that it's pretty hot outside. the courtyard is surrounded by walls and farm buildings. a large tree of some kind, willow, horse chestnut, lime, a clump of pines. dovecots, swallows. the child raises its eyes. say it's seven o'clock in the evening. onto the kitchen table arrive in their place the milk, the basket of eggs, the skinned rabbit. then each of the fruges goes to its destination, the dairy, the cool scullery, the cooking pot, the shelf. the men come home. glasses of fresh wine. a cross is made in the middle of the large loaf. supper.7 in this “domestic” model of space, there is a border between the inside and the outside. it is porous and non-exclusionary: strangers may be welcomed into the domestic space and offered hospitality. this extension of hospitality is in fact characteristic of the space of the oikos, domus, or habitus. on this traditional model of the space of the human environment, outside the habitus is the pagus – the surrounds of the village which acts as a permeable boundary. lyotard explains: pagus always means the country, the region, the opposite of heim, of home, that is, of village. it is moreover a very beautiful word, the word that gives us pax, companion, etc. it is precisely the place where one forms pacts with something else (it is the same root; let’s from time to time put up with parody-etymologies; this one in any case is “true”); it is a place of boundaries.8 ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 36 w oo dw a r d the pagus is described elsewhere by lyotard as the zone; it refers to the area surrounding the village or city walls, which acts as a “zone of contact” between those belonging to the habitus, and strangers who come from other regions.9 the main distinction organizing this space is that of home/elsewhere, which can also be formulated as culture/nature, or more generally as inside/outside. the idea of nature is key to this traditional, rural, pre-industrial mode of existence: the domus is “[a] mode of space, time, and body under the regime (of ) nature.”10 it is a way of habitation in which domesticating a powerful, often hostile nature, and organizing life according to its rhythms, is the predominant concern. the great mutation in this model of space that lyotard identifies is not between the rural village and the metropolis—he understands the latter as maintaining intact the inside/outside, and the border between them. the metropolis is only a “complication” of the space of the domus insofar as different suburbs become their own center, and the borders between them act to both link and separate them in relation to other suburban centers. the change, rather, comes with the transformation of the metropolis into the megalopolis. lyotard has in mind here most specifically california, which he understands as a new model of space, one that has undergone a qualitative change. it is a model spreading to span the world: through means of communication and of telecommunication, the great urban conglomerations extend like a dense network along the coast of california and will soon cover the globe, from san francisco through yokohama and singapore as far as ankara and milan, and from milan through the ruhr, london, and new york as far as los angeles.11 california is a space of “conurbation”: suburbs connected by highways, one after the other, without reference to any urban center. as the quote above suggests, technologies of communication and information also play an important role, as they liberate ties to fixed physical times and spaces, and connect things in a decentralized, “free” manner.12 the transformation lyotard sees here is the displacement of the border and the decentering of the center. human community is similarly diffracted and dispersed. space is no longer divided between a “here” (home) and “elsewhere,” an inside and an outside – the border zone seems to have expanded indefinitely, such that “there is nothing left but surroundings.”13 the “outside,” understood as nature, or as the place where the stranger or 37 isparchitecture.com the other dwells, also disappears. the implication is that there is no longer an idea of an external reference point, a nature which would provide a rhythm to regulate the ordering of the habitus. the space of the megalopolis is entirely artificial, if that term even continues to have meaning. relations between different human groups are no longer structured through a mediating border which allows hospitality: while we might say that the megalopolis is certainly a space of integration or assimilation, of peaceful multicultural coexistence, lyotard in fact emphasizes that the relations with other cultures in the megalopolis are also often “based on distrust, on conflict, on a latent state of war that explodes, at times, into violence.”14 what interests lyotard is how the minorities, outsiders, or “remainders” of human communities are positioned in these different organizations, representations, or structurings of space. this leads him to a characteristically complex position on the relation of the domus to the megalopolis, in which neither is unambiguously touted as better than the other. first, lyotard asserts that, contrary to what one might think, a space for otherness or the remainder is better preserved in the traditional domus than in the contemporary megalopolis. there, otherness not only existed outside, in the pagus or beyond, but was welcomed into the home as a guest. moreover, lyotard points to the otherness at the heart of the home, of domestic life, in the fact that it is the traditional location of the intrigues and dramas represented in tragedy.15 in this manner, in the privacy of the oikos a certain otherness or remainder is secluded and protected from the public life of the polis. in the megalopolis, by contrast, everything becomes a matter of public exchange, and there is no longer a space removed from this circulation, public scrutiny, and transparency. this accords with the capitalist economy in which everything can be translated into exchange value california is a space of “conurbation”: suburbs connected by highways, one after the other, without reference to any urban center. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 38 w oo dw a r d and sold on the market, and also to the all-pervasive sphere of human rights in which every aspect of life is expected to have a rational accounting and legitimate defense.16 the idea of the habitus, lyotard suggests, today arouses our nostalgia, and this nostalgia can act as a kind of resistance to the contemporary system and a spur to thought and creativity. 17 however, lyotard also maintains a strongly critical and vigilant attitude towards such nostalgia. first, he acknowledges that it is probably nostalgia for something which never really existed; a projection from the position of the contemporary megalopolis.18 second, he warns of the danger of believing that the world of the habitus could be restored, aligning such a belief with heidegger and the politics of national socialism. he thus sees danger not in the old organization of space and society itself, but in the nostalgic desire to restore it. (“homo re-domesticus in power kills in the street shouting ‘you are not one of ours: he takes the visitor hostage. he persecutes anything that migrates’.”)19 the task for thinking in the megalopolis is, for lyotard, to resist the homogenization of thought along with the homogenization of space. in this way he sees a parallel between philosophy and architecture. architectures: project, non-project in a conversation with the architect piero derossi, lyotard suggests that the task of both philosophers and architects has changed with the shift from the habitus to the megalopolis. modern philosophers (and here the quintessential model is descartes’s discourse on method) assumed an architectural model of thought. descartes describes how thought was like a city which has been built up through generations, with conflicting designs, and what is needed is to raze the city to the ground, to begin again and, on a secure foundation, to build a city according to a consistent rational plan. modern philosophers also thought that they could give prescriptions to architects and urban planners in terms of a general representation of an ideal city which would instantiate an ideal human community. similarly, modern architects followed the model of believing that everything human beings need for dwelling well together can be rationally planned out in advance, and given to a population which will be perfectly suited to its use. we can recognize here the great modernist architectural projects of the early to mid-twentieth century, such as those of adolf loos, le corbusier, walter gropius, ludwig mies van der rohe, and so on, in which cities are planned, all ornamentation is sacrificed to function, and a single style is imposed everywhere (the international style). in painting, lyotard notes, there is also an analog insofar as urban planning has been represented using 39 isparchitecture.com a uniform organization of space – such as in “the ideal city” by the school of piero della francesca (circa late 15th century), one of the first to apply the principles of perspective prescribed by alberti’s on painting.20 today things are quite different in philosophical thought, first of all because modern philosophy —in the sense of a project of finding a secure foundation for thought, and building a consistent and homogenous structure of knowledge upon it— has been radically cast into doubt. along with this, the possibility of political philosophy presenting an ideal for human community has also been seriously questioned. according to lyotard, the philosopher today is no longer in a position to be able to prescribe to the architect a project, understood as a model of human community which could be followed as a guide for what to build to ensure an ideal beingtogether.21 more strongly, lyotard suggests that this term “project” implies a control or domination over “the totality of phenomena in the world and over human phenomena.”22 such an attitude of mastery and control has also been subjected to extensive critique (as, for example, in adorno and horkheimer’s dialectic of enlightenment, or heidegger’s reflections on technology). lyotard suggests that the architect, now in a similar position, can no longer believe that design for a human community is something that can be entirely thought out in advance. both philosophers and architects are united in asking the question, “what can a community be today?” and in not knowing how to give an answer to this question.23 without a concrete answer, the model of the ideal city must be abandoned, and along with it the very idea of a “project” as something that the architect can plan from scratch. the architect must then find a new way of working, which lyotard suggests might be something like a “non-project”: lyotard suggests that the task of both philosophers and architects has changed with the shift from the habitus to the megalopolis. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 40 w oo dw a r d as you see we are dealing with a project that in the end is not even a project. rather it is a sort of attitude, a frame of mind, that is, to be precise, an attitude of non-domination over the thing to be built or thought. we could say, a sort of passivity, or better still passibility, that seems to me an essential part of art, of the artistic attitude, and certainly of thought as well. i do not know whether we can still give everything the name of project, project of the non-project.24 while fleeting and tentative, these suggestions put the architect in a position closer to that of the painter or the musician, insofar as they must open themselves to a “passibility,” as he says here – that is, to trying to feel and make judgements about what is to be done which are not based on any predetermined rule. no doubt there has always been much of this in architectural invention, but lyotard’s model of the megalopolis suggests that this aspect of architecture must be accentuated today. architects must become artists, because they can no longer work with an ideal model of human community. when they engage in (non-)projects, they must be attentive to the contingencies of the situation in which they build, the conditions which already pre-exist, the complexities of the communities they build for, and they must be willing to be open to the possibility that the effects their buildings will have, once actualized in the community, will be to a significant degree unpredictable. architects: le corbusier, arakawa and gins let us consider now some of the architects lyotard discusses explicitly, and treats as artists. despite his opposition to the modernist architectural project of the “total plan,” this does not prevent lyotard from seeing a tendency contrary to total planning—and thus, the artistry—in the late work of le corbusier, one of the dominant figures of modernist architecture. in an essay on le corbusier—“conventus,” from 1994—lyotard repeats but also reconfigures some of the main ideas he had previously made in his fleeting encounters with architecture. lyotard’s focus for the essay is a single work by le corbusier—the convent at la tourette in lyon, completed in 1961 (figure 1)—yet the scope of this short piece is ultimately much broader. although the term is not used, we see the great modernist le corbusier positioned here as an architect of the non-project, insofar as he opposes his “free plan” (plan libre) to "the project." the idea of “the project” is here described in terms of an “egyptian” ideal of space, where 41 isparchitecture.com all of urban planning is centralized in and unified by the fixed “block” of the pyramid: “geometric plan, blind facades, identical in all directions, tons of amassed stone weigh on the land of the living. […] all this crushing of time and space …”25 “the project” is evident here as a fixed and homogenous idea of space which is imposed on all space and lived relations in a dominating way. in contrast, lyotard presents le corbusier’s architecture as led by the ideal of a “free plan,” which he describes as a “variable” space conceived in terms of waves or vibrations: “question of frequency. this is a variable of vibration: it’s the number of times by unit of time that a mobile object animated by a wave movement passes on the axis of its propagation.”26 despite this apparently precise physical definition, the use of the terms “waves” and “vibrations” is largely metaphorical, and concerns space as conceived and lived. these terms work simply to open architecture to alternative ways of conceiving the nature of materials and the experiences of bodies in space. le corbusier decomposes the supposed unity figure 1: la tourette ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 42 w oo dw a r d of space into component volumes, and considers these as having a “free” relation to each other, a relation not determined in advance. the emphasis in this essay appears largely to fall on the habitus, the problem of the habitation of space; of how architects can design buildings in which we can feel ourselves to be at home (thus recalling oikos and domus). but with le corbusier—or at least, lyotard’s interpretation of him27—this turns out to be a matter closer to what he will call “the uninhabitable.” with the decomposition of the plan and the consideration of space in terms of vibrations, the question of habitation becomes one of the “resonance” of the body with the built environment, of the sensing body and the sensed architectural space: “in order to be my home, it need only resonate with the vibrations of my whole body. i only need it’s resonance with my rhythms in order to inhabit it.”28 to explain this idea of resonance, lyotard plays on the similarity between frequency and frequentation.29 to be at home in a space is not a matter of inhabiting it in the manner of a homogenous body’s fixed relation to a given space, but of a variable relation, in which frequencies would be “modulated” by the body’s frequentation, its comings and goings, in that space. describing the way we might get up in the night, half asleep, to get a glass of milk, and successfully navigate the space without turning on the lights, lyotard writes that “[t]here, where i can be a sleepwalker without error, is my home.”30 yet in posing the “at home” in terms of frequencies and frequenting, there is something which is never truly at home, at least as conceived on the old model of a natural fit between a given body and a given space. in this sense, being at home is a matter of “inhabiting the uninhabitable”—a degree of habituation to a space that will never settle into a fully tamed habitus, because it is always a matter of variable resonance between bodies and spaces which are never completely stable of fixed. we can note here a first contrast with phenomenology. while schooled in the phenomenological tradition and a some-time follower of merleau-ponty, lyotard criticized the latter for an overly harmonious view of the relations between the body and space, which he believed limited both the phenomenologists’ ability to explain disharmonious experiences (such as sleep and orgasm) in which the body doesn’t make sense of its surroundings, and art as the creation of the new.31 if art is understood as witnessing “the birth of perception,” as merleau-ponty contends, then this limits the scope of what kinds of art are viewed as legitimate. for lyotard, art—and this includes architecture—should destablize the body’s habitual relations to the world by giving it disharmonious, challenging experiences. 43 isparchitecture.com it should dislocate the body in space, not simply help it to feel located. in the context of architecture, this disharmony and dislocation which produces new aesthetic sensations is precisely what he calls “the uninhabitable.” the uninhabitable is more heavily accented in lyotard’s treatment of the experimental architecture of shusaku arakawa and madelaine gins. in their collaborative architectural projects – such as the site of reversible destiny (yoro, 1995), the reversible destiny lofts (mitaka, 2005), and the bioscleave house (new york, 2008)32 – arakawa and gins seek to “reverse destiny” with respect to the human body. they created spaces in which the body will decidedly not feel at home, in order to provide it with constant stimulation. this sensori-motor stimulation is thought, in turn, to stimulate the brain and the immune system, and to keep the body young and healthy by promoting brain plasticity and freedom from disease. in their avant-gardist hyperbole, arakawa and gins announce a hope for defeating mortality through an appropriate architecture: “we have decided not to die” and “making dying illegal” are two of their slogans.33 what interests lyotard in their work is not this rhetoric of immortality, but the dehabituation of the body as conducive to provoking an aesthetic experience. arakawa and gins develop the concept of the “architectural body,” which is the body considered as ontologically continuous with, and shaped by, its architectural environment.34 what interests lyotard is the way that they conceive architecture as having a direct effect on the body, and of its capacity to make art of inhabitable space. lyotard conceives of their work as a mutation of three-dimensional space, just as painting is a mutation of 2-dimensional space, or of color itself. this mutation, which is an artistic event in lived space, is precisely the uninhabitable: “for one instant, the body, the everyday body, despite his opposition to the modernist architectural project of the “total plan,” this does not prevent lyotard from seeing a tendency contrary to total planning—and thus, the artistry—in the late work of le corbusier “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 44 w oo dw a r d the body of the habitus, is exposed to the uninhabitable.”35 in order to feel the effects of this mutation, the body must undergo an “ascesis” in relation to the habitable36—its habits and habituations must be undone. arakawa and gins seek to produce this ascesis, for example, by making space difficult to navigate – introducing steep inclines, or placing barriers in unexpected places. (figure 2) the functional approach of modernist architecture is reversed. the aim is not to obliterate all function, however, but to introduce difficulties to be overcome by the body in its attempts to achieve its goals. summing up and generalizing these conclusions from arakawa and gins’ work for all architecture, lyotard writes: [a]rchitecture seeks to transfer into inhabitable space a power of habitation that is not itself inhabitable. this art cannot offer human beings any topos where they might live and be sheltered, that is to say, where they might escape from this elsewhere. architecture as an art cleaves space-time in such a way that there and then are at home here and now while still being far away.37 riffing on lyotard’s well-known theme of “presenting the unpresentable,”38 the problem or stake of architecture as an art would then be how to “inhabit the uninhabitable.” the question for the architect would be: how to construct a habitation in which the uninhabitable can be encountered? comparisons: phenomenology, postmodernism now that we have surveyed lyotard’s relevant texts, we are in a position to draw out the critical contrasts announced at the outset. we have already noted lyotard’s relation to merleau-ponty, but his challenge to phenomenology may also be extended to heidegger, whose writings on dwelling have been highly influential in architectural theory. in a rare text on lyotard’s writings on architecture, rob shields notes some similarities with heidegger.39 however, there is also an important contrast to be made between lyotard and the german phenomenologist. in short, we might see the heideggerian perspective as expressing a nostalgia for the habitus, as lyotard’s referencing of heidegger in this regard suggests.40 while we have noted that lyotard does not believe this mode of dwelling in itself, nor a nostalgia for it, signal anything worrying, we also saw that the same cannot be said for the attempt to reimpose it. and so we might well think that for lyotard, any architectural model based on the heideggerean notion 45 isparchitecture.com of dwelling will risk being out of step with the transformations of time, space, and beingtogether that the megalopolis has effected.41 at worst, such a r c h i t e c t u r a l projects might be conceived as conservative, even “fascistic,” in their attempts to make the body feel at home in a fixed place, with others who are part of an autochthonous c o m m u n i t y , while keeping strangers beyond the borders (or welcoming them only on the strictest conditions). although there are no explicit references to this in lyotard’s writings (as far as i’m aware), it is easy to see his notions of space as linked far more closely to emmanuel levinas.’ in his essay “heidegger, gagarin and us,” levinas bemoans the heideggerean notion of place, with its fixed horizon, as ethically problematic, and instead celebrates the exposure of gargarin—the first person to space-walk—to a space without fixed horizon as analogous to the nomadism of the jewish peoples.42 certainly lyotard’s comments about husserl’s notions of earth, body, and space in his short text “habitus” seem to head in this direction. according to husserl, the relativistic discoveries of physics regarding time and space do nothing to change our body’s perception that “the earth does figure 2: site of reversible destiny--arakawa and gins ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 46 w oo dw a r d not move,” the existential truth that we are grounded on an earth with a fixed horizon.43 rather than opposing the existential truth of the body to the scientific truths of reason, lyotard instead asserts: there is no need for the bodies to form a nature that would hold the secret of distances, and still less that the focal point they form should be a home. on the contrary, the failure of this metaphysics liberates another truth, one that can be reconciled with the relativism of the physicists. the focal point of the field is in the field and does not stop moving, just like everything that is in the field.44 for reasons that are both ethical and political, then, as well as artistic, lyotard challenges the dominant phenomenological views of the body and space. because of lyotard’s own deep association with the postmodern, there is the obvious need to compare his views with those of the famous postmodern architectural theorists, such as robert venturi and charles jencks. the latter is an especially interesting comparison to make, since lyotard explicitly sought to distance what he meant by the postmodern from jencks’ use of the term. for example: as for the 'trans-avantgardism' of bonito oliva and the similar currents one can observe in the usa and (including jencks's 'postmodernism' in architecture, which the reader will do me the favour of not confusing with what i have called 'the postmodern condition'), it is clear that behind the pretext of picking up the tradition of the avant-gardes, this is a pretext […] to encourage the eclecticism of consumption. mixing the same surface neoor hyper-realist and abstract, lyrical or conceptual motifs means that everything is equivalent because everything is good for consumption. […] what is called on by eclecticism are the habits of magazine readers, the needs of the consumer of standard industrial images this is the spirit of the supermarket shopper.45 as lyotard makes abundantly clear here, he sees jencks’ architectural postmodernism as nothing more than a market-driven eclecticism consistent with trans-avantgardism in painting (which was also sometimes called postmodernism). certainly, if we compare some of lyotard’s ideas on architecture which have emerged above with those of jencks and other representatives of the “popular” form of architectural postmodernism, 47 isparchitecture.com we can identify at least some significant points of similarity. most notably, with both we see a critical break with the modernist ideal of total planning for an ideal community. jencks famously proclaimed the death of modern architecture and the birth of the postmodern with the demolition of the pruittigoe housing estate in st. louis, usa, at 3:32 pm on 15 july, 1972. for him, this demolition of a characteristically modernist project after the years of social dysfunction it had housed signaled the end of the modernist dream of planned community, and ushered in a new era, in which ornamentation and locality-specificity returned.46 however, lyotard rejects this kind of clear linear periodization which seeks to delineate the modern and the postmodern, and—as we have already seen with the example of le corbusier—his concerns with the arts incorporate much that is usually delineated as “modern.” briefly glossing a complex topic, lyotard extols the virtues of experimentation in the arts, and highly values this dimension of modernism, but he critically rejects the tendency of modernism to construct a narrative of progress, with a particular style and an ideal of purification or perfection. rejecting such notions does not mean for him the end of new developments in the arts and a pastiche of past styles, but a free pluralism of experimental creation.47 lyotard’s approach to the postmodern then invites a more nuanced view of how different architectures might be understood and judged. endnotes 1. see for example william m. taylor and michael p. levine, “philosophy of architecture,” the internet encyclopedia of philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/ architec/#ssh3ci 2. as noted by both taylor and levine “philosophy (lyotard) sees jencks’ architectural postmodernism as nothing more than a market-driven eclecticism consistent with transavantgardism in painting “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 48 w oo dw a r d of architecture” and saul fisher, “philosophy of architecture in historical perspective” (supplement to “philosophy of architecture,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ architecture/perspective.html 3. these texts are, respectively: “conventus” in misère de la philosophie (paris: galilée, 2000); “reserves of spatial events” and “dear neverending architectonic reflective wherewithal” in what to paint?, ed. herman parret. writings on contemporary art and artists 5 (leuven: leuven university press, 2012); “dwelling and the postmodern: a conversation with jeanfrançois lyotard,” skala 22 (1990): 36-41; “what are we looking for?: a conversation between architect and philosopher,” lotus international 73 (1992): 67-75; and “habitus” – contribution to “il paradiso perduto = paradise lost,” lotus international 79 (1993): 102-131. 4. following for example le corbusier, who writes: “i consider architecture and city planning together as a single concept.” precisions: on the present state of architecture and city planning. trans. edith schreiber aujame (cambridge, mass: mit press, 1991), p. 70. 5. see for example lyotard, “answering the question: what is postmodernism?” in the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. trans. geoff bennington and brian massumi (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1984). 6. most famously in the postmodern condition. 7. jean-françois lyotard, the inhuman: reflections on time. trans. geoffrey bennington and rachel bowlby (cambridge: polity press, 1991), p. 191. 8. jean-françois lyotard with jean-loup thébaud, just gaming. trans. wlad godzich (manchester: manchester university press, 1985), p. 42. 9. see “the zone” in lyotard, postmodern fables. trans. georges van den abbeele (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1997). previously published in the dimensions of play: ways of thinking architecture and the city. any : architecture new york, 12. new york: anyone corporation, 1995. 10. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 192. 11. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 110. 12. for lyotard on these effects of communication technologies, see for example “logos and techne, or telegraphy” in the inhuman. 13. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 110. 14. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 110. 15. see the essay “oikos” in jean-françois lyotard: political writings. 49 isparchitecture.com trans. bill readings and kevin paul (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1993). and in “domus and the megalopolis” we read: “in the lowest depths of the domus, rumour of anti-nature, threat of stasis, of sedition. father, mother, child, female servant with the heart of gold, niece, old man-servant, shepherd and ploughman, gardener, cook, all the figures of wisdom, the corner of the park under the fig tree, the little passage for whispering, the attic and its chests – everything is matter for obscene crimes. something in the domus did not want the bucolic.” lyotard, the inhuman, pp. 195-6. 16. see lyotard, “the general line” in postmodern fables. 17. lyotard, “domus and the megalopolis” in the inhuman. 18. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 201. 19. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 197. 20. see lyotard’s discussion of this in “painting as a libidinal set-up,” translated by kieth crome, in the lyotard reader and guide. ed. keith crome and james williams (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2006). 21. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 70. 22. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 69. 23. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 70. 24. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 72. 25. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 199. translations from this text are mine. 26. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 200. 27. lyotard openly acknowledges that his interpretation takes a great deal from that of jacques lucan. see the latter’s “tout a commence là” in le ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 corbusier, une encyclopedié. paris: centre georges pompidou, 1987. 28. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 201. 29. “fréquence” and “fréquentation” in french. 30. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 201. 31. on lyotard’s relation to merleau-ponty’s phenomenology, see my article “lesson of darkness: phenomenology and lyotard’s late aesthetics,” journal of the british society for phenomenology vol. 50, no. 2 (2019): 104-119. 32. some of these projects were realised only after lyotard’s death, but embody earlier ideas on which he commented. 33. see arakawa and gins, pour ne pas mourir / to not to die (paris: éditions de la difference, 1987) and making dying illegal (new york: roof books, 2006). 34. see arakawa and madeline gins, architectural body (tuscaloosa: university of alabama press, 2002). 35. lyotard, what to paint?, p. 407. 36. lyotard, what to paint?, p. 391. 37. lyotard, what to paint?, p. 407. 38. see lyotard, “answering the question.” 39. rob shields, “oblique views and heterodox spaces: le corbusier’s conventus” in rereading jean-françois lyotard: essays on his later works. ed. heidi bichis and rob shields (surrey: ashgate, 2013), p. 111. 40. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 195. 41. see martin heidegger, “building dwelling thinking” in martin heidegger: basic writings. ed. david farrell krell (san francisco: harper collins, 1993). a key distinction here that could be pursued is that of the boundary, which is essential to heidegger’s account of space, locale, and dwelling, and which is the distinctive feature that disappears in lyotard’s account of the space of the postmodern megalopolis. 42. emmanuel levinas, “heidegger, gagarin and us” in difficult freedom: essays on judaism. trans. sean hand (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 1990). 43. see edmund husserl, “foundational investigations of the phenomenological origin of the spatiality of nature: the originary ark, the earth does not move.” trans. fred kersten in edmund husserl: shorter works (notre dame, indiana: notre dame university press, 1978). 44. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 111. br os s 50 51 isparchitecture.com 45. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 127. 46. charles jencks, the language of post-modern architecture, 4th edn. (london: academy editions, 1984), p. 9. in a later interview, in fact, lyotard does seem to present jencks’ architectural postmodernism as broadly in line with his own thinking of the postmodern insofar as both reject the tabula rasa approach of modernism, and instead connect with tradition. see “dwelling and the postmodern.” this would be a point from which to take up further comparison. 47. on this topic, see my article “lyotard on postmodern music,” evental aesthetics 5.1 (2016): 118-143. ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 52 w oo dw a r d isparchitecture.com architecture is concealed unto itself: helmuth plessner and his influence on twentieth-century architecture gerald adler introduction nestling in, moving along, feeling one’s way, occupying space, the thousand ways of living within our postures and giving the silent image of spaces and planes through such postures an immediate connection to me, these are the ways to understand architecture. we always have to feel such an image and its ideal system of expression on our own body in order to taste the sense of a building. the purely ornamental, the effect of light, the qualities of materials form a meaningful structure, if not consciously, then in a more or less immediate reaction to the artificially formed world of space.1 by any measure, this is an inspiring, evocative, and illuminating text that feels absolutely of the moment. that it was written almost one hundred years ago by an aspirant former student of zoology on his way to obtaining a chair in philosophy at the university of göttingen, gives pause for thought. the writer was helmuth plessner, and the field of study he made his own was philosophical anthropology. the purpose of this paper is to elucidate plessner’s thinking and the relationship philosophical anthropology had with architecture. biographical sketch helmuth plessner was born into an affluent family of jewish descent in wiesbaden, in 1892. nestling in, moving along, feeling one’s way, occupying space, the thousand ways of living within our postures [...] “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 107 ge r a ld a dl er a bright schoolboy, he went on to study medicine, and then zoology and philosophy in heidelberg. on the eve of the first world war he moved to göttingen to study phenomenology under edmund husserl. he was appointed professor of philosophy in cologne in 1926, having already published his first major work, the unity of the senses (die einheit der sinne, 1923). within two years at cologne he had published what is generally regarded as his magnum opus, the levels of the organic and man (die stufen des organischen und der mensch, 1928). seven years later he was dismissed from his post, and, after a short stay in istanbul, was offered refuge in holland with a chair in sociology in groningen. as the war progressed, he went underground in holland but returned to germany in 1951. numerous writings followed, leading to his collected works being published by suhrkamp by 1985, the year of his death.2 plessner, who wrote his key texts in the years of the weimar republic, has been largely absent within architectural discourse, especially in comparison with the attention afforded his contemporary, martin heidegger, with whom plessner shares some common interests, particularly as regards the architectural implications of his thinking. his work on the concept of what he termed ‘ex-centricity’ is the cornerstone of philosophical anthropology; indeed, similar to heidegger, plessner’s language—his images and metaphors—make explicit references to human spatial relationships, and indeed to the culture of architecture. plessner deserves to be seen in the light of the great upsurge in philosophical enquiry and critical thinking emanating from weimar germany in the 1920s, alongside the likes of theodor adorno, walter benjamin, ernst cassirer, arnold gehlen, martin heidegger, siegfried kracauer, and max scheler.3 plessner’s house before dealing with plessner the philosopher let us consider the house he commissioned for himself and his wife in göttingen (figure 1). on his return to postwar germany in 1951, plessner took up the newly-founded chair in sociology at the university of göttingen, married monika tintelnot, and commissioned the architect lucy hillebrand (1906-97) to build their house in the eastern suburbs of the town. hillebrand was an inspired choice, being both local as well as a convinced and thoughtful modernist.4 from the north entrance side the house appears single storey; this belies the fact that it is built into a sloping site. it is rendered white, with a low-pitched hipped roof: sachlich, simple and straightforward, a 1950s rendering of a 1920s neues bauen house. the layout of the (upper) ground level is surprising, the orthogonal lines of the exterior softening 108 isparchitecture.com into an organic essay of a curved staircase leading down to the guest bedrooms beneath. the private quarters of plessner, hard by the entrance, give onto a free-planned workroom. beyond, visible through glass doors and panels, is a narrow gallery lined with bookcases, enveloping the top section of a doubleheight void overlooking the guest and reception areas beneath (figure 2). these give directly onto the garden. the house is one of a family of villas designed by hillebrand in post-war west germany, all of which continue the theme of external restraint combined with internal freedom of layout.5 evident from the plan, the house abounds in fluid spatial transitions from one area to the next;6 its organic composition resembles that of the houses of hans scharoun and hugo häring, and as the sociologist heike delitz has recounted, “hillebrand designed by virtually dancing through her spaces. bodily movement in space was her guiding principle; […] plessner explained ‘designed’ more precisely, in that she drew for him, and they ‘spurred each other on’ figure 1: lucy hillebrand, plessner house, göttingen (1951-52). view of house from garden. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 109 ge r a ld a dl er in this creative work, as monika plessner has recounted […] a bauhaus, then, instead of heidegger’s hut.”7 delitz’s point with this final, acid aphorism is that plessner’s engagement with modernism and the development of architecture was a positive and creative one, immersive in the practice, theory and politics of contemporary design, as opposed to the freiberg professor’s haughty withdrawal from it in his todtnauberg retreat.8 in the words of tom spector, “while plessner was engaging the modern condition, heidegger was retreating from it. while heidegger bemoans modern alienation, plessner tells us that such alienation is actually the human condition. whereas heidegger wants to get at the headwaters of conventions, plessner prefers to take us as we present ourselves. where heidegger retreats, plessner is convivial.”9 plessner’s göttingen house, in its ‘natural artificiality,’ its ‘mediated immediacy,’ and its ‘utopian transcendence,’ resembles in all its complexities the houses of josef frank, with their inner spatial gymnastics contrasted with their external simplicity of form, plane, and line (figure 3).10 we shall deal with these three concepts, the lynchpins of plessner’s philosophical anthropology, in the main section of this paper, and then explain the relevance of the vienneseborn architect frank (1885-1967). plessner was straightforward and uncomplicated in his understanding that “[a]rchitecture, on account of rationally understandable functional concepts, presents the object with its meaning, a house, a staircase, a garden.”11 for plessner, these ‘functional’ elements are also clear conveyors of ‘cultural’ meaning: we see a staircase, and know that it will take us up to the floor above. it is wonderful to imagine plessner and hillebrand ‘dancing’ the göttingen house into being. and yet plessner had already described such an embodied approach to space, anticipating maurice merleau-ponty’s later writings, as the extraordinary passage from his 1923 book the unity figure 2: lucy hillebrand, plessner house, göttingen (1951-52). view from plessner’s workroom to the library gallery and the garden beyond. 110 isparchitecture.com of the senses quoted at the start of this paper makes clear. plessner built an edifice through his work in philosophical anthropology based on human positionality. it is complex and nuanced, and has ramifications for architecture that are similarly complex and nuanced and that are, moreover, suspicious of radicalism for its own sake. having given a sense of plessner’s architectural interests and preferences, it is now time to delve into his concepts of philosophical anthropology and the all-important term ‘positionality.’ plessner’s philosophical anthropology philosophical anthropology deals with questions like ‘what is man?’ and ‘what is man’s place in the nature of things?’ as opposed to the more philosophically fundamental ‘what is being?’ the german sociologist joachim fischer (president of the helmuth plessner society from 2011 until 2017) has distinguished philosophical anthropology (the capital letters denote its distinctiveness), the figure 3: lucy hillebrand, plessner house, göttingen (1951-52). upper floor (main entrance level) plan. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 111 ge r a ld a dl er special movement within german philosophy of the 1920s, from a more generalised philosophical interest in anthropology.12 following fischer’s distinction, this paper will capitalise ‘philosophical anthropology’ to demarcate philosophical anthropology (no capital letters) from plessner’s particular take on it. plessner’s claim for philosophical anthropology is that it provides “a clarification of the position of man in the world.”13 plessner formulated his thinking about philosophical anthropology at the same time as martin heidegger conceived his fundamental ontology, although it derives from very different premises. in brief, where heidegger’s ontological starting point is man’s temporal sense of being (‘dasein’, roughly, ‘being’, or ‘being-there’, to use a word of heidegger’s) in the world, plessner begins with man’s spatial relationships, with other humans, creatures, and the wider environment. with this in mind, it is all the more surprising that he has been so neglected by architectural culture, especially in light of the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities of recent years. plessner came from a background in the natural sciences, a field of knowledge requiring plain and straightforward language, a language that, moreover, has to act as an adjunct to non-verbal forms of communication, such as drawings, diagrams, and photographs, akin to architectural communication.14 immersed in transcendental philosophy in parallel with and subsequent to studies to those in medicine and zoology, plessner sought to answer goethe’s wish that kant’s critique of pure reason (kritik der reinen vernunft) be completed by a critique of the senses (kritik der sinne).15 in a nutshell, this was to be plessner’s contribution to knowledge, initiated with his the unity of the senses and substantiated with his main text the levels of organic being and man five years later.16 in this book we find plessner’s one substantive contribution to philosophical vocabulary: the word ‘ex-centric’ in the sense of “out of the centre.”17 the levels failed to sustain the same degree of interest as the key contemporaneous work of phenomenological philosophy, heidegger’s being and time, either in the field of philosophy or, as this paper focuses on, that of architecture.18 the reason, perhaps, is due to its interdisciplinary nature: plessner was a trained biologist, and indeed of the seven chapters of the levels, it is only the final one, ‘the sphere of man,’ that fully fleshes out his philosophical anthropology. man’s ex-centric ‘positionality’ plessner posits that, at the (human) observable scale of biological life, each organism’s position relative to that of others, and to the environment, 112 isparchitecture.com is a decisive factor in our understanding its motivations and dasein. viewed in terms of an ascending hierarchy in the natural world, plants have fixed positions in the world, whereas animals move freely. they have, according to plessner, different kinds of ‘positionality.’ human beings have the additional characteristic of being aware of their positionality and of being able to reflect upon it. they have ‘ex-centric positionality.’ seen in the context of architecture, the concept of man´s ex-centric positionality has interesting implications, both for the way we perceive our position in the world, in reference to our surroundings, and in the way designers conceive, propose, and make such environments. first of all, architecture provides a way of understanding ex-centricity through the developing means of representing buildings in the early decades of the twentieth century where, in avant-garde circles, the axonometric projection began to be favoured by architects in preference to the perspective, as a means of conceiving and representing the objective realities of a building’s formal composition.19 the axonometric, famously, is a more analytical representation of a building from which we are able to scale off accurate dimensions, and does not depend upon the single human observer and viewpoint demanded by the perspective. it is emblematic of a disinterested abstraction, ‘ex-centric,’ as opposed to the perspective’s centredness on the human (and one particular human’s) eye. the human viewpoint of the perspective, as opposed to other apparently more dispassionate and objective architectural projections, is the main topic of robin evans’s groundbreaking study, the projective cast, and alberto pérez-gómez and louise pelletier’s book architectural representation and the perspective hinge.20 these were published in the late 1990s, in the wake of a renewed and sustained interest in architectural drawing for its own sake, on the part of avant-garde human beings have ‘ex-centric positionality.’ “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 113 ge r a ld a dl er architects and students, and on the brink of the computer revolution in architectural practice that would fundamentally change the way buildings are imagined and produced.21 in recent years, the ubiquity of digital means of representation and architectural production has multiplied the questions regarding man’s position with respect to architecture, in an era where images are commonly projected onto flat screens and scaled up or down at will into virtual space.22 we cannot claim that buildings and places have any views of their own positions in the world, be they objective or subjective. what may be argued, though, is that people who imagine or make buildings and places, ‘architects,’ have, in modern times and places, steadily developed an ex-centric view of their work that has tended to locate them outside, and separate from, the work itself, and, moreover, with heightened abilities to reflect on their work dispassionately. to be ‘outside the work itself ’ means having the mental ability to regard the world dispassionately, where ‘outside’ is seen as being increasingly separate from the sentient self, while ‘heightened abilities’ may be understood as belonging to the increasingly independent and ‘professional’ architect, no longer (quite so) subservient to the whims and interests of a powerful and socially superior patron. such an ‘ex-centric’ position is a particularly twentieth-century, ‘modern,’ disposition of architects as practitioners, theorists, and historians who stand broadly against the ‘autonomy’ of architecture, seeking instead to couple it with other disciplines, most notably sociology in the 1960s, linguistics in the 1970s, critical theory in the 1980s, and so on. the ‘criticality’ at large in the humanities and social sciences has noticeably extended into architectural design and has gained increased traction in the last decades. examples from the last decades would be post-modernism in architecture, where criticality issuing originally from linguistics has been a powerful influence upon architectural theory and practice (for instance, in the work of charles jencks, denise scott brown, and robert venturi). ‘critical architecture’ has had a significant impact on post-1980s design theory and practice, where psychoanalysis, feminism, and most notably derridean deconstruction has had a profound influence upon architects as diverse as jennifer bloomer, daniel libeskind, and peter eisenman.23 the architect, as artist and agent, is emblematic of a renewed philosophic interest in the question of “how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his viewpoint included. it is a problem that faces every creature with the impulse and the capacity to transcend its particular point of view and to conceive of the world as a whole.”24 114 isparchitecture.com plessner’s emphasis on space and position as opposed to time and occasion is probably his most important contribution to architectural culture, and is the subject of the next section of this paper. the finitude of human beings published in the same year as the now more famous being and time, plessner’s the levels similarly explores the philosophical implications of man’s finitude. the substantive difference is that whereas heidegger sees finitude in its temporal sense (‘we will all die’), plessner regards our spatial limitations and relationships as more compelling (‘we are all located in different places, and in a constantly changing relationship to those places’).25 he goes on to maintain that ‘human beings live in three worlds: an outer world (aussenwelt), an inner world (innenwelt), and the shared world of culture (mitwelt).26 this more nuanced and holistic sense of the world, derived from a biological understanding of plant, animal, and human life-forms, challenges cartesian dualism and is furthermore at odds with descartes in an additional elaboration. plessner maintains there is a ‘double aspectivity’ to life, at least as it appears to us humans. we experience the world ‘from an inner and outer perspective’ and have a double vocabulary when describing ourselves in the world.27 there are contrasting outer-world concepts such as ‘body’ (‘körper’) or ‘living body’ (‘leib’) and inner-world ones such as ‘soul’ (‘seele’) and ‘lived experience’ (‘erlebnis’); and, as far as the mitwelt (a word translated by jos de mul as ‘[shared] world of culture’) goes, ‘i’ (‘ich’) and ‘we’ (‘wir’). this is indeed an elaboration, or perhaps a circumvention, of the mind-body problem bequeathed by descartes. plessner’s three anthropological laws in the final chapter of the levels, ‘the human sphere’, plessner outlines his three anthropological ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 115 ge r a ld a dl er laws that follow from his understanding of man’s ex-centric positionality and his finitude. these are (i) the law of natural artificiality, (ii) the law of mediated immediacy, and (iii) the law of the utopian standpoint. 1. natural artificiality the law of natural artificiality, in a clear nod to heidegger’s thinking, states that man uses artificial means (technology) to overcome his ‘constitutive homelessness’.28 as an excentric being standing in disequilibrium, out of place and time, constitutively homeless, [man] has to “become something” and form his own equilibrium. […] man wishes to escape the unbearable excentricity of his being, he wishes to compensate for the dichotomy [hälftenhaftigkeit] of his own lifeform and he can only manage to do this with things that are sufficiently heavy to weigh on the scales of his existence.29 plessner goes on to specify what it is that supplies this corrective to man’s ex-centricity: culture. to put it simply, as jos de mul does in his introduction to his edited book on plessner, “[t]he world of culture and technology is the expression of the desire of human beings to bridge the distance that separates them from the world, their fellow man and themselves.”30 what better combination of culture and technology is there than architecture? plessner understands architecture as ‘artificial,’ certainly, but its artificiality is natural to man as he is currently constituted. here plessner makes common ground with his contemporary, the philosopher arnold gehlen, for whom man, the deficient being (‘mängelwesen’), has to build his own world, before he can ‘be’: “man is naturally a cultural being.”31 plessner’s law of natural artificiality is an ontological response, one that answers man’s existential need for a secure place in the world. plessner recognises that since man is compelled, through his type of existence, to lead the life that he actually lives, that is, to make what he is – since he only is when he accomplishes things–he needs a complement of an unnatural nature to which he is unaccustomed. because of this he is by his very nature, by dint of his form of existence, artificial. as an ex-centric being that is not in equilibrium, standing in the void, placeless, timeless, constitutively homeless, he has to “become something” and to create his own equilibrium. and he creates this only with the assistance of unnatural things that emerge from his creation when the results of this creative making are granted their own heft.32 plessner makes it absolutely clear that culture, the very essence of natural 116 isparchitecture.com artificiality, requires both mind and hand; it is, as he puts it, “sucked out of the fingers: intelligence and manual dexterity lie at the root of the origin of the use of tools and of culture.”33 2. mediated immediacy: immanence and expressivity plessner’s second anthropological law, mediated immediacy (subtitled ‘immanence and expressivity’), speaks of the centrality of culture and technology in enabling man to express himself and his ex-centric position in the world. “man can only invent insofar as he discovers,” in other words, man can only mediate things and conditions that are immediately available to him.34 “[man’s] productivity is only a pretext by which discovery becomes occurrence and gains substance,” a sentiment that finds an immediate echo in the writings of his contemporary, the architect hugo häring (18821958).35 häring asks us to “call on things and let them unfold their own forms. it goes against our nature to impose forms on them, to determine them from without, to force upon them laws of any kind, to dictate to them.”36 form finding has become the mantra of organic architecture ever since and shares its vitalism with that of plessner and others from the first decades of the twentieth-century.37 however, we would be mistaken in thinking that the architectural implications of plessner’s second law are limited to the organic: let us not forget the adjective ‘mediated’ that plessner couples with ‘immediacy.’ cultural activities may well begin with the world as experienced, but they soon develop trajectories of their own, ‘aesthetics’ if you will, in order to express and make intelligible any particular ethos. certainly, reading the speech that he gave at the german werkbund’s twenty-fifth anniversary conference in berlin, in 1932, it is evident that plessner alludes to the architecture of the bauhaus, and to the benefits of the flat roof, while criticising the overtly aesthetic tendencies of the international plessner’s three anthropological laws 1. natural artificiality 2. mediated immediacy 3. utopian standpoint “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 117 ge r a ld a dl er style and its followers. for instance, in answer to the question of a how a designed object should appear, and what it should look like, plessner (ironically) replies, “it should be beautiful!” he then goes on to explain that “this painterly view is somehow to be seen as superseded. […] a room is there for living in. a chair is there for sitting in.”38 by the end of the section on this second law, plessner has expanded his thesis. he can now claim that, as a “law, […] in the end people do not know what they do, but only experience it through history.”39 this second law is one that poses problems for those seeking a single architectural direction from plessner, for surely the demands of extreme functionalism, exemplified by the organic architecture of häring, compete directly with those of formalism and historicism. however, for plessner, culture is always at least one step removed from the body’s physiology; his phenomenology never leads to an over-simplistic manifestation of function, which for him is always historically embedded. the architectural import of his second law leans more towards the claims of history and the memorability of received forms of buildings, and chimes with plessner’s own maturing views by 1932 elaborated in the following section, with an inclusiveness and largeness of character that leads to an ‘open’ architecture, and one, moreover, that is able to accommodate historical precedent. plessner is reticent as to what ‘open form’ might actually mean for architecture. in his werkbund speech in which he alluded to such epicentres of avantgarde design as dessau, rotterdam, and amsterdam, plessner praised asymmetrical layouts and (especially) the flat roof, both emblematic of bauhaus architecture, as examples of ‘openness.’ the flat roof, in particular, lacks a conventional termination, and so is open to possibilities of buildings being stacked one on top of another.40 this second law is, therefore, ambiguous regarding its implications for architecture. on the one hand, and of great relevance to one strand of the neues bauen, it has an obvious relationship with the organic functionalism of häring; on the other, with the demands of history and the importance of a continuing tradition, it represents the antithesis of functionalism. josef frank’s interwar work—about which more later— comprising well-wrought buildings and pithy writings, represents perhaps the ideal balance between the demands of invention and of tradition. one aspect of tradition that links viennese aesthetics with plessner’s demand for expressivity is the mask. here one thinks of plessner’s playful and insightful essay “the smile,” concerning the subtleties of the facial expression that is for him the most human of all our (dis)guises.41 the mask was certainly something that adolf loos railed against in his 118 isparchitecture.com writings even if his executed buildings, with their spatially rich interiors of raumplan, their mixed palette of materials, and with their owners’ eclectic furnishings, are all ‘hidden’ by the white-painted render of their exteriors.42 his buildings, especially the houses, invariably have clear boundaries, even if these boundaries belie complexities within. loos believed that the exterior of a building should have a neutral public presence. this would be apostrophised by the professor of literature helmut lethen as ‘public coolness,’ which plessner “[sought] to turn […] into a medium that accepts vitalizing boundaries.”43 the mask for plessner acts as an essential distancing mechanism, a human mediation of the immediacy of the external world (aussenwelt) that allows human beings to be in the world. for lethen, plessner’s sociological discovery of roles as a protective medium is informed by nietzsche’s claim that every profound spirit needs a mask; his anthropology centres on this paradox: ‘only masked is man entirely real’. oscar wilde’s motto – ‘man is least of all himself when he speaks in his own name. give him a mask, and he will tell the truth’ – echoes through plessner’s code of distance.44 human beings’ ex-centric positionality is due to the ‘membrane’ that separates them from their environment.45 the german architect heinrich tessenow’s executed buildings, drawings and writings—an oeuvre that reached its maturity exactly contemporaneous with plessner’s halcyon years of the 1920s—have uncanny echoes of much of the philosopher’s work.46 in an earlier essay, “objectivity or truth in craftsmanship,” tessenow (1876-1950) wrote: “it would be more beautiful, we would form closer human bonds, if we were able to openly show our sorrows and joys or the pipes of our houses and streets etc, everything that concerns us as humans; but we lack the ability to do so, lest such frankness embarrass or hurt us, and so we ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 119 ge r a ld a dl er have much to hide.”47 tessenow acknowledges the mask-like function of architecture that conceals the dreary if not dire facts of human life, and so makes it possible for us to live. his thinking concedes that suppression is necessary in order to allow meaningful expression to emerge, and concurs with plessner’s view that there must be “in every artistic reading […] a distortion of the work, a partisanship, a choice, an emphasis, in a word a distancing alienation, in order to see the object.”48 it is in the city of vienna, the birthplace of psychoanalysis, that ‘mediated immediacy’ found its most obvious outlet, though without the directness and polemical purity that are the hallmarks of weimar germany’s protagonists of the neue sachlichkeit (new objectivity), cognate with interwar modern architecture (neues bauen). within viennese critical writings, too, there is frequently a mismatch between texts and buildings. texts are by their very nature one step removed from the objects they describe or analyse, and so tend to be more polemical and uncompromising than the buildings designed by the same author. one only has to compare loos’s shrill and hectoring writings, for instance, “ornament and crime,” with the architect’s nuanced buildings and interiors, embedded in viennese traditions of biedermeier (the comfortable bourgeois aesthetic of central europe, between neoclassicism and romanticism) as they undoubtedly are.49 on the other hand, in the era of ‘red vienna,’ exactly contemporary with weimar germany in the 1920s, we have the suave cynicism of frank, who later wrote (in his swedish exile), in his famous essay “accidentism”: “the formal rules of art have been preserved through tradition, even though their validity cannot be proven; for that reason, there can be no art without recourse to tradition. since these rules have been consistently observed from the earliest times up to the present day, one can regard them as axioms.”50 frank’s pragmatic and non-partisan views clearly relate to plessner’s more nuanced thinking at the dawn of nazi rule in germany, a point that will be elaborated in the final part of this paper. the tenor of frank’s writing is on a par with the wry wit evident in his buildings and other design work: his architectural thinking is always mediated via understandable and stylistically knowing writings and buildings. this accords well with plessner’s ‘mediated immediacy’ of his second anthropological law, and his recognition that culture and technology are key human faculties that comprise our ontology. 3. utopian standpoint: nothingness and transcendence the third and final law of man’s utopian standpoint is the one that connects plessner most profoundly with questions of philosophical 120 isparchitecture.com ontology. it builds on the mediating role of the second law with the implication for architecture that it is to be located firmly within a historical tradition. its subtitle, ‘nothingness and transcendence,’ seems more distant from the scientific underpinnings of the previous laws, and yet man’s ex-centric being can only result in a belief in transcendence, as a bulwark against nothingness (i.e., the belief in god), or its profane equivalent, a hope in and striving for a brilliant (and atheist) future. “the ex-centric form [of] human existence drives man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects.”51 buildings are obvious examples of such objects, produced within each society’s architectural culture. architecture is central to plessner’s philosophical anthropology as it simultaneously acts in the inner, outer, and ‘with-worlds,’ with the architect as ex-centric agent: “[human existence’s] ex-centric form compels man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects […] its constitutive rootlessness bears witness to the reality of world history.”52 history, together with its twin, memory, is a central human faculty that affords us utopian transcendence, and with this third law, plessner’s philosophical anthropology broadens out to encompass man’s historical nature. it is the law he expresses most succinctly (at some five pages right at the end of the levels, it is significantly shorter than the preceding two laws), but the one to which he returns in his postwar writings in a more expansive mode. he considers the implications that man’s ex-centric position has for history, and for historiography, in his book the belated nation where he states that “only one thing remains of life: memory.”53 and in a late essay he writes: thus man never returns. we have to renounce the romanticism of alienation and homecoming inherent in marxism and admit to ourselves its illusionary human existence’s ex-centric form compels man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 121 ge r a ld a dl er character. in its optimistic linkage of progress and homecoming marxism is based on an outmoded anthropology, which, still under hegel’s spell, ignores the consequences of insight into the impenetrability of man and the essence of his historicity.54 this is (late) plessner, at his most hard-boiled and without any illusions. it is in complete contrast to the romanticism of heidegger that suggests that appropriate architecture could provide such a refuge from modernity. such a homecoming, expressed in the late 1960s but harking back to the antagonistic polarities of late weimar germany, would be satisfied neither by the nostalgia offered by ferdinand tönnies’s ‘community’ nor by the rigidities of marxist society.55 instead, according to lethen, “plessner contrasts the identikit picture of community as a symbiotic companionship with an idea of society that lacks idyllic features. it is an open system of unencumbered strangers.”56 an open political and social system, moreover, that finds its architectural equivalence in the open form typified by walter gropius’s bauhaus ensemble (1925-26) at dessau. this characterises plessner’s pragmatic turn away from the abstract idealism inherent in marxism to a transcendence which is just out of our reach, lying in the future of some utopian dream, or as plessner concluded in the belated nation, “[e]ven in the apparent finality of fundamental dogmatism [the philosophy of life] remains linked to historical change and in truth ready to awaken those unknown forces that herald what is coming.”57 what might this mean for architecture? in his werkbund speech, plessner claimed that “we have to underline one more point that is important for the success of this train of thought: the dissolution of the private ties through the technical world, the limitation of the private space of human existence, the eradication of private relationships and in place of these eradicated private relationships the gradual coming into being of a public realm.”58 he went on to discuss the bankruptcy of aesthetics, since the aesthetic attitude is no longer valid, it has become in a quite definite sense a private matter. it is the preserve of people of taste, of those who possess time, money and education, who take pleasure in fine things and know what to do with them: however, it is no longer the preserve of the public sphere, no longer the preserve of that unassuming subjectivity of the masses, in which we all participate, like it or not.59 so far, so sachlich. however, in what at first sight appears to be a volteface on the part of plessner, towards the end of his speech he appears to subvert, or soften, his argument: 122 isparchitecture.com but the things with which we are concerned here […] are greater than the things of politics and of political ideology. not only do we have the firm belief, but we already know that the new form-making and the search for new form does not rely upon the socialist train of thought. the hope that this new formworld can only be completely brought about by dint of a proletarian revolution […] we can no longer entertain.60 plessner’s decoupling of the neues bauen from marxist ideology is quite startling in the light of his foregoing polemic. the views of the werkbundists present at the speech are not known, but they— and plessner—must have seen the writing on the wall: hitler had become chancellor by the end of january 1933, and the werkbund was subsequently disbanded.61 yet had the werkbund audience been familiar with plessner’s writings, and with his carefully plotted development of his anthropological laws stemming from his understanding of man’s ex-centricity, then they would have taken his words—prophetic, from our post-communist perspective—in their stride. nine years earlier, one year after the publication of his the unity of the senses, in 1924, he had published limits of community: a critique of social radicalism. it is worth quoting some of its opening remarks, in order to gain the full impact of plessner’s withering assault on dualistic thought, and on the dire consequences such thought would have on political and social life, and, by implication, on architecture: by radicalism we mean generally the conviction that the truly great and good only come about by conscious recourse to the roots of existence; the belief in the healing power of extremes whose method is to make a stand against all traditional values and compromises. […] social radicalism […] is the native world-view of the impatient, sociologically: of the lower classes, biologically: of youth. […] radicalism means dualism. [it is] contemptuous of the conditional, of the ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 123 ge r a ld a dl er limited, of small things and steps, of restraint, or reticence, of unconsciousness, joyful, but only of great things, devout, but only to the mighty, purist, therefore pharisaic, principled, therefore inhibited, fanatic, therefore destructive. the enemy of radicalism is nature.62 plessner is here announcing a new social construct for man, one that recognises its artificiality while acknowledging its anthropological roots in the biological and the natural. conclusion the burden of this paper has been to introduce a relatively unknown philosopher, and to outline the implications his thinking had for architecture. plessner’s philosophical anthropology had little effect on his architect-contemporaries, although aspects of his three ‘laws’ had clear resonance with the buildings of the neues bauen in germanophone europe of the interwar years. we began the paper with a passage from plessner’s the unity of the senses of 1923, one that seemed to presage much of the ‘phenomenological’ architecture we are currently experiencing, followed by the postwar house designed for him and his wife monika by the architect lucy hillebrand. we end with some examples of the work— writings and buildings—of the viennese architect josef frank, already alluded to several times. frank’s ‘compromised’ architecture is less well known than the designs and writings of his viennese peers, most notably adolf loos. the ‘compromise’ (regarded by frank as a virtue) is with stylistic purity in the buildings and dogmatic correctness in the writings. the latter, especially those of the viennese years before his exile, have a pithy irony that speaks to us directly today, as evinced by the recent translation of his collected writings with the foreword written by denise scott brown. in his long essay “architecture as symbol: elements of the german new building” (1931) frank writes about imagin[ing] a world in which people live in small houses in meadows, growing tulips and pursuing arts and crafts of that sort, cut off from the world, peaceful and sedate. all they need grows in their garden, and they know nothing of the rocket ship that will soon fly to the moon. any rush is unnecessary since no one works more than he must, and all find their work fulfilling. such a way of life will seem strange to most today, even if in its straightforwardness it is not absent of all propagandistic pathos and as an ideal is even preferable in some respects. but how few will even see [any] point in shaping something lacking in any 124 isparchitecture.com pathos, even the pathos of absolute primitivism; alas, very few people accept that a pleasant life is always a via media between all kinds of ideals – no person has the same disposition all the time -; and that shaping a pleasant life as a composite of all these ideals is a matter with goals just as consistent and absolute as the goals of those who strive for a single extreme. the fate of modern architecture hinges on achieving this ambition, for its essential function resides in the formation and symbolization of our lives.63 this function of architecture, to form and symbolise our lives, represents in a nutshell how it serves mankind’s ‘positioned’ existence, as expressed in plessner’s three anthropological laws. frank’s house that best exemplifies these twin architectural functions is the beer house, vienna (with oskar wlach, 1929-30; figure 4). in its ‘white’ aesthetic, its simplicity and composition of external form, and the ‘flow’ of major internal spaces, it has much in common with the similarly undoctrinaire, yet unashamedly modern, plessner house of the early 1950s designed by hillebrand. while they both share attributes of modernist aesthetics and planning, they are equally unapologetic about their historical and cultural roots: they exhibit the ‘mediated immediacy’ of plessner’s second anthropological law. frank wrote a sturdy defence of the beer house, “the house as path and place.” to choose just one extract from this admirable essay, one that has a clear relationship to the plessner house, is difficult; nonetheless, when frank writes that “[t] he focus of the house is the sitting area, its piazza,” we can see the connection with the doubled-height salon that hillebrand designed. frank continues: every living room must have a center, around which it is ordered, giving the space its character. in the old days this was more easily accomplished, as there was a fireplace or–even though much less characteristic–the oven. today [1931], at a time when this focus is, more often than not, absent, the organization of the the function of architecture, to form and symbolise our lives, represents in a nutshell how it serves mankind’s ‘positioned’ existence “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 125 ge r a ld a dl er plan has become more difficult, as this center has to be created in architectural terms. the numerous means available for this are windows, niches, columns, etc. it is also the absence of the formal center that renders the rectangular room so uninhabitable.64 figure 4: josef frank with oskar wlach, beer house, vienna (1929-30). view into the hall from the living room. the ‘path’ through the house is actually a series of connected ‘places,’ and while the conception as a whole is startling, there is an unmistakable homeliness in the familiarity and scale of the discrete spaces and their comfortable furnishings and fittings. 126 isparchitecture.com the concluding remarks of frank’s essay may be regarded as an architectural formulation of much of plessner’s positional, human-centred philosophy: all our commodities, and here we may include the house, are really a compromise between function, material, form, quality, price, and other things, all following a middle (and varying) course, yet the rules for the good house as an ideal do not change in principle and have only to be looked at afresh. how does one enter a garden? what does the route look like from the gateway? what is the shape of an anteroom? how does one pass the cloakroom from the anteroom to reach the living room? how does the seating area relate to the door and the window? there are many questions like this which need to be answered, and the house consists of these elements. this is modern architecture.65 acknowledgments i am grateful to my peer reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments and to my (guest-) editors, martin düchs and christian illies, for their support throughout, and for inviting me to speak at the ispa bamberg conference in the first place. i would like to thank peter bernhard who has been most generous in sharing with me his understanding of plessner’s thinking. notes all translations are by the author unless otherwise stated. endnotes [1] helmuth plessner, die einheit der sinne: grundlinien einer ästhesiologie des geistes (bonn: f. cohen, 1923) in helmuth plessner, anthropologie der ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 127 ge r a ld a dl er sinne: gesammelte schriften iii (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1980), 267. [2] for the biographical sketch of plessner’s life from which this is drawn see plessner’s philosophical anthropology: perspectives and prospects, ed. jos de mul (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2014), 12-14. [3] plessner has, though, featured prominently in two recent books of cultural history: frederic schwartz, blind spots: critical theory and the history of art in twentieth-century germany (london: yale university press, 2005) and helmut lethen, cool conduct: the culture of distance in weimar germany, trans. don reneau (berkeley and london: university of california press, 2002), especially chapter three, “the conduct code of the cool persona,” 33-100. originally published as verhaltenslehren der kälte: lebensversuche zwischen den kriegen (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1994). [4] hillebrand was, like plessner, of mixed jewish descent, and was unable to practise during the nazi interregnum. see “biografie,” fembio, accessed june 27, 2017, http://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/ lucy-hillebrand/. see also lucy hillebrand, zeit-räume der architektin lucy hillebrand, ed. dieter boeminghaus (stuttgart: krämer, 1983) and sonia ricon baldessarini, “lucy hillebrand: architektur als schrift der beweglichkeit,” in wie frauen bauen: architektinnen von julia morgan bis zaha hadid (berlin und grambin: aviva, 2001), 93-102. [5] see hillebrand, zeit-räume, 156-7. the description of plessner’s house cites albrecht bürkle, “das haus des professors,” in merian 6, 1 (1953): 41. [6] “there were hardly any doors [in plessner’s wiesbaden house].” cited in heike delitz, “ein bau für die modern philosophie und soziologie: plessner in göttingen,” in plessner in wiesbaden, eds. tilman allert and joachim fischer (wiesbaden: springer vs, 2014), 133-143, cited 136, from original in carola dietze, nachgeholtes leben. helmuth plessner 18921985 (göttingen: wallstein-verlag, 2006), 362. the lack of doors puts one in mind of the domestic architecture of ludwig mies van der rohe, of whom it was said that “he [plessner] might have been mies’s favourite philosopher, therefore the favourite philosopher of one of the three great heroes of modern architecture.” (from dietze, nachgeholtes leben, 138, citing hans-joachim dahms, “mies van der rohe und die philosophie um 1930,” in arch+ no. 161 (2002), 55. [7] delitz, “ein bau,” 133. delitz cites dietze, nachgeholtes leben, 361. for more on hillebrand’s relationship to dance, see klaus hoffmann, “über tanz-schrift zu raum-schrift” (“on dance-script to space-script”), in hillebrand, zeit-räume, 14-15. monika plessner is cited by dietze in 128 isparchitecture.com nachgeholtes leben. [8] todtnauberg in the black forest is the location of heidegger’s hut where he retreated in order to write, in his refuge from the world. see adam sharr, heidegger’s hut (cambridge: mit, 2006). [9] tom spector, in comments to this issue’s editors, and communicated to the author february 27, 2018. [10] see the beer house, vienna (with oskar wlach, 1929-30) for a prime example of josef frank’s domestic output. [11] plessner, die einheit der sinne, 266. [12] a good overview of philosophical anthropology may be found in joachim fischer, “die ‘kölner konstellation,’” in plessner in wiesbaden, eds. tilman allert and joachim fischer (wiesbaden: springer vs, 2014), 89-121. here the three ‘stars’ alluded to are, in addition to plessner, max scheler and arnold gehlen. see also bernhard beller, “anthropologie und ethik bei arnold gehlen” (munich: ludwig-maximilians-universität, 2010), unpublished doctoral dissertation, especially “eine kurze geschichte der philosophischen anthropologie,” 12-41, accessed november 13, 2017, https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15913/1/beller_bernhard.pdf. for the distinction between the specific, 1920s movement and more a generalised anthropological interest for philosophy, see joachim fischer, philosophische anthropologie. eine denkrichtung des 20. jahrhunderts (freiburg im breisgau: alber, 2009), 9. in a similar vein, the term neues bauen (‘new building’) is a specific reference to architecture in the german-speaking lands in the 1920s, an aesthetic reference that cannot be used in respect of architecture, however ‘new,’ in, say, the 1890s or the 1950s. [13] helmuth plessner, “homo absconditus,” in helmuth plessner, conditio humana (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2003), 353-66, 353. first published in merkur, 23rd year, vol. 11 (1969): 989-998. [14] one is reminded of otto neurath’s work in ‘red’ vienna and his project to develop a clear language of visual communication before the semiotics revolution of the 1960s. see eve blau, the architecture of red vienna, 19191934 (cambridge and london: mit, 1999). [15] helmuth plessner, die einheit der sinne, 7-315 and 31. [16] helmuth plessner, die stufen des organischen und der mensch: einleitung in die philosophische anthropologie (berlin: de gruyter, 1928), reprinted 1975 (berlin: de gruyter), sammlung göschen 2200. [17] the german term “exzentrisch” does indeed mean both eccentric and ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 129 ge r a ld a dl er “out of the centre.” plessner uses the term “exzentrische positionalität” in the sense of “being in a position that is out of the centre.” so i have rendered the spelling in translation in order to differentiate its meaning from the english ‘eccentric.’ see plessner, die stufen, chapter 7, “die sphäre des menschen,” 288-346, especially section 1, ‘die positionalität der exzentrischen form. das ich und der personcharakter,’ 288-93. [18] martin heidegger, sein und zeit (tübingen: max niemeyer, 1927). [19] see auguste choisy, histoire de l’architecture (paris, 1899). [20] alberto pérez-gómez and louise pelletier, architectural representation and the perspective hinge (cambridge: mit, 1997). [21] see rolf sachsse, bild und bau. zur nutzung technischer medien beim entwerfen von architektur (braunschweig and wiesbaden: vieweg, 1997). [22] see gerald adler, timothy brittain-catlin, and gordana fontanagiusti, “introduction”, in scale: imagination, perception and practice in architecture, eds. gerald adler, timothy brittain-catlin, and gordana fontana-giusti (abingdon: routledge, 2012), 1-9. the phenomenon of flatness is explored in various scales, media, and locations in barry higman, flatness (london: reaktion, 2017). [23] see, for instance, critical architecture, eds. jane rendell, jonathan hill, murray fraser, and mark dorrian (abingdon: routledge, 2007). [24] thomas nagel, the view from nowhere (new york and oxford: oxford university press, 1986), 3. nagel’s is a restatement, in modern terms and times, of a philosophical question that may be traced at least as far as back as descartes. for plessner, the only such creature on earth is the human being. [25] see de mul, plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 14-15, and plessner, die stufen, 293, ff. (aussenwelt, innenwelt, mitwelt). [26] see de mul, plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 16-17. [27] ibid., 17. [28] see helmuth plessner, die stufen, 310. the reader who is looking for a shortcut to plessner’s three main anthropological laws should refer to helmuth plessner, “der mensch als lebewesen,” in helmuth plessner, mit anderen augen: aspekte einer philosophischen anthropologie (stuttgart: reclam, 1982), 9-62. this essentially reprints the laws as stated in the levels (see plessner, die stufen, 309-46), prefaced by a short introduction. there is as yet no english translation of die stufen. 130 isparchitecture.com [29] plessner, die stufen, 310-11. [30] de mul, plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 19. [31] arnold gehlen, “philosophische anthropologie,” (1971), in arnold gehlen, philosophische anthropologie und handlungslehre (collected works, vol. 4) (frankfurt-am-main: klostermann, 1983), 236-46, here 240. actual quote: “so erscheint der mensch schon von natur aus als kulturwesen, seine sonderstellung hierin begründet.” see also arnold gehlen, der mensch: seine natur und seine stellung in der welt (berlin: junker & dünnhaupt, 1940). [32] plessner, die stufen, 310. [33] plessner, die stufen, 312. plessner embraces technology in ways that heidegger found impossible. for plessner, as for his contemporary, the philosopher friedrich dessauer, “[t]echnology is for germany what sun is for spain’s wine, for canada’s grain, for argentina’s pastures.” (friedrich dessauer, philosophie der technik: das problem der realisierung (bonn: friedrich cohen verlag, 1927), 31. [34] plessner, die stufen, 321. [35] ibid., 32. [36] hugo häring, die form, vol. 1 (october 1925): 5, cited in peter blundell jones, hugo häring (stuttgart and london: axel menges, 1999), 78. [37] see peter bernhard, “plessners konzept der offenen form im kontext der avantgarde der 1920er jahre” (“plessner’s concept of open form in the context of the avant-garde in the 1920s”), in arhe iv (july 2007). there is by now a large bibliography on the relationship between biology and architectural modernism. the english-speaking reader will be more familiar with d’arcy thompson’s book on growth and form (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1961). this is an abridged version of the original book published in 1917. thomson’s ideas about the relationship between biological and structural and architectural form were taken up with alacrity in the years following its re-edition. [38] helmuth plessner, “wiedergeburt der form im technischen zeitalter” (“rebirth of form in the technical age”), in arch+ no. 161 (june 2002): 52-57, transcript of plessner’s speech on october 14, 1932 in berlin on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the german werkbund, here 54. (“es soll schön sein! diese malerische blickhaltung wird irgendwie als überwunden empfunden. […] ein raum ist zum wohnen da. ein stuhl ist zum sitzen da.”) translations from this speech are my own, although a complete english translation exists: helmuth plessner, “rebirth of form in ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 131 ge r a ld a dl er the technical age,” trans. jonathan blower, in art in translation 3, 1 (2011): 37-51. first published in german in politik—anthropologie—philosophie: aufsätze und vorträge, ed. salvatore giammusso and hans-ulrich lessing (munich: fink, 2001), 71-86. the international style exhibition opened at moma, new york city on february 9, 1932, some eight months before the werkbund’s anniversary meeting in berlin. [39] plessner, die stufen, 341. [40] plessner, “wiedergeburt der form,” 57. [41] helmuth plessner, “das lächeln,” in helmuth plessner, mit anderen augen: aspekte einer philosophischen anthropologie (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1982), 183-97. originally published in 1950. [42] see beatriz colomina, privacy and publicity: modern architecture as mass media (cambridge and london: mit, 1994). “we are divided between what we think and what we say and do,” from colomina, private and publicity, 33. colomina is referring to the fin-de-siècle disjunctions manifested in ‘civilised’ cultures, especially visible in vienna, between rich and poor, outside and inside, technology and culture, and so on. she starts the section with an apposite quote of hugo von hofmannsthal’s (from his buch der freude): “depth must be hidden. where? on the surface.” see also janet stewart, fashioning vienna: adolf loos’s cultural criticism (london: routledge, 2000), especially chapter four, “the display and disguise of difference,” 98-130. [43] lethen, cool conduct, 55, and richard sennett, the fall of public man (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1974). lethen goes on to account for just such ‘coolness’ in western mores and habits of behaviour since the enlightenment: “[richard] sennett [in the fall of public man, 1976] looks for orientation to public dialogue in the eighteenth century, while plessner’s theory breathes the air of seventeenth-century french classicism.” since 2007, lethen has been director of the international research centre for cultural studies in vienna (university of art and design linz). internationales forschungszentrum kulturwissenschaften, accessed march 29, 2018, ifk.ac.at/pdfs/helmut_lethen_bibliographie.pdf. [44] lethen, cool conduct, 62, citing friedrich nietzsche, werke in drei bänden vol. 2 (munich: carl hanser, 1963), 604. nietzsche’s actual words are “[j[eder tiefe geist braucht eine maske,” literally, “every deep spirit needs a mask.” lethen further emphasises the point: “plessner does not tolerate the enactment of ‘naked honesty’ or ‘eruptive authenticity’ either in contemporary design, whether the new objectivity interiors of bauhaus architecture—‘with overhead lighting and tiled walls’—or in expressionist 132 isparchitecture.com stage sets. hygiene resides for him at the cold pole, ‘reckless sincerity’ at the warm. he takes aim at all forms of unmediated directness, pleading for moderate temperatures and indirect lighting, for art and literature of whatever type as long as they eschew intimate self-revelation in favor of the regulating practice of distance.” from lethen, cool conduct, 54. [45] plessner must have been aware—although his writings do not attest to it—of the dessau visionary designer siegfried ebeling, whose tract “space as membrane” was published in 1926. see siegfried ebeling, space as membrane (london: architectural association, 2010), edited and with an afterword by spyros papapetros; introduction by walter scheiffele; translated by pamela johnston based on an earlier translation by anna kathryn schoefert. originally published in german as der raum als membran (dessau: dünnhaupt, 1926). [46] see gerald adler, “energising the building edge: siegfried ebeling, bauhaus bioconstructivist,” in peripheries, eds. ruth morrow and mohamed abdelmonem (abingdon: routledge, 2012), 183-99. [47] heinrich tessenow, “die sachlichkeit oder die wahrheit in der gewerblichen arbeit” (“objectivity or truth in craftsmanship”), in heinrich tessenow, hausbau und dergleichen (weimar and rostock: edition m, 2011), heinrich tessenow gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, ed. theodor böll, 38. originally published in berlin by bruno cassirer, 1916, and subsequently in braunschweig by vieweg, 1986. [48] helmuth plessner, “mit anderen augen” (“with other eyes”), in helmuth plessner, mit anderen augen: aspekte einer philosophischen anthropologie (stuttgart: p. reclam, 1982), 171. [49] adolf loos, “ornament und verbrechen” (“ornament and crime”) (1908), in adolf loos, trotzdem (vienna: prachner, 1982), 78-88. originally published in adolf loos, trotzdem. 19001930 (innsbruck: brenner-verlag, 1931). loos’s writings can still appear shocking, especially “ornament and crime.” however, his buildings and interiors are remarkably and richly finished and furnished, in complete contrast, for instance, with the generally more polemical german modern architects. to take an extreme pairing, one need only compare, say, loos’s famous müller house in prague (1930) with hannes meyer’s starkly ascetic ‘co-op zimmer’ installation of 1926. [50] josef frank, “accidentism,” in josef frank, schriften/writings, vol. 2, trans. christopher long (vienna: metroverlag, 2012), 373. originally published (in swedish) as “accidentism,” in form 54 (1958): 160-65, and in german in baukunst und werkform, year 14, nuremberg 1961, vol. 4, 216-18. frank continued: ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 133 ge r a ld a dl er in our age of scientific thinking, all traditions are gradually being lost; there is no longer any reason to recognize rules that cannot be proven. thus, concepts such as art and beauty–which cannot even be fully defined–have come under doubt. a person without tradition is forced to invent his own rules of art, which, as a result, must be quite arbitrary. to believe these rules himself and to disseminate the belief in them, he must base them on moral, scientific, utilitarian, or mystical motives. for a pithy and concise assessment of frank’s centrality in vienna’s interwar architecture and debates concerning aesthetics, see friedrich achleitner, “josef frank und die wiener architektur der zwischenkriegszeit,” in friedrich achleitner, wiener architektur: zwischen typologischem fatalismus und semantischem schlamassel (vienna, cologne, and weimar: böhlau, 1996), 81-87. [51] plessner, die stufen, 341. [52] ibid. [53] helmuth plessner, die verspätete nation (stuttgart: kohlhammer, 1959), 97. this book, originally published in 1935 with the title das schicksal deutschen geistes im ausgang seiner bürgerlichen epoche (the fate of the german spirit at the end of its bourgeois epoch) was suppressed the following year. it was only republished in 1959 with its new title. [54] helmuth plessner, “de homine abscondito,” trans. claus mueller, in social research 36, no. 4 (winter 1969): 509. [55] ferdinand tönnies, gemeinschaft und gesellschaft (leipzig: fues’s verlag, 1887). tönnies famously distinguished notions of (traditional) ‘community’ from those of (modern) ‘society,’ paving the way for much of the sociological and political thinking of the twentieth century. [56] lethen, cool conduct, xi. [57] plessner, die verspätete nation, 166. [58] plessner, “wiedergeburt der form,” 52. [59] ibid., 53. [60] ibid., 55. [61] see peter bernhard, “plessners konzept der offenen form.” this is a version of a lecture given by bernhard at the plessner workshop held at the tu dresden in april 2005. it is essentially a commentary on the position ‘open form’ has in plessner’s “rebirth of form” speech on the occasion of the werkbund’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 1932. bernhard alludes to 134 isparchitecture.com plessner’s understanding of open form in the context of technology as well as of life itself. for technical artefacts, such as machines, their ‘open forms’ enable them to change as needs and capabilities change. [62] helmuth plessner, grenzen der gemeinschaft. eine kritik des sozialen radikalismus (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2002), 14. originally published by friedrich cohen, bonn, 1924. it remains untranslated into english. helmut lethen has commented that “[w]ith term ‘radicalism,’ plessner attacks worldviews based on a conviction that there was any good to be had from ‘a return to the roots of existence.’ to the wish projections of ‘primary unity’ and radical therapies, plessner opposes his behavioural doctrine of distance and bases it on the anthropological principle that every human being, from the moment of birth, leads an incomplete existence. ‘that is why man is “by nature” artificial and never in balance.’” from lethen, cool conduct. embedded quotation from helmuth plessner, macht und menschliche natur (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1981), 199, quoted in helmut lethen, cool conduct: the culture of distance in weimar germany, trans. don reneau (berkeley and london: university of california press, 2002), 53. [63] josef frank, “architektur als symbol. elemente deutschen neuen bauens” (“architecture as symbol: elements of the german new building”), in josef frank, schriften/writings, vol. 2, trans. john sands (vienna: metroverlag, 2012), 9-191, here 27-28. [64] josef frank, “das haus als weg und platz” (“the house as path and place”), in josef frank, schriften/writings, vol. 2, trans. wilfried wang vienna: metroverlag, 2012), 198-209, here 207. originally published in der baumeister 29/8 (august 1931): 316-23. [65] ibid., 209. see also christopher long, the new space: movement and experience in viennese modern architecture (new haven and london: yale university press, 2016), with photographs by wolfgang thaler. here long enlarges on his earlier monograph on frank (see christopher long, josef frank: life and work (chicago and london: the university of chicago press, 2002)) and relates frank’s concept of weg (path) to similar concepts of movement and experience in the work of loos and oskar strnad. long focusses in particular on the beer house, and cites a contemporary reviewer’s description of the entry sequence that evokes the visitor’s experience of entering the plessner house: “one enters the hall [from the anteroom] through an unobtrusive door and is at once standing, surprised and moved, in the heart of the structure. the first glance instantly offers a clear understanding of the entire arrangement.” from long, the new space, 140, long’s translation, citing wolfgang born, “ein haus in wien-hietzing,” innen-dekoration 42 (september 1931): 364. how not to be at home in one’s home: adorno’s critique of architectural reason matt waggoner adorno wrote prolifically about modernism in culture and the arts, but little has been written about whether or in what form he might have addressed architectural concerns. the project of exploring this potentially fruitful intersection has been helped in the last couple of decades by authors from philosophy and critical theory contrasting his ideas about dwelling with heidegger’s and by architectural theorists considering the import of his aesthetic theory.1 if these fall shy of the more immediate connections to architecture that some have hoped to uncover, this is because adorno almost never wrote about specific buildings and their designers (which is the kind of specificity that you do find in what he wrote about music and literature). neither did he publish any texts dedicated exclusively to architecture or dwelling, which is not to say that he never wrote about them or that architectural concerns are absent from his work. adorno’s writings on dwelling and architecture live here and there, emerging and then moving on to surface later, if not often as direct commentary then as a kind of architectural gaze his thinking sometimes employs. dwelling and architecture exist like exiles in his writings even though the question of dwelling— of what it means to inhabit social and space-time worlds as embodied beings—lies as much at the core of adorno’s philosophy as it did in heidegger’s. in adorno’s case, the fact that dwelling resides there as restlessly as it does is a stylistic impression of the theory itself. the question of dwelling... lies as much at the core of adorno’s philosophy as it did in heidegger’s “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 28 w a gg on er i begin by revisiting one of his instances of sustained architectural specificity. though it is no more than a couple of pages, minima moralia’s (1951) aphorism a18, “shelter for the shelterless,” is packed with observations about houses and housing that epitomize adorno’s incisive brand of cultural criticism.2 i suggest the passage should firstly be seen in relation to the opening sections of le corbusier’s towards a new architecture (1927).3 adorno’s pronouncement at the start of “shelter for the shelterless” that “dwelling, in the proper sense, is impossible today” is usually set against heidegger’s desire to recover an original, pure dwelling practice. from 1949 (the year adorno returned to germany) until 1951, they were both working on problems of dwelling, culminating in the publication of minima moralia in the spring of 1951 and heidegger’s delivery of the lectures “building dwelling thinking” and “... poetically man dwells ...” later that year.4 but the question of whether they consciously responded to one another in these texts and what level of interaction they might have had may well be less significant for the purposes of analysis and interpretation than the fact that corbusier’s text was by all appearances a common touchstone for both of them. when adorno also writes in “shelter for the shelterless” that “the house is past,” for instance, he echoes corbusier’s claim that “the house will fall to dust.”5 to acknowledge points of convergence between adorno, heidegger, and corbusier is not to equivocate, and indeed, the fault lines between adorno and corbusier are conspicuous (just as they are with heidegger). corbusier identifies housing as the architectural question, a “problem for the epoch.” setting an agenda for architecture in the 20th century, towards a new architecture sets up the house as one of modernity’s central “problems,” which modern architecture was poised to solve by harnessing processes of mass production. by contrast, “shelter for the shelterless” insists that dwelling in modern life is a problem without a solution. more to the point, and bearing in mind germany’s “final solution” and stalin’s “death solves all problems,” adorno held that what has to be resisted are the usually ominous implications of guarantees of a wholesale solution. adorno’s anxiety about the problem solving attitude was not simply a reaction to the historical events and conditions that shaped his life. it was also, for him, a philosophical claim (a counterpoint to the positivistic tendencies of his day) nicely summarized in his early examination of husserl’s philosophy: the idea that a philosopher must produce a fixed set of irrefutable findings ... presupposes that all the tasks he sets for himself can be fulfilled, that there can be an answer to every question he raises. this assumption, however, is disputable. 29 isparchitecture.com it is possible that there are philosophical tasks which, although arising necessarily in a coherent process of thinking, can not be fulfilled; thus, they lead to an impasse … which has its roots in inherent antagonisms of the problem itself.6 this is the root of adorno’s much-discussed negative utopianism. it is why he regarded the highest tribute that can be paid to utopia as the refusal to entertain premature substitutes or to gloss over the persistence of contradictions forestalling its genuine realization. the paradoxical expression of such an act of fidelity is that in order to be true to utopia, one has to resist it. while this could be seen as a manifesto for architectural pessimism—an inability to countenance corbusier’s hope for an engineered utopia—from adorno’s standpoint it is about safeguarding against the falsification of utopia. the goal was to preserve the real and future possibility of a society transformed so that living with others and otherness, without doing so at anyone’s expense, is both publicly supported and privately possible. in a word, the obstacle to such possibilities for adorno is most certainly capitalism, but more precisely it is the necessity in market societies to secure shelter through exchange and what he calls (for reasons discussed below) the “property relation.” adorno’s generation of intellectuals witnessed capitalism at a time when it was rapidly and very effectively learning how to manage the internal contradictions that marx suspected would lead to its self-incurred demise. to adorno and his colleagues in the 1920s and 1930s (the frankfurt school’s formative years), the hope of a successful transition away from capitalism seemed increasingly fraught as the various countermovements protesting the liberal model proved themselves to be deformed versions of the same “identitarian” (totalizing, universalizing) logic of equivalence implicit in capitalism. as long as the underlying contradictions dwelling in modern life is a problem without a solution “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 30 w a gg on er of society were going to remain unaltered in any substantial way for the foreseeable future, faithfulness to the idea of the right life was going to necessitate refusals to accept its semblance, no matter how well-planned or well-intentioned the proposals. his rejections of the idea of a “blueprint” for utopia suggest that he sensed an affinity between two trends: on the one hand, the sweeping programs advanced by political parties claiming to once-and-for-all solve the problems of modern society (interpreted as cultural degradation in germany and inequality and alienation in russia); on the other hand, the similarly sweeping proposals advanced by architects for master-planned communities and cities (corbusier’s ville radieuse in 1930, wright’s broadacre city in 1932). one of adorno’s concerns about architectural blueprints for utopia was that they failed to account for the persistence of fundamental contradictions like those inherent in the property relation. his other concern about this penchant for master plans was that they seemed to harbor the same totalitarian tendencies as the parties. still, corbusier’s criticisms of the “cult of home” and his insistence that the problem of housing remained unsolved resonates with part of the argument of “shelter for the shelterless,” whose title, it is worth noting, is borrowed from a chapter of siegfried kracauer’s the salaried masses (1930). kracauer tutored adorno in philosophy during the latter’s precocious teen years, poring over such onerous texts as kant’s critique of pure reason. kracauer was a trained and practicing architect in those days and the salaried masses would become one of the first critical examinations of the birth of middle class labor environs like the office space.7 it interrogates the fin de siècle social fantasy that cubicle life provided respite and greater self-determination than the oppressive drudgery of the factory space, an assumption kracauer challenges by stressing the mechanization of office work, kafkaesque means of control implemented by office planners and new managerial systems, and the onset of an even more paralyzing workincited ennui. similarly, “shelter for the shelterless” insists that shelter fantasies cannot be abstracted from the material conditions that make optimistic programs of escape, refuge, or shelter-based “problem solving” acts of wishful thinking. the conditions informing adorno’s spatial-architectural pessimism in “shelter for the shelterless” include the wartime decimation of the housing stock (germans, including heidegger, called it a “housing shortage,” which adorno thought was specious, a way of ignoring the past); the exclusions and the violence of state-sponsored nativism (promoting authentic ties to home and homeland); the mechanizing 31 isparchitecture.com effects of technology and mass production on all forms of interiority (including the invasion of the factory model, with its compulsory discipline and injunction to produce and be useful, into the private sphere); and the inescapable means-end logic of the property relation. adorno’s adamance about the underlying conditions of dwelling and the impossibility of extricating oneself from their contradictions responds as much to heidegger as to corbusier, despite the obvious tension between heidegger’s concerns about technological reason and corbusier’s technophilia. adorno’s disagreement in both instances is not with the claim that we were not building right, but with the claim that we have the capacity to definitively resolve housing’s problems here and now as if they had only to do with misguided conceptions of genuine or optimally efficient dwelling and not with the economic foundations of society. “shelter for the shelterless” illustrates the unresolved nature of dwelling’s problems by throwing a spotlight on some of the attempts to evade them and how they fail. german post-war “traditional residences” are contaminated by the “musty pact of family interests.” regardless of one’s relation to what took place in them, one cannot live in them free of guilt. “functional modern houses” like corbusier’s machines for living in facilitate the “straying of the factory model into the private sphere.” “period-style houses” that have been restored and then purchased as historical novelties are mausoleums embalming their inhabitants alive. “hotels and furnished rooms” sought after in some avant-garde attempt to sidestep the trappings of bourgeois ownership make a mockery of those who really have been driven into homelessness or provisional housing situations. bombed-out cities and the abandoned structures of what had recently been labor and concentration camps, but are now too politically toxic to repurpose, have become omens of the fate of all housing. like architectural blueprints for utopia...failed to account for the persistence of fundamental contradictions “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 32 w a gg on er the job that one needs in order to avoid homelessness in a society that commodifies shelter, these neglected structures serve as concrete symbols of the disposable nature of everyone and everything in late modernism after they no longer prove useful. and finally, adorno cites the bauhausinspired craft movement in architecture, furniture, and design that had set out to eschew form in favor of function but eventually backslid into stylized, curvilinear ornamentation, which is precisely what corbusier, loos, gropius, and others indicted as bourgeois pretension.8 adorno offers the reader a compendium of what are still contemporary tactics for evading the contradictions of dwelling. we could read these six pseudo-solutions as descriptions of various chic-urban attempts today on the part of city planners, private developers, architects, and shelter consumers to make dwelling strategies seem like solutions to bigger problems. the argument of “shelter for the shelterless” is that none of them resolves anything because the underlying issues remain unchanged. nothing escapes the predicament of dwelling in modern life and our attempts, clever and noble though they may be, are shabby conceits and naively complicit. he credits the inadequacy of these solutions to the structural constraints of the property relation, which is of course something most architects admit and have experienced first-hand. there are two explanations for adorno’s preference for the term “property relation.” first, when the institute for social research relocated to columbia university in the 1930s (because it was forced to shutter when national socialism rose to power), it began avoiding anything that could have been perceived in the u.s. context as overtly marxist terminology. they self-censored terms like communism and revolution, even substituting seemingly innocuous terms such as “market society” and “capitalism” for a variety of more generic designations like “exchange society,” “instrumental reason,” and the “property relation.”9 but the second reason adorno preferred the language of the property relation is because it allowed him to accentuate the claim that property is indeed a relation, not a thing, which is to say that property is the quintessential example of what adorno and his colleagues, inspired by georg lukacs’ writings on the subject, called reification.10 heidegger opens his remarks in “building dwelling thinking” by saying that dwelling is about belonging. the difference between adorno’s philosophy of dwelling and heidegger’s has, in a nutshell, to do with adorno’s suggestion that belonging in communitarian and contractual models of inclusion and ownership is an extension of the logic of possessive exclusion. although to belong is surely to be in a relation of sorts, 33 isparchitecture.com to belong in those ways is to be incorporated—to “rest in the preserve of being” (heidegger) or to be assimilated as an appendage of the self (locke)— thereby nullifying the otherness and particularity (the “non-identity,” in adorno’s phraseology) of the thing or person that belongs. to insist on the word “relation” when speaking of the system of private property is to recognize that everything that belongs (a home or a homeland, for instance) is only naively and ideologically the exclusive domain of those whose claims of belonging are deemed legitimate. all property, including every home and every homeland, exists in relation to what lies beyond it, which our ways of speaking and thinking about them disavow. adorno’s reflections on the nature and scope of the property relation go beyond architecture’s often complacent recognition of the constraints of client expectations and market demands. the deepest problem of housing in a capitalist society is that it is a basic need that can only be purchased as a commodity (by most) with wages—money earned by finding purchasers for another commodity, labor—in a market that will not always need to increase production to full employment levels and is sometimes economically compelled to decrease it by shrinking the labor force.11 this is the double bind of a market-based shelter economy. in addition to the basic economic contradiction that makes dwelling, in the proper sense, impossible, adorno unpacks the moral facets of its conundrum as well, insisting that regardless of one’s relation to it (as property owners, renters, or participants in one of shelter’s sub-economies—squatting, camping, living in rehabilitated refuse) every relation to home (and to homeland) is implicated in a system that entails one kind of unsheltering or another. he argues, for instance, that there is no morally responsible way to own because ownership is inherently exclusive, always taking something from ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 34 w a gg on er someone somewhere in the social ensemble (contrary to locke’s claim in the second treatise that it does not); that the application of techniques of mass production to housing strips them, as it does all commodities, of a singular relation to the owner, negating the claims of genuine belonging; that there is no way out of entanglement since to try and extricate oneself from the system of shelter and shelter impropriety would leave one intolerably exposed; that the interiors of houses have become scenes of pseudo-autonomy from an external world that has, nonetheless, thoroughly intruded upon interiority. “wrong life,” adorno concluded, “cannot be lived rightly.”12 economically, morally, and in many cases physically, we are all somehow unhoused. it was perhaps too hasty, though, to have suggested that adorno rejects all forms of problem solving. he does offer something, but as one should expect from a consummate dialectician, it takes the form of a paradox. in “shelter for the shelterless,” he holds that the solution to the predicaments of housing will consist in living in one’s home in full knowledge that if one owns (for instance), one does not singularly own anything, and that in some sense it is owners who are objectified and who become possessions. looking beyond its effects on owners, ownership participates in the unsheltering of others (a claim that can be illustrated in many ways, one of which is the well-studied regional correlation today between increases in property values and subsequent increases in eviction rates). there is no way out of these kinds of entanglement, so the only responsible course of action, adorno claims (to the consternation of many of his left-wing peers and readers, still today), is to participate in an “uncommitted, suspended way,” and “not to attach weight to it.”13 this would be hardly different than the knee-jerk architectural shrug were it not for an astonishing additional claim he makes: one must “learn how not to be at home in one’s home.”14 a good deal can be said about this deceptively compact formulation: it appears to have originated from kierkegaard’s stages on life’s way (1845), which adorno quotes in his first post-habilitation book-length study of kierkegaard (kierkegaard: construction of the aesthetic, 1933); walter benjamin includes it in his arcades project (finally published in 1999 but written in the 1930s), not citing the original but adorno’s rendition of it; adorno revisits it in minima moralia (in “shelter for the shelterless”) two decades later, ostensibly as a way of responding to nietzsche’s pride at having never been a homeowner, but more broadly in response to the aforementioned pseudo-solutions to the moral conundrums of housing in post-war germany; and it resembles 35 isparchitecture.com freud’s concept of das unheimliche, the uncanny, which is to say not homelike, strangely familiar, or not at home with oneself (many of the frankfurt school’s members, including adorno, were greatly influenced by freud, who in a 1919 essay describes the uncanny as an experience of strangeness in the ordinary).15 i think we have to read adorno’s dictum as an entreaty to take up relations to homes and homelands—to how we “construct” them geographically and architecturally, as well as to how we inhabit them—in ways that are not just open to neighbors, strangers, and other kinds of visitors, including those who have been excluded or rendered obsolete by various incarnations of the property relation. even more radically than that, it means that we will need to see ourselves as visitors in our own homes, guests of a sort with no more exclusive claim to them than others. his is an ethic of displacement and a politics of unbelonging that starkly contrasts with communitarian and contractual traditions of right, where moral responsibility is predicated either on a sense of belonging within a community of shared norms and identity or on the abstract logic of an equivalent exchange of possessions. adorno’s argument is that in both cases, communities and contracts are constituted on the model of the property relation, where the good is dependent on claiming sovereignty over this place, this identity, this property, claims that rely on necessary exclusions. what would be the outcome of such a dramatically reconstituted understanding of property, home, belonging and dwelling? the ethic of displacement points, i suggest, toward the formation of anticommunities, ad hoc and provisional aggregations of those who are commonly displaced and for which the foundational value that binds people together is not identity but non-identity, living with difference. like the uncanny, it would make the ownership participates in the unsheltering of others “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 36 w a gg on er ordinary strange and the stranger at home. this idea of informal, ad hoc communities and alternative kinships appears throughout adorno’s writings, including his reflections on american exile after returning to germany (in which he wrote warmly about the reception he received and about the spirit of collaboration he experienced, despite arriving with a very different methodological and theoretical orientation than what was practiced in the u.s. at that time).16 the question he leads us to ask is how we might live (and design living arrangements) in ways that subvert the logic of exclusive possession, even though there is no way to escape it under present conditions. since choosing not to dwell is not an option, and since there is no dwelling in modern life that escapes the property relation, how can we “be at home,” how can we rethink its meaning and practice—but also how can we develop, design, and build housing that installs some new practice of being at home so that home is not a possession that excludes but a relation that invites intimacy amid environs of otherness? how can new paradigms of constructing dwelling systems, structures, and arrangements allow for the mobilization of reciprocal styles of residence, where residents are visitors and visitors are welcomed. to do so would be to address the “problem of the epoch” by modeling housing on the precarity of the unsheltered exile rather than on the security of the native/owner with so-called authentic ties to place and property. are there pathways from adorno’s post-war philosophy of housing to the present? i will not labor over the obvious associations with contemporary social and political movements like sanctuary cities, the right to the city, and the right to housing, except to affirm that these are certainly benefactors of the kind of reasoning that one finds in adorno’s writings on housing, hospitality, and dwelling. i can think of other examples as well. richard rothstein’s the color of law (2017) includes a section near the end of the book in which he permits himself to speculate on how housing segregation could be rectified if there was political determination to do so. he imagines policies aimed at incentivized means of rolling back local zoning practices and federal tax benefits that promote segregated housing patterns. this could be accomplished by making tax subsidies conditional on the inclusion in wealthy areas of a sizable percentage of affordable housing stock and by mandating aggressive measures to attract racially diverse tenants. rothstein argues that, although the supreme court does not currently recognize it, the legal justification for such assertive measures is based on the fact that it was de jure policies backed by federal and local 37 isparchitecture.com governments that for decades created and sustained housing segregation, and thus government has a 14th-amendment obligation to rectify the consequences of its new deal-, civil rights-, and even post-civil rights-era illegalities. the intergenerational effects of inclusive housing (through access to better-funded schools and community resources for the children of relocated tenants, for instance) would be enormously impactful.17 to be sure, even this does not escape entanglement since it involves displacing families from neighborhoods in which they may have deep roots in the community, but it also requires wealthy neighborhoods to open themselves to changes that would fundamentally alter the makeup of those communities as well. measures that make dwelling inclusive (particularly in middle and upper-middle class white neighborhoods) by dismantling and repairing the harms of housing segregation would be consistent, i think, with what it could mean in a practical, present-day sense to learn how not to be at home in one’s home. in the period between 1964 and 1968, prominent voices in the civil rights movement, including president johnson himself, became intensely vocal about the incapacity of the new civil rights laws— outlawing discrimination in public accommodations and extending the right to vote—to overcome segregation and its direct effect on income and opportunity inequality.18 martin luther king, jr. argued that expanding the quantity, access, and king’s rhetoric routinely employed architectural metaphors “ ” figure 1: martin luther king jr. memorial, washington, d. c. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 38 w a gg on er location of low income housing in the u.s. was a necessary step toward racial and economic justice. usually known for its theological imagery, king’s rhetoric routinely employed architectural metaphors as well, such as when he said that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring”19; and when he lamented to harry belafonte that after all of their efforts and the eventual passage of the civil rights laws in the 1960s, he realized that economic inequality linked to housing segregation would continue unabated. he worried that they had done little more than integrate into a “burning house.” (figure 1). in 1967, king adopted the image of a “world house” which informed an essay of the same name: a famous novelist died. among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “a widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” this is the great new problem of mankind. we have inherited a large house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together—black and white, easterner and westerner, gentile and jew, catholic and protestant, moslem and hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.20 the image of a world house asks us to see human beings as common inhabitants of the earth who are mutually affected by one another’s suffering and insecurity. it is an image of living with difference, which is not only suggestive of welcoming and responding to the other. implicit in its concept is the idea that i can lay no exclusive claim to a singular instance of housing, homeland, social belonging, or citizenship since there is but one planetary mesh of interconnected housings. king tries to reimagine the shelter of physical residence, political recognition, and economic wellbeing that white society assured for itself at others’ expense as a site of ordinariness that has to become uncanny, defamiliarized. as a radically exteriorized conception of what it means to be housed, this image is reminiscent of what adorno tries to accomplish with a seemingly very different kind of spatial-architectural metaphor. adorno’s “no man’s lands” are playful in their discourse with the meaning of utopia, which is another kind of no-place. to impute utopian significance to places whose historical references include dumping grounds and the space between two fronts in trench warfare (where the carnage of bombed buildings and disfigured bodies abound) is tongue-incheek, a conscious attempt on adorno’s part to insist that utopias will not yet come in the form of successfully implemented solutions to sweeping 39 isparchitecture.com problems. for now, they will appear in the rubble of failed solutions, the refuse of damaged life. “the resurrection of the dead,” adorno wrote, “will take place in the auto-graveyards.”21 but no man’s lands are not only scenes of destruction and obsolescence. they are also sites of contiguity, non-spaces of in betweenness that lie beyond the boundaries of regions of exclusive possession and control. to inhabit the no man’s land is thus to exteriorize the self, to abandon the security of the carapace for the vulnerability and precarity of border regions. no man’s lands are deconstructive zones of contact and cross-contamination where binarily conceived relations no longer hold, relations between subject/ object, self/other, mind/body, resident/stranger, life/death, reason/affect, utopia/dystopia, home/ exile. adorno’s no man’s lands acknowledge that our materiality is an inescapably shared feature of our existence as embodied beings, making us both dependent on and responsive to that which is outside us. this is true because of our need to seek food and shelter amid external environs and social arrangements and because of historically specific intrusions into interiority—mental, affective, and aesthetic interiority through the culture industry, architectural interiority through the mass production of houses and the penetration of the spaces of work and life by new forms of influence and control, and the interiority of social and political belonging, when in the name of authentic ties to home and homeland one is dislocated, either into exile or to the concentration camp. this is why, rather than kierkegaard’s constructions of selfhood through images of interiority (his touchstones tended to be the accoutrements of the 19th-century bourgeois apartment), adorno preferred kafka, whose characters could not find refuge. they were instead expelled onto barren surfaces, exoskeletal and exposed. in reference to kafka, adorno once called upon the image of no man’s lands to describe the the image of a world house asks us to see human beings as common inhabitants of the earth who are mutually affected by one another’s suffering and insecurity “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 40 w a gg on er unlocatable position of characters who suffered an “unsuccessful death,” having been so thoroughly depleted and made obsolete that, though not physically dead, they exist in a kind of socially dead/undead state.22 but like the unsuccessful deaths in kafka’s stories, adorno sees promise in the precarity and dislocation of no man’s lands. he sees them, for one thing, as scenes that expose us, and for that reason they also expose the real nature of embodied life. the shared frailty of bodies and of the environs upon which they depend is a reminder that to be an embodied being is to be something that lives outside itself (this is another sense in which adorno used the phrase no man’s land, to describe the experience of exteriorization). in other words, embodied life contains within its phenomenology a template of what we mean by dwelling. the necessity of corporeal beings to seek housing in a place, in relations of both physical and social geography, is never purely subjective and cannot be individualized. the sensorium of embodied subjectivity is not even something that happens on its own; it is enlivened by contact with and exposure to other bodies and bodily states. embodiment bears an essential relation to dwelling because to inhabit a body is to inhabit bodies as such, a common corporeality stitched together by the reflexivity of the touch and by collective modes of meeting shared needs and responding to shared vulnerability. the human experience of dwelling begins with embodiment, with the fact that consciousness is inseparable from the somatic and the sensorial, which are, like everything physical, inherently responsive to, dependent upon, and passively and actively bound up with that which is external to consciousness. modes of dwelling in bodies and in space are not those of enclosure and sovereignty but of cohabitation and an ethically enlivening non-sovereignty. no one ever singularly inhabits a body because embodiment is not, as we like to imagine it, a state of being a self-sufficient thing. its existence is inseparable from and can only be constituted as such within a matrix of contact and connectivity that can either prove sustaining or detrimental, depending on the quality of the bonds. what we should add to this is that the scope of that which stitches me into the world is not exclusively the interfacing of organic bodies. it includes the kind of tethering that binds bodies together by housing them in time and space. there are other ways that i come to exist as a place-holding being in the world and that i am delivered into and hopefully preserved in such constitutive contact with it and with others. for if, as judith butler argues in senses of the subject, it is not the case that there is already a pre-existent “i” prior to being touched, but that the touch instead enlivens me as a feeling, sensing self, then we must 41 isparchitecture.com also maintain that there is no way to conceive of the human being apart from the kind of tethering and contiguous relations that enable me to inhabit the external world.23 we are fastened to one another by virtue of our common embodiment, but our bodies are also intertwined with one another and with the world inside a global tissue of connected environs that includes such things as streets, neighborhoods, cities, infrastructures, and coverings, the matrix of shelters and shelter arrangements in which we dwell. it is within these structures that we reside with varying degrees of satiety and security, some more enlivening than others. just as the body does not enclose us from others, shelter does not enclose us from that which surrounds us and in relation to which we are only ostensibly distant and distinct. rather, dwelling is the activity and shelter the fabric with which the self is extended into and implicated in worlds of being and belonging, which i take to be what king envisioned when he adopted the image of a world house and what adorno envisioned when he upheld no man’s lands as potentially fruitful shared experiences of propulsion into scenes that exteriorize us, over which none of us can claim exclusive nativity or possession. this brings me, finally, to the other architecturally compelling feature of no man’s lands in adorno’s works. it is that adorno’s models of living with difference—aggregations of the commonly dislocated and the kinds of alternative bonds that crystallize among them—invite redefinition of the meaning of housing and home, of the designed character of dwelling and the social arrangements it facilitates. repositioning exilic states as the foundation for ethical responsibility, adorno inverts the relation between home and exile such that our model of home is fashioned after the non-exclusive relations that characterize communities of shared displacement. this aspect of adorno’s philosophy of dwelling is just as consistent with king’s interest in an expanded and exteriorized conception of the utopias... will appear in the rubble of failed solutions, the refuse of damaged life “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 42 w a gg on er house as it is with different models of family and kinship (which were also present in king’s reflections on the world house). for it is on the basis of a traditional concept of kinship that homes and homelands have historically acquired their meaning as scenes of common identity and exclusive claims of the right of belonging and possession. learning how not to be at home in one’s home will necessitate, then, learning how to forge bonds of belonging that are predicated on intimacy and proximity between aliens and strangers rather than kin and countrymen. reimagining houses and housing as no man’s lands enlists us in the project of reconstituting the social arrangements that have traditionally organized and orchestrated shelter, and it includes risking their contamination with conceptually promiscuous alternative cohabitation structures. these would no longer be arrangements whose bonds are rooted in exclusive claims of cultural and genetic belonging, nor the claims of contractually legitimized, inherited or purchased belonging. it is difficult, for obvious reasons, for us to imagine dwelling and housing apart from the logic of possessive exclusion rooted in relations of the family and private property. we know that under the circumstances, when territorial sovereignty, patriarchal vestiges, and the property relation circumscribe every form of dwelling, we would intolerably expose ourselves to insecure states if we did not participate in the shelter-based economy according to its rules. this is why adorno’s “solution” cannot take the form of a master-planned blueprint for utopian dwelling. what he offers us instead is an architectural counter-image to the blueprint by comparing the task of reimagining dwelling and housing to images from land surveys. the blueprint is an abstraction, a rationalization of reality, whereas aerial photographs of the surface of the earth capture the materiality of the terrain. in “notes on kafka,” having likened the unsuccessful death to a no man’s land, adorno argues that kafka’s stories function like wartime aerial photographs of demolished cities, neighborhoods, buildings, and homes. he describes this function as the production of an impossible view from the standpoint of an as yet unforeseeable utopia, “hell seen from the perspective of salvation.” his writing “feigns a standpoint from which the creation appears as lacerated and mutilated as it conceives hell to be.” recalling jews in the middle ages who were tortured, executed, and hung head down, adorno tells us that “kafka, the land-surveyor, photographs the earth’s surface just as it must have appeared to these victims during the endless hours of their dying.”24 when adorno describes these views of the extremes of exposure, suffering, and insecurity as the standpoint of salvation, he is suggesting that we need to invert our notions of pessimism and optimism. genuine optimism does not conceal 43 isparchitecture.com realities beneath abstractions and pseudo-solutions. its conception of utopia is not that of the blueprint but of the preservation, if only in thought (whose focal point is like an image from afar), of an as yet unforeseeable transformation of the material conditions for dwelling and cohabitation. “to include [kafka] among the pessimists, the existentialists of despair, is as misguided as to make him a prophet of salvation” since “the light-source which shows the world’s crevices to be infernal is the optimal one.”25 ever since the ideal cities of corbusier and wright, the “optimal solutions” of architecture to the problems of housing have not captured the depth of the damages incurred by dwelling because of its enmeshment in the property relation. rothstein and others remind us how those blueprints, once approximated in the development of new deal housing programs and postwar suburbs, led to the even deeper entrenchment of racially exclusive property relations. with the aid of federal support and local zoning practices, the approaches they inspired contributed to the intransigence of segregated housing patterns and the intergenerational economic debilitation of african americans that resulted from those patterns. in no small part, ideological notions of the proper family model played a role in justifying the exclusions of housing as well, both because of racially coded discrimination against single parent families and because of the inviolable status accorded the nuclear family and individual property, effectively shielding them against government’s ability to prevent or police the segregationist practices of developers, real estate agents, banks, and neighborhood associations. adorno’s critique of architectural reason is an immanent critique that thinks through the categories and concepts of architectural perspectives and practices. what is architecture to adorno’s ‘solution’ cannot take the form of a masterplanned blueprint for utopian dwelling “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 44 w a gg on er do when its entire task is beset by the ineluctable contradictions of the property relation? adorno’s answer is that architecture must do what art did during the period of high modernism and what artists at its periphery (such as gordon matta-clark) have intimated in their works. architecture must become anti-architectural, not in the sense that it no longer plans, designs, and builds dwellings and dwelling arrangements, but that it does so in ways that feign an impossible standpoint (rather than blueprinting false solutions) by reimagining dwelling as no man’s lands of exteriorized contiguity and dwelling’s ideal social arrangements as alternative kinships. it has to learn how not to be at home in its traditional mandate to build spaces that reinforce our preconceptions of proper social space. dwelling in the proper sense may be impossible today, but its future may be what is, til then, deemed improper. endnotes 1. samir gandesha, “leaving home: on adorno and heidegger” in adorno and heidegger: philosophical questions (redwood city, ca: stanford university press, 2007, pp. 101-28); hilde heynen, architecture and modernity: a critique (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1999). 2. theodor adorno, minima moralia: reflections from damaged life (new york: verso, 1974). i use “shelter for the shelterless” to translate “asyl für obdachlose” rather than jephcott’s “refuge for the homeless.” for an extended investigation into “shelter for the shelterless,” see waggoner, unhoused: adorno and the problem of dwelling (new york: columbia university press, 2018). 3. le corbusier, towards a new architecture, frederick etchells, trans. (new york: dover, 1986). most readers will be familiar with the history of the text and its title. originally published in french in 1923 as vers une architecture, the first english translation by etchells appeared in 1927, in which the title was interpreted as towards a new architecture. in 2007, getty published a new english translation returning corbusier’s title to the original toward an architecture. when referring to the book’s title in what follows, i follow the etchells translation since it remains the most widely used version of the text in english. 4. martin heidegger, poetry, language, thought. albert hofstadter, trans. (new york: harper collins, 1977, pp. 141-160, 209-227). 5. heidegger questions the role of the house in a far less pointed and pithy way in “building dwelling thinking”: “today’s houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun, 45 isparchitecture.com but do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them?” (p. 144). 6. theodor adorno, “husserl and the problem of idealism,” journal of philosophy (vol. 37, no. 1, january 4, 1940: pp. 5–18). 7. siegfried kracauer, the salaried masses: duty and distraction in weimar. quintin hoare, trans. (new york: verso, 1998). 8. adorno, 1974: pp. 38-39. 9. the institute for social research was the institution, founded in frankfurt under the auspices of its university, that gave birth to the group of scholars known as the frankfurt school, some of whom were less directly connected to the institute than others. see martin jay, the dialectical imagination: a history of the frankfurt school and the institute for social research, 1923-1950 (berkeley: university of california press, 1973). 10. georg lukacs, history and class consciousness: studies in marxist dialectics (cambridge, ma: mit, 1971). 11. marx, of course, goes one step further when he argues that even labor shrinkages are economically strategic for capital. they create what he calls an industrial reserve army: unemployed (often homeless or insecurely sheltered) workers who are ready at a moment’s notice to report to the factory or the office as soon as their labor is again required. 12. adorno, 1974, p. 39. 13. ibid. 14. ibid. 15. theodor adorno, kierkegaard: construction of the aesthetic. robert hullot-kentor, trans. (minneapolis: university of minneapolis press, 1989); walter benjamin, the arcades project. howard eiland and kevin mclaughlin, trans. (cambridge, ma: belknap press of harvard university press, 1999); sigmund freud, “the ‘uncanny’” in the standard edition of the complete psychological works of sigmund ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 46 w a gg on er freud, volume xvii (1917-1919): an infantile neurosis and other works, pp. 217-256. i suspect there are still more reference points for the quote that i am not yet aware of. 16. theodor adorno, “scientific experiences of a european scholar in america” in critical models: interventions and catchwords (new york: columbia university press, 1998, pp. 215-242); adorno, “foreword” in prisms. samuel weber and shierry weber nicholsen, trans. (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1967, pp. 7-8). 17. richard rothstein, the color of law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated america (new york: liveright publishing, 2017). 18. see ira katznelson, when affirmative action was white: an untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-century america (new york: w. w. norton and company, 2006). 19. michael eric dyson, come hell or high water: hurricane katrina and the color of disaster (new york: basic civitas books, 2007). 20. martin luther king, jr., “the world house” in where do we go from here: chaos or community? (boston, ma: beacon press, 1968, p. 177) 21. adorno 1967, p. 271. 22. adorno 1967, pp. 270-271. 23. judith butler, senses of the subject (new york: fordham university press, 2015). 24. adorno 1967, p. 271. 25. ibid. protests in hong kong (2019) the storming of the legislative council in hong kong by a group of local activists on july 1, 2019 marked a turn of events in what was until then the largest ever series of political demonstrations in the semi-autonomous chinese territory. in the months that followed, hong kong was shaken by violence and unrest unseen since the riots in the 1960s against the british colonial rule. the emergence of these scenes of total chaos in a city where safety and efficiency of shared urban space and infrastructure are enormously valued and sustained at highest levels effectively generated a fundamental sense of destabilization. this article introduces an ancient chinese cultural notion, jianghu, with the aim of contributing to an enriched and differentiated cultural understanding of these events and the transformation of urban space they effected. the first part introduces jianghu in contrast to the dichotomy of the public and the private so deeply rooted in western civilization. the comparison is not so much about suggesting jianghu as a substitute concept to replace existing interpretations entirely, but an attempt and an invitation to open new perspectives of understanding of a place that is the hybrid result of a complexity of cultural influences and unique historical and political circumstances. the section that follows outlines an image of hong kong as a city during times of peace, as well as a very brief account of its political history, to provide the background for the subsequent description and interpretation of a hong kong shaken by protests as a contemporary form of jianghu. the last portion of the essay describes the actions within and the transformation of urban spaces during the violent anonymity in jianghu: hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis esther lorenz ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 102 lo r en z protests in hong kong between july and november 2019 to illustrate the congruence between characteristics of jianghu as known from chinese film and literature and the events that deeply unsettled the hong kong territory. the private and the public the question of public space from a western perspective is grounded in the dichotomy of public and private inherent in an understanding of the city that is deeply rooted in the greek polis. while the existence of and stability of the family is a precondition for a productive engagement in public life in the ancient city-state, the duality between the two realms is distinct. aristotle speaks about two lives that exist in parallel.1 as hannah arendt points out, greek society maintains a sharp distinction between the home and the family on the one hand—dedicated to a life grounded in biological association and characterized by command—and political organization on the other—negotiated through the process of persuasion.2 in chinese culture, grown from its own ancient roots, this sharp distinction between public and private has never taken place. the family, like in the greek polis, is at the beginning of society, and in chinese culture it is also at its core. rather than forming a parallel realm, socio-political structures grow in expansion from the notion of the family and the home, and are deeply rooted in confucianist thought. they establish a societal and spatial framework distinctly different from that in the west that li shiqiao identifies as “degrees of care.”3 this resonates with the conception of tianxia, a term that dates back to philosophical writings from the zhou period and that maintained a steady influence throughout china’s history. it literally translates as “all under heaven” and denotes a normative “world” that can be understood as the largest existing form of the family, deeply imbued with confucian values of morality and hierarchy. zhao tingyang discusses the “isomorphism between family and tianxia” during the zhou dynasty that ties together a political order of tianxia providing protection for each family with an ethical order that extends “family relationality into the tianxia institutional order.”4 tianxia establishes a hierarchy grounded in morality and power and acted out by paying tributes, which correspond to giving respect to parents and ancestors within a family. zhao points out the all-inclusiveness of tianxia as its fundamental characteristic that leads to a conception of an interiorization of the entire world with “no outside.”5 yet, there are gaps that emerge between the extended circles of familial care, and there are limits to their capacity to be all-encompassing. there are positions of rejection and projections of alternative worlds. there are individuals who deliberately withdraw themselves from the hierarchical, 103 isparchitecture.com established order, acting upon a variety of motives. in fiction and in reality this realm outside the normative order is known as jianghu. jianghu – an external realm of non-structured action jianghu is a chinese cultural concept that literally translates as “rivers and lakes.” the term can be traced back to the daoist philosopher zhuangzi. in his writings the term denotes a life freed from officialdom, career aspirations and family ties. he uses “rivers and lakes” synonymously with the way, the tao, the natural realm for man and his thinking that is characterized by purposelessness and detachment.6 zhuang zi’s writings in a political sense promote non-hierarchical, dynamic organization of human life.7 over time the term has developed a rich spectrum of meaning both through fiction as well as through history. the aspect that remains constant between the evolving uses and interpretations of this concept is that jianghu establishes a position outside regulated systems, from which these can be reflected on, opposed, and overturned. this logic appears as a frequent feature in the narratives of chinese martial arts tales and movies, commonly described as wuxia. the most influential tale to date to describe the realm of jianghu in relation to wuxia is the novel outlaws of the marsh or water margin (水滸傳, by shi nai’an, 14th century), situated in the period of the song dynasty (960-1279). the book tells the story of 108 rebels who, frustrated by the political environment and the living conditions at that time, “became leaders of an outlaw army of thousands and fought brave and resourceful battles against pompous, heartless tyrants.”8 the protagonists withdraw from their everyday lives and hide in the marshes of liangshan in shandong province to prepare for and to conduct the fight for justice against the corrupt ruling order. while regular society is hierarchical and highly structured, jianghu does not have structure, it relies on alliances in chinese culture, a sharp distinction between public and private has never taken place. the family is at the beginning of society, and is also at its core. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 104 lo r en z and honor codes that are fluid and subject to change. as the conceptual dwelling place for itinerant performers, healers, swordsmen, beggars, and outlaws both in real life as well as in fiction, jianghu forms the antithesis to home and the family. in martial arts tales, jianghu is frequently treated as a realm that one can enter, but also again leave, to return to home and family. it is distinct from shanlin, “mountains and forests,” the retreat for daoist monks and hermits. while shanlin is a place for non-action and spiritual contemplation, jianghu is characterized by action that is committed to effecting change in society.9 in contemporary contexts, jianghu appears in academic discussions on the arts and the digital as a potential new realm that enables evasion of government control and censorship. but jianghu is different from habermas’ public sphere, where society can openly debate issues of common concern. it is in fact a space external to societal structures and conventions, from which counter concepts can be envisioned, and battles against oppressive, corrupt, or unjust authorities can be fought. jianghu may denote the retreat from a regulated life, opposition to government in the fight for justice, lawlessness, or personal freedom; it signifies both a mental state and a space. while consistently implying some form of rejection of a status quo, it has remained vague and malleable in its interpretation, and in relation to specific socio-political conditions of any given era. governmental care as the normative hong kong hong kong is a city with an extremely high population and building density. the spatial compression produces a three-dimensional urban fabric of short distances. in conjunction with a highly efficient public transportation infrastructure, the city is primarily navigated on foot, only 7.6% of the population own a private vehicle.10 due to this prevalence of pedestrianism, hong kong’s population density is directly reflected in the mass of moving bodies that traverse the city through this three-dimensional pedestrian network. these spaces are not made for pause, contemplation or flânerie, they are spaces of flow designed to provide the most convenient, smooth, and rapid connections between places of living, work, education, and leisure. this priority is also reflected in the organization of the spaces themselves—surface markings on the floor and overhead signals, reminiscent of highway guidance systems, control the use of lanes and direction of flows, turnstiles and rail guards manage access and zoning, elevated walkways and metal barriers provide clear separation between pedestrian and vehicle space. life in hong kong is characterized by an enormous dedication to maintaining the constancy, safety, and efficiency of this flow through a high 105 isparchitecture.com degree of management exerted by the government. while these spatial parameters and approach to governing are symptomatic of the needs of a city of a material and human density as extreme as in hong kong, conversely, the unique morphology and tight organization of the city must be recognized as the result of an underlying sociocultural framework that enables its formation and sustains its vitality. if seen through a chinese cultural perspective, according to li shiqiao, the approach of the hong kong government may need to be understood as one of all-encompassing care,11 including the provision of open spaces and leisure facilities that are accessible to all, but that do not inherently constitute public space in a political sense. the level of care by the government in maintaining order is matched by a high level of compliance from its citizens. the cultural basis for this general tolerance of guidance, rules, and restrictions in hong kong’s population is often explained through notions of confucianism, which resonates with the understanding of the city as nested scales of familial care that also implies loyalty and respect toward government. hong kong ranks among the safest cities in the world.12 for the average citizen violence is an extrinsic phenomenon. during normal, peaceful times, space, management and conformity are tight, and seem not to leave gaps outside the realm of governmental care, with few exceptions. in hong kong, highways, roads, and scarce instances of vacant or abandoned land, dangerous and unfit for bodily occupation, can be understood as spatial manifestations of jianghu, while triad operations embody the social manifestation of “rivers and lakes,” as the world of “bandits” that runs in parallel and exists hidden from and outside the realm of the established order. for most hong kong citizens jianghu does not touch upon their everyday lives but exists in a world of literary and cinematic fiction. in contrast to this perception of stability and largely friction-free everyday collective life in the city ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 106 lo r en z of hong kong there lies an inner struggle, which is rooted in the precarious political situation that is fundamental to hong kong’s existence—first as a british colony following the opium wars, and since the handover of the territory to china in 1997, as a “special administrative region” of the people’s republic of china, operating under the motto of “one country, two systems.” the identity of hong kong people, who are largely comprised of immigrants from mainland china and their descendants—92% of hong kong’s population are ethnically chinese—has developed its own characteristics overtime, with a self-conception distinctly different from the mainland, and at the same time deeply rooted in chinese culture given their ancestral heritage. for many of these immigrants, their transition to hong kong can be interpreted as constituting various forms of “entering jianghu” in relation to mainland china, either as a realm “outside” allowing for alternative lifestyles and opportunities or as a place to evade the control of the central government. while hong kong had been open to western ideas and influences since the incremental ceding of the territory to the british, starting in 1842, throughout its time as a colony it had been ruled by a governor who was directly appointed by the british monarch. the governing efforts of the british colonial rule prioritized the maintenance of stability conducive to the flourishing of trade and commerce. absent of substantial provisions of democratic institutions and processes, a public sphere in the sense of jürgen habermas had not been established by the time of the handover in 1997.13 the ambiguity of the basic law with regard to instituting universal suffrage, in combination with the stipulation that the chief executive is to be appointed by the central government based on a selection “through election or through consultations,” present provisions perhaps less committed than what contemporary supporters of democracy sometimes refer to as “promises.”14 moreover, the impending end of the 50-year period of hong kong’s semi-autonomy in 2047 constitutes a looming threat that is virtually inescapable. this is exacerbated by instances of attempted introductions of new laws that seem to threaten both hong kong’s identity and stipulated level of independence. to hong kong’s citizens these appear as premature steps of the realization of hong kong’s full absorption into china—whatever this final scenario may look like in the future—which are feared to violate the provision in the basic law that the “the socialist system and policies shall not be practiced in the hong kong special administrative region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”15 in the past these incidents triggered otherwise rare political demonstrations in hong kong, 107 isparchitecture.com such as the protests in 2003 against a new national security law, and the demonstrations against the introduction of a curriculum of “moral and national education” in hong kong’s education system in 2012.16 the proposition of a new extradition law in 2019 that would allow criminal suspects to be surrendered to china for trial not only triggered vehement rejection by the hong kong people, but it also sparked more violent and sustained forms of activism, unseen in the territory for over half a century, and unprecedented in some of their characteristics and ways of utilizing and transforming the spaces of the city. given hong kong’s political and cultural hybridity, we need differentiated perspectives to think with and through the events that took place in this unique territory. hong kong’s space of crisis as jianghu the protests against the extradition law in 2019 are to date considered the largest political demonstrations that have ever taken place in hong kong, culminating in up to two million citizens— more than a quarter of the territory’s population— gathering in the streets on june 16, 2019.17 they came out in opposition to the proposed bill, and in protest against the chief executive carrie lam’s decision two days earlier to only suspend rather than drop the bill.18 the week before, on june 12, a smaller demonstration in front of the government offices turned violent when protesters threw bricks and metal rods at the police, who in return responded with the use of batons, pepper spray and tear gas.19 in a response on the same day, lam expressed her disapproval of the incident and reiterated her rejection of the demonstrators’ demands through familial metaphors: “if i let him have his way every time my son acts this way, i believe we will have a good relationship in the short term. but if ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 108 lo r en z i indulge his wayward behaviour, he might regret it after he grows up.”20 this statement is revealing of the government’s self-conceived parental role towards its citizens. in any case it did not resonate well with hong kong’s youth. the accumulative effect of the reactions by the government in the early summer of 2019 such as this one may in fact have unleashed deepseated disappointment and desperation in hong kong’s young generation, who felt increasingly not taken care of at all. these sentiments would certainly be grounded in the fear of their cultural identity, values, and way of life being jeopardized by the impending end of the “one country two systems” stipulation well during their lifetime. these emotions may have additionally been exacerbated by the progressive vanishing of perspectives in a hong kong characterized by an ever-expanding wealth gap in its population, driven by an extreme combination of land policy and capitalist real estate practices that go all the way back to british colonial rule. on july 1, 2019, the anniversary of hong kong’s handover to china, a group of activists broke into the legislative council building, smashed the façade and vandalized the interior, sprayed over the flag of hong kong in the council chamber, and—strangely enough—raised the british colonial flag in its stead. this sudden shift to violence marked “an irreversible step toward escalation”21 and a clear crystallization of two very distinct groups of protesters: the first group represented the large majority of those demonstrating peacefully and within the boundaries authorized for the rallies. while they did express their support for democratic values, they raised their voices specifically against the extradition law. after the announcement of its suspension, despite lingering disappointment with this incomplete concession, these large demonstrations came to an end. the anger and dissatisfaction of the second group—comprised of several disparate fractions of predominantly young people—did not dissipate. in contrary, they grew even stronger. these protesters turned to active aggression to provoke a strong response from the government. they expanded their demands—which functioned less as an agenda for political negotiation than as a declaration of the government’s failings—to a total of five with remarkably varying political weight, ranging from universal suffrage to elect the legislative council and the chief executive to amnesty for themselves irrespective of the nature of their actions. the distinction between these two types of demonstrators is relevant for the discussion at hand. the first group, while expressing disagreement and staging dramatic scenes of the city’s tight spaces packed with people, acted in full compliance with the rules and within behavioral conventions. in contrast, the moment of storming the legislative council building and the sudden shift to violence of the second group, i argue, can be understood 109 isparchitecture.com as an act of self-withdrawal by the activists from the familial care of the hong kong government and from the order of its societal structure, triggered by the sense of abandonment described above. it marks their entry into the realm of jianghu. this explanation is supported by the radical change in the behavior of these activists: the occupation of spaces not designed for sojourn, general conduct opposing governmental and societal norms, the remaining in a tenacious position of opposition throughout the government’s various attempts to open a dialogue, the active use of violence, the wilful embracing of danger, and the blurring of identities. on the surface these manifestations may not appear any different from political activism and unrest in other places, however, in hong kong more than anywhere else, these stand in stark contradiction to the territory’s normative way of life, and importantly, to the young activists’ own disciplined conforming to these prior to the crisis: “they were becoming something different from what they were, a metamorphosis that would have been difficult to imagine in orderly hong kong, a city where you line up neatly for an elevator door and crowds don’t step into an empty street until the signal changes.”22 in what follows, i will lay out the corresponding implications in terms of the use and adaptation, movement within, and re-conceptualization of the urban spaces involved, all of which, i argue, constitute contemporary manifestations of jianghu. inhabiting and transforming the infrastructures of flows at first, victoria park formed the primary gathering and starting point for the formally organized demonstrations against the extradition bill. as the largest park in hong kong, it serves as a frequent location for regular public events, including the annual tiananmen vigil (suspended since 2019). after a while, the movement shifted from victoria park to transitory spaces in the city these manifestations may not appear any different from political activism and unrest in other places, however, in hong kong more than anywhere else, these stand in stark contradiction to the territory’s normative way of life. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 110 lo r en z such as shopping mall atria, underpasses, elevated walkways, tram stops, roads, highways, traffic islands, and the footings of freeway columns; precisely those spaces that are dedicated to ensuring efficient traffic flow— pedestrian or motorized—that are either not designed or even prohibited for sojourn. the choice of locations and the actions taken within them not only ensured greater visibility and impact of the movement, but they also led to a material and conceptual transformation of these spaces. they were rendered dysfunctional through the protesters’ actions that caused traffic to slow down or to come to a complete stand-still. this constituted a direct confrontation with both the government and the order of everyday life in the city. hong kong’s urban density further potentiated the effectiveness of these blockages due to its large population relying on only few highperforming infrastructural arteries for their daily commutes. on the one hand, the transformation of these transitional spaces was established through the bodily movement and occupation of the protesters, which broke with common societal norms in hong kong. on the other hand, the spatial mutation was achieved by the physical alteration of the spaces themselves: the walls of underground tunnels and pedestrian bridges leading to major transport hubs—usually characterized by mute and sanitary tile or glass surfaces—were covered with post-its and flyers. in aggregation these formed a thick pixelated tapestry of chinese poetry, messages offering emotional support, calls for political change, and practical announcements. guardrails along pedestrian sidewalks were dismantled only to be rearranged into various forms of barricades, physically and metaphorically breaking with rules and regulations that shape hong kong’s everyday life. roads and highways were sprinkled with arrangements of paving bricks that transformed them into so-called “brick battlegrounds.”23 these were more than simple barricades. the strategic composition and distribution of clusters of bricks presented tactics explicitly aimed at preventing police response. in the process they hindered general road traffic as well. these intentional arrangements produced their own aesthetics through the spatial and material transformation of the road into a new kind of urban landscape that was now inaccessible to cars: a jianghu sphere that called for a mode of movement and inhabitation by the human body different from the normative ways of navigating the city; perhaps a new form of qinggong—the ability to move lightly and swiftly to “cross difficult terrain and scale walls quickly.”24 roads and highways constitute a most direct analogy between jianghu and hong kong’s physical urban spaces. resonating with the metaphor of “rivers and lakes” these are spaces for flows of traffic; they are separated, dynamic, and they are dangerous to the unprotected body. 111 isparchitecture.com the occupation and transformation of these urban territories establishes jianghu both as an alternative space as well as an alternative mode of conduct, radically breaking with normative behavior, while at the same time exerting enormous pressure on the government by blocking the flows of the city that are synonymous with its livelihood and efficiency. becoming water the umbrella movement in 2014 had adopted a sedentary approach, which involved the occupation of public sites in three locations in the form of temporary settlements, comprised of tents and managed collectively. in contrast, the 2019 protests developed an entirely different strategy—one of fluidity and anonymity. the protesters took inspiration from bruce lee’s quote “be like water,” which—albeit originating in popular culture—is a direct reference to the martial arts tradition and the teachings of taoism.25 they rephrased it to describe their own tactics: be strong like ice. be fluid like water. gather like dew. scatter like mist. the protests were organized in a dispersed, temporary, and dynamically shifting manner, popping up in various locations, making it difficult to predict when and where they would occur, and for police to respond. the nonhierarchical organization without any identifiable leadership inhibited the police from pinpointing anyone responsible. the gear worn by the activists provided physical protection from teargas and basic equipment for defense and attack, and at the same time, it veiled the wearers’ identity, ensuring anonymity despite the omnipresence of security cameras, mobile phone cameras, and press cameras. the quasi-uniform outfit also led to the dissolution of the individual body into the group of acting bodies, foregrounding their alliance and cause, and the impression of both single parts and masses of dynamically changing matter moving in urban space. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 112 lo r en z with a heightened awareness of urban surveillance technology, activists took an array of measures to incapacitate or bypass it. these ranged from the spraying of surveillance cameras to more sophisticated spatial tactics, such as the occupation of and movement across roofs of buildings and elevated walkways—modes of traversing the city previously only known from hong kong’s gangster movies—to evade the field of vision of surveillance cameras in the city’s pedestrian walkway system, effectively hiding in plain sight. they became invisible to the authorities’ cameras and face recognition software yet remained highly visible to hong kong citizens looking up from the streetscape, over from adjoining walkways or down from office and residential towers. hong kong’s unique morphology and density significantly contributed to the formation as well as the increase in intensity of this confrontation and juxtaposition of the ordered and the unruly, the hidden and the visible. the explicit use of water metaphors led to the protests being named the “water revolution” in news coverage.26 the variety of such metaphors used to develop, communicate, and perform protest tactics suggest an overall strategy of becoming water to find anonymity and a segregated space of action in the “rivers and lakes” that are jianghu. digital jianghu social media and the internet played a key role in the mobilization and organization of the movement, as well as in developing forms of counter surveillance directed at the authorities through the strategic documentation and subsequent broadcasting of actions conducted by the police. digital tactics employed by the activists included a combination of online art, forums, and live streaming. fearful that the hong kong government might increasingly adopt measures of internet surveillance and censorship known to be employed in mainland china, the protesters’ set of social media applications and technologies of data sharing was carefully curated as to not leave any digital traces of their identities. the use of non-mainstream messenger apps—the telegram application and the local lihkg forum — in combination with the use of airdropping via their smartphones to exchange information, enabled them to carve out spaces of anonymity and to set up encoded channels of communication in the digital realm to match their strategies in physical space.27 the working principles and the effectiveness of the social media platforms enabled self-organization without de-fined leadership through real-time aggregation and communication of individual initiative. this corresponds to jianghu as an anarchic, dynamic space, in which individuals act alone or in alliances yet without any hierarchical order of command. it 113 isparchitecture.com constitutes a parallel realm that stands in opposition to an established societal order and at the same time evades the grip of its control. the emergence of contemporary jianghu in hong kong in times of normality, jianghu exists in films and novels in chinese culture. in times of crisis and political change, this concept can transform actual spaces into versions of jianghu and to create a mental space for retreat from, reflection on, reprojection of, and potentially the overturning of the status quo. what we witnessed in 2019 in hong kong was the emergence of a contemporary form of jianghu, as a hybridization of digital space, material space, and spatial practices. in absence of any certainty or promising outlook in the face of the expiry date of hong kong’s status as special administration in 2047 and following a severe loss of trust in their government to uphold and defend the rights of hong kong citizens stipulated in the basic law, the radical branch of hong kong protesters took a momentous step to withdraw themselves from the established order and governmental care to fight for their own vision of political justice. in line with literary accounts of jianghu, they produced a new space of action through their own codes and tactics, a parallel world of alternative rules and negotiation of power.28 they radically transformed the space of the city to form the backdrop for their actions and to match their change in conduct. in the ever-increasing escalation of the confrontation between protesters and police the city had turned into a smoking chaos. by late fall 2019 the government had fully withdrawn the extradition bill, though this delayed move failed to generate a substantial sense of resolve. by that time, jianghu had fully unfolded in the territory and in the temper of its young adult generation. clemens von haselberg describes jianghu as a parallel world, as a counterpart to the “public” world of officialdom, hong kong’s unique morphology and density significantly contributed to the formation as well as the increase in intensity of this confrontation and juxtaposition of the ordered and the unruly, the hidden and the visible. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 114 lo r en z but also as its mirror.29 the protests aggressively confronted the hong kong government, expressing deep dissatisfaction and distrust. at the same time, the sudden cutting of ties with conformist behavior by its youth and their metamorphosis into radical subjects throwing themselves into a fight against an intricate conglomerate of forces plainly exposed the impracticality of the very foundations that the “special administration” is built upon—the political agreements that grant it a controlled autonomy with an expiry date. the full ramifications of the emergence of jianghu in contemporary hong kong remain to be seen. the hong kong government’s hardened response to the unrest and the imposing of a new national security law by beijing would have only amplified the lingering dissent. meanwhile the movement has been brought to a halt by the global pandemic, and for now the streets of hong kong are muted by restrictive measures in the name of public health. whatever the consequences of these events will be, the emergence of jianghu in hong kong’s urban space demonstrates that a meaningful connection exists between cultural conceptions and spatial practices. this interrelation alters both the formation as well as our perception of collective life in cities and modifies the notion of what is normatively described as “public space.” our discussion of the form and functions of shared urban spaces can be much enriched if we are able to introduce place-specific cultural conceptions and spatial practices in our understanding of different cities around the world. endnotes 1. hannah arendt, the human condition, (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 24. 2. ibid., 28ff. 3. li shiqiao, understanding the chinese city (los angeles: sage publications, 2014), 98ff. 4. zhao tinyang, all under heaven: the tianxia system for a possible world order (oakland: university of california press, 2016), 67. 5. ibid., 62. 6. zhuangzi, and burton watson, the complete works of chuang tzu (new york: columbia university press, 1968), 80. 7. murray n. rothbard, ‘concepts of the role of intellectuals in social change towards laissez faire’, the journal of libertarian studies, vol. ix, no.2 (fall 1990). 8. shi nai’an, the water margin. outlaws of the marsh. the classic chinese novel (north clarendon, vt: tuttle publishing, 2010). 115 isparchitecture.com 9. clemens von haselberg, erzählen von china: genrespezifische identitätskonstruktionen im wuxia film (wiesbaden: springer, 2019), 69. 10. ‘number of private cars per one thousand population in hong kong from 2009 to 2019,’ statista, https://www.statista.com/ statistics/960015/hong-kong-private-cars-per1000-population/ (accessed june 28, 2021). 11. li, understanding the chinese city, 113-114. 12. global ranking 11 in 2020, according to the 2021 stc safety index. https://globalresidenceindex. com/hnwi-index/safety-index/ (accessed june 28, 2021). 13. peter j. hutchings, ‘freedom of speech in hong kong & the problem of “china”.’ cardozo studies in law and literature vol.8, no.2 (1996), 267–75. 14. article 5, the basic law of the hong kong special administrative region of the people’s republic of china, effective as of 1 july 1997, https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclaw/ chapter1.html (accessed august 25, 2022). 15. article 45, the basic law of the hong kong special administrative region of the people’s republic of china, effective as of 1 july 1997, https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclaw/ chapter4.html (accessed june 24, 2021). 16. amy gunia, ‘a brief history of protest in posthandover hong kong,’ time magazine, 20 june 2019, https://time.com/5606212/hong-konghistory-mass-demonstrations-protest/ (accessed june 28, 2021). 17. 2019 population in hong kong: 7.52 million, data retrieved from: ‘population estimates – table 1a: population by sex and age group’, census and statistics department, https:// www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/web_table.html?id=1a, (accessed june 30, 2021). 18. emma graham-harrison and verna yu, ‘hong kong leader suspends extradition bill amid protest pressure,’ the guardian, 15 june 2019, ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 116 lo r en z https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/15/hong-kong-leadercarrie-lam-extradition-bill-delay-protests-china (accessed june 30, 2021). 19. associated press, ‘hong kong extradition law: a timeline of events that led to the current mass protests.’ young post, south china morning post, 12 june 2019, https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/news/hongkong/article/3055149/hong-kong-extradition-law-timeline-events-ledcurrent (accessed august 31, 2022). 20. martin purbrick, ‘a report of the 2019 hong kong protests’, asian affairs, vol.50, no.4 (2019), 465-487. 21. heike holbig, ‘be water, my friend: hong kong’s 2019 antiextradition protests.’ international journal of sociology, vol.50, no.4 (2020), 325–37. 22. tom lassetter, ‘revolution 101: the hardened teens of the hong kong protests,’ reuters, 13 december 2019, https://www.reuters.com/ investigates/special-report/hongkong-protests-radical/ (accessed august 30, 2022). 23. guardian reporter, ‘mini stonehenges: hong kong protesters take on police, one brick at a time.’ the guardian, 15 november 2019, sec. world news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/ministonehenges-hong-kong-protesters-take-on-police-one-brick-at-a-time (accessed july 3, 2021) 24. robert chard, ‘review of review of fox volant of the snowy mountain, by jin yong and olivia mok.’ bulletin of the school of oriental and african studies, university of london vol.59, no.3 (1996), 606–607. 25. “empty your mind. be formless, shapeless, like water. now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. now water can flow, or creep, or drip, or crash. be water, my friend.” quoted from: don mcdougall, ‘the way of the intercepting fist.’ longstreet, season 1, episode 1, paramount television, edling productions, corsican productions, 1971. 26. jamil anderlini, ‘hong kong’s ‘water revolution’ spins out of control.’ financial times, september 2, 2019. https://www.ft.com/ content/d1f60a3a-cd58-11e9-b018-ca4456540ea6 (accessed august 30, 2022). 27. yong ming kow, bonnie nardi, and wai kuen cheng. ‘be water: technologies in the leaderless anti-elab movement in hong kong.’ proceedings of the 2020 chi conference on human factors in computing systems. honolulu hi usa: ac (2020), 1–12. 28. haselberg, erzählen von china, 70. 29. ibid., 70. isparchitecture.com design-politics: how buildings mean lawrence j. vale 19th century prussian general carl von clausewitz famously stated that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”1 the same might be said about the architecture of public buildings. but if public architecture is also an extension of politics by other means, what—more precisely—are those means? philosopher nelson goodman is among the few to pose this question directly. in his essay “how buildings mean,”2 goodman rightly points out that we must consider the prior question of how a particular work of architecture conveys meaning before we are able to address the issue of what the building may mean. goodman, writing in the late 1980s while based at harvard during the latter part of his career, thereby inserted himself in a debate starting to percolate in the more rarified precincts of architectural education—such as the harvard graduate school of design—about the extent that architecture constituted an autonomous practice. in his essay, goodman aims to identify the categories of meaning that the built environment may convey as well as to elucidate the mechanisms by which these meanings are transmitted. this sort of analysis is crucial for understanding the boundary between properties that are intrinsic to works of architecture and those properties ascribed to architecture that are central to its reception in a politically-driven world. ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 34 v a le in this paper, i consider both the strengths of goodman’s formulation and its limitations–as viewed three decades later in an era when digital media have dramatically reoriented the ways that architecture is both presented and represented. the enhanced attention to the role of media makes it increasingly difficult to sustain much practical sense of architecture as an autonomous or even quasi-autonomous practice. rather—in an era of programmable facades, highly-charged urban contexts, and countervailing artistic interventions and augmentations—it seems increasingly impossible to isolate goodman’s ideas about “denotation,” “exemplification,” “metaphorical expression,” and “mediated reference” from a building’s political reception. the result, i argue, is a kind of conjoined designpolitics. in what follows, i explore the power of that design-politics hyphen through a set of examples that range from the lincoln memorial3 to donald trump’s hotels. goodman’s ideas about architectural meaning: an example denotation the lincoln memorial in washington, d.c. (figure 1) provides an especially good example of goodman’s first type of meaning—denotation— because it is, literally, full of texts. in this sense, its meanings are intended to be read directly, at least for those who can read english and roman numerals. the entablature and upper setback of the building contain carved names of the forty-eight contiguous states that comprised the united states at the time construction of the memorial finished in 1922. (awkwardly, but understandably, a separate plaque in front of the structure discontiguously adds alaska and hawai’i, which were added as states only in 1959.) continuing the denotative content, the building façades feature a total of thirty-six columns—one pillar for each of the states in the union in 1865 at the close of the civil war. through the deployment of these columns, the states of the union that lincoln saved directly structure the proportions of the building—twelve on the long sides, eight on the short sides (that adds up to forty but the corner columns are seen from two sides, so that is why it totals thirty-six.) the denotation continues on the inner walls of the building, with parts of two lincoln speeches literally carved into stone. importantly, the two speeches chosen—the gettysburg address and the second inaugural address—are both centered on the role of lincoln as preserver of the union of states. by contrast, architect henry bacon (and, presumably, his clients) chose not to highlight other famous texts that may well have carried far greater political or policy significance, such as the emancipation 35 isparchitecture.com proclamation. the civil war may well have been fought over the future of a southern slave economy, but the lincoln memorial—at least in its denotative sense—was centered on reminders of union, not on freeing slaves. metaphorical expression the lincoln memorial also nicely conveys goodman’s second type of meaning—the notion of metaphorical expression. the building is not just a rectangular object with columns, but a metaphorical temple, with lincoln as a seated deity. here, a public building conveys meaning because of widely shared cultural notions (at least in western culture) about greco-roman practices of deification and worship. and just in case the metaphor might be lost on some visitors, architect bacon and his team also made use of goodman’s first type of meaning— denotation—by carving a more literal reminder just above lincoln’s head: “in this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of abraham lincoln is enshrined forever.” we are thereby shown a metaphorical shrine and temple, and also reminded about what we are seeing. exemplification the lincoln memorial is also a prime site for the building is not just a rectangular object with columns, but a metaphorical temple “ ” figure 1: lincoln memorial ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 36 v a le observing goodman’s third mechanism of meaning: exemplification. goodman observes that every work of architecture exemplifies certain of its properties in ways that draw particular attention. in the case of this memorial, it is clear that the building serves as the termination of an axis, and emphasizes bilateral symmetry, both as a building and as a work of urban design. as a composition, the building itself exemplifies a clear pattern of solid-void-solid, as a way to draw attention to the statue of lincoln at the center. and, at the same time, the form of the building emphasizes the gleaming white materiality of its marble, in contrast with the darker interior. mediated reference finally, the lincoln memorial helps us understand goodman’s fourth type of architectural meaning—what he terms a mediated reference. here, beyond the notion of metaphor, the building asks those who view it to associate it with broader conceptual references—notions that could be about such things as worship, democracy, freedom, or unification. construction of the building had been controversial—from lingering sectional disputes about the role of lincoln to the idea of constructing this temple on a former swamp— so project proponents needed to do everything possible to remind visitors about the ideals of unification and unity. they did so in 1923 by having the american institute of architects use the building to stage a pageant honoring henry bacon, keeping the focus on neoclassical design and worshipful display. a decade and a half later, however, the mediated reference of this monument began to shift. in 1939, famed african-american contralto marian anderson was denied the opportunity to perform at washington dc’s constitution hall by the daughters of the american revolution, due to her race.4 at the urging of eleanor roosevelt, secretary of the interior harold ickes arranged for anderson to sing instead from the steps of the lincoln memorial. a mixed-race audience of 75,000 people showed up. the mediated reference altered again on august 28, 1963, when the building served as the terminal focal point of the march on washington, (figure 2)one hundred years after lincoln had signed the emancipation proclamation. marian anderson began the program by leading the singing of the national anthem. memorializing the events of the day and adding to the mediated reference of the building itself, the federal government authorized placement of a carved stone added on the platform from which king gave his famous “i have a dream” speech. in this way, the mediated reference had shifted from saving the union to securing civil rights. in 37 isparchitecture.com its late-20th-century messaging, the building was less about political union than about the pursuit of racial and economic equality. the metaphor was still that of a temple and its god, but now lincoln was to be deified for other reasons. in 1968, the lincoln memorial consolidated its relationship with martin luther king, when king’s poor people’s campaign was granted a permit to construct resurrection city adjacent to the memorial. in this way, the mediated reference of the building as a representation of both civil rights and economic rights reached full fruition. it was thus no surprise that barack obama chose to celebrate part of his inauguration in 2009 at the lincoln memorial. beyond goodman’s quartet of meaning types clearly, the notion of a mediated reference starts to take the meaning of a building into a larger realm of applied ideas, more so than do notions of denotation, metaphor, or exemplification. yet goodman is still content to view mediated references as part of the way that buildings mean as works of architecture. that said, he also readily acknowledges that buildings may also have nonarchitectural meanings—things that he considers to be more arbitrary, with no intrinsic connection to design. goodman writes: a building of any design may come to stand for some of its causes or effects, or for some the building asks those who view it to associate with broader conceptual references “ ” figure 2: lincoln memorial, 1963 ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 38 v a le historical event that occurred in it or on its site, or for its designated use; any abattoir may symbolize slaughter, and any mausoleum, death; and a costly county courthouse may symbolize extravagance. to mean in such a way is not thereby to function as an architectural work.5 applied to my example of the lincoln memorial, there still seems good reason to attach the mediated reference label—whether “union” or “civil rights”—to the building itself, since the associations are clearly not arbitrary. still, it is possible to imagine other events happening on the site—a plane crash, say, or a murder—that would, indeed, bear no relation to the memorial’s meaning as a work of architecture. goodman— presumably prodded by his nearby colleagues at harvard’s graduate school of design—wanted to cling to the possibility of an autonomous realm for architecture, or at least to lay claim to what mit architectural historian stanford anderson first called “semiautonomy” and later “quasiautonomy.”6 but, increasingly, quasi-autonomy just leaves me queasy. we now seem clearly in a world of queasy autonomy, one where the public and the media insist that public buildings be seen as inhabited places and as parts of cities. this may understandably threaten the professional self-esteem of some designers, especially if they expect their work to communicate their own design intentions. yet we are long past any era where architects can hope to control the received meaning of their designs. we are in a world where public buildings are experienced not just as objects but as productive processes engaged with human labor, material supply chains, financial tradeoffs, and community impacts. it seems increasingly harder to preserve a separate realm of meanings that are intrinsic to architecture qua architecture, separate from some presumed set of overlaid meanings that are somehow non-architectural. especially if one looks at buildings at the scale of urban design, this implicates them in their surroundings and, accordingly, asks us to consider ways to account for their associated meanings. increasingly, i argue, the power of what goodman would consider “non-architectural meanings” has become so predominant that there is little practical value in declaring them to be non-architectural. in short, just as the boundaries between architectural and non-architectural meaning are harder to maintain, so too it is harder to maintain a separation between the world of design and the world of politics. instead, especially with the burgeoning of digital media in the three decades since goodman tried to set categories and boundaries for ”how buildings mean,” all public buildings have become what i have previously termed “mediated monuments.”7 such 39 isparchitecture.com public buildings are inseparable from the media campaigns conducted to construct (and constrict) their interpretation. in what follows, i will take nelson goodman on something of a world tour in search of what he may have missed. i will stick with his four terms, but probe how they may be altered by externally imposed agendas. building from goodman’s nomenclature, this means that denotative meaning can now be temporarily—or permanently—annotated with additional texts, and thereby altered. it means that the expression of metaphors may stray far from the positive associations predicted by architects. it means that buildings may exemplify certain properties, but that the aesthetics of these properties are increasingly inextricable from political economy. finally, taking goodman forward means that, with burgeoning forms of new media, mediated references proliferate and shift. we can see this even in the lincoln memorial, depending on how we view it. seen obliquely from above on a summer’s day, the monument may seem a forested object rather than a temple at the end of an axis reminding us about civil rights. or, if one looks beyond the memorial to the northwest, we see yet a different context. instead of locating memorial within the artifice of washington d.c. with its mall and its height limitations, we are confronted with broader realm of capitalist investment that has jumped the potomac to build high-rises in less restrictive northern virginia, amazon’s future new hub. the meaning of buildings clearly varies depending on the viewpoint of the observer, and the scale of environment being observed. beyond goodman, toward design-politics taken together, i am arguing for a convergence of design and politics, and propose that they be conjoined by a hyphen. seen this way, how buildings goodman [...] wanted to cling to cling to the possibility of an autonomous realm for architecture [...] but, increasingly, quasiautonomous architecture just leaves me queasy “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 40 v a le mean is inextricably linked to what, why, and where buildings mean. we can begin by taking on goodman’s notion of meaning by denotation. once denotation gets tied in with marketing, toponymic alteration (aka name-changing), and annotation, the denotation gets engulfed by its design-politics. denotation gets trumped one prominent place to start is with chicago’s trump international hotel and tower, the city’s second tallest building—even if this is a place that would initially seem to have little to offer students of goodmanian denotation. when first opened, in 2008, the building appeared as a vast composition of soaring blue glass, with minimal signage. but in 2014, 6 years after completion, the trump organization added five 20’ tall letters spelling out t-r-u-m-p 141-feet wide, lit at night with led fixtures (figure 3). the designers located this lettering 200 feet above street level for maximum urban visibility at a distance. initially proposed to cover 3,600 sq. ft., chicago’s planning and development department insisted that it be down-sized by 20 percent, still leaving it at 2,891 sq. ft. a prepresidential donald trump assured chicago tribune architecture critic blair kamin that the backlit led lighting “will be more subtle”–to which kamin responded: “as subtle as godzilla.”8 at night, the signage stands out not just as the terminus of north-south streets, but as the dominant presence of the east-west view along the chicago river. trump, apparently a scholar of architecture and of philosophy, is clearly into deal-making dialogue with nelson goodman when he commented that the sign is “part of the architecture of the building.” he also knowingly enters into the realm of semiotics when he adds that “the people in the building” (who of course are the only ones who don’t actually have to look at the signage) “love it as an identifier.”9 trump told an interviewer that he expected the sign to become an important part of the cultural landscape of chicago in the manner of the hollywood sign.10 importantly for trump, the sign covers part of the building occupied by air conditioning vents and other mechanicals, so it doesn’t restrict views or revenues from interior space. that, too, is part of the building’s design-politics. in gaining its new signage, trump’s eponymous chicago tower is, arguably, now not the same building. its new denotative layer, though, adds more than mere explanatory lettering; it also adds a new kind of exemplified property, and it shifts the mediated reference of the work, linking it to a global brand associated with ostentation. and, in both the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and its presidential aftermath, 41 isparchitecture.com the billboard-bold presence of the trump name on the city’s most storied skyline could not help but be polarizing. any effort to analyze this edifice as merely a tall structure of glass and steel, devoid of other associations, now seems fruitless—and certainly bears little relationship to how the building is received on the ground. it is also another reminder that buildings exist as urban artifacts not just as isolated structures. in urban design terms, this one does more than terminate an axial vista; it trumps it. chicago’s zoning committee belatedly realized what it had inadvertently permitted, and duly established a “chicago river corridor special sign district.”11 still, this did nothing to undo the designpolitics of denotation that had already been allowed to occur. the new ordinance just meant that trump will have no future competition for visual attention. the chief recourse has come via the work of artists. one such interpretive designer simply de-pixilated the first letter-removing the ‘t’ to alter the meaning. another artist sought a permit to float a series of gilded pig-shaped balloons, strategically aligned, as new form of editorial erasure.12 other editing (and editorializing) photoshoppers proposed a quick demise for the structure as a whole.13 following trump’s election as president, the denotative meaning of his eponymous structures underwent pointed alteration in some locales. in 2018, the majority owner of the trump ocean club in panama city had the trump part of the name removed, and then grandly performed an antifascist song in the lobby to mark the occasion.14 in figure 3: trump international hotel and tower ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 42 v a le terms of shifting the scope of goodman’s notion of “denotation,” perhaps the most sustained commentary has come from video projection artist robin bell, who has been annotating trump properties in both new york and washington, dc. on the evening of august 7, 2017—one week after reports surfaced that special counsel robert mueller had impaneled a grand jury as part of his investigation into russian interference with the election and any possible collusion with trump campaign staffers—bell projected a huge russian flag onto the street-facing front of the trump soho property. in turn, the middle blue stripe of the flag was annotated with a sequence of matter-of-fact advertisements in english and russian: “follow the money”—“laundering services available”—“happy to help, bro!,” along with an image of vladimir putin. accompanying this, a retinue of five uniformed militarized marchers in red hats and mock russian army garb strode toward the building to the strains of the russian national anthem. a projection project that lasted less than 15 minutes in real time quickly went viral on social media posted by onlookers, leading to widespread coverage on everything from the new york daily news to huffington post to business insider to artnet.com.15 the trump soho hotel would never be the same. by december, the hotel was renamed the dominick.16 bell’s most publicized work has happened in washington, dc. at the trump international hotel, a building with a long history of shifting denotation and meanings. taller than either the washington cathedral or the u.s. capitol, the old post office and clock tower along pennsylvania avenue—originally completed in 1899—clearly appealed to the trump organization. shortly before trump entered the presidential race, his company won the right to redevelop the old post office site as a luxury hotel. in 2016, they put up a massive construction sign in front of the building that echoed the coloration of the campaign bumper sticker and read “trump: coming 2016.”17 the trump international hotel opened shortly after trump was elected president in 2016, and robin bell was quickly on the scene to annotate its façade using video projections from a truck parked just across the street, generating substantial press coverage in such outlets as cnn, the bbc, the new york times, and the los angeles times.18 as legal challenges arose regarding the issue of whether profits from the hotel violated the emoluments clause of the u.s. constitution,19 bell’s annotation elided goodman’s notion of denotation with other modes of meaning, especially mediated references. the post-election backlash entered the realm of design-politics though efforts to turn the building 43 isparchitecture.com into a meme about corruption: “pay trump bribes here” and “emoluments welcome” featured an arrow pointing to the hotel’s arched entrance. at the same time, through a new form of denotation, the installation sought to remind the public about the actual text of the emoluments clause. bell also flashed façade dialogues that engaged other emergent news items, including proposed bans on certain terms at the centers for disease control and prevention such as “diversity” “entitlement,” “fetus” “transgender” and “science-based.”20 on another occasion, he annotated the headquarters of the nearby environmental protection agency with a warning: “don’t let a climate denier take over the epa.” in addition, bell annotated the department of justice building with an image of attorney general jeff sessions as a klansman, with an illuminated “#sessionsmustgo.”21 the politics of metaphors next, it is worth examining how goodman’s ideas about metaphorical expression are also inextricable from the politics embedded in such metaphors. the messages may not be as angry or partisan as the trumpian annotations, but metaphors, too, intertwine design with politics. metaphors are not neutral; classic phrases such as “a man’s home is his castle,” are famously gendered. since at least the early 17th century, this notion has been part of english common law, later transmitted to the united states, where it conveyed the right to forbid entry. this has been used as a way to assert individualism and anti-government views. another image, from a promotional booklet produced by the national association of real estate boards in 1922, (figure 4) underscores the ways that home-as-castle is a deeply gendered bell’s annotation elided goodman’s notion of denotation with other modes of meaning, especially mediated references. “ figure 4: home owning breeds real men ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 44 v a le notion, rooted in differentials in power and access to resources.22 this is not “man” as in “mankind”—rather, as explained here, “home owning breeds real men”—"it is what puts the man back in manhood”. such metaphors mean not just as works of architecture but as acts of politics. sometimes the metaphor has less serious overtones, as in the notion of hotel as palace. there are places named palace hotel across the world, often in cities long past ties to any actual royal rule. the opportunity to be temporary royalty may be little more than a frivolity of the wealthy, yet it may reveal deep-seated anxieties or jealousies or, alternatively, just an exaggerated sense of self-worth. more prosaically, in suburban boston during the 1980s the architect robert a.m. stern fancified a postmodern speculative office building into a faux-renaissance palace. it is really no more than a mini office park in an auto-dominated zone of malls, multilane highways, and vast parking lots; inside is no palace. still, stern and the developers correctly deduced that it would be possible to market the palace metaphor more than the reality. the politics of exemplification turning next to the design-politics of exemplification it is also clear that architectural properties—even basic constitutive issues such as height, color, materials, and symmetry that very much seem to be confinable to the realm of aesthetics—are nonetheless more complex socio-cultural products and, therefore, are embedded in politics. consider the longstanding aim to construct tall buildings as an index of power. it is certainly possible to isolate the aesthetics of a building as a tall shape from any other of its properties, and to see such buildings, in goodman’s terms, as exemplifying the property of height. it is also true that some buildings are made taller in order to convey that property. but height-mongering has an agenda; the ‘how’ of its meaning seems increasingly inseparable from the ‘why’ and ‘where’ of its meaning. the design-politics of height the height of buildings, throughout the history of architecture, has been inseparable from its institutional presence, whether as funerary pyramids or as church spires, mosque minarets, victory arches and columns or capitol domes. especially since the late 19th century, with enhanced global communication, the height of a building has become a comparative 45 isparchitecture.com and competitive phenomenon. even so, the competitive design-politics of tall buildings began much earlier. bruges boasted an early non-religious tall building as early as 1240, an observation tower constructed on top of the market building, which included spaces serving the city’s major cloth industry and the municipal archives. an octagonal part added was added in the 1480s, bringing the tower to 83m (272 feet), and, with its former wooden spire, it used to be even taller—354 feet (figure 5). the height was clearly about conveying the economic power of bruges. in other words, the exemplification was not just about the physical properties of its tower and spire, but about the city leadership seeking to exemplify (and thereby market) its financial prowess. at the same time, it means through metaphor, by serving as a prototypical “cathedral of commerce.” sometimes, such marketing served primarily internal domestic purposes but sometimes the visual statement was intended to be understood internationally. spiro kostof notes that drawings from gustave eiffel’s office showed height of his famous tower as, quite consciously, larger than adding together notre dame, the arc de triomphe, and the statue of liberty. it also mattered that it eclipsed the washington monument as tallest manmade structure in the world (and almost doubled it).23 until 1889, new york’s the spire of trinity church was that city’s highest structure, though it faced competition throughout the 1870s and 1880s as the empire state’s media struck back. an irrational obsession over building height along new york’s newspaper row (with towers all eclipsing the figure 5: bruges market square tower ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 46 v a le adjacent city hall) led to protracted battle among the new york times, the tribune, the sun and pulitzer’s world. by 1909, however, the metropolitan life insurance tower outdid both church and press and, at 700 feet, became the tallest occupied building in the world. with a 50-story tower on top of 11-story base it resembled the campanile of st. mark's in venice. the tower also featured a clock that was visible a mile away and was topped by a beacon: “the light that never fails.” as a company pamphlet put it, “high and lofty, like a great sentinel keeping watch over the millions of policy holders and marking the fast-fleeting minutes of life, stands the tower.” geographer mona domosh explains that the tower conveyed “a civic as well as a commercial message,” revealing the new economic power and prestige of insurance companies. life insurance, the product of 19th-century prosperity and the availability of a new immigrant market, helped calm a family’s fears that its breadwinner might die young.24 the multivalence of meanings for tall buildings continued to develop with completion of new york’s woolworth building in 1913. not just content to express the fact that it was the world’s tallest building, it needed the additional “cathedral of commerce” moniker to stake a metaphorical claim as well. church and state stood recombined in a spire that conveyed capitalist triumph. sometimes, though, the use of exemplification and metaphor in tall building has taken more traditional forms. the chicago temple, designed by holabird and roche in 1924, is a united methodist church on top of skyscraper. it was the tallest building in chicago from 1924-1930. and, at 29 stories and 568 feet, it remains the tallest church building in the world (still outdoing the côte d’ivoire’s yamoussoukro basilica, which soars a mere 489 feet).25 two u.s. states—nebraska and louisiana—have skyscrapers as their capitols, but these were exceptions to the growing subjugation of government to private corporate towers. other planned towers participated into geo-political competition. the russian communists proposed a mammoth palace of the soviets in the 1930s, intended to overshadow both the past achievements of the adjacent kremlin and to handily out-do america’s empire state building. the project remained unbuilt. elsewhere, the use of building height as an extension of international political tension reached a particularly memorable moment in the urban staging of the national pavilions of rival powers at the 1937 paris world’s fair. here, arrayed across a grand court constructed adjacent to the eiffel tower, the german pavilion was allocated a site immediately opposite the spot offered to the soviet union. in his rather self-serving famous memoir, inside the third reich, hitler’s architect albert speer 47 isparchitecture.com revealed the true d e s i g n p o l i t i c s impulse behind his design for the german side of the urbanistic c o n f r o n t a t i o n . “while looking over the site in paris,” speer writes with a degree of implausibility, “i by chance stumbled into a room containing the secret sketch of the soviet pavilion;” sculpted figures 33’ tall striding toward the german pavilion. “i therefore designed a cubic mass, also elevated on stout pillars, which seemed to be checking this onslaught, while from the cornice of my tower an eagle with the swastika in its claws looked down on the russian sculptures.”26 (figure 6) during the early years of the cold war, stalin proposed a series of large towers intended to house (and thereby highlight) a series of non-capitalist achievements, such as universities. clearly, building heights had become not just a matter of an exemplified architectural property but a tool for geopolitical competition—a way for russians to contend with the americans at their own game. in that context, the specter of a much-discussed trump tower in moscow, whether constructed from partnership or collusion, would have carried an additional layer of import. overall, though, the design-politics of skyscrapers has long since shifted away from either an intra-american or cold war enterprise, and long since become an international phenomenon. cities in china, taiwan, korea, and malaysia have put national, and often nationalist, stakes into the ground through aspirations to build tallest. then, before “peak oil” might come to pass, middle clearly, building heights had become not just a matter of an exemplified architectural property but a tool for geopolitical competition “ ” figure 6: postcard, 1937 paris exposition ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 48 v a le easterners joined the game with peaks of their own. dubai’s leadership willfully invented a high-rise corridor, culminating with the world’s tallest building in 2010, standing 828 meters (2716 feet). when under construction, it was known as burj dubai to highlight its location—even as dubai faced considerable economic difficulties. but at the opening, which was timed to coincide with the 4th anniversary of sheikh mohammed bin rashed al-maktoum’s rule in dubai, the name was announced as the burj khalifa, in honor of the emir of its neighbor and rival, abu dhabi, which had lent money to cover dubai’s debts.27 so, in goodman’s terms, the burj does indeed exemplify height, but renaming dubai’s apex for an abu dhabi emir also reveals the heights of chutzpah—though i doubt that was the word they used to describe it. by the early 2020s, the home of the world’s tallest building—intended to rise at least 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) will likely have migrated to saudi arabia, another place seeking the global recognition for its kingdom in a manner that is more visible—and visualizable—than hidden oil reserves. the design-politics of color if the architectural property of height also exemplifies politics, so too does the property of color, especially if that color can be strategically manipulated. increasingly, whether through interior lighting or through projections, architectural façades have become re-programmable. buildings are often lit to commemorate particular holidays or sports facilities, but sometimes the use of color can deliberately carry a design-politics. as one example, following the tragic shooting of coptic christian pilgrims near cairo in may 2017, the mayor of tel aviv honored the victims by lighting the tel aviv municipal building in the colors of the egyptian flag. this act of symbolic solidarity action was repeated in november, following an attack that killed more than two hundred worshippers at a crowded mosque on the sinai peninsula known to be frequented by sufis.28 the design-politics of materials similarly, even the actual materials of buildings can sometimes be an expression of design-politics. albert speer, aided by some sketches provided by hitler himself, planned and designed the gargantuan germania to replace the center of berlin with a grandiose north-south axis. speer reports that hitler insisted that the vast dome of the great hall be constructed of masonry without any steel reinforcement. accordingly, speer’s highly dubious “theory of ruin value” promised that the resultant building, 49 isparchitecture.com once rendered into ruins after a thousand years, would have no aesthetically displeasing protrusions of rebar.29 just as the city was to be an extension of the nazi politics of global conquest—the word in stone—so, too, the materiality of the unreinforced stone itself was meant to convey power and control. but this is not the most striking way that the very materiality of stone exemplifies design-politics, and not just design. martin kitchen’s trenchant biography, speer: hitler’s architect, notes that in nov. 1938 some three thousand jews were forced to leave berlin every month; they were “evicted, forced into exile, terrorized or rounded up in concentration camps.” speer wanted to do this not just to free up well located apartments for others but also to build up an ex-urban workforce that could be used for germania. as kitchen argues, in close collaboration with the ss, he ruthlessly exploited the labour of concentration camp inmates in quarries, brickyards and factories producing building materials, they worked under appalling conditions and the mortality rate was shockingly high. speer made thousands of jewish families homeless, most of whom were handed over to the gestapo to be shipped to what was delicately described as ‘the east.’ 30 the mauthausen (austria) and flossenbürg (bavaria) camps established in 1938 were explicitly sited to provide high quality stone for berlin rebuilding. sachenhausen (near berlin) supplied labor for brickworks at oranienburg, which was also built at speer’s request in 1938. specialized stone for other projects led to siting of grossrosen (in polish silesia) for bluish-grey granite, and natzweiler-struthof in alsace for reddish granite. in this way, the material needs of rebuilding berlin and other monuments caused speer and his team of planners and architects to be intimately involved in the ‘final solution.’ this chilling account this chilling account provides further evidence that architectural properties such as stone may exemplify far more than their literal materiality. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 provides further evidence that architectural properties such as stone may exemplify far more than their literal materiality. nazi architecture and nazi urbanism were not just violations of scale and distortions of neoclassicism in aesthetic terms; their material origins also inextricably linked them to violations and distortions of human rights. in short, the siting of concentration camps and the building of cities were part of the same nefarious complex of design-politics. the design-politics of symmetry so, if seemingly innocuous aspects such as height, color and materials are implicated in design-politics—and cannot be left to inhabit some wishful quasi-autonomy of architectural design—are there any exemplified architectural properties that might still remain apolitical acts of aesthetics? one possibility for this might be the notion of symmetry. surely something as quintessentially aesthetic as this can occupy a place safely removed from politics? well, perhaps not—or at least not always. architectural symmetry is not just the solid-void-solid of the lincoln memorial. it can also convey implications of equivalency, with parallel weights given to each side of some central point. in turn, however, it also matters what (or who) is being weighted and aesthetically presented as parallel and equivalent. and symmetry also draws particular attention to whatever is signaled out as the center of the composition, be it a front door or an entire highlighted realm. sometimes, as in the case of the almshouse developed in 1800 to house boston’s poor, symmetry is about more than visual balance; it also can encode a sense of separated but equal that carries a social, or even political meaning. what we see here is symmetry used to accommodate and enforce the institution’s gender separation—indigent men on one side, indigent women on the other. and, importantly, the middle part is not just some attractively articulated a-b-a aesthetic rhythm, but is instead generated by the need to provide a chapel at center, as a source of moral judgment and redemption for the benighted denizens of the almshouse. (figure 7) the design-politics of mediated references: freedom, security, democratic access, exclusion if even the most intrinsically architectural elements can be bound up with politics—goodman’s category of exemplification—it is even easier to return to the case for finding a design-politics in the other categories va le 50 51 isparchitecture.com of denotation, metaphor, and mediated reference. denotation, especially when it can be altered or augmented through the actions of others, seems easily bound with politics. and, similarly, metaphors—simply because they are already rooted in culturally freighted language—also seem particularly malleable to political manipulation. this leaves mediated references, already the part of goodman’s quartet that seems furthest from architectural purity. using two final examples, i aim to show how designers deliberately shape the intended conceptual resonances of their work, while also demonstrating just how easy it is for such mediated references to shift—just as the lincoln memorial moved from “union” to “civil rights” as its primary referent. following the destruction of the twin towers in the 2001 9/11 attacks--themselves a deliberate targeting of exemplified architectural properties (height) and metaphorical expression (capitalism and world trade)—daniel l i b e s k i n d ’ s c o m p e t i t i o n winning urban design plan for the ground zero site memorably entered the world of mediated references because he dubbed his central structure the freedom tower. moreover, libeskind gave it symbolically resonant height of 1776 feet—a number that had culturally-encoded american meaning as a mediated reference for “independence” even if it could not be a palpable measurement of height. underscoring the designer’s figure 8: freedom tower and lower manhattan figure 7: almshouse ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 52 v a le intent—just in case the conceptual resonance of the building might be lost—libeskind’s competition rendering showed the form of the seemingly abstract building to be anthromorphically mimicking the raised arm of the statue of liberty. the design-politics of the urban design scheme and the building were as much about the concept of american-style freedom as a direct counterpoint to the restrictive politics of terrorists as it was about the form of buildings. sadly, the mediated reference to “independence” and “freedom” was not to last; instead, as built, the blockier one world trade center building designed by david childs exhibits far greater attention to issues of security than freedom; its fortified base is designed to withstand the impact of a truck bomb (figure 8). turning now to canberra, australia, it is possible to explore other struggles over mediated reference in the contested terrain of this capital city designed by american walter burley griffin. griffin’s competitionwinning plan featured a “land axis” that included a triangular district of government buildings culminating in a “capital hill,” as well as a perpendicular water axis along an artificial lake. the australian government, slowly but surely, executed many aspects of griffin’s plan despite many alterations, yielding a long axis of power stretching from the australian war memorial at the base of mount ainslie southwest to parliament house. (figure 9) the result is both a dominant narrative about “garden cities” and democracy—but also a counter-narrative promulgated in the same central space by aboriginal activists who regard the very site of the capital as an illegitimate usurpation of “sacred land.” intermittently since 1972, and consistently since 1992, these activists have maintained an “aboriginal embassy”—an informal settlement placed directly athwart the country’s most iconic political space.31 (figure 10) in addition to tents and signage that conveys reminders about “stolen children,” “native title,” and “genocide,” a ceremonial flame has been kept alight since 1998. in other words, there is no shared mediated reference; one group’s strong association is the negation of the other. it took three-quarters of a century, but eventually griffin’s plan for a capital hill with a capitol building yielded an unusual hybrid—a parliament building carved into the hill, seemingly there to symbolize the people’s freedom to walk over the top of the hill and look down upon the halls of the legislative representatives. yet security concerns quickly ended the access to the summit, thereby shifting the mediated reference. meanwhile, parliamentarians drive their cars directly into underground parking and, unlike the provisional parliament house that preceded this one, there is 53 isparchitecture.com no longer any intermediary outdoor space where lawmakers can be stopped to confer with journalists.32 and for some aboriginals, the building still seems closed off. politicians celebrated the role of the aboriginal artist who designed the mosaic forecourt but the official royal institute of australian architects booklet about the building treats the entry sequence as a calculated symbolic spatial sequence that narrates the “advent of european civilization.”33 with entry through a detached trabeated portico, (figure 11) it is as if indigenous culture has been trampled over and left outside. clearly this parliament house is a building, like all good public structures, that means in multiple and complex ways. conclusion: building a design-politics as these examples from around the world have shown, there is increasing convergence between design and politics—enough, i think, to warrant a hyphen. the mechanisms of meaning— the 'how?' sorts of questions about the meaning of buildings that nelson goodman asked us to try to isolate—are inextricably linked to what, why, and where buildings mean. is the building on figure 9: canberra figure 10: aboriginal embassy figure 11: parliament house ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 54 v a le sacred land? does acquiring its materials depend on conscripted labor? do its metaphors allude to oppressive rather than emancipatory practices? will artists annotate the façades with contentious messages? agendas for public buildings are set not just by architects, or even by their clients, but by a variety of contested actions and personal, subnational, national and international priorities. the architecture of buildings matters, but it is their larger design-politics that richly renders them as central to the human experience. the author wishes to thank dr. suzanne harris-brandts for her excellent research assistance. endnotes 1. this phrase, from on war, is sometimes translated with the word “policy” replacing “politics” and with the word “by” replaced by “with.” 2. nelson goodman, “how buildings mean” in goodman and catherine elgin, eds., reconceptions in philosophy (indianapolis: hackett, 1988), 31-48. 3. earlier attempts to deploy goodman to explain the lincoln memorial appear in both editions of lawrence j. vale, architecture, power, and national identity (new haven: yale university press, 1992 and new york: routledge, 2008). 4. this exclusionary policy was dropped in 1943. at about this time, maryland artist mitchell jamieson created a 12’ by 7’ mural, called “an incident in contemporary american life,” which adorns a wall in basement of the interior department building. on feb. 1, 2018, to mark the beginning of black history month the interior department held a ceremony to mark the mural’s 75th anniversary. this resulted from the activism of a massachusetts high school student who wrote an op-ed in the washington post, as well as letters to federal officials and oprah winfrey; elise takahama, “westwood student wins recognition for forgotten civil rights mural,” boston globe, 1 february 2018; https://www.bostonglobe. com/metro/2018/02/01/westwood-student-wins-recognition-forforgotten-civilrights-mural/rlb65wwyvbolgumr6wv4nk/story. html 5. goodman, 43-44. 6. stanford anderson, “critical conventionalism in architecture,” 55 isparchitecture.com assemblage 1 (october 1986), 6-23; stanford anderson, “quasi-autonomy in architecture: the search for an ‘in-between,'” perspecta 33 (2002), 30-37. 7. “mediated monuments and national identity,” journal of architecture 4 (winter 1999), pp. 391-408. 8. blair kamin, “donald trump: giant sign on his chicago tower is like hollywood sign,” chicago tribune, 5 june 2014; blair kamin, “donald trump’s sycophantic, vitriolic treatment of architecture critics,” chicago tribune, 7 october 2016. 9. micah maidenberg and ryan ori, “trump to sign maker: you’re hired,” crain’s chicago business, 21 february 2014. 10. trump quoted in kamin, “donald trump: giant sign...” 11. city of chicago, office of the mayor, “mayor emanuel announces proposed ordinance to establish a chicago river corridor special sign district,” 17 september 2014; https:// www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/ press_releases/2014/sep/mayor-emanuelannouncesproposed-ordinance-to-establish-a-chicag.html; “city bans big signage along river, but trump’s sign stays,” curbed, 14 november 2014. 12. corey mueller, “will trump tower sign be obscured by flying pigs?” chicago tribune, 4 may 2017. 13. kelly bauer and david matthews, “throw trump tower into the river? 7,000 chicagoans to join symbolic dumping,” the block club, 13 january 2016; https://www.dnainfo.com/ chicago/20160113/downtown/want-tosstrumptower-into-river-theres-event-for-that/ 14. ana cerrud and david a. fahrenthold, “trump’s name is stripped from panama hotel,” washington post, 5 march 2018; kirk semple, steve eder and ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 56 v a le ben protess, “panama hotel owner declares victory and trump’s name is removed,” new york times, 5 march 2018. 15. https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/protesters-projectpictures-putin-trump-soho-hotel-article-1.3393395; https://news. artnet.com/art-world/trump-soho-hotel-russia-ties-1045406; https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/artist-projects-trump-soho_ us_598a19f7e4b0449ed50622b1; https://www.businessinsider.com/ trump-putin-meme-russia-trump-soho-hotel-new-york-2017-8 16. christopher brennan, “trump soho signs come down at newly christened dominick hotel, though checkered past remains,” new york daily news, 21 december 2017. 17. the “trump – coming 2016” sign received considerable press coverage during the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. d.c. city council members proposed investigating its removal, but ultimately, the federal election commission said that the sign was not a violation. aaron c. davis, “trump’s ‘coming 2016’ sign stays on federal building near white house,” washington post, 20 july 2015; perry stein, “that huge ‘trump’ sign between the white house and capitol is being removed,” washington post, 18 august 2016. 18. nicole chavez and emily smith, “’pay trump bribes here’ sign projected onto trump’s dc hotel,”cnn.com, 16 may 2017; christopher mele and daniel victor, “”’pay trump bribes here’ projected on trump hotel in washington,” new york times, 16 may 2017; carolina miranda, “meet robin bell, the artist who project protest messages onto trump’s d.c. hotel last night,” los angeles times, 16 may 2017; maria chu, “the artist projecting on to trump hotel,” bbc news, 7 june 2017; associated press, “anti-trump images become big business for dc projectionist,” 21 august 2018, https://wtop.com/dc/2018/08/ anti-trump-images-become-big-business-for-dc-projectionist/slide/1/ 19. jessica taylor and peter overby, “federal watchdog finds government ignored emoluments clause with trump hotel,” national public radio, 16 january 2019; https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/685977471/federalwatchdog-finds-government-ignored-emoluments-clause-with-trumphotel 20. curtis m. wong, “lgbtq group projects word trump reportedly tried to ban from cdc onto his hotel,” huffington post 28 december 2017; https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hrc-trump-hotel-cdcreportedlybanned-words_us_5a3aa7d2e4b0b0e5a79f16ae. the “banned words” terminology was likely overstated—followon reporting suggested 57 isparchitecture.com that, far from a ban, the list of words was merely a suggestion of terms to avoid if an organization wanted to get funding during a highly-politicized era. 21. robin bell (@bellvisuals), “projecting #bootpruitt on the epa, it’s time for @ epascottpruitt to go!,” twitter post, 28. march 2018; https://twitter.com/bellvisuals/ status/979142626548109313?lang=en; “’sessions must go’ projected on doj headquarters,” usa today, 19 may 2017. 22. m.w. folsom, the facts about home owning: an authoritative presentation (chicago: national association of real estate boards, 1922). 23. spiro kostof, the city shaped (boston: bulfinch press, 1991), 320. 24. mona domosh, “the symbolism of the skyscraper: case studies of new york’s first tall buildings,” journal of urban history 14, 3 (may 1988), 337, 339. 25. http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/ chicago-temple-building/2609; https:// www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/15/ yamoussoukro-notre-dame-de-la-paix-ivory-coastworldslargest-basilica-history-of-cities-in-50buildings-day-37 26 albert speer, inside the third reich (new york: simon and schuster, 1970), 81. 27. andy hoffman, “dubai’s burj khalifa: built out of opulence; named for its saviour,” the globe and mail, 4 january 2010; https://www.theglobeandmail .com/reporton-business/dubais-burj-khalifabuiltou t -o f opu l enc e -named fo r i t s s a v i ou r / article1208413/ 28. “tel aviv city hall lit with egypt flag in solidarity with copt terror victims,” times of israel, 28 may 2017; https://www. timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-city-hall-lit-withap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 58 v a le egypt-flag-in-solidarity-with-cairo-terror-victims/; “egyptian flag lights up ta city hall in solidarity with mosque victims,” times of israel, 24 november 2017; https://www.timesofisrael.com/ egyptian-flag-lights-up-ta-city-hall-in-solidarity-with-mosque-victims/. 29 martin kitchen, speer: hitler’s architect (new haven: yale university press, 2015), 34. 30. kitchen, 72-73, 85. 31. national museum of australia, “aboriginal tent embassy;” https:// www.nma.gov.au/definingmoments/resources/aboriginal-tent-embassy; tom mcilroy, “the aboriginal tent embassy has been left off the act heritage list,” canberra times, 19 april 2015; monica tan, “the aboriginal tent embassy: ‘we were all young, crazy, but we believed in justice,’” the guardian, 10 may 2016. 32. james weirick, “don’t you believe it: critical response to the new parliament house,” transition (summer/autumn 1989), 65. 33. the celebratory volume sponsored by the raia is haig beck, ed., parliament house canberra: a building for the nation (sydney: collins, 1988), 20-25; joint house department (canberra), australia’s parliament house: the meeting place of our nation (canberra: australian government publishing service, 1989), 8. there is perhaps no more compelling example of hannah arendt’s “space of appearance” than lina bo bardi’s museum of art in são paulo, masp, designed in 1957 for the assis chateaubriand art collection previously housed in an old downtown building. although the work of the italian émigré architect lina bo bardi was always independent of the so-called paulista school, the audaciously monumental structure of her museum, suspended clear of the ground from two deep, long span reinforced concrete beams resting on four equally gigantic reinforced concrete piers, served to create a partially covered terrace, opening off the avenida paulista and overlooking the verdant landscape of trianon park. ever since its completion in 1968 which happened to coincide with the worldwide student revolt, this space has served as the ultimate paulista symbolic site for spontaneous political demonstrations. as an arendtian cultural nexus with a similar political potential bo bardi’s museum will be matched at virtually the same time by a toplit, equally monumental core incorporated into the faculty of architecture and urbanism built on the campus of são paulo university to designs of the architect joão vilanova artigas, between 1959 and 1961. the result, in both instances was the creation of a res publica that corresponded, however inadvertently, to arendt’s concept of “the space of appearance,” as first defined by her under the rubric work in her magnum opus the human condition of 1958: the manmade world of things, the human artifice erected by homo faber, becomes a home the space of appearance within the megalopolis. architectural culturepolitics of são paulo 1957-2017 kenneth frampton ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 40 fr a m pt on for immortal men, stability of which will endure and outlast the everchanging movement of their lives and actions, only insomuch as it transcends the sheer functionalism of things produced for consumption and the sheer utility of objects produced for use. life in its nonbiological sense, the span of time each man has between birth and death, manifests itself in action and speech…if the animal laborans needs the help of the homo faber to ease his labor and remove his pain, and if mortals need his help to erect a home on earth, acting and speaking men need the help of homo faber in his highest capacity, that is the help of artists, of poets and historiographers, of monument-builders or writers, because without them the only product of their activity, the story they enact and tell, would not survive at all. in order to be what the world is always meant to be, home for men during their life on earth, the human artifice must be a place fit for action and speech, for activities not only entirely useless for the necessities of life but of an entirely different nature from the manifold activities of fabrication by which the world itself and all things in it are produced.1 although arendt never alludes to the megalopolis per se, which in any case in the late 50’s had yet to be acknowledged this is the “placeless” landscape she foresees in the human condition when, in the fifth chapter, she defines the “space of appearance” in the following terms: the space of appearance comes into being whenever men are gathered together in a manner of speech and action and therefore precedes all formal constitution of the public realm…only where potentialities of action are always present can power remain with them and the foundation of cities which, as city states have remained paradigmatic for all western political organization is therefore the most important prerequisite for power…power preserves the public realm and the space of appearance and as such it is the life blood of the human artifice… without being talked about by men and without housing them, the world would not be a human artifice but a heap of unrelated things to which each isolated individual was free to add one more object… without the enduring permanence of the human artifice there cannot be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after…2 and it is also much the same megapolitan landscape she has in mind when in her later critique of consumerism, she writes: 41 isparchitecture.com in our need for more and more rapid replacement of worldly things around us we can no longer afford to use them, to respect and preserve their inherent durability, we must consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the good things of nature which spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man’s metabolism with nature. it is as though we had forced open the distinguishing boundaries which protected the world, the human artifice, from nature, the biological processes which goes on in its very midst as well as the natural cyclical processes which surround it delivering and abandoning to them the always threatened stability of the human world.3 in the last chapter of the human condition, entitled the ‘vita activa and the modern age,’ arendt touches on the socio-economic consequences of the mass ownership of the car without which the demise of the city and the emergence of the megalopolis would not have been possible. if, in concluding, we return once more to the archimedian point and apply it, as kafka warned us not to do, to man himself and to what he is doing to this earth, it at once becomes manifest that all of his activities, watched from a sufficiently removed vantage point in the universe, would appear not as activities of any kind but as processes, so that as a scientist recently put it, modern motorization would appear like a process of biological mutation which human bodies gradually begin to be covered by shells of steel. for the watcher from the universe, this mutation would be no more or less mysterious than the mutation which now goes on before our eyes in those small living organisms which we fought with antibiotics and which mysteriously have developed new strains to resist us…we live although arendt never alludes to the megalopolis, this is surely the placeless landscape she foresees in the human condition. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 42 fr a m pt on in this society as though we were as far removed from our own human existence as we are from the infinitely small and the infinitely large which, even if they could be perceived by the finest instruments, are too far away from us to be experienced.4 the arendtian ideal of the city-state was not only predicated on the remote model of the ancient greek polis but also on the or worker’s councils that emerged spontaneously in the aftermath of the russian revolution of 1917, only to be instantly suppressed by the triumphant bolsheviks party. arendt’s other example of council formation were the groups formed during the hungarian revolt of 1956, which she equally admired and which were also summarily suppressed. perhaps no one has understood arendt’s concept of direct democracy better than shmuel lederman in his study hannah arendt and participatory democracy of 2019 wherein he wrote: ultimately, the different way arendt conceptualized the meaning and the potential of the councils emanated not so much from historical idiosyncrasies as from the different ontological and epistemological foundations of her political thought namely from the way she “politicized” german existentialism and used heidegger’s phenomenological method to offer a strikingly original analysis of the experience of action and speech in the public sphere.5 later, lederman cites two recent examples of participatory democracy: first, the indian state of kerala, which, had, in the past, been under a democratically elected communist government and second, the city of porto alegre in the south of brazil. of this last lederman writes: … in the spirit of the council tradition, participatory budgeting in puerta alegre continually challenged the very structure of hegemonic representative democracy…participatory institutions now play a role channeling demands emerging from organized communities;…the blurring between state and society occurs as government officials and community leaders now occupy a space within state institutions…(in recent years 100,000 residents have taken part) in a process prioritizing public works, such as street paving, the laying of water and sewerage lines, the building of new schools and hospitals and so on.6 as the title of this essay intimates, “spaces of appearance,” in a cultural if not an overtly political sense, have intermittently appeared over the 43 isparchitecture.com years within the exceptionally vast and placeless megalopolis of são paulo. such spaces have been an intrinsic part of the urban culture of são paulo since the foundation of the sesc organization (the serviço social do comércio; en: social service of commerce) in 1945, which was conceived from the outset as providing a certain sector of workers with beneficial social, recreational and cultural facilities. the socio-cultural agenda of this welfare provision was first given an architectural formulation in the so-called sesc pompeia designed by lina bo bardi in 1977, in collaboration with marcelo ferraz. this work entailed the conversion of a disused, single story factory in the center of the city into a complex combining multiple facilities, including an 800-seat restaurant, a reading room, a library, a 750-seat theatre and a dental clinic. bo bardi would add to this same complex a new multi-story sports center, housing among other facilities a gymnasium and indoor swimming pool. this new addition was built out of exposed, in situ reinforced concrete in manner of le corbusier’s bêton brut. its multistory, silo-like form, linked by ramps to a concrete access tower, was given an industrial character so as to appear as if it had always existed in relation to the original single-story, monitor-lit factory. the interstitial space between the two was landscaped in such a way as to provide a nominal, artificial “beach” in which users could sun bathe. this achievement was echoed in 2017 by the realization of another sesc complex within the são paulo megalopolis; the so-called sesc 24 de maio built to the designs of the late paulista architect paulo mendes da rocha, who collaborated with one of his former pupils, maria moreira, a founding partner in the practice, mmbb. here again we have the of sesc commissioning the re-use of an existing structure, this time a disused department store which since it was largely ruined had to be extensively rebuilt. apart from providing the usual mix of sesc amenities, the entire work was predicated on the “spaces of appearance,” in a cultural if not an overtly political sense, have been an intrinsic part of the urban culture of são paulo since the foundation of the sesc organization in 1945. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 44 fr a m pt on heroic idea of building a large swimming pool on top of an existing 13-story structure. this daring engineering concept was predicated on supporting the pool and the rest of the building on four gigantic reinforced concrete columns, each measuring 1.2 meters in diameter. these four columns were centered on the four corners of a square, set within the virtual square of the original building with a continuous pedestrian access ramp rising up to one side of the column grid. the pool on the roof was surely a manifest improvement on the narrow “urban beach” which had been a key feature in the sesc pompeia. the raison d’etre behind this seemingly counter-intuitive decision to place the heavy weight of the pool at the top of the building would be accounted for by the architect in the following: the pool choses its place not the architect. a sunny, open pool, despite the winter, is completely different from a closed, heated pool. my image is copacabana, leblon, ipanema!7 in a conversation with the chilean architect enrique walker in 2018, mendes da rocha will make the ideological stratagem of the paulista school of architecture explicit, in his response to walker’s question as to the political implications of the sesc 24 de maio, when he remarked: every project is a political statement. the project idea is one of projection of the future. so, the intention is to imagine what we should be, what we can be. the design is not simply a matter of architecture…generally speaking, society throughout the world is exclusive, in principle. it always protects itself from free public action: these are the famous gated communities, the buildings with security. we made this building open to public use as much as possible. and sesc comes into that as well, which tells us something about sesc policies. so, everything we do has a political value; there is a political essence in the idea of decision. and the new occupation of an existing building is part of a very interesting policy linked to the economy. you are better off reusing buildings rather than discarding them … every construction, every action of ours has value, a political essence, which must be read between the lines of what is there…in architecture in particular, the first thing it entails is to seduce others so that they can see the dimensions of what, despite the circumstances we must do.8 among the architects practicing in são paulo over the last half of the 20th century there has perhaps been no figure who has been more aware of the profound challenges posed by the são paulo megalopolis, now covering a 45 isparchitecture.com million square kilometers with a population of 30 million people, than paulo mendes da rocha. as he put it at an earlier moment when the population stood at 20 million: “it would have better to have built ten cities of 2 million each.” for mendes da rocha the megalopolis has been a challenge that can only be significantly addressed by creating public spaces, within which to resist the overwhelmingly disjunctive “non-place” of the megalopolis, not only in terms of culture-politics but also psychologically. hence his penchant for creating microcosmic public realms such as his poupa tempo, the so-called “time-saving” building realized in the center of the city in 2008. the swiss architect annette spiro’s appraisal of this work encapsulates the ennobling quality of this mutual interface between the general public and the municipality; a building that in effect serves as a range of offices for the granting of licenses and the payment of rates, taxes and fees, etc. in her view: “what could have easily been a labyrinth of bureaucracy is exactly the opposite; a singular 300-meter-long space, a bridge, an airy hall, an elongated public square…by virtue of one grand gesture, urbanistic, functional and spatial intentions are cogently satisfied.”9 in this one work one is able to appreciate fully the underlying ideology of the são paulo school of architecture as this was initially envisaged by the architect, joão vilanova artigas and the historian-theorist, flavio motta; that is to say the accommodation of socio-cultural and politically progressive programs within the fabric of tectonically articulated, monumental form. it is this that surely accounts for mendes da rocha’s assertion that engineering and architecture should be one and the same, although he would be the first to concede that this tectonic ethos is not, in and of itself, able to serve as an adequate point of departure before the dystopic fragmentation of the megalopolis for, as he would put it: “a city’s memory is not a continuous accumulation of eternities. it can only be preserved every project is a political statement. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 46 fr a m pt on in its historical discontinuity. we have to have the courage to face this inevitable discontinuity and turn it into stimulus.”10 in this regard mendes da rocha’s capacity to imagine and create spaces of public appearance would be particularly challenged in 2000 when he received from both rio de janeiro and paris separate commissions to design sports facilities as part of their rival bids to host the olympic games of 2008. what is significant about these two quite different proposals, with the one much more extensive and ambitious than the other, is that they were both designed for the worldwide megalopoli, i.e. for universal placelessness just as prevalent in the urbanistic chaos surrounding the hausmannian core of paris, as it is throughout the vast extent of the são paulo megalopolis and where the one would consist of a number of different interventions on multiple sites, the other consisted of a single large stadium related to a pre-existing canal and podium of smaller stadia accommodating various specialized sports, i.e. the so-called “sports boulevard.” what mendes da rocha had to say about his various proposals for the urbanized region of são paulo emphasizes the potential opportunity provided by the games as an incentive for the reconstruction of city form. as he would write of his piecemeal project of repairing the degradation of megalopolitan fabric around são paulo: … it proposes to intervene in places that today, despite their effective urban structuring are nonetheless degraded, as happens in all the world’s dynamic cities, with railway stations, unwanted polluted waterways and unexpected empty lots. thus, the proposal envisages the urbanization of abandoned areas, weaving houses, with new leisure, health and education facilities right into the existing urban fabric.11 there are perhaps no two works from the middle of the last century having more disparate implications than hannah arendt’s the human condition of 1958 and jean gottman’s megalopolis of 1962 for while arendt’s concept of “the space of appearance” may be seen in retrospect as being of importance for the practice of architecture, gottman’s relevance resided in the fact that he was the first to recognize that the urbanized region was already an emergent and universal condition. this, is ever more the case today as we veer towards the urbanization of 75% of world’s population by 2050, according to the three-volume study the endless city, published by the london school of economics in 2007. in this regard, it may well be that brazil in general and são paulo in particular proffer a range of socio-cultural interventions that are of particular pertinence today given the inevitable wholesale urbanization of the planet. i have in mind in the first instance 47 isparchitecture.com the extraordinary capacity of paulista municipality to build a large number of school-cum-community centers for the poorest sectors of society. there is surely no school building program of comparable stature and speed of realization anywhere else in the world today. this exceptional achievement suggests that even under globalized capitalism there is much to be said for the potential of the city state or the urbanized region to overcome the political ‘nonplace’ of the megalopolis in its most alienated form. this much seems to be implied by chantal mouffe’s recent thesis of agonistics, first published in 2013 as a political stratagem to overcome the current impasse of representational democracy. in this she cites with approval the political philosophy of the italian intellectual, massimo cacciari, who having served twice as the mayor of venice, recommends a future policy in which he advocates “federation from the bottom” as opposed to the current union of european nation states which although they derive from representational democracies, are nonetheless subject to the top-down regulatory power of the european union. in her appraisal of cacciari’s thesis, mouffe writes: what cacciari advocates can be conceived as a type of federal union in which the component units would not be limited to nation states and in which the regions would also play an important role. from the point of view of an agnostic model for europe, i find particularly interesting his claim that such a union would manifest a form of autonomy exercised in systems which are integrated in a conflictive mode, and that it would combine solidarity and competition. incorporating cacciari’s proposals, we could imagine a european union that would not only be a demio-cracy composed of nation states, but one where there would be a multiplicity of different kinds of demio, where democracy could be exercised at different levels and in a it is of the utmost importance that the architect should have conceived of his intervention in terms of giving rise to auditoria and their attendant “spaces of appearance” without which architecture, has no socio-political cultural significance. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 48 fr a m pt on multiplicity of ways. such a view recognizes and articulates different forms of collective identities and their new modes of co-operation.12 of equal consequence as “spaces of appearance” has been the exemplary policy pursued by the city during the first decade of the 21st century wherein it would realize an extensive program of school building throughout the farflung periphery of the city, situating these schools in the midst of center-less favelas, that is in the heart of spontaneous, self-built housing settlements, dating back from the 60’s, as they are to be found throughout the fringes of the city. twenty-one such schools were built by the city under the mayoralty of marta suplicy who was affiliated with lula da silva worker’s party during his first presidency, 2003-2010. since then another twentyfive schools-cum-community centers have been built under the rubric of centros educacionais unificados (en: unified educational centers) or ceus. these large complexes incorporate a wide range of supplementary social services including theatres, cinemas, sports facilities, nursery schools, kindergartens, vocational high schools, dance halls, swimming pools, clinics, etc. ceus were also conceived as accommodating university extension courses which would be coordinated by the federal government. largely designed by the architect’s department of municipality under the leadership of alexandre delijacov, andré takia and wanderley ariza, these educational complexes now distributed throughout the periphery of the city constitute potential “spaces of appearance” in a political sense. all of this incorporates, in so many respects, the essence of paulista architectural culture-politics made manifest throughout the conurbation, notwithstanding the traumatic political changes to which brazil has been subjected over the past seven decades. in this regard it is significant when it comes to the megalopolitan proliferation of free-standing objects it is significant that mendes da rocha invariably worked at two different scales; on the one hand, at the scale of microcosmic intervention, such as his poupa tempo building or his arc of the patriarch of 2007 and, on the other, at the continental scale of the territory at large. a measure of this was evoked by mendes da rocha in his 1980 proposal for the regularization of the bay of montevideo in uruguay of which he wrote: the straightened lengths of the bay front are focused on the water, and provide new recreation areas in the form of gardens, plazas, theatres, cinemas, cafes, restaurants. transformed into a city square on water, 3 km across between cerrito hill and the harbor and lying between different city districts and centers, the bay bustles with light passenger traffic and makes a lively and sophisticated impression. at a remote 49 isparchitecture.com and delightfully situated point in the bay a tiny island was transformed into a theatre, after the manner of the venetians. perhaps one night an inexpressibly haunting melody from its shores will linger over the city. who knows it would be even like villa-lobos’s, floresta do amazonas.13 however improbable and costly such a modification would have been, it would have afforded a new territorial datum capable of unifying the placeless megalopolis surrounding the bay of montevideo throughout its perimeter. it is of the utmost importance that the architect should have conceived of his intervention in terms of giving rise to auditoria and their attendant “spaces of appearance” without which architecture, as the most material of the arts, has no socio-political cultural significance. endnotes 1. hannah arendt, the human condition (second edition), (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 173-174. 2. ibid., 199-200. 3. ibid., 125,126. 4. ibid., 322, 323. 5. shmuel lederman, hannah arendt and participatory democracy. a peoples utopia (cham, palgrave macmillan, 2019), 185. 6. ibid., 200. 7. andres lepak and daniel talesnik, access for all. são paulo’s architectural infrastructures (zurich: park books, 2019), 189. 8. lepak and talesnik, access for all, 193. 9. annette spiro, paulo mendes da rocha. works and projects (zurich: niggli, 2002), 27. 10. rosa artigas, paulo mendez da rocha, 50 years, (new york: rizzoli, 2007) 24. 11. ibid., 85. 12. chantal mouffe, agnostics (london: verso, 2013), 53. 13. spiro, paulo mendes da rocha, 162. in ordinary language, it is not very common to speak about ‘the political.’1 however, to distinguish between the political and politics opens up an important alley for reflection. i am not the first nor the only one to make this distinction. a variety of political theorists do the same, but with different remit. some theorists envisage the political as a space of freedom and public deliberation. this we call the associative view of the political. others understand it as a space of power and conflict, which we call the dissociative view. my understanding belongs to this second perspective. with the term ‘the political,’ i refer to the dimension of antagonism, which, i argue, is constitutive of human societies. politics is the set of practices and institutions through which a certain order is created. this order organizes human coexistence in a context of conflict. according to the dissociative perspective, political questions always require decision making to choose between conflicting alternatives. and, contrary to the dominant view under neoliberalism today, those political decisions cannot be reduced to technical issues which can be solved by experts. in neoliberal societies, there is an incapacity to think politically. in this article, i will reflect upon the issue of public space and the potential of artistic practices in the context of conflict and antagonism. 1. the political to a great extent the contemporary incapacity to think politically is not only caused by the uncontested hegemony of neoliberalism, but also by liberalism in general. with “liberalism,” i do not mean “economic liberalism,” which is the basis on the political, public space and the possibility of a critical architecture chantal mouffe ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 28 m ou ff e of capitalism, nor “political liberalism,” as a set of political institutions, i refer here to the philosophical discourse, which has got many variances, some more progressive than others. though there is no common essence, there is a multiplicity of what we could call, using an expression of ludwig wittgenstein, family resemblance. save a few exceptions, the dominant tendency in liberal thought is characterised by a rationalist and individualist approach, which, in my view, is not able to adequately grasp the pluralistic nature of the social world with the conflicts that pluralism entails—conflicts for which there is no rational solution. the typical liberal understanding of pluralism is that we live in a world in which there are many perspectives, many values, and different beliefs. however, through serious deliberations and rational negotiations, these different perspectives can constitute harmonious and non-conflictual perspectives. this type of liberalism negates the political in its antagonistic dimension. one of its main tenets is a belief in the possibility of universal consensus, which can be established through strict rational reasoning. but to acknowledge the antagonism of the political underscores the inescapable moment of decision. i use ‘decision’ here in the derridean sense. as derrida insisted, to decide is always to decide in an undecidable terrain. a decision made after calculation, is not a decision at all. decision-making in an undecidable terrain means choosing between alternatives that cannot be resolved through rational reasoning. the antagonism of the political reveals the limits of any rational consensus, and therefore is antithetical to the liberal vision. when examining the different perspectives existing within contemporary liberal political thought, we can distinguish two main paradigms. the first is called the aggregative paradigm. there is a confluence with the associative view of the political, but it is not exactly the same. the aggregative view envisages politics as the establishment of a compromise between competing forces in society. individual participants are portrayed as rational beings, driven by the maximization of their own interest. this is an instrumental understanding of acting; (it is) market ideology applied to the domain of politics. the instrumental view easily apprehends politics through economics and is often dominant in political science departments, for instance in the broadly accepted rational choice theory. the second paradigm is dominant within philosophical discourses, and is often called the deliberative paradigm. two of their representatives are john rawls in the united states and jürgen habermas in germany. they somehow developed their views in reaction to the instrumentalist model. their argument is that there is more to politics than just the search for personal interests. instead of an instrumental rationality, they 29 isparchitecture.com propose a communicative rationality, believing that it is possible to create a rational moral consensus by means of free discussion. in this case, politics is not apprehended through economics, but through ethics or morality. what these views leave aside through their rationalist approach is precisely what, to me, is the specificity of politics: the fact that in politics we are always dealing with a “we” as opposed to a “them.” this does not mean that antagonism is always present, but it is an ever-present possibility. another drawback of the rationalism of liberalism is that it is not able to acknowledge the crucial role played by what i call passions in politics. i refer here to the affective dimension, which is central to the constitution of any collective form of identification. political identification is always collective, and this implies an affective dimension. liberalism, with its methodological individualism, is not able to grasp the specificity of the political, the collective and the affective. in my work, i argue that only when we acknowledge the political in its antagonistic dimension, can we pose the central question for democratic politics. this is not to question how to negotiate a compromise, or what kind of procedure is needed to reach a rational, fully inclusive consensus. it is impossible to establish a consensus without exclusion. therefore, despite what many liberals want us to believe, the specificity of democratic politics is not to overcome this “we/them” opposition, but how to construct this opposition to be compatible with the recognition of pluralism. in order to answer this question, i use the notion of the “constitutive outside,” a term proposed by the american philosopher henry staten in his book wittgenstein and derrida.2 he uses this term to refer to a number of terms that are developed by jacques derrida, like derrida’s notions of supplement, trace, and différance. the aim of those notions is to highlight the fact that the creation of an identity always implies the establishment of difference. this the antagonism of the political reveals the limits of any rational consensus, and therefore is antithetical to the liberal vision. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 30 m ou ff e difference is moreover often constructed on the basis of a hierarchy, for instance man/woman, black/white. this view is based on ferdinand de saussure’s claim that every identity is relational, and acknowledges that the affirmation of a difference is the precondition for the existence of any identity. in other words, the perception of something other that constitutes its exterior is the precondition of existence of an identity. if we accept this, and apply it to the field of politics, we can understand that the constitution of the “we” is what politics is about and that politics cannot exist without the determination of a “them.” the identity of a “we” needs to have a constitutive outside, a “them.” but this does not mean that such a relation is necessarily antagonistic. in politics we thus deal with collective identities on the basis of “we/ them.” those differences can simply be a pure difference. to give an example: “we,” the french, need to have a “them,” the german. or “we,” the catholic, and “them,” the protestant or the muslim. this is not necessarily a relation of antagonism. but under certain conditions, this “we/them,” can become an antagonism, and can be constructed on the basis of friend and enemy. this happens, for instance, when the “them” is perceived as questioning the identity of the “we,” thus threatening its existence. from that moment on, any form of “we/them” relation, being from religious, ethnic, economic, or other origin, becomes antagonistic. an example that i often give to my students is the disintegration of yugoslavia. the slovenian, the bosnian, the croat and the serb were not enemies, but in certain circumstances, such as those in the death of tito and the coming to power of milošević, who tried to establish serbian supremacy, they began to see each other as enemies. their relationship became antagonistic. this is important to realize, the ever-present possibility that “we/them” relations become antagonistic. upon that remark, i would like to stress that identities are always a result of processes of identification. identities, as freud claims, can never be completely fixed, therefore, we are never confronted with “we/them” opposition that expresses essentialist pre-existing identities. this is an important point to stress, since the “them” represent the condition of possibility of the “we,” as i argued above. this means that the constitution of a specific “we” always depends on the type of “them” from which it is differentiated. the crucial point is that this allows us to envisage the possibility of a different type of “we/them” relation according to the way the “them” is constructed. since all forms of political identities entail a “we/them” distinction, this means that the possibility of emergence of antagonism can never be eliminated. i thus assert that the political belongs to our ontological 31 isparchitecture.com condition. in hegemony and socialist strategy, ernesto laclau and i argue that next to the concept of antagonism, there is another concept which is crucial to address the political: the concept of hegemony.3 to acknowledge the dimension of the political, the ever-present possibility of antagonism, requires coming to terms with the lack of a final ground and the undecidability that pervades every order. it requires recognizing what we call the hegemonic nature of every kind of social order. every society is the product of a series of practices which attempt to establish an order in a specific context. but this context is always contingent. it is important to realise that according to such a conception, society cannot be seen as the unfolding of a logic that will be exterior to itself, whatever the source of this logic will be — the forces of production for marx, nor the development of the spirit for hegel. every order is the temporary and precarious articulation of contingent practices. this means that things could always have been otherwise and that every order is predicated on the exclusion of other possibilities. to acknowledge this can also be called political: it is always the expression of a particular structure of power relations. there are always other possibilities that have been repressed, but that can also be reactivated. every hegemonic order is susceptible to being challenged by counterhegemonic practices, practices that will attempt to disarticulate the existing order, to install another form of hegemony. this is what the agonistic struggle is about: the struggle between hegemonies. the political is linked to those acts of hegemonic institution, and in this sense can be differentiated from the social. this distinction between the social and political is important. these two domains are two different ways of looking at the same thing. the social is the basis of ‘sedimented practices’, referring to practices that conceal the act of the contingent political institution. these practices appear as if they were self-grounded. or to put it differently, this does not mean that antagonism is always present, but it is an ever-present possibility. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 32 m ou ff e we take these practices for granted. there is a need for such sedimented practices, as you cannot have everything in perpetual flux. the social and the political have the status of what martin heidegger called ‘existentials,’ which are the necessary forms of societal life. 2. on public spaces once the ever-present possibility of antagonism is acknowledged, one can understand why one of the main tasks of democratic politics consists in defusing the potential antagonism that exists in social relations. a society cannot exist in constant flux or civil war. there is a need for some form of stability. if we accept that this stability cannot be achieved by transcending the “we/them” relation, but only by constructing it in a different way, then the following question arises: what could constitute a tame relation, a sublimated form of antagonism? what form of “we/them” will this imply? or to put it differently, how could conflict be accepted as legitimate and take a form that does not destroy the political association? this requires that some kind of common bond exists between the parties in conflict so that they will not treat their opponents as enemies to be eradicated. that would be a form of civil war, because they will see their demands as illegitimate. this is precisely what happens in an antagonistic enemy relation. however, the opponents cannot be seen simply as competitors whose interests can be dealt with either through negotiation, the aggregative conception, or reconciled by deliberation (the deliberative view). in that case, the antagonistic element will simply have been eliminated. the two solutions offered by liberalism are not adequate, precisely because they do not recognise the inevitable dimension of antagonism and the fact of the hegemonic conception of society. if we thus want to acknowledge on one side the inevitability of the antagonistic dimension, while on the other allowing for the possibility of its sublimation, of its taming, we need to envisage a third type of relation. and this is the type of relation that i have proposed to call agonism. antagonism is a “we/them” relation in which the two sides are enemies, wherein these two sides do not share any common ground. there is no symbolic space among them. agonism is also a “we/them” relation with conflicting parties. however, with agonism, although acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, the two sides recognise the legitimacy of their opponents. they are adversaries, not enemies. this means that when in conflict, they see themself as belonging to the same political association. they are sharing a common symbolic space and it is within this space that the conflict takes place. what exists among them is a conflictual consensus. they have different interpretations of the shared political values. 33 isparchitecture.com what is at stake in agonistic struggle is in fact the very configuration of power relations around which a given society is structured. it is a struggle between opposing hegemonic projects, which cannot be reconciled rationally. the antagonistic dimension is always present, it is a real confrontation, but one which is played out under regulated conditions by democratic procedures. the agonistic conception of democracy acknowledges the contingent character of the hegemonic political-economic articulation, which informs a specific configuration of a society at a given moment. this is a precarious and pragmatic construction, which can be disarticulated and transformed as a result of the agonistic struggle among the adversaries. contrary to the values of the liberal model, the agonistic approach recognises that society is always politically instituted. it never forgets that the terrain in which the hegemonic intervention takes place is necessarily the outcome of previous hegemonic practices. this is why the agonistic model denies the possibility of a nonadversarial democratic politics and criticises those who, by ignoring this dimension of the political, reduce politics to a set of supposedly technical moves and neutral procedures. unfortunately, the latter is the dominant view in the neoliberal hegemonic, as i stated previously. the most important consequence of the agonistic model of democracy for the issue of public space is that this conception challenges the widespread notions that inform most liberal visions, wherein public space is regarded as the terrain where consensus could possibly be reached. for the agonistic model, public spaces are the battlefields where different hegemonic projects are confronted without any possibility of a final reconciliation. in this view, we are not dealing with one single public space. according to the hegemonic approach, public spaces are always plural. the agonistic confrontation takes place in a multiplicity of discursive surfaces. the second important point i want to make is that for the agonistic model, public spaces are the battlefields where different hegemonic projects are confronted without any possibility of a final reconciliation. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 34 m ou ff e while there is no underlying principle of unity, no predetermined centre to this diversity of spaces, there always exist diverse forms of articulation amongst them. we are not faced with the dispersion envisaged by some modernist thinkers. this is, for instance, the big difference between our approach and the one of michel foucault. many parts of our previously mentioned book hegemony and socialist strategy are influenced by foucault, such as the conception of power. but we part company with foucault when he asserts the pure multiplicity of public spaces. we argue, on the contrary, that public spaces are always hegemonically structured. given the fact that hegemony results from the specific articulation of a diversity of spaces, this means that the hegemonic struggle always consists in the attempt to create a different form of articulation. this not only differentiates our view from foucault’s, it is also differentiated from jürgen habermas’s view, who reflected a lot about the political public space. when he envisages a public sphere, habermas presents it as a place where deliberation aiming at the rational consensus takes place. to be sure, habermas accepts that it is improbable that such a consensus could effectively be reached, given the limitation of social life. he therefore presents this consensus, this ideal situation of communication, as a regulative idea. i would argue that this is, though slightly different, fundamentally the same conception. according to the perspective that i am advocating, the impediments to habermas’s ideal speech situation are not empirical. for habermas, we would never be able to reach it, because we will never be able to completely coincide with our rational self, to leave aside all our particularities. the impediments are therefore empirical. to me, however, those impediments are not empirical, they are ontological. and the rational consensus that habermas presents as a regulative idea is, in my view, a conceptual impossibility. my idea of agonistic public space also differs from hannah arendt’s. in my view, the main problem with arendt’s understanding of agonism is, to put it in a nutshell, that it is an agonism without antagonism. arendt puts a great emphasis on plurality and insists that politics deals with the community and reciprocity of human beings which are different from one another. this is essential to her view. but she never acknowledges that this plurality is at the origin of antagonistic conflicts. according to arendt, to think politically is to develop the ability to see things from a multiplicity of perspectives. in a reference to immanuel kant, in her book lectures on kant’s political philosophy, she refers to his idea of enlarged thought.4 for arendt, this idea is a model of political practices, which testifies that her conception of pluralism is in fact inscribed in the horizon of an intersubjective agreement. what arendt looks for in kant’s doctrine 35 isparchitecture.com of aesthetic judgment is in fact a procedure for ascertaining intersubjective agreement in the public space. this is why i will argue that while significant differences in their respective approaches exist, arendt and habermas both end up envisaging the public space as one free from antagonism. both belong to the associative conception of politics, which is distinct from the dissociative conception of politics that i advocate. 3. on artistic practices and the possibility of a critical architecture so far, i have argued that by bringing to the fore the discursive character of the social and the multiplicity of discursive practices through which our world is constructed, the hegemonic approach is particularly fruitful when it comes to apprehending the relation between art and politics. this relation should not be envisaged in terms of two separate constituted fields, art on one side, politics on the other, between which a relation will need to be established. according to this approach there is an aesthetic dimension in the political and a political dimension in art. indeed, from the point of view of the theory of hegemony, artistic and cultural practices play a role in the constitution and the maintenance of a given symbolic order, as well as in challenging this hegemonic order. and this is why artistic and cultural practices necessarily have a political dimension. this is why i have suggested that it is not useful to make a distinction between political and non-political art. i therefore prefer to speak about critical art. identifying the critical to the political implies that all artistic practices that are not critical are not political either. but, as said, there is a political dimension in all forms of art. the importance of the hegemonic approach for critical art is that it highlights the fact that the construction of a hegemony is not limited to the traditional political institutions, but that it also takes place in a multiplicity of spaces, which are usually called it is not useful to make a distinction between political and non-political art. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 36 m ou ff e civil society. this is where, as antonio gramsci has shown, a particular conception of the world is established and a specific understanding of reality is defined—what he calls the common sense. this common sense provides the terrain in which specific forms of subjectivity are constructed. gramsci insists that the domain of culture plays a crucial role there, as it is one of the terrains where common sense is built and subjectivities are created. this hegemonic approach reveals that artistic practices constitute an important terrain for the construction of political identities. it allows us to grasp the decisive role that those practices could also play in the counter-hegemonic struggle, because they contribute to the emergence of new forms of subjectivity. an important dimension of the counterhegemonic struggle is indeed the transformation of the common sense as the space where specific forms of subjectivity are constructed. from this perspective, critical art is constituted by a manifold of artistic practices that are going to contribute to question the dominant hegemony. the objective is a transformation of political identities through the creation of new practices, new language games, that will mobilize affects in a way that allows for the disarticulation of the framework in which current forms of identification are taking place. as such, artistic practices allow other forms of identification to emerge. it is worth indicating that there are different answers to the question of what critical art is. in fact, it is important to acknowledge that not all conceptions of radical politics envisage the criticality of artistic practices in the same way. we can, i would like to argue, roughly distinguish two main strategies to visualize radical politics, one that i have in my book agonistics called ‘engagement with’ and the other ‘desertion from.’5 the second one, which is promoted by thinkers like michael hardt and antonio negri and their followers, reject any engagement with the state and all existing institutions. in their recent work, hardt and negri have moved a bit from that view, but most of their followers have not. the strategy that they advocate is one of exodus, that calls for the desertion of the places of power, which is justified by the claim that under the current condition of cognitive capitalism, exodus is the only form of resistance to the domination of bio-power. desertion should include the institutions of the art world, which they see as totally instrumentalized by the creative industries. the art world has become complicit with capitalism, and thus can no longer provide a site of resistance. against this view of radical politics in terms of exodus, the strategy that the hegemonic approach advocates, is one that, again borrowing a term from gramsci, we call a “war of positions.” it does not consist 37 isparchitecture.com in withdrawing from existing institutions, but by engaging with them in order to bring about a profound transformation in the way they function. this war of positions targets the nodal points around which neoliberal hegemony is established, disarticulating the key discourses and practices through which neoliberal hegemony is sustained and reproduced. it thus consists of the diversity of counter-hegemonic practices and interventions, which operates in a multiplicity of domains: economic, legal, political, and cultural. the domain of culture plays a crucial role in this war of positions, because this is the space where the common sense is established and subjectivities are constructed. critical artistic and cultural practices can contribute to the fostering of an agonistic confrontation by making visible what the dominant consensus tends to obscure and obliterate. this permits challenges to the existing hegemony. i want to insist that this can be done in a diversity of ways, in a multiplicity of interventions and in active engagement with a wide range of institutions in a variety of spaces. there are many terrains in which artistic and cultural practices can unsettle the established common sense and contribute to the emergence of new forms of subjectivity. but what about architecture? can it be critical as well? recognizing the role of cultural artistic practices in the construction of a hegemony contributes to vizualising the role that architectural practices could play in the construction, reproduction, and transformation of a hegemony. the possibility of a critical architecture starts with the acknowledgment that the social is always discursively constructed and that architecture also has a political dimension. however, it is one thing to recognize its political dimension, another to determine whether this political dimension is critical. as i have stated previously, the political does not equate with the critical. once we can recognize the political dimension of architecture, the possibility of a critical architecture starts with the acknowledgment that the social is always discursively constructed and that architecture also has a political dimension. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 38 m ou ff e we can follow different strategies to guide this political dimension. what strategy will then orient us in a critical direction? the strategy that laclau and i advocated in hegemony and socialist strategy, the strategy that i still advocate in my book, for a left populism, is a strategy of critical engagement with institutions in order to transform them.6 this is a matter of both the disarticulation of a given hegemony, as well as the importance of creating something new. a critical approach always consists of a double movement, of disarticulation and rearticulation. it seems to me that this strategy of “engagement with” is particularly suited to critical architectural practices. moreover, i cannot really think of architectural practices that correspond to a strategy of exodus. in architecture, one is always, it seems to me, dealing with presentation, construction, and mediation, and those are precisely the things that the exodus strategy rejects. endnotes 1. this article is a lightly edited transcript of chantal mouffe’s keynote lecture at the 5th biennial conference of the international society of the philosophy of architecture (ispa), held via zoom at monte verita, ascona, switzerland, on july 4th, 2021. 2. henri staten, wittgenstein and derrida (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1986). 3. ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe, hegemony and socialist strategy: towards radical democratic politics (london/new york: verso, 2001). 4. hannah arendt, lectures on kant’s political philosophy, ed. ronald beiner (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1992). 5. chantal mouffe, agonistics. thinking the world politically (london/ new york: verso, 2013). 6. chantal mouffe, for a left populism (london: verso, 2018). the user’s space is lived—not represented (or conceived). [henri lefebvre]1 introduction a recurring theme in the history of architectural and urban theory is the shaping role the built environment plays in the everyday lives of its users. perhaps most famously illustrated by winston churchill’s statement “we shape our buildings, and afterwards they shape us,” both theorists as well as designers have frequently considered the designed environment as playing an active part in society and examined the relation between plans on the drawing table and their impact on people’s lives in reality.2 although divergent in their outcomes, the ambitions of modernists like le corbusier, structuralists like herman hertzberger, and current architects who advocate the participation of endusers in their design processes converge in the belief that design can contribute to the production of a certain ideal society. these same ambitions, however, have also led to projects in which people behaved differently or even completely opposite to the intentions of the designers. the efficiency and functionality that were at the basis of early twentieth century modernism were later part of the criticism on the living-conditions in buildings like pruitt-igoe in saint-louis or the bijlmer-neighbourhood in amsterdam.3 alison smithson expressed her disillusionment about the way residents behaved in robin hood gardens after she and her husband had designed it completely around their vision on an ideal collective society.4 in less extreme cases as well, what architecture does. an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment margit van schaik ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 140 va n sc ha ik it seems the impact of the built environment is limited. hope for creating an ideal social situation, such as strong communities shaped by collective spaces or gardens, often seems vain in retrospect and serve primarily as a good story to “sell” the design rather than a proper solution in reality. luckily, the same principle applies vice-versa: even in poorly designed buildings, people seem to be quite flexible in making their environments work for whatever it is they want to do. this observation has led some to observe, that the built environment is not as influential as designers themselves might like to think. according to architect and behavioural researcher richard buday for example, “environmental determinism’s failure showed leading architecture … does not shape behaviour any better than secondary architecture,” and therefore one might even wonder if the architect’s profession is at all that relevant.5 the belief in this power of the built environment can even be dangerous according to buday, as it neglects to acknowledge the impact of people’s own choices. regardless of how much or how little impact design has on people, we can nevertheless agree that one environment can be experienced as more pleasant, lively, beautiful or practical than another, even when such judgements might not be universal. underestimating such impact might be just as dangerous as overestimating its power. instead of trying to measure the share that can be ascribed to environmental design, this article therefore proposes an alternative route: instead of asking the quantitative question of how much impact the environment has on its users, it asks the generative question of how such impact arises. the first part of the article explores possible answers to this question. the second discusses issues that complicate the implementation of this knowledge into the design practice. the theories of such philosophers as edmund husserl, martin heidegger and maurice merleau-ponty, in the wake of recent developments in the fields of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and more specifically the research program of embodied embedded cognition, provide insights into the strong and dependent relations between the mind, the body and the environment.6 supported by extensive scientific research over the last few decades, these insights dismiss a cartesian view in which an immaterial and independent mind can think rationally about the physical world.7 as many architectural theorists, such as harry mallgrave, have shown, these insights offer strong potential for understanding architectural experience as well.8 instead of considering subjects as relatively independent from the built environment they perceive, we can now understand how architectural experience is a physical consequence of the impact a building has on its users. to make this assertion clear, we will have a look at what is 141 isparchitecture.com called the enactive approach to perception, a theory that is part of the broader embodied embedded cognition movement. as andrea jelić, et al. have argued, this enactive view provides a particularly useful guide to studying architectural experience.9 of particular interest is a paper by evan thompson and francisco varela, in which the connections between mind, body and world are explained as three “dimensions of embodiment,” or three different cycles of operation that integrate these three components: 1. cycles of organismic regulation of the entire body. 2. cycles of sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment. 3. cycles of intersubjective interaction, involving the recognition of the intentional meaning of actions and linguistic communication.10 although it falls beyond the scope of this article to describe these kinds of cycles in all their biological detail, they do provide an interesting framework with which we can explore the ways in which architecture influences its users. they describe the three levels at which body, brain and world are integrated with each other and therefore how connections between them are made, which provides an overview of how architecture has “access” to a human being. in the latter part of the article, i will therefore consider each dimension separately and explore how it relates to the built environment to arrive at a tool with which the impact in specific cases can be analyzed. besides this theoretical exploration, a specific case-study will be used in order to illustrate the theory and relate it to building practice. the chosen case-study is the plenary meeting hall of the dutch parliament, a design that holds a special relation to themes of publicity and power. seating the 150 elected members of parliament, it forms the physical realization of dutch democracy and despite being an indoor space, the hall is arguably ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 142 va n sc ha ik one of the most public spaces in the country. in the first instance, both literally and physically public access to meetings in the hall is ensured at all times, overcoming complex issues such as security and wheelchair access. but access is ensured virtually as well, as the debates taking place in the room are shared through various media on a daily basis. programmatically similar to the british house of commons chamber churchill referred to in his famous statement, the impact of the hall’s design is particularly relevant, since it may possibly influence policies that concern the entire country. it results in interesting relationships between the roles that are accommodated and how they have become physical in the design of the space, the furniture and other facilities. drawings of this design will provide an illustration of the impact that can be discovered in each cycle. organismic regulation under organismic regulation we understand those unconscious processes that regulate the state of the organism. as thompson and varela explain, the “main basis is the autonomic nervous system, in which sensors and effectors to and from the body link neural processes to basic homeodynamic processes of the internal organs and viscera.”11 the purpose of these cycles is to translate information about the environment to reactions within the body in order to keep the organism safe and healthy. often, they remain unnoticed, as they occur unconsciously and more instinctively than intentional perception and action. fig.1: pi de bruijn/ architectencie, assembly hall of the dutch parliament, the hague 1992, an overview of the roles in the plenary hall and their position 143 isparchitecture.com emotional states are the outcome of an interaction between, for instance, the central nervous system and visceromotor systems that regulate the organs. these emotional states can be understood as a first “gut feeling” about what is experienced. as thompson and varela explain “organismic regulation, because of its links with basic emotional operating systems … has a pervasive affective dimension that manifests in the range of affective behaviours and feelings.”12 in other words, when we experience architecture, organismic regulation controls our first reaction to a building.13 the autonomic nervous system, which is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, responds to these emotional states.14 the sympathetic nervous system has an activating role, as it accelerates the heart rate in response to certain circumstances. therewith it regulates our “fightor-flight” response, as it can prepare the body for intense physical activity. the parasympathetic nervous system, however, calms the body. when circumstances suggest that the organism is safe, this system brings it to a state in which it can rest. here, we can draw a parallel to what edmund burke has called the sublime and beautiful as categories of aesthetic enjoyment.15 the former is based on a tensioning of the body, when for example we stand on the edge of a cliff, the latter is based on a relaxation when we observe something serene and controlled. from this we can understand organismic regulation as the process that on the one hand makes us say “wow” when for example observing imposing or monumental architecture, and on the other makes us feel comfortable when a space is small and shielded.16 this observation becomes more concrete when we consider the design of the dutch plenary meeting hall. the hall is part of a building designed by pi de bruijn and realized in 1992, located at the binnenhof in the hague. it holds the plenary meetings of the parliament or the “tweede kamer” these emotional states can be understood as a first “gut feeling” about what is experienced. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 144 va n sc ha ik fig.2: possible emotional states evoked by the general layout of the plenary meeting hall fig.3: possible emotional states evoked in the center of the hall 145 isparchitecture.com (second chamber), which has a comparable role to the house of representatives in the u.s. or the house of commons in great britain. the 150 members of parliament are seated in six segments, facing their chair(wo)man and clerks on one side and the government (cabinet) on the other. [fig. 1] when entering, walking through and resting in the arena-scaled hall, different emotional states will probably arise, related to different parts of the space. [fig. 2-6] in the centre of the hall for example, one is in the middle of a large space, with a high ceiling in which all other users of the room are facing you due to the orientation of their seats. these elements seem intended to evoke a reaction of alertness. in contrast, in the small hallway below the public stands, users are mostly shielded from the large room, because the lower ceiling provides a space that feels much more soothing. it is no coincidence that most actual compromises are made here, where politicians that might be enemies in the “arena,” can feel at ease and come together.17 when you are in the centre of the hall users face a collection of large natural stone walls that rise from behind the chair(wo)man to which comments are addressed. these solid walls might very well evoke a sense of awe and are clearly meant to impress via their monumentality. at the same time the furnishings of the meeting hall are designed in such a way that people are often shielded from each other. “vak k,” the part in which the cabinet is seated, is completely surrounded by a low wooden wall, which makes them in a way protected from the rest of the people. the interruption barrier (for members who respond to or question members of the cabinet) is comparable, with the exception that in this case the wall starts at about 20 cm above the ground, so that the member’s feet remain visible. sensorimotor coupling the second category of ways in which body and the world are interwoven concerns more ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 146 va n sc ha ik fig.4: possible emotional states evoked by the lectern for speaking members of parliament fig.6: possible emotional states evoked by the lectern for members of the cabinet fig.5: possible emotional states evoked by the desks and seats of members of parliament 147 isparchitecture.com elaborate actions and movements through the environment. these movements are made possible by our so-called motor system, which is much more connected to perception than has previously been presupposed. as susan hurley explains in consciousness in action, following up on for example the work by ulric neisser, the generally assumed divide between the body and the mind has resulted in an input-output picture of perception.18 in that picture, perception forms the input from the world to the mind and action forms the output. the mind mediates between these two states: through thought it links the right input to the right output. however, discarding the cartesian divide leads to the conclusion that perception and action are much more interwoven with each other than traditional views have acknowledged. building on, amongst other theories, what has been called the reafference principle, thompson and varela explain, “situated activity takes the form of cycles of sensorimotor coupling with the environment. what the organism senses is a function of how it moves, and how it moves is a function of what it senses.”19 this point was already developed in the 1970s by james gibson in his theory of affordances.20 he argued that humans (and other animals) perceive the world through the actions that are possible within it. we encounter the affordances present in the environment, rather than perceiving the world through something like a photograph, in which all details are grasped at once. what the environment affords is what it offers, provides or furnishes an animal to do in it. a flat surface, for example, is seen as walk-on-able, a surface about 40 cm above the ground is sit-on-able, and round objects that can be grasped in the hand are throw-able and catchable. such affordances are different for each animal or person, related to their individual capabilities. the theory of affordances means that the designed environment of architecture is perceived in the same way, through the actions that it affords. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 148 va n sc ha ik fig.7: actions of speaking afforded in the center of the hall fig.8: actions of speaking afforded by the lectern for speaking members of parliament 149 isparchitecture.com in the description of a relatively simple process of getting milk from a store nearby, architectural theorist sarah william goldhagen shows how these processes continually take place, mostly unconsciously, leaving room for thoughts about plans for the weekend.21 it shows how the built environment is continuously used as a means to something else, rather than being observed as a neutral object. stairs are perceived as providing the possibility to ascend, arcades are perceived for the possibility of walking through, and windows invite you to look outside. they do not determine the user to undertake any of these actions, but through the processes by which we perceive the environment and instrumentalize it for our actions, they do provide us with countless invitations which we do or do not act upon. the impact of an affordance therefore does not lie in the determination of a person’s actions (so i agree with buday, the idea of “environmental determinism,” is problematic), but in the invitation it offers.22 furthermore, although the environment cannot determine what actions a user will undertake, it does often constrain the way in which actions can be performed.23 stairs do not determine you to ascend, but they dictate where you will enter the next floor if you do. arcades do not determine you to walk through them, but they do influence which rooms are the most accessible. and a window does not determine you to look through it, but it does influence what you will see if you do. in case of the plenary meeting hall, the affordances offered by the design are effectively endless, continuously inviting the users in the room to undertake certain actions. on a most basic level the room therefore both expresses and invites the activities it is designed for: a composition of seats, desks and microphones shows the purpose of using the room for plenary meetings by the parliament. [fig. 7-11] some of these affordances stairs do not determine the user to undertake any actions, but ... they do provide us with countless invitations which we do or do not act upon. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 150 va n sc ha ik fig.9: actions of observing afforded by the seats of members of parliament fig.10: actions of walking afforded by the center of the hall 151 isparchitecture.com have clear consequences for how the debates usually take place. consider for example the position of lecterns relative to each other: they determine how the different users are facing one another when they speak. members of cabinet always face the members of parliament that respond to them using the interruption microphone, but they are standing parallel to the ones that are presenting a longer story. furthermore, the lecterns often presuppose their users to be standing up, otherwise the microphone cannot be reached. this same microphone makes sure its users are facing the centre of the meeting hall, as they are positioned in a certain way. the chair(wo)man can control who is allowed to speak, as he or she can turn microphones on and off. the arrangement of seats in the room forms the basis for how members of parliament are sitting in relation to the cabinet and the chair(wo)man during the plenary meetings. the seats provide room for 150 members of parliament, who are divided into six segments of 25 members. some of these members are therefore closer to the debate than others, and might be quicker to use the interruption microphones than the so-called “backbenchers” behind them.24 the different parties are spread among the segments, so that members of a party are not necessarily sitting together in one group, and often mix with other parties. walking paths between the segments make it possible to walk to the centre of the room or the hallway under the public stands, but they also provide space for members to discuss matters with each other between different debates. these are just a few examples of the long list of affordances offered by the meeting hall, that show what kind of impact they might have on the way in which daily activities take place. intersubjective interaction the third category of “cycles of operation” concerns things that are active in social cognition and help humans understand each other. these ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 152 va n sc ha ik cycles make it possible to interpret others, and reason about their intentions, their desires and their emotions. intersubjective interaction involves both structures that are also important to emotion as well as sensorimotor coupling and more specifically the use of mirror-neuron systems. in the 1990s a team of scientists discovered so-called mirror neurons that fire not only when we perform particular activities, but also when we see someone else performing that activity.25 this discovery has led scientists to believe that these neurons play a role in the understanding of emotions, actions and intentions of others (when these are already part of our own repertoire).26 for example, when we see someone else feeling sad, we virtually mirror this expression (although we do not carry out the actual movement) and by “observing” our own feelings arising from this expression, we understand the other is sad. so, we use ourselves as a kind of fig.11: actions of walking afforded between seats of members of parliament 153 isparchitecture.com simulator, mirroring others, in order to make sense of the world. this process is generally known as empathy. according to vittorio gallese, one of the discoverers of mirror neurons, we use this process constantly.27 mirror neurons are active not only when we perceive other human beings, but also in the observation of inanimate objects. recent fmri studies have shown that neurons activated when we are being touched, fire when we perceive someone else being touched, but also when we perceive objects touching one another, such as when we see raindrops falling on the leaves of a plant.28 we not only use ourselves to simulate the actions and emotions of other people, but also to simulate our environment. this has led gallese to replace the word “empathy” with “embodied simulation,” and argue that “the sense we attribute to our lived experience of the world is grounded in the affect-laden relational quality of our body’s action potentialities, enabled by the way they are mapped in our brains.”29 remarkably enough, when the first theories of empathy originated at the end of the nineteenth century, they were part of a philosophical theory on aesthetics, not of how we socially engage with other people. the german theorist robert vischer published on the optical sense of form, in which he distinguished between sehen as a relatively passive form of visual perception, and schauen as a more active one.30 aesthetic experience, with which reality is “grasped,” is based on the latter kind. during this aesthetic experience, we go through a process of einfühlung, by which we “feel ourselves into” or simulate what we encounter. the environment is “reflected in certain vibrations and—who knows what—neural modifications” that make the experience possible.31 vischer’s theories were followed by theodor lipps, whose ästhetik, published at the start of the nineteenth century, explored the analysis of empathy in aesthetic experience further.32 he argued that everything we remarkably enough, when the first theories of empathy originated at the end of the nineteenth century, they were part of a philosophical theory on aesthetics, not of how we socially engage with other people. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 154 va n sc ha ik experience is permeated by our own life. the experienced object is the result of both what has been given by the environment and the activity of the observer. for lipps, aesthetic experience arose from the feeling or movement that an object evokes in us. for example, a great hall evokes a movement of expansion, and from that we understand its greatness. in the case of the dutch parliament, which is itself a great hall, the aesthetic experience could include this same greatness both in the height of the ceiling as well as in the large tapestries on the wall. it can also include the appreciation of the clean shapes of pearwood in the furniture or the craftsmanship that must have been involved making it, although this interpretation of einfühlung involves much more elaborate systems than simply mirror-neurons.33 furthermore, it has been suggested that mirror systems play an important role in language as well. neuroscientist michael arbib hypothesizes that the ability to recognize manual actions in others provided a bridge via pantomime and imitation for the human capacity for both sign and spoken language.34 following this, intersubjective interaction enables us to interpret and make sense of our environment. so, it is through this system and its integration with other systems that we can talk about concepts or messages that are communicated by architecture, based on their physical composition and the actions, both practical and emotional, that they make possible. following giacomo rizzolatti and michael arbib in linking our mirror system to the highly evolved neural and social systems that enable us to use language and other forms of symbolic abstraction, it is through this last cycle that we understand the symbolic meaning provided by architecture. in the case of the dutch parliament, one can interpret the coat of arms printed on the seats of members of parliament as referring to the dutch nation. furthermore, we might interpret the hierarchy of different roles played in the debates through the differences in how luxuriously each seat is designed, through subtle height differences and through accents in the composition of desks such as the higher one or the chair(wo)man. it is also through this cycle that we might interpret the green carpet, the grey ceiling and the tulip-shaped seats as representations of the dutch landscape, as explained in a brochure on the “meaning” of de bruijn’s design.35 users however need quite some information to understand this connection. while people who have foreknowledge might indeed associate these symbols with what they represent, others not armed with such cultural apparati will be unlikely to understand it that way. as stated above, thompson and varela mention the involvement of processes of the first and second cycles in the third.36 processes important 155 isparchitecture.com to emotions are also part of recognizing emotions in others, and mirror neurons are themselves part of sensorimotor systems. and the intertwining goes still further: evoked emotional states are probably also dependent on the affordances and messages one recognizes, and the perceived affordances are related to a person’s mood or their interpretation of the function of the room. the purpose of the framework is therefore not so much to separate each kind of impact but rather to show the elaborate range of impacts that are possible within one design. the implication of the theories as laid out above is that, without impact to the form of some physical change in the body there is no experience. architectural experience therefore only exists through this impact. still, such impact does not determine the behaviour of a building’s users. the two following remarks offer partial explanation in this regard. a network of actors firstly, this impact is spread throughout an endless network of little impacts that each play their own small yet significant role. the three kinds of cycles of operation reveal an elaborate and complicated range of endless modes of exchange between the world and the body, as the case-study has shown as well. relations originate at different levels and in different ways at the same time and are therefore hardly ever observable as a one-toone relationship between a design decision and a (behavioural) change. how this works has previously been laid out by the so-called ‘actor-network-theory’, conceived by sociologists and philosophers, of which bruno latour, john law and michel callon are the bestknown examples.37 one of their basic claims is that in social processes, objects can play a role similar to that of human beings. both animate and inanimate objects participate in our social lives significantly, together forming a large network of countless “actors” that each play a role. one design decision ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 156 va n sc ha ik fig.12: possible messages conveyed through the arrangement of seats in segments fig.13: possible messages conveyed through the furniture of the chair(wo)man 157 isparchitecture.com can be seen as a drop in an ocean of actors, only some of them related to the designed physical environment. pedestrians’ experience of a street, for example, can be seen as the sum of decisions like the general proportions, the plasticity of facades or the position of windows, etc., forming only a piece in a larger network of other determining factors, like recent events in the pedestrian’s life or her his general mood that day. some attempts have been made to show determinant relations between design decisions and their effect on users. take, for instance, research on the layout of hospital rooms in relation to the healing process, or educational environments in relation to learning processes.38 or, closer to our case-study, consider how research in 2018 showed a relation between the voting behaviour of parliament members and their position relative to each other in the room.39 however useful such studies may be, they should always be interpreted with regard to the specificity of the case-studies on which they were based. in another situation the conditions might very well be different, so that the same design decisions could lead to different results. determinism and free will secondly, it is worth considering the compatibilist view of philosopher daniel dennett, who argues that a deterministic universe does not rule out free will.40 he distinguishes between things in what he calls the scientific image on the one hand and the manifest image on the other. the first group consists of things like neurons, atoms and dna, things that we know mostly from scientific research. the second group consists of things that we encounter in our everyday lives: colours, euros and promises, etc. these things have no location or substance and scientifically speaking they are not what people generally consider them to be. free will is part of this latter group, so according to dennett, free will is just as real as the colours, euros and promises that ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 158 va n sc ha ik play a significant role in everyday life. scientifically speaking, one fact necessarily leads to another, however the endless number of causes and effects are impossible to sort-out in the lived-world of manifest images. we can apply this way of thinking to what we have encountered in this article: at a scientific level, the impact of the built environment on the user is a prerequisite for any environmental experience and this impact is part of a large network of different actors. in the practical world of manifest images, however, this network cannot possibly be understood in its entirety and therefore the effect of design decisions remains unpredictable to a certain extent. this means that in the lived-world of any subject experiencing the environment, the shaping role of design can only be more or less present and recognizable. furthermore, the design process itself largely takes place at this practical level too, which makes it unlikely for a designer to foresee all the consequences of the countless design decisions he/she must make, either consciously or unconsciously. empathy from the first part of this article we could conclude that claiming design decisions have no impact is problematic. from the second part we can add that claiming causality between design decision x and result y is equally problematic, as the full breadth of the network in which this impact is integrated cannot be understood from the practical level of our lived world and the design process. to conclude, i would like to draw attention to the skill of empathy being employed by the architect during the design process, which is of special relevance in this regard. during this process, in which the designer imagines himself or herself to be part of the environment he or she is designing, it is possible to assess many aspects at once, instead of focussing on the “drop in the ocean” of a single design decision. it offers the possibility to be receptive to what the environment has to offer instead of considering it solely in light of the conceptual ideas it was built on. furthermore, we can see empathy as a skill that can be enriched: the aforementioned studies on healing environments, for instance, may be too specific to be implemented directly into other designs, but they provide insights that can be integrated into empathic processes, as do the theories on cognitive science of architectural experience. moreover, these processes can be further enhanced in light of the plurality of identities of the future users. knowledge of the identity of different end-users, or participatory processes in which contact between the designer and the end-user is established, improve the possibility of the designers’ capacity to understand the experience of other identities. 159 isparchitecture.com in this way, the skill of empathy can enrich the designers’ understanding of the effects their designs are likely to have and then to help align their decisions with their renovated understanding of users’ experiences. empathy can contribute to an environment that finds a balance between its facilitating role in our lived-world daily processes while being receptive both to the plurality and the freedom of its users. acknowledgements with special thanks to the reviewers and michael arbib for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. illustrations the drawings and analyses are based on the following literature: tweede kamer der staten-generaal. the house of representatives at work. august 2015. https:// www.houseofrepresentatives.nl/how-parliamentworks/house-representatives-work. prodemos. politics in the netherlands (the hague: prodemos, 2013) herman tjeenk willink, ‘verval van de democratische rechtsstaat en de rol van de pers.’ het expertisecentrum journalistiek. 21 september 2015. http://www.expertisecentrumjournalistiek. nl/slot-toespraak-herman-tjeenk-willink-vervalvan-de-democratische-rechtsstaat-en-de-rol-vande-pers/. joris luyendijk, je hebt het niet van mij, maar...: een maand aan het binnenhof (amsterdam: podium, 2010) the drawings are also based on the following two interviews: we can see empathy as a skill that can be enriched. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 160 va n sc ha ik alexander pechtold, interviewed by the author. an interview on the role of the interior design of the second chamber in the debating culture (7 september 2016) herman tjeenk willink, interviewed by the author. an interview on possible strategies for the dutch political system (28 october 2016) complemented with research conducted in the architectural archive of the new institute, rotterdam and the personal archive of pi de bruijn. endnotes 1. henri lefebvre, the production of space (hoboken: wiley, 1992), 362 2. simon richards, architect knows best: environmental determinism in architecture culture from 1956 to the present (milton park, oxfordshire: routledge, 2012). 3. see for example the introduction in charles jencks, the language of post-modern architecture (london: academy editions, 1991), 23; marlies buurman, ‘stadsgezichten: kleiburg en de bijlmer.’ het parool, (21 january 2011). 4. alison smithson, ‘the violent consumer, or waiting for the goodies’ architectural design, no.5 (1974). 5. richard buday, ‘we shape buildings, but do buildings really shape us?’ common edge (april 13, 2017) https://commonedge.org/weshape-buildings-but-do-buildings-really-shape-us/ (accessed october 18, 2021); note also the counterreaction to this article by robert lamb hart: robert lamb hart, ‘how buildings shape us.’ common edge (september 21, 2020) https://commonedge.org/how-buildings-shapeus/ (accessed august 23, 2022). 6. robert a.wilson, and lucia foglia. ‘embodied cognition.’ the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2016), http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2016/entries/embodied-cognition. 7. for a discussion on this, see note 6. on the other hand, some important research has tended to stress both the anti-dualist elements in descartes himself, and the uptake of those elements in some twentieth-century phenomenology, especially by maurice merleau-ponty. see for example sara heinämaa, ‘merleau-ponty’s dialogue with descartes: the living body and its position in metaphysics.’ in: dan zahavi, sara heinämaa and hans ruin (eds.) metaphysics, facticity, interpretation: phenomenology in the nordic countries, by (dordrecht: kluwer, 2003), 23-48. 8. harry francis mallgrave, architecture and embodiment, the implications 161 isparchitecture.com of the new sciences and humanities for design (abingdon: routledge, 2013), 111. 9. andrea jelić, gaetano tieri, federico de matteis, fabio babiloni and giovanni vecchiato. ‘the enactive approach to architectural experience: a neurophysiological perspective on embodiment, motivation, and affordances.’ frontiers in psychology, no.7 (2016), 481. 10. evan thompson and francisco j. varela. ‘radical embodiment: neural dynamics and conciousness.’ trends in cognitive sciences, vol.5, no.10 (2001), 418-425. 11. ibid. 12. ibid., 425. 13. mallgrave, architecture and embodiment, 111 14. laurie kelly mccorry, ‘physiology of the autonomic nervous system,’ american journal of pharmaceutical education, vol.71, no.4 (2007), 78. 15. edmund burke, a philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. (1757). an interesting study in this regard can be found in the dissertation of dmitri kormanov, which shows evidence that the sympathetic nervous system is indeed activated when experiencing sublime landscapes. dmitri kormanov, feeling the landscape: six psychological studies into landscape experience (wageningen: wageningen university, 2009). 16. mallgrave, architecture and embodiment, 112113. 17. joris luyendijk, je hebt het niet van mij, maar...: een maand aan het binnenhof (amsterdam: podium, 2010). 18. susan l. hurley, consciousness in action (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1998); ulric neisser, cognition and reality: principles and implications of cognitive psychology (san francisco: w.h. freeman, 1976). 19. thompson and varela, 418-425; the reafference principle has been coined by erich von holst ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 162 va n sc ha ik and horst mittelstaedt, ‘das reafferenzprinzip.’ naturwissenschaften, no.37 (1951), 464-476. 20. james jerome gibson, the ecological approach to visual perception. (boston: houghton mifflin, 1979). the key idea of affordances was already present in jakob uexküll, umwelten: “a stroll through the worlds of animals and men: a picture book of invisible worlds.” in: clair h. schiller, instinctive behavior: the development of a modern concept (new york: international universities press, 1957), also in semiotica, no.89, 319-391. originally appeared as jakob von uexküll streifzüge durch die umwelten von tieren und menschen (berlin: springer, 1934). 21. sarah williams goldhagen, welcome to your world. how the built environment shapes our lives (new york: harpercollins publishers, 2017), 52-54. 22. buday ‘we shape buildings, but do buildings really shape us?’ (accessed october 18, 2021). 23. as gibson notes in a later essay, “affordances do not cause behaviour but constrain or control it”. james gibson, reasons for realism (edited by edward reed and rebecca jones) (hillsdale: lawrence erlbaum publishers, 1982), 411. 24. luyendijk, je hebt het niet van mij, 53. 25. g. di pellegrino, l. fadiga, l. fogassi, v. gallese, and g. rizzolatti, ‘understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study,’ exp brain res, vol.91, no.1 (1992), 176-180; see also giacomo rizzolatti, leonardo fogassi, and vittorio gallese, ‘mirrors in the mind.’ scientific american, vol.295, no.5(2006), 54-61. 26. for a discussion of this, see michael arbib, when brains meet buildings: a conversation between neuroscience and architecture (new york: oxford university press, 2021), 306-311. 27. vittorio gallese,‘embodied simulation: from neurons to phenomenal experience.’ phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, vol.4 (2005), 23-48. 28. s.j. ebisch, m.g. perrucci, a. ferretti, c. del gratta, g.l. romani, and v. gallase, ‘the sense of touch: embodied simulation in a visuotactile mirroring mechanism for observed animate or inanimate touch.” journal of cognitive neuroscience, vol.20, no.9 (2008). 29. vittorio gallese, alessandro gattara, ‘embodied simulation, aesthetics, and architecture: an experimental aesthetic approach.’ in: sarah robinson, juhani pallasmaa (eds.), mind in architecture: neuroscience, embodiment, and the future of design, (cambridge, massachussetts: the mit press, 2015), 161-179; for a further discussion on this, see arbib, when brains meet buildings, 330-335. 163 isparchitecture.com 30. robert vischer et.al, empathy, form and space: problems in german aesthetics, 1873-1893, harry f. mallgrave and eleftherios ikonomou (introduction and translation), (santa monica/ chicago: the getty center for the history of art and the humanities, 1994), 89-123. 31. ibid., 90. 32. theodor lipps, ästhetik; psychologie des schönen und der kunst (hamburg: voss verlag, 1903). 33. for a discussion of the process of empathy in appreciating craftsmanship see gallese and gattara, embodied simulation, aesthetics, and architecture: an experimental aesthetic approach,’ 161-179. for a further discussion on the primacy of mirror neurons in aesthetic experience, see arbib, when brains meet buildings, 336-349. 34. michael arbib, how the brain got language: the mirror system hypothesis (new york: oxford university press, 2012). 35. tweede kamer der staten-generaal, ‘tweede kamer in beeld,’ tweede kamer (november 2013), https://www.tweedekamer.nl/sites/default/-files/ field_uploads/tweede%20kamer%20in%20 beeld_tcm181-210466_0.pdf. 36. thompson and varela, ‘radical embodiment’ 418-425. 37. see for example: bruno latour, ‘where are the missing masses? the sociology of a few mundane artifacts,’ in: wiebe e. bijker and john law (eds.), shaping technology / building society: studies in sociotechnical change (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1992), 225258; bruno latour, reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory (oxford: oxford university press, 2005); john law,. ‘notes on the theory of the actor-network: ordering, strategy and heterogeneity.’ systems practice, no.5 (1992), 379-393; michel callon, ‘techno-economic networks and irreversibility,’ in: john law (ed.), a sociology of monsters: essays ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 164 va n sc ha ik on power, technology and domination, london: routledge, 1991), 132165. 38. goldhagen, welcome to your world. 39. alessandro saia, ‘random interactions in the chamber: legislators’ behavior and political distance.’ journal of public economics, (2018), 225-240. 40. daniel dennett, ‘free will is as real as colors, promises and euros.’ lecture at the radboud university nijmegen, the netherlands, march 12, 2016. isparchitecture.com the anthropology of a smokefilled room: ethnography and the human at oma graham owen introduction this paper examines ethnographic studies of design processes within the celebrated dutch architectural practice oma, studies undertaken from an actor network theory perspective as promulgated by the anthropologist-philosopher bruno latour. considering the participantobservation work of yaneva, the article contrasts the relative absence of discussion of issues of labour and working conditions with their prominence in recent work by observers of architectural education and by activist academics such as deamer, tombesi and wilson. why might this ethnographic study have overlooked or de-emphasised these aspects of human relations at oma? with critiques of latourian and ant-based approaches in mind, the paper asks if this is an aversion characteristic of such perspectives, with their defining selfdistinction from critical theory. this paper argues for at least four reasons that these studies of oma do not tackle the issues of architectural “labour in the making,” reasons that are respectively ethnographic, methodological, epistemological, and ontological. the article draws upon the reflections of ignacio farías and alex wilkie on the evolution of “studio studies” from latour et al.’s laboratory studies. from a philosophical point of view, it proposes potential extensions of studio studies to foreground labour conditions, which can be seen as central to design processes in studios such as oma. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 161 ow en in medias res the year is 1991. the scene is a two-bedroom apartment in rotterdam. i am visiting former classmates working at rem koolhaas’s office for metropolitan architecture. five oma employees share the flat. my friends, a couple with some means, have one of the bedrooms. the rest are, in effect, camping. one, from the states, has a thin mattress on the floor. all his possessions are scattered around it, like those of a homeless person under a bridge. i have come to visit oma, but also to see significant modernist works in rotterdam. but my friends do not know where those are. all they know is the route between the apartment and the office, and the cafes where they eat breakfast and dinner when they can. when i arrive, trouble is brewing. no one, other than rem and the three associates, has been paid for two months, say the junior architectural staff. simply, no cheques have appeared. a letter of protest is being drafted: the staff, after all, do have bills of their own to pay. and the pay, when it has come, is not great: 14,000 pounds a year, or a dollar figure in the 20,000s. a typical work week consists of 70 to 100 hours. the average time to burnout and departure for a staff person at their level, they report, is two to three months, although my classmates, with more personal resources at their disposal, have lasted longer. the staff are international, but many have come to rotterdam without work permits, under the radar; they receive no employment benefits.1 over time, did success change oma? did the practice become able to offer working conditions befitting trained professionals, recognizing that they too have lives to lead outside the office, obligations to others to fulfil? anecdotal but firsthand web reports from 2015 suggest otherwise. one former employee of less than a year describes a spirit of camaraderie on all-nighters, but nonetheless acknowledges “extremely long hours–below market pay–very high turnover rate,” and remarks that “if everyone is going to be there for 15-18 hours a day, maybe include more than just a coffee machine and microwave in the kitchen”. another former staff member recognizes the attraction of an oma stint on one’s resume, and reports receiving benefits, but confirms a “[r]uthless working environment. management really doesn’t care if you don’t sleep for days in a row as long as deadlines are met. working hours are ridiculously long. you basically never stop working, specially [sic] if you are an intern or junior architect. forget about having anything resembling a life outside of the office, the office is open 24/7. office culture is bad. lots of dissatisfied employees. incredibly disorganized 162 isparchitecture.com project environment. very high rate of turnover […] most employees who [have been] here for a long time have been raised in these types of environments so they ‘don’t know any better’ and have little ‘real world’ experience.” a third former staff member observes more succinctly: “no sleep ever. tense environment. and no sleep ever. ever. ever.”2 while the review comments on oma are among the more extreme, such concerns are not unfamiliar among architectural firms that seek celebrity status within the discipline, indicating a set of labour issues endemic to culturally ambitious “starchitect” practices and certainly worthy of investigation. ant and architecture, laboratory and labour to think back today to the mattress of the 1991 oma employee, to his belongings scattered on the floor around him, is to be reminded all too easily of other more recent sleeping accommodations associated with the production of culturally ambitious architecture. those in the rotterdam apartment were admittedly less dire and more selfchosen than those of migrant workers with which we are now familiar in the emirates, as evidenced by the work of investigative journalists and activist groups,3 but as those activists have argued, the two instances are connected by a disciplinary complex of issues as regards architectural labour. these issues, however, figure 1: dubai migrant workers’ sleeping accommodations ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 163 ow en do not appear to have surfaced in the ethnographic studies of oma’s practice, despite their focus on the daily practices of design as a necessary component in the understanding of architecture. trained as a philosopher and anthropologist, bruno latour has brought influential attention to design in the more recent decades of his career.4 drawing upon his applications of actor network theory and the concept of the thing in studies of science and technology, latour seeks, as ariane lourie harrison observes, to challenge architecture to revise its conception of buildings as static objects, to understand that buildings develop agency as sociotechnical systems, through negotiations among people, institutions, and technologies. […] any entity (human or non-human, individual or organization, architecture) can be conceptualized as both an actor and a network, in actor-network theory, its constitutive actions redistributed accordingly. […] by this approach, it becomes more difficult (and less productive) to refer to an entity as a discrete or isolated object. […] all phenomena are networked assemblages of actors, each capable of reconfiguring the network, affecting each of its constituents. latour proposes the term thing to describe these socio-technical assemblages that make up the bulk of our environment and experience, and to distinguish his hybrid schema from the more rigid, modernist categorization of phenomena into subject and object. an ant approach to architecture highlights the discrepancy between the manifest thingness of a building (multiple constituencies, overlapping material, technological and discursive systems, inherent spaces of controversy) and its representation as a rendered object (static, set serenely in cartesian space). […] [a]n ant’s view would suggest that buildings be represented as dynamic ‘spaces of controversy’.5 latour and yaneva remark that, “it is paradoxical to say that a building is always a ‘thing’ that is, etymologically, a contested gathering of many conflicting demands and yet, having said that, to be utterly unable to draw those conflicting claims in the same space as what they are conflicting about.”6 latour himself asserts that, “what is needed instead are tools that capture what have always been the hidden practices of modernist innovations: objects have always been projects.”7 particularly through his students and collaborators, he has encouraged close studies of the processes of the studio. transposing their techniques from latour’s earlier studies of laboratory life, and seeking to understand “architecture in the making,” his colleagues have undertaken ethnographic enquiries into the process by which architecture comes into being, and have challenged conventional interpretations. in philosophical terms, these studies constitute a search for, if not “truth,” a more accurate understanding of the construction of knowledge and the relationship between architecture 164 isparchitecture.com and the social. in examining the respective roles of human and non-human actors, this work alters normative assumptions about the extent of human agency. albena yaneva has made notable contributions to this e n d e a v o u r . she claims that a r c h i t e c t u r e cannot be understood by conven t iona l narratives of its production and reception. in essays such as “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move,” of 2008, by latour and yaneva, they seek to reverse etienne jules marey’s ambition to build a “photographic gun” that would freeze the stages of a bird’s action in flight. instead, they seek a theoretical device to reveal “that a building is not a static object but a moving project, and that even once it is has been built, it ages, it is transformed by its users, modified by all of what happens inside and outside, and that it will pass or be renovated, adulterated and transformed beyond recognition.”8 in the process of this argument’s elaboration, theorists as notable as george baird, neil leach, ian borden, and jane rendell are set aside as representative of superseded paradigms of interpretation: everyone knows that a building is a contested territory and that it cannot be reduced to what is and what it means, as architectural theory has traditionally done. […] as long as we have not found a way to do for figure 2: bruno latour lecturing at harvard university graduate school of design. 2009. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 165 ow en buildings the reverse of what marey managed to do for the flights of birds and the gaits of horses, architectural theory will be a rather parasitical endeavor that adds historical, philosophical, stylistic, and semiotic ‘dimensions’ to a conception of buildings that has not moved an inch.9 in writing of her observations of oma, yaneva insists that, “you can still appreciate a building, like or dislike it, praise or dismiss it, without knowing anything about the design experience that made it happen; but you cannot understand a building without taking these design experiences into account.”10 thus yaneva asserts that there is a deep and wide knowledge (attainable by both outsiders and, ultimately, by those involved in its production) of a work of architecture that takes into account the extensive processes and controversies through which it has come into physical being; and, indeed, she is asserting that the work of architecture is that assemblage of processes, controversies, actors… without that recognition, yaneva is claiming, there is no adequate knowledge of architecture; rather, only a superficial appreciation or casual evaluation. but given these substantial epistemological claims, it is surprising—even though yaneva picks up clues in the texts under consideration here—that issues of employment ethics, conditions of work, and their rationalization by staff members, do not surface as foregrounded parts of the assemblage. yaneva’s work opens up in detail the day-to-day working practices in an ambitious and influential practice such as oma. her painstaking observation of the role of physical models and digital representations in their process of design undoubtedly offers valuable insights. years of fieldwork, the demanding tasks of collation of notes, transcripts and correspondence, and the continued research enterprise through the university of manchester are worthy of respect, and the writings of both yaneva and latour have become increasingly evident in architectural discourse in recent years. but as others have observed,11 latour’s aggressive promotion of paradigm shifts and his inclination to use the language of warfare in seeking to colonize and dominate intellectual fields suggest that some circumspection is warranted in assessing these claims regarding the formation and adequacy of knowledge (at least scholarly and practitioners’ knowledge) of architecture. and in this particular instance, that circumspection needs to address the downplaying of those aspects of studio life that pertain to the ethics of architectural labour. 166 isparchitecture.com the voluntary prisoners of oma in the early 2000s, yaneva undertook research as a participant observer within oma. the results of this ethnographic observation were published as made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (2009), hereafter made by oma, and the making of a building: a pragmatist approach to architecture, also of 2009. in her interviews excerpted in made by oma, in particular, she confirms that there is an “overproduction” of design ideas in blue foam model form; hears of staff being asked to “put a [design] p r o p o s a l on the table overnight;”12 and hears another say, “[s]ometimes i don’t have dinner for like two days, because i work during the evenings. [ay:] [t]hat’s how everybody works here? [abji:] yes, we even work in the weekends, but it’s ok, it’s a good atmosphere.”13 in the making of a building, yaneva observes that: at the end of the ordinary working day (around six o’clock), computer music announces the beginning of ‘the evening shift’. architects start buzzing with excitement following the departure of all the administrative staff. they find themselves alone with specific design tasks to complete surrounded by the sounds of the same music they have listened to during the day in the privacy of their earphones. now the music is given the opportunity to contribute to the office figure 3: oma “newhitney” selected study models ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 167 ow en hubbub, and to amplify the excitement. the architects share a pizza around the table of models […] [s]ometimes a new model arrives with the sunrise, more updated drawings are printed out and set up on the table just as the city of rotterdam is about to wake up.14 the young architects recover from their nocturnal labours with “one of those strong oma coffees that really wake you up even if you have only slept for a couple of hours.”15 yaneva remarks that, because designs for terminated projects are sometimes resurrected in later commissions, “the sleepless nights spent in the company of a foam-cutter, a computer and a couple of fellow architects from the same [project team] have not been in vain.”16 the blue foam “smells,” she notes, when cut on the hot-wire cutter17—and it does so because it is releasing toxic fumes—but no one, we might note, seems concerned with the health risks to the staff. indeed, the demands of oma’s working conditions seem to serve yaneva’s larger claims regarding knowledge and reality: “the fact that there is no urban life ‘out there’, far from the studio, has been demonstrated by all those who never visited the whitney [museum] site in manhattan but kept on designing for it, by all those who never learned spanish but built in cordoba, and by those who never borrowed a book from the seattle library but reinvented the library typology. designers never go ‘outside’; there is no outside. […] the studio constitutes their world. […] oma and koolhaas treat the studio as the world.”18 one may well ask whether these descriptions and assessments constitute an apologia for the conditions observed, or whether they serve instead to expose the conditions of labour without direct accusation or criticism? the tone of the description of the musical all-nighter is positive, even approbatory, conveying the student-like “excitement” of the participants without evident irony; generally speaking, irony is by no means absent from the latourian rhetorical repertoire, but conspicuous by its absence in this instance. reflexivity yet yaneva’s observations, undertaken in the early 2000s, overlap with a period of notable reflexivity within architectural practice and education, particularly within the north american context. brought to professional attention in the publication progressive architecture in the early 1990s,19 given intensity by the accidental deaths of several students after 168 isparchitecture.com multiple all-night work sessions, exposed to the wider academy and the public at large through further journalistic exposés,20 concerns with the adverse effects of the traditions of the design discipline and profession were confronted in the redesign of studio culture, of 2002.21 in these and subsequent reports, the reproductive cycle between the architectural academy’s tradition of do-ordie work practices and a similar culture in the profession, particularly among its most culturally ambitious members—with all the implications for work-life balance, health, and the perceived value of architects’ time—was indicted. but traditions die hard, bound up as they are with identity, and debates over such concerns and indictments have continued internationally to the present day.22 philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, who between them had experienced working at oma from 1996 to at least 2000, published in that latter year “oma at work,” an account of that experience. oswalt, editor of the journal arch+ from 1988 to 1994, evidently brought a critic’s eye to that endeavour. they describe and explicate in detail the processes of the office, and it is worth quoting these accounts at some length for comparison with yaneva’s observations and the more recent ex-employee reports online: an important precondition is that the majority of the employees are quite inexperienced and young. not only do they work unbelievably hard for relatively little money and thereby make it possible to pursue thousands of ideas, to try them out and reject them, which no client would ever want or be able to pay for, but more importantly, it is the naivety with which they approach the tasks they are set. ignorant of how the problem would normally be solved, they can experiment with a childlike lack of inhibitions and thus develop new ideas. […] rem’s instructions are mostly so vague, his presence over long periods only intermittent and his distance ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 169 ow en to the design team so great that some employees opine that he is not really a designer at all, it is his staff who produce the architecture. […] [but t]he distance between the team of designers and rem leads to great flexibility: at any time, the direction can be changed unexpectedly, and the more doggedly the design team sticks to a solution or a problem, the likelier it is that this will happen. the work of days or weeks can be discarded in the space of a minute without much discussion. […] [o]ther members of staff are occasionally drawn in at short notice. […] less in awe of that which has already been achieved, the staff who have been uninvolved until then foil the intentions of their colleagues, which makes it at the same time much easier to develop substantial new ideas. basically, almost any form of destabilization appears to be welcome. it is rather unlikely that the team that has begun a project takes it through to realization. it may happen that a team, having worked through the night and an interim presentation, comes into the office to find that the workplaces have been seized by colleagues and the team has to find new ones. the concept of private property does not exist in the office anyway: every drafting pen, every adhesive film, every geodesic triangle that you have with difficulty acquired for yourself can disappear again within days or hours. and it would not surprise anyone in the office if he or she were told that they had to fly that very day to hanoi for several days because of a project. one hundred per cent availability is implicitly demanded–24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with the exception of christmas. […] it can happen that just a few hours before a presentation or a deadline rem wants to change the design, the model, the drawings or collages. then arguments of time or costs are of no import, to the despair of the financial director and the curses of the staff who have to change everything at the last moment.23 as oswalt and hollwich suggest, these accounts describe, by comparison with conventional professional practices, a deliberately unstable and chaotic situation, one in which “human resources management” evidently occurs in part by placing staff and their design ideas in a quasi-darwinian struggle for recognition, with status, approval, and reliable communication and decision-making constantly undermined; the possibility of predatory internal competition apparently tacitly condoned. billable hours (those hours of work charged to the fee that the client has agreed to pay) are clearly far exceeded by actual hours expended and, from that conventional professional perspective, the financial viability of such an office is enabled only by the absence of overtime pay, an intense stigma attached to time-in-lieu (paid time off equivalent to unpaid overtime worked), and significantly below-par compensation for the majority of staff.24 drawn in, it seems, by the cachet of being known to have worked for oma, and by its apparent value—if not in monetary terms—in one’s portfolio and cv 170 isparchitecture.com (especially given koolhaas’s international renown and influence), young staff in particular appear to find themselves in an exploitative situation. mutinies, by the time that oswalt and hollwich are working there (and yaneva is about to undertake her observations), seem less likely, as some of the “voluntary prisoners”25 turn out to be the warders of their co-workers: in a passage of sharply ironic tone, oswalt and hollwich note that, “the office is characterized more by an american mentality than a european one: produce, criticize and don’t ask for reasons, don’t argue, show unlimited commitment, don’t expect any solidarity from your colleagues – don’t worry, be happy. it is not by chance that almost all the project leaders come from the usa.”26 yaneva cites oswalt and hollwich’s article in the making of a building, but takes pains to distinguish her intentions from theirs: “my aim is not to present the habits of the office and the general rules of their design philosophy […] but to make the reader hear the architects’ voices, to follow the reactions and discussions of architects, engineers, stage designers, cost evaluators, curators and artists, to see them draw, build models, negotiate the costs of a building, and design the newhitney.”27 resistance in her participant observations, yaneva adheres to latour’s exhortation to “follow the actors” (both human and non-human), and to describe rather than seek to explain, in order to observe “architecture in the making.” such an approach contrasts with recent investigations into attitudes in the discipline and profession to work and labour, regarding the fabrication of buildings but also regarding the production of design. these include the studies undertaken by peggy deamer, paolo tombesi et al.;28 by the artists’ activist group gulf labor with andrew ross on the exploitation of migrant labour produce, criticize and don’t ask for reasons, don’t argue, show unlimited commitment, don’t expect any solidarity from your colleagues – don’t worry, be happy. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 171 ow en for cultural projects in the gulf states;29 and by mabel wilson and others of the academic activist group who builds your architecture,30 who have argued that the conditions under which architecture is produced are an integral part of its ethical dimension. it might be asserted that such studies revisit marxist concerns characteristic of the 1970s, and indeed deamer’s edited collection the architect as worker opens its “foreword” with a quotation from marx distinguishing between mental and material labour. nonetheless, the contributors are at pains to identify the differences at play in our times: joan ockman, in that same “foreword,” acknowledges that: intellectual labor has become increasingly arduous and stressful today by virtue of the expansion of the workday to the 24/7 cycle, ‘flexible’ hiring and firing policies, insecurity with respect to healthcare and other social benefits, and– in the particular case of young, highly educated architects–low compensation and unpaid internships. […] these problems are compounded today in the context of a disorganized global ‘precariat’ that has to market its own skills as ‘entrepreneur of itself.’ 31 to these formulations we might add other dimensions of the neoliberal dispensation: the virtuous social roles ascribed to “creativity” as “innovation,” construed as bringing economic liberation to cities (through the creative class itself; the bilbao guggenheim, etc.) and individuals (liberated, by means of digital platforms, from the need of nannyemployer conditions such as benefits, unions, workplace rights) alike. and, indeed, in her online summary of made by oma, yaneva declares her intention to show “how innovation permeates design practice, how everyday techniques and workaday choices set new standards for buildings and urban phenomena.”32 in contrast, as manuel shvartzberg confirms, under that neoliberal dispensation, “in material terms, creativity is the measure by which workers will cannibalize themselves for the sake of the company – extreme work hours, no parallel commitments (love, friendship, community, etcetera).”33 oma’s location in this complex of concerns has in part to do with the firm’s status as an acknowledged generator of innovation in those terms (the seattle public library’s impact on library usage and the city’s economy, for example), and in part with its principals’ and former staff ’s status in the world of architectural education (koolhaas’s appointment at the harvard graduate school of design, for instance). if the university— in spite of the ongoing attempts to reconstruct it in the image of neoliberal values—is still expected by some to engage in challenges to the ideological conventions of its time, then the prominent architectural 172 isparchitecture.com practitioner-teacher might well be expected to use their affiliation with the academy not simply as a source of clients and junior staff, but rather as a venue to be openly reflexive about the conditions of their own professional practices. as dariel cobb observes: academics now need to do more: examine the labor rights of architecture workers and the labor practices of architecture offices within a larger social history. having personally experienced the unmitigated drudgery of long hours and low pay within a purportedly elite professional architecture setting, i think it’s time to move workers’ whispers and complaints from blogs and trade publications to the arena of sustained critical discourse. generations have passed during which such engagement would have been vilified, only to arrive at this ripe political moment for reexamination.34 with such initiatives in mind, could one suggest that an additional path of observation might have been undertaken in the ethnography of oma; namely, who builds your foam models? the methods of sisyphus a further objection might be raised, however, that many culturally ambitious architects have obtained from their staff, by one means or another, long hours at low pay, and that this is indicative of the low value placed by society at large upon architectural work. quality of ideas and execution takes more time (so the argument goes) and therefore costs more than most clients are willing to pay; thus, in this noble shared cause, the shortfall in income has to be passed on to staff. in other words, inadequacy of compensation is a condition forced upon the practice as a whole for those who set their ambitions high; and (by implication of this argument) the moral issue is shifted to the societal level. might this constitute a rationale for yaneva’s who builds your foam models? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 173 ow en overlooking of the labour issues at oma? it seems unlikely, given this invocation of latour in making: “society has to be composed, made up, constructed, established, maintained, and assembled. it is no longer to be taken as the hidden source of causality which could be mobilized so as to account for the existence and stability of some other action or behaviour.”35 oswalt and hollwich, though, in their laconic recounting of the particularities of oma’s design method, offer apologias for some of its more extreme demands: settling on a solution, or to put it more precisely, filtering out a solution from the pool of ideas, takes place very late; the alternatives are developed in parallel over a long period. the decision is postponed as long as possible, because it always implies the loss of other possibilities, limitation. […] when you are involved in this process, you can sometimes despair over the inefficiency and the absence of conventional professionalism. but in the end, you are obliged to concede that the non-linearity of the design process, the lack of routine or an established canon of methods or solutions are the basis for the quality of the office’s work. […] it is characteristic that rem assesses a project sceptically precisely when it has developed continuously without conflicts, crises and interruptions. […] it is the ambition of the office to structure the design process in such a way that the maximum number of influences, criteria and ideas are included. […] it is indicative that innumerable alternatives will also be investigated when an obviously brilliant idea has already been come up with: although rem had already had the basic idea at the beginning of the iit project [the mccormick tribune campus center of 1997-2003], all the same he kept the team investigating and developing completely different ideas for weeks. as none of the newly developed options was any more convincing, though, the idea that was there from the start was taken up again. this sisyphus-like way of proceeding may appear totally inefficient, but it proves to be extremely fruitful.36 rationalisation sisyphean indeed; yet as yaneva’s interviewees demonstrate, oma’s young staff nonetheless rationalise their intense and difficult working conditions. in the oma publication content (cited by yaneva as one of her guides to the office’s practice),37 staff chosen to collaborate with herzog and de meuron at their basel office comment ironically but disparagingly 174 isparchitecture.com on the more civilised and relaxed conditions they see there: “we don’t have time for long weekends, lunches, coffee breaks, and short workdays. we want to work hard, do things fast, have no free time, learn, and move on. in basel, people do not move on; they have good lives.”38 contrary to the studio culture studies’ alarm at inadequate rest and poor eating habits, the oma staff writing in content “dread the hour lunch break, during which we have to roam the boring streets of basel in search of expensive, tasteless food. thank god for globalism, mr wong and mcdonald’s.”39 angela mcrobbie, in her studies of the individualization of precarious labour in the culture industries, observes that: one of the most perplexing issues facing social scientists and policy-makers is the sheer enthusiasm on the part of young people for ‘creative’ jobs they know in advance will require long stints of working, often through the night, for relatively low pay. such enthusiasm is unabated even for those who are wellversed in the politics of precaritie, and this opens up important questions for the future of work. in particular, does this ethos confirm michel foucault’s oft-quoted insight that power works most effectively when it is tied to the promise of pleasure and selfreward, in this case through ‘creative enterprise’ or ‘passionate work’?40 in the example from content, there is an identification of the working conditions as a kind of rite of passage, indicative of the seriousness and substance of the endeavour. some might suggest that there is an internalization of abuse as a badge of courage, as a confirmation of the most serious commitment to the field; but also that this internalization constitutes an essential mechanism of social reproduction, a process by which a prized identity is handed down from one generation to another. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 175 ow en william wiles, reporting in 2011, assembles a further set of telling rationalisations by the firm’s managers themselves: oma’s breakneck internal pace comes at a cost – the company has an extremely high turnover of staff, as implied by the number of independent practices that spin out of it; high numbers of burnouts are also rumoured. incredibly, this high turnover is company policy. ‘we want to refresh and renew our organisation on a permanent basis,’ says [victor] van der chijs [managing partner]. ‘we really want every year at least 25 percent of our people to be new. and we want them to be young, bright people. the idea [is] [...] that we really need those people to feed in new ideas, make sure that oma stays relevant and really understands what is going on.’ many companies would balk at this kind of turnover. a high churn rate of staff is very costly–time is tied up training, knowledge and experience is continually leaking away, good practices can be hard to maintain. […] ‘most people know that when they join oma, that they work on average for three years here and after that, they leave,’ says van der chijs. ‘it’s already in their minds.’ […] looked at with these expectations in mind–people join oma knowing they are in for an intensive but short and valuable experience that will leave them ready to start up on their own–and the office starts to look more like an elite college than an architecture and research firm. ‘the environment that is generated from the projects here is an incredibly strong learning experience, a fast-track learning experience,’ says [project architect mark] veldman. ‘you learn much more here in a year than you would learn in a university.’ 41 in these passages, the upper echelons of oma invoke familiar neoliberal shibboleths as justifications of the office’s work practices: the casualisation of labour;42 employment as a springboard to personal entrepreneurship (every short-term employee is, regardless of their prior socio-economic status, potentially the next bjarke ingels, jeanne gang, or joshua princeramus); and the value of experience in the firm as a form of education (implicitly justifying low compensation). the nature of oma’s design method, in which many non-linear directions are explored and physicalmodel options generated—almost as if a process of emergence were being set in motion out of multiplicity—is evidently inextricably tied to high demands on low-cost labour (of which there has been a reliable supply, given the practice’s ties to academies). thus an understanding of oma’s approach to design would seem to necessitate attention to this relationship to labour. such a situation might even have been considered from the actor network theory (ant) perspective as worthy of study 176 isparchitecture.com as a controversy in itself: “design,” after all, “has a proactive power to incite public controversies over thorny issues and generate social effects.”43 but in the case of oma’s labour practices, these opportunities appear not to have been taken up. ethics and agency, critique and description why might this ethnographic study have overlooked or de-emphasised these aspects of human relations at oma? what are the constraints on this project of philosophical anthropology? is the latourian approach inherently unable to tackle such a topic, or are there affordances that could adjust its scope? variations in interpretations of that method’s assumptions suggest that it has versions that are more or less circumscribed. greater circumscription does not appear to result from an inherent limitation of pragmatist ethics per se, which after all seeks to adapt its practices on the basis of experience, unless one equates pragmatism in this instance with a cynical realism, in the sloterdijkian sense,44 on koolhaas’ part (a valid concern, given latour’s enthusiasm for sloterdijk as a philosopher of design).45 latour’s ethics, construed by gabriel hankins in the context of literature, occurs in the “nonmodern” condition, where nature, society and culture no longer exhibit the categorical distinctions presumed in the modern. “action,” observes hankins, “becomes distributed between actants [human and nonhuman] that coproduce the action rather than figured as a subject acting on its object.”46 he quotes latour: “an ‘actor’ in the hyphenated expression figure 4: wbya proposed revisions to aia code of ethics p.1 ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 177 ow en actor-network is not the source of an action but the moving target of a vast array of entities swarming towards it.”47 “a latourian account,” continues hankins, “remains uncertain as to location of agency.”48 such a situation, and the emphasis on description over explanation, has led to the charge for ant of descriptivism. whittle and spicer assert that: by producing descriptions of existing networks of actors in an apparently neutral, apolitical manner, ant actually reinforces the state of affairs that it describes. indeed, law (2003) recognizes the possibility that ant simply reproduces rather than challenges the hegemony of the networks they describe. […] ant remains indifferent about the specific means through which power is established (amsterdamska, 1990). for instance, coercion, corruption and intimidation are not distinguished on any normative basis from persuasion, negotiation and reward. […] ant brings with it a tendency to legitimize hegemonic power relations, ignore relations of oppression, and sidestep any normative assessment of existing organizational forms.49 in an essay published in 2004, latour famously asked, “why has critique run out of steam?”50 his purpose was to distinguish the methods he was propounding from those of critical theory, which he felt had fallen prey to popularization and misapplication. extending this position in a debate of 2011 with neil brenner and others over the methods of urban studies, ignacio farías emphasizes inquiry as ant’s “style of cognitive engagement,” as distinct from critique. he acknowledges brenner et al.’s charge that assemblage-based urban studies risk a “naïve positivism” and ideological affirmation of current conditions, but seeks to argue against that charge. “three methodological principles,” observes farías, “summarize [ant’s] commitment to the empirical: ‘follow the actors, forget the contexts’, ‘describe, don’t explain’ and ‘do not switch conceptual repertoires when you describe’.”51 the world is not all in, […] it is in the making. […] the most obvious consequence of this ontology is that it involves accounting for all actual entities involved in such processes of construction, whether human or nonhuman, their interactions and transformations. the most important consequence […] is that the notion of assemblage involves no outside, no exteriority. […] assemblages are self-contained processes of heterogeneous associations calling for a positive description of their becoming, not external explanations.52 here, journalist sander pleij’s interviews in his 2014 article “who is rem koolhaas” affirm the connections. koolhaas remarks: “but being critical is the basis of it all, i think that in the last 25 years the critical from outside 178 isparchitecture.com is no longer existent. just like žižek, latour and all those other ones are declaring. you can’t look at it from the outside.”53 farías, however, continues: “precisely because asymmetry is not presumed and explained structurally or contextually, the study of urban assemblages involves unveiling the actual practices, processes, sociomaterial orderings, reproducing asymmetries in the distribution of resources, of power and of agency capacities, opening up blackboxed arrangements.”54 by contrast with farías’ qualification, yaneva asserts that her “intentions were humble: i did not try to explain the oma practice or koolhaas’s approach […] [i had] the pure purpose of generating infra-reflexive descriptions of invention which would keep the freshness of design experiences […] far from the reach of the prevailing meta-reflexive theories of design. […] i simply described various design practices without sticking to references outside architecture.”55 architectural “labour in the making”: conclusions and openings in her “introduction” to the making of a building, yaneva notes that “i have deliberately chosen not to discuss koolhaas’s early works and his theoretical and philosophical thinking […] as this can bias my description of the design process at oma.”56 this is in keeping with yaneva’s interpretation of the descriptive approach, but carries certain risks. in its 1978 project for the extension of the dutch parliament in the hague, oma had proposed a generously equipped chamber for what they saw as the characteristic “orgies of speech” of dutch politics, but down the hall had also provided a “smoke-filled room”—miesian in its aesthetic— where the actual decisions would be made. the ironic tone of this contrast occurs innumerable times in oma’s work, suggestive of koolhaas’s “why has critique run out of steam?” “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 179 ow en cynical realism about transparency and democracy and, later, of his equivocal embrace of authoritarian clients (for example, china’s cctv). in the context of this paper, metaphorically the hague parliament’s debating chamber embodies the public presentation of oma’s intentions and values; the smoke-filled room, its actual internal practices. in the latter we find the “black-boxed arrangements” of farías’s analysis. in this instance, has the smoke prevented the black box of labour ethics from being opened up? “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move,” wrote latour and yaneva in 2008; for all the benefits of this idea, one would not want to think that the gun was adding to the smoke in the metaphorical room. oma, after all, in its daily practices had been able to implement, by the early 2000s, the neoliberal corporation’s wildest dreams: an unending supply of short-term contract labour, entirely flexible, eager to work up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week for minimal fixed salary, self-unorganised and self-policing, readily pitched into predatory competition, abnegating any expectations of structured career advancement, enthusiastic about unrelenting stress as the normal state of affairs, with work-life balance a non-issue, and conveniently departing when burnt out, before the right to an unlimited contract would kick in. are not the staff ’s acceptance of this situation—its relationship to their sense of disciplinary belonging and “chops”—and its fundamental role in oma’s disciplinary reputation and success also vital circulating components of the actor network in play? there may be at least four reasons that these studies of oma do not tackle the issues of architectural “labour in the making.” first, in the ethnographic project, the studies may have encountered a twin hazard for anthropologists: becoming too close to their subjects and yet, in other respects, not close enough. there is a sense of identification with the practice, and not only through the daily intimacy with their studio activities and thoughts: the design of the book made by oma (presumably the work of an actor network of which the author was a part) also pays a conspicuous homage, in its use of a sequence of quasi-cinematic images on its opening pages, to those of smlxl, the 1995 bible of oma’s practice to that date. latour was a contributor to the 2006 domus d’autore volume on “amo post-occupancy,” edited by koolhaas and amo, the research arm of oma.57 oma was a participant in the 2005 exhibition “making things public,” curated by latour (with peter weibel) at the zkm karlsruhe, and latour has been an apologist, enthusiast, and kindred intellectual spirit for koolhaas in interviews.58 farías and wilkie, in their introduction to studio studies, make a series of observations relevant to the larger implications of this first reason and 180 isparchitecture.com those that follow. the intimacy of studio life, they assert, means that ethnographers “almost inevitably cannot restrain themselves from becoming ‘native’ members of studio collectives and thus actively involved in creation processes.”59 we may observe that the countervailing need to “come home” periodically is thus made more difficult, in spite of—or perhaps also because of—the fact that the researcher’s grant, academic contract, or salary enables them to maintain a certain immunity to the coercions of studio employment. if we may propose here a possible extension of the oma study, what might be needed is a periodic process of more sustained auto-ethnographic reflection on the researcher’s own enthusiasm for the culture of the studio. second, in the methodological project, there is the resistance to “external” perspectives and values, in which labour ethics may have been implicitly and a priori defined as outside. yaneva takes pains, particularly in the making of a building, to distinguish her pragmatist approach from that of critical sociology and theory, which would be “to mobilize and evoke ideas from outside architecture to interpret design and reveal a myriad of hidden meanings and mechanisms of architectural practices.”60 here, farías and wilkie’s remarks indicate that this resistance is indeed characteristic of the larger latourian and ant projects. in their literature review, farías and wilkie touch on the issue of labour, but appear to distance their research program from it, both as a concern of “critical” scholars and as a condition (they imply) not manifested in the day-to-day practices of the studio itself: in examining the political economy of creative labour, critical scholars (hesmondhalgh and baker 2010) have pointed to the market and institutional arrangements that allow firms in the media and cultural sector to extract the surplus value of creative work, such as exploiting unpaid labour time. […] ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 181 ow en as such, the social and cultural sciences overlook the very settings where the products of the creative industries are brought into being by focusing on the … inter-institutional conditions in which creativity is achieved.61 earlier sociologists such as richard petersons, pierre bourdieu and howard becker dwelt, farías and wilkie note, on the “broader’ social, industrial and institutional contexts” of cultural production. against this approach, they invoke antoine hennion’s charge that it “only attempted the study of milieu, professions, institutions, markets, policies–that is, everything ‘around’ the object itself.”62 this categorical exclusion of “institutional contexts” from studio studies63 seems, however, at odds with farías’ own earlier confidence (cited above) that ant-derived methods do enable foregrounding of “the asymmetries of distribution […] of power and of agency capacities [and] opening up black-boxed arrangements,” which seem entirely worthy goals.64 third, in the epistemological project, there is an evident parallel exclusion of the context of the socialization of architects into generationally reproductive labour practices. yet as yaneva herself observes, “for me, the ‘apprentice’ in architecture […] [t]he rhythm of the office tamed me at the end to the extent that i became ‘trained by the field’ and began, up to a certain point, to think and act like an architect.”65 but “[t]he protagonists of my story were always quicker than me […] and always spent more time working overnight.”66 even so, “[my] routine of interview and observations followed by transcription was loading my fieldwork weeks in such an intensive way that i was literally living in the office.”67 thus in her own “apprenticeship,” yaneva herself reproduces, albeit initially by choice, the labour practices of her subjects. her overall approach is “inspired by william james’s project of radical empiricism. […] empirical would mean to be faithful to what is given to experience and the numerous connections that are revealed in it. […] such an approach to architecture consists in investigating the architectural culture and the practices of designers rather than their theories and their ideologies.”68 however, reflexive analysis of that experienced process of reproduction does not appear to figure in this empirical investigation of oma’s culture of “voluntary prisoners of architecture” and the connections potentially revealed within. could we then imagine the project being extended such that the researcher arranges to “follow the actors” further, to accompany the staff home (when they do go home); when they quit, are terminated or their contracts expire; or when they attempt to deal with the rest of life? farías and wilkie acknowledge, after all, that in the laboratory studies that they take as initial inspiration for studio ethnography, “equal attention 182 isparchitecture.com is paid to all the activities undertaken by scientists and lab technicians, whether routine informal talk, strategic career decisions, or fact-making efforts. all such practices are considered part of knowledgemaking processes.”69 fourth, in the ontological project,70 the drive to ascribe agency to non-human actors (in this case, the blue foam models) may diminish perception of the agency of human actors. the junior staff, though identified in the “acknowledgements” of the making of a building, appear by first name only in the “short stories” that form the chapters of made by oma (an exemplification of latour’s early advocacy of story-telling as an alternative to explanation); some of the female architectural staff are there described as “girls”; and design is presented as a form of play that generates its own rewards. this can have the unfortunate effect of a kind of infantilisation of those most affected by the firm’s working conditions. again, the broad ambition to describe “distributed creation processes” in the studio ensemble is shared by others coming from a similar intellectual formation: farías and wilkie assert that “the notion of studio life […] designates a vitality: a generative capacity that inheres in the human-material arrangements and circulations taking place in studios and converging in the creation of new cultural artefacts.”71 such a vitalist narrative of creativity can sometimes obscure, though, the possibility that the studio organism is self-devouring. “a kind of infantilisation of those most affected by the firm’s working conditions” “ ” acknowledgements i thank the organizers of the original conference “the human in architecture and philosophy” for the invaluable opportunity to develop this paper in the context of that event, and for their patience; and the editors, reviewers and my fellow conference participants for their constructive comments. i also thank my graduate research assistants bahareh javadi and particularly kekeli dawes and jonathan house for their enthusiastic contributions to the primary documentary research for this paper. endnotes [1] observations by the author. [2] “oma*amo architecture reviews,” glassdoor, https:// www.glassdoor.com/reviews/oma-amo-architecturereviews-e429120.htm, accessed january 31, 2016. from an informal survey of employee reviews published on glassdoor of practices such as zaha hadid architects, shop, foster + partners, bjarke ingels group, heatherwick, ds+a, mecanoo, mvrdv, asymptote, steven holl, gehry partners, morphosis, jean nouvel, etc. recurring complaints include long hours, chronic understaffing of projects, poor pay, unpaid overtime, poor work-life balance, inadequate professional development or advancement opportunities, junior staff treated as replaceable, limited technical depth among the long-term staff, predatory internal competition promoted by the firm’s culture, unskilled and bullying but inequitably rewarded management. [3] see, for example, “migrant workers’ rights on saadiyat island in the united arab emirates,” human rights watch, published 2015, accessed february 18, 2015, hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/uae0215_ foruploadr.pdf. see also “what can architects do about workers’ rights in the gulf?,” icon, published march 26, 2015, accessed may 21, 2015, iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/11715-what. [4] see, for example, bruno latour, “a cautious prometheus? a few steps toward a philosophy of design (with special attention to peter sloterdijk),” keynote lecture for the networks of design meeting of the design history society, falmouth, cornwall, september 3, 2008, http://www. bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/112-design-cornwall-gb.pdf. [5] ariane lourie harrison, “latour and yaneva: an ant’s view of architecture,” in architectural theories of the environment: posthuman territories, ed. harrison (new york: routledge, 2013), 107-8. 184 isparchitecture.com [6] bruno latour and albena yaneva, “‘give me a gun and i will make all buildings move’: an ant’s view of architecture,” in explorations in architecture: teaching, design, research, ed. reto geiser (basel: birkhäuser, 2008), 86. [7] latour, “a cautious prometheus?,” 13. [8] latour and yaneva, “‘give me a gun,’” 80. [9] ibid., 86-88. [10] albena yaneva, made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (rotterdam: 010, 2009), 104. indeed, latour comments disparagingly on architectural theory in general in rania ghosn, el hadi jazairy, and stephen ramos, “the space of controversies: an interview with bruno latour,” new geographies 0 (cambridge, ma: harvard gsd, 2008), 122–135. [11] olga amsterdamska, “surely you are joking, monsieur latour!,” science, technology, and human values 15, 4 (autumn 1990), 495-504; sal restivo, “politics of latour,” review essay, organization and environment 8, 1 (march 2005), 111-115. [12] yaneva, made by oma, 72. [13] yaneva, made by oma, 43. [14] albena yaneva, the making of a building: a pragmatist approach to architecture (bern: peter lang, 2009), 38. [15] ibid. [16] yaneva, made by oma, 89. [17] yaneva, made by oma, 58. [18] yaneva, made by oma, 84-85. [19] thomas fisher, “patterns of exploitation,” progressive architecture (may 1991), 9. [20] patrick monaghan, “the ‘insane little bubble of nonreality’ that is life for architecture students,” the chronicle of higher education (june 2001); and jody temkin, “for would-be architects, grad school like boot camp,” the chicago tribune, january 6, 2002. [21] aaron koch et al., the redesign of studio culture: a report of the aias studio culture task force (washington, dc: american institute of architecture students, 2002). [22] see, for example, “mental health reports 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16,” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 185 ow en graduate architecture landscape and design student union, university of toronto, http://www.galdsu.ca/mental-health-report-2013-2014. see also, richard waite and ella braidwood, “mental health problems exposed by aj student survey 2016,” architects’ journal 243, 16 (july 28, 2016), n.p. see also, leah sottile, “the aec industry’s deadly problem,” architecture, august 31, 2016. [23] philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, “oma at work,” trans. fiona greenwood, archis 7 (1998), n.p. also available at philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, “oma at work,” trans. fiona greenwood, volume project, http://volumeproject.org/oma-at-work/. also available at philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, “oma at work,” trans. fiona greenwood, cloud-cuckoo-land, http://www.cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/wolke/ eng/subjects/991/oswalt/oswalt.html. [24] and perhaps, given the hindsight now available, koolhaas’s reported semi-retirement to switzerland; which would tend to confirm that the strictures of inadequate fees have not been evenly distributed across the hierarchy of the office. [25] the phrase is koolhaas’s, from his widely published architectural association student thesis project exodus. see rem koolhaas and elia zenghelis, “exodus: or the voluntary prisoners of architecture,” the white slave, 1972, https://thewhiteslave.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/ exodus-or-the-voluntary-prisoners-of-architecture/#jp-carousel-333. [26] oswalt and hollwich, “oma at work,” n.p. [27] yaneva, the making of a building, 24. [28] peggy deamer, ed., the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design (london: bloomsbury academic, 2015). [29] andrew ross, ed. [for gulf labor], the gulf: high culture/hard labor (new york: or books, 2015). [30] who builds your architecture?, http://whobuilds.org/. [31] joan ockman, “foreword”, in the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design, ed. deamer (london: bloomsbury academic, 2015), xxi-xxii. [32] albena yaneva, “abstract,” for made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (rotterdam: 010, 2009), the university of manchester library, available at https://www.escholar.manchester. ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:87450. [33] manuel schvartzberg, “foucault’s ‘environmental’ power: architecture 186 isparchitecture.com and neoliberal subjectivization,” in the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design, ed. deamer (london: bloomsbury academic, 2015), 189-90. [34] dariel cobb, “dispatches from mit: becoming political,” in asymmetric labors: the economy of architecture in theory and practice, eds. aaron cayer, peggy deamer et al. (brooklyn, ny: the architecture lobby, 2016), 147. [35] yaneva, the making of a building, 198 n. 4, from bruno latour, “when things strike back: a possible contribution of science studies to the social sciences,” british journal of sociology 51, 105-23. [36] oswalt and hollwich, “oma at work,” n.p. [37] yaneva, the making of a building, 32 n. 34. [38] fenna haakma wagenaar, “astorology: protect us from what we want,” in content, ed. rem koolhaas et al. (köln: taschen, 2004), 204. [39] ibid. [40] angela mcrobbie, “is passionate work a neoliberal delusion?,” transformation, published april 22, 2015, accessed july 19, 2016, https:// www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/angela-mcrobbie/is-passionatework-neoliberal-delusion. see also angela mcrobbie, be creative: making a living in the new culture industries (london: polity press, 2015). [41] william wiles, “inside oma,” icon, published september 30, 2011, https://www.iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/9554-inside-oma. [42] in dutch employment law, three years has been the maximum total duration of fixed-term employment contracts, beyond which further employment would automatically be for an unlimited term. see expat survival guide 2014 (haarlem: expatica, 2013), 60. [43] yaneva, the making of a building, 199. but see also albena yaneva, mapping controversies in architecture (farnham, uk: ashgate, 2012). [44] see kazys varnelis, “‘we cannot not know history’: philip johnson’s politics and cynical survival,” journal of architectural education 49:2 (november 1995), 92-104. as varnelis observes, “the modern cynic understands what false consciousness is, sloterdijk explains, but uses that knowledge to pull a fast one. acting fundamentally in their own self-interest, cynics ‘see to it that they are not taken for suckers.’” quotation from peter sloterdijk, critique of cynical reason (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1987), 5, quoted in varnelis, “‘we cannot not know history,’” 101. [45] see latour, “a cautious prometheus?” see also bruno latour, “spheres ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 187 ow en and networks: two ways to interpret globalization,” harvard design magazine 30 (spring/summer 2009), 138-44. [46] gabriel hankins, “the objects of ethics: rilke and woolf with latour,” twentieth-century literature 61:3 (september 2015), 333. [47] ibid. [48] ibid. latour, ever the agile guru in his “on recalling ant” essay of 1999, acknowledged concerns about moral issues, while not appearing to respond fully to them. see bruno latour, “on recalling ant,” in actornetwork theory and after, eds. j. law and j. hassard (oxford: blackwell, 1999), 15-25. [49] andrea whittle and andré spicer, “is actor network theory critique?,” organization studies 29:04 (2008), 622-623. [50] bruno latour, “why has critique run out of steam? from matters of fact to matters of concern,” critical inquiry 30 (winter 2004), 225-248. [51] ignacio farías, “the politics of urban assemblages,” city 15:3-4 (june-august 2011), 367. [52] farías, “the politics of urban assemblages,” 369-70. [53] sander pleij, “i hate being an architect,” medium, published june 8, 2014, accessed december 1, 2015, https://medium.com/@pleij/i-hatebeing-an-architect-7c42abbcd6d#.b7v4rvms2. [54] farías, “the politics of urban assemblages,” 369-370. [55] yaneva, made by oma, 100-101. [56] yaneva, the making of a building, 26 n. 29. [57] rem koolhaas and amo, “amo post-occupancy,” domus d’autore series, 2006. [58] maría j. prieto and elise s. youn, “interview with bruno latour: decoding the collective experiment,” agglutinations, published july 5, 2004, accessed october 30, 2016, http://agglutinations.com/archives/000040. html. [59] ignacio farías and alex wilkie, “studio studies: notes for a research program,” studio studies: operations, topologies, displacements (abingdon: routledge, 2015), 9. [60] yaneva, the making of a building, 25-26. [61] farías and wilkie, “studio studies,” 3. the internal reference is to david hesmondhalgh and sarah baker, creative labour: media work in three 188 isparchitecture.com cultural industries (abingdon, oxon.: routledge, 2010). [62] antoine hennion, “an intermediary between production and consumption: the producer of popular music,” science, technology and human values 14:4 (1989), 401, cited in farías and wilkie, “studio studies.” [63] as a further example, the ethnographic studies by sophie houdart of image production in the architectural studio of kengo kuma also appear to eschew the topic of labour conditions. see sophie houdart, “copying, cutting and pasting social spheres: computer designers’ participation in architectural projects,” science studies 21:1 (2008), 47-63. [64] sophie houdart, “multiple ways of being real: the representations in perspective in the architectural project,” land 46 (2006), 107-122. [65] yaneva, the making of a building, 34-35. [66] ibid. [67] ibid. [68] ibid., 196-197. [69] farías and wilkie, “studio studies,” 4. as a further possibility for future research, one might also propose a comparative ethnographic study of at least herzog & de meuron’s practice, whose design techniques have resembled oma’s (including blue foam models), but whose working environment is seen—at least by their oma collaborators in content—as quite different. [70] here i refer to the latourian concern, in propounding the notion of the complex and contested thing, to move beyond distinctions between objective and subjective agencies in order to acknowledge the active role of inanimate entities in actor networks. see also, for a more extended discussion of the topic, pauline lefebvre, “from autonomy to pragmatism: objects made moral,” architecturephilosophy 2:1 (2016), 23-37. [71] farías and wilkie, “studio studies,” 6. vittorio de sicca’s il tetto (1956), an artful cinematographic exercise in neo-realist style, centers on one couple’s quest to find a home in post-war rome. the second half of the film sees penniless luisa and natale plan the completion of a house of sorts. the city regulations allow people to secure their right to a parcel of land and a small building if they manage to construct the latter without being stopped by the authorities. the completion of the house is to be secretive and realized overnight— the title of the movie refers to one of the features required for the building to be legally considered as completed, and thus occupiable: four walls, a door, and a tetto¸ a roof. at dawn, policemen find the newly erected shack, luisa and natale anxiously hiding within. the agents inspect it, walking around its perimeter. they palpate its block walls in a methodic way. they knock vigorously on the door, which they then try to open, without success—it is sturdily hinged and fastened. i won’t spoil the film’s ending, suffice it to highlight a simple intuition here at play: in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the audience, these four walls, door, and roof are the necessary features of a house. we recognize the space of the house bounded within these closed, basic elements. we recognize it as the space of the private, where inhabitants’ bodies are “sheltered” and safe. this characterization is time and again set in opposition (or patent complementarity) with the space of the public. built public spaces evoke imaginaries of collectivity and seamlessness; of civicism and openness. built private spaces evoke imaginaries of control and identifiable boundaries, of refuge, individuality and sustenance.1 property, necessity and housing. reconsidering the situated right to a place to be erika brandl ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 84 br a n dl i have detailed il tetto’s dwelling as fastened, closed and in many ways, impenetrable. one ought not to penetrate this little portion of city space, as it is now walled off and occupied. regardless of nearby activities, events, gatherings, infrastructures—that which lies behind these walls is not to be touched. this filmic set-up hints at an established legal and sociocultural principle. there exists an architectural inside and outside. both inside and outside spaces operate according to a given set of rules. luisa and natale’s shack represents the paradigmatic inside space of the home. as such, we attribute to it the sacredness of private property. “that which lies behind these walls is not to be touched”—in most cultures, the claim is gospel.2 the walls’ outside can be declined in many degrees of publicness, and thus operate according to varying rules and laws. yet, as i will demonstrate in this article, the architecture of private property, with a marked focus on the architecture of dwellings, arises as existentially significant because of the functions which it enables and protects. commonplace definitions of what constitutes a good “dwelling” or “house” allude to human necessity, but ultimately fall short of providing us with true housing adequacy. this, i posit, is because they limit their scope to physical features (walls, windows, floors, doors, roofs) and their delimitation of a private inside, opposed to a public outside. they do so, however, without clarifying those very essential human functions. to be sure, housing architectures are constituted of basic, physical elements; they allow for a form of domestic life which can vittorio de sica, il tetto (1956) 85 isparchitecture.com hardly take place in streets, parks and urban squares. why is this the case? why must something be done inside and not outside the house? in this article, i return to the seminal works of jeremy waldron and richard epstein in order to clarify what is at stake with the principles of adequacy and property which oversee one’s life in dwelling. i comment on the functions of publicly and privately built infrastructures, considering notions of individual freedom and flourishing. “why must something be done inside and not outside the house?” is another way of asking “why are dwellings so necessary to us?”—returning to this straightforward interrogation, and examining it in light of a rightsbased tradition of political philosophy, allows for an improved understanding of contemporary architectural challenges. in the concluding part of my examination, i make use of different scenarios to highlight the tension following from stringent boundaries in societies where individuals’ right to adequate dwelling is not fulfilled. in particular, i recuperate alejandra mancilla’s cosmopolitanist reasoning on the old right of necessity and apply it explicitly to urban situations, where public and private boundaries order the sustenance of human life. this leads to new considerations on the policing of urban spaces, and on the duties of states in ensuring the fulfillment of the right to adequate dwelling (or right to housing). before i start this investigation, i need to clarify the important difference between the “right to housing” and “housing rights.” the former term refers to a moral right. it is a justificatory argument, a condition which relates to licit individual interests, and which is informed by sociocultural norms or standards. the latter term refers to a legal right, to conditions granted by statutes. housing rights are concerned with statutory features, or law entitlements, such as those on which luisa and natale depended. in other words, housing rights will describe what provisions might be (content ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 86 br a n dl definition, legality), but not why they ought to be (content justification, morality). this article focusses on the normative framework, examining implications and features of a right to adequate dwelling infrastructures, and exploring the question on what grounds such a right performs. or simply put, why it exists, and what should be its content in terms of legal protections and provisions. the same conceptual logic applies to the canon “right to the city”, which links back to moral and justificatory arguments. finally, while the term “housing” evokes a formal specificity that the term “dwelling” fittingly avoids, i use both words interchangeably. political and activist cultures which mobilize around this issue have, for the most part, adopted the expression “right to housing.” so, i maintain a connection with these cultures by recuperating it literally in my text. on individuals’ situated freedom to be i first turn to legal philosopher jeremy waldron. his ‘homelessness and the issue of freedom’ (1991) remains to this day one of the most rigorous and spirited philosophical studies of the issue of housing. this account has led prominent scholars to revise their libertarian position on the existence of a human right to an adequate dwelling.3 as the text deals with the nature of vagrancy and public and private ownership, it reveals the complexity of the occupation of space in cities, as well as the impact of housing inadequacy on human dignity, welfare and liberty. jeremy waldron begins by reminding the reader of the importance to revise the liberal discourse surrounding an (ever more limited) individual right to be in a place. in a manner which echoes that of famed philosophers of welfare rights, he expresses his frustrations at the lofty-sounding but ultimately inconsistent commitments of liberal theorists, which are here accused of glossing over the questions raised by the absence or the gross inadequacy of housing, and in particular by homelessness. these questions relate to the “most basic principles of liberty”, and so ought to preoccupy us every bit as much as more familiar worries about torture, the suppression of dissent, and other violations of human rights.4 waldron proceeds to detail people’s situated nature, which brings him to call for a complete requalification of what is understood as dignified—adequate—occupations of spaces, be they private or public. what, then, is implied by people’s situated nature? in brief, all actions must be situated. this follows from the simple fact that “everything that is done has to be done somewhere.”5 as embodied beings, we are always located. we are not free to perform an act unless there is some place we are free to perform it in. such statements are banal, but to waldron they hint at the possibility of speaking of housing as one of the most significant goods, if not “the most significant.”6 or, to rephrase 87 isparchitecture.com this in the evocative language of capability, they hint at the possibility of speaking of housing as one of the most significant enablers of essential human functions. rights are interrelated and interdependent. the right to a safe, situated place corresponds to the freedom of exercise of all other rights. the idea at play for waldron is that an individual who has no site of dwelling is completely and at all times at the mercy of others. crucially, and i will return to this idea, there is no place governed by private property rules or increasingly stringent public property rules where she is allowed to be and do at will. she cannot make use of her most basic functionings as she basically has no right to be anywhere. if our conceptions of human freedom, welfare or autonomy are to relate to a person’s most vital interests and functions, we can see how the situated nature of individuals points at the special importance of domestic architecture in relation to the exercise of most basic capabilities. now, there may not seem anything “particularly autonomous or self-assertive or civically republican or ethically ennobling about sleeping or cooking or urinating.”7 these are actions and activities that we rarely find referenced in philosophical treaties or doctrines on space. still, it very much matters when people are not free to perform such actions. maybe we think that sleeping and excreting aren’t dignified actions, but we can nevertheless agree that there is something profoundly, inherently undignified about preventing someone from performing these actions. if a person needs to urinate, what she needs above all as a dignified person is the “freedom to do so in privacy and relative independence of the arbitrary will of anyone else.”8 waldron wants his readers to realize that the access to an adequate dwelling literally corresponds to the freedom to be in some delimitated, physical place—at least one place—to undertake basic human functions. remember that if we are not at liberty to undertake these basic who has no site of dwelling is completely and at all times at the mercy of others. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 88 br a n dl activities, we are not, properly stated, able to live at all. consequently, impairment of normal functioning through housing inadequacy constitutes a fundamental injustice: a harmful restriction on one’s capabilities, on her individual freedom and on individual opportunity related to our “normal, species-typical” opportunity range.9 or, to put it plainly, impairment of normal functioning through housing inadequacy constitutes a severe right violation. let me shortly return to il tetto. when i spoke of luisa and natale’s little shack, i associated it with commonplace imaginaries of control and identifiable boundaries, with notions of refuge and individuality. this ought to be emphasized, the existential importance of one’s dwelling goes beyond the provision of life-sustaining material equipment. it must also provide for security of possession and tranquility. walls of houses shall not be trespassed, windows shall not be shattered, nor shall doors be forced open. what is found inside one’s house, bodies, objects or resources, must be shielded for this house to be deemed adequate. the haven that our young italian couple hurriedly erected overnight provides them with tools of subsistence, but also with the abovementioned security of possession and tranquility. these provisions are equally important and interconnected. they jointly participate in enabling individuals’ basic functions. interestingly, one key aspect of the institution of private property is shown here. as an institution, property is a salutary social arrangement which ensures a more functional, safe and peaceful life with others.10 private property has been broadly celebrated as that which can vittorio de sica, il tetto (1956) 89 isparchitecture.com guarantee independence by providing the material basis for self-reliance, as well as that which can secure a space free from the arbitrary power of other individuals (a critical form of self-defense against outer domination or abuse). and it is no coincidence that the latter feature recalls waldron’s portrayal of persons without dwelling as “completely and at all times at the mercy of others,” and needing the “freedom, privacy and relative independence of the arbitrary will of anyone else.” to be housed holds an existential significance. as they work to guarantee a certain level of security and the satisfaction of our basic needs, we accept and respect property arrangements.11 these arrangements are formalized as the built infrastructure of villages, towns and cities. in ‘property and necessity’ (1990), richard a. epstein confirms these advantages, when he discusses the “powerful,” “wonderful idea” of private property as a legal and sociocultural model.12 while he warns his readership that such a model cannot define a complete state of affairs between individuals, and that it must allow for holdouts, epstein demonstrates the beneficial effects of these property rights in terms of personal freedom, welfare, and skill development. as new dwellers, luisa and natale can now enjoy the institutionalized protection of their physical person and possessions. they can rest assured, and so, hope to flourish. life-sustaining appropriateness of public and private architectures, with remarks on houses in light of these security-related features of property, natural interrogations arise. is it an unreasonable assumption to equate the infrastructure which allows for basic human activities with the architecture of housing? what are the different relations of property which might bring safety and tranquility about? can individuals not achieve subsistence and security of possession in other built environments? are public spaces really not fit for sustaining such bodily life and ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 90 br a n dl development? after all, waldron’s ‘homelessness and the issue of freedom’ presents a conceptual defense of one’s right to a place, not a house. it first looks like that those essential actions and activities which we carry on in our home could simply be carried on elsewhere. this greatly diminishes the significance of dwelling adequacy in a rights perspective, as individuals who are not properly housed are at liberty to undertake these important actions elsewhere. such a refutation has been prompted against homeless individuals and anti-homelessness activists when they invoke the human right to a house. the reply goes along the line that being housed is not the only condition or space to undertake situated acts like cooking, sleeping, showering, and so on. under this view, a defense of housing-related bodily considerations simply proves the importance of our individual right to some kind of place—this doesn’t mean that this place should be a house. it might be, indeed, a public space, like a municipal restroom, a street bench or a subway platform. it could be an underpass, a free urban camping, a gazebo in the town hall’s gardens. to homeless individuals, these sites are accessible on account of their outer, open-air situation. this simple insight reminds us of where we began. there exists an architectural inside and outside; both inside and outside spaces operate according to a given set of rules—a bundle of property laws. a stringent set of rules protects architectural “insides” (houses, but also schools, banks, shops) and their occupants in ways that allow them to safely undertake various life-enabling doings. if public spaces are to be understood as the negative of buildings, or architectural “outsides,” a different set of rules is enforced.13 what’s more, these very rules often tend to work against the realization and protection of individual, essential functions. admittedly, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the current, severe forms of policing one’s actions in public places. this phenomenon is observable in cities across the global north and south.14 a large number of laws prohibit behaviors that we have identified as necessary to the accomplishment of basic human activities. think of barbecuing in a city park (one must eat), sleeping overnight in a bus shelter (one must sleep), bathing in a retention basin (one must wash) or urinating in the street (one must excrete). we are forbidden to carry out these acts in many public sites. the rules regulating what one is free to do in such sites frequently turn out to be as stringent and exclusive as those exerted by private property owners. this puts individuals back in a position where they have to ask for permission (from public authorities) to undertake the basic functions that make life possible, thereby violating their personal freedom to do so. so, the right to undertake these basic functions seems to demand more than the right to be in a public space, or any space. it implies the possibility 91 isparchitecture.com of occupying an architectural “inside.” now, there exists instances of outer, open-air sites where propertyless individuals are allowed to undertake basic, bodily actions and activities. think for a start of the wide outdoors of norway or sweden, where a long-established allemannsretten (right to roam) ensures everyone’s access to the resources and space of the wilderness. though i focus here on villages, towns and cities; defining public spaces as the negative of built infrastructure does suppose a minimum concentration of buildings. architectural traditions of public restrooms (singapore leads by example) are still present in several urban centers. so are municipal washbasins (portuguese lavatórios públicos, among others) and drinking fountains (see the cochabamba public water facilities, established after the activist pressure of the bolivian coordinadora para la defensa del agua y de la vida). in north africa, communal bread ovens, an institution of their own, guarantee one’s possibility to bake. long iftar (fast-breaking) tables are deployed in the streets of many near and middle eastern cities. such formal typologies still stand, but in diminished numbers. since the modernization and privatization of household equipment, many of them were effectively dismantled and abandoned, and refashioned inside the domestic space.15 stricter policing of streets, squares or urban parks ensued: law infringements and displays of socalled inappropriate behavior in common urban environments are known to be disciplined with hefty fines. it appears that, for a critical number of extant (homeless) individuals, their right to carry out basic bodily functions does necessitate more than the right to be in a public space, thus pointing to the occupation of an architectural “inside.” but should these “insides” be de facto houses? i argue that they should. the aforesaid principles of security of possession and tranquility are hardly ensured in drop-in shelters, charity dormitories, and other public refuges, where permanent defining public spaces as the negative of built infrastructure does suppose a minimum concentration of buildings. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 92 br a n dl occupancy and object storage are, to a large extent, proscribed. without sturdy dividing walls, safe storage, padlocks or the likes, one lacks the privacy and the autonomy of dignified life, and is left in a position of vulnerability.16 we already know that lacking a permanent house already means to expose one’s body to numerous threats and deprivations, which incapacitate homeless individuals in ways that prevent them to lead a decent or minimally-good existence (even less a flourishing one). the straightforward value of our reflection on commonplace imaginaries of control and identifiable boundaries lies in showing us that even in cases where their bodies are sheltered within walls and under roofs, people remain critically incapacitated. as private architectural “insides”, houses participate in good mental health as much as in good physical one. without these dimensions of security, tranquility, intimacy, and so on, public shelters can’t be places where one develops and makes good use of her basic functions. if a situated place to be doesn’t provide us with the freedom, privacy and relative independence from the arbitrary will of anyone else, it remains deeply inadequate. recalling living out in the streets or in temporary shelters, many individuals spoke of a feeling that they didn’t (have the capability to) have a life worth living, as if their individual resilience had derived from solid walls which were no longer.17 vittorio de sicca’s dramatic script plays on this idea that, as new “homeowners,” luisa and natale can truly begin to live. in a few words, we need here to consider the different modes of ownership—or, to formulate it in an epsteinian manner, the different relations of property, which enable the vittorio de sica, il tetto (1956) 93 isparchitecture.com good exercise of people’s most basic activities. i follow un-habitat, the united nations human settlements program for human settlements and sustainable urban development, in identifying “secure tenure” as the important feature in one’s relation of property to housing.18 secure tenure refers to legal recognition of one’s control over her living space, through ownership or usufruct. this is really key. individuals can assuredly achieve adequacy in dwelling through rental situations; despite the widespread association of the advantages of private property with home ownership, usufruct forms of tenure can allow for security of possession and tranquility.19 in all cases, it is my opinion that they only do so when non-owners (tenants on the private rental market and in public social housing) have a reasonable level of control over the place that they occupy, and when permanent place attachment is made possible through strong rent contract protections. the details fall outside the scope of my brief exploration here, but it is important to stress that adequate usufruct can enable basic, housingcontingent functions. the right of necessity revisited we have established the importance of dwelling architecture: while it may vary in size or shape, the inner place that we call home enables essential actions and activities. to be deprived of housing is a direct threat to one’s existence. this interrelation is reflected by the human right to housing and its associated claims and duties. walls, doors, windows, ceilings and floors are more than ordinary material arrangements. they protect our bodies and minds, they allow for our most vital interests and functions to be realized, and to develop. and, given this special, situated importance, they are themselves protected by potent property laws. in the last part of this article, i utilize the political philosophy of alejandra mancilla to clarify the moral underpinnings of property rights. in particular, i examine the weighty ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 94 br a n dl ways in which this “bundle of rights” relates to dire housing deprivation and needs.20 mancilla’s thought-provoking writings on moral cosmopolitanism and global poverty shed new light on the permissibility of actions in the face of such housing deprivation, by advocating the right of necessity, a right of the needy to take the material resources they need for subsistence, from those who are not similarly needy.21 it is a privilege (absence of duty not to take others’ possessions to ensure one’s own subsistence) as well as a claim (you have a duty not to stop the needy from taking your possessions). while it first seems at odds with the institution of private property, the right of necessity is actually consistent with accepting its very legitimacy. richard epstein reminds us that the recognition of the right of necessity is, in effect, one of the internal limitations which ought to be included in any such legitimate institution, an escape valve of sorts. a system of exceptions based upon strong, if variegated, perceptions of necessity, is necessary to people’s endorsement of private property as a prime social arrangement.22 the moral intuition at play is that no system of property entitlements that could “reasonably command the acceptance of all who are subject to it” could include a requirement that an individual starve or freeze to death as the cost of respecting the proprietorial rights of others over what one needs to survive.23 in emergency scenarios of necessity, and as a means of last resort, the law must allow for entries upon land and interference with personal property that would otherwise have been trespass. alejandra mancilla builds from this operation of justification, arguing that it is unreasonable to restrict the right of necessity to emergency cases, when the global economic order is structured in a way that maintains millions in a precarious state. or, to realign this line of thought to the present paper: it is unreasonable to do so when housing markets worldwide are structured in ways that maintain many in a precarious state with regard to dwelling adequacy. consider the four following scenarios. 1) while on a hiking trip on some high mountain plateau, you get lost without proper clothing and equipment. you are alone, exposed, and frozen. but you finally spot a hut in the distance. when you go there, you find its door locked. you then proceed to break one window, crawl inside and find shelter until aid comes. 2) on a sail trip with your family, a violent storm breaks out. you manage to approach some private pier and moor your boat to it, guaranteeing you and your family’s safety, and protecting the boat from material damages. 3) you are a homeless individual in the cold winter night. the town’s dropin refuge is situated at too long a walking distance, and you are fighting sleep. you are alone, exposed, and frozen. spotting a tenement building with an empty ground floor, you go there and find its door locked. you 95 isparchitecture.com then proceed to break one window, crawl inside and find shelter until the day comes. 4) you are a homeless individual in the extreme heatwave of the summer. you feel weak, debilitated by heat exhaustion. no one offers you water or help. you climb over the fence of a private courtyard and jump in the fresh pool, cooling your body down. these four scenarios describe emergency situation where one’s subsistence is at stake, but 1) and 2) are often more readily accepted as invocations of the right of necessity.24 as mancilla puts it well, in our current world, acceptance of the right of necessity remains confined to cases of one-off, mostly naturally caused emergencies. … this means that if an individual takes someone else’s property and claims that he did so because his right to subsistence was unmet, he will probably end up punished by society and by the law: common morality tends to sanction property infringements almost with no exceptions, and legal systems reject exculpation based on extreme poverty or indigence.25 we should ask ourselves: should we uphold a narrow conception of the right of necessity when current urban and economic arrangements, and their related application of property rights, have not been designed in a manner that guarantees access to minimum material provisions for all? entry upon land and interference with personal property do appear reasonable and acceptable in urban milieus which lack the infrastructure to provide the needy with housing. this is a provocative statement, especially when contrasted with our past examination of the importance of security of possession and tranquility: the claim which follows from the invocation of one’s right of necessity (welloff individuals mustn’t prevent a destitute person from taking their possessions) proves to be extremely demanding. i have pleaded that a house is not a standing reserve, or an investment opportunity, but the armature for self-integrity and bodily security: entry upon land and interference with personal property do appear reasonable and acceptable in urban milieus which lack the infrastructure to provide the needy with housing. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 96 br a n dl it ought not to be violated. human freedom, autonomy, health, dignity, agency— these notions are to be safeguarded by enforcing property rights, because such rights suppose a basic guarantee of security. controlling one’s own home is an immediate expression of one’s will. freedom is not something which just occurs in thought. it requires some physical domain outside the person’s own mind where she can actualize her will, without external interference. yet again, if subsistence cannot be ensured in public spaces, or through welfare programs and social architecture, necessity can justify the infringement of one’s home. but this is an untenable prospect for any functional, organized society. i believe that these tensions (and our overall normative findings on property, necessity and the architecture of housing) reveal the special responsibility of states in ensuring their citizens’ vital human activities and interests, through the realization of housing adequacy for all. in other words, it is morally incumbent on states to rearrange property provisions in a way that does not leave the houseless in a position where they may legitimately invoke their right of necessity.26 housing shortages and deprivations are attributable to the way in which current human institutions are framed. cultures such as ours, where ordinary circumstances consist in severe housing inadequacy co-existing with extreme wealth and luxurious dwelling (according to numbers collated in recent years, “more than 11 million homes lied empty in europe alone, enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice over”),27 must undergo change. through redistributive policies, projects and statutes, governments are best suited for implementing such a change. the ramifying details of housing-related duties borne by states deserve a separate investigation. suffice it to conclude by asserting that in a hypothetical society where the universal fulfillment of the human right to housing is guaranteed under normal circumstances, the exercise of the right of necessity would be confined to exceptional situations like scenarios 1) and 2). and until such hypothetical societies become reality, and while they work on the implementation of new housing schemes (construction of social units, rent caps, expropriations of speculative architecture), state authorities should refrain from strictly policing certain open spaces in the city. il tetto’s luisa and natale could attempt at building and keeping their shack because the regulations of 1950s rome allowed for people to secure their right to a parcel of land and house if they manage to construct the latter without being stopped by the authorities. this suggests something like the beginning of a humanist attitude of tolerance and flexibility (or even a sense of justice) in the face of immediate, bodily necessity. similarly, we can think of the chilean callamperos (urban propertyless), a group of working-class people who, between the 1950s and 1970s, became 97 isparchitecture.com known for occupying some empty patches of santiago overnight. remarkably, these callamperos were rarely evicted. if municipal actors tried to pursue this path of eviction, the callamperos resisted pacifically until the latter gave up. this amounted to a tacit approval of their occupying actions by the authorities, as well as the surrounding city dwellers.28 these two historical cases teach us a worthy lesson. the infrastructure of housing is expansive and expensive: given the impossibility of immediate remediation of what were severe shortages of dwelling, the municipal governments of rome and santiago showed leniency towards what was allowed in the open air, public spaces of their cities. we should follow their example, as of today and in coming times of housing crises. endnotes 1. richard a. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, harvard journal of law and public policy, vol.3, 1990, 4. 2. property and its declinations in private, common or communal subgroups refers to the rules that govern people’s access to and control of things: it is a feature of human cultures across the world. yet, it must be stressed that a lot of african, indian, asian, or north american indigenous architecture are articulated around deeply different notions of privacy and publicness, privileging togetherness in ways that make little importance of walls and hard boundaries (think of the jewish kibbutz, one example among other). this topic is deserving of a stand-alone study, and so falls outside the scope of the present paper. 3. peter king, ‘housing as a freedom right’, housing studies, vol.18, no.5, 2011, 661. 4. jeremy waldron, ‘homelessness and the issue of freedom’, ucla law review 295, 1992, 296 5. ibid., 296. 6. ibid., 296. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 98 br a n dl 7. ibid., 296. 8. ibid., 321-322. 9. norman daniels, ‘health-care needs and distributive justice’, philosophy of public affairs, vol.4, no.2, 219. 10. alejandra mancilla, the right of necessity: moral cosmopolitanism and global poverty (london: rowman & littlefield, 2016), 15. 11. mancilla, the right of necessity, 15. 12. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, 3-4. 13. again, there exists many examples of non-western cultures where (for reasons linked to social traditions, climate, and so on) the difference between inside and outside is much more diffused—it is softer than the hard limits of walls and fences that we associate with the division of space in western cultures. 14. un-habitat, the right to adequate housing, 2009; https://www.ohchr. org/documents/publications/fs21_rev_1_housing_en.pdf. 15. human rights council, report of the special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, 2011; https://www2.ohchr. org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/18session/a-hrc-18-33-add4_ en.pdf. 16. carol mcnaughton nicholls, transitions through homelessness: lives on the edge (basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 2008), 17. 17. mcnaughton nicholls, transitions through homelessness, 17. 18. un-habitat, the right to adequate housing. 19. stuart hodkinson, ‘the return of the housing question’, ephemera | theory & politics in organization, vol.12, no.4, 2012, 426. 20. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, 2-3. 21. alejandra mancilla quoted in garrett cullity, ‘mancilla, alejandra. the right of necessity’, ethics, no.128, 2017, 260. 22. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, 7-8. 23. cullity, ‘mancilla, alejandra. the right of necessity’, 261. 24. we tend to assume that it is no fault of the hiker or the sailor that they find themselves using someone else’s property—they were unlucky, trapped in a hostile landscape; the hut or the pier was the only possible option available to ensure their physical security. on the other hand, we tend to assume—and quite uncharitably so—personal failure and fault when it comes to homeless individuals’ struggles for necessity; plus, cities are dense environments, with a (presupposed) network of available resources. according to this logic, violating someone’s property cannot be a means of last resort for 3) or 4). 25. mancilla, the right of necessity, 71. 26. ibid., 71. 99 isparchitecture.com 27. rupert neate, ‘scandal of europe’s 11m empty homes’, 2014; https://www.theguardian. com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-emptyproperties-enough-house-homeless-continenttwice (accessed 2020-03-17). 28. mancilla, the right of necessity, 87-88. isparchitecture.com koolhaas’ revision of foucault’s panopticon; or, how architecture and philosophy just met andré patrão 1. to ask about the interactions between philosophy and architecture architecture and philosophy have engaged with one other, directly, marginally, or just simply implicitly, in the works and discourse of academics, practitioners, and critics, most evidently in architectural modernism and postmodernism, but most intensively in the reactions to both. philosophy has been avidly sought by architects to help question, disclose reveal, systematize, express, and expand the understanding of architectural works, the world upon which they intervene, the discipline itself, and the role of its practitioners and theoreticians. architecture, in turn, has grown within philosophy from a passing example or an illustrative metaphor of some other matter, or a generally misfit artform within an aesthetic theory, into a topic in its own right—as testified by the recent development of a ‘philosophy of architecture.’ the particularly acute multiplication and radicalization of interactions between philosophy and architecture throughout the 20th century produced a number of well-known cases in which an author, work, school, movement, or approach from one discipline had a direct decisive effect the other. famously, norberg-schulz relied heavily on martin heidegger’s philosophical writings to elaborate his own distinctive architectural phenomenological ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 60 pa tr ão theories. kenneth frampton, also well-read in the german philosopher’s writings, was never shy about the effect hannah arendt exerted on him. at times philosophers and architects collaborated, such as in 1985 when bernard tschumi invited jacques derrida and peter eisenman to design a garden pavilion in parc de la villette (1982-1998), or when discussions between jean baudrillard and jean nouvel were published as the book the singular objects of architecture (2002). preceding them all is of course the philosopher who also briefly became an architect, ludwig wittgenstein in the design and construction of house wittgenstein (1928). these celebrated examples represent the epitomes of a still widespread tendency which, in diverse ways and to different degrees, shapes both philosophical and architectural works. and yet, seldom does either discipline take a step back to reflect upon the motives and methods of these interactions as a research topic in itself. how does architecture make use of philosophy? how does philosophy speak of architecture? why does one turn towards the other? what comes about in their doing so? we shall engage these questions by analyzing one particular casestudy of such interactions: the potential influence of philosopher michel foucault’s discipline and punish (1975) on architect rem koolhaas’ koepel panopticon prison renovation project (1981). this connection is far less well-known than the previously mentioned examples, as it is far more low-key. in fact, it is difficult to point out or even discern its existence. however, as shall be seen, this discreteness does not mean that there is no case-study, but rather that discreteness is one of its principal traits, and one which distinguishes it uniquely from the cannon of architecture and philosophy’s interactions. we shall begin by introducing the two protagonists of each domain and their respective contributions to the case-study: first, foucault and the popular section of discipline and punish’s chapter “panopticism;” second, koolhaas’ renovation proposal for the koepel panopticon prison and the explanatory text revision that came with it. third, we will dwell on how the former’s philosophical thinking may have exerted direct yet nearly imperceptible consequential influence upon the latter’s architectural project. fourth and finally, the distinctive characteristics of this case-study shall be brought before the broader questions of how philosophy and architecture can engage one another. 61 isparchitecture.com 2. michel foucault, and panopticism michel foucault has long been a recurring reference in architectural discourse. his writings on the socially marginalized, the power structures that set them apart from the mainstream, and the role of a certain conception of knowledge in enforcing this system have informed and influenced architectural concerns, generally— but not only—through the social sciences. his concept of heterotopia, for example, continues to sprout a rich variety of contradictory readings and reflections, while delighting the imagination for architecture researchers, practitioners, researchers, and even students, very much due to his original social critiques and the inspiring images with which he conveyed them. the force of foucault’s impact on architecture is rather surprising, though, considering that architecture is not a major foucauldian topic, nor even a minor one, nor did he ever produce any literature whatsoever exclusively or even primarily dedicated to architecture. for example, the famous lecture about heterotopias “of other spaces” (des espaces autres), delivered to the circle of architectural studies (cercle d’études architecturales) in 1967, is in fact little more than a copy of “heterotopias” (des hétérotopies), the 1966 radio broadcast on france culture about utopia and literature, and with absolutely no intent to engage architecture at all—much like the concept’s first appearance in the order of things (les mots et les choses, 1966) which also focused on literature. the closest foucault came to addressing architecture directly, thematically and extensively was in “space, knowledge, and power,” a 33-question interview conducted by american cultural anthropologist paul rabinow, and published in the architecture and design journal skyline in on march 1982. however, even there, architecture is not so much discussed directly as a topic in itself but rather as seldom does either discipline take a step back and reflect upon the motives and methods of these interactions as a research topic in itself. how does architecture make use of philosophy? how does philosophy speak of architecture? “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 62 pa tr ão a gateway into topics that underlie it (e.g. knowledge and power) which actually interested him. it so happened that they interested architects too. indeed, in foucault’s writings architecture and architectural works only tend to appear as metaphors or as case-studies to illustrate and develop some issue other than architecture itself. and perhaps the most effective deployment of both strategies is found in the second section of the chapter “panopticism” of his book discipline and punish. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (surveiller et punir – naissance de la prison), published in 1975, is a genealogical inquiry into the emergence of the modern prison system, particularly in france, and a study of its disciplinary mechanisms’ widespread presence in many other areas of society. the emphasis falls on the reformist disciplinary penal system developed since the late 18th / early 19th century which, though far more benign than the punitive system it supplanted, nevertheless constituted an intensive form of generalized social control. at the center of this kind of disciplinarity are surveillance strategies—as hinted at in the discrepancy between the book’s original title (surveiller et punir) and its english translation (discipline and punish), where the french surveiller (“to monitor”, in the sense of “surveillance”) is replaced by “discipline.” to illustrate these disciplinary mechanisms, foucault resorts to what he considers their most paradigmatic example: the panopticon, a building typology devised, curiously enough, not by an architect but by renowned the english philosopher jeremy bentham (1748-1832), inspired by his brother samuel’s organization of industrial labor compounds. in its simplest and most characteristic form, the panoptical typology consists of a cylindrical multi-story arrangement of partitions around a central observation house. the observers at the center have a constant unhindered view into every partitioned space; hence the typology’s name from the combination of the ancient greek pan (all) and optikos (pertaining to sight), meaning “allseen” or “all-under-sight.” from within the partitioned spaces, however, it is impossible to perceive what happens in the observation house.1 thus, in a panoptical system, a small number of observers can monitor a large number of people at any given time; the prominent feature, though, is that those monitored, unable to verify when they are or are not in fact being watched act as if they always are. the prisoners thus become their own guards. foucault, like bentham, regards the panopticon as an architectural formulation of certain benthanian philosophical and social principles— in a way making it too a case-study of architectural and philosophical interaction—which bentham celebrates optimistically in panopticon; or, 63 isparchitecture.com the inspection-house2 (figure 1) and foucault denounces bleakly in discipline and punish. for both, however, architecture is only employed as a means to make a point, but is not the point itself. foucault does not invoke the panopticon because it is architecture. in discipline and punish the panopticon is both a metaphor—the disciplinary power relations described throughout the book symbolized by the dramatic image of the archetypal surveillance techniques employed to enforce it—and a casestudy: not just a representation but a paradigmatic operational mechanism that enables and enforces the power structures of which foucault speaks. throughout the “panopticism” chapter, foucault’s interpretation and depiction of the panopticon ends up producing a philosophical description of an architectural typology, by expounding its historical origin, purpose, possible functions, modes of operation, formal characteristics, and societal role. inadvertently, though, in doing so his reading also becomes an interpretation of the panopticon qua architectural object, albeit one grounded on his own understanding of architecture seen later in “space, knowledge, and power,” as an mere instrument of far greater underlying forces. hence this is why, in his words: the panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, [may very well] be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached architectural works only tend to appear in foucault’s writings as metaphors, to illustrate a nonarchitectural point, or as case-studies, to illustrate and develop some other nonarchitectural issue “ ” figure 1: bentham’s panopticon ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 64 pa tr ão from any specific use.3 discipline and punish thus unwittingly offers a philosophical critique of an architectural object and, with it, an accessible way from architecture into foucault’s philosophical thinking. between 1979 and 1981, koolhaas made use of both. 3. rem koolhaas, and the koepel panopticon prison the second protagonist of this story is a young rem koolhaas, renowned in the architecture world after delirious new york (1978) but still seeking to establish himself as a practitioner. in 1978, his office for metropolitan architecture produced what would become the first entry in their official list of projects: the dutch parliament extension, in the hague, netherlands. despite an ex aequo first place in the competition, alongside the dutch architect leo heijdenrijk , the proposal was ultimately rejected along with all the others. however, oma was granted what koolhaas called a “consolation prize:” in 1979, the dutch government commissioned oma to assess the possibility of prolonging the lifetime, by another 50 years, of a prison, built in arnhem between 1882 and 1886. (figure 2) the original building, designed by dutch architect and engineer johan frederik metzelaar, was known as the koepelgevangenis—a conjunction of the dutch words “jail” (gevangenis) and “cupola” (koepel), alluding to its distinctive large domed roof. along the inside of its cylindrical walls were four floors of holding cells, around a guardhouse at the center from which guards could originally see into every cell without being seen. in other words, the arnhem koepel was a panoptical prison. oma’s proposal adds a series of new functions and structures to the prison complex: outside of the original building to the east there is the entrance, lobby, reception area, porter’s room, and meeting room; from here a visitor heads south, to the visitor’s garden and visitor’s room; to the north is the pavilion for difficult prisoners, a kitchen, and a patio in between, as well as a storage area; to the west is the guard’s’ canteen, guard’s’ cloak room, instruction department, shops, and more storage space, as well as the sports area, which includes a gymnasium, judo room, multi-purpose room, running track, sports field, and a pool. inside the old koepel dome is a library, barber, meeting room, shop, and an infirmary. the original building undergoes modifications as well: two new satellite structures house living quarters, dining rooms, and bathrooms, enabling the possibility of dividing the inmates of each floor into two groups (of 65 isparchitecture.com sensibly 48 people each), or even more if the satellite is divided too; and the cells, no longer constantly translucent to the guards, offer privacy. the most significant change, though, is the replacement of the central guardhouse by two lower-level streets intercepting in a cruciform manner, containing several of the aforementioned functions and opening access to the rest of the complex. in s, m, l, xl (1995), koolhaas alludes to this s i m u l t a n e o u s l y metaphorical and practical gesture with two gruesome frames from luis buñuel and salvador dali’s film un chien andalou (1929), displaying an eye being cut: the crossing streets cut the all-seeing eye, the pan-optikos. in other words, koolhaas removes panopticism from the panopticon. both generalist and specialized literature commonly assume that oma’s redesign of the koepel panopticon prison was strongly influenced by discipline and punish, published just four four years before the commission, and by foucauldian thinking in general. one of the earliest and most prominent examples of these texts was anthony vidler’s article “the ironies of metropolis: notes on the work of oma,” published in skyline in march 1982—by no coincidence in the same skyline edition issue that included foucault’s interview “space, knowledge, and power.” according to vidler, “[in the arnhem prison project] we find echoes of a reading of michel foucault, whose studies of discipline and power have strongly influenced the politics and strategies of the generation of oma.”, and it is “in the space marked by foucault after the crossing streets cut the all-seeing eye, the pan-optikos. in other words, koolhaas removes panopticism from the panopticon. “ ” figure 2: arnhem prison ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 66 pa tr ão nietzsche, that the project has been conceived.” 4 indeed, the easily accepted assumption of foucauldian influence on the koepel renovation does not appear to raise any red flags that would lead us to question it. until we do question it, that is: exactly where is this influence? we ought to remember that the current inquiry does not merely search for a possible foucauldian interpretation of the project, one amongst many that a critic may adopt to understand koolhaas’ project once concluded, but rather the actual foucauldian influence during the design process that produced the project. thus, instead of assuming the existence of a case-study, we must first ask if there really is a case to study. the task presents difficulties though. as it turns out, koolhaas and foucault actually met in what we could well imagine to be a pivotal event: around seven years before the arnhem commission, architecture student rem koolhaas had just arrived in ithaca (new york, usa), where he would attend cornell university from 1972 to 1973. in the fall semester of 1972, foucault spent three weeks at cornell lecturing at cornell’s romance studies department. the celebrity french thinker and the promising dutch pupil became acquainted during this time. the encounter itself, though, was not especially life-changing. recalling the occasion in an interview with the cornell journal of architecture 8: re (2004), koolhaas affirms that he “cannot claim any kind of significant intellectual influence”5 from foucault. admittedly, the answer is disappointing, but not surprising, coming from someone who readily makes use of his formidably rich knowledge of his and other various fields in his works, but resolutely resists sacrificing his authorial originality to them. in 2008, in an interview for radical philosophy, the interviewers jon goodbun and david cunningham noted how other architects of the same generation—eisenman, tschumi, and libeskind—explicitly associated themselves with various philosophical trends while koolhaas did not, to which he answered, after listing multiple philosophers he was acquainted with: “i don’t think these influences or relationships necessarily need to be flagged up. but it’s not an indifference to these thinkers.”6 indeed, any claim of an ‘influence’ upon koolhaas must be cautious in its use of the word. rather than a powerful force that invades and pervades his work, an ‘influence’ for koolhaas seems more like an ingredient which he takes hold of, tinkers with, processes and mixes with others to produce something of his own. the original sources of these external contributions become almost untraceable. it is in this sense that we must understand an exceptional confession, made at an event hosted by eth zürich in 2011, regarding delirious new york, published in the same year as the arnhem 67 isparchitecture.com commission: [there is something which is generally not recognized,] that actually this book was a kind of french book, in the sense that it was profoundly influenced not only by barthes, but also to some extent by foucault, and particularly by somebody who had become my personal friend, hubert damisch.7 could the same be said specifically for the arnhem project, though? in 1981 oma handed in the arnhem renovation project to the dutch ministry of justice with an essay called revision containing an overall historical analysis of the arnhem koepel prison and its typology; the theoretical and conceptual framework in which oma operated; and an objective programmatic and formal description of the project itself. the text was later published in s, m, l, xl (1995), a book traversed through and through by a cornucopia of words simulating a dictionary, and which includes three entries quoted from foucault: ‘exclusion’, quoted from foucault’s 1970 address to the collège de france under the entitled “l’ordre du discours,” translated by alan sheridan in 1972 as “the archaeology of knowledge & the discourse on language;” and, from discipline and punish, ‘visibility’ and ‘power.’8 we may, however, argue that these dictionary entries came after the fact, as a later recognition of an influence. nevertheless, revision also contains other little (but more than coincidental) connections. for one thing, the text’s description of the panopticon uses a series of words that appear in alan sherridan’s english translation of discipline and punish, but not, for example, in bentham’s panopticon; or, the inspection house (e.g. referring to the panopticon’s floors as ‘rings’ instead of ‘circumferences’). more importantly, though, revision echoes foucault’s bleak critical interpretation of the panopticon, resorting to similar reasons and indeed, the easily accepted assumption of foucauldian influence on the koepel renovation does not appear to raise any red flags that would lead us to question it. until we do question it, that is: exactly where is this influence? “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 68 pa tr ão description, so much so that we can even pinpoint revision’s similarities to the first two paragraphs, and perhaps part of the third, of the second section of “panopticism.” once again, though, we may counter by noting that perhaps these similarities only suggest a shared intellectual context between foucault and koolhaas, with crossing issues, discussions, and approaches, like vidler had noted so well. this was already the case at cornell, for the same academic milieu that brought foucault to campus, and that even pioneered the introduction of continental philosophy in the usa through the journal diacritic, surrounded koolhaas during his studies. it is no coincidence that koolhaas had also read roland barthes, another renowned structuralist and later post-structuralist from the same parisian intellectual scene as foucault’s before producing his “french book.” indeed, skepticism over the existence of a case study at all seems reinforced by the fact that throught the entire text of revision foucault is not once quoted, mentioned, or even alluded to even though he explicitly references the evaluation by the governmental jacobs committee, the accusations launched by the 19th century dutch parliament member wintgens, and prison typologies experimented with in amsterdam and maastricht. other unnamed decisive forces may also have come into play. four years before discipline and punish, robin evans published the article “bentham’s panopticon: an incident in the social history of architecture” (1971) in the architecture association quarterly, while koolhaas, an eager reader of these issues, was still a student at the school.9 evans, curiously enough, quoted one of foucault’s earlier publications in the essay, suggesting that not only was he acquainted with the french philosopher’s work, but found him pertinent for the topic too. their readings differed though: for example, evans’ focuses less on the role of authority—distinguishing his reading from koolhaas’ and foucault’s— but more on the panopticon’s solitary confinement—like koolhaas’, but unlike foucault’s. this may explain certain particularities of revision’s interpretation of the panoptical typology: on the one hand its two main pillars are the all-seeing surveillance system and solitary confinement, not so emphatically highlighted by foucault; on the other hand, it often omits critical components of discipline and punish, such as the panopticon’s imposition of self-surveillance upon the surveyed, a fundamental point for both bentham and foucault. an alternative possible explanation, though, comes from the same event in which koolhaas admitted some degree of foucauldian influence: [s]omehow i have a kind of sense of reticence, or chastity, or perhaps 69 isparchitecture.com it is that i write in my own kind of mind more literature than theory that prevents me from mentioning all these sources. and also because i am deeply aware that i am the kind of result of very respectable influences but also very unrespectable influences and that everything is a kind of amalgamation of trash and high culture […].10 in other words, we should not expect to find a smoking gun of direct influence as it may be dissolved with other elements, or even not exist at all. the difficulty in confirming the assumption of a case-study is both due to the fact that because the links between the architect’s and the philosopher’s works are not explicitly demarcated, and also because these are irreducible to a single simple and uncorrupted instance, act, or event. the cause lies partially with foucault’s less than marginal interest in architecture, but mostly with koolhaas’ own attitude towards external influences. it is nearly impossible to pinpoint an irrefutable, straightforwardly foucauldian effect upon the arnhem design, or to determine exactly how much can indeed be directly attributed to foucault, or how many links were consciously forged by koolhaas. notwithstanding, a reading of revision shall come to show that, to a significant degree, the koepel design does indeed deal with a foucauldian approach to a foucauldian representation and discussion of a benthanian object, regardless of whether this was or was not deliberate. it is in this sense that we can claim the existence of a case-study. 4. the foucaldian ‘influence’ (and lack of) in koolhaas’ designrevision: koolhaas from, through, beyond, besides foucault how does foucault’s and particularly discipline and punish’s influence appear in oma’s project for the arnhem panopticon renovation? to better the koepel design does indeed deal with a foucauldian approach to a foucauldian representation and discussion of a benthanian object, regardless of whether this was or was not deliberate. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 70 pa tr ão understand the design process we return to the explanations given in revision, whose seven small chapters may be split between a critical analysis of the old koepel—from historical overviews to the broader architectural debates they provoke, and of the new proposal that follows—from its conceptual aim to its formulation as an architectural project. the first few paragraphs contain oma’s interpretation of the panopticon qua typology, and of the arnhem panopticon in particular. more than simply an introduction for the reader, this description reveals the architects’ grounding interpretations of the site’s pre-existing conditions, thus constituting the object upon which to intervene. for example, we could conceive of the arnhem prison in terms of its urban situation, or of its distinct cylindrical form, or its colossal dome, the interior lighting, materiality, running costs, or environmental sustainability. each different reading of the site’s pre-existing conditions derives from different approaches, theoretical frameworks, priorities, interests, and many other factors which reveal and emphasize different aspects of the site and call for different responses koolhaas construes the koepel according to “the panopticon principle, with its mechanistic ideal,” as an application of “a universal principle of organization for situations in which a small group of supervisors monitors a much larger group of supervised.” for koolhaas, “[t]he arnhem koepel represents the principle in its purest form: a single, all-seeing “eye” is placed dead center in a circle of the observed.” however, this principle, “[o]ne hundred years later, has become intolerable.”11 in these words we recognize a synthetic and superficial semblance to foucault’s reading of bentham’s description of the panopticon: the stress on its mechanistic character and the purity of an ideal put into an architectural form is even reminiscent of the previously quoted passage of discipline and punish concerning the panopticon’s not being a ‘dream building’. in other words, oma’s interpretation of the pre-existing object, upon which they, as architects, shall intervene upon, broadly coincides with a foucauldian critical philosophical description of the panoptical typology. turning revision’s pages and moving towards the contents of oma’s own proposal, implicit reference to the philosopher, no longer limited to discipline and punish, persists. consider, for example, koolhaas’ argument for programmatic flexibility, rather than ideal pre-determined architectural formal typologies (koolhaas’ real interest), as a manner of accounting for the inevitably incessant historically shifting ideologies and their social formulation (foucault’s real interest): if prison architecture today can no longer pretend to embody 71 isparchitecture.com an “ideal”, it could regain credibility by introducing the theme of revision as raison d’être. a “modern” prison architecture would consist of a prospective archaeology, constantly projecting new layers of “civilization” on old systems of supervision.12 a reader familiar with foucault cannot help hearing echoes of the philosopher’s own concept of “archaeology”, as conveyed for example in the birth of the clinic: an archaeology of medical perception (naissance de la clinique – une archéologie du regard médical, 1963) and archaeology of knowledge (l’archéologie du savoir, 1969). koolhaas’ prospective archaeology both presupposes and builds from foucault’s archaeological method: on the one hand, it rejects trans-historical and transcultural absolute social and (consequentially) architectural models, embracing instead the constant transformation of what societies, or “civilizations” as the architect put it, regard as the best model in each period; on the other hand, it then turns this foucauldian analytical tool deployed on the past for an understanding of the present into a generative design principle projected towards the future. hence prospective archaeology, which does not simply create a new archaeological layer with the next prison typology, but rather builds on the fact of their inevitable demise and replacement. the arnhem renovation project is founded on the thematization of prospective archaeology. “arnhem could be an experiment with a form of renovation that articulates programmatic and ideological change without destroying the building itself.”13 foucault’s implicit presence as a reference understandably disappears as the design progresses deeper into architectural and technical territory. oma’s actual design gravitates around the surrealistinspired metaphor of cutting the panopticon’s allseeing eye, executed by replacing the guardhouse ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 72 pa tr ão with the two sunken streets from which the rest of the project spreads out. while this gesture may act upon foucault’s reading of the panopticon, it certainly does not act according to him. in fairness, discipline and punish is mostly a descriptive endeavor, and thus does not offer prescriptive orientations that koolhaas could follow. but would he, who so vehemently rejects external dominance over his work, ever agree to follow them even if he could? in the end, the full weight and extent of foucault’s influence upon oma’s design process is measured not only by philosophy’s presence, but also by philosophy’s absence. while discipline and punish, foucault, and philosophy in general do introduce decisive inputs throughout the design process, particularly in the initial interpretation of the pre-existing and in preparing an approach towards it, architecture is never sidelined as the dominating force. the koepel renovation project was not meant as a mere literal architectural formulation, expression, or translation of philosophical principles, discussions, and ideas. koolhaas meant to design, first and foremost, an architectural project—a seemingly banal yet radically simple approach within the larger architecture world’s interactions with philosophy. 5. philosophy for architecture,, architecture for philosophy despite two years of discussions with the dutch authorities and, eventually, an approval for construction, oma’s proposal for the arnhem prison was never built. its indefinite suspension was not due to any particular conceptual or programmatic problems, but to an all-too-familiar reason for architects; lack of funding. the koepel would eventually be renovated by martin van dort, of archivolt architecten bv, in a process that started in 1994and only ended in 2005.14 but the declining number of prisoners in the netherlands led the classified national monument to be closed in 2016, and sold in 2018. nevertheless, oma’s arnhem panopticon renovation project remains an exceptional, unique, and—design-wise—highly successful instance of a consequential interaction between philosophy and architecture. this outcome may surprise considering the two protagonists involved, the way they work within their own disciplines, and how they interact with the other’s: foucault’s disinterest in architecture as a research topic and koolhaas’ almost indiscriminate appropriating, and critiquing of the vast 73 isparchitecture.com multiple sources he knows. the result is a case-study as much about architecture and philosophy’s interested interaction as concepts and topics become shared across disciplinary boundaries as it is about their disjunction. we do not find an authoritative philosophical imposition of ill-fitting, inadequate, and even just unrealistic principles, norms, and judgements upon architecture. instead, foucault works within his own concerns, but develops them in such a way that they offer themselves to appropriation. in an interview with the geographers of the journal herodote, in 1976, foucault, insistently confronted with the fact that he had not said much about geography in his writings, offers a reply that can just as well be applied to architecture: if i do the analyses i do, it’s not because of some polemic i want to arbitrate but because i have been involved in certain conflicts regarding medicine, psychiatry and the penal system. […] it’s up to you, who are directly involved with what goes on in geography [or architecture], faced with all the conflicts of power which traverse it, to confront them and construct the instruments which will enable you to fight on that terrain. and what you should basically be saying to me is, ‘you haven’t occupied yourself with this matter which isn’t particularly your affair anyway and which you don’t know much about’. and i would say in reply, ‘if one or two of these “gadgets” of approach or method that i’ve tried to employ with psychiatry, the penal system or natural history can be of service to you, then i shall be delighted. if you find the need to transform my tools or use others then show me what they are, because it may be of benefit to me.15 this is where koolhaas comes in. not, however, as the architect who obsessively attempts to koolhaas did not simply copy foucault into architecture, but rather borrowed his conceptual and terminological clarity to develop and better express his own ongoing architectural discussions “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 74 pa tr ão translate philosophical concepts into architectural form as if there lay an unassailable absolute foundation for architectural designs, and much less to superficially legitimize his work with empty or misunderstood quotations of a celebrated philosopher. koolhaas, both a brilliant theoretician and practitioner, respectfully instrumentalizes philosophy and, along with many other tools, takes what he needs as and when he needs it for the sake of the production of an architectural project first and foremost. his sources, almost impossible to isolate in a single moment of contact, may also very well arise from the sheer shared discourse between disciplines, which often includes influential literature like discipline and punish and, it would seem, seminal works of architecture too. the arnhem project thus shows architects how their designs can gain from resorting to philosophy without sacrificing architecture in the process. however, there are relevant insights for philosophers as well. while foucault’s study of the panopticon created a philosophical critique of an architecture object, koolhaas’ design in turn created a philosophicallycharged architectural reaction to a foucauldian interpretation of bentham’s panopticon—the conception of the pre-existing object upon which oma intervened. the koepel renovation project contains an architectural critique of the benthanian utilitarian vision that originated the panoptical typology, and a critical conversation with foucault’s own critique of it. as such, it can be read in philosophical terms, even if the architect’s action itself is not philosophy nor primarily philosophically motivated, for it does engage in a dialogue with philosophy even if through the distinct means of architecture. the koepel panopticon prison renovation is therefore not just a case-study for architects, but for philosophers too. endnotes 1. jeremy bentham, “panopticon; or, the inspection-house.” in the works of jeremy bentham, 4:36–142. (edinburgh: william tait) 1843, pp. 40-41. 2. bentham, 1843, p. 39. 3. michel foucault, discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, 1975, p. 205. 4. anthony vidler, “the ironies of metropolis: notes on the work of oma,” skyline, march, 1982 p. 21. 5. “oma re: omu: interview with rem koolhaas on oswarl mathias ungers.” interview by jeremy alain siegel, melissa constantine, matt eshleman, and steven zambrano cascante. the cornell journal of architecture 8: re, march 6, 2004. http://cornelljournalofarchitecture. 75 isparchitecture.com cornell.edu/read.html?id=18. 6. jon goodbun and david cunningham, “propaganda architecture: interview with rem koolhaas and reinier de graaf.” radical philosophy, october 30, 2008. https://www.radicalphilosophy. com/interview/rem-koolhaas-and-reinier-de-graaf. 7. rem koolhaas and bernard tschumi. “a conversation,” interview by trüby stephan. gta events eth zürich official website, may 18, 2011. https://video.ethz.ch/events/2011/d-arch_ gta/75db5f75-5ff9-41af-a221-c48ab14f8aa5.html. 8. “revision.” [1981] in s, m, l, xl, by rem koolhaas, bruce mau, and oma, 233–53, 2nd ed. new york: monacelli press, 1995. 9. i am greatly indebted to mary mcleod for pointing out the existence of this article and its potential pertinence for koolhaas’ project at arnhem. 10. rem koolhaas and bernard tschumi. “a conversation.” 11. revision p. 237. 12. revision p. 241. 13. ibid. 14. p.i. de berg, “arnhem renovatie, restauratie en uitbreiding koepelgevangenis” (rijskmonument)” archivolt architecten bv. accessed august 31, 2018. https://archivolt-bna.nl/web/wp-content/ uploads/2015/03/pi-de-berg-a4.pdf. 15. michel foucault, “questions on geography.” in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977, translated by colin gordon, 1st american ed., 64–77. new york: pantheon books, 1980. p. 65. foucault’s works cited in the text: “des hétérotopies.” france culture, july 12, 1966. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. 2nd vintage books ed. new york: vintage books, 1975. it does engage in a dialogue with philosophy and its subjects, even if through the distinct means of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. edited by colin gordon. 1st american ed. new york: pantheon books, 1980. “questions on geography.” in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977, translated by colin gordon, 1st american ed., 64–77. new york: pantheon books, 1980. “space, knowledge, power.” in the foucault reader, edited by paul rabinow, 1st ed., 239–56. new york: pantheon books, 1982. surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison. collection tel. paris: gallimard, 1975. the archaeology of knowledge & the discourse on language. translated by a.m. sheridan smith. new york, ny: pantheon books, 1982. the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. vintage books edition. new york, ny: vintage books, 1966. michel foucault and john k. simon. “michel foucault on attica: an interview,” 1991 1974. m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 76 first step: walking in bernardo(’s) sandals challenging what he criticized as the straitjacket of fashion, in 1946 the architect, designer, and author bernard rudofsky launched the line of footwear bernardo sandals. making present the bodily awareness of the horizontal plane, they were designed to adapt to, rather than constrain, the anatomy of the foot, aspiring to remain timeless pieces, comfortable and wearable outside fads and short-lived trends. decades later, they are still defying the passage of time. more than mere footwear, the sandals are a design manifesto expressing the connection between feet and floors, always in touch through the intimacy of the sole, a relationship rudofsky celebrates in architectural and design projects. building upon the multiple meanings of the italian word pianta,1 he notes the attraction between the sole of the foot (la pianta del piede) that caresses the sole of the house, and also its plan (la pianta della casa).2 departing from modernist notions about the functionality and efficiency of plan organization, he establishes an affinity between the plan of the house and the materiality of its pavement: “the pavement will control the plan. only on a good plan one can make a good pavement.”3 not only does the floor become the place of interaction between the architectural body and the human body, but—this essay argues —it generates the mood and atmosphere of a place. this text begins from an intellectual nudge. critical of scientific ecology in the research on the environment, philosopher gernot böhme introduces the “aesthetics of atmospheres” as an operative concept that factors in the subjectivity of on foot: embodied atmospheres andreea mihalache ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 166 mi ha la ch e human experience in architectural and urban design. looking at different scales of perception from architectural objects to urban landscapes, he contends that “atmosphere is the subject matter of architecture,”4 to which architectural critic david leatherbarrow replies: “is it?”5 building upon the aesthetics of atmospheres (böhme) and their association with habits (leatherbarrow), this essay will walk the reader through bernard rudofsky’s constructions of embodied atmospheres, arguing that, unexpectedly, for rudofsky the locus where atmospheres manifest themselves is the horizontal plane of the floor. as one moves through space, be it indoors or outdoors, the most immediate (yet unnoticed) encounter is the one with the pavement. soft or hard, warm or cold, smooth or rough, ground planes have latent possibilities to provide the first opportunities for the body to know and feel its world. engaging with the floors, one becomes attuned to the rhythms, pace, temperatures, textures, and sounds of the world. like other midcentury architects, rudofsky recognizes that modern architecture, and, in a larger sense, the consumer culture, have alienated people from their places. if to lose one’s place in the world is—quite literally—to lose ground, then becoming aware of the surfaces we step on might reconnect us to a deeper sense of the self. beyond aesthetics, his attention to floors and pavements ultimately reflects an ethical concern with defining one’s place in the world. second step: passing through atmospheric habits the emergence and frequency of the terms and concepts we employ both in research and informal language indicate tacit concerns underlying our everyday lives, as well as broader societal and cultural anxieties. etymologically, the term atmosphere (from greek atmos = vapor and sphaira = globe) originally designated the ring of vapor supposed to be “exhaled from the body of a planet,”6 but from the eighteenth century onward, it has also conveyed a “certain mood hanging in the air.”7 moods, affects, atmospheres—appropriated into the architectural vocabulary from psychology and physics, these concepts have become recurrent themes in the work of many contemporary architects and theorists. if one notices an increased frequency of these terms in the architectural discourse, it is not because architecture has not been concerned with them in the past, but, rather, because a certain discontent with the current experience of the environment is prompting the search for answers outside the tangible and the measurable. a sign of a certain disenchantment with the quotidian, it speaks about the dissatisfaction with the banality of everyday experiences constantly mediated through screens and simulated realities. as philosopher richard kearney observes, “the more virtually connected 167 isparchitecture.com we are, the more solitary we become. we ‘see’ brave new worlds, but ‘feel’ less and less in touch with them.”8 the interest in atmospheres traverses fields and disciplines. in architecture, peter zumthor, juhani pallasmaa, and steven holl are among the most notable contemporary designers and theorists invested in the topic of atmospheres, but ideas about constructing the atmosphere of a place are not new. alberto perez-gomez observes an implicit interest in atmospheres as early as vitruvius’ ten books on architecture, where a tempered and balanced environment was at the core of a healthy life.9 building upon current scientific evidence demonstrating the role of feelings, emotions, and moods that architecture engenders in our psychosomatic health, he demonstrates the importance of studying these hidden and unmeasurable dimensions of architecture.10 juhani pallasmaa observes that it was only from the mid1990s onward that the experience of architecture has begun to replace a long-established formal approach to design.11 indeed, it seems that theorizing unquantifiable and elusive concepts such as atmosphere, mood or ambiance has emerged as a relatively new phenomenon in the early 2000s.12 this “atmospheric turn” has various explanations that range from deterministic views to social and political arguments, from subjectivity to scientific evidence.13 peter zumthor defines atmosphere as an almost-mystical quality of a space, intrinsic to those architectures that move you.14 he finds it in “the magic of things, the magic of the real world,”15 and believes that it offers a possible response to the quest for “architectural quality.”16 from the atmosphere of medieval cathedrals (built on the transfiguration of light passing through stained glass), to the renaissance villas in the italian veneto (intimately connected with existing natural caves and breathing the air that circulated naturally through a sophisticated system of vents and ducts), one becomes attuned to the rhythms, pace, temperatures, textures, and sounds of the world “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 168 mi ha la ch e to eileen gray’s marvelous e.1027 house (centered on experiencing the space through sensuous materials and textures defining the mood of each room), or le corbusier’s espace indicible (suggesting a phenomenal experience of the space), architects have long tackled—both explicitly and implicitly—the atmosphere of a place. in philosophy, the influential work of hermann schmitz, regarded as a founding father of research on atmospheres, left its mark on the writings of contemporary continental philosophers such as gernot böhme and tonino griffero.17 the former explicitly calls into question the primacy of vision in people’s interaction with the environment and advocates for integrated approaches to architecture and city planning, in both design and scholarship, that should carefully consider and actively engage all our senses. böhme observes that atmospheres have an in-between quality: they relate factual traits of the environment with one’s bodily feeling in that environment, so are both spatial and emotional.18 in other words, they are situated between the subject and the object: they touch one’s bodily space, which is “neither the place a person’s body takes up, nor the volume that it constitutes,” but the sphere of one’s material presence.19 therefore, atmospheres are about presence, and never about representation. böhme proposes that examining architecture and cities through the lens of the aesthetics of atmosphere produces two major shifts: first, the turn from “what” something represents to “how” something is present.20 (thus, “aesthetics” recovers its original meaning, that of a theory of perception, rather than the visual concern with beauty and artistic taste prevalent from the eighteenth century onward.) second, it enables the shift from the form or shape of things to the way they engage with the space of our bodily presence.21 for böhme, atmosphere is the subject matter of architecture.22 pondering over the meaning and implications of this argument, david leatherbarrow nuances böhme’s theory and outlines—not unlike le corbusier’s tenets for a new architecture—five points on architectural atmospheres.23 first, they manifest themselves immediately or, like böhme also remarked, they are about presence. second, they are specific to historical and cultural contexts, which suggests that they cannot be transferred or replicated outside of where they are formed. third, they are a matter of both emotions and intellect. fourth, they construct backgrounds, in the double sense of layers of history and present appearances. lastly, atmospheres are correlated with habits.24 the latter is perhaps the most relevant for the argument of this essay: the idea that the mood of a space emerges from concrete, material conditions, from practices and rituals that are enacted and performed in unique historical and cultural contexts. leatherbarrow observes that 169 isparchitecture.com practical experience and everyday use are key in creating atmospheres, which play a two-part role, “initial and global, then marginal and tacit.”25 simply put, one first perceives them as distinct phenomena in the foreground of their experience (the way a traveler visiting a medieval city for the first time might register and treasure every uncanny detail), but eventually, by force of habit and repetition, they recede into the background (the way an inhabitant of the same historic city is no longer aware of what has become familiar and wellknown). leatherbarrow proposes that atmospheres are neither an attribute of the settings from which they proceed, nor a matter of individual sentiments – he draws attention, instead, to the continuity, rather than the split, between object and subject. his approach implicitly challenges böhme’s argument that stage set design (where moods are fabricated from objective and carefully manipulated elements such as sound, illumination or spatial geometries) is the paradigm for a theory of atmosphere.26 one of böhme’s tacit goals is to remove the impreciseness associated with atmospheres and demonstrate that, despite their vagueness, they can be produced from concrete factors. however, his use of stage set design as the paradigm for this theory privileges conventions and artificiality as modus operandi, suggesting scripted and therefore predictable scenarios, and thus removing the sense of spontaneity or happenstance. on the other hand, if habits are intrinsic to the formation of atmospheres, as leatherbarrow suggests, then the design process alone does not have the power to fully prescribe specific ambiances, therefore one needs to understand the environment through a moreencompassing lens, not only beyond its immediate physical manifestations but also from within the factors that have constituted it throughout time this is to say that atmposphere are not about spontaneous surfacing or controlled design, but rather that critical to grasping their nature is understanding ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 170 mi ha la ch e practices of inhabitation developed and sedimented over time. it is this balancing act between control and release, between design practices and living practices, between space and time, between the measurable and the immeasurable that bernard rudofsky tackles in many of his writings and projects spanning the middle and late decades of the twentieth century, where he centers his attention on the overlooked role of floors and pavements. third step: touching the floor known primarily for his 1964 exhibition (and subsequent catalog) architecture without architects, rudofsky was a tireless traveler, an ingenious footwear designer, a prolific writer, and a gifted architect. at a time when most architects looked up above the ground to see as a prevailing mode to perceive the environment, he looked down to feel the touch of the floor. despite his consistent return to the theme of floors and pavements, scholarship has only marginally examined what is at stake in his obsessive return to these horizontal surfaces.27 rudofsky offers an architectural and existential way of anchoring us into the world through floors and pavements as the often-overlooked canvas against which life itself unfolds. they construct the mood of a place by being active agents of our various practices of inhabitation. “stone mosaic, marble slabs, stucco reliefs, mural decorations from the simplest geometric ornamentation to elaborate paintings, were employed [in roman outdoor rooms] to establish a mood particularly conducive to spiritual composure,” writes rudofsky in 1952.28 that pavements define the character of a room and have the potential to generate spiritual dispositions was well-known in ancient civilizations: “do you know the faun house in pompei? here we understand why the pompeians who inherited the greek culture could easily give up the frescoes: they had paintings of profound beauty on the floor.”29 the ground plane is what ties together the individual, the house, and the city: house floor or city pavement, the horizontal surface, intimately related to the human body through the sense of touch, is the first element that creates the mood of a space. the floors have the potential to delay movement, slow down the pace, and, implicitly, expand time. as the only surfaces that constantly engage the sense of touch, they are neither purely functional, nor merely aesthetic. rarely seen, they are always felt. it is through floors and pavements that the sense of touch remains active, and yet paradoxically, designs often overlook them. floors and pavements carry an inherent contradiction: on the one hand, they need not to be noticed in order to function properly; on the other, as they become 171 isparchitecture.com unnoticed, they take away one’s awareness of the ground. through floors and pavements, individuals experience the unmediated presence of the earth while at the same time gain a sense of belonging to a larger community. they ground human beings into the earth and situate them within the horizon of a specific culture. although western philosophy has primarily been sight-centered, in the twentieth century existential phenomenology recovered aristotle’s claim in de anima that touch is the most universal, pervasive, and intelligent of the senses.30 against the platonic idea that sight is superior to touch because it is distant and mediated (hence the elevated status of theoria, i.e. to look at, to speculate), aristotle argues that touch, in fact, does have a medium and its medium is the flesh.31 through touch one reads and interprets the world and at the same time is touched by it. it is in this reciprocity between the self and the world that rudofsky situates his interest in the continuity between the sole of the foot, the pavement of the building, and the skin of the earth. for rudofsky, the act of building starts from floors and walls, the most vital elements of the architectural vocabulary that also give human beings the ontological status of their upright posture. “a wall is the bread of architecture. (…) building his first wall, he [the man] became, mentally, a biped.”32 elsewhere, he writes: “the floor is, literally and figuratively, the touchstone of a civilization. a good floor is much more than a delight to the eye; it appeals to that most sensuous of our senses, touch.”33 in the february 1938 issue of the italian architecture journal domus, rudofsky publishes what appears to be an illustration of an architectural foundational moment: builders have laid out in plan the foundations of the outer walls of a house and are now settling the stones to stabilize the structure. rudofsky’s caption stresses the primordial role of the floor and floorplan as the organizing forces of the building: “architecture begins with a pavement: if habits are intrinsic to the formation of atmospheres, as leatherbarrow suggests, then the design process alone does not have the power to fully prescribe specific ambiances “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 172 mi ha la ch e the architect inscribes order in the freedom of nature. but this order has to be in harmony with nature.”34 the drawing recalls ancient practices of inscribing the plan of a building at full-scale onto the site itself. as paul emmons observes, the construction of the plan on site anticipates the future building, establishing an intimate connection between drawing, site, and architecture.35 while in pre-modern times, the floor was the actual floor plan of the new construction, this intimate relationship has been gradually lost with the changing practices of architectural drawing.36 no longer viewed as an embodied footprint, but primarily as a horizontal section, today the floor plan bears little, if any affinity at all with the architectural floor.37 challenging these modern forms of representation, rudofsky explores drawings and buildings as embodied phenomena. the surface of the page, the surface of the building floor, and the surface of the site itself become one and thus the pavement acquires its ontological role. because “every culture has its perfect pavement,”38 floors teach more about a certain civilization than any writings or indirect accounts.39 throughout his career, rudofsky remains a relentless critic of the commodification of architecture both in the domestic realm and in the public sphere. in 1955, he publishes behind the picture window, a collection of essays on the nature of the modern house, written as satires, rather than academic papers. the chapters lay out his frustrations with the “american way of life”40 and propose what he calls elsewhere “a new way of living”41 based on lessons learned from past civilizations. one fig 1: bernard rudofsky, plan of the procida house project published in domus, issue 123 (march 1938) 173 isparchitecture.com such example (which he describes in a later book) are the neolithic houses in lindenthal, germany discovered in the early decades of the twentieth century, and which reveal to rudofsky a methodical architectural strategy that is neither accidental nor clumsy.42 central to their design is the sculpted floor that celebrates the intimate encounter of the body with the earth and, as the authors infers, situates the individual in a specific horizon of inhabitation: what lifts the lindenthal houses above the commonplace is their sculpted floor. (…) pausing for a moment in the amble of our flat-footed way of life (…) it seems that somewhere in the course of human advancement we lost our capacity for enjoying well-turned-out space. what probably happened is that our fingerspitzengefühl— our “fingertip feeling”—progressively deserted us while numbness crept up on our toes and buttocks, body parts traditionally hidden. yet it is exactly these parts that are instrumental in probing the ground on which we walk, stand, or sit, for they, like no others, keep us in close touch with our surroundings.43 the metaphor of the “fingertip feeling” evokes both the sense of touch and a design intuition, that – neither exact, nor imprecise – is built upon practice and habits, and relies upon all senses. poetry seizes the synesthetic experience born at the encounter of sight and touch: “i see with my fingertips / what my eyes touch.”44 if one can see with their fingers, then one can also know with the toes of their feet that – not unlike one’s hands—feel, sense, and make sense of the environment through touch. fourth step: entering the house in 1938, rudofsky publishes in domus the drawings for a house on the island of procida, off the coast of naples. titled “non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere” (translated in english as “what we need is not new technologies, but a new way of living”), the article that pavements define the character of a room and have the potential to generate spiritual dispositions was well-known in ancient civilizations “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 174 mi ha la ch e constitutes, as rudofsky himself will acknowledge later, the kernel of “half a dozen books on architecture, apparel and related matters.”45 designed for a piece of land that he and his wife berta bought on the island in 1935, the project, although never built, is rudofsky’s design manifesto for the ideal house. (fig.1) a harmonious encounter between architecture and the practices of everyday life, the ideal home eliminates the unnecessary prostheses of consumerism, seeking an unmediated relationship between inhabitants, their customs, nature, and design. having lived and worked in italy for several years, rudofsky praised and learned from the integration of landscape, design, and lifestyle that he noted (and idealized) in the peninsula. building bridges across time and space, his account of the procida house recalls pliny the younger’s descriptions of his tuscan villa, rendered in minute details in his letters.46 pliny’s peripatetic narration moves from the larger scale of landscape and climate to renditions of individual rooms, all of which have an intentional relationship with the outdoors. views, sounds, textures create an atmosphere attuned to the seasons, as well as the inhabitant’s lifestyle: “a little fountain, playing through several small pipes into a vase it encloses, produces a most pleasing murmur;” a bedroom with two different orientations looks upon a cascade “which entertains at once both the eye and the ear.” rooms are carefully designed with the appropriate orientation that offers shade in the summer and sun exposure in the winter, as well as balanced views towards the apennine valleys, vineyards, bodies of water, ivy-covered trees, cypresses, and roses. in rudofsky’s procida project, carefully observed habits, rather than programmatic specifications, generate the atmosphere of each space, shown in hybrid forms of architectural representation that combine two-dimensional and perspectival views. the beginning of the article announces that people have long lost the contact with the ground.47 from the horseback rider who needs special tools to remove her boots, to the woman wearing heels unsuited for walking, to the athlete or the ballerina, everyone has lost touch with the earth through the multiple layers interposed between the foot and the earth itself.48 more than a rhetorical trope or a nostalgic longing for an idyllic pre-modern time, this statement indicates a deeper loss: the erosion of our grounding and the dissolution of tectonics. as rudofsky writes elsewhere, modern houses, with their transparent walls, appear so light that they could fly away at any moment like a magic carpet.49 the gradual disappearance of tectonics translates into human uprootedness, and this sense of displacement finds its physical expression in the cookie-cutter houses of suburban developments, which simultaneously respond to and create the need for artificial environments 175 isparchitecture.com that remain unchanged, irrespective of location, living customs or individual habits. designed in a modern vocabulary, the procida house challenges modern assumptions about function and program. although the rooms are designated through conventional nomenclature (living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, etc.), the project describes and responds to the activities taking place in these spaces, which are shown in unconventional forms of architectural representation. people’s movements between inside and outside are choreographed through the materials and textures of floors. in a subtle play of scales and textures, the house transforms furniture into architecture and architecture into furniture. considering them superfluous, rudofsky eliminates the dining table, the desk, the night table, the kitchen table, and the bathtub.50 having its entire floor made of mattresses, the bedroom becomes an oversized bed (not unlike japanese rooms covered in tatami),51 where one can only walk barefoot. in his theory of inhabitation, rudofsky operates an essential distinction between washing (as the modern utilitarian act of removing dirt and grime) and bathing (as an ancient form of ritual or cultivated leisure).52 he expresses it by placing the toilet and the sink, and, respectively, the bathtub, in different spaces. the bathroom becomes, in fact, a bathtub: dipping into the ground, the floor carves it out from the ground plane itself, thus creating an intimate relationship between the body of the bather and the earth itself. the patio with its natural pavement of grass, daisies, violets, and orchids, is the true living room of the house, which itself “grows” from the floor plane. a tent in the summer and a fireplace (shared with the music room) in colder weather, allow for the year-round inhabitation of this outdoor room. firmly anchored into the ground, the body of the house and the bodies of its inhabitants find their place in the world. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 176 mi ha la ch e fifth step: wandering down the street shifting his attention from the domestic realm to the public sphere, in 1969 rudofsky publishes streets for people: a primer for americans, a book “about the great outdoors, the pedestrian street, and the people one meets there.”53 written at a time when america enthusiastically embraces suburban living while ignoring its urban centers and public spaces, the book has a twofold goal: to unpack the malfunctions of american cities in contrast with their european counterparts and to provide design resources for a future when even americans will recognize the need for “a more dignified city life.”54 lavishly illustrated with rudofsky’s own photographs and filled with erudite literary and musical references, each chapter addresses a particular theme: cleanliness and hygiene, covered urban structures (such as canopies, porticoes, and gallerias), urban practices (from walking and strolling to processions, rituals, and performances), soundscapes and street music, street names, stairs, bridges, elevated streets, water and street food. an entire chapter, “diamant streets and crystal pavements” (a reference to the frozen water canals of venice), is dedicated to urban floors and their intimate connection with the body of the pedestrian. textures and colors bring to life this canvas that unfolds under people’s feet often as an extension of the house floors. evocative descriptions conjure up the marble and lava-paved streets of antiquity, the splendor of babylonian streets, the square hard stones of florence, the pink marble mosaic of a street gutter in evora, or brick-paved ramps with stone footholds for horses. the atmosphere of the city results from the orchestration of all these different elements articulated on the ground plane, which, almost like a living creature, moves, undulates, and meanders. a firm presence in space, as böhme describes the atmosphere, yet often tacit and marginal, as leatherbarrow puts it, the city pavement establishes connections between different scales – the personal scale of the body, the convivial scale of the community, the larger one of the environment – and remains a ubiquitous, yet unremarkable, actor in the urban choreography of the city. rudofsky’s nostalgia for a pre-industrial society and for the cities of the old world is more than anything a nostalgia for time as embodied duration, rather than instantaneity. while he often idealizes a far-fromperfect world, he presents architectural ideas whose goal is to slow down time. the floor is the architectural element with the immediate potential to make people tarry and linger as they move through space. the most inconspicuous, yet the most direct in its engagement with the body, the floor constructs the physical measure of our pace. by slowing down its pace, the body readjusts to its environment. 177 isparchitecture.com the floors rudofsky imagines are often impractical, inaccessible to everyone, unsuited for comfortable walking, whimsical, and, sometimes, quite useless. however, what is at stake in his emphasis on the horizontal plane is the awareness of time as embodied experience (particularly relevant at a moment when architecture is mainly concerned with space) and the ethical dimension of finding one’s place on earth. the in-between quality that böhme attributes to atmospheres, along with leatherbarrow’s emphasis on habits and behaviors, are manifested in rudofsky’s celebration of floors as “the touchstone of a civilization.” last step: strolling away on the otherwise smooth and inconspicuous floor of the arsenale building at the 2021 venice architectural biennale, one stumbles upon a mosaic of stones, some of them carved out in threedimensional configurations, with their interiors gilded. among the thought-provoking proposals displayed in the exhibition that float, fly, and defy gravity, this elegant gesture simply reminds us of where we stand in the world. marking the earth, these golden hieroglyphs choreograph the dance between “i” and “us,” between a body and a multitude of bodies, between low and high, below and above. making us aware of the depth of our ground plane, (polished) stone and (shimmering) gold define a volume of space and its atmosphere. one of the most notable—and most subtle— projects at the biennale, this installation designed by the portuguese office aires mateus recognizes the forgotten role of pavements. “architecture answers to its time. some things, however, never change: we live together under the same sky; we live together on the same ground. the sky above our head, the ground under our feet: a natural metaphor of community.”55 if atmospheres are about presence, as böhme contends, and they cannot exist in the absence of habits, as leatherbarrow observes, the atmosphere of the city results from the orchestration of elements articulated on the ground plane, which, almost like a living creature, moves, undulates, and meanders. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 178 mi ha la ch e then the ground, as rudofsky and aires mateus show, could become the starting point of further interrogations about the nature of atmospheric inhabitations. ultimately, to sense the mood of a place and to find our pace and place in the world we might have to close our eyes and honor our “fingertip feeling.” we might have to touch instead of look and tiptoe our way through space so that not only do we see with the tips of our fingers, but also understand with the tips of our toes. endnotes 1. pianta means sole, a level in the house, but also a plant 2. bernard rudofsky, ‘variazioni,’ domus, issue 124 (april 1938), 14 3. rudofsky, ‘variazioni,’ 15 (translation by the author) 4. gernot böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres (london/new york: routledge, 2017), 135-140; these ideas are first published in english in an earlier essay from 2002 5. david leatherbarrow, ‘atmospheric conditions,’ in: henriette steiner and maximilian sternberg (eds.), phenomenologies of the city: studies in the history and philosophy of architecture (london: ashgate, 2015) 6. oxford english dictionary, online edition, entry “atmosphere.” 7. böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres, 2 8. richard kearney, touch: recovering our most vital sense (new york: columbia university press, 2021), 4-5 9. alberto perez-gomez, attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science (cambridge, ma/london: the mit press, 2016), 2 10. ibid., 1-13. fig 2: aires mateus, ground, venice biennale in 2021 179 isparchitecture.com 11. juhani pallasmaa, ‘space, place, and atmosphere: peripheral perception in existential experience,’ in: christian borch (ed.), architectural atmospheres: on the experience and politics of architecture. (basel: birkhauser, 2014), 19 12. among the most recent publications in the field, one will find: journal of architectural education, “atmospheres,” vl. 73 issue 1 march 2019; perez-gomez, alberto. attunement; borch (ed.), architectural atmospheres; klaske havik, hans teerds, and gus tielens, with juhani pallasmaa and peter zumthor, building atmosphere. oase#91 (rotterdam: nai publishers, 2013); peter zumthor, atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects (basel: birkhauser, 2006). quite tellingly, adrian forty’s words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture from 2000, a book that eruditely traces the philosophical and intellectual history of architectural terminology, does not include an entry on architectural moods or atmospheres. 13. christian borch justifies the rationale of a volume he edited in 2014 as a follow-up to current fads and fashions that examined the atmospheric qualities of architecture and urban spaces. (borch, “introduction: why atmospheres?” in borch (ed.), architectural atmospheres) 14. zumthor, atmospheres, 11 15. ibid., 19 16. ibid., 11 17. in 1969, hermann schmitz publishes the sphere of the emotions where he discusses emotions as atmospheres. his work, which is still to be translated into english, exercised a decisive influence on gernot böhme (whose first publication on atmospheres, atmosphäre: essays zur neuen äesthetik, dates from 1995) and tonino griffero (atmosferologia: estetica degli spazi emozionali, first published in 2010 and translated into english in 2014) 18. böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres, 3 ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 180 mi ha la ch e 19. ibid., 180 20. ibid., 26 21. ibid., 5 22. ibid., 135-140 23. leatherbarrow, ‘atmospheric conditions,’ 85-100 24. ibid., 96 25. ibid., 87 26. böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres, 3 27. the topic appears in full book chapters or specific reflections in various articles. he dedicates an entire book to the theme of streets and street life (bernard rudofsky, streets for people: a primer for americans (new york: doubleday & company, inc., 1969), designs and commercializes a line of footwear that exists to this day (the bernardo sandals), and introduces original, if impractical, floors in the exhibitions he curates. 28. bernard rudofsky, ‘giardino, stanza all’aperto: a proposito della casa giardino a long island, ny,’ domus, issue 272 (july-august 1952), 5 29. rudofsky, ‘variazioni,’ 15 30. see kearney, touch, ch.2 ‘philosophies of touch: from aristotle to phenomenology,’ 33-60 31. ibid., 35 32. bernard rudofsky, ‘the bread of architecture.’ arts & architecture, vol.69, no.10 (oct. 1952), 28 33. bernard rudofsky, ‘before the architects.’ design quarterly, no.118/119 (1982) 61; the same idea reappears bernard rudofsky, behind the picture window (new york: oxford university press, 1955), 186 34. rudofsky, ‘l’architettura comincia con un pavimento,’ in: domus no. 122 (february 1938), 1 35. paul emmons, drawing imagining building: embodiment in architectural design practices. (london/new york: routledge, 2019), ch.1. ‘footprint plans,’ 21-47 36. emmons observes: “the close relationship between plan and earth is shown through practices of inscribing the plan at full-scale onto a site.” ibid., 29 37. ibid., ch.1. ‘footprint plans,’ 21-47 38. rudofsky, “variazioni,” 15 39. rudofsky, “before the architects,” 61 40. rudofsky, behind the picture window, 5 41. rudofsky, ‘non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere,’ in: domus, issue 123 (march 1938), 5 42. bernard rudofsky, the prodigious builders. notes towards a natural 181 isparchitecture.com history of architecture. (new york and london: harcourt brace jovanovich, 1977), 102-107 44. octavio paz, ‘this side.’ the poem can be found online: https://www.poetryverse.com/ octavio-paz-poems/this-side 45. front matter to bernard rudofsky, now i lay me down to eat: notes and footnotes on the lost art of living (new york: anchor books, 1980) 46. pliny the younger, “lii letter to domitius apollinaris,” https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ ancient/pliny-letters.asp#genpart%20vii 47. rudofsky, “non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere,” in: domus, issue 272 (july-august 1952), 6 48. ibid., 6. 49. rudofsky, ‘giardino, stanza all’aperto,’ domus issue 123 (march 1938), 71 50. rudofsky, ‘non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere, domus, issue 272, (july-august 1952), 8 51. ugo rossi makes this observation in his analysis of the procida house in ugo rossi, bernard rudofsky architetto (napoli: clean edizioni, 2016), 76 52. rudofsky, behind the picture window, chapter ‘our indecorous bathroom’ 53. rudofsky, streets for people, 15 54. ibid., 21 55. hashim sarkis, biennale architettura 2021: how will we live together? (venice: la biennale di venezia, 2021) zurich (2022) the idea of public space is crucial for our political imagination, precisely because it is perceived as being not only threatened, but even as on the way toward extinction. throughout its history, the concept seems to imply both a promise of a more transparent social world, and a threat to which we are exposed: it is a space of free exchange, but also one to which we are subjected, and where conflict seems unending. in this sense, two competing versions could be given: the first one would tell a story of the rise and fall of public space, and it is probably the most common one; the second, which is less frequent, presents public space as always and structurally constituted by a conflict that will make it into a space of struggle, where the dreams of undistorted communication not only cover over the reality of power, but in fact are instrumental for its deployment. these two can neither be fused into a common story, nor can we simply choose between them; perhaps they can be said to constitute something like the antinomy of public space. kant and the enlightenment the classical origin of most stories of public space is the agora in the greek polis, which has taken on a symbolic value for all subsequent theorizing, notwithstanding the fact that it must be seen as a retroactive fantasy, similarly to many other such greek “origins” that have been assumed since the late eighteenth century onwards. that the selection of citizens that were allowed to take part in greek democracy was indeed small has been brushed aside, which has made it possible to transform it public space. conflicts and antinomies sven-olov wallenstein ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 14 w a ll en st ei n into a model for various promises of a restored gemeinschaft in modernity, a community that would rest on a direct “representation,” as if the exclusionary mechanisms at once had been repressed and sublimated into a kind of ideal space. this trope appears in winckelmann, rousseau, the early romantics, the young hegel (who would later discard it), and many other thinkers on the eighteenth century that were trying to articulate a new foundation for political theory after the downfall of the absolutisttheological model. (in fact, even though this is rarely made into an explicit theme, the various versions of contract theory seem to require something like a common space, a medium of assembly, in which the first act of signing occurs, since it takes place at one singular point in time, not as a series of individual events separated in space and time.) the second step in this story is the construction of an ideal public space, which as we noted often looks back to its alleged greek origin, and yet constitutes something basically new. this is the idea of a world of rational reflection, communication, and judgment that would rely on readers dispersed in space and time, only related through the sense that they share a common rational project. we find this outlined in kant,1 in his conception of the enlightenment and its öffentlichkeit as a spatial and temporal ideal form where all dogmas, theoretical as well as moral and political, can be subjected to debate. to participate in this debate, kant proposes, one must however act as a “public” person and not as a bearer of official authority, as in the case of the judge, the magistrate, the priest, etc., which in kant’s vocabulary are “private” uses of reason (for us today, this terminology would be inverted). the divide between these two roles comes across in a statement that has spawned many vitriolic remarks, and it seems to make kant into a late-come proponent of the traditional doctrine of reason of state, or even a kind of prussian state philosopher: “reason as much as you wish but obey!” what kant in fact means, however, is something different that still today remains a basic tenet of legal theory. whoever acts as a figure of public authority must uphold what kant in other contexts calls the “mechanism of society,” since processes based on authority must be transparent and predictable once the initial variables are clearly staked out. we may indeed reason as much as we want, and question the soundness of laws. but this reasoning belongs to a space of individual, intellectual license, which as such is not the basis of procedures of authority. when passing a judgment, the court must follow the law, even though each of its members may very well perceive the law as unjust. while the private use of reason is based on authority and obedience, kant stresses the processual character of the public debate, which means that it should remain open-ended. we are living in an age of enlightenment, 15 isparchitecture.com he writes, not an enlightened age, since the latter would assume that reason had been perfected. if the process were to be stopped, i.e., if we would attain a perfect “match” between thinking and world, such a state could in a sense not be separated from a metaphysical dogmatism where truth could be decreed, and reasoning comes to an end. enlightenment is reflexive, in the sense that it must always be prepared to question its own results. as kant notes, this is due to a “maturing capacity for judgment” characteristic of that period which allows for the step out of our “selfincurred tutelage” (unmündigkeit), as he writes in the enlightenment essay which also makes it all the more essential for everyone of us to attempt to “think in the place of everyone else,” as he later will say in the critique of judgment (§ 40).2 what kant in fact discovers, as he moves from the first to the third critique and the various essays on politics, is that judgment is not simply “determining,” as in theoretical cognition, but also “reflexive,” engaging a dimension of intersubjectivity that requires us to change perspective, and to project a possible future where we all would be spontaneously reconciled, while still acknowledging that no empirical state of affairs could ever be said to be precisely such a fulfilled state. in the third critique, the discussion of judgment is carried out in terms of taste, beauty, and the sublime, and the link to the political writings does not at first hand seem obvious, although a closer reading of the texts reveals many subterranean links. they are however always tentative, as if experiments in thought that transfer propositional forms by way of analogy, metaphor, metonymy, and a host of other figures. rather than an aestheticizing of politics, or a politicizing of aesthetics, the twofold temptation that haunts post-kantian modernity, it is an exercise in what kant in the third critique calls an “enlarged mode of thought” (erweitere denkungsart), a reflection that does not aim for ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 16 w a ll en st ei n grounding in theory of practice, but moves freely between them, drawing on all types of sources and texts, unfolding in the interstices of imagination and judgment. for instance, when kant refers to the french revolution, he introduces the idea of a “sign of history” that would account for the way in which empirical events impact not only the affective part of the spectator, but also introduces ideas of reason, and even constitutes a kind of historical teleology, although surrounded by several caveats. the sign introduces a certain temporal dimension, and, as we will see, it at least communicates indirectly with the idea of a public space that would be materialized and embodied in a kind of monumentality. the relevant passages can be found in the second part of kant’s the conflict of faculties,3 where the question is whether progress in history can be ascertained or not. no direct empirical facts will suffice, kant claims, instead we should attempt to find “signs” that indicate—indirectly, precisely as signs—the existence of a transformed moral disposition. the french revolution, he suggests, is such a case, not because it has brought about shifts and changes in government (these may be reversed, and even lead to a factually worse state than before), but because it affects the spectators in a particular fashion. it is not the violence, the sound and fury of the res gestae that signify moral improvement; in fact, at the end of the day, the effects of the revolution may be such that it actually increases the amount of suffering in the world. the crucial aspect is what kant calls enthusiasm,4 a particular passion among those who experience it from a certain distance, in this case from across the rhine: it is the germans who are filled with enthusiasm, and a whole generation of idealist philosophers and poets in the wake of kant will corroborate his analysis. the germans, kant argues, are precisely by virtue of their distance from the stage of history exempt from the violence of pathological passions, since they have nothing to gain by entertaining them; on the contrary, their passions will be redirected from immediate aims towards moral principles, and in this they indicate a particular receptivity for ideas that is lost in the immediate imbroglio of the french milieu. first, we must note the theatrical dimension. the drama is organized by the divide between stage and audience, perhaps to some extent drawing on an implicit reading of aristotle’s poetics, where enthusiasm replaces katharsis as the desired outcome. but the revolution is as such obviously not a fiction, rather a real event whose moral effect can only be discerned if it passes through a certain distancing and aesthetic derealization. the impact of the political is registered in a quasi-aesthetic space, and even though the real (events and actions) cannot be reduced to an aesthetic phenomenon, the relation to moral principles can only be created by way 17 isparchitecture.com of a certain circulation within an aesthetic realm. the entangled nature of these relations no doubt signals a hesitance on kant’s part, but, arguably, just as much the contradictory and entangled nature of the real itself. to this we must add the temporal nature of the historical sign: it is a signum rememorativum, demonstrativum et prognosticon, i.e. a sign of memory that tells us that there has always been a certain amount of progress, a sign that demonstrates that there is a case in the present, and a sign that offers the prognosis that there will be progress in the future, that hope is not lost regardless of the vicissitudes of the revolution at present. in this sense, it institutes a historical possibility: even though empirical events may lead us astray and even turn out disastrously, this possibility cannot sink into complete oblivion. the same holds for the enlightenment, which for kant, as we saw, is not simply an empirical phase in history, but a reflexive move within reason itself, in which it calls upon itself to know itself, from within, without any support from transcendent authorities. the sign can in this sense be understood within a logic of the monument: it preserves a moment in time, embodies an idea, and projects it into the future. orienting the affective response of the beholder towards the domain of moral principles and supersensible ideas, it points to a possibility to be realized in the future. but it also points to the transcendence of such a future in relation to all empirical presents; the aesthetic affect must remain in an imaginary realm, if it is to retain its force in the realm of political, whereas any collapse of the two into each other would be precisely a “transcendental illusion” in the sense kant had already outlined in the first critique. the sign of history is only one of the many intermediary figures that kant proposes to create a bridge between the sensible and the supersensible, nature and freedom, and it is no easy task to sort them in a clear order, or to see if they are connected, if the “critique of political reason” remained in a state of fragmentation and suspension, it was because the political for kant couldn’t be subsumed under a priori principles. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 18 w a ll en st ei n hierarchically or otherwise. as lyotard points out (and in this he often comes close to arendt),5 if the “critique of political reason” remained in a state of fragmentation and suspension, it was because the political for kant couldn’t be subsumed under a priori principles, but always mobilized concepts drawn from cognition, ethics, and aesthetics, even religion, in a way that blurs the line between proper and improper uses. the rise and fall of public space in the tradition from kant, this lack of a priori principles has often been taken as a positive characteristic: it is the absence of univocal rules that constitutes the idea of society as a kind of ongoing mediation and reflection, an open-ended process of legitimization and production of consensus that neither acknowledges the decrees issued by a sovereign power, nor those of any alleged science of politics. thus, many have claimed that the creation of a modern political space would have kantian criticism and the french revolution as two founding moments. as claude lefort puts it, the end of the eighteenth century would have been the moment of the “democratic invention” or the “invention of democracy,”6 which as such was marked by a constitutive ambivalence: the subject that speaks (the “people”) is at the same time to be brought forth in this very same address, via a kind of political performativity. but rather than simply a contradiction that in advance would undermine this new political logic, the performative is what dismantles the theological and/or ontological foundation of politics, to the effect that we can say that there is politics, in the modern sense of the term, precisely to the extent that the very idea of a foundation has eroded. there is an absence at the heart of society, a void that many are indeed eager and even desperate to fill, which is why a certain totalitarian temptation always follows modern democracy like a shadow (for instance, as we noted earlier, by letting the aesthetic fill out this gap, not just as a “bridge,” as kant writes, but as a common positive ground). a somewhat different narrative is provided by jürgen habermas, from his early analysis of the public sphere to the later theories of communicative action.7 for him, the idea of a constitutive void or indeterminacy is not enough to safeguard a modern idea of the political; instead, he suggests that the theory of communication must be given a “transcendental” status if the respective roles of discourse are to be safeguarded. despite these differences, lefort’s and habermas’s theories both delineate powerful and highly influential narratives of the emergence of political freedom as connected to the space of public life, and for both the kantian moment occupies a central place. 19 isparchitecture.com it is however also crucial that in both accounts (more emphatically in habermas), the public sphere is perceived as under threat. when habermas in his classic 1962 study on the transformations of the public sphere begins by locating the promise of a public sphere, he points to the time of kant and the emergence of what could be called modern media as a site of free reflection (they create a “world of readers,” eine leserwelt, as kant says). but at the same time, this account seems already from the outset destined to end with the corruption of this very same system, at a point where it is absorbed by commercial interests and becomes part of a culture of the spectacle. one can ask to what extent the public sphere that habermas’s whole discourse mourns for ever existed; if it was there as a promise at the end of the enlightenment, as an idea (but nothing more) in kant, then as soon as its real and material infrastructure was set in place, it began to deteriorate. it seems clear that the idea of a single public space governed by the rules of rational communication was never, or will ever be, instantiated empirically, and in this sense it can only be taken as a “regulative” idea in the kantian sense: it is there in order to make sense of, or more precisely to judge and evaluate, a given empirical manifold, but it is never instantiated as such, which is probably why habermas in his later writings comes to understand the ideal communicative situation as a transcendental requirement (or in terms of a “transcendental pragmatics,” as proposed by karlotto apel).8 the problem with this however is whether such a regulative idea is at all capable of accounting for a factual development: it achieves its authority by adopting a normative transcendence with respect to the vicissitudes of history, while it remains unclear to what extent any of these factual developments were ever directed by this ideal. similarly, one could ask if the ideal of a transparent communication could ever account for what goes it seems clear that the idea of a single public space governed by the rules of rational communication was never, or will ever be, instantiated empirically. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 20 w a ll en st ei n on in communication; simply reiterating the traditional divide between is and ought may seem like evading the question, or at least to remain deaf to what goes on in language. the later claims by habermas that the problems could be settled through a “procedural rationality” (a minimum set of rules that safeguard rationality without making any substantial claims about the content of debates) seems to go in the same direction, and appears to assume that the basic questions have already been solved, or at least could be bracketed because of their technical, specialized nature.9 drawing on habermasian ideas, but in a way that stays closer to concrete problems of public space, the urban theorist michael sorkin has suggested an analogous account of the privatization of public space, which ends on an even more apocalyptic note and predicts the “end of public space”.10 many other similar cases could be cited; a conclusion would be that it seems almost unavoidable to inscribe the idea of a public “site” (whose spatial characteristics may vary) for rational political discourse in a story that tells of rise and decline. if such a site once existed—be it the greek agora, the renaissance city, the ideal space of the enlightenment—it is now a memory, an object of nostalgia. at the same time, this narrative cannot simply ascribe the demise of its object to some external cause: the rise of an affluent class that only looks to its own interests, the commercial press, the proliferation of information, technological changes; all of these are both what made this site, space, or sphere possible, and that which lies behind its inevitable deterioration in the present. genealogies of public space other narratives than those of rise and fall are obviously possible, not just in the sense that they would cite other empirical cases, but also, and more profoundly, in that they would question its underlying assumptions. in some cases, they could amount to what looks like an inversion of the first story. so in the case of richard sennett, whose the fall of public man attempts to show how the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on personal authenticity and psychological truthfulness, displaced an enlightenment culture of conversation and of the salon.11 in the eighteenth century “public man” was at liberty to stage a self, in a kind of enactment of the self in terms of rhetoric rather than psychology, whereas the nineteenth century would instead demand that one should appear as one truly is and condemn the split between inside and outside as a sign of moral inaptitude.12 other stories take us beyond the figure of reversal, and instead opt for a different and more conflict-ridden understanding of the historical process, tending to something that, following nietzsche and foucault, could be 21 isparchitecture.com called a “genealogical” model.13 in these stories, it makes no sense to ask if public space in the “true” sense existed at one point of another, if it was once a promise that was later betrayed for some reason, or if there has been a fall from one state to another. public space has always been both an object of dispute, and a disputed space of the dispute itself, to the effect that it has no true or ideal sense beyond all the ways in which it has been appropriated, rejected, contested, and redefined. if such a space has a constant feature—this time not in the sense of a regulative idea but rather that of a pervasive empirical fact—it is that it has always been based on various exclusions and hidden or explicit privileges, as any analysis of the actual composition of the alleged origins in the greek political assemblies and the agora will unambiguously show. as rosalyn deutsche suggests, the kind of analysis that we have previously discussed, which mourns the downfall of an ideal public domain, might even, somewhat provocatively, be called “agoraphobia.”14 what it profoundly fears, she argues, is to acknowledge that all public discourse is marked by asymmetries and power relations, not just incidentally and contingently, but structurally and constitutively. non-violent discourse might in this sense fulfill a very traditional definition of ideology: an imaginary solution to real contradictions, transposed to the realm of regulative ideas that always ought to be realized, but in fact never are (similarly to way in which the idea that all humans are equal in principle can serve to obscure that fact that they are never equal in reality). such an ideal will always appear as distant in time or space, always lost or to come, and this temporal projection is what holds fear at bay by rationalizing it. in a similar vein, chantal mouffe claims that “the political,” which for her must be distinguished from “politics” in the empirical sense of processes of policy-making and decision-making, has to do with the way in which a society is symbolically instituted it seems almost unavoidable to inscribe the idea of a public “site” for rational political discourse in a story that tells of rise and decline. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 22 w a ll en st ei n in terms of a fundamental antagonism.15 this she distinguishes from liberal conceptions, which are based on an “aggregative” model that understands the political in terms of the economy and the market, and from a deliberative model that understands the political as the application of morality. for mouffe, the political has to do with passions, and to take a political stance will always involve a separation between an “us” and a “them,” which creates an asymmetry in the space in which the two parties are to meet. the problem for mouffe becomes to what extent this antagonism can be transformed into an “agonism” that would allow passionate encounters while still mitigating or sublimating the violence of antagonism. how can we acknowledge the legitimacy of the opponent, without reference to a set of rules or a rational consensus to be achieved as the outcome? does the shift to agonism not presuppose some standard according to which it can be construed as successful—or, inversely, as has been argued by slavoj žižek, must the idea, or ideal, of agonism, not have recourse to a more basic liberal-capitalist order that itself cannot be challenged? just as for deutsche, this has important consequences for the notion of public space. mouffe places her theory in clear opposition to the one proposed by habermas, but also, although less clearly, to hannah arendt, whose conception of an “enlarged thought” and a political intersubjectivity draws on kant’s aesthetics.16 for mouffe, public space cannot be seen as one entity that could subsequently be occupied or compromised by external forces, rather it is a constitutive plurality in a sense that goes beyond the peaceful “space of appearance” as delineated by arendt: it is a multiply contested and non-symmetric space, a battleground traversed by struggles for hegemony. if public space is the space where politics is realized, this can only occur through acts of confrontation and unmasking. what mouffe proposes is that the public domain must be seen as an ongoing experimental construction, rather than as a regulative idea against which all empirical domains should be measured and against which they all will appear as deficient. the antinomy of public space how should we judge the conflict between those two stories? to some extent it is reminiscent of what paul ricoeur once called a “conflict of interpretations,”17 i.e. between a restorative hermeneutics that wants to return to an original sense buried under sediments of history, and a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in the wake of marx, nietzsche, and freud, for which the given—consciousness, texts, or, as in this case, this strange entity called public space—always harbors inner contradictions that must be unearthed, and that eventually will destroy the unity of the object in question. 23 isparchitecture.com but perhaps the choice of the word “hermeneutics” as an overarching term is misleading, since it glosses over the highly different conceptions of thought itself that we find in these two conceptions. at stake are not just methodologies of interpretation, but a kind of antinomy that lies deep in the heart of thought itself. but what, then, is this antinomy? the term seems as such to already settle the conflict, since it belongs to the kantian vocabulary. for kant, an antinomy results from two conflicting interests, and his chief example is the notion of freedom: for the understanding, as the faculty that legislates over the science of nature, the interest lies in maximizing the scope of causality, and freedom is an impossible concept, since it would disrupt the causal chain. for the faculty of reason (as opposed to the faculty of understanding, and directed towards ideas), the interest is to safeguard a sphere of the supersensible that preserves the autonomy of rational agents. in natural science, causal chains must be seamless, and that free actions do not exist is not an empirical discovery, but an a priori requirement. for ethics, freedom is inversely what is required for the moral law to be at all applicable, and its status cannot be revoked by any reference to physics. what holds together these two claims is the architectonic of reason, which allows the sensible (nature) and the supersensible to co-exist.18 now, in the case of public space, just as in kant’s analysis of freedom, both parties can argue their respective cases forcefully: the idealist account lays claim to an ethical necessity (no empirical facts can settle the question of what public space should be), whereas the genealogical seems to refer to a kind of sensible manifold (ethical ideals are not what matters, but rather significance lies in what people in fact do). what is striking, and rather different than in kantian philosophy, is that the first version, which stresses universals and communicative action, tends to be pessimistic about the present and even more so about the future, whereas the if public space is the space where politics is realized, this can only occur through acts of confrontation and unmasking. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 24 w a ll en st ei n second version, which stresses contingency and forces, tends to see the future as open an undecided. what seems to be at stake here is thus not the difference between theoretical and practical reason, or between nature and freedom, as kant would have it, but rather between two versions of freedom, which is why we cannot solve the issue by an appeal to some putative architecture of reason. the antinomy of public space in this sense testifies to division between two ideas or even ideals of philosophy, rather than to a split inside a particular philosophy. endnotes 1. the classic text is immanuel kant’s 1784 essay, ‘an answer to the question: what is enlightenment?’ in immanuel kant, political writings, trans. h. b. nisbet, ed. hans reiss (cambridge: cambridge univ. press, 1990). 2. immanuel kant, ‘what is enlightenment?’ mary c. smith, tr. http:// www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/ccread/etscc/kant.html. 3. translated in political writings (as in note 1). 4. i draw here on the commentary by jean-françois lyotard, l’enthousiasme: la critique kantienne de l’histoire (paris: galilée, 1986). 5. which is not to say that their readings coincide: in many respects they differ sharply, in a way not unrelated to the antinomy between the two stories of public space that will be sketched in the following section. 6. see claude lefort l’invention démocratique: les limites de la domination totalitaire (paris: fayard, 1981). 7. jürgen habermas, strukturwandel der öffentlichkeit: untersuchungen zu einer kategorie der bürgerlichen gesellschaft (luchterhand: neuwied, 1962), and jürgen habermas, theorie des kommunikativem handelns (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1981). 8. see for instance karl-otto apel, understanding and explanation: a transcendental pragmatic perspective, trans. georgia warnke (cambridge, mass: mit, 1984). 9. in another terminology, the idea of a procedural rationality endowed with an intentionally “thin” definition seems to deny the possibility of ”deep conflicts”, i.e., conflicts where the very nature of rules is at stake. interestingly, such conflicts are abundant at the level that many (though not all) philosophers would see as the basic one, the foundations of mathematics and logic. 10. see for instance the contributions in michael sorkin (ed.), variations on a theme park: the new american city and the end of public space (new york: hill and wang, 1992). for a critical discussion of sorkin’s account, as well as of similar proposals by mike davis, see 25 isparchitecture.com rosalyn deutsche, ‘men in space,’ in rosalyn deutsche, evictions: art and spatial politics (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1996). this is obviously not to deny the empirical pertinence of the analyses of late capitalist space and of the commodification of the urban landscape proposed by sorkin and davis; it does however mean to question their underlying narrative structure, which tends to project a past and more ideal situation or possibility that at one point were betrayed. 11. richard sennett, the fall of public man (new york: random house, 1977). 12. while doubtless effective as an antidote to the traditional story, the image of a fall occurring at the beginning of the nineteenth century, should not lead us into believing that free public sphere once existed, and then vanished, but we should rather see one contradictory and tensionladen structure displacing another, as sennett shows. that the ideal of public man was highly disputed can be seen in the writings of rousseau and diderot. if diderot in his paradoxe sur le comédien shows how the actor’s distance from himself is a precondition for theater, then rousseau can be said to invert this theory by making theater itself into a paradigm for false social relations, as in his lettre à d’alembert sur les spectacles. 13. for foucault’s account of nietzsche, see ‘nietzsche, genealogy, history,’ in: michel foucault, language, counter-memory, practice, ed. donald f. bouchard, trans. donald f. bouchard and simon sherry (ithaca: cornell university press, 1977). foucault says little about public space, but it would no doubt be fruitful to enter this complex via his analysis of greek democracy and his discussion of parrhesia, “fearless speech,” which always introduces a difference that breaks with the merely formal symmetry of equals. see the ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 26 w a ll en st ei n two last courses at the collège de france, le gouvernement de soi et des autres: cours au collège de france (1982-1983), ed. frédéric gros (paris: seuil ; 2008), and le courage de la vérité: le gouvernement de soi et des autres ii: cours au collège de france (1983-1984), ed. frédéric gros (paris: seuil: 2009). 14. see rosalyn deutsche, ‘agoraphobia,’ in: roslyn deutsche, evictions: art and spatial politics (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1996). 15. for mouffe’s views, see chantal mouffe, on the political (london: routledge, 2005), and chantal moufe, ‘agonistic public spaces, democratic politics, and the dynamics of passion,’ in: joseph backstein, daniel birnbaum, and sven-olov wallenstein (eds:), thinking worlds: the moscow conference on philosophy, politics, and art (new york and berlin: sternberg press, 2008). for the relation to carl schmitt and the conception of the political as oriented along the axis friend-foe, see her anthology chantal mouffe, the challenge of carl schmitt (london: verso, 1999). 16. see hannah arendt, lectures on kant’s political philosophy, ed. ronald beiner (chicago: university of chicago press, 1992). 17. see paul ricoeur, the conflict of interpretations: essays in hermeneutics (evanston, ill.: northwestern university press, new ed. 2007). 18. i disregard some of the more objectionable moves that permit kant to close the gap between theoretical and practical reason, above all the reference to the thing itself, of which he says that it is at least not contradictory to assume would be the locus of a free, supersensible causality. kant is perhaps too eager to close the gap, because of the demand for an architectonic unity of reason, even though his “dissolution” (auflösung) of the antinomy is dependent on it, as i think is evinced by respective developments of the theme in arendt and lyotard. isparchitecture.com essentialism and spatial (re) production benjamin bross introduction the phenomenon of globalization continues to strengthen and spread across socio-cultural community boundaries, resulting in homogenized cultural landscapes. as henri lefebvre pointed out, spatial production1 exhibits a society’s value systems through the spaces (and places) it produces. one of the principal effects of a technology-driven flow of information on spatial production is that it has increasingly become a binary proposition: either design practice contributes to a sense of place by being rooted in place-based iterative sociohistorical spatial production processes or, it follows modernism’s rejection of history and tradition in order to disrupt consciously the socio-historic context. the former asserts the continuation of localized spatial traditions and the latter producing design that participates in a larger globalized contemporary aesthetic. yet, if spatial production is to (re)produce spatial traditions, how do we recognize what is essential to the identity of space? the purpose of this essay is to produce an analytical approach that examines site-specific spatial design that results in placemaking: a unique physical spatial experience defined by the relationship between various spatial objects and ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 10 br os s their properties. together, these objects, usually typological spaces, and their qualities produce a sense of environmental and geographic spatial identity that distinguish a place from other spaces. the spatial production of objects that acknowledge and utilize their contexts help counteract the increasing homogeneity of globalized space. the question is then, how do we determine if a spatial product (a door, a house or a city plaza) belongs to, and hence continues, a specific spatial production tradition or context? how do we answer the question: what is it? what follows describes spatial products as knowable by the nature of their properties. this article uses the philosophical concept of essentialism to develop a framework to analyze and generate designs that are rooted in context and history. the paper explores “aristotelian” essentialism, focusing on the efficient and final causes, to define the nature of a spatial object. the essay continues by explaining the role of time in identifying spatial products. finally, anchored in the previous analyses, the essay proposes three modes of spatial production: discontinuity, continuity, and innovation, that describe contemporary spatial production based on the deployment of essential properties of an object. these three modes allow designers to reflectively engage in the practice of spatial placemaking. essentialism introduction to essentialism modern essentialism, as part of part of the “scientific realism” tradition, can be applied to explain the nature (see below) of objects. first, it is important to remember that as lefebvre notes, “nature creates and does not produce.”2 this is important to note because my essentialist argument focuses on the essential qualities of produced objects and not that of created things of nature. hence, the essay is not about natural kinds, but rather, about the essential qualities of produced spatial objects. this philosophical approach seeks to document qualities including those that go beyond the “appearances in order to discover the hidden causes of things.”3 thus, objects are defined by characteristics/properties that are bound in the essence of the object. essentialism requires first an affirmation of the object’s characteristics/properties and thus distinguishes those properties that are intrinsic and necessary for being the object from those which are accidental; the latter defined as a “property of an object …. it happens to have but that it could lack.”4 necessary properties, in turn, are “primary or secondary qualities” where “primary qualities are properties of the objects themselves. the secondary qualities are manners in which we are affected by things in the process of perceiving them.”5 11 isparchitecture.com hence, all essential properties are intrinsic, but not all intrinsic properties are essential. moreover, as leibniz6 argued, and more recently baruch brody,7 intrinsic properties can only be essential if they are possessed at all times by the object. therefore, attitudes towards spatial objects are in themselves accidental, that is, susceptible to the passage of time and the concurrent evolution of value-systems. an attempt to describe an object by what it is not would ultimately be fruitless, because all objects lack an infinite number of properties. rather, it is imperative to search for properties, characteristics, or qualities that the object must possess to be categorized as a part of a specific spatial production tradition. the question then becomes, how do we identify the essential qualities of a spatial product? aristotle’s causes aristotle’s “causes”8 provide an important approach to applying essentialism to spatial production. aristotle proposed “four categories of cause” that explain physical reality and the nature of things: material, formal, efficient and final.9 the material cause, as the name suggests, explains the material content of the object; the formal cause explains the shape of the object. with efficient cause, aristotle attempted to describe qualities that are not necessarily revealed at the surface of the object itself but are imbued into the object during its production. these qualities include socially constructed value systems acting through the individual or groups producing the object: rituals of production, skillsets, aesthetics (value judgements of beauty), logistics (including location, tools and facilities) and temporality (duration and time frame). the final cause, or the purpose of the object, is the designed purpose or function of the object. because material and formal causes are somewhat self-evident, the essay focuses on the role of efficient and final cause in determining spatial essence. all essential properties are intrinsic, but not all intrinsic properties are essential “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 12 br os s efficient cause in an aristotelian context, one of the ways we can explain essential properties of the object is by understanding the object’s efficient cause or its process of production. first, efficient cause explores who produces the object, and more importantly, how. under this interpretation, efficient cause is the combination of the producer and the process (steps) of production itself.10 at its most expansive scope, a culture is defined by its traditions and rituals (what it does), and at its most granular, fabricators are defined by their knowledge; hence the carpenter is identified as the carpenter because she knows how to do carpentry. efficient cause analysis requires the development of identifiable proprietary sets -a group based on identified shared properties. who may start with a general category, for example, an ethnic, national, or other productive group, i.e. “the french”, and can finish with definitive specificity, such as a particular or individual producer -i.e., jean nouvel. as in set theory, related groups of specific examples are part of the greater general set, with each set containing kinds.11 specificity in the set is only as relevant as required by the analyst to demonstrate the validity of the general set’s essential and related properties.12 who produces the object is then an essential property of the object itself -even anonymity of production is an identifiable property of the object (i.e., when we do not know or cannot know who made the object, when anonymity is a requirement of production, or when anyone can produce an object). as walter benjamin13 noted, who or what produces an object is a fundamental property when determining authenticity (see replication below), hence it is an essential component of identity. the appearance of “black swan”14 exceptions to any specific set, do not invalidate the original set, but rather, create a new independent subset within the larger general set or alternately, widen the sorting criteria. identifying who produces the object is limited only by the venn diagram-like qualifiers that are used to form a kind set: i.e., profession, religious or hierarchical status, socio-cultural and political membership, etc. when analyzing a spatial product, such as a church, we might investigate who designed, built, blessed, and funded the product, noting that each of these producers had a specific role because of their knowledge in the process of production. we might further investigate requirements to participate in these roles, for example, to bless a religious shrine, it is a requirement to be an ordained priest of that religion. another aspect of efficient cause is the ‘how’ or the process of production. in essentialism, the object’s essential identity may embody the processes of production if deemed relevant by the individual maker 13 isparchitecture.com or society as a whole. these processes include but are not limited to rituals or traditions and their associated codes (rules) of execution. for example, it may be essential that the object be produced following specific manufacturing steps or associated rituals that may or may not be visible in the object itself; at specific periods of time, such as the first full moon of the year, or when a comet appears in the evening sky. as we shall see below, these codes of production, may significantly overlap with the final cause, i.e. the designed purpose, as often how something is produced is part of why an object is produced. hannah arendt15 has argued that the how also includes socio-political value systems, including capital production contexts, codes, and working conditions. like production rituals, these characteristics may or may not be visible in the product itself, and overlap at times with other essentialist causes. for example, a church façade may be made of the stone of a specific quarry, such that its material cause is stone, but its efficient cause is that the stone must be from a particular quarry associated with a sacred mountain. finally, efficient cause might incorporate “constructal”16 logic, where the object is the natural (that is obeying natural laws) result of a production process. once again, it is necessary for the analyst to propose and bound the relevant parameters in developing identity sets. final cause aristotle describes final cause as the object’s purpose or telos. purpose can be divided into two parts: what it should do, for example “a house should provide shelter”; and what it can do (beyond its primary purpose) because of its intrinsic properties, such as materiality, shape, dimension, volume, color etc., for example, “a house can be a museum.” the should makes explicit intent, while can acknowledges an object’s possibilities, but is like production rituals, these characteristics may or may not be visible in the product itself, and overlap at times with other essentialist causes. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 14 br os s void of designer intent. as we shall see below, this is a critical idea as it lays the foundation for a constructed system of values. furthermore, fundamental to the idea of what an object does, is an incorporated history of all previous actions, which taken as a sum, enable present and future actions of the object (hereafter, called functions). these historic, present and future functions become the “signs” by which semiotic analyses ascribe various degrees of meaning and ultimately the collective memory inherent in the social contexts of spatially produced objects. another important aspect of final cause exists in an object’s potential purpose, such that as the object fulfills its purpose, what was initially an extrinsic object quality, thereafter transforms the object’s essence, and now forms part of its intrinsic properties. it is important to note that regardless of the transformation, the object retains its initial properties even while gaining new qualities.17 in that sense, the object acquires new purposes, that are fundamental for describing the object’s nature. this is especially important when the object must then be able to perform the new intrinsic purpose as its reason for being. while considering an object’s purpose— and hence describing it—space-time contexts must be identified clearly: what the object has been, what it is, and what it could be are properties of the object. these contexts are necessary to establish categorical boundaries of being. to illustrate this point, let us examine the “western wall”18 in jerusalem. (figure 1) as a material cause, the wall is made of limestone “jerusalem stone” blocks quarried near the site.19 turning to the wall’s efficient cause, the wall’s stone blocks were placed side by side to form long courses, with each successive course rising away from its bedrock foundation. though parts of the wall have been built and rebuilt by different rulers and their corresponding subjects over the last 2000 years, historic records show that king herod ordered the initial construction20 of the wall; hence, members of judean society ranging from priests to slaves initially built the wall. at each instance, the tools and technology that were used to construct the wall correspond to the time and cultural corpus of the people working on the wall. in terms of its final cause, the wall was designed and erected as a structure capable of holding back soil in order to support a large temple surrounded by ceremonial grounds. once the wall was finished sometime between 19 bce and the end of construction of the temple mount in 64 ce, it fulfilled its telos. yet in 70 ce, 6 years after the temple mount was finally completed, the second temple was destroyed.21 after the destruction of the temple by the romans, only portions of the retaining wall and temple mount were left 15 isparchitecture.com –though eventually the latter were also removed. however, as f.m. loewenberg notes,22 the portion of the retaining wall that did survive, did not acquire an “aura”23 of symbolic and theological importance until nearly 1500 years later; that would happen four years after the 1546 earthquake, when houses and other lean-to structures collapsed and revealed the original retaining wall. sultan suleiman i, the magnificent, instructed his engineers to clear away debris and prepare a prayer site for jews. thereafter, the once extrinsic property –its spatial relationship to the holy of holiesbecame an intrinsic quality, i.e. no longer was it simply a retaining wall, but rather, as a physical remnant of the temple and its grounds, over the centuries increasingly becoming judaism’s holiest site. critiques of essentialism in his essay, “no route to material origin essentialism?”24 nic damnjanovic critiques saul kripke’s naming and necessity, pointing out arguments made against essentialism’s apparent inability to determine the “sufficiency” or minimum figure 1: western wall, jerusalem ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 16 br os s properties that an object must possess to be considered essentially that object. first, it is important to note his criticism is primarily directed at material cause, and concludes “any argument for (emo) [material origin essentialism] that relies on a sufficiency principle is bound to fail.”25 damnjanovic notes that any essentialist argument that depends on exclusive material properties of objects alone is not enough to identify an object as unique, or belonging to its own set. instead, an object’s identity essence is derived from material, the other three causes, and its resulting intrinsic compossibility.26 simply stated, an object´s essence does not rest alone on its materiality, but in the sum of the properties that are present in its production, and its ability to sustain relationships (interactions) with other objects. other critics note that essences do not seem to be observable and hence verifiable. david oderberg, citing locke as the source of the confusion, counters that the fundamental question that must be answered is “what is meant by observability.”27 he continues by discussing an object´s quiddity, pragmatically noting that objects do possess intrinsic properties that do manifest themselves extrinsically. as such, these intrinsic properties cannot be separated from the object, and hence flow forth from it, revealing its essence. he writes “…what a thing is does determine how it is –in the traditional terminology, function follows essence. essence just is the principle from which flows the characteristic behavior of the thing. and a thing´s numerical identity as particular member of a kind determines its particular behavior…”28 objects must be evaluated by what they are and do, and on that basis, analyses reveal how and why an object behaves as it does. therefore, designers can utilize modern essentialism to identify spatial production traditions not only by their form, but also equally as important, by what they do, and how they achieve designed functions. as we shall see below, this is of paramount importance when attempting to avoid “pastiche” aesthetics. the role of time in the reductionist tradition, time is a descriptive property of a spatial product (object) indicating the specific status of being (existing) in an object’s production, use and relationship with other objects. in this sense, an object possesses five distinct (but related) qualities of time: embodied, existence, contextual, production, and use. embodied time describes the passage of time incorporated since the object’s creation.29 for example, in the case of the itsukushima torii30 (figure 2) the columns are made from camphor tree trunks. these 17 isparchitecture.com camphor tree trunks are at least two hundred years old before they were cut down. the embodied time property is neither accidental nor incidental, as width, height and loadbearing requirements for the itsukushima torii necessitate trees that must be at least 200 years old to fulfill its final cause in the same way as past torii iterations. existence time is the descriptive characteristic of the object’s age from production inception going forward. this is because objects can be said to be in existence once they have been produced and function (see final cause). existence time criteria is fundamental to understand the value systems which are imbedded in the production of spatial product. for example, use may be the primary production criteria when choosing materials prioritizing their point of obsolescence, thus enabling future market-oriented consumption. the itsukushima torii’s existence time begins once the tree trunks are transformed into columns, and all other components are integrated to form the new whole object of the torii. in this way, we describe the age (measured flow of time) of the components either figure 2: itsukushima shrine torii ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 18 br os s as independent of human interaction (created), or dependent on the production process.31 contextual time is determined by the occurrence of other events that demarcate the beginning, continuation and end of specific periods. in contextual time, we note referential time points, as in the past, present, and future, but more importantly, by a proposed generally accepted historic identifier such as neolithic or roman. contextual time is indispensable to understand spatial identity as belonging to an identifiable set of criteria to which the spatial product belongs, and as such, denotes and connotes particular spatial identity; it allows us to examine the characteristics of the social, cultural and political contexts in which an object has been, is, and will be produced. contextual time is often considered the prevalent criteria for membership in an identity group, as we often refer to qualities of context when describing an object’s identity. as such, we state the object belongs to, emulates (simulates, but is not authentic), and disrupts the time qualities of objects belonging to the same identity groups. if matched with efficient and final causes, we derive a cross-reference of who, how, and why, as related to the contextual time frame in which they are produced. who in contextual time, may reference the larger set of people whose cultural spatial making is identified with the production of an object, such as the “edo” or “meiji” periods. equally importantly, is the iterative nature of contextual time, since the production of an object reinforces the notion of a specific period of production: for example, when archeologists suggest that a ruin dates from a specific time frame because its physical characteristics match those of other objects known to have been produced in that time context. production time refers directly to the time that is necessary to produce an object. for example, one salient characteristic of fordism32 is the mass production of consumable products in a specific calibrated amount of time. in this manner, we can describe the time it takes to produce a spatial object as a specific, descriptive quality. in the case of a torii, we could distinguish within the context of efficient cause, between those that are handmade (longer periods of time and labor intensive) and those that are machine-made (rapid production and serially made). as the name suggests, use time describes the measured amount of time an object performs its functions. whereas existence time is a measure of the passage time of the object, use time measures the duration of each function. recalling that function applies equally to what an object should and can do, we can similarly note that use time applies to the carrying out of activities that are intended and unintended. at first sight, the latter might suggest an 19 isparchitecture.com extraneous consideration, yet if we recall the example of the western wall, construction of spatial myth is often the result of built environments performing time-based unintended activities. such activities become fundamental in understanding the shaping of human perception derived from the essence of the spatial product. for example, a farmer’s field that temporarily becomes a brutal battlefield; though comparatively insignificant to the existence time of the field, the use time of the rummel farm33 as a battleground during the u.s. civil war transformed the farm into a spatial component of the gettysburg national military park. such a spatial transformation includes the corresponding changes to site’s spatial essence legibility. developmen of sets sets are collections of objects that share criteriabased common properties. to apply essentialism as sorting criteria requires considering objects’ intrinsic properties. sets are made through the analyses of spatial production for identification purposes based on the cause properties (discussed previously) of the objects. for example, “set doors” is composed of the physical object “doors,” such that all doors are contained in “set doors.” as a first step, the designer defines a door through its final cause essence: what does a door do that makes it a door? what must a door perform to be considered a door? a second step is to sort doors by efficient cause, answering who must produce the door, and how must they produce it to be perceived as a door, and more specifically a particular type of door? a third, but certainly not final step, would be to generate time criteria that further restricts set membership: in what context time is the door produced, and what is the use time for a particular door? one possible next step is to identify what is a door by formal properties: dimensions, materials, configurations, ornamentations, colors, components, etc. each answer generates additional use time describes the m e a s u r e d amount of time an object performs its functions. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 20 br os s sets defined by commonalities between member objects, and differences with objects of other sets, while all objects are generally still considered doors. taken to its logical end, we can visualize how on one hand increasing complexity leads to increasing differentiation and ultimately uniqueness in an object, while on the other hand, we can determine as many sets as necessary to establish what is essential in a spatial identity set. at the larger scale, the quantified and qualified identification of sets allow observers to assert that an object belongs to a specific tradition of spatial practice because of its essential properties. once a set has been determined by specific criteria, essentialism becomes normative when applied to generate design. first essentialism describes what is, and then, what it should be based on established rules of belonging to the set. the more limited the set of explanations available for each property, the easier it is to identify the uniqueness of the type to a society, and in some cases, the singularity of the object itself. these properties are often expressed as normative regulations: to be considered a part of an object’s set, a shared minimum of characteristics must be evident. the more specific the set, the clearer the revelation of the essential nature of the object to a society, and within a society’s total production. set development reveals constructed value systems not only for the set, but for the set developer as well. a central aspect of set development is the privileging of some properties over others to generate a set identity. in other words, why properties are chosen is as important as what properties are chosen. the deconstruction of property privileging reveals meaning through semiotics. for example, amos rapoport (following hall) categorized human spatial production based on their physical permanence into fixed, semifixed, and non-fixed components.34 in his methodic approach, he proposes a system that identifies the object’s essential final cause properties in terms of its existence time to derive meaning. designers can utilize his system to generate spatial production that follows the essential property rules to generate similar objects. as we shall see next, such an approach presents an opportunity for designers to continue a spatial tradition by (re)producing that which has been classified as belonging to a pre-existing contextual set; or, innovate designed components rooted in context or history yet exemplifying contemporary expressions of functions, materiality and/or form. discontinuity, continuity and innovation having described essentialism as analytical tools to examine the identity 21 isparchitecture.com of spatial products, we can now propose how these analyses are applied through design. generally, we understand spatial production through three general modalities: discontinuity, continuity, and innovation. each of these modes of production display varying degrees of commonality, from none to total, with the latter a high reliance or emulation on the proprietary qualities of contextual spatial production. specifically, we are able to categorize spatial objects because sets (see above) contain objects that relate to each other through causal qualities at the exclusion of objects that do not share properties. jouni-matti kuukkanen, citing thomas kuhn, explains that: according to kuhn’s theory, references of kind terms are determined through a network of similarity and dissimilarity relations, which specify what properties an entity can and cannot have in order to qualify as that kind. similarity-dissimilarity sets do not entail any principled distinction between essential and superficial properties. although the original formation of sets does not require any description, the descriptive content stored in the sets is subsequently needed to keep the boundaries between kind categories sharp.35 because sets are determined by selecting specific parameters, designers must engage in the selection of properties that may be produced or re-produced during object production. obviously, certain parameters are impossible to replicate, such as contextual time. yet, as we will see below, the inability to possess the same contextual time disqualifies continuity only as far as it limits an object´s authenticity for a specifically bounded time context, but not in its tradition of making or embedded value systems (i.e. building codes). having described essentialism as analytical tools to examine the identity of spatial products, we can now propose how these analyses are applied through design “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 22 br os s discontinuity with the rise of modernism in the 19th century and onward, as exemplified by adolph loos’ treatise ornament and crime, designers and artists willfully turned away from the past and its traditions. moreover, contemporary spatial production practices, even in the postmodernist period, continue to question the value of establishing a continuity or innovative relationship with historic and contextual environments. lebbeus woods had gone so far as to declare “i am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.”36 it is this rejection of spatial history and context that creates spatial discontinuity, as it privileges objects that are dissimilar to their environment. discontinuity is a modality of spatial production where contextual essential qualities are obviated in favor of the production of a consciously differentiated spatial product. discontinuous spatial production exhibits the absence of the various properties of the spatial products such as time, materiality, history, purpose, and value systems. differentiated objects exhibit contextual relationships that are limited to either their physical presence, enforced embedded value systems, or functionality. perhaps one of the best examples of discontinuous spatial production is adolf loos’ steiner house. built in 1910 in a viennese suburb, it radically differentiates itself in its façade design and plan development, a precursor to his raumplan,37 from the neighborhood’s preexisting houses. for the purposes of our discussion, spatial production requires that objects occupy physical space over time.38 because of the physical relationship between objects, there is an ontological reality of perceived existence, regardless of the design intention of the produced objects. simply stated, a new office building whose design embraces a differentiated essence and hence façade from its context, has a relationship with all the other buildings in its proximity by virtue of its physical existence, during the time that buildings in proximity exist. it is this condition of physicaltime existence that allows our built environment to be understood as a palimpsest: layer upon layer of spatial production that in summation exhibits aldo rossi’s “genius loci.”39 another baseline shared relationship is the enforced embedded value systems during the production of spatial objects. discontinuous objects share imposed values systems, such as fire codes, ada, setbacks, design review directives, or other legislation that all objects must obey. in that sense, all spatial products of a specific time and place exhibit the constructed 23 isparchitecture.com value systems of the participative groups who enact, promote and enforce codified production rules. yet, other constructed value systems are often suppressed or removed from the production process itself, diminishing or eliminating bonds between objects. finally, discontinuous objects tend to relate to other objects by their functions. hence, we can see how houses built in the 18th century through the 21st century should provide shelter but, often do so at such differentiated processes that the function provides any meaningful relationship across time and space. altogether, discontinuous spatial production generates environments of disconnected spatial objects, standing silently apart from each other, in the same space, but without a sense of place. continuity continuity is the act of producing objects that directly exhibit object-property kinds revealed by the essentialist qualities of an existing environmental context. this production can occur by either replacement, replication or resemblance. the intent is figure 3: ise jingu shrine ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 24 br os s to go beyond surface-first qualities and define design composition through essentialist frameworks in the way of making that embed value systems associated with spatial production. to replace, is “to take the place of,”40 and –ment, indicates the action itself. replacement is literally an action where an object´s spatial component are exchanged in situ by components whose qualities are materially identical to those that are being displaced. component qualities obey causes with the possible exception of contextual time. because components are bound to the historic period in which they were produced, all objects not produced at the same time as the original components can be determined to be different, unless the period is expansive enough to be considered part of one space-time continuum.41 replacement components themselves are subject to further analysis: they may have been produced at the same time as the original components, but stored for later use, maintenance and upkeep. for example, roofing tiles might be produced and stored specifically for later use, at the same time as a first set of tiles are installed; these stored tiles are then used to replace older tiles as these reach the end of their useful life. the replacement tiles, though installed years or decades later, would still belong to the same contextual and production time as the first installed tiles. alternatively, identical components may be produced millennia later, to replace failing components. the question in this case is a larger one, when we consider who installs them, and how they install them. this analysis becomes relevant to those who seek to establish parameters of authenticity. who? is not an innocent question, as it identifies groups that seek to appropriate or consolidate socio-political power through the affirmative control of historic spatial products. how must be understood too, as we analyze forces of capital and labor involved in production and replacement: we must consider the final cause of replacement itself, especially when accounting for social, cultural and political agendas. replication is a spatial production process by which an object´s physical components are produced in an identical manner to the original but, in a separate physical space and time. unlike replacement, replication production does not occur in situ. similar to replacement components and objects, replication products are bound by the specificity of their time qualities. for example, the jingu shrine in ise is replicated during the shikinen sengu ceremony occurring every 20 years (figure 3). junko edahiro notes, its underlying concept—that repeated rebuilding renders 25 isparchitecture.com sanctuaries eternal—is unique in the world. in the occidental way of thinking, creating something durable would normally involve building a structure with robust stones, bricks, and concrete. at this shrine, however, the structures are made exclusively from wood and, by being rebuilt over and over again, can last forever. also, in the process of rebuilding, the skills of shrine builders and craftsmen in various fields (carpentry, sacred treasures, apparel, etc.) are also passed on from generation to generation.42 viewed as part of the final cause, the jingu shrine object’s use time prescribes that its torii pillars be used in the sanctuary for twenty years; once dismounted from within the main shrine, they are used another twenty years as gates at the uji bridge. while any variation of this use time may not eliminate the torii essence of the object, it would however, prevent it from being considered specifically an ise grand shrine torii, because the deviating iteration would no longer be bound by the required use time characteristics. mass replication (in series or concurrently) by non-mechanical and non-automated means of production, precisely because of implied labor concentration in production time, evokes the sense of a process-centered spatial production unity. in mass replication, spatial production is accretive to the individual maker at the personal level, but also accretive to the larger scale society. specifically, production by replication connotes membership in the larger group. presently what we mostly see, however, is mass replication by mechanical and automated processes that obey the logic of capital as its main identity. this continuous spatial production approach is prevalent in projects that produce large amounts of units in a standardized and rapid manner (thus providing the largest “ ” production by replication connotes membership in the larger group ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 number of costs efficiencies). for example: mass housing projects whose constituent components, entire buildings, and even neighborhoods, are produced identically and serially (except for their physical location within the overall urban project). on one hand, as walter benjamin43 noted,mass replication has provided unprecedented access to all types of works and spatial products for the largest number of people. yet, benjamin points to the failures of mass replication, where spatial production is driven by the logic of capital, leading to vanishing authenticity. similarly, aldo van eyck has pointed to mass replication in urbanism as its main challenge in placemaking. he notes “[w]e must continue the search for the basic principles of a new aesthetic and discover the human meaning of number. we must impart rhythm to repetitive similar and dissimilar form, thereby disclosing the conditions that may lead to the equilibration of the plural, and thus overcome the menace of monotony.”44,45 there is a final mode of continuity, that neither replaces, replicates, but relates to the context: resemblance. michel foucault recalls that until the “end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in knowledge of western culture. it was resemblance that largely guided exegesis and the interpretations of texts; it was resemblance that organized the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them.”46 at first glance, reaching back to the sixteenth century and its aristotelian tradition47 might seem an anachronistic approach, but attempts to contemporize once archaic forms of understanding yields fruits in present postmodern discourse. spatial production is perceived as continuous because it resembles preexisting contextual components. though varying from object precedent/context, they do so in such a way as to present the observer a sense of unity or belonging to a greater group of objects. resemblance in objects requires the development of parameter-defined kinds criteria; individual essential properties that permit identification of the object, or what foucault calls the “signature.” moreover, resemblance joins spatial objects to each other, over distance and time, creating what foucault names sympathetic links -rendering contextual time a non-essential quality of the product. in resemblance, spatial products with similar fundamental properties form sets whose objects exhibit specimen variations to generate object individuality, while retaining membership through what wittgenstein called “familiar relationships.”48 for example, we can readily recognize a brownstone neighborhood in new york, but we can also distinguish individual dwellings frome each other. wittgenstein notes that we as observers br os s 28 27 isparchitecture.com recognize similarities between objects, writing that “we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing; sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”49 innovation the third major modality is that of innovation. unlike resemblance, where properties may vary superficially or minimally from object to object, but retain essential familiar similarities and hence belong to the same “set,” innovation represents a wider variation in material cause and an outright departure from an object’s historic efficient cause essence. often, changes in material realities are catalysts for changes in production processes. how and who exhibit contemporary labor, production technology, and social value systems while maintaining essential formal and final causes. by modifying the efficient cause properties, designers propose spatial relationships that simultaneously relate to the contextual precedent, while modifying an object enough to imbue it with a sense of contemporaneous production –i.e., the zeitgeist. thus, objects are produced with essential modifications that address new or contemporary social, cultural and political contexts. this looking back to history but being part of the present is the hallmark of innovation. in koestler´s ghost in the machine, he relates a story describing the process of production attributed to bios.50 however, where nature evolves, spatial producers innovate. following his narrative, spatial production processes innovate by incorporating simpler processes into the production of increasingly complex objects. we can directly relate the original production process and its resultant spatial product with each new iteration because of contextual time and the changing efficient cause of an object to achieve intended functions. innovation allows for, even promotes, the notion that design can reveal the i n n o v a t i o n represents a wider variation in material cause and an outright departure from an object’s h i s t o r i c efficient cause essence. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 28 br os s contextual essence of things, and still be produced in its own time context. critical regionalism, for example, as defined by kenneth frampton, approaches place making through innovation that seizes on the essential aspects of spatial production and steers away from what he calls “nostalgic historicism” and “sentimental” attachments to place. instead, frampton’s focus is on “elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place.”51 confronted with the inability to match contextual time, selected properties are extracted, decanted from contextual objects, to reveal causes that create sympathetic commonalities from spatial object to object. essential components are not formed from the impulse of replication, but rather, from the material cause of location, the efficient cause of the producer, and the final cause of its functions. where focus is placed solely on the form as perceived, with disregard for other causes, spatial production becomes “pastiche,” and ultimately void of any content other than the act of aesthetic continuity resemblance. an example of spatial innovation is urbanu’s tulou housing (20052008) (figure 4) in guangzhou, china. hakka migration between the 12th and 20th century produced the “tulou …. a dwelling type unique to the hakka people.”52 the oldest examples are “o” shape building typology, built with compacted earthen walls that look inward in fortresslike relationship with their exterior context. this meant that living units faced inward. that orientation, along communal programming in the central courtyard, provides a rich social environment. after studying traditional hakka dwellings in the chinese provinces of jiangxi, fujian and guangdong, urbanus developed a housing project that innovated on the traditional typology. while preserving the final and formal causes (cantilevered roofs over a circular housing block with centralized programming) they also embraced contemporary construction processes and materials such as poured reinforced concrete walls and slabs and steel guardrails. conclusion the above text is an attempt to explain an essentialist design approach to spatial production in order to achieve context-based placemaking. the sum of essential qualities is the spatial identity of the essential components of a society’s secretions. as globalization continues to strengthen and spread across socio-cultural community boundaries, places are reduced to geographic accidents: increasingly, locations fail to reveal the essence of cultural spatial production, and therefore, they fail to reveal their uniqueness. 29 isparchitecture.com ultimately, all spatial production reveals embedded value systems: what is important in the production of space. for those who prioritize not only preserving but also enhancing the qualities of place, especially in the context of contemporary market-driven considerations, the practice of spatial production requires the capacity to go beyond the surface image of objects. it requires the ability to peel away each layer to reveal aristotelian causes that define design criteria sets of proprietary qualities and functions –and then apply them. these sets, each with their own object-derived properties, form the basis of the sum of the parts to create a greater sympathetic whole. each object, be it a teakettle, a house, or city park, is then the sum of its essential parts and can contribute to the continuation and innovation of spatial production. if modernism’s, and postmodernism’s rejection of the past, including its traditions, and context continues, and what is valued and therefore prioritized is the differentiated spatial object, we will eventually be confronted with a world where little or no cultural production differences exist. the long shadow of homogeneity will have spread figure 4: tulou housing ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 30 br os s over our communities, and we will only find the mythical trace of what was once place through the nostalgic science of archeology. endnotes 1. henri lefebvre, the production of space, (malden, ma, blackwell publishing) 2011, 15 2. lefebvre, 70 3. brian ellis, the philosophy of nature, a guide to the new essentialism, (montreal, quebec:mcgill-queen´s university press, 2002), 24-25. 4.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/ 5. op. cit. ellis, 41-42. 6. gallois, andre, “identity over time”, the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2016 edition), edward n. zalta (ed.), url = <https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/identity-time/>. 7. baruch a. brody, identity and essence, (princeton, n.j: princeton university press, 1980.) 8. aristotle, the complete works of aristotle, physics, edited by jonathan barnes, (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1995), 315-446. 9. “the four causes”, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed on july 2, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ aristotle-causality/#foucau 10.aristotle. physics, book 2:3, p.332-333 11. “natural kinds” stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed on july 5, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/ for additional explanation of kinds.\ 12. “essentialism”, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed july 2, 2018 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#ess, 1.3 essentialism. 13. walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.” illuminations: essays and reflections. (new york, ny, 1969), 217-251. 14. past experience and/or observations fail to predict the emergence of new objects or events. 15. hannah arendt, the human condition, (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 1998),141-144. 16. adrian bejan, and j. peder zane, design in nature: how the constructal law governs evolution in biology, physics, technology, and social 31 isparchitecture.com organization, (new york, ny. anchor books, 2013), 1. 17. “intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties.” stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed november 20, 2019 at https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/ 18. also known as the “wailing wall.” 19. ilana teitelbau, “a stone’s throw from the quarry,” jerusalem post, accessed on january 25, 2020. https://www.jpost.com/ local-israel/in-jerusalem/a-stones-throw-from-the-quarry 20. evidence exists that the wall itself was finished after herod’s death. see yadin roman, “who built the western wall,” accessed on january 22, 2020, http://www.zfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/ who-built-the-western-wall.pdf. 21. ibid. 22. loewenberg, f.m. 2017. “is the western wall judaism’s holiest site?” the middle east quarterly 24 (4). http:// search.ebscohost.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login. aspx?direct=true&db=jph&an=ijp0000182628. 23. see walter benjamin’s definition of authentic. 24. nic damnjanovic, “no route to material origin essentialism?” erkenntnis (1975-), vol. 72, no. 1 (jan., 2010), pp. 93-110, springer. 25. ibid. p.102 26. compossible: able or possible to coexist with another. see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compossible 27. david oderberg, real essentialism, (new york, routledge studies in contemporary philosophy, 2007), 22. 28. ibid. p. 23 29. nature creates, humans produce. 30. shinto shrine gateway in southern japan 31. theseus’ ship paradox demonstrates an object’s embodied time is paramount in identifying questions of component and object authenticity. 32. “fordism”, encyclopaedia britannica, accessed on august 27, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/fordism. 33.http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/battlefield-farms/ rummel-farm/ 34. amos rapoport, after hall, the meaning of the built ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 32 br os s environment: a nonverbal communication approach, (tucson, az: the university of arizona press, 1990), 87-101. 35. jouni-matti kuukkanen, “kuhn on essentialism and the causal theory of reference*”, philosophy of science, vol. 77, no. 4 pp. 544-564, the university of chicago press on behalf of the philosophy of science association, october 2010, p.546 36. lebbeus woods, war and architecture, pamphlet architecture series #15, princeton architectural press, 2002, p.1 37. cynthia jara, “adolf loos’s raumplan theory,” p.185 38. mental space is beyond the paper’s scope. 39. aldo rossi, architecture of the city, (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1999), 103. 40. https://www.etymonline.com/word/replace 41. in this way, replacement time bounding resolves the paradox of theseus’ ship. 42. junko edahiro, “rebuilding every twenty years renders sanctuaries eternal -the sengu ceremony at jingu shrine in ise city”, accessed october 1st, , 2018, https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_ id034293.html 43. benjamin, 1969. 44. aldo van eyck, “steps towards a configurative discipline”, accessed on november 1, 2018, https://hts3.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/vaneyck_steps-towards-a-configurative-discipline.pdf. p.333 45. for van eyck, “number” means “harmony in motion.” 46. foucault identifies four types of resemblance: convenientia, aemulatio, analogy, and sympathy. michel foucault, the order of things: an archeology of the human sciences (new york, ny: vintage books, 1994), 17. italics mine. 47. op. cit. aristotle, categories, edited by barnes, 3-9 48. “ludwig wittgenstein”, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed october 10, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#bib 49. ludwig wittgenstein, translated by g.e.m. anscombe, philosophical investigations (oxford, uk, basil blackwell, 1958, 1986), 33, 66. 50. op. cit. koestler, 45 51. kenneth frampton, from “towards a critical regionalism”, accessed on october 11, 2018, http://designtheory.fiu.edu/readings/frampton_ regionalism.pdf 52. “tulou collective housing 2008,” urbanus. accessed on december 10, 2019. http://www.urbanus.com.cn/projects/ tulou-collective-housing/?lang=en architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members at ispa events. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey. the cover photo is by tom spector. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley editors carolyn fahey, ph.d., newcastle university stefan koller, ph.d., delft university of technology editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk erosy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com contents nathaniel coleman 157the myth of autonomy 135editorial 139noël carrollarchitecture and ethics: autonomy, aesthetics, art 179christoph baumbergerthe ethical criticism of architecture: in defence of moderate moralism 247interview: andrew ballantyne 231paul guyermonism and pluralism: the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of architecture 198mark jensenaristotle, autonomy, and design 214felipe loureirothe image in power: vilém flusser and the craft of architecture 252call for papers: wittgenstein symposium isparchitecture.com like the inaugural issue last summer, the present issue owes the lion’s share of its contributions to an international conference held by the international society for the philosophy of architecture, the society behind architecture philosophy. entitled ‘autonomy reconsidered’, the conference raised a host of questions to both disciplines, indeed calling the disciplines to join their efforts in answering them: contemporary philosophy and architecture discourse alike marginalize the ethical dimension of architecture. yet, it seems that the ethical dimension in both architecture and philosophy has been compromised because both disciplines have not established a clear interdisciplinary understanding of autonomy. together, and in service to both fields of study, we must reconsider what autonomy means for both architecture and philosophy, or rather, for architecture philosophy. without consideration to design intent, societal (at times, utopian) agendas and programs, architecture is still largely deemed to be ethically ‘neutral’ or silent. but is architecture ethically neutral? is it ethically silent? can ethical evaluation of designs and built objects operate autonomously from evaluation of the human agents that create them? can a designer’s activity be considered autonomous, and hence allow for questions of attribution and responsibility? once we isolate the architectural, landscape, or urban designer from outside pressures, and only focus on her core métier – to what extent is philosophy and architecture discourse alike marginalize the ethical dimension of architecture “ ” autonomy reconsidered carolyn fahey, stefan koller & tom spector ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 136 ed it or ia l that isolated activity autonomous? and if an architect’s actions cannot be autonomous, would architecture stop having to answer to itself ? philosophical ethics has opened its purview beyond human action to animal ethics and environmental ethics, but has not yet found a way to expand its existing reflections to designed objects, particularly built ones. perhaps in parallel to ethics, contemporary aesthetics discusses the moral repercussions of art works with clear representational content – socially critical novels, figurative paintings – but has not paid closer attention to architecture. is the lack of attention in aesthetics due to architecture’s representational content being elusive, or because architecture’s aesthetic appraisal is taken to proceed autonomously from moral considerations? how would architecture be considered otherwise? 1 the conference’s call went on to, “invit[e] papers which probe these questions, or re-draw the assumptions behind them.” 2 it is in that spirit that we present to readers the opening contribution, a keynote at that conference. in “the myth of autonomy,” nathaniel coleman exposes and dissects foundational myths that, he argues, drive various autonomy projects in architecture to this day. such projects, coleman argues, operate on assumptions that cannot be upheld, and presuppose the unavailability of architecture’s live relation to the social and the ethical. that unavailability comes into stark question once architecture’s relation to utopia is reconsidered: not autonomy, but its great other, merits reconsideration if we are to redraw present day assumptions. coleman’s authoritative tour de force across the prominent figures in today’s autonomy debates in architecture sets the stage for the journal issue more widely. its claim that philosophers’ (especially kantian) notions of ‘autonomy’ are of limited use in such concerns should certainly not stand unanswered for long. tackling the call for papers’ challenges to the philosophical community head-on, noël carroll and christoph baumberger also argue against the self-insulation of architecture from ethical considerations, as coleman does. yet, they appear more conservative about the means required to get us there, while disagreeing between themselves on those means – thus inaugurating the proliferation of viewpoints and arguments this journal seeks to promote. carroll and baumberger’s implicit disagreements are delicate precisely because both authors are driven to a similar position: ‘moderate moralism’. moderate moralism is a position carroll himself coined and developed for various art forms, but never before for architecture. the position’s validity – especially its claim to an internal relation 137 isparchitecture.com of architecture to ethical values – both authors remind us, has vast consequences for how we build and design. autonomism, once again, is found to be unsupportable. will no one stand up for its defense? this brings us to the papers of mark jensen and felipe loureiro. jensen considers autonomy from a different point of departure. what, he asks, if autonomy were primarily concerned, not with the status of the object, but with the status of its producers? could their relative autonomy be an important determinant of the quality of the built environment? to consider these questions, jensen draws from aristotle’s ethics as a framework. felipe loureiro’s essay on the applicability of philosopher of media vilém flusser’s ideas to architectural images engages the topic of autonomy indirectly by examining the increasing opaqueness of the means of architectural image production – from hand drawing, to photography, computer images, and now protoyping – in contemporary times. while the means of image generation becomes increasingly abstract, the decreasing distance between conception and production is blurring the distinction between design and craft. could this development be bringing the modern-day designer’s unhappy choice between irrelevant celebrity or embedded anonymity back into some sense of real control and significance? if the journal’s inaugural issue introduced features not often encountered in an academic journal – follow up questions posed to authors or their targets, an interview, room for sidebar notes – the present issue inaugurates a further such feature central to the journal’s concept: the continuing of conversations previously left open, as befits philosophical reflection. the second part of paul guyer’s essay on monism and pluralism, and the interview with andrew ballantyne both take off where we left them in will no one stand up for [autonomy”s] defense? “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 138 ed it or ia l the previous issue. with both conversations having run their course thus far, we look to readers to pen questions of their own – whether to join conversations already begun, or to start a fresh thread of exchange. endnotes 1. fahey, carolyn, and stefan koller, june 27, 2013, “autonomy reconsidered,” international society for the philosophy of architecture, http://isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/ isparchitecture.com architecture and ethics: autonomy, architecture, art noël carroll introduction this paper concerns the relation(s) between architecture and ethics. perhaps needless to say, the intersections between architecture and ethics are manifold. architects, for example, should not cheat their clients or endanger them by using substandard building materials. nor should they take risky shortcuts or evade building codes. they bear certain responsibilities for the safety of the inhabitants of their buildings. their structures should stand firm. they should not collapse under predictable pressures. if the client has paid for one kind of stone, the architect should not try to counterfeit it with a cheaper substitute. architecture intersects so often with ethical issues that it is plausible to suggest that there are more connections between architecture and morality than there are in the case of any other art form. however, while conceding this, it may also be said that a great many of these relations do not have to do with architecture-as-architecture. many, rather, concern architecture-as-business and the ethics thereof. architects are business persons and, like all business persons, they should not, all things being equal, cheat their customers. building potemkin villages, for instance, is immoral. but, if “business” sounds like too narrow a concept here, we might categorize the pertinent relations in question in terms of architecture-asservice. the architect is a provider – a provider of services – and her clients have the right to expect ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 140 ca r r ol l that their contracts and their agreements with their architects will be fulfilled, including expectations grounded in prevailing social expectations, such as: that houses not fall down. the relevant ethics here are fairly generic – deriving from the kinds of responsibilities any provider has to her clients, albeit with specific reference to the sorts of contractual relations and social expectations that bind builders to those for whom they build. nevertheless, admitting these connections between ethics and architecture-as-service leaves open the question of the nature of the relation (or relations), if any, between ethics and architecture-asarchitecture. this is the question i will address in this paper. architecture as instrument in order to engage the issues of the relation of architectureas-architecture to ethics, we need to get a handle on the notion of architecture-as-architecture. as a first approximation, let us think broadly of an architect as a designer who constructs places – a person who shapes or builds environments – by arranging material forms, enclosing spaces and opening them. conceived this way, architectural activity as such is patently related to ethics in that architects can be seen to be organizing spaces for morally assessable purposes. for example, designing airport terminals in such a manner that passengers are confused about how to find their way out of the shopping area in search of their departure gates is to be complicit in chicanery; as is designing shopping malls that effectively entrap the clientele so they keep circling the same stores, constantly tempted into buying something. likewise designing highway overpasses so that they are too low to allow buses carrying poor people to travel to the parks and beaches frequented by the better-off is another example of designing space for immoral purposes. of course, spaces can also be organized for eminently righteous goals as in the case of much contemporary green architecture. similarly, shigeru ban’s designs for emergency disaster relief habitats are creations of indisputably great humanitarian value.1 thus, there can be no question that architects as designers of built environments can use their skills for good or ill, morally speaking. nevertheless, those who are interested in the relation of ethics to architecture-as-architecture – or architecture qua architecture – will protest that these are not the sorts of examples that need to be explored. for, they 141 isparchitecture.com will argue that the relation of architecture to moral or immoral purposes is an external relation. that is, it is the purpose of the organization of the space and not the design itself that is subject to moral assessment. and, furthermore, that purpose is external to the practice of architecture qua architecture. this is not to say that the architect is not culpable if he/she is complicit in implementing an immoral scheme. but his/her guilt is not, so to speak, architectural guilt. or, maybe a related, but somewhat different way of getting at this general point is to say that the moral wrong in this case is attributable to the architect and not to the structure – i.e., not to the architecture. architectural obligations the very notion of architectural guilt brings to mind, and possibly implies, that there must be something like architectural obligations. if there were architectural obligations – commitments architects incur simply by being architects – they would secure an internal relation between ethics and architecture qua architecture inasmuch as these putative obligations would be internal to the practice of architecture as such. part of what it is to be an architect, then, would be the responsibility to abide by said obligations. any builder would have to live up to these duties and any building would have to meet the standards they imply. failure to do so would be immoral. these obligations would constitute an ethics of architecture qua architecture. the rhetoric of such an approach is resonant in such phrases as “truth to the materials” and “structural honesty.”2 some well-known candidates for alleged architectural obligations are: 1) that architects should be “true to” or beholden to their materials. 2) that architects should practice structural honesty – that they should not mask the true structure of their constructions. 3) that architects should embody or articulate the very notion of architectural guilt brings to mind, and possibly implies, that there must be something like architectural obligations. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 142 ca r r ol l the spirit of their age, or even more radically, 4) that architects should by their buildings shape the spirit of their age prospectively. let us look at each of these proposals in turn. the requirement that architects should be true to their materials appears to rest supposedly upon the moral principle of honesty. don’t try to palm off so-called crystal glass as true crystal, to cite an example of ruskin’s cited by pevsner.3 of course, if your client is paying for true crystal, there is an obvious moral infraction here in terms of the ethics of architecture-as-business. but what are the grounds for suspecting that there must be a moral infraction from the perspective of architecture qua architecture? the worry seems to be that there is deception afoot. but suppose that it is freely advertised that it is crystal glass? i suspect that those who maintain that architects are beholden to their materials will still contend that there is a breach of architectural obligation in this case. but what could it be? what are the grounds for this alleged moral transgression? maybe it will be proposed that, even if it is widely advertised, many may still take the crystal glass for true crystal. but whose fault is that and, in any event, who is harmed and how? the “true to the materials” line of thought sometimes makes it sound as though the materials have rights. yet that’s just superstitious. similar objections may be leveled against the appeal to structural honesty. this is the idea that the built environment should show forth its structure. it should not hide it underneath ornament, for instance. it should not suggest that it bears its weight anywhere other than where it actually does. but again, it is hard to identify who is harmed if the structure of a building is not evident to your average observer. is one harmed if one takes the beams on the façade of mies van der rohe’s seagram’s building to be its central weight bearing structure rather than the beams recessed behind them? one may call for foregrounding the structure of a building in the name of clarity, but it is an equivocation to equate a taste for intellectual clarity with honesty in the moral sense. moreover, it cannot be a moral transgression to fail to make manifest the structure of a building to outside observers since very often the structural supports are not visible to the naked eye – for example, the underground timbers upon which rest the richardsonian romanesque trinity church in boston. indeed, the view that there is a moral imperative 143 isparchitecture.com to reveal architectural structure appears to confuse a stylistic preference with an ethical concern. hegel began his grand survey of the history of art with what he called the symbolic stage, which was best exemplified by the great pyramids of egypt. these structures, he claimed, revealed the level of consciousness’s self-understanding of itself at a very early stage, one whose lack of inwardness was putatively reflected symbolically in the limited interiority of the pyramids. at least since hegel, it has become common for art historians to approach artworks with an eye to establishing the way in which they articulate the spirit of their age. various architectural theorists have taken this role of emblematizing the spirit of the age as the brief of architecture as such.4 it is not clear how this is a moral obligation, unless we endorse an extremely broad sense of the notion of ethics; perhaps it may be argued that when architecture performs this role, it provides a social good. however, if this is the idea, then it makes it seem as though architecture cannot but help doing good all of the time, since it is difficult to imagine the failure of any work of architecture to reflect its time. even something like horace walpole’s antiquarian fantasy strawberry hill reflected at least one strand of his cultural moment. that is, since even nostalgic architecture will reflect its times, it seems impossible to fail in this regard which would place all architecture qua architecture on the side of the angels. this not only seems too rosy an outlook, but also is too intellectually indiscriminate to be informative even on its own terms. moreover, connected to the problem that all architecture reflects its time is the underlying fact that this is so precisely because there are so many different, often conflicting, tendencies going on during the same time period. it seems doubtful that there is ever a spirit of the age in the sense of a singular, all-encompassing theme. but if that is true, then the claim that architecture should articulate its age is an impossible obligation, since the ‘true to the materials’ line of thought sometimes makes it sounds as though materials have rights. yet that’s just superstitious. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 144 ca r r ol l there is no singular spirit to embody. thus, to the extent that “ought” implies “can,” there can be no architectural obligation to emblematize the (one and only) spirit of the times. not only have some argued that architecture should reflect the spirit of the age. some have gone further, contending that architecture should abet the development of the age prospectively, bringing supposedly positive tendencies in the present into fruition in the future by means of built environments that reinforce and guide those tendencies.5 much of the rhetoric of modern architecture sounds this clarion call. in this case, structural honesty is sometimes invoked as a commitment to the kind of intellectual clarity associated with the rationality of allegedly enlightened times. truth to the materials of modern industrial society – like steel – is linked to the notion of being true to our times. modern architecture, it was believed, not only reflects the emerging rational-industrial culture, but would hasten it as life in various machines for living and working would blossom into an enlightenment utopia, specifically a blue print utopia – to take advantage of a very useful notion introduced by nathaniel coleman. (parenthetically, there is a parallel dystopian story told about how this apotheosis of so-called rationality contributes to the tyranny of instrumental reason and neoliberalism.) the notion of architecture’s obligation to being on the side of history, of course, inherits the liabilities of its component parts, including the ideas of truth to the materials, structural honesty, and the emblematization of the spirit of the times. just as there is no singular spirit of the times, for example, there is no privileged path to the future, no end of history to which the architect must be committed. as commentators like david watkin have persuasively demonstrated, architectural modernism rides on the same faith in a teleological view of history that karl popper discredited under the rubric of historicism.6 history has no preordained narrative and, even if it did, it is not clear how architects could know it. consequently, it cannot be their moral obligation to realize it. indeed, added to the epistemological limitation of not being able to discern the course of history, architects would also confront another epistemic roadblock, namely the lack of the kind of causal knowledge that would be required to influence the historical process in determinate, predictable ways. think of all of the unintended consequences modern architecture has set in motion. so, even if architects knew where history was headed, neither they nor anyone else knows how to get there. (this lack of causal knowledge also bedevils dystopians, although in a different way. juhani pallasmaa claims that the privileging of vision 145 isparchitecture.com in modern architecture leads to detachment and contemporary alienation.7 but that is an immensely complicated causal hypothesis, one so complex that it is hard to know how to even begin to isolate the variables needed to test it empirically.) of course, so far i have only challenged some of the leading versions of the idea that there are architectural obligations. that does not conclusively prove that there are no such obligations. but it does shift the burden of proof to the friends of the conviction that there are ethical obligations internal to the practice of architecture. so, in the absence of a creditable proposal from their side, it may be useful at present to pursue another tack in an effort to establish an internal relationship between ethics and architecture qua architecture. art and architecture at this juncture, i propose to parse the notion of architecture qua architecture in terms of architecture qua art. architecture is a matter of building environments but not all built environments are architecture. what makes a building architecture? i suggest that it is its claim to art status. of course, i need to say more about what is involved in a building’s possession of art status. nevertheless, it should be uncontroversial that it is by being considered art that buildings are commonly identified as architecture. that is, if a built environment is art, then it is architecture. thus, architecture-as-art is one – perhaps the most common – way of satisfying the formula, architecture-as-architecture. moreover, if this is acceptable, it suggests a straightforward way of linking architecture qua architecture internally to ethics. namely, architecture-as-architecture will be connected to ethics at least in the way or ways that art in general qua art can be connected to ethics. at this juncture, i propose to parse the notion of qua architecture in terms of architecture qua art. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 146 ca r r ol l however, this strategy immediately faces a challenge, namely the contention that art is categorically separate from ethics. call this view autonomism. obviously autonomism must be tackled head-on before we can take advantage of any putative link between art and architecture. autonomism autonomism is a viewpoint that begins to take its modern form in the eighteenth century in discussions of beauty. francis hutcheson, borrowing the notion of disinterestedness from the earl of shaftesbury, characterized beauty as an immediate feeling of disinterested pleasure. “disinterested” for hutcheson meant “independent of personal advantage.” to find a building beautiful was to take pleasure in the mere sight of it rather than, say, taking pleasure in it because it belongs to you. the disinterestedness of the lover of beauty, for hutcheson, is just like the impartiality of a judge in a court of law. in both cases, they are required to issue judgments independent from their personal interests and advantages. kant took on board much of hutcheson’s conception of beauty – or what he, kant, called free beauty – and argued that judgments of free beauty (also known as aesthetic judgments) were based upon experiences of disinterested pleasure. however, kant expanded the range of pertinent interests to be bracketed for the sake of disinterest, encompassing purposes in general, including ethical ones, and reference to concepts, possibly, at least in part, because concepts are typically connected to purposes. subsequently, interpreters, or perhaps more accurately misinterpreters of kant, erected a theory of art upon kant’s theory of free beauty. stated crudely, it presumed that the function of art is to afford aesthetic experiences, experiences divorced from purposes, such as ethical ones, and that are instead valued for their own sake. this transmogrified into the art-pour-art (art-for-art’s sake) slogan in france, popularized by benjamin constant and madame de stael and which also provided the impetus for nineteenth century aestheticism as practiced by pater and wilde, the latter of whom famously denied the relevance of morality to literature, maintaining books were only well-written or not. of course, if art, properly so called, is divorced altogether from purpose, that bodes ill for architecture’s claim to art status, since architecture is so wedded to serving ulterior purposes. this is why so often in nineteenth century hierarchies of the arts, architecture’s status is typically demoted to the lowest art form on the totem pole, if it is not disenfranchised entirely. under earlier theories of art, architecture suffered for not being imitative. things did not get better under the dispensation of aestheticism, because 147 isparchitecture.com architecture was linked to non-aesthetic purposes and thus to uses and interests. in the twentieth century, earlier art-forart’s sake tendencies were refined and worked into a theory called the aesthetic theory of art which we can regard as the contemporary form of autonomism. in rough outline, it holds that something is a work of art if and only if it is made with the primary intention to afford aesthetic experience, which nowadays is generally conceived to be an experience valued for its own sake and not for some other purpose whether cognitive, moral, religious, political, etc. this theory can allow that architecture is an art so long as and to the extent that it is made with a primary intention to afford aesthetic experience, such as contemplation of the visible form of a building. but, at the same time, this theory severs architecture-as-art from ethics. the aesthetic theory of art has been extremely influential among analytic philosophers of art. even those who would never profess allegiance to it outright show themselves to be under its sway when, for example, they consult their “intuitions” and find that art and ethics are necessarily twain. however, despite the authority of the aesthetic theory of art, it fares badly empirically when weighed against the history of art. most art historically was and arguably continues to be made with primary intentions other than affording aesthetic experiences. commissioned by churches, rulers, guilds, aristocrats and so forth most art has been made with the primary intention to serve religion, politics, cognition, morality and so on. catholic painters for centuries composed their devotional pictures with the primary intention of engendering reverence. they would have considered it blasphemous to suggest that their work be contemplated primarily for the disinterested pleasure it imparted to viewers. similarly, the maori of new zealand have a war ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 148 ca r r ol l dance called the haka in which they stamp their feet ferociously, bulge their eyes, stick out their tongues and wave their arms aggressively for the purpose of scaring off intruders. were the enemy to sit down and savor a haka for the sake of contemplative pleasure, the dance would be selfdefeating, since it was made with the primary intention of driving away invaders in terror.8 nor can the aesthetic theory of art be repaired by dropping the requirement that the intention to afford aesthetic experience be primary because that will make the theory too broad. for example, almost every commodity in the industrialized world today is made with some intention to support what are called aesthetic experiences. yet no one mistakes the cereal aisle in the grocery store for a modern day art gallery. so, the aesthetic theory of art, at least as characterized thus far, is dubious. for our purposes, that removes a major barrier blocking the strategy of extrapolating the relation of architecture qua architecture to ethics via the relation of art to ethics. art and expression to model the relationship of architecture qua architecture to ethics on that of the relation of art to ethics requires saying something about how we understand art. obviously i cannot elaborate on a full-scale theory about how to identify art in the middle of the already large project of exploring the relation of ethics to architecture. so allow me to cut some corners. let us say that pronounced expressivity is a pretty reliable symptom of art status. by this, i do not mean to be defending some version of the expression theory of art. i am not claiming that art is necessarily expressive; some art, like duchamp’s readymade canine grooming comb, is not. nevertheless, pronounced intentional expressivity is a fairly reliable symptom of art. it is because the haka projects such an intentionally pronounced and coherent aura of fearsomeness and male aggressivity that we are provisionally disposed to classify it as dance art. interestingly, from our point of view, pronounced expressivity is also frequently cited as a mark of architectural art. paul goldberger says: “architecture begins to matter when it goes beyond protecting us from the elements, when it begins to say something about the world…”9 as is well known, nelson goodman thinks that buildings are architectural art when they mean. he writes, “a building is a work of art insofar as it signifies, means, refers, symbolizes in some way.”10 149 isparchitecture.com for gordon graham, architecture as such ideally expresses its function; he observes of marble hall in holkham hall in norfolk, england, that its elegance expresses its function, i.e. to display the elegance of its owners.11 and paul guyer argues that kant holds that all art, including architecture, involves the expression of aesthetic ideas. for example, by way of illustrating kant, guyer notes “that a (protestant) church must keep its décor simple to induce the proper mood of humbleness.”12 not all of these characteristics of the art of architecture amount to exactly the same claim, but they agree broadly in taking some measure of pronounced expressivity, albeit understood in different ways, to be a sign of architectural art. for example, it is the pronounced expressivity of the curving colonnades, reaching out from st. peter’s cathedral in rome, that prompts us to regard them as architectural art. for they gather together and embrace the crowds in the plaza in their “arms” in a way that is welcoming. or consider the majestic central staircase in the museum of modern art in new york city. its majesty marks with heightened significance and drama the experience we are about to have of the museum’s magnificent collections. august and ceremonial, the stairway expresses the pride appropriate to the holdings it introduces. perhaps pronounced expressivity may even be an ingredient in a sufficient condition for architectural art status. however, be that as it may, it is enough for my purposes that there be a recurring internal relation between architectural art and pronounced expressivity. for inasmuch as certain expressive properties are ethically charged, their architectural projection will be ethically assessable. for example, the façade of the georgian doorway at 16 bedford square in london with its fanning window by thomas leverton radiates the so, the aesthetic theory of art, as least as characterized so far, is dubious “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 150 ca r r ol l most energetic hospitality, bursting with cheerful amiability, epitomizing the virtue of sociability.13 or, for architectural art on the dark side, consider the narrative relief in the palace of the assyrian king ashurbanipal which was designed with the express intention to celebrate the king’s wanton cruelty.14 thus, we see that architecture qua architecture maybe related to ethics by way of expression. the case goes like this: some art, including architectural art, is expressive. some of that expressive art, including architectural art, is ethically charged. if some architectural art is ethically charged, then that architecture is potentially ethically assessable. thus, the relation of some architectural art to ethics can be internal because it is rooted in the nature of architectural art. consequently, there is at least this one way in which architecture-as-architecture is internally related to ethics. moderate architectural autonomism undoubtedly the autonomist will be suspicious of the preceding maneuver. thus far the autonomist has been represented as claiming that art is categorically divorced from purpose and use, including ethical purposes. this is a very radical position. but the autonomist, upon hearing the previous arguments, may retreat and regroup, counterattacking with a position that we can call “moderate autonomism.” the moderate autonomist concedes that art may be made for many purposes, not only affording aesthetic experience, but also commanding reverence, advancing ideologies, bringing consolation, promoting virtue, rallying the troops, etc. call ‘affording aesthetic experience’ the aesthetic dimension of art. this dimension is allegedly distinct from the others just mentioned. though these others can be considered legitimate features of art qua art, they contrast with the aesthetic dimension. the former features of the artwork are artistic features of the artwork, but they are not aesthetic features. the aesthetic dimension is comprised of properties, like form, that afford aesthetic experiences thereof and which are valued for their own sake. furthermore, the moderate autonomist maintains that only those aesthetic affordances are relevant when considering architecture qua architecture. if there is an argument here, it probably relies upon severing aesthetics from purposes. and that will putatively segregate categorically the aesthetic properties of the artwork from the artistic ones, including the ethical ones, in the process of distinguishing mere building from pure architecture or architecture as such or architecture qua architecture. in this way, the moderate autonomist may recoup at least part of her position in 151 isparchitecture.com the face of the considerations that i raised earlier. moderate architectural moralism according to the moderate architectural autonomist there is a categorical distinction to be drawn between the aesthetic dimension of the architectural work of art and the ethical dimension. the ethical dimension may be a legitimate part of the architectural artworks qua art, but it is not ever part of the aesthetic dimension which is putatively the only dimension that counts in considering architecture qua architecture. one important corollary of this view is that an ethical defect in a work of architecture will never count as an aesthetic blemish in architecture qua architecture because the aesthetic properties are categorically distinct from the artistic ones, including the ethical ones. this is autonomism to the degree that it asserts that there is a domain of pure architecture qua architecture where moral considerations never play a role. it is moderate autonomism because it allows that things like ethics, religion, politics, etc. are legitimate concerns of art. they are just never aesthetically relevant where aesthetic relevance is what determines the domain proper of architecture qua architecture. moderate architectural moralism is the rejoinder to moderate architectural autonomism. the moderate architectural moralist contends that some works of art, including some works of architectural art, feature moral defects that are also aesthetic defects, specifically formal defects. thus the moderate moralist argues contra the moderate autonomist that the aesthetic dimension and the ethical dimension of the arts, including some architectural art works, are not absolutely cleaved, since sometimes there can be an internal relation between the ethical dimension of a given artwork and its aesthetic dimensions as evidenced by the possibility that sometimes an ethical defect in an ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 152 ca r r ol l artwork can also count as – i.e., be identical with – an aesthetic defect. the moderate moralist might proceed defensively, questioning whether the moderate autonomist’s argument for the categorical separation of the artistic properties and the aesthetic properties can be advanced without begging crucial questions. however, the moderate moralist may also propose a positive argument on behalf of his conclusion. the first step in the moderate moralist’s argument is his definition of form: the form of an artwork is its ensemble of choices which realize the point or purpose of the artwork. formal features then are choices that contribute to the point or purposes of the works. architectural theorists should be familiar with this conception of form, since it echoes the architectural slogan that form follows function. next the moderate moralist points out that the point or purpose of many artworks is to engender emotional responses. the point of a comedy, like shaw’s you never can tell, is to elicit comic amusement. characters, situations, and plot coincidences are designed to that effect. clearly architectural artworks often have the purpose of provoking emotional responses. both the interiors and the exteriors of gothic cathedrals are predicated upon instilling awe by means of their vaulting spires and naves. they are literally designed to take our breath away and to reduce us to hushed silence. often the mood or emotion we identify as expressed by a building is connected to the feeling it arouses in us. so in the case of the gothic cathedral, we say the cathedral is awesome. the emotions aroused in us by artworks do not arise by happenstance. they, like all emotions, are governed by certain conditions of appropriateness. the appropriate object of fear is perceived danger. if an object does not appear threatening to us, it is not an appropriate object of fear, and if we are sound of mind, it will not be frightening to us. one of the conditions for awe is that the object be perceived to be of great size or power. if the object does not meet this condition, the object will not be experienced as awesome. these observations about the emotions have obvious applicability to the arts, including architecture, since artworks are often in the business of eliciting emotional responses. horror fictions, for example, are in the business of provoking horror, a compound emotion of fear and disgust. thus, horror fictions must design characters to this end. were one to present as the monster a figure like casper the friendly ghost in what is intended as a genuine horror fiction that would be a failure in design because casper is too nice to be scary and too clean to be disgusting. casper would be a design choice that would be a defect because he 153 isparchitecture.com would fail to realize the purpose of horror fiction. that is, the choice of casper would be a formal failure. similarly to build out of papier maché an architectural structure such as a triumphal arch, meant to project strength, would be a formal error since it would dissolve in even a mild rainstorm. but, what has this to do with ethics? simply this: many of the emotions are related to ethics either because they involve moral conditions – as anger is concerned with justice being done to me or mine; or they are moral emotions on their own terms, like righteous indignation. eliciting these emotions requires meeting certain ethical conditions. if these are not met, the intended emotion will not take hold and the artwork will fail in its purpose. for example, with respect to an aristotelian tragedy the central character cannot be an evil, truly reprehensible character because we will not feel tragic pity for him, but joy at his being dealt his just desserts. to present the historical hitler as the protagonist of a play intended to elicit tragic pity in the aristotelian sense would be a design error – a formal defect – because it involves the choice of an element not suited for – in fact at odds with – the purpose of the work. the audience is more likely to shout “well done” when calamity befalls hitler than to shed a tear for him. moreover, notice that the formal error here is rooted in an ethical defect. tragic pity depends upon an object that is morally undeserving of the calamity that befalls him. the historical hitler does not meet that condition. he deserves whatever he gets. to attempt to mandate tragic pity will encounter imaginative resistance on the part of morally sensitive audiences. the creator of our abortive hitler tragedy has a morally defective understanding of what is required for tragic pity. thus he makes the wrong design choice in constructing the protagonist of his play. but this is simultaneously a formal error, precisely because it ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 154 ca r r ol l is a moral error. thus, sometimes a moral defect in an artwork is a formal defect just because it may block the audience’s intended emotive uptake. a similar possible scenario can be sketched with respect to architectural art. imagine a memorial constructed after a bloody civil war between the as and the bs. made of granite, it is divided into two equal halves that formally mirror each other. on the left slab are listed all of the names of the fallen as. on the right side are all of the names of the fallen bs. the structures are enormous, granting each side enormous gravity. each side looks the same. the only differences appear when you get close enough to read the names which differ from one side of the monument to the other. otherwise, neither side of the memorial diverges in appearance from the other. neither side receives special architectural accent or emphasis. architecturally the two sides are equal and the design calls upon viewers to feel sorrow equally for and to admire or honor equally the dead of both sides of the civil war. but, in point of fact, one side – let’s say the bs – were guilty of horrible atrocities, bombing civilians with poisonous chemicals, employing rape to demoralize and subdue villages that showed sympathy to the as, and worse. many of the names of the fallen bs on the memorial belong to known war criminals. for the morally sensitive viewer, the two sides of the civil war are not deserving of equal sorrow and honor. the bs don’t merit sorrow at all. thus the morally sensitive audience will resist the architectural rhetoric of the monument. for that reason, the choice of presenting the as and the bs as equal visually is a formal error because it is a design choice that fails to realize or to implement the purpose of the memorial. but it is simultaneously a formal defect because it both exhibits and mandates a morally corrupt point of view – one that equates war criminals with the honored dead who opposed them. thus, the uninflected handling of the two sides of the memorial represents a formal, aesthetic flaw, exactly because it embodies a morally defective viewpoint that undermines the purpose of the work by thwarting audience uptake. consequently, moderate architectural autonomism is false. a brief summary we began with the challenge to ascertain whether there might be an internal relation between architecture qua architecture and ethics. although there may be more, we identified at least one such relation by construing architecture qua architecture as architecture-as-art. we then modeled the relation of architecture to ethics on the relation of art to ethics, 155 isparchitecture.com specifically with reference to art as expression. this led to the conclusion that architecture can be ethically assessable as architecture when it projects properties expressive of moral import. we then considered how a moderate architectural autonomist might respond to this conclusion and disputed that response by mounting an argument on behalf of moderate architectural moralism, the position that maintains that in some cases a moral defect in a work of architectural art may be constitutive of an aesthetic defect. endnotes 1. see dana goodyear, “paper palaces,” the new yorker, volume xc, number 23, august 11 and 18, 2014: 66-75. 2. see: joan ockman, “ethics and aesthetics after modernism and postmodernism” in the hand and the soul ed. by sandra iliecu (charlottesville: university of virginia press, 2009), 45. quoted in stefan koller, “architects on value” in ethics, design and planning of the environment ed. by claudia basta and stefano moroni (dordrecht: springer, 2013), 59. 3. quoted in david watkin, morality and architecture revisited (chicago: university of chicago press, 1977, 2001), 108-9. 4. see sigfried gideon, space, time and architecture (oxford: oxford university press, 1941); nikolaus pevsner, pioneers of the modern movement (london: faber and faber, 1936); karsten harries, the ethical function of architecture (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1997). 5. pevsner, op. cit. 6. watkin, op. cit. 7. juhani pallasmaa, the eyes of the skin (oxford: wiley, 2005). 8. an alternative account of the haka was offered in some cases a moral defect in a work of architectural art may be constitutive of an aesthetic defect. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 156 ca r r ol l at the conference on architecture and ethics in delft in july of 2014. an audience member argued that the function of the haka was to present rivals with a performance that they assessed in terms of how formidable the dancers appeared. however, even if this, rather than the account offered above, is the correct account of the haka, it remains clear that the dance was not created with the intention to be valued for its own sake. moreover, the same could be said about much of the armor designed for european knights. it was made to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy and not to deliver disinterested pleasure. 9. paul goldberger, why architecture matters (new haven: yale university press, 2009), ix. 10. nelson goodman and catherine z. elgin, reconceptions in philosophy (indianapolis: hackett, 1988), 33. see also: remei capdevila-werning, goodman for architects (london: routledge, 2013), 13. 11. gordon graham, philosophy of the arts 3rd edition (london: routledge, 2005), 178-182. 12. paul guyer, “kant and the philosophy of architecture”, the journal of aesthetics and art criticism, volume 69, number 1 (winter, 2011), 15. 13. see alain de botton, the architecture of happiness (new york: vintage books, 2006), 99. 14. see noël carroll, “art and recollection” in art in three dimensions (oxford: oxford university press, 2010), 171. isparchitecture.com the myth of autonomy nathaniel coleman architecture, one would think, has its own validity. it needs no reference to any other discipline to make it “viable” or to “justify” its value. we might even question whether words like value or morals are applicable to an architectural style.1 my point is very different from e.g. eisenman’s idea that architecture is self-centered and only concerned with its own formal-compositional issues. eisenman posits that architecture should throw off its concern with the world, abandon function and only concentrate on architectural form. [...] i am trying to formulate the overall rationality of the discipline that necessarily involves the integration of world-reference (function) and self-reference (form).2 in this article, the so-called ‘autonomy project in architecture’, as theorised by ignasi de solà-morales (1942-2001); k. michael hays’s (b. 1952); patrik schumacher’s (b. 1961), of zaha hadid’s office; and pier vittorio aureli (b. 1973) is interrogated. in particular, the main aim of this article is to reveal the project of autonomy in architecture as a myth, especially in relation to the parallel myth of an avant-garde (especially a neo-avant-garde) in architecture. however, it is important to underline that my interrogation of ‘the myth of autonomy’ has little to do with recent trends in anti-theory, for example as outlined by jeremy till (b. 1957) in his architecture depends (2009). ultimately, the aim of this article is to recover a critical-historical perspective that reveals the project of orthodox modern architecture eschewed by ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 158 co le m a n autonomists as itself an earlier response to the same persisting disciplinary crisis that animates their efforts. following on from this, utopia is reintroduced as providing architects with a much more promising set of tools for redeeming architecture than autonomy ever could. as i will argue, the most significant contribution utopia can make to architecture is to return the social and political to it, which also provides a way to resist the formalist pull of autonomy. renewal of utopia, and with it the social and political dimensions of architecture, inevitably reveal(s) autonomy as a myth invested primarily in the dissolution of just such a possibility. the great paradox of autonomy in architecture is that it is duplicitous, using the inevitable impurities of realization as a cover for impossible desires for purity as a means to liberate architecture from its obligation to communities. the apparent naiveté of the modernist project as one of engagement, as interpreted by architects such as aldo van eyck, is discarded in favor of disengagement as apparently the only realistic response. oppositions in the introduction to the oppositions reader compilation he edited, hays ruminates on why autonomy became such an important preoccupation of so many of the architect authors and theorists who contributed to oppositions (1973-1984), the journal of the institute for architecture and urban studies in new york city (1967-1984). however, he goes no further than raising the question, a move as provocative as it is frustrating: for the essential contradictions between architecture’s autonomy – its selforganization into a body of formal elements and operations that separate it from any place and time – and its contingency on, even determination by, historical forces beyond its control subsumes all the ‘formal socio-cultural and political’ concerns into an all embracing dialectic. the conflicts of formalism and determinism [...] seem almost symptomatic of a deeper [...] social pathology [... .] one should ask not whether architecture is autonomous, or whether it can willfully be made so, but rather how it can be that the question arises in the first place, what kind of situation allows for architecture to worry about itself to this degree.3 despite leaving readers without a definitive response to his question, hays does offer several takes on autonomy drawn from the pages of oppositions. even so, relatively convincing explanations for architects’ turn inward, away from material reality and the perplexing burdens of their discipline, do exist. as the german philosopher of hope ernst bloch (1885-1977) and the italian architectural historian and theorist of closure manfredo tafuri (1935-1994) have intimated, architecture as a ‘work’, akin to the 159 isparchitecture.com unique achievements of the fine arts, rather than as an industrially reproducible ‘product’ – as french sociologist and philosopher of cracks henri lefebvre (1901-1991) asserted – is all but impossible under capitalism. the failures of orthodox modernism, in particular its ostensive social project and ultimate rejection of this, left architects without a program or project for architecture and the city. ascribing this failure to utopia also left them without the tools for thinking their way beyond capitalism and modernism. although these phenomena are often presented as a new condition particular to the crisis of modernity after the second world war, with the move toward autonomy seen as having taken a cue from the frontiers of visual and performing arts. however, this understanding deprives narratives of the terminal condition of orthodox modernity of a critical-historical perspective that might well reveal the project of modern architecture eschewed by autonomists as itself an earlier response to the same persisting disciplinary crises. although tafuri’s discussion of piranesi in the sphere and the labyrinth is very helpful in illuminating this predicament, to my mind, british architectural historian and theorist joseph rykwert’s (b. 1926) the first moderns (1980) offers an even more lucid account of the shift in direction for the discipline suggested here. indeed, rykwert, who was awarded the 2014 royal institute of british architects gold medal, pushes the origins of this shift slightly further back than tafuri does, to the end of the baroque and the period of the rococo, in particular to claude perrault’s (16131688) conceptualization of ‘positive and arbitrary beauty’ – the division between the quantitative and qualitative in building. in light of the dramatic consequences of this, for rykwert, the only way forward for the discipline of architecture is to recuperate its enduring vocation: the nature of our responses to the world of artifacts, the way in which groups and communities appropriate space, occupies sociologists and anthropologists. and utopia is reintroduced as providing architects with a much more promising set of tools for redeeming architecture than autonomy ever could “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 160 co le m a n we acknowledge these human scientists as important and wholly serious people. yet their studies are, in the last reduction, almost inevitably problems of form. this book [the first moderns, 1980] recalls a time when the architect’s business was just that. perhaps if there is to be a place for the architect’s work within a future social fabric, he will need to learn how to deal with such problems again.4 rykwert leaves us with a challenge at the end of the first moderns, rather than an answer: for architects to regain their lost place within the culture, they must reconnect with those aspects of their discipline that once ensured this. although not explicitly stated, this clearly reveals the project of autonomy in architecture as a profound form of alienation that deprives buildings of many of its associations and topics. while rykwert’s reconstruction of the preconditions that have led to the current situation of the past forty to fifty years is decidedly wide-ranging, he does not exactly excavate the causes of this condition, which tafuri is more comfortable doing. as such, the significant socio-political import of his argument is somewhat obscured. perhaps the reason for this is that whereas tafuri had lost all hope for architecture, rykwert has remained optimistic, leaving it to those more pessimistic of his readers to intensify the polemic his work suggests. indeed, my consideration of autonomy in relation to architecture developed here is informed by the battle for an architectural soul (perhaps only my own) carried out – in spirit at least – in the triangulated space between the thinking of tafuri, lefebvre, and rykwert.5 the tension that exists between tafuri’s theoretical world and lefebvre’s is a product of the friction between the former’s conviction that the world system of capitalism is totally closed, and the latter’s belief in the generative potential to be drawn through the cracks that always exist in that never quite totally closed system. rykwert provides the third point of the triangle by being even more stalwartly optimistic than lefebvre on the one hand, and unconvinced by tafuri’s pessimism on the other. arguably, the play of architectural theory today continues to be carried out within the triangulated space created by the tensions identified above, even if it tends to be imagined as operating within the altogether less determinate spaces of collage city, as conceived by architectural historian and theorist colin rowe (1920-1999), who, as hays observes, suffered a, “deep disillusionment with the utopian mission of [modern] architecture.”6 actually, of the four theorists introduced just above, rowe is the one who most believed, if only half-heartedly, that autonomy – as a using of things and not believing in them – alone could redeem orthodox modern 161 isparchitecture.com architecture from its significant failings that came into view after world war ii. tafuri was also committed to autonomy in architecture, but did not share rowe’s conviction that it could only be redeemed by formalism, which promised to quash its social and political content. tafuri’s conception of autonomy differs from rowe’s as fundamentally a critique of the tragedy of architecture under capitalist production. however, the inevitable self-indulgence of the autonomy project in architectural practice, especially as advanced by the new york five architects in the 1960s and 1970s proved too much for tafuri to take. ultimately, he came to see the crisis of architecture as ‘a crisis of ideology’. in light of this, he came to assert that architects are powerless to resist their capture within the system of capitalist production; as they are little more than technicians within a building industry, ensnared within the total closure of the capitalist/neoliberal system. it is in confronting tafuri’s pessimism (valid as it might be) that the possibility of the counter-spaces suggested by rykwert, and more emphatically theorized by lefebvre really cannot be ignored. rykwert’s positivity, and, in particular, lefebvre’s stubborn optimism, furnishes compelling antidotes to tafuri’s resolute pessimism. as introduced above, lefebvre could locate possibilities in even the most unpromising conditions of the same system described by tafuri as total; precisely because lefebvre believed that systemic closure is never as total as it might appear: cracks in the system can always be detected, which reveals the apparently impossible as actually possible, even across the scant moments that separate the two. paradoxically, tafuri’s pessimism seems to me to have been, at least in part, an inevitable byproduct of the ultimately frustrated hopes he placed in autonomy, no matter how short-lived, while lefebvre’s work on space, in particular his determined optimism, would have ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 162 co le m a n been impossible had he grounded his hopes for transformation, even his ideas on autgestion (self-management), in autonomy. the crypto-utopianism of rykwert and the more overt utopianism of lefebvre articulate an alternative to the project of autonomy that long ago lost its political edge as a form of resistance to the inevitable dissolution of the engaged cultural work of architecture when subsumed within the building industry as one of the most extreme forms of capitalist production. tafuri, lefebvre, and even rykwert share serious doubts about the architect as expert, or advocate, or as guardian of some imagined “communal imaginary” (at least in the present), rendering such a view difficult to sustain, unless the conventional professional mythologies of the architect are left unchallenged. although tafuri and lefebvre shared a relative suspicion about autonomy and the avant-garde alike, what separates them are their respective ideas on the degree to which the total closure of the given condition is actually final. as such, they differed on the relative value of utopia as well. in contradistinction to its reputation, utopia is bound up with the real world on the ground (at least in lefebvre’s conception of it, and my own). as such, utopia offers real possibilities for overcoming given conditions without exiting the everyday. indeed, utopia is actually nearly always about the everyday. but utopia permits us to act on the everyday, and even exit given conditions, without necessitating the delusion of either autonomy or a fictional avant-garde to imagine transformative alterity. the otherness of utopia is always about return as well – the exit is necessary to re-imagine the present that will be transformed. ultimately, concrete, or constitutive, utopias mount a challenge to autonomy in architecture, to the repetition compulsion of neo-avant-gardes without a cause as well. the alternatives that utopia posits enlivens history and renews tradition by being a ‘handing over’ rather than a ‘handing down’: utopia imagines how the past can be surrendered to the future by way of renewed – reimagined – tradition. reading autonomy through utopia, as i am doing here raises a paradox by which utopia (in the way i understand it) although so commonly presented as impossibility or no place, inevitably problematizes the myth of architectural autonomy. by returning the social and political to architecture, utopia provides a way around the formalist pull of autonomy while retaining the hope of freedom in the distanciated space it articulates, which autonomy must negate. the space of utopian thought, though located elsewhere in space or in time, is always situated in the present as a critical appraisal of and alternative to it. in this way, utopia can never be autonomous, as its engagement with the context it attempts 163 isparchitecture.com to transform is always dialogical, interweaving self and other, individual and society. autonomy must ultimately take the form of a myth – in art as in life – because all works – especially architecture – and all people are always already embedded within a wider web of associations, primarily social. in this way, autonomy in architecture is arguably above all else a fairytale remarkably well-suited to transforming ideologies of freedom, individualism, and neoliberalism into a myth, a self-soothing story that perpetuates the illusion of agency (particularly evident in the endless cycles of aimless neo-avant-gardes in architecture). considered in this way, the shape autonomy has taken in architectural theory and practice as formalism begins to make sense, especially in the form of spatializations of disconnectedness from the social and political in architecture that autonomy entails. as developed immediately above, what i am proposing here might well seem to be at odds with framing the question of autonomy in a traditionally kantian way. for kant, autonomy is to be valued as a form of ethical understanding, in the sense that it presupposes some rational will. as noted kant expert paul guyer notes, above all, kant was the philosopher of human autonomy, the view that by the use of our own reason in its broadest sense human beings can discover and live up to the basic principles of knowledge and action without outside assistance, above all without divine support or intervention.7 i am unconvinced that life on the ground bears this out as a real possibility. while such a belief may be seductive, how many people actually act in accordance with their own moral duty (or even their own best interests, rather than apparent self interest) independent of a web of social relations? although autonomy in practice in architecture might be explained as the (morally) laudable effort autonomy in architecture is arguably above all else a fairytale remarkably well-suited to transforming ideologies of freedom, individualism, and neo-liberalism into a myth, a self-soothing story that perpetuates the illusion of agency. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 164 co le m a n to act ‘without outside assistance’, architecture is not philosophy, at least not in the sense that permits the purity of argumentation in isolation from concrete experience and practices on the ground. so while arguments in philosophy might need not be troubled by the way in which the mundane inevitably taints practice, as architects we are so deeply embedded in the world that attempting to claim any such luxury is at best a misapprehension. inevitably, as architects, only if we are vigilant in attending to just how infrequently any of us actually act in our own best interest, or on behalf of the communities to which we belong, will we have any hope of acting in remotely ethical ways. it is in this regard that autonomy as individualism (and as willful disengagement), inevitably suggests just the sort of isolation associated with formalism. intriguingly, the idea of freedom that best describes a wide range of autonomy projects in architecture is transcendental (in the sense of being a priori or preternatural), rather than empirical (in the sense of being experiential or pragmatic).8 in this regard, perhaps the opposition ought to be more simply stated as the ‘pure’ as opposed to the ‘impure’, which in terms of utopia could be indicated as the difference between the ‘abstract’ (transcendental) and the ‘concrete (empirical). however, for these differences to have dialectical value, in terms of defining an alternative idea of freedom with regard to architecture, the concrete, empirical, or pragmatic would need to be thought of as far more nuanced than technocratic understandings of them usually permit. k. michael hays influenced by philosophical post-structuralism in their responses to the failures of architects’ flirtations with positivist social science that so marked the orthodox modernism of the post world war ii period, a fair number of the generation of architects reaching maturity post-1968 set for themselves the task, as hays has put it, of ‘thinking architecture back into its own.’ interestingly, this group’s prevailing conception of architecture’s own imagined it as domain of practice free of social obligation and unfettered by the habits of culture, of comprehensibility and of the everyday. arguably, this fantasy of a pure architecture remains dominant, or at least prevails as an aspiration for practice, what hays calls the ‘autonomy project.’9 given the association of high-modern, or orthodox-modern architecture with utopia, most of the post-1968 generation of architects wants to be as post-utopian as they are autonomous; indeed, many are categorically anti-utopian. according to hays’s reading (and that of other chroniclers) of 165 isparchitecture.com autonomy, architects as divergent as aldo rossi and peter eisenman, or bernard tschumi, rem koolhaas, and zaha hadid (amongst others) share a suspicion of architectural sincerity of the sort aldo van eyck detailed until his death in 1999, and which rykwert continues to encourage. the counterprojects of still practicing architects as diverse as tadao ando, deborah berke, david chipperfield, herman hertzberger, renzo piano, tod williams and billie tsien, and peter zumthor come to mind. paradoxically, the first group attempt to escape utopia by way of inventing architectures in which some relative perfection is achievable, whereas the second group transacts in the transformative potential of hope, while embracing hints at fallibility as a crucial humanizing characteristic (yes, arguably even ando, zumthor, and chipperfield). consciously or otherwise, i believe this tension reveals some sort of awareness (in both camps) that autonomy is preternatural, only possible outside of the realm of “time and necessity” (as alberti observed), or “place and occasion” (as van eyck observed). equally, as john ruskin long ago asserted (and le corbusier practiced) perfection is reserved for the unknown or unknowable, or is achievable only when the problem is so reduced, or the aims set low enough, that it can be attained. confirming this interpretation, hays argues that the “autonomy project” entails freeing “architecture from the burden of utility” necessarily so in “recognition of the impossibility, or failure of meaning” for an architecture inexorably compromised by its capture within the building industry that realization ironically exacerbates. it is for this reason that autonomists like hays are not particularly interested in the actual reception of built works. only theories and theoretical (or visionary) projects have any chance of freedom from the burden of use and the destructive consequences of the capitalist production of building. in hays’s view, architecture, in, “any traditional sense, such as van autonomy as individualism (and as willful disengagement) inevitably suggests just the sort of isolation associated with formalism. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 166 co le m a n eyck proposed,” is irredeemably lost, ostensibly leaving autonomy as the only authentic response.10 the troubling thing about the supposedly authentic response of autonomy is that it requires emptiness, or meaninglessness, for its achievement. as an example of this, consider tafuri and francesco dal co’s assessment of louis i kahn’s work: [t]he new bases for architecture set up by kahn are every bit as artificial as the myths and institutions in which he put his trust [...]. it is nostalgia that determines kahn’s language. that determinism breaks with the modern tradition no less violently than does every attempt to confine it in the display cases of a museum. kahn’s work inveighs against the reduction of architecture to a negligible object. but this signifies protecting the values from the process of history by transfiguring them into symbols, by attempting to recover their arcane properties.11 while i might experience kahn’s work as an audacious attempt to recuperate social meaning and comprehensibility in modern architecture, tafuri and dal co necessarily see it as confirmation of a false consciousness, in the sense that it is an attempt to resist the, ‘reduction of architecture to a negligible object,’ as an inevitable consequence of capitalist production and the flows of history. in tafuri and dal co’s terms, although resistance of this sort might be possible because it exists, it is false – a myth – in the sense of misleading us as regards the material, ideological and institutional processes of capitalist society. the significance of this is that, in marxist terms, those conditions could only ever be overcome if nothing diverts attention from the reality of our circumstances under capitalism. while i have great sympathy for this position, i remain unconvinced by the prospect of autonomy – of a socially and politically empty architecture that retreats from reality and the everyday, as much as from utopia – as the way to set the stage for what ernst bloch called “true architecture” that will only ever be possible when architecture emerges from the, “hollow space of capitalism.”12 although this might make me into a utopian socialist who encourages piecemeal attempts to willfully act upon history out of step with its flows, rather than a scientific socialist, deleuze and guattari argue that, “[w]hat matters is not the supposed distinction between utopian and scientific socialism but the different types of utopia, one of them being revolution.”13 in my estimation, as practiced, autonomy is not a revolution but rather a restoration of sorts in the sense that an empty architecture, whatever its claims to resistance, is an architecture fully coincident with the processes of the capitalist production of buildings. without the edge of utopia, of a sustained critique of the present that seeks to transform it, 167 isparchitecture.com architecture is just another product to be exchanged. by the same measure, the autonomy project of architecture is compensatory; a sad response to architects’ diminished authority and reduced influence within the building industry of capitalist production, effected through a reduction of the tasks of architecture primarily to formal or typological concerns. thus, the autonomy project is less liberation than requiem. couched as a form of resistance to the dominance of capitalist production, autonomy in architecture is more convincingly a symptom of the very condition it purports to resist. in point of fact, autonomy in architecture constructs an apologia for solipsism, radical individualism, self-indulgence, and a negation of the social and other external forces that shape architecture and which it shelters, to say nothing of the web of associations of which it is part. clearly, nothing could be more consistent with the logic of products. though i feel closer in spirit to lefebvre and rykwert, this pessimistic conclusion is closer to tafuri, who, as hays observes, “found architecture in a double bind. to the extent that architecture can function in a capitalist society, it inevitably reproduces the structure and codes of that society in its own immanent logics and form.”14 escape becomes capture, suggesting that the choice is between either capitulation or transformation, rather than between determinism or autonomy. summarizing tafuri, hays notes: “when architecture resists, when it attempts to reassert its own disruptive voice, capitalism simply withdraws from service, relegates it to the boudoir, so that demonstrations by architects of their works’ autonomy and degraded life become redundant and trivialized in advance.”15 indeed, for tafuri, the, “return to pure architecture,” that capitalism necessitates, is little more than a return, “to form without utopia [...] to sublime uselessness.”16 the autonomy project is less liberation than requiem. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 168 co le m a n ignasi de solà-morales for ignasi de solà-morales (1942-2001), the autonomy project really begins to take shape in the aftermath of the rebellions of 1968. for him, in its present form, this condition is describable as, “our present panorama of incertitude and desolation.”17 indeed, the self-absorption suggested by the very desire for an autonomous architecture arguably only becomes a preoccupation in periods of crisis, or of “pessimism.”18 in morales’s view autonomy entails, “the disappearance of all reference to anything beyond the universe of artistic products’ themselves.”19 what is more, “the idea’ is put ‘before the materiality of the object […]. the process is more important than the work of art. more important than the finished, isolated object are the ideas [that] made it possible.”20 although for morales the preceding describes what he calls “plastic arts,” a similar condition exists for architecture, in which its autonomy is “based on the body of theory intrinsic to it.”21 in a passage that highlights the limitations of thinking of theories and projects as autonomous from construction – from the built reality of building – morales describes the experience of visiting a constructed building designed by italian architect aldo rossi (1941-1997), as opposed to the genuine pleasure of seeing his drawings and other representations: the sense of disillusion experienced by many upon seeing a rossi building constructed on an actual site and from concrete materials derives from the fact that the building thus asks to be considered objectively or functionally, while its author tries to call instead to the process revealed in his drawings, so that the construction of the building is an episode in an architectonic discourse understood as autonomous and thus indifferent to construction or use.22 in such work, including that of the architects peter eisenman (b. 1932), michael graves (b. 1934), richard meier (b. 1934), john hejduk (19292000), and charles gwathmey (1938-2009) considered in the 1971 book the new york five, “[t]he idea, defined by sketches, not by built work overtakes the importance of the ‘real thing.”23 the desire for ‘the autonomy of the discipline’ of architecture is a symptom of, “the failure of modern architecture,” that apparently joins this grouping of architects together.24 as described by morales, the architecture of autonomy is characterized by, “the evocation of impossible architectures, of ruins, of spatial absurdities, and of conceptual paradoxes,” indicative of a, “loss of confidence in the possibility of a truly buildable and culturally valid architecture.”25 the internalized work of automist architects is, “concerned purely with syntax [the composition or arrangement of architectural elements]: semantics [the meaning of architectural elements that emerges from assemblages of 169 isparchitecture.com them, and from their metaphoric power] constitute not so much a goal to be reached as a point from which to depart.”26 here, morales returns our attention to the association between autonomy and a draining away of culturally associative content in architecture, in response to the crisis of architecture (and modernity) as a crisis of meaning and ideology, and as a symptom of the capitalist production of buildings. pier vittorio aureli (b. 1973) – the project of autonomy for aureli, the key aim of what he calls “the project of autonomy” is to intensify the difference between “present thinking” and “past thinking.” in this sense, “autonomy” is that process by which the apparent uniqueness of the present can know itself as distinct from the past and from tradition, even if both become tropes that autonomists “mess” with. however, while aureli is interested in autonomy as a project of international architectural culture in general, his main preoccupation is with emphasizing its italian origins and the multiplicity of expressions within that context, which is to say, that while it might be convenient to identify aldo rossi with tafuri, for aureli they are different in the way that rowe and eisenman are. although the subtlety of this might be elusive, it is surely reasonable to argue that historian/theorists (tafuri and rowe) will be different from practitioner/ theorists (rossi and eisenman). at the very least, the former could make a much more convincing claim to autonomy than the latter: history and theory exist in the realm of texts, which are much less costly or risky to produce than buildings are. on the other hand, architecture is always implicated in the dominant culture and bound to its modes of production. as such, the construction of architecture always renders it already far too compromised – by association – to lay any claim to autonomy of any substantive sort. it is precisely ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 170 co le m a n this compromised position that implementation foists upon architecture that encouraged a range of autonomists to initially turn away from making buildings toward the construction of theories and representations. however, even these activities, in particular the crafting of supposedly autonomous representations, are quickly subsumed within the logic of the provision of products and of consumption. the beautiful representations of architect theorists may have been free of the ‘burden of use’ because they could, or would, never be constructed, but this did not inoculate them from quickly becoming objects of exchange, far from autonomous in any convincing sense. one need only think of the importance of the leo castelli gallery in soho new york city in this regard during the 1970s and early 1980s. many architects’ reputations were made, and building careers ultimately launched, on the basis of first producing apparently autonomous representations. it is in this regard, as aureli observes that “capitalism evolves to disarm [...] resistance.”27 aureli’s argument, it is worth noting, obtains to a small architectural elite that is not representative of architecture as generally practiced. nor does his argument particularly relate to the individuals who conventionally populate buildings. indeed, this is likely the point: autonomy of any sort that actually proceeds to some real form of resistance presupposes isolation from the mainstream. it is in this regard that autonomy is countercultural, which ostensibly confirms it as a critical practice of a sort. though only for so long as it is not named as a style or consumed as one. the near impossibility of actually achieving this turns on the duration of the cycles of style that autonomy is part of having – paradoxically – become shorter and shorter since the 1970s. although aureli offers something of a history of autonomy in architecture – from the 1960s onward – with an emphasis on italian currents, it seems to me that the main aim of his project is to locate, or more precisely, to carve out, a place for his own practice by laying claim to an inheritance from the italian autonomists, in the belief that this would actually make practice – his own – possible in the midst of capitalist production. thus, his observations about the convictions of the autonomists appear to mirror his own hopes: [the autonomists’ project was] not about the destruction of capitalist culture and bourgeois history per se but, on the contrary, [it was rather about] their deep analysis and instrumental use. autonomy was not the creation of politics and poetics ex nihilo but rather an audacious effort to appropriate the political realm in order to construct an alternative to capitalist domination.28 the peculiar thing about aureli’s reading, or perhaps of the strain of autonomy he is interested in, is that its aims are, according to him, 171 isparchitecture.com “postpolitical” rather than “political”, which to me seems a sure recipe for failure.29 clearly, attempting to act upon capitalist production in some postpolitical manner comes just a bit too close to the myths of the end of history that underpin the neoliberal project today. however, in telling the story in this way, aureli brings us close to a truer condition, that of melancholia, of a sense of exhaustion and despondency in the face of the apparent failure and defeat of communism, and of the left more generally, particularly in their inability to offer up a compelling alternative to the entrepreneurial spirit and chameleon-like wiles of capitalism. indeed, in aureli’s view autonomy’s target was not so much capitalism as it was communism and the left, in the belief that through the antagonism of autonomy, capitalism could be transformed (somehow from within). but how this could be achieved – disengaged from politics – remains a mystery. nevertheless, aureli is clear: he wants to, “attempt to extract from [the] history [of the project of autonomy] what is still valid today.”30 achieving this clearly presents a significant problem in a context where autonomy suggests a particular attitude, or style, as much as a retreat from many of the multiple problems that make up architecture, for example, encounters with place and use. ultimately, for aureli, by the time the autonomy project in architecture was exported to the anglo-american context it arrived as an already spent force, suggesting aesthetic innovations of a formalist sort, rather than any radical political initiative. as such, the very conditions of extreme commercial production that autonomy professed to counter quickly consumed it within its own capitalist logic. nevertheless, aureli looks to, “autonomia as a way to establish long-term responsibilities and solid categories by which to counter the positivistic and mystifying ways that social and political development comes to be seen as evolutionary progress.”31 while i certainly agree with the necessity of doing just this, the “autonomy ultimately, the myth of the autonomy project maintains the status quo by which utopia must still be renounced. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 172 co le m a n project” in architecture must inevitably turn-in on itself to become both self-justifying and self-indulgent, little more than a compensation for the near impossibility of socially rich and significant architectural practise with the reach of capitalism. ultimately, the myth of the autonomy project maintains the status quo by which utopia must still be renounced, including the commitment to transformation it speaks, and the real social and political engagement it requires. in this renunciation, the architect can also maintain his or her fiction of some special status in the making and remaking of the world, despite all of the evidence to the contrary that persistently debunks this myth. patrik schumacher patrik schumacher, who teaches at the architectural association in london, is a director in the office of zaha hadid architects; his prominence in uk architectural education and position in hadid’s office, as representative of so-called starchitect practises, are the key reasons for considering his take on the autonomy of architecture here. the main shortcoming of schumacher’s writing on architecture is that to make his point he presumes an either/or situation of either grand master narratives, or none. as such, his argument is totalizing and lacks subtlety. his tone suggests that the current system of cultural production really is as closed as the absolute fragmentation he posits would ensure. he associates master narratives with the social renewal projects of utopia, evident, according to him, in the urban projects of orthodox modern architecture. overcoming master narratives, with a putative realism, entails, as with most autonomists, doing away with utopia. according to schumacher, the current condition reveals, “the all too evident impossibility of designing a new world,” not least, he argues, because the current condition, “indicates how far utopia has been left behind.” in this regard, schumacher observes, “two related tendencies that conspire to frustrate any straightforward utopian impulse within architecture and design: 1. the dissolution of the utopian politicocultural discourses of emancipation and social progress [...].” and, “2. the increasing autonomy and self-referential closure of the discipline of architecture, as expressed [...] in the [...] work and writings of peter eisenman.” he continues, “while [i]t might seem that [...] architecture withdraws into itself because no compelling social project exists that could inspire and direct architectural speculation [...], there is another way one could theorise the relationship between these two phenomena.”32 on the basis of the argument developed in the preceding pages of the present article, by this juncture it should come as no surprise that my conviction 173 isparchitecture.com is that the withdrawal of architecture into itself is indeed a symptom of having, “no compelling social project,” to, “inspire and direct architectural speculation.” in schumacher’s view: [t]he tendency towards architectural autonomy might be understood as a moment of an overall societal process of differentiation, whereby social communication fragments into a series of autonomous domains – the economy, politics, the legal system, science, art etc. – establishing self-referentially closed subsystems within society. each of these autonomous discourses contributes, in its specific way, to the overall social process. but this overall social process – society – does no longer have any control centre over and above the various increasingly autonomous communication systems. the differentiated discourses establish their own sovereign independence with respect to their underlying values, performance criteria, programmes and priorities. in this sense the various subsystems operate self-referentially [...] in a kind of self referentially enclosed autonomy.33 according to schumacher, such fragmentation is to be welcomed precisely because the condition of autonomy facilitates, “the ability to experiment with adaptations to a turbulent environment on many local fronts simultaneously, without the need to synchronise all moves, and without running the risk that failures rip too deep into the social fabric.”34 moreover, his belief is that such fragmentation protects architecture because, “design rationality too can neither be reduced to nor controlled by any other than its own logic.”35 schumacher’s discourse depends on a large degree of overconfidence in the supposed logic of his statements. nowhere is this arrogance more pronounced than in his naïve and out-of-date statements on utopia that are, admittedly, fairly typical of primitive understandings of the concept, and which stubbornly persist in architecture theory: ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 174 co le m a n the self-referential closure of the differentiated subsystems of societal communication spells the end of utopia. utopia as a coherent project and blueprint, i.e. as the wholesale reinvention of society integrating politics, law, economy and architecture, breaks up in the face of an insurmountable complexity barrier [...]. today society has no address, no centre and no opportunity to generate a binding representation of itself and its destiny.36 the preceding begs the question as to whether or not utopia must be blueprint to articulate reinvention. an alternative position arising from with the discipline of utopian studies and beyond is that the blueprint utopia is just one, albeit unfortunate, utopian possibility amongst others. examples of these alternatives include “utopia as method” as ruth levitas understands it, as a way of thinking about and working toward the “possible-impossible” as henri lefebvre described it, or the taking of the first resolute, though by no means certain, steps toward the realization of alternatives that would be “constitutive” rather than “pathological”(of a blueprint utopian sort), in paul ricoeur’s sense.37 amongst the many peculiar aspects of schumacher’s thinking is his conviction that: [a] mark of the self-referential closure of architecture is that design decisions are tightly knit to their kind and only obliquely/indirectly [...] refer to external demands and circumstances [...]. political, legal or financial concerns are not immediately architectural concerns.38 the sheltered vision of architecture this encourages only serves to further separate architecture from the everyday and to absolve architects of their obligation to communities and individuals. as construed by schumacher, autonomy liberates architects to a space of unobstructed self involvement of an “art-for-art’s-sake” sort which only confirms the disconnect between architects and their architecture from everyday life while contributing to the transformation of buildings and cities into little more than a collection of branded commodities. as with so many architects, schumacher’s ultimate defense for such a disconnected view of architecture is the cultural capital that attaches to some imagined association with a putative avant-garde: the distinction of avant-garde versus mainstream, merely commercial “architecture”, remains constitutive for the discipline. only innovative, generalisable contributions [...] that are deeply entangled in the autopoeitic network of architectural communication [are considered]. the degree of autonomy that architectural discourse has established by differentiating itself from the immediacy of everyday talk about buildings [...] should grow with the overall complexity of society.39 175 isparchitecture.com in conclusion although tafuri could see only false consciousness – and certain failure – in attempts to act upon history, when acting within history is seen as the only possible option, the risk is that the results will be as self-serving as they are anti-utopian. but what other possibility could there be if attempts to act upon history are seen as being out of step with its flow, and thus supposedly doomed? moreover, if acting within history entails doing away with utopia, acting upon history is fundamentally utopian. resigning oneself to history as determinant also risks becoming self-serving by absolving architects from being critical and acting critically. this conundrum leads me to a passage from deleuze and guattari’s what is philosophy?, with which i would like to conclude, as i believe it captures many of the strands i have been developing in this paper while helping us to imagine how to reconcile our desires for freedom with our simultaneous capture within webs of social association, by way of utopia: actually, utopia is what links philosophy with its own epoch, with european capitalism, but also already with the greek city. in each case it is with utopia that philosophy becomes political and takes the criticism of its own time to its highest point. utopia does not split off from infinite movement; etymologically it stands for absolute deterritorialization but always at the critical point at which it is connected with the present relative milieu [...]. in utopia (as in philosophy) there is always the risk of a restoration, and sometimes a proud affirmation, of transcendence, so that we need to distinguish between authoritarian utopias, or utopias of transcendence, and immanent, revolutionary, libertarian utopias [...]. the word utopia therefore designates that conjunction of philosophy, or of the concept, with the present milieu – political philosophy [...].40 if acting within history entails doing away with utopia, acting upon history is fundamentally utopian. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 176 co le m a n the quote above establishes an apparently irresolvable paradox for architecture: if the autonomy project in all of its myriad guises actually reveals an attempt to be free of utopia, it is precisely this self-deceiving attempt at escape that renders architecture irrelevant and ensures its conclusive separation from culture – in adolf loos’s sense – and from everyday life. conversely, it seems, then, that utopia holds out a potential resolution to the problem of renewed purpose and relevance for architecture, fortifying it to act against the solvent of capitalism, the very same condition that inspired most of the doomed attempts at architectures of autonomy in the first place. endnotes 1. philip johnson, “where are we at?”, architectural review, cxxvii, september 1960, pp. 173–75, reprinted in philip johnson writings (new york: oxford university press, 1978), p. 100. 2. thomas schumacher, “on parametricism: georgina day interviews patrik schumacher” (2012), available at http://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/on%20parametricism_.html 3. k. michael hays, ‘introduction’, oppositions reader (new york city, princeton architectural press, 1998), p. ix. 4. joseph rykwert, the first moderns: the architects of the eighteenth century (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1980), p. 470. 5. for more on tafuri, lefebvre, and rykwert see n. coleman, utopias and architecture (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2005), and nathaniel coleman, lefebvre for architects (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2015). i have also considered the importance of tafuri, lefebvre, and rykwert, as outlined here, in numerous journal articles. 6. ibid., p. xi. 7. paul guyer, “kant, immanuel”, in e. craig (ed.), routledge encyclopedia of philosophy, (london: routledge 1998/2004), retrieved june 16, 2014, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/db047 8. see paul guyer, “kant on the theory and practice of autonomy”, social philosophy and policy 20.2 (july 2003), pp. 70-98, here p. 98. 9. k. michael hays, “the textualization of architecture, 1978–1986” (talk presented as plenary speaker at text & architecture, an international word & image conference, paris, 26–28 june 2003, organized by the university of paris, 7 denis-diderot/college of the holy cross, worcester, ma, 26 177 isparchitecture.com june 2003). 10. k. michael hays, “textualization”, ibid. 11. manfredo tafuri and francesco dal co, modern architecture, trans. robert erich wolf (new york: harry n. abrams, 1976), p. 402. 12. ernst bloch, “building in empty spaces”, in the utopian function of art and literature: selected essays, trans j. zipes and f. mecklenburg (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1988), pp. 187-190. 13. deleuze and guattari, op. cit., p. 100. 14. hays, “introduction”, oppositions reader, p. xiv. 15. ibid. 16. manfredo tafuri, architecture and utopia: design and capitalist development (1973), trans. barbara luigia la penta (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1976), p. ix. 17. ignasi de solà-morales, “from autonomy to untimeliness” (1991), in differences: topographies of contemporary architecture, trans. graham thompson (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1997), p. 73. 18. ignasi de solà-morales, ibid., p. 73. 19. ibid., p. 74. 20. ibid., p. 74. 21. ibid., p. 75. 22. ibid., p. 77. 23. ibid., p. 77. 24. ibid., p. 77. 25. ibid., p. 82. 26. ibid., p. 77. 27. pier vittorio aureli, project of autonomy: politics and architecture within and against capitalism (new york city: princeton architectural press, 2008), p. 9. 28. ibid., p. 14. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 178 co le m a n 29. ibid., pp. 9-11. 30. ibid., p. 12. 31. ibid., p. 83. 32. patrik schumacher, “the autopoeisis of architecture”, in latent utopias experiments within contemporary architecture (vienna/new york: springer verlag, 2002). available online at: http://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/autopoeisis.htm. interested readers are encouraged to see also an earlier treatment of schumacher’s thinking on utopia and contemporary architecture in my article ‘utopia beyond amelioration’, boundaries 8 (april-june 2013), 4-11. 33. schumacher, “autopoeisis”. 34. ibid 35. ibid. 36. ibid. 37. see ruth levitas, utopia as method (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2013); nathaniel coleman, “utopia and a new romanticism”, in lefebvre for architects (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2015), pp. 18-52; and nathaniel coleman, in utopias and architecture (abingdon, oxon: routledge, 2005), pp. 10-11, 29, 38-39, 52, 56-62, 237-38. 38. patrik schumacher, “the autopoeisis of architecture,” in latent utopias experiments within contemporary architecture (vienna/new york: springer verlag, 2002). available online at: http://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/autopoeisis.htm. 39. patrik schumacher, ibid. 40. gilles deleuze and félix guattari, what is philosophy? [1991], trans. g. burchell and h. tomlinson (london: verso, 1994), pp. 99-100. the ethical criticism of architecture: in defense of moderate moralism christoph baumberger the practice of architectural criticism is supercharged with ethical evaluations. we praise certain works of architecture for their sustainability, their inspiring and enlivening character, their encouragement of an autonomous and satisfying life for their users, or their contribution to the peaceful cohabitation of different social or ethnic groups. we criticize other works for the harm they cause to the environment, for their negative impact on the health or well-being of human beings, for the morally reprehensible attitudes they convey or the morally despicable functions they serve. such assessments of architectural works are of an ethical nature, or at least possess an ethical dimension. i take this feature of architectural criticism seriously and wish to address two questions1: do ethical assessments of architectural works have any bearing on their value as works of architecture? and how is the ethical value of an architectural work related to its aesthetic value? the answers i defend are, roughly, that the ethical value of an architectural work has a bearing on its architectural value, and that the ethical and aesthetic value of such a work have a bearing on each other. more precisely: 1) a work of architecture will in some cases be architecturally flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it has ethical flaws (or merits). 2) a work of architecture will in some cases be aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it has ethical flaws (or merits). 3) a work of architecture will in some cases be ethically flawed (or meritorious) due to the moderate moralism claims that the relations between the ethical value and the aesthetic and architectural value are invariant and symmetric. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 180 ba um be r ge r fact that it has aesthetic flaws (or merits). in claims 1 to 3, “work of architecture” is to be understood in a very broad sense, including works of artistic as well as of everyday architecture, and buildings as well as other elements of the built environment, such as bridges and squares.2 such a broad notion of an architectural work suits my purpose since buildings and other elements of the built environment can – regardless of whether they are artworks or not – be judged from an ethical as well as from an aesthetic point of view, and it certainly makes sense to assess their overall value, what i call “architectural value”.3 the questions about the relation between ethical, aesthetic and architectural value arises thus for architectural works in the broad sense. moreover, this broad notion is of great importance since our built environment contains much more than buildings, and most of what it contains are not (or, at least, are not typically considered to be) artworks. in this article, my main concern is to defend claims 1 to 3. in my argument i will mention particular works of architecture, but any detailed examination of specific works is beyond the scope of this article and will have to wait for another occasion. before i defend my three core claims (sections 2 to 4), i first further specify the proposed view these claims substantiate, distinguish that view from opposing views and explain what is at stake in holding the view (section 1). 1. moderate moralism claims 1 to 3 define what i call moderate moralism with respect to architecture. it is a form of moralism for two reasons. firstly, it claims that there is some ‘interaction’ between ethical assessments of architectural works and their aesthetic and architectural assessments, where claims 1 to 3 define the nature of that interaction. this distinguishes moderate moralism from autonomism, which holds that ethical flaws or merits are never aesthetically and/or architecturally relevant; either because it makes no sense to morally evaluate works of architecture (radical autonomism), or because the ethical assessment and the aesthetic or the architectural assessment of an architectural work never interact (moderate autonomism). secondly, moderate moralism claims that the relations between the ethical value and the aesthetic and architectural value are invariant and symmetric, i.e. positive ethical qualities are always associated with positive aesthetic and architectural qualities and negative ethical qualities are always associated with negative aesthetic and architectural qualities. this distinguishes it from contextualism, which agrees with moderate moralism that the ethical value of a work of architecture can have a bearing on the 181 isparchitecture.com aesthetic and architectural value, but takes it to be a contextual matter whether an ethical flaw or merit is aesthetically and/or architecturally meritorious or defective. according to contextualism, the relations between ethical, aesthetic and architectural values are complex and invertible, i.e. negative ethical qualities can in certain cases be associated with positive aesthetic or architectural qualities, and vice versa. in this respect, moderate moralism is more demanding than contextualism.4 what makes it nonetheless a moderate form of moralism is that it does not claim that ethical assessments of architectural works and their aesthetic and architectural assessments always interact. my use of the terms in italics differs from their usage within the recent debate on the relationship between art, aesthetics and morality.5 this is partly due to the fact that i deal with architecture whereas the recent debate is focused mainly on the representational arts, such as literature and painting. the main difference is that moderate moralism or (as berys gaut calls it) ethicism is usually defined only by a claim regarding the influence of the ethical on the aesthetic, i.e. by a claim of type 2. in particular, it does not involve anything which corresponds to the distinction between aesthetic and architectural value, and thus no claim of type 1. the value of a piece of literature or a painting is its aesthetic or, maybe, artistic value, but the value of architectural works in my broad sense is, as we will see, not exhausted by their aesthetic value, and it cannot generally be identified with their artistic value since most buildings and other elements of the built environment are not artworks. moreover, moderate moralism as it is usually defined does not include any claim regarding whether the aesthetic value of a work has a bearing on its ethical value. but this question, addressed in claim 3, is especially pressing in the case of architecture since due to their public character architectural works unavoidably affect people’s well-being. hence my version my version of moderate moralism is more ambitious than the view is often characterized. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 182 ba um be r ge r of moderate moralism is more ambitious than the view is customarily characterized as being. whether architects should regard themselves as moderate moralists has important implications for how they should conceive of their profession. if moderate moralism is correct about the relation between ethical, aesthetic and architectural values, then ethical considerations belong to the core of architecture and must play a crucial role in design, planning and construction processes. architects cannot dismiss ethical criticisms of their works as irrelevant or misguided in principle. moreover, they cannot defend ethical flaws of their works by arguing that these flaws contribute to the aesthetic worth of the works, as would be possible if contextualism were right; at most, they can argue that the ethical flaws in question are neither aesthetically nor architecturally relevant. before i turn to claims 1 to 3, here is what i mean by ethical, aesthetic and architectural values of works of architecture. firstly, i construe the ethical in a wide sense, according to which it concerns normative questions regarding what is morally right or wrong, as well as evaluative questions regarding the good life. thus the ethical value of an architectural work includes its positive or negative contributions to the good life and the well-being of people, as well as its promotion or violation of moral rights or duties. secondly, the aesthetic is also to be understood in a wide sense, according to which it concerns questions regarding aesthetic experiences and properties (aesthetic questions in a narrow sense), as well as questions specifically regarding artistic architecture, for instance, about artistic style, expression, genre and art-history. beside its capacity to yield aesthetic experiences (aesthetic value in the narrow sense), the aesthetic value of an architectural work with art-status thus also includes, for example, stylistic, expressive and art-historic qualities, which contribute to the artistic value of the work. aesthetic value cannot generally be identified with artistic value since we can aesthetically experience buildings and other elements of the built environment which are not artworks. such structures can thus have aesthetic value (in the narrow sense) even if they do not have artistic value. finally, i construe architectural value as the total value of a work of architecture as such. it includes all qualities appropriate to consider when evaluating an architectural work. aesthetic properties are certainly among these qualities, but even in the case of architectural works with artstatus they do not exhaust them. thesis 1 claims that at least some ethical properties should also go into an overall evaluation of an architectural work. i leave it open which further properties or values constitute architectural value, but it seems likely that utility,6 durability, social values 183 isparchitecture.com and cognitive values are also among the qualities that should be considered in an overall evaluation of a work of architecture. architectural value can thus not be equated with the aesthetic or the artistic value of an architectural work. 2. ethical value and architectural value claim 1 states that architectural value partly depends on ethical value in such a manner that a work of architecture will in some cases be architecturally flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it has ethical flaws (or merits). this might seem uncontroversial if the architectural value represents the total value of an architectural work. however, autonomists raise two objections against this first thesis. according to the first objection, we morally assess people (their actions, motives, intentions and characters), but it makes no sense to morally evaluate artifacts such as architectural works. moral evaluations of such works, so the objection goes, are based on a category mistake since moral criticism assumes moral responsibility and thus moral agency, but architectural works have no mental states and can thus not be moral agents.7 however, such artifacts as laws and constitutions, for instance, are also subject to moral evaluation. hence, there is no general objection against artificial products of human activity being subject to ethical assessment. moreover, a closer look at critical practices reveals that we can and do morally evaluate architectural works.8 firstly, we morally evaluate such works with respect to their planning, design, and construction processes. a building can, for instance, be ethically criticized due to a violation of moral rights during its construction phase, at least in certain instances.9 secondly, we morally evaluate architectural works with respect to their impact on the environment. a building can, for instance, be ethically criticized due to its disproportionate emission of pollutants, ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 184 ba um be r ge r energy consumption, and waste of resources. thirdly, we morally evaluate architectural works with respect to their impact on individuals and society. a building can, for instance, be ethically criticized because it negatively influences the health, well-being, or behavior of individuals, and because of its negative social ramifications. finally, we morally evaluate architectural works with respect to their functions, symbolic meanings, and forms. clearly, such aspects can be ethically evaluated regarding their impact on human beings and the environment. however, there may be reasons for ethically evaluating them regardless of their impact. some functions seem to be ethically objectionable, regardless of whether they actually impair any person’s well-being. the symbolic meaning of a building that expresses morally abject attitudes seems to deserve a negative ethical evaluation, regardless of its actual influence on people. and nigel taylor has argued that the form of a building which has obviously not received requisite care is ethically objectionable, regardless of how it actually influences the wellbeing of persons.10 the first three ways to morally evaluate architectural works determine their extrinsic ethical value, since such evaluations concern the conditions under which the works are developed, as well as their causal effects. the last one establishes the intrinsic ethical value of an architectural work, since such an evaluation concerns features of the work itself, regardless of how it affects people and the environment. within the debate about the relation between ethical and aesthetic values of artworks, the ethical value is often restricted to the intrinsic ethical value which, in turn, is typically construed solely in terms of the ethical features of attitudes that the artwork manifests.11 however, such a conception of ethical value is too narrow for architecture and rules out consequentialist considerations from the beginning. thus there are senses in which judging architectural works along ethical lines appears reasonable and is common practice. but how should such ethical judgments be interpreted? it has been argued that such judgments should be re-described as evaluations of what is done through the works by those who have participated in their realization and maintenance, and can be meaningfully considered responsible for.12 according to this view, the ethical appraisal is primarily directed towards people who commission, design, construct or use an architectural work, and only obliquely towards the work itself. others have argued that we can at least take particular moral assessments of architectural works at face value if we distinguish between moral responsibility and moral accountability. from such a perspective, an architectural work itself can be morally accountable, even though it cannot be made morally responsible due to its lack of moral agency.13 my answer to the first objection against claim 1 does not require any decision 185 isparchitecture.com as to which strategy is more promising. the second objection against claim 1 grants that architectural works can be morally evaluated, but insists that the ethical cannot be architecturally relevant since some architectural works are good or even great works of architecture, even though they are severely ethically flawed. some (architecturally) great works are ethically flawed due to a violation of moral principles during their planning and building phase; perhaps corruption was involved, or exploitation, or discrimination, forced labor, even the use of slaves, as is the case for the egyptian pyramids. other great works are ethically problematic due to harm they cause to the environment, as is the case for minimally insulated modernist buildings with ecologically wasteful heating systems. further great works are ethically deficient due to negative impacts on the health or well-being of humans, either due to immoral intended use (as with the roman coliseum), or due to functional unsuitability (as in case of mies van der rohe’s farnsworth house, where comfort is sacrificed for the sake of aesthetics). there also exist great buildings that are ethically flawed due to morally objectionable attitudes or views they express; an example is giuseppe terragni’s casa del fascio, which is often described as symbolizing fascist ideologies.14 this objection applies only to an extreme moralism, according to which architectural value is exclusively determined by ethical value. such extreme moralism is implausible since we evaluate works of architecture with respect to a wide variety of qualities, such as their beauty, originality, site specificity, durability, functionality, or clarity. a moderate moralist should be a pluralist with regard to architectural value and acknowledge that, beside ethical values, architectural value also encompasses aesthetic, design, and use-values, as well as arthistoric, social and cognitive values, among other ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 186 ba um be r ge r things. then he can hold that a building is architecturally flawed as it is ethically flawed, but that it has many architectural merits, which make it a good or even great work of architecture overall.15 3. ethical value and aesthetic value the main argument for my second claim – that an architectural work will in some cases be aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) due to ethical flaws (or merits) – is that it best suits our evaluative practices. this can, for instance, be demonstrated with reference to the role functional considerations play in architectural criticism. such considerations are crucial for evaluations of architectural works since architecture is essentially functional. it does not only deal with shapes and forms, but these shapes and forms must be arranged such as to provide a suitable framework for specific human activities. as i have pointed out, functional considerations have a bearing on the ethical evaluation as functional suitability of an architectural work can influence the wellbeing of its users. we can, for example, praise a building ethically for spatial adequacy and user-friendliness. however, functional considerations frequently influence also the aesthetic evaluation of an architectural work. it is widely assumed that we can, for example, aesthetically praise a building due to its functional beauty.16 a building can be functionally beautiful if it is, and also appears, fit for its function, since the expectations triggered by our knowledge of its function appear to be satisfied. thus many art nouveau residential buildings appear to offer a place suitable for living. a building can also be functionally beautiful if it exhibits a pleasing tension with respect to its function, given that it fulfills its purpose yet shows some surprising features in relation to its functional category. mies van der rohe’s boiler plant at the illinois institute of technology, for instance, functioned well though its tower-like chimney and high clerestory windows made it look more like an early church. finally, an architectural work can be functionally beautiful if it is elegant with respect to its function, by meeting our expectations and fulfilling its function in efficient or ingenious ways. robert maillart’s salginatobel bridge, for instance, crosses a steep valley in a bold and elegant manner without employing unnecessary elements. in this way, functional adequacy (or inadequacy) can be an ethical as well as an aesthetic merit (or flaw) of an architectural work. hence, there are ethical merits (or flaws) of architectural works that constitute aesthetic merits (or flaws). this is what 2 claims. in the remainder of this section, i further defend my second thesis by addressing four objections. the irrelevant dimensions objection insists 187 isparchitecture.com that not every ethical flaw of an architectural work is aesthetically relevant: a building during construction of which human rights of workers have been violated, or a building which uses materials produced under inhuman conditions, may be ethically flawed, but it is doubtful whether such a building is consequently aesthetically flawed. this, however, is not an objection against my second thesis, since 2 only claims that ethical flaws or merits of architectural works will in some cases be aesthetically relevant. moderate moralism postulates only that an architectural work is aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) when it contains an ethical flaw (or merit) which is aesthetically relevant.17 this raises the question whether there are general conditions of aesthetic relevance with regard to architecture. it seems unlikely that there exist strict criteria, but we might hope to find symptoms of the aesthetic relevance of ethical flaws or merits. as a rough idea, an ethical flaw or merit tends to be aesthetically relevant if it is essentially connected to at least one main feature of architectural works; frequently mentioned candidates for such features are (a building’s) form, function, structure, and meaning.18 an ethical flaw is essentially connected to such a feature if the feature could not have been realized or maintained in morally legitimate ways, or if the flaw consists of ethically problematic aspects or effects of this feature. a general account of aesthetic relevance is certainly desirable, yet not necessary to argue successfully for 2. autonomists (as defined in section 1) often invoke another argument against 2: the aesthetic attitude objection. it claims that ethical flaws or merits of an architectural work are never aesthetically relevant because we adopt an aesthetic attitude when we assess works aesthetically, and this attitude is insensitive to moral considerations.19 the aesthetic attitude is generally characterized in terms of disinterested attention to the aesthetic object. it has been questioned whether such a specific aesthetic ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 188 ba um be r ge r attitude exists,20 but even if it does, a dilemma arises. either the aesthetic attitude is understood as precluding any appeal to functional considerations, or it is understood in some other way. in jerome stolnitz’s approach, for instance, disinterestedness requires a deliberate withholding of concepts so that the very attempt to conceptualize an object in terms of its function is incompatible with adopting an aesthetic attitude.21 if the attitude is understood in these terms it is too narrow for capturing everything that is aesthetically relevant, since functional considerations are aesthetically relevant. alternatively, the aesthetic attitude is understood in such a way that it may include an appeal to functional considerations. according to glenn parsons and allen carlson, for instance, disinterestedness only requires an object to be appreciated for its own sake rather than for some personal benefit it may signify, but this does not entail experiencing an object without applying any concepts to it.22 if the attitude is understood in this manner it need not be insensitive to moral considerations, since functional considerations are ethically relevant. hence, the aesthetic attitude is either too narrow or not necessarily insensitive to moral considerations. a third objection against my second thesis has been put forward by contextualists (as defined in section 1). they claim that ethical flaws of works are sometimes aesthetic merits at the same time.23 one major argument for this view is the immoral function objection. as we have seen, an architectural work may be aesthetically meritorious when it is functionally beautiful. however, an architectural work can be functionally beautiful with respect to an immoral function. in such a case, the work is aesthetically meritorious due to the fact that it is ethically flawed. thus, the ethical flaws of architectural works may be in some cases aesthetic merits. an argument along these lines has been put forward by andrea sauchelli. his example is the basilica of saint peter in rome. a critic of catholicism might argue that it has the immoral function of promoting an ideological worldview that harmfully influences moral education. however, the critic might, at the same time, appreciate the ingenuity and adequacy of the basilica’s design to the end of fulfilling this immoral function. the critic might argue that the basilica is functionally beautiful with respect to an immoral function, thus illustrating a building’s ethical flaw that at the same time is an aesthetic merit.24 in such cases, though, it is not the ethical flaw as such that promotes the aesthetic merit. the aesthetic merit is based on the function, not on the immorality. in contrast to a comedy that achieves its humor by means of the immorality of its point of view, the basilica does not succeed aesthetically due to its immoral function, but due to a function that just happens to be immoral. hence the example does not establish any particular connection between aesthetic value and immorality. 189 isparchitecture.com sauchelli himself ponders such an answer to his objection against moderate moralism.25 this may indicate that we should construe his objection as an instance of another objection against 2, i.e. the inseparability objection.26 according to moderate moralism, some moral flaws are aesthetic flaws, so it seems that the removal of such moral flaws should lead to aesthetic improvement of the work – but this is not the case. an aesthetically commendable feature of an architectural work (e.g., its functional beauty) may depend on its moral flaws (i.e., having an immoral function). hence removing the moral flaw (replacing the immoral function by a morally good one) would not necessarily aesthetically improve the work, since it might then no longer be functionally beautiful. however, as gaut stresses, moderate moralism does not claim that removal of a moral flaw invariably leads to an aesthetically better work. moderate moralism is formulated in terms of the pro tanto principle that an architectural work is aesthetically flawed when it contains ethical flaws; in other words, that ethical flaws of a work diminish its aesthetic value.27 but moderate moralism does not hold that removing an ethical flaw must – all things considered – aesthetically improve the work. the reason is that removing the ethical flaw (namely, replacing the immoral function) might remove some other aesthetic merit depending on that flaw (namely, its functional beauty). thus, moderate moralism agrees with contextualism that removing a moral flaw might not aesthetically improve an architectural work, all things considered, but moderate moralism insists that, when a work is ethically flawed, it is aesthetically flawed, too.28 let me illustrate this claim by using the example of the farnsworth house. according to moderate moralism, the house is aesthetically flawed due to the fact that it is ethically flawed because of its functional unsuitability. however, this claim does not imply that improving the user-friendliness of the house will improve it aesthetically. this will moderate moralism does not claim that the removal of a moral flaw invariably leads to an aesthetically better work. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 190 ba um be r ge r hardly be the case since the house achieves its remarkable beauty precisely because it distills habitability to the breaking point. that many aesthetic qualities of the house depend on its user-unfriendliness does, however, not imply that it is the ethical flaw which makes the house aesthetically appealing. the kind of beauty the house exhibits may only be achievable at the cost of the ethical flaw of being functionally unsuitable, but the ethical flaw is not among the features that we aesthetically appreciate. (i here presuppose that not all beauty a building can have is of a narrowly functional variety.) moreover, the claim that the house is aesthetically flawed due to its ethical flaw is compatible with claiming that it is excellent from an aesthetic point of view and a great work of architecture. the aesthetic flaw constituted by its ethical flaw is clearly outweighed by other aesthetic merits of the house. 4. aesthetic value and ethical value debates regarding relations between ethical and aesthetic values usually discuss whether the ethical value of a work can influence its aesthetic value. the converse question – whether the aesthetic value of a work can influence its ethical value – is rarely discussed.29 my third thesis affirmatively answers this further question; here is an argument: p1) an architectural work is ethically flawed (or meritorious) when it impairs (or promotes) human well-being. p2) since living in an aesthetically appealing environment is essential to human well-being, an architectural work will in some cases impair (or promote) human well-being due to aesthetic flaws (or merits). c) an architectural work will in some cases be ethically flawed (or meritorious) due to its aesthetic flaws (or merits). (thesis 3.) all three steps of this argument are pro tanto claims. the influence of an architectural work on the well-being of human beings is not the only factor to determine its ethical value. for instance, the work can also be ethically flawed because it contributes to violation of moral rights. and having aesthetic merits or flaws is not the only factor to determine whether a work promotes or impairs human well-being, or whether it is ethically meritorious or flawed. the work can, for instance, also promote human well-being and be ethically praiseworthy because it is structurally safe and suits its function. furthermore, p2 and c are qualified as relevant in some cases, since not all aesthetic merits and flaws are sufficiently significant to be ethically relevant or have serious impact on human well-being. this argument leaves three big questions to address. the first two 191 isparchitecture.com concern p1, the third p2. firstly, whose wellbeing should be considered in ethical evaluation of an architectural work? for fairness’ sake, this must encompass all persons affected by the work. due to their public character, architectural works affect even the well-being of persons not directly involved in constructing or using them. due to their durability, they affect people for a long time, often over many generations. hence not only the well-being of architects, workers, and users should be taken into consideration, but also the well-being of neighbours and passers-by, for instance; and not only the current well-being of people, but also their future well-being – even the well-being of future generations. secondly, what does it mean to promote or impair the well-being of affected human beings? this depends on the account of well-being.30 according to a “desire-satisfaction” account, well-being lies in the satisfaction of one’s informed desires, that is, desires one would have if one were fully or at least sufficiently informed about one’s situation. it is likely that these desires include the desire to live in an aesthetically pleasing environment, as well as much more specific aesthetic preferences, which may vary across persons and cultures. the main problem with such accounts is that people may desire things that run counter to their own (and other people’s) well-being, and they may hold such desires even after being properly informed of such. “objective list” accounts, on the other hand, hold that well-being lies in possession of all or most of the goods to be found on a list, which is objective in the sense that its items contribute to our wellbeing even if we do not desire them. most lists proposed in the literature contain an aesthetic asset – “aesthetic experience,”31 for instance, or “the awareness of true beauty.”32 a frequent objection to such accounts is that they ignore reasonable differences among people as to what well-being consists of. this objection can be accommodated the kind of beauty the house exhibits may only be achieveable at the cost of the ethical flaw of being functionally unsuitable, but the ethical flaw is not among the features that we aesthetically appreciate. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 192 ba um be r ge r to some extent by admitting that the listed goods can often be realized in very different manners. a third big question arises relative to subjective preferences, which include aesthetic propensities: which qualities of an architectural work count as aesthetic merits, and which are considered aesthetic flaws? this may vary with culture and age, but also within a culture during a certain age. there is, for instance, often a divide between the aesthetic assessments of experts and those of laypersons. architects and architectural critics tend to find certain forms, materials and styles beautiful, which laypersons may find ugly and unfriendly; and laypersons tend to find buildings aesthetically appealing, which experts may criticize as banal or kitschy.33 taking aesthetic preferences of laypeople as authoritative might lead to a banal repetition of conventional structures; in many contexts, retroarchitecture which imitates a well-established and popular style of the past may be what best fits the aesthetic preferences of the general public. letting experts determine what is considered an aesthetic merit means adopting a paternalistic attitude. both are undesirable stances. since architectural works are part of our living environment, aesthetic preferences of people who use public spaces need to be taken into account in planning contexts as well as in political decisions regarding land-use. these aesthetic preferences, however, should not be regarded as simply given and unchanging, as laypersons may learn from experts who are more experienced in dealing with aesthetic questions. to navigate an intermediate course between uncritical satisfaction of laypersons’ aesthetic requirements and a paternalistic approach demands dialogue between architects and the public, and presents an educational challenge to architects and architectural critics.34 conclusion i have proposed a broad notion of architectural value which includes all qualities appropriate to consider when evaluating a work of architecture. it is beyond dispute that aesthetic properties are among these qualities. my first thesis claims that at least some ethical properties are also among the qualities that should be considered in an architectural evaluation. my second and third theses concern relations between the ethical and the aesthetic value out of the values involved in composing the architectural value. these theses claim that the ethical and the aesthetic value interact in such a manner that an architectural work will in some cases be aesthetically flawed (or meritorious) due to the fact that it is ethically flawed (or meritorious) and vice versa.35 193 isparchitecture.com endnotes 1. however, i do not take for granted that, every time architects or architectural theorists use morally supercharged terminology, the evaluation is of an ethical nature. since vitruvius’ age, architects and architectural theorists have often used ethical terms in order to justify aesthetic preferences – e.g. when claiming that it be a moral duty to design buildings true to their materials, not hiding structural support, and expressing the spirit of their period. see maurice lagueux, “ethics versus aesthetics in architecture,” the philosophical forum 35 (2004): 124-133. 2. “work of architecture” is often understood in a much narrower sense and reserved for works of artistic architecture, which are distinguished from mere buildings. nikolaus pevsner, e.g., opens his outline of european architecture (harmondsworth: penguin, [1948] 1957, 23), with the famous remark: “a bicycle shed is a building; lincoln cathedral is a piece of architecture.” 3. what i mean by ethical, aesthetic and architectural values is further explained at the end of section 1. 4. technically, the difference between moderate moralism and contextualism is as follows. moderate moralism takes the value relations to be invariant and symmetric; according to contextualism, they are complex and invertible. 5. see, e.g., noël carroll, “moderate moralism”, british journal of aesthetics 36 (1996): 223-238; berys gaut, art, emotion and ethics (oxford: oxford university press, 2007), ch. 3; alessandro giovannelli, “the ethical criticism of art: a new mapping of the territory,” philosophia 35 (2007): 117-127. giovannelli’s taxonomy has been adapted to architecture by andrea sauchelli, “functional beauty, architecture, and morality: a beautiful konzentrationslager?” the philosophical quarterly 62 (2012): 128-147. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 194 ba um be r ge r 6. it could be argued that we should not be concerned with utility when evaluating a work of architecture as such because a building’s usefulness is disturbingly malleable over time while other features such as its beauty may endure. (thanks to tom spector for raising this objection.) however, i do not think that the variability of a feature is a good reason not to consider that feature in an evaluation of an architectural work. furthermore, in evaluating a work, we should distinguish between its intended and its actual function. an architectural work may have fulfilled its intended function, even though it is no longer in use (as in case of ancient temples), or it may function well, even though it did not fit the originally intended function (as in the case of zaha hadid’s vitra fire station). 7. cf. sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 138. 8. see christian illies and nicholas ray, “philosophy of architecture,” in philosophy of technology and engineering sciences, vol. 9, ed. anthonie meijers (amsterdam: elsevier, 2009), 1199-1256; warwick fox, “architecture ethics,” in a companion to the philosophy of technology, ed. jan kyrre berg olsen, stig andur pedersen and vincent f. hendricks (chichester: wileyblackwell, 2009), 387-391. 9. under which conditions can we say that the architectural work itself is morally flawed in such cases? james harold has suggested a counterfactual test for narrative artworks that can be adapted to architecture: the violation of moral rights during the planning and construction phase of an architectural work influences its moral evaluation if the same work could not have been realized without violating moral rights. see james harold, “on judging the moral value of narrative artworks,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 64 (2006): 259-270. 10. nigel taylor, “ethical arguments about the aesthetics of architecture,” in ethics and the built environment, ed. warwick fox (london: routledge, 2000): 163-206, here 201-205. 11. see, e.g., gaut, art, 6-9. 12. see sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 138-139. 13. for the distinction between responsibility and accountability see luciano floridi and j.w. sanders, “on the morality of artificial agents,” minds and machine 14 (2004): 349-379. 14. see, e.g., simona storchi, “’il fascismo è una casa di vetro’: giuseppe terragni and the politics of space in fascist italy,” italian studies 62 (2007): 231-245. 15. cf. gaut, art, 64-65. 16. see sauchelli, “functional beauty.” in contrast to sauchelli, i assume 195 isparchitecture.com that simply looking, without being, fit for function is not an aesthetic merit. a more elaborated treatment of functional beauty should distinguish between intended and actual functions (see endnote 6). for slightly different conceptions of functional beauty than sauchelli’s, see glenn parsons and allen carlson, functional beauty (oxford: oxford university press, 2008), and larry shiner, “on aesthetics and function in architecture: the case of the ‘spectacle’ art museum,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69 (2011): 31-41. 17. cf. gaut, art, 83. 18. the notions of form, function and structure are widely debated and defined in very different ways within architecture theory; for a good overview, see adrian forty, words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture (london: thames & hudson 2000). an in depth study of the varieties in how and what buildings ‘mean’ is provided in christoph baumberger, gebaute zeichen. eine symboltheorie der architektur (frankfurt a/m: ontos 2010). 19. cf. gaut, art, 81-82. 20. see george dickie, “the myth of the aesthetic attitude,” american philosophical quarterly, 1 (1964), 56-65. for an overview of the debate provoked by dickie’s article see james shelley, “the concept of the aesthetic,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (fall 2013 edition), edward n. zalta (ed.), http:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/ aesthetic-concept/. 21. jerome stolnitz, aesthetics and philosophy of art criticism: a critical introduction (boston, mass.: houghton mifflin, 1960), 35. 22. parsons and carlson, functional beauty, 25. 23. positions committed to this claim are sometimes labeled “immoralism.” see matthew kieran, “forbidden knowledge: the challenge of immoralism,” in art and morality, ed. josé luis bermúdez and sebastian gardner (london: ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 196 ba um be r ge r routledge, 2003), 56-73. 24. sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 143-144. he admits that in some cases (such as nazi extermination camps) immoral functions are perceived as so hideous that we are unable to aesthetically appreciate these buildings as functionally beautiful in virtue of their immoral functions. 25. sauchelli, “functional beauty,” 146. 26. cf. gaut, art, 59-60. 27. a pro tanto aesthetic principle specifies the contribution an aesthetically relevant feature makes to the aesthetic value of a work, but it does not determine whether the work is aesthetically good, all things considered. in this way, the moderate moralist’s pro tanto principle that ethical flaws of an architectural work diminish its aesthetic value leaves open the possibility that an ethically flawed work is aesthetically good overall. this will be the case if the work has aesthetic merits which outweigh the aesthetic flaws of the work constituted by its ethical flaws (see the last paragraph of section 1). 28. cf. gaut, art, 57-66. 29. while one could find historical examples, the matter is rarely discussed in the contemporary literature. an exception is robert stecker, “the interaction of ethical and aesthetic value,” british journal of aesthetics 45 (2005): 138-150. 30. cf. ibo van de poel, “can we design for well-being?” in the good life in a technological age, ed. philip brey, adam briggle and edward spence (new york: routledge, 2012), 295-306. for the distinction between “desire-satisfaction” and “objective list” accounts of well-being see also philip brey, “well-being in philosophy, psychology, and economics,” in the same volume, 15-34. 31. john finnis, natural law and natural rights (oxford: clarendon press, 1980), 60. 32. derek parfit, reasons and persons (new york: oxford university press, 1984), 499. 33. cf. robert gifford, donald w. hine, werner muller-clemm, d’arcy j. reynolds jr, kelly t. shaw, “decoding modern architecture: a lens model approach for understanding the aesthetic differences of architects and laypersons,” environment and behavior 32 (2000): 163-187. 34. see sabine roeser, “aesthetics as a risk factor in designing architecture,” in ethics, design and planning of the built environment, ed. claudia basta and stefano moroni (dordrecht: springer, 2013), 93-105. 197 isparchitecture.com 35. i thank stefan koller, tom spector, and an anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments and suggestions. aristotle, autonomy, and design: ancient wisdom and the modern home mark jensen in the discipline of architecture, we can distinguish at least three different questions related to autonomy. first, we can ask about the autonomy of the concepts and judgments made by architects and philosophers of architecture. does architecture possess conceptual frameworks and principles of judgment that are logically independent of other disciplines, such as ethics, aesthetics, engineering, and politics? second, we can ask about the autonomy of the architect herself in her practice. are her designs constrained by persons and factors outside of her control? finally, we can ask about the autonomy of citizens who live in spaces designed by architects. what possibilities or constraints are actualized by the design of a space for those who dwell in it? hidden among these questions are two different conceptions of autonomy. the conception presupposed by the first question is concerned with the independence of architecture as an area of theoretical investigation. a discipline is autonomous when it can be carried out independently of other disciplines. a discipline that lacks autonomy is one that depends on other theoretical domains for its investigation. the conception presupposed by the second and third questions, however, is concerned with the autonomy or freedom of the people involved, both architects and those who occupy their dwellings.2 here, an architect is autonomous or free to the extent that her designs are within her control; an occupant is autonomous or free to the extent that she faces no external constraints the conception presupposed by the second and third questions, however, is concerned with the autonomy or freedom of the people involved, both architects and those who occupy their dwellings. “ ” 1 ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 199 je n se n in attempting to live according to her own rational plan.3 the problem for architects and occupants who lack autonomy is not dependence on something else but rather a restriction on their freedom to access their respective goods. my aim in this paper is to explore this second conception. is it possible that we as designers and occupants – are not realizing all of the goods that could be available to us? do current practices in residential architecture restrict the freedom of designers and occupants? it is my view that we have good reasons to answer these questions in the affirmative. in order to vindicate my judgment, i will develop a critical approach grounded in the anthropological, social, political, and architectural analysis of aristotle. central themes in aristotle’s thought, especially his accounts of eudaimonia (happiness), arêtê (virtue), and phronêsis (practical wisdom), have been rehabilitated by contemporary moral philosophers and find support among contemporary moral psychologists.4 insofar as aristotle’s thought in these areas retains theoretical and practical significance, it seems possible that other aspects of his thought, especially his accounts of the oikos (house) and the polis (city-state), are worthy of renewed attention as well.5 to be clear, my primary aim in this paper is not interpretive: while the reader will gain some insight into aristotle’s views on the topics in question, my aim instead is to develop a critical approach to architectural practice that draws upon some of the compelling aspects of aristotle’s thought. aristotle’s recent rehabilitation among moral philosophers was motivated by worries about the reigning enlightenment orthodoxy.6 similarly, the best way to appreciate the appeal of an account of freedom in architectural practice based on aristotle will be to begin by drawing a contrast with the enlightenment. this discussion occupies part 1 of the paper. in part 2, i develop my critical standpoint. finally, in part 3, i point out ways in which our contemporary architectural and urban planning practices inhibit the realization of important goods and sketch some avenues for improving the current state of affairs in accord with my approach. i also return to the distinction between the two different conceptions of autonomy that i laid out at the very beginning, arguing that my exploration of the second question has implications for how we think about the first. 1. autonomy and the enlightenment tradition in the western enlightenment tradition, autonomy is self-governance. the autonomous person is ruled by her reason; she is not controlled by the internal influences of passion and appetite or the external influences 200 isparchitecture.com of custom and culture.7 understood in this way, autonomy lies at the heart of the liberal tradition of western individualism. it is the only legitimate basis for political authority.8 it is the proper achievement of mature people in mature societies.9 with their correlative respect for the autonomy of others, mature autonomous citizens are reasonable, democratic, tolerant, and just.10 despite its many virtues, the enlightenment account of autonomy strikes many of us as too thin. in the first place, there is little explanation for how it is that we as individuals and groups achieve autonomy. apart from notable outliers such as locke’s discussion in some thoughts concerning education, rousseau’s meditations in emile, and mill’s personal reflections in his autobiography, little attention is paid to the specific task of cultivating autonomous people. in the philosophical tradition, mature, autonomous citizens are typically taken as given. the problem here is of course that real people are not like this. we were children once; we are adults now; and we will be senior citizens later. human life is a succession of stages with different challenges, standards, and requirements for selfgovernance at each stage. an account of autonomy that leaves out this dimension is not adequate. in the second place, the account of autonomy, especially in its kantian and neo-kantian versions, is tied to an account of self-governance that appears to be too abstract. for kant, the autonomous person is the person who makes moral judgments on the basis of a universalization procedure.11 it seems to me, however, that moral judgments cannot be made on the basis of a universalization procedure alone. moral judgment also requires a pre-deliberative canon of norms including ideals, functional descriptions, principles, practices, and habits. to be sure: i’m not defending a particular account of the pre-deliberative canon. my point is merely that the contents of a good life marked do current practices in residential architecture restrict the freedom of designers and occupants? “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 201 je n se n by excellent moral judgment cannot be determined on the basis of an impartial rational procedure alone. the implication of these concerns, it seems to me, is that we need a more robust account of autonomy. this not to reject the enlightenment tradition altogether: several aspects of the tradition seem to be correct. for example, autonomy of the sort that matters to us is a condition that human beings achieve when things are going right for us – it is a mark of human flourishing. it is something we achieve in varying degrees. in this way, autonomy is not a necessary or basic characteristic of the human condition; it is instead something that we must figure out how to get for others and ourselves. 2. autonomy and aristotle aristotle begins with a very different understanding of human flourishing and a correspondingly different account of self-governance. in developing my approach, i will focus on three specific aspects of his analysis: (i) his account of the fundamental unit of human life, (ii) his account of the good life in community, and (iii) the way he employs the “doctrine of the mean” in the context of architecture. these three elements will give us tools sufficient to sketch an account of freedom sufficient to sustain a critique of contemporary architecture – especially contemporary home design and construction. 2.1 the fundamental unit of human life the concept of the “fundamental unit of human life,” is the concept of the proper starting point for an investigation into the human species from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. finding this fundamental unit requires some care: we can err too small by focusing on a component and err too big by focusing on an aggregate. aristotle regards the household as the fundamental unit of human life and identifies its elements with a quote from hesiod. the household includes: “a house, a wife, and an ox for the plow.”12 abstracting a bit, let’s call these elements (i) one’s residence, (ii) one’s intimate relationships, and (iii) one’s tools for one’s work.13 we should notice immediately the contrast between aristotle’s starting point and that of the enlightenment. aristotle does not begin with the abstract rational individual. he begins instead with a person in context. from aristotle’s perspective, the enlightenment approach that begins with the bare individual is bound to fail in the same way that the biologist 202 isparchitecture.com is bound to fail who attempts to make sense of ants by starting the investigation with a single ant confined to a specimen jar. the component part is mistaken for the whole unit. aristotle’s more inclusive starting point lays the groundwork for our account of human freedom. the extent of one’s freedom will depend on the degree to which one achieves success appropriate to one’s residence, relationships, and work. for example, as physical beings, we require shelter from the elements in the world that threaten our bodies. as developmental beings, we require relationships with more mature people to help us grow. and as dependent and aspirational beings, we need avenues through which we can work to meet our unmet needs. together, it seems right to say that the degree to which we are free depends in part on the degree to which we have found success in building a dwelling, establishing a social network, and finding meaningful work.14 contrapositively, to the extent that these three tasks are challenges for us, our freedom is constrained and our lives are characterized by a kind of servitude. in other words, the idea of self-governance for aristotle is one that presupposes natural dependence on others and modifications to the environment. this insight is not especially profound; we might regard it as a philosophical adaptation of maslow’s hierarchy of needs.15 however, it seems to me that the relationship between these three elements of basic human life and human freedom is more complex. it is also the case that freedom, at least to some degree, is necessary in order to achieve a degree of success in these three elements. in other words, these elements, together with freedom, are symbiotically related. for example, in order to secure a residence that will enable my family to flourish, i require successful work. and in order to secure successful work, i require a secure residence in which or from which to do it. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 203 je n se n and both of these observations presuppose that i can make choices with respect to my residence and my work that are free from the constraints that would keep me from making reasoned choices that reflect my own moral, philosophical, or religious account of the good life in the context of my community. we can conclude then that the aristotelian account of freedom begins holistically and in situ. to be a human being is to be located in a place, intimately connected to others, and involved in work. autonomy in the more robust sense that i am developing here both requires and enables success with respect to these basic elements of human life. one is free to the extent that one can pursue one’s account of the good life. 2.2 the good in community while aristotle regards the household as the fundamental unit of human life, he does not regard it as the complete focus of an investigation into human affairs. by itself, a household is not self-sufficient. on his view, households are naturally organized into villages and a group of villages together constitutes a city (polis).16 only when we build a city do we achieve a self-sufficient human community, and, in turn, the proper focus for a comprehensive investigation.17 in other words, to understand and then evaluate human affairs we cannot but make reference to the city. villages, households, and citizens are all constituents of a city in their own fashion; their activities cannot be understood without reference to the city as a whole. now to say that a city is constituted by its citizens is not to say that a city is simply composed of citizens. if that were so, the good of the city could be measured purely in terms of the individual success and failures of its citizens. instead, the good for the city is a common good. it is achieved when each of the citizens in the city performs his or her specific function well. consider aristotle’s claim about the chief good at the beginning of the nicomachean ethics: and since it [political science] uses the other sciences concerned with action, and moreover legislates what must be done and what avoided, its end will include the ends of the other sciences, and so this will be the human good. for even if the good is the same for a city as for an individual, still the good of the city is apparently a greater and more complete good to acquire and preserve.18 as aristotle will explain in more detail, the function of the citizen is given not only in terms of her function in the context of the fundamental unit. citizens’ also have functions attached to their roles in the village, 204 isparchitecture.com and in turn, their roles in the city.19 in aristotle’s ideal constitution, the government assigns these roles according to citizens’ stages and capabilities. it seems to me that we need not follow him in assigning these roles involuntarily, but we must follow him in recognizing that the obligations associated with excellent citizenship extend beyond one’s obligations in the household. we must take care in describing the relationship between the household and the city in much the same way that we took care in describing the relationship between the constituent elements of the household and the freedom of the individual. the flourishing city is certainly one in which all of the households are flourishing as well. but it does not follow that a city of flourishing households is sufficient to realize a flourishing city. in other words, the success of individual households in achieving their private goods does not guarantee the achievement of all of the common and public goods associated with a flourishing city. insofar as citizens identify with the good not only of their household but also of their city, citizens’ pursuits will include a range of private, public, and common goods. as always, the starting point for these pursuits will be citizens’ dwellings, relationships, and work. as a result, our final account of these elements must be further tailored to suit the further goods that these elements both require and enable. importantly, free citizens are not defined in terms of the absence of government interference.20 instead, free citizens are those who are enabled by the city to accomplish their good and who, at the same time, enable the city to achieve its common and public goods. 2.3 the golden mean the “golden mean” is a central theme in aristotle’s moral and political thought. in many activities and pursuits, we achieve excellence when we find the mean between extremes of excess and the aristotelian account of freedom begins holistically and in situ. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 205 je n se n deficiency. courage, for example, is the moral virtue concerned with our feelings of confidence in the face of a threat.21 courage is found in the mean between excessive feelings of confidence (the vice of foolhardiness) and a deficiency of feelings of confidence (the vice of cowardice). aristotle doesn’t say much about architecture. but the few comments he does offer on the subject reflect a more generalized application of the doctrine of the mean. first, with respect to the organizational plan for houses in a city, aristotle says: where private dwellings are concerned, the modern hippodamean scheme of laying them out in straight rows is considered pleasanter and more useful for general purposes. but when it comes to security in wartime, the opposite plan, which prevailed in ancient times, is thought to be better. for it makes it difficult for foreign troops to enter and for attackers to find their way around. hence the best city-state should share features of both plans. this is possible if the houses are laid out like vine “clumps,” that is if certain parts and areas are laid out in straight rows, but not the city-state as a whole. in this way, both safety and beauty will be well served.22 notice here that aristotle is concerned with both form and function. for the purposes of aesthetics, he regards straight rows as superior. for better defense, irregular arrangements make it difficult for invaders to succeed. while this discussion departs from aristotle’s usual way of employing the doctrine of the mean, he is clearly following a middle path here between an extreme concern with aesthetics and an extreme concern with specific function. this moderate path will best achieve excellence in city planning. aristotle’s predilection for moderation can also be found in his reflections on residential design, at least by implication. in describing the design of the city, he says, “…it should be large enough to enable the inhabitants to live a life of leisure in a way that is generous and at the same time temperate.”23 aristotle’s overall aim is to describe a happy city where the citizens live flourishing lives together. flourishing citizens, in turn, are citizens who live excellently; living excellently, in turn, is a matter of performing activities virtuously. it would be consistent with aristotle’s argumentative approach, i think, to extend this remark to residential design. residences should be big enough to enable citizens to be leisured (that is, free to pursue the liberal arts and the social virtues) but not so big as to encourage vices of excess such as ostentatiousness and wastefulness. in other words, happiness will not be found in a life preoccupied with maintaining one’s estate. such a life would be similar to the hypochondriac or the germaphobe: people who’ve made an end out of something that should rightfully be regarded merely as a means to an end. residences for 206 isparchitecture.com aristotle are the tools of their occupants, not the purposes of life for the occupants. the homeowner who does nothing with his life but work on his home misses out on the complete human good and contributes little to the common good. interestingly, just as residences are not the ultimate ends of their occupants, nor are residences the ultimate ends of their designers. residences are designed and built in order to enable their occupants to pursue the good, including the individual, common, and public good. in this way, an architect is a good architect if she designs and builds residences that accomplish these aims. she contributes to the common good of the city. she is free qua architect insofar as she identifies with the common good of the city, this good informs her practice, and she is not encumbered by external constraints on her practice. finally, it’s not just the size of the residence that has an effect on the extent of our freedom. the design of the residence can also have an effect. aside from the studies that show that our environment can affect our mood and productivity, we know from our own experience that the nature and quality of our surroundings can profoundly affect the vitality of the talking, living, and working that we do in them. together with an excellent architect and builder, we believe that we could construct for our household a space that could maximize the capabilities of our household and thereby greatly increase the degree of freedom with which we could achieve an excellent (and thereby happy) life in community with others. 2.4 a model of autonomy in architectural practice let us now synthesize the themes that we’ve developed above. first, consider the residence. at bottom, residences are tools: they are spaces designed to enable us to flourish in the context of our relationships, our work, and our leisure. the good residence is one in which our freedom the homeowner who does nothing with his life but work on his home misses out on the complete human good and contributes little to the common good. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 207 je n se n is enhanced. at the same time, the design of the residence must reflect the circumstances of our household and its responsibilities with respect to the city more broadly. a good residence increases the freedom of its occupants to pursue the good life in community. but like all of our tools, we prefer those that do more than answer to our functional needs – we prefer those that answer to our functional needs in a way that we find aesthetically pleasing. next, consider the architect. we do not assume that every citizen will be a master of design and construction. in the excellent city there will be division of labor. some citizens will be excellent at design and construction; the flourishing life is one in which they are free in the city to design and construct residences (etc.) that enable households and the city to flourish. given what we’ve said above, the design and construction process must be a rational partnership. the architect brings expertise and experience to bear while the occupants bring aesthetic preferences and an account of the particular goods and pursuits attached to their household. the ultimate aim of the partnership is to produce a dwelling that conforms to the description above. finally, we must qualify this account by noting that, as human beings, there is no one perfect designed space in which we will be enabled to flourish for our entire life. at different stages in our life, we will have different functional requirements, together (perhaps) with developing aesthetic judgments. so either our residences must be flexible or our city must offer a range of choices. both of these options involve the risk of limitations to our freedom. 3. contemporary architecture 3.1 a critique of current practice how does this ideal match up with our current realities? we should note first that this entire vision is available to the wealthiest members of contemporary society. architects and builders exist who could, in partnership with homeowners, design and build dwellings that reflect and enable freedom in this sense. i frame this first claim counterfactually, however, because in most cases those homeowners who can afford to realize this model fail to achieve it. they build without regard to the common and public good of the community, seeking instead to isolate themselves in enclaves with other wealthy people. they also build large, wasteful, ostentatious homes that enable vice and inhibit virtue. at the same time, the socioeconomic realities of contemporary markets act as disincentives to architects and builders to partner with middle and lower 208 isparchitecture.com classes in pursuit of freedom in the sense i describe above. outside of the wealthy, most of us select from and live in residences that neither are the product of genuinely autonomous architecture nor enable freedom for occupants. in the first place, many of us cannot make significant alterations to our dwellings because we do not own them. even in the united states, the ownership rate is below sixty-five percent.24 in the second place, even when we have some choice among possible houses or apartments, our options are nearly all one form or another of mass housing. mass housing is, by definition, designed without contact and therefore without input from those who will occupy it. to be sure: designers of mass housing are constrained by the market – the market requires that they produce units that people will select among a range of choices. but since the architects of mass housing must cater to a wide range of people, they must produce designs that are suited broadly. this problem could be overcome if our building methods for mass housing permitted greater flexibility for configuration and reconfiguration. unfortunately, our contemporary designs and building methods permit very little change on a macro level. occupants can add furnishings, detailing, and color to a unit but they have little opportunity to create or adapt their main spaces to better match the distinctive aesthetic and functional characteristics of their particular household. macro level aesthetic and functional characteristics – the ways in which the beauty of the unit as a whole might be tailored to match the household – are inaccessible without great cost. the autonomy of occupants is significantly constrained. it is no better for the architects and builders of mass housing than it is for the occupants. in addition to having no direct connection to the eventual occupants of the dwellings they design and a good residence increases the freedom of its occupants to pursue the good life in community. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 209 je n se n construct, they are rarely permitted to add furnishings, ornamentation, color, and other details to their products. in other words, they are not really permitted to finish designing and building a residence. market forces require them to build residences that are incomplete from a design standpoint. note that the problem here is not merely that of not seeing a design plan through to its full realization. it is instead the problem that the architect is not permitted to fully design a residence. since she does not know the occupant, even a fully designed but not fully built structure would fail to satisfy the needs of a mass housing market that requires broad appeal. in this way, the architect too is constrained in her freedom with respect to the full use of her expertise in service of the good of the community and its citizens. 3.2 elements of a solution it is possible that the problems i suggest above all reduce to problems of economic class. even in a flourishing capitalist economy with redistributive policies that create a broad and flourishing middle class, it might be that the kind of freedom and flexibility that i defend is available only to the wealthiest members of society. a more optimistic attitude would hold that with creative thinking, sound government policy, and motivated entrepreneurship we could make progress. supposing that my model provides an attractive starting point for rethinking contemporary practice, it seems clear that at least the following three improvements would need to be made. first, we need to increase the flexibility of the residences that we design. given that households and their needs are constantly evolving over time, we must design and build residences that can be more easily configured and reconfigured to fit the conditions necessary for a flourishing household. to be sure: some changes in the nature of a household will require changing residences. but changing residences is highly disruptive to the household and ought to be minimized for the sake of their pursuit of the good. second, we need to find ways to enable households to make use of the full spectrum of talent that architects and builders have to offer. achieving a complete design offers benefits for both the architect whose full talents are utilized and the occupants whose dwelling will be better suited to achieving their goods. finally, we must find a way to reduce the costs associated with flexibility and complete design in order to expand the possibilities for a wider segment of the population. insofar as greater numbers of architects and occupants can better achieve their goods, the common good for the community is better achieved. 210 isparchitecture.com 3.3 two conceptions of autonomy revisited at the outset, i noted that the autonomy of architecture as a theoretical discipline is different from the autonomy of the architect and the occupant. the latter two forms of autonomy concern the realization of specific goods while the former concerns disciplinary independence. the critical perspective that i develop here implies that architecture qua theoretical or academic discipline cannot be independent. architecture serves the good of the city and thus stands subordinate to politics, broadly construed. of course, this follows only in the context of the aristotle-inspired ideal. if cities and other forms of community have no common good or telos, then architecture could be independent as a discipline. in a world of this sort, there is no such thing as a building out-ofplace since there would be no organizing principle from which to render the judgment in question. but insofar as we still find ourselves making judgments of this sort, we still find the aristotelian perspective or something like it attractive. acknowledgement the views expressed in this presentation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the u.s. air force, the u.s. department of defense, or the u.s. government. endnotes 1. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2nd international conference of the international society for philosophy of architecture: autonomy revisited, on july 11, 2014. 2. a discussion of the concepts of autonomy and freedom naturally invites the distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty. (for the in a world of this sort, there is no such thing as building outof-place since there would be no organizing principle from which to render the judgement in question. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 211 je n se n canonical paper, see isaiah berlin, “two concepts of liberty,” in four essays on liberty, oxford: oxford university press, 1969.) insofar as my account has roots in aristotle, it is best seen as part of the positive liberty tradition. however, it seems to me that the account i develop here can avoid the slippery slope to dogmatism and tyranny that was the chief concern of berlin. 3. for a contemporary discussion of the idea of a rational plan, see john rawls, a theory of justice, revised edition (cambridge: mass.: the belknap press of harvard university press, 1999), pp. 358-365. 4. see for example alasdair macintyre, after virtue, 3rd edition (notre dame: indiana, university of notre dame press, 2007), rosalind hursthouse, on virtue ethics (new york: oxford university press, 2002), and daniel russell, practical intelligence and the virtues (oxford: clarendon press, 2009). for virtue theory and moral psychology, see nancy snow, virtue as social intelligence: an empirically grounded theory (new york: routledge, 2010) and christian miller, character and moral psychology (new york: oxford university press, 2014). 5. some work has already been done to re-appropriate aristotle for politics. see aristide tessitore, ed., aristotle and modern politics: the persistence of political philosophy (notre dame, indiana: university of notre dame press, 2002). 6. see for example macintyre, after virtue, pp. 51-61. 7. see immanuel kant, groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, edited by lara denis (orchard park, ny: broadview press, 2005), pp. 98-102. 8. see john locke, “second treatise of government,” in two treatises of government, student edition, edited by peter laslett (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1988), §99 (p. 333). 9. see immanuel kant, “answer to the question: what is enlightenment [1784],” translated by thomas k. abbott, in basic writings of kant, edited with an introduction by allen w. wood (new york: the modern library, 2001), pp. 133-141. 10. john rawls paints a thorough picture here. see rawls, “the idea of public reason revisited,” in john rawls, collected papers, edited by samuel freeman (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1999), pp. 573-615. 11. kant, groundwork, p. 81. 12. aristotle, politics, 1252b10. 13. notice that i have framed my discussion of our dwellings, relationships, and work as abstract types, rather than specific tokens. in aristotle’s politics, 212 isparchitecture.com the specific tokens include a patriarchal marriage, and slaves (human tools) if you have the money for them. we can accept the view that our thinking about human anthropology begins with dwellings, relationships, and work without being required to accept his specific account of the household. 14. recently, andrew ballantyne has argued that architecture must be concerned with the habits of the occupants in their everyday lives. (see andrew ballantyne, “architecture, life, and habit,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69(1) 2011: 43-49.) on this point, ballantyne and aristotle are in agreement. however, aristotle and contemporary neo-aristotelians might worry that ballantyne’s appeal to pragmatism will not provide him with the normative justification that he needs for “an appreciation of the fitness of the match between place and the ethos…” (p. 48). they might suggest that a neo-aristotelian approach would provide what he needs. 15. abraham maslow, “a theory of human motivation,” psychological review, 50(4): 370–396. 16. there is an excellent monograph on this relationship. see d. brendan nagel, the household as the foundation of aristotle’s polis (new york: cambridge university press, 2006). 17. aristotle, politics, 1252b27. 18. aristotle, nicomachean ethics, second edition (kindle edition), translated and annotated by terence irwin (indianapolis: hackett publishing company), p. 2. 19. aristotle, politics, 1329a2ff. 20. cf. berlin, “two concepts…” as i noted above (note 2), i am defending a version of positive liberty. 21. cf. aristotle, nicomachean ethics, 1115a7ff. 22. aristotle, politics, 1330b25. 23. ibid, 1326b30. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 213 je n se n 24. robert r. callis and melissa kresin, “residential vacancies and homeownership in the second quarter 2014,” u.s. census bureau news, http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf. accessed august 1, 2014. the image in power: vilém flusser and the craft of architecture felipe guimarães de souza fernandes loureiro the use of 3d renderings – computergenerated images which can look very realistic, some of them being easily mistaken for photographs – is widespread in both architectural practice and education. at first glance, these images seem to be incredibly useful for the communication between architects, clients and the general public, since they appear to offer a very clear and detailed vision of the final ‘product.’ however, my experience as a practising architect led me to believe that this apparent accuracy is misleading, and that it can actually be counter-effective. the realism of these images forces architects to be highly precise about aspects that were only supposed to come up at later stages, and they can also trick clients into approving a “beautiful picture” instead of a clearly expressed architectural idea. in addition to these concerns, the indiscriminate use of these images seems to reinforce the idea that a building – or space, in broader terms – is mainly something to be experienced visually, and that a good building or space is one in which our eyes are constantly looking at ‘good pictures.’ this picturesque understanding of architecture not only neglects the haptic experience of space, flattening volumes into surfaces and space into perspectives, but it also reduces the work of the architect to the composition of pictures. as an architect, i cannot feel at ease with this reduction, and this unsettling led me to pursue a deeper understanding of the way we experience architectural images. in his 1985 book ins universum der technischen bilder,1 czech philosopher vilém flusser presents, this picturesque understanding of architecture… reduces the work of the architect to the composition of pictures. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 215 lo ur ei r o “a model of cultural history” consisting of five rungs that symbolize different moments, each one being defined by a specific medium which prevailed in, “the task of transmitting information crucial to society and to individuals.”2 at first, we could only express ourselves and transmit any kind of knowledge through our actions. then, through the creation of objects, we could perpetuate these actions, leaving their imprints in artifacts which could still speak for us when we were no longer present. these objects have thus created culture, and were the first medium for transmitting and perpetuating it. later on, images which depicted or symbolized objects and actions became even more relevant than the objects themselves. these images, such as cave paintings, are what flusser calls traditional images. they were eventually supplanted, around 4000 years ago, by linear texts, which explained images, creating what he calls the “historical level.” much more recently, texts have collapsed, “into particles that must be gathered up. this is the level of calculation and computation, the level of technical images,” or images created by apparatuses such as cameras, computers and tv sets.3 this model gives us an image of a linear process in which man is constantly stepping back from the direct experience of the world, going deeper and deeper into abstraction. however, though new rungs are added, the previous ones are not lost or forgotten – they are simply different worlds, created and shaped by different media. figure 1 is an attempt to sum-up and illustrate flusser’s model. figure 1: flusser rungs. 216 isparchitecture.com flusser calls the fifth rung, shaped by the prevailing of technical images, “a new, dimensionless level, one to be called, for lack of a more positive designation, ‘posthistory.”4 the term “posthistory” rises from the notion that history was created by writing, whose linear logic shaped the dominant ontology of an era, and that the prevalence of technical images – which are non-linear, but rather two-dimensional – marks the end of history. today, the logics of linear writing no longer apply to the way we experience culture, and this experience influences the way in which we perceive reality as a whole. regarding the production of images, for instance, technical images are made by envisioners, whereas traditional images were created by image makers. the gesture of the envisioner is directed from a particle toward a surface that can never be achieved, whereas that of the traditional image maker is directed from the world of objects toward an actual surface. the first gesture attempts to make concrete (to turn from extreme abstraction back into the imaginable); the second abstracts (retreats from the concrete). the first gesture starts with a calculation; the second starts with a solid object.5 photographers, for instance, work through an apparatus – a camera – and they, “can only desire what the apparatus can do. any image produced by a photographer must be within the program of the apparatus.”6 the apparatus is itself a kind of medium through which the envisioner works and thinks, since, “not only the gesture but also the intention of the photographer is a function of the apparatus. […] a human intention works against the autonomy of the apparatus from the inside, from the automatic function itself.”7 photography provides us with a great example of how we work through and with apparatuses in order to create technical images, but it also gives way for a confusion regarding the essence of these this model gives us an image of a linear process in which man is constantly stepping back for the direct experience of the world “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 217 lo ur ei r o images. photographs can be seen as snapshots of reality, which arise, “through the capturing and holding of approaching particles or waves from the environment,” but these depictions are essentially different from those made through traditional images.8 this can be easily understood if we consider their essential similarity with computer-generated images: the photographer visualizes a house as houses seems to be in the outside, objective world. then he takes an apparatus in hand to “grasp” (with concepts such as “perspective” or “shutter speed”) what he has visualized. the apparatus calculates these concepts automatically, and the photographer presses a button to release the machine to carry out these calculations, making the vision of the house into an image. the computer operator visualizes an airplane as one might be found in the outside world. then he takes an apparatus in hand […] to “grasp” what he has visualized […]. the apparatus calculates these concepts automatically, and the computer operator presses on the keyboard to make the apparatus carry out these calculations, making a visualization of an airplane appear on the screen. the same power to envision is at work in both cases, that of the photographer and of the computer operator, only it is more evident with the computer operator, who is more conscious than the photographer of this power.9 at first, these two kinds of images seem to be very different: the photograph of the house can be seen as a depiction, while the airplane drawing could be understood as a model. however, they are both models. in the example above, flusser is talking about an activity which was created by an apparatus – there were no photographers before there were cameras – and another which already existed, but that was re-created by the use of an apparatus. architects and designers have always worked with handmade drawings, and now most of them use computers for drawing. we can say that the handmade drawings were traditional images, and that they were depictions of what the designer or architect had in mind – they were depictions of visions, and these image makers knew how to build these images. on the other hand, anyone can take a picture without understanding how a camera works, and how photographs are built. the camera is what flusser calls a black box – a mysterious apparatus that blindly, “transforms the effects of photons on molecules of silver nitrate into photographs.”10 it is opaque, impenetrable. referring to his own work process, flusser describes the functioning of his typewriter, which can be clearly understood and seen as an extension of his fingers: “i can watch as each pressed key sets a hammer in motion that strikes the intended letter onto the page and how the carriage moves to make way for the next letter.”11 the typewriter is transparent, and flusser seems to believe that this transparency makes it adequate for the craft 218 isparchitecture.com of writing: “when i write, i write past the machine toward the text.”12 this happens because the typewriter is not a medium, but only a tool. the medium is linear text, which can be handwritten, typed, carved in stone, etc. the act of typing was obviously created by the typewriter, but apparently writers learned to use it as instinctively as their predecessors used their hands and tools. writers have not become ‘typists.’ on the other hand, an opaque apparatus does something, which we do not understand, in a way that is invisible to us. its working has no connection or resemblance to human actions, only its interface can be recognizable. analyzing the development of human-computer interfaces, bill verplank argues: piaget described three stages of learning. we are born with enactive or kinesthetic knowledge; we know how to grasp and suck. at a certain age we pay more attention to how things look; our iconic thinking is mistaken for example by a tall glass as “more.” only at a certain age do we understand conservation; then we are ready for symbolic thinking. […] the development of human-computer interfaces has followed the opposite path. the first interactive computers used teletypes (tty) and the style of interaction was a dialog of symbols; i type and the computer types back at me. […] with the invention of mouse and bit-map display, the iconic graphical “direct manipulation” interface became the dominant style. this progression suggests that the next stage is enactive interfaces.13 it is interesting to see that flusser’s model for cultural history is quite similar to piaget’s model for human development, and how human-computer interfaces apparently developed in the opposite way, becoming increasingly intuitive. with touchscreens and gesture recognition, this interaction seems much closer to the way we interact with concrete objects, but the process has become even more opaque, since we do not even have to know how the camera is what flusser calls a black box […]. it is opaque, impenetrable. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 219 lo ur ei r o to operate the apparatuses – they can read us, understand our gestures, decode and compute them. the apparatus offers a field of possibilities, through which we can browse by repeating recognizable gestures – thus, to a certain extent, it is the apparatus which operates us. it can capture and translate our apparently instinctive gestures, but we have to ‘speak’ its language. the ‘direct manipulation’ interface is still dominant, and the opaqueness of the apparatuses is transferred to the images they generate. flusser states that technical images can never be true nor false – they can only be regarded as probable or improbable. this notion becomes quite clear if we consider how easy it is to manipulate technical images. with photoshop and other similar software, photographs can be edited in a radical but imperceptible way. we can only tell that a photograph was edited when the editing goes too far, making it look improbable. this reveals how the “reality” of technical images is misleading, which led flusser to state that “the basis for the emerging universe and emerging consciousness is the calculation of probability. from now on, concepts such as ‘true’ and ‘false’ refer only to unattainable horizons, bringing a revolution not only in the field of epistemology but also in those of ontology, ethics, and aesthetics.”14 this revolution has surely affected architecture in many different ways. in his 1982 essay architecture as drawing, alberto pérez-gómez describes the development of architectural drawing throughout history, focusing on the renaissance notion that architectural drawings were images of an architectural idea, “implying ‘look’, ‘semblance’, and ‘form.” while the traditional builder, a primeval poet (from the greek poiesis, to make) made his thoughts into building through the implementation of an operational geometry (in the original sense of giving human dimension to external reality), the renaissance architect articulated the necessarily “abstract language” of walls, openings, and columns in architectural drawing, by means of plans (ichnographia), elevations (orthographia) and profiles or sections.15 these drawings were never understood as pictures of the future building – they represented an idea, “to be fulfilled in the building.” since most architects were deeply involved in the construction process, they were also responsible for turning this idea into reality. thus, architectural drawings formed, “an autonomous realm of expression,” somehow independent from architecture itself but always aiming for it. during the 18th century, the development of descriptive geometry allowed architects to elaborate geometrically precise drawings. architects could then distance themselves from the building site, drawing, “universal 220 isparchitecture.com projections that could […] be perceived as reductions of buildings, creating the illusion of drawing as a neutral tool that communicates unambiguous information, like scientific prose.”16 we can thus say that descriptive geometry is the “mother” of photography, since these drawings created the same illusion created by photographs – that of an impartial, direct depiction of reality. these “realistic” drawings have freed architects from the craft of building, turning them into “efficient designers.” thus, the craft of the architect changed from conceiving an architectural idea – that could be communicated through the abstract language of drawings – and getting it built, to conceiving and creating drawings that illustrated how parts of a building should be built. this is why, following the development of descriptive geometry, architects like boullée and ledoux created another meaning for architectural drawings: their drawings constituted a set of theoretical projects that they assumed to be true architecture, in opposition to their actual buildings. not surprisingly, both architects felt that architecture was deeply akin to painting. thus architecture became primarily the making of the drawing (or the model), the same poetic act that has always magically revealed the truth of reality.17 the emphasis on this relation between architecture and painting may signal an attempt to keep the craft of architecture close to traditional imagery, protecting it from the proto-technical images created through descriptive geometry. thus, at this point, we can say that there were two kinds of architectural drawings: instructional drawings made for the construction site and poetic drawings made for the expression of “true” architectural ideas. although the poetic drawings to which pérez-gómez refers illustrated utopian, sometimes “unrealistic” buildings, actual buildings were still conceived through similar images, that is, from images of architectural ideas. flusser states that technical images can never be true nor false – they can only be regarded as probable or improbable. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 221 lo ur ei r o if we compare them with those made by renaissance architects, the only difference would be that these images were now developed and divided into a set of instructional drawings which would guide the construction process. today, most architectural drawings are made through apparatuses, and even handmade drawings are inserted into a world dominated by technical images. figure 2 below combines the process described by pérez-gómez with the model presented by flusser. the visualization of this combination seems to highlight the fact that the current role of architectural images does not seem to be quite clear. in a 1990 lecture held in budapest, flusser states: the idea was that image should document politics. but, in the first half of the xx century, and more strongly after the second world war, this relationship began to change. all of the sudden, politics were made in order to get into an image. the purpose of politics was an image – the purpose of the arabs hijackers of airplanes was to be taken in television. politics is aimed at being taken in an image.18 to a certain extent, the same inversion happened to architectural images. figure 2: timeline of architectural drawing. 222 isparchitecture.com now, it is the picture that generates the building. photo-realistic 3d renderings “look” real, as if they were photographs taken in the future, after the building is complete. thus, these images are “models for photographs,” and not depictions of architectural ideas. while most architectural drawings aim to represent a building which will only exist in the future, these images try to represent photographs that can only be taken in the future. in a new york times article on the role of renderings in the real estate market, elizabeth a. harris states that “the real purpose of these drawings is not to predict the future. their real goal is to control it.”19 this idea of controlling the future by providing an apparently objective vision of it can be traced back to the 18th century architectural drawings, and has reached its peak with the apparent photorealism of computergenerated images – which look even more objective and ‘neutral.’ however, to a certain extent, these images only exist as instructions to be interpreted by apparatuses. they have the same logic of the instructional drawings which made possible the creation of industrial design – they are a set of instructions, the numerical description of a composition. this is the logic of programming, the internal logics of the apparatus which is, at the same time, tool, surface, and frame. becoming envisioners, architects have lost the connection to the craft of image-making. this affects the expression, representation and communication of architectural ideas, and also the construction of the ideas themselves. descriptive geometry created the theoretical background for the emergence of photography, and technical images as a whole, since its “neutral” depiction is something like an apparatus; it is a system that is already somehow “outside” of the architect’s mind, and through which he must work, keeping himself inside a limited field of possibilities. the same inversion happened to architectural images. now, it is the picture that generates the building. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 223 lo ur ei r o the role of the architect, like we usually see it now, is still the one forged in the 18th century. by working through and with descriptive geometry, architects are almost like industrial designers, the main difference being that construction has remained a much less automated process. industrial design, including not only the design of industrial products but of the machines themselves, was only possible after the creation of descriptive geometry – and, if we see it as a “mental apparatus,” we can say that this apparatus has created industrial designers, as much as the camera has created photographers. after all, how could one conceive a machine to manufacture a product without being able to predict and translate the shape of the product with extreme precision? the machine had to be programmed. following the process described by pérez-gómez, we can sketch a progression that starts with the traditional builder, the primeval poet who worked directly on the building itself, develops into the role of the builder/ artist/intellectual of the renaissance, who worked with abstract drawings while still being deeply involved with building, and moves forward to the efficient-designers of the enlightenment, who made instructional drawings in their studios, detached from the construction site. figure 3 demonstrates a growing separation between thinking and building, which was mediated by drawing. now, we give instructions to an apparatus that “draws” instructional images, which will then be interpreted by the builder. however, with 3d printing, another apparatus is responsible for the production of the figure 3: architecture’s increasing abstraction. 224 isparchitecture.com object itself. in this case, a software – which can be the same the designer uses for drawing – decodes and transmits instructions for the apparatus which is going to mold, cut, or sculpt the object. thus, there is no need for dialogue between different people – architect and builder, or designer and production engineer; the dialogue happens between apparatuses, and it is obviously opaque to us. all the designer needs to do is to give instructions to the software. thus, we can say that this technology frees designers from having to create instructional drawings – they can focus exclusively on the creation of the object, of its form. in a fairly near future, 3d printers may become widespread, so that anyone will be able to design and print (build) objects. thus, no instructional images will be needed at all. would anyone need designers then? or should we expect designers to be the ones creating the best conceptual models for printing? the dialogue between apparatuses may free architects and designers from the need to create instructional images, but can this freedom be demeaning to their practices? bill verplank believes that the development of enactive interfaces can bring us closer to the objects we shape, like the traditional builder mentioned by pérez-gómez: this direct engagement with the materials, producing immediate results, is what makes for a craft tradition. there is no time to step back and plan or abstract and analyse. we need no principles, textbooks or classrooms, only studios. masters pass on their practices to apprentices; the only learning is by doing. the introduction of architecture and engineering as distinct from construction and manufacture made explicit the role of drawings and design. are we returning to craft and forgetting design? 20 verplank seems to consider craft as a practical skill learned through imitation and repetition, and design as an intellectual activity for ‘anticipation and reflection.’ many of us may share this notion, the dialogue happens between apparatuses, and it is obviously opaque to us. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 225 lo ur ei r o only using the word “craft” when talking about a hands-on activity such as woodworking or shoemaking. these craftsmen use different tools and different gestures, whereas computers are now the main – if not the only – tool for intellectual work. architects, engineers, lawyers and accountants work in similar workstations – desks with computers – and repeat the same gestures – typing and clicking. thus, in physical terms, these activities have been leveled. these professionals work with different software, which provide different possibilities, but they are all envisioners. their work is seen as a set of intellectual activities that can be reduced to the logics of programming – to information processing, to computation. thus, while working, they can only imagine what was already imagined by the programmer, and this limitation can be really damaging to the poetic dimension of creative work. brazilian philosopher olavo de carvalho has developed the “theory of the four discourses,” which consists in the idea that “human discourse is a unique potency which can be actualized in four different ways: poetics, rhetoric, dialectics and analytics (logic).”21 this theory is based on his interpretation of the overall structure of aristotelian philosophy, considering that the differences between the four discourses lie in the human intentions behind each one of them. like flusser, carvalho also provides a model in which different eras were created by the prevalence of one of these discourses, which had, at the time, a recognized authority figure 4: three models. 226 isparchitecture.com over the other three. this model also illustrates an increasing abstraction, a distancing from concrete experience which follows towards an analytic worldview, “scientific reason emerges as the supreme fruit of a tree which has poetic imagination as its roots, planted in the soil of the sensible nature.”22 this does not mean, however, that we live in an analytical age devoid of poetic discourse. in fact, this gradual movement from the poetic imagination all the way to logical ‘certainty’ pervades all creative work. carvalho argues that “poetics correspond […] to the ‘first level’, to the connection between the data captured by the senses and the universe of discourse. the bridge between ‘world’ and ‘discourse.”23 thus, when we are creating, we are turning our impressions of the world into discourse, that is, into something that can be thought and communicated. this is why carvalho states that “poetry belongs, therefore, to the genre of mimesis, it is a form of imitation, and its specific difference is that it does not imitate what has happened (like history, for instance), but what is possible. the imitation of the possible is the definition of poetic work.”24 we can then say that all creative work begins with the imitation of the possibilities in which the work will develop. architects and designers begin their work not by envisioning images or manipulating form, but by discovering and selecting possibilities in which – and with which – to work. we can only discover possibilities by imagining them, and everything that can be imagined can become a possibility. when working with black boxes, we can surely use our imagination to discover possibilities inside those provided by the apparatus, but we are necessarily limiting our imagination, which was open to the whole of reality – as captured by our sensitive nature – to the program of the apparatus. when we draw through apparatuses, we are when we are creating, we are turning our impressions of the world into discourse “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 227 lo ur ei r o necessarily creating a gap between thinking and drawing. actually, we are not really drawing, but only giving instructions to an opaque, mysterious black box which will draw for us. even though enactive interfaces can make this process more direct and intuitive, there is still this gap, this barrier – we are still losing something along the way. pérez-gómez refers to the platonic concept of chora, which is, “both cosmic place and abstract space, and is also the substance of human crafts. […] it is the ‘region’ of that which exists.”25 when we design through apparatuses, the computer is not just a substitute for the pencil – it is actually a substitute for the pencil, the paper and, ultimately, a “virtual” substitute for chora. apparatuses try to create a virtual chora, an immaterial region for that which exists – but only exists as information, as numbers which can be rearranged into images. its hidden functioning emulates the aura of mystery that one can sense in the dimension of the possible, but it cannot really emulate the complete realm of possibility, the reach of the imaginable. in any creative work, the process of imagining never stops, and it is actually made not only through thinking, but also through testing and prototyping. architects and designers draw to visualize what they imagine, and to test possibilities. these drawings are not “printed ideas” – snapshots of what they are envisioning in their minds – but part of the process of imagining, of unraveling possibilities. irish architect john tuomey, for instance, draws inspiration from the ‘constellations’ of drawings made by carlo scarpa, who filled pages with small conceptual sketches in which he tested many variations of the same solution. scarpa stated: “i want to see things, that’s all i really trust. i want to see, and that’s why i draw. i can see an image only if i draw it.”26 palladio’s sketches for the reconstruction of the baths of agrippa, for instance, are of the same nature. these drawings have 400 years between them, but their similarities allow us to believe that the process behind them was fairly the same. at least in this conceptual stage, palladio and scarpa worked in a very similar way – they were not thinking and drawing, but thinking through drawing. computers and 3d printers may seem to free us from a secondary activity which is – or at least was – part of the intellectual activity of design. however, this activity is not secondary – it is actually what makes design a craft. there is no design without drawing, especially without the kind of drawing which works as a way of thinking, “imagining, shaping, seeing, all at the same time.”27 this kind of drawing can never be delegated to apparatuses, since these black boxes can never be poetic in the sense of making reality transparent to us. architecture does this in a deep and direct way, by shaping the world in which we live. 228 isparchitecture.com the emergence of parametricism may lead us to believe that, in the future, the work of an architect can actually be reduced to just inserting data into a software, which will then create forms.28 however, architecture cannot be reduced to a set of choices, to data processing. any creative work develops in what jorge luis borges calls, “the ambiguous time of art,” or, “in real time, in history, whenever a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates and loses the others. such is not the case in the ambiguous time of art, which is similar to that of hope and oblivion. in that time, hamlet is sane and is mad.”29 architectural design is a creative, poetic activity based on reflection and synthesis, and achieved through drawing and visualization. apparatuses can surely be very useful for architects, as long as they do not let themselves be “tricked” by the apparently unbiased, objective outputs made by these devices – and they also should not use them for tricking others. as flusser puts it: “from the standpoint of so-called common sense, technical images are objective depictions of things out in the world. the critical project is to show that in defiance of common sense, they are not mirrors but projections that are programmed to make common sense appear mirror like.”30 architecture is indeed a craft, responsible for creating a connection between our lived-world and our culture, making some aspects of reality transparent to us. its scope is that of the imaginable. this scope should not be reduced, and it just cannot be programmed. endnotes 1. vilém flusser, into the universe of technical images (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011). 2. ibid., p. 5. 3. ibid., p. 7. 4. ibid., p. 15. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 229 lo ur ei r o 5. ibid., p. 21. 6. ibid., p. 20. 7. ibid., p. 20. 8. ibid., p. 42. 9. ibid., p. 43. 10. ibid., p. 16. 11. ibid., p. 24. 12. ibid., p. 36. 13. bill verplank, “interaction design sketchbook”, p. 22, accessed august 09, 2014, http://www.billverplank.com/ixdsketchbook.pdf 14. flusser, into the universe of technical images, p. 17. 15. alberto pérez-gómez, “architecture as drawing”, jae, vol. 36, no. 2 (winter, 1982): 2-7. 16. ibid. 17. ibid. 18. “vilém flusser television image and political space in the light of the romanian revolution”, youtube video, 24:32, posted by “klenov vasiliy”, may 31, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qftay2u4nvi 19. elizabeth a. harris, “idealized or caricature, architectural renderings are weapons in real estate”, the new york times, august 26, 2013, accessed august 09, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/nyregion/ architects-renderings-as-a-weapon-in-real-estate.html?hp&_r=1& 20. bill verplank, “interaction design sketchbook”, p. 2, accessed august 09, 2014, http://www.billverplank.com/ixdsketchbook.pdf 21. olavo de carvalho, aristóteles em nova perspectiva: introdução à teoria dos quatro discursos (são paulo: é realizações, 2006), p. 26. translation by the author. 22. ibid., p. 43. 23. ibid., p. 105. 24. ibid., p. 137. 25. alberto pérez-gómez, “chora: the space of architectural representation”, in chora volume one: intervals in the philosophy of architecture, edited by alberto pérez-gómez and stephen parcell (montreal: mcgillqueens university press, 1994), pp. 1-34. 26. carlo scarpa, in carlo scarpa. the complete works, edited by francesco dal co and giuseppe mazzariol (new york: rizzoli, 1985), p. 230 isparchitecture.com 164. cf. john tuomey, architecture, craft and culture (london: gandon editions, 2008), p. 14. 27. bill verplank, interaction design sketchbook, unpublished ms. dated december 1, 2009, retrieved august 09, 2014, from http://www.billverplank. com/ixdsketchbook.pdf. 28. see patrik schumacher, “the parametricist manifesto”, presentation at the 2008 venice biennale, retrieved august 10, 2013, from http:// archpaper.com/news/articles.asp?id=4623. 29. jorge luis borges, “the false problem of ugolino,” in selected non-fictions. volume 1 (new york: viking penguin, 1999), pp. 277-281. 30. vilém flusser, into the universe of technical images (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2011), p. 49. monism and pluralism: the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of architecture paul guyer part i of this essay appeared in vol. 1, no. 1 of architecture philosophy. in part i we observed several examples of how the one-sided cognitivism of german idealist aesthetics led to reductionist conceptions of architecture and in turn to negative assessments of the value of architecture. in part ii, i now turn to one nineteenth-century treatment of architecture that is pluralistic rather than monistic and thus in at least some ways points to the possibility of a more satisfying aesthetics of architecture. i refer to the theory of architecture adumbrated by john ruskin in the seven lamps of architecture, which even though it must be shorn of some of the romantic assumptions long ago pointed out by geoffrey scott,1 nevertheless offers at least a model for (what part i identified as) a synthetizing rather than separatist approach to architecture. 3. a pluralist approach to architecture: ruskin the seven lamps of architecture, first published in 1849, thus three decades after schopenhauer’s world as will and representation and the commencement of hegel’s lectures on aesthetics in berlin, is notorious for its conclusion that there are only four styles suitable for contemporary architecture – the pisan romanseque, the early gothic of the western italian republics, the venetian gothic, and the i want to suggest that we can interpret the lamps of power and beauty as ruskin’s versions of the beautiful and the sublime. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 232 gu y er english earliest decorated.2 this is hardly the aspect of the work that i wish to discuss, let alone defend. a fortiori i have no intention to defend his even more restrictive remark in the preface to the second edition of the seven lamps that “i have now no doubt that the only style proper for modern northern work, is the northern gothic of the thirteenth century, as exemplified in england, pre-eminently by the cathedrals of lincoln and wells,” let alone to defend the even more strident remark of this preface that “there are only two fine arts possible to the human race, sculpture and painting,” so that “what we call architecture is only the association of these in noble masses, or the placing them in fit places.”3 i cannot reconcile this last remark in particular with ruskin’s statement in the original text that “perfect sculpture may be made a part of the severest architecture; but this perfection was said at the outset to be dangerous.” ruskin continues: [t]he moment the architect allows himself to dwell on the imitated portions, there is a chance of his losing sight of the duty of his ornament, of its business as a part of the composition, and sacrificing its points of shade and effect to the delight of delicate carving. and then he is lost. his architecture has become a mere framework for the setting of delicate sculpture, which had better all be taken down and put into cabinets. it is well, therefore, that the young architect should be taught to think of imitative ornament as of the extreme of grace in language; not to be regarded at first, not to be obtained at the cost of purpose, meaning, force, or conciseness, yet, indeed, a perfection -the least of all perfections, and yet the crowning one of all…4 here ruskin makes it clear that the merits of sculpture, which might certainly include their cognitive significance as imitations, should only be part of the larger complex of aims in architecture, which, like language, can please us through formal properties like conciseness and emotional impact or force as well as through its semantic content. a passage like this suggests that ruskin’s fundamental position is that we should take a synthesizing rather than separatist approach to architecture, seeing it as involving our cognitive powers in play as well as work and engaging our emotional and conative powers as well. a statement like, “it has been my endeavour to show [...] how every form of noble architecture is in some sort the embodiment of the polity, life, history, and religious faith of nations,”5 also suggests that ruskin takes a multivalent approach to the pleasures of architecture. i do not want to take this statement too literally, but to take it as exemplifying the attitude that the experience of architecture is complex, not restricted 233 isparchitecture.com to a single form of cognition as the german idealists had just argued, but involving and at best fusing a wide range of human values and sources of pleasure. in particular, i want to suggest that ruskin’s seven “lamps” – sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, and obedience – can, without too much distortion, be associated with the three sources of aesthetic pleasure identified in the course of the eighteenth century – cognition as such, the free play of the mental or cognitive powers, and the experience and expression of emotion – all three of which were synthesized in a complex account of aesthetic experience by at least a few authors, such as kames (whose elements of criticism remained a common textbook in american colleges throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, although i cannot say if that was true for ruskin’s oxford in the 1840s). specifically, i want to suggest that we can interpret the lamps of power and beauty as ruskin’s versions of the beautiful and the sublime, both of which from a kantian point of view involve freely playing cognitive powers, the former imagination and understanding, the latter imagination and theoretical and practical reason; that the lamps of truth but even more those of life, memory, and obedience bring out elements of straightforward cognition rather than the free play of cognitive powers in the experience of architecture; and that the lamps of sacrifice but also life, memory, and obedience highlight emotional dimensions of the experience of architecture.6 throughout the discussion of the seven lamps, i suggest, ruskin’s tacit argument is that all of these lamps are sources of pleasure in the experience of architecture, and that there is no reason to restrict our experience – or the buildings that produce it – to any one or any proper subset of these lamps. ruskin introduces both the lamps of power ruskin’s tacit argument is that all these lamps are sources of pleasure in the experience of architecture, and that there is no reason to restrict our experience. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 234 gu y er and beauty at the start of the chapter explicitly devoted to the former, stating that in [...] reverting to the memories of those works of architecture by which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will generally happen that they fall into two broad classes: the one characterised by an exceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which we recur with a sense of affectionate admiration; and the other by a severe, and, in many cases mysterious, majesty, like that we felt at the presence and operation of some great spiritual power.7 ruskin signals the association of his two lamps with two basic eighteenthcentury categories in the very act of stating that his understanding of them also goes beyond the simple distinction between the beautiful and sublime: the difference between these two orders of building is not merely that which there is in nature between the beautiful and the sublime. it is, also, the difference between what is derivative and original in man’s work: for whatever is in architecture fair or beautiful, is imitated from natural forms; and what is not so derived, but depends for its dignity upon arrangement and government received from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed.8 these statements are rich in historical resonances. the initial claim that beauty is something delicate to which we respond with affection while the sublime is something powerful to which we respond with awe is, of course, reminiscent of the way edmund burke distinguished between them ninety years before the seven lamps.9 the claim that beauty consists in the imitation of natural forms of course reminds one of batteux’s thesis that the single principle of all the arts is imitation, but i think a more proximate antecedent for ruskin would have been archibald alison’s essays on the nature and principles of taste of 1790, reissued in 181110 and thus presumably still in circulation when ruskin was young,11 the thesis of which is not that similarities between works of nature and works of art are important because they allow the latter to be a means of cognition of the former, but rather that we enjoy “associations” between art and nature that allow the pleasures of the latter to be carried over in non-rule-governed ways to the former; in other words, alison’s theory of the associations between art and nature is a version of the scottish idea of free play, published in the same year as but entirely independently of kant’s version of the theory of free play, according to which the mind freely plays back and forth between art and nature. i think that this free, associationist rather 235 isparchitecture.com than strictly cognitivist interpretation of artistic and architectural beauty is evident in ruskin’s following chapter on beauty when he states that “i do not mean to suggest that every happy arrangement of line is directly suggested by a natural object; but that all beautiful lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the external creation; that in proportion to the richness of their association, the resemblance to natural work, as a type and help, must be more closely attempted.”12 meanwhile, ruskin’s account of the lamp of power, namely that we enjoy powerful works especially because of their suggestion of the power of the human mind or minds behind their creation, stands in a tradition going back to thomas reid, who asserted, although about beauty, that “it is in the moral and intellectual perfections of mind, and in its active power, that beauty originally dwells; and that from this as the fountain, all the beauty which we perceive in the visible world is derived,”13 and before him to shaftesbury, who held that our pleasure in the outward forms of objects is grounded in “the forms which form, that is, which have intelligence, action, and operation.”14 but in this case, too, it seems to me, ruskin is not arguing that we appreciate sublime works of architecture because they give us actual knowledge of the intentions of the human minds that created them, but because they suggest the power of the human mind in a more general way. in both the cases of power and beauty, then, it seems to me that ruskin is arguing that we enjoy suggestions and intimations rather than determinate cognition, and so these two lamps can be associated with the eighteenth-century theory that in the beautiful and the sublime we enjoy the free play of our cognitive powers rather than actual cognition, perhaps especially with the associationist version of this theory. in both the cases of power and beauty, then, it seems to me that ruskin is arguning that we enjoy suggestions and intimations rather than determinate cognition. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 236 gu y er the lamp of truth, by contrast, would seem to suggest a more straightforwardly cognitivist account of aesthetic pleasure: if truth is adequatio rei et intellectus or correspondence between representation and object, we would enjoy a true representation because of the information it gives us about its object. here, however, we have to proceed with some caution, because ruskin’s suggestion seems to be more that we enjoy truthfulness rather than truth in architecture, sincerity rather than information15: “that indignation which we profess to feel at deceit absolute, is indeed only at deceit malicious. we resent calumny, hypocrisy, and treachery, because they harm us, not because they are untrue.”16 ruskin’s thesis is not that we should dislike architecture that misinforms us of some truth, conversely that we should like architecture simply because it correctly informs us, but rather that we should dislike architecture that intentionally deceives us, above all about its own materials and structure, because we dislike being intentionally deceived, and conversely enjoy architecture that deals with us honestly, because we like to be dealt with honestly. this is the premise of ruskin’s thesis that we should condemn architecture that disguises the nature of its materials: not because we need to acquire from architecture some information about the nature of its materials or the natural forces that govern them that we do not otherwise have (as schopenhauer’s account might suggest), but simply because we dislike being handled dishonestly. and this premise is important because it is what allows for the distinction that ruskin makes between deception and imagination, his claim that “a communicated act of imagination” is “no lie,”17 and the allowance he makes that for non-exhibition of underlying structure in what we recognize to be intended as a work of imagination rather than a piece of information, thus his claim that “the architect is not bound to exhibit structure” but that if, in gothic vaulting, “the intermediate shell were made of wood instead of stone, and whitewashed to look like the rest, – this would, of course, be direct deceit, and altogether unpardonable.”18 ruskin’s distinction between imagination and deception would also allow, i think, for some common ground between him and geoffrey scott, who defended the use of stucco to mask the underlying brick in renaissance architecture against ruskin’s preference for the honest display of stone in gothic architecture on the purely aesthetic ground that it allows for pleasing patterns of line and light that could not otherwise be achieved19: if a building can be understood as intended as a work of imagination rather than a presentation of fact, then there is room for the enjoyment of decorated rather than displayed structure on ruskin’s as well as scott’s 237 isparchitecture.com account; indeed, here ruskin’s otherwise outrageous suggestion in the preface to the second edition of the seven lamps that architecture must ultimately exploit the means of painting or sculpture could be used in his defense. ruskin’s discussion of “the lamp of truth” also includes his notorious argument that even in his own nineteenth century an architecture of wood, stone, and masonry is preferable to one of iron. he writes that the art of architecture: having been, up to the beginning of the present century, practised for the most part in clay, stone, or wood, it has resulted that the sense of proportion and the laws of structure have been based [...] on the necessities consequent on the employment of those materials; and that the entire or principle employment of metallic framework would, therefore, be generally felt as a departure from the first principles of the art. abstractedly there appears no reason why iron should not be used as well as wood; and the time is probably near when a new system of architectural laws will be developed, adapted entirely to metallic construction [...] . [but architecture’s] first existence and its earliest laws must depend [...] upon the use of materials accessible in quantity, and on the surface of the earth, that is to say, clay, wood, or stone: and as i think it cannot but be generally felt that one of the chief dignities of architecture is its historical use [...] it will be felt right to retain [...] the materials and principles of earlier ages.20 on the one hand, this seems like sheer conservatism, adequately confounded by, for example, the accomplishment of mies van der rohe in works like the illinois institute of technology campus and the seagram building in finding incomparable elegance in the structural forms of steel (and glass). on the other hand, ruskin’s comments suggest that we find a genuinely cognitive pleasure in architecture as a if building can be understood as intended as a work of imagination rather than a presentation of fact, then there is room for the enjoyment of decorated rather than displayed structure on ruskin’s as well as scott’s account. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 238 gu y er form of history, as giving us insight into the past, and that this should not be entirely forgotten in the face of other sources of pleasure. this leads us to “the lamp of memory,” which can also be understood at least in part as an expression of the cognitive aspect of architectural experience.21 the lamp of memory seems like the most straightforward expression of a cognitivist aspect in ruskin’s conception of the sources of architectural pleasure. specifically, ruskin argues that architecture is a medium for knowledge of the human past. “architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. we can live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her [...] there are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, poetry and architecture.”22 but ruskin’s conception of the cognitivist function of architecture as a vehicle for memory differs from that of the german idealists in several key ways. unlike hegel, ruskin does not conceive of architecture as a – doomed – vehicle for metaphysical knowledge, nor, like schopenhauer does he conceive of it as a – not necessarily doomed – vehicle for knowledge of the fundamental forces of non-human nature; he conceives of it specifically as a vehicle for knowledge of human history. and then it should also be noted that architecture serves human memory in several ways, partly intentionally but also partly unintentionally. ruskin begins his discussion of the “lamp of memory” with the case of buildings whose decorations are “animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning,”23 buildings whose ornamentation is thus intended to carry a message about a people and their present and past to the future. but he also argues that buildings are witnesses to history in ways that could not have been intended by their original builders, that the glory of a building may be: in its age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or condemnation, which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity [...] it is in that golden stain of time, that we are to look for the real light, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of men, till its walls have been witnesses of suffering [...] that its existence [...] can be gifted with [...] language and life.24 here ruskin claims that buildings are witnesses to the human deeds that play out within and before them, much of which of course cannot have been foreseen by the original builders and may even undermine their intentions in all sorts of ways, and that we who come later can read this 239 isparchitecture.com history in the buildings as they stand, well-preserved or ruined or in between, before us. ruskin also notes that can get a sense of non-human history from buildings as well, from the “superinduced and accidental beauty [...] of the rents, or fractures, or stains, or vegetation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man.”25 buildings thus yield us knowledge of the general processes and specific events of both non-human and human history. now ruskin’s last remark about the universally beloved color and form that are produced by natural processes suggests that in actual experience the cognitive significance of architecture cannot be separated from what might have been thought of as its purely aesthetic dimension; and since it would also be artificial to separate the historical significance of architecture from our emotional response to human history, the argument of “the lamp of memory” suggests that all three aspects of the experience of art distinguished in eighteenth-century aesthetics are in fact fully merged in the experience of architecture as ruskin conceives it. but before i turn to the emotional dimension of the experience of architecture, let me just mention that there are cognitivist aspects to ruskin’s accounts of the lamps of “life” and “obedience” as well. ruskin uses his chapter on “the lamp of life” to begin the argument that he will continue in the famous chapter on “the nature of gothic” in the stones of venice that we love the evidence of the creativity of all involved in the creation of a work of architecture, the stonecutters as well as the master mason or architect, as itself the product of the various lives of all these people, their “accidental carelessnesses of measurement” ruskin’s conception of the cognitivist function of architecture as a vehicle for memory differs from that of german idealists in several key ways. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 240 gu y er as well as their “proposed departures from symmetrical regularity, and the luxuriousness of perpetually variable fantasy.”26 but there is another, or perhaps more general argument here, that “no inconsiderable part of the essential characters of beauty depend [...] on the expression of vital energy in organic things, or on the subjection to such energy, of things naturally passive and powerless”; the “vivid expression of the intellectual life which has been concerned”27 in the production of architecture is one instance of this, but so might be the evidence of organic but non-human life in, say, the limestone used in a building. the presupposition of ruskin’s argument is that of course we must in some way understand the expression of life in any of its forms in architecture before we can respond to it in other ways. a similar assumption underlies ruskin’s argument in his final chapter on “the lamp of obedience.” his argument here is that architecture can be an expression of freedom, as opposed to mere chaos, only if it is an exercise of “restraint” within a style28 – it is in this context that he makes the claim earlier mentioned that there are only four styles suitable for modern building.29 but of course to work within a style, even to innovate within it and test its limits without exceeding them, the architect has to understand the style and its laws; so freedom in design and construction, which might be associated with the eighteenth-century idea of free play, also has to be associated with knowledge. the necessity of connecting rather than separating free play and knowledge is also on display in this passage, which begins the penultimate section of the final chapter of the seven lamps of architecture: it is almost impossible for us to conceive [...] the sudden dawn of intelligence and fancy, the rapidly increasing sense of power and facility, and, in its proper sense, of freedom, which such wholesome restraint would instantly cause throughout the whole circle of the arts. freed from the agitation and embarrassment of that liberty of choice which is the cause of half of the discomforts of the world; freedom from the accompanying necessity of studying all past, present, or even possible styles; and enabled, by concentration of individual, and co-operation of multitudinous energy, to penetrate into the uttermost secrets of the adopted style, the architect would find his whole understanding enlarged, his practical knowledge certain and ready to hand, and his imagination playful and vigorous [...].30 here knowledge is argued to be a necessary condition of free play. that might mean that knowledge is not a source of pleasure in its own right, but only a means to the pleasure for both architects themselves and 241 isparchitecture.com the audiences for their work over time that comes from the playful and vigorous imagination. but, as we have seen, the knowledge of both history and the laws of non-human as well as human nature that we can get from architecture is also, in ruskin’s view, a source of pleasure in its own right. so there is no danger that knowledge will be reduced to a mere means for the pleasure that comes from free play: both are sources of architectural pleasure in his view. finally, i return to ruskin’s recognition of the emotional dimension of our experience of architecture. as i already suggested, it would be entirely unnatural to separate our emotional response to human deeds and for example “suffering” from our cognition of them, and likewise artificial to separate our emotional response to manifestations of human freedom from our knowledge of the laws or style or other laws that furnish the constraints within which freedom can be meaningfully exercised; so the emotional aspect of the experience of architecture is implicit throughout ruskin’s treatment of its cognitive dimensions in the lamps of memory and obedience. it would be equally implausible to leave out the emotional aspect of architectural experience from “the lamp of power,” ruskin’s version of the sublime: his statement there that, in the edifices of man there should be found reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue [...] but of that also which reproves the pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories more than these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thought, with the work of his own hand [...].31 the presupposition of ruskin’s argument is that of course we must in some way understand the expression of life in any of its forms in architecture before we can respond to it in other ways. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 242 gu y er makes clear the emotional impact of the sublime in architecture on the author, but on the author only as a representative of us all: we cannot think of “the works of god upon the earth” and “the dominion over those works which has been vested in man” as “intellectual lamps of architecture” without also experiencing a profound emotional response.32 but the emotional dimension of architectural experience has been on display since the outset of ruskin’s book, beginning with the first “lamp of sacrifice.” this refers to the “spirit which offers” especially for “devotional and memorial architecture” “precious things, simply because they are precious; not as being necessary to the building, but as an offering, surrendering, and sacrifice of what is to ourselves desirable.”33 through using precious materials in our – public rather than merely private – buildings, we “exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline”34 – and express our need to honor, for ruskin of course specifically our need to honor god.35 the need to express self-discipline and honor must be grounded in our feelings or emotions, not just our desire for pleasure but in a wide range of other, first-order emotions. and in response to works of architecture that express such feelings in their creators similar feelings may be and surely often are expressed in subsequent spectators of those works, even those who do not share the beliefs of the original creators – even one who does not share the belief-systems of their creators cannot fail to be stirred by the chartres or the suleimanya of sinan or the st. matthew passion of bach, although of course the experience of such a spectator can hardly be identical to that of the original creator of the work or its originally intended audience. as ruskin concludes “the lamp of sacrifice,” the creators of such works, “have taken with them to grave their powers, their honours, and their errors; but they have left us their adoration,”36 that is, their emotion, which we, for all our differences, with them and amongst ourselves, cannot but at least to some degree agree with. so ruskin actually begins his work with an emphasis on the emotional dimension of our experience of architecture and by implication of aesthetic experience more generally. but we have seen that as his argument unfolds, he equally emphasizes the pleasure of sheer cognition through architecture as well as of the vigorous play of the human imagination in architecture, and further the ways in which all three of these dimensions of aesthetic experience are not merely intertwined but are also interdependent. so i conclude that ruskin’s seven lamps is a paradigmatic expression of a 243 isparchitecture.com synthesizing rather than separating approach to aesthetic theory in general and architectural theory in particular, and that although a century and threequarters on, we can hardly feel constrained by his particular stylistic dictates, an enduring benchmark for the complexity of aesthetic ambitions we should have in architectural practice as well. endnotes 1. geoffrey scott, the architecture of humanism, first edition 1914, second edition 1924 (new york: scribner’s, n.d.), especially chapter v, “the ethical fallacy.” 2. john ruskin, the seven lamps of architecture, introduction by sir arnold lunn (london: j.m. dent & sons, 1907), p. 213. 3. ruskin, seven lamps, p. xxii. 4. ibid, p. 137. 5. ibid, p. 203. 6. my interpretation of the seven lamps thus differs from that offered by cornelis j. baljon in “interpreting ruskin: the argument of the seven lamps of architecture and the stones of venice,” journal of aesthetics and art criticism 55 (1997): 40114. baljon argues that all seven “lamps” are forms of associations of ideas, thus that the work stands entirely within the tradition of eighteenth-century scottish “associationism,” represented above all by the 1790 work of archibald alison (see p. 403), while ruskin then broadens his approach to architecture in the stones of venice. without controverting baljon’s claim that ruskin’s philosophical knowledge was (proudly) confined to the british tradition and excluded german aesthetics from kant to hegel (p. 401), i would suggest, indeed already have suggested in my comments about the work of kames, that the british or even the scottish tradition is broader than ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 244 gu y er associationism alone, and that ruskin’s work is more fruitfully read against the background of the threefold division of cognition, play, and emotion that i have suggested. 7. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 69. 8. ibid, p. 70. 9. see edmund burke, a philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublme and beautiful (1757, second edition 1759), edited by j.t. boulton (london: routledge & kegan paul, 1958), especially part one, sections vii-xi, xix. see also baljon, p. 403. 10. archibald alison, essays on the nature and principles of taste, 2 vols. (edinburgh: bell & bradfute, 1811). see baljon, p. 403. 11. baljon goes beyond this weak statement and calls alison’s work, “a particularly rich source of inspiration,” for ruskin (p. 403). 12. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 104. 13. thomas reid, essays on the intellectual powers of man (1785), edited by derek r. brookes (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2002), essay viii, “of taste,” p. 602. 14. shaftesbury, the moralists, part iii, section ii, in characteristicks, vol. ii, p. 107. 15. for a general discussion of this distinction, see bernard williams, truth and truthfulness (princeton: princeton university press, 2002). 16. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 30. 17. ibid, p. 33. 18. ibid, p. 35. 19. see scott, architecture of humanism, chapter iv, “the mechanical fallacy,” e.g., pp. 103-7. 20. ruskin, seven lamps, pp. 39-40. 21. baljon suggests that ruskin thought iron architecture lifeless and thus should have included his argument against it in “the lamp of life” (p. 403). this overlooks ruskin’s argument for our historical attachment to stone rather than iron construction, which would suggest that if his argument against iron architecture should have been included anywhere other than in “the lamp of truth,” then it should have been in “the lamp of memory.” but had he done that, ruskin would have spoken too soon: riding now across a great late nineteenthor early twentiethcentury railroad bridge such as the hell’s gate in new york or the firth of forth bridge in scotland is certainly an experience redolent with historical significance. 22. ruskin, seven lamps, p. 182. 23. ibid, p. 182. 24. ibid, pp. 190-1. 245 isparchitecture.com 25. ibid, p. 197. 26. ibid, p. 160. 27. ibid, p. 150. 28. ibid, p. 205. 29. ibid, p. 213. 30. ibid, pp. 213-14. 31. ibid, p. 71. 32. ibid, p. 70. 33. ibid, p. 9. 34. ibid, p. 10. 35. ibid, p. 11. 36. ibid, p. 28. trying to think in a connected sort of way: part ii andrew ballantyne in conversation with stefan koller part i of this interview appeared in vol. 1, no. 1 of architecture philosophy. question: there seems to be something important to you at the level of pure methodology, regardless of the philosophical content engaged. is that something that you think is peculiar to philosophy or is philosophy one of the disciplines that might bring method to architecture? why is method not already inherent to architecture as an academic discipline? why is the methodological stringing together of content not already inherent to architecture as an academic discipline? answer: it’s not that thinking is especially isolated in philosophy, or in architecture, or in anywhere else. i don’t think that thinking in architecture is necessarily less rigorous than in other places. i think thinking in architecture is very rigorous about certain sorts of things, but equally rather lax, or typically rather lax, in some other ways. that’s probably true of all disciplines, but we have different ways of making use of information, different ways of thinking about things, or coming close to thinking about things. i put things on a scale ranging from common sense at one end of the scale to perhaps something more like logic thought at the other. when you’re dealing with common sense, it’s not philosophical thinking, you’re recognizing a pattern of events and assuming that that pattern of events will repeat itself the way it did when you encountered it the last time. most of the time, that kind of recognition works. so with everyday activities we can deal with common sense and yesterday and today and thinking in architecture is very rigorous about certain sorts of things, but equally rather lax, or typically rather lax, in some other ways. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 247 ba ll a n ty n e tomorrow, are fairly similar and we can go through them in a similar way. not by thinking out the situation afresh but by remembering what we did yesterday and the day before, and in fact we stop thinking about it, we just go through our routine, habitual patterns, and everything is fine and everything continues the way it did. but if we want to change things or we’re faced with a fresh problem, then we have to do a different sort of thinking, which may involve an element of recognizing patterns from what we did before. also, you need to make some sort of analysis, maybe have some sort of creative response to what it is. maybe it’s a matter of logical deduction, but there’s a different kind of thinking that goes on. that’s the kind of thinking that it’s important for me to engage with when i’m writing. i don’t have to do that every day in every way. i wouldn’t get through the day if i did. a lot of things i just do as routine. when it’s a matter of academic work, academic thinking, then you do have to think. philosophy is good at prioritizing that sort of thinking discipline. actually michel tournier described philosophers as the professionals of thought. he studied philosophy as a student alongside deleuze, and it took him completely by surprise when he failed the exams that deleuze passed. he went on to become a novelist and won the prix goncourt, but there’s a wistful tone when he talks about philosophers. thinking is their business and they show you how to do it. there’s other ways of doing it, but philosophy is good, it’s rigorous, and it really makes you think. the other person i really like on that subject is david hume, who describes himself being sent into depression by the isolation that comes with rigorous philosophical thinking. he says that if he needs a remedy for that, it’s easy to find. he just seeks out company – a game of backgammon – and all his philosophical problems disappear. he regains the will to live or whatever it is. he was a sociable person. we’re all sociable people, and we feel good and comfortable with the world if we’re engaged with conversation and so on. that doesn’t get you thinking philosophically. in order to think rigorously and logically, you do have to withdraw and internalize. it’s quite an isolated process. maybe there are philosophers who can conduct socratic dialogues with others, but for me that kind of conversation makes best sense if you think of it as articulating the different voices in your own head. maybe i haven’t met the right people. but i recognize what i do as feeling like what hume describes. so you need to be able to do that and then to function as a human being, you need to come out of it. hume’s punch line is his remedy for the depression that comes with philosophical work is carelessness and inattention. he says, “for this reason i rely entirely upon them.” his method is a method of carelessness 248 isparchitecture.com and inattention, but that’s a method for living, not a method for doing philosophy. q: how extraordinary to bring out the contribution of philosophy in that light when it’s philosophy that kind of temporarily puts ordinary life and common sense on hold, as in hume. nothing ultimately, if you narrowly attend to it, even the collision of billiard balls, makes sense anymore and you have to relapse into custom to even be able to get by. it makes philosophy pull away from common, ordinary life. in one of your most recent works, “architecture, life, and habit” you use the work of some philosophers, or your own philosophical thought, to reorient thinking about architecture from this remote disengaged aesthetic touristic contemplation. towards an understanding that, in dealing with building, we deal with the people that inhabit them, and the life that shapes around them. the work becomes a new pragmatist aesthetics of architecture which looked as if the philosophy pulled a customary architectural historian back into engaging with the life that surrounds these buildings – the common life. a: of habits that become so habitual that you’ve lost sight of them, which become the things that shape your world. q: it seems to run in the opposite direction of the humean relation to philosophy, where philosophy is something that pulls you out of ordinary life. then there’s the wittgensteinian way of pulling you back in and enabling you to engage with it. in a sense that is not everyday in the sense of being common or habitual, but in reconnecting you to something that maybe through habit or academic study or even a design attitude to the built object has removed it from its built, lived reality. a: yes. i’d hoped that one could find a way to aestheticize the everyday activity and find value in it. and enjoy doing everyday things by waking up to them. it may be going against that idea of thinking through withdrawal. it’s withdrawn thinking but turned in on the activity of living and perhaps being more sociable. what lies at the heart of that article, is that in order to think rigorously and logically, you do have to withdraw and internalize. it’s quite an isolated process. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 249 ba ll a n ty n e architectural discussion ought to begin with ordinary things and daily life and branch out from there. i think too much of the time we’re faced with architectural discussion that begins with an admiration of form or something. these things can be quite demanding or difficult or even get in the way of ordinary life. they stand apart from it. they’re special in some way and it’s nice that they’re special, they’re challenging in that sort of way. but for sanity’s sake, there just has to be a way of valorizing things that you have to do anyway. why not make that the substance of what you do rather than something that has to be awkwardly fitted in afterwards? q: does that also entail that you would not follow the distinction that many other writers have tried to make between architecture with a capital “a” on the one hand and mere building (in german, bauen as opposed to baukunst) on the other hand? the second is the vernacular, or the ordinary utilitarian domestic-level but culturally significant building. on the other hand, you’ve got some things that are much closer to the fine arts or architecture at least tries to align itself with the lofty ambitions of the artistic. would you not want to draw a distinction precisely to avoid us having this split attitude? a: i really don’t want there to be that separation. i want it to be a sliding scale – if anything – where you begin with the ordinary things that you have to do and then find special intensifications of those things that makes them out of the ordinary, that makes them more pleasurable, or dramatic, or whatever it is. they’re rooted in something meaningful. they’re not separated. otherwise, you get this split and it starts feeling like there’s a separation between everyday activity and aesthetic sensibility. i really want them to be connected. i want my life to be full of wonderful aesthetic experiences. q: everything you say is the complete opposite of schopenhauer. the reason for that is that you strike me as someone who is very optimistic and cheerful and that means also for you that these aesthetic experiences, especially when they are of buildings, ought to be life-affirming in a broader sense than just having an uplifting experience of contemplation. for schopenhauer the idea is that life is full of woe and suffering and then aesthetic experience of architecture is one of the very few things that enable us to pull out of this life of suffering. so i’m also wondering to what extent these very fundamental decisions and your attitude towards how to approach architecture and ordinary building relates to a larger understanding of human life? because in your work that emerges clearly at several junctures, but where exactly does that come from for you? what’s the entry point of that? is it already the reality of how you encounter the buildings, or is there an independent philosophical view that brought you to this? a: i wonder. it’s a conviction. where do convictions come from? i 250 isparchitecture.com do think that a lot of aesthetic experience is unconscious. a lot of what we do all the time is unconscious and of course philosophical reflection is conscious. if you’re trying to think about everyday experiences and why you feel good about having done something one way or another, what is it you’re dealing with? a lot of the time you’re dealing with something that’s unconscious, at the moment of your decision-making. you’re deciding to sit at this table rather than on that sofa, but why are you deciding that? what are the issues that you’re rehearsing? you’re not entirely conscious of what they are but somehow one is more comfortable, the other feels better adapted to the task at hand. there’s a big element of unconscious stuff going on and what is that? there’s all kinds of things we’ve got to get right before we can start worrying about aesthetic issues in a conscious sort of way. for example, things like heating and lighting, they just have to be dealt with in some way. if you’re in a house that’s too cold to be comfortable then there’s no way you’re going to be dwelling on the elegance of its proportionsfor too long, you’ll be moving on or wrapping yourself up. q: so, it would be like addressing, or talking about concrete building considerations as heating, lighting, and construction more broadly. to what extent do you think philosophy could contribute to our understanding of such things? a: nothing at all. i think that they’re more or less preconditions. if we can’t get enough food to survive, we don’t worry about the meaning of life. the meaning of life becomes very clear: it’s to get food. i don’t think that philosophy would help us to find food in that sort of emergency, but with more leisure and forethought – well, if your job is to teach philosophy then it would be philosophy that was putting food on your table. and then in the most ambitious restaurants there’s certainly room for a philosophy of food, which has quite a lot of it is astounding just how uninformed they are about the actual details, say, of a painting, a piece of music, or a building. “ ” aesthetic content and very little discussion about nutrition. q: what do you think authors, especially young authors, going into architecture philosophy right now should be aware of ? what can they learn from what is currently less than perfect, or just plain bad? a: on the one hand you have philosophers, even aesthetic philosophers whose very business it is to write about art, where it is astounding just how uninformed they are about the actual details, say, of a painting, a piece of music, or a building. on the other hand, you have architecture historians who are greatly accomplished in mopping up every last detail about a work of art, but fall flat when they raise more general issues. admittedly, i have painted the extreme end points on a wide spectrum – but there is a lot of room in between these that is still left unexplored. and that is where i think a great deal of interesting work remains to be done. andrew ballantyne’s books include key buildings from prehistory to the present: plans, sections and elevations, 2012 architecture in the space of flows, 2012 (co-edited by c. smith) deleuze and guattari for architects, 2007 architecture theory: a reader in philosophy and culture, 2005 architecture and experience: radical change in spatial practice, 2004 architectures: modernism and after, 2004 architecture: a very short introduction, 2002 what is architecture?, 2002 architecture, landscape and liberty: richard payne knight and the picturesque, 1997 andrew ballantyne and stefan koller isparchitecture.com about the authors noël carroll is distinguished professor of philosophy at the city university of new york. nathaniel coleman is reader in history and theory of architecture at newcastle university. christoph baumberger is a senior research fellow at the eth zürich’s institute of environmental decisions. mark jensen is associate professor of philosophy at the united states airforce academy. felipe loureiro is a practising architect with rio arquitetura in rio de janeiro, brazil. paul guyer is jonathan nelson professor of philosophy and humanities at brown university. image credits diagrams: felipe loureiro andrew ballantyne and stefan koller: carolyn fahey given the wealth of new ways of conceptualizing building, its practice, and its meanings, this call for papers prompts authors to reconceptualize the notion of buildings’ functions in terms of use, particularly as is described in wittgenstein’s use theory. by engaging one of philosophy’s richest and most formidable postmodern thinkers -– ludwig wittgenstein – the discourse surrounding function can move away from architecture’s modernist paradigm that has largely defined how we think about and deal with questions relating to function. wittgenstein – who remains largely undealt with by the architectural discourse, but whose work has nevertheless had ample development from within the philosophical discourse – provides genuine contributions to the understanding of use and meaning. specifically, the wittgensteinian notion of meaning as use moves the discussion away from mechanical or systematic notions grounded in scientific enquiry, and instead focuses analysis on the particular context or language-game within which ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 call for papers: international wittgenstein symposium w itt ge ns te in ho us e, vi ew fr om st re et keynotes: james conant, professor of philosophy, university of chicago ákos moravánszky, professor of architecture theory, eth zürich simo säätelä, professor of philosophy, university of bergen paul wijdeveld, author of ludwig wittgenstein, architect use value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions wittgenstein house vienna, austria 17-18 august 2015 isparchitecture.com a building partakes. thus, the hope is to utilize ludwig wittgenstein’s theory of meaning to achieve radically alternative analyses of building’s use, thereby allowing for productive re-engagement with one of architecture’s most fundamentally philosophical questions. lines of enquiry may include: • does a building mean in isolation from humans? does a canonical building mean outside of its local socio-cultural context? or does a building only mean within the architectural discourse that has canonized it? • within wittgenstein’s use-theory, does the distinction between building and architecture exist? in which contexts does this distinction hold meaning? is the distinction still meaningful today? • what is the use value of building in contemporary society? are there new use values in building that suggest a shift in the trajectory of the building practice, of society, of culture? • does building itself challenge commonly accepted theories of meaning? does building itself challenge commonly accepted readings of wittgenstein’s use-theory? are there specific instances in which building can be shown as revealing limitations in wittgenstein’s theory of use? • does wittgenstein’s use theory supplant notions of the symbolic? or does it give symbolism renewed significance? how do different types of architectural symbolism figure in wittgenstein’s use theory? the symposium will take place between the 17th and 18th of august 2015 in the famous wittgenstein house in vienna, austria. given the unique and incredibly inspiring setting, space is limited. abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words. all submissions are due by 01 may 2015 submitted in rtf file format to isparchitecture@gmail.com. for questions regarding the call for papers or the symposium please contact the acting editor for the issue and event organizer, dr. carolyn fahey at carfahey@gmail. com. refer to the ispa website for the most up-to-date information regarding the event’s organization. a selection of the papers will be published as a special issue in architecture philosophy. symposium delegates who wish to be considered for inclusion in the special issue will be asked to submit papers between 5,000 and 7,000 words by 01 december 2015. more details regarding full paper submission will be provided at the time of the event. in the meantime, detailed submission instructions for architecture philosophy are available in this printed journal as well as on the ispa website at isparchitecture.com. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is the paper written in english to general academic writing standards for the humanities? does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines? review criteria isparchitecture.com please direct all submissions and general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. there are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special issue, conference proceedings, etc.). submission types authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. full papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word abstract, response pieces should be between 500 and 1,500 words, and book reviews between 1,000 to 2,000 words. general formatting all submissions should be presented in accordance with the university of chicago style. papers should be rtf documents, 12 point font, times new roman, doublespaced, and with no additional or otherwise unique formatting. references should be manually placed in brackets (e.g. [1], [2], and so on) with full citation information placed in the references section at the end of the document. photo guidelines and image permissions images should be at least 300 dpi and read well in greyscale prints. the images should be submitted as individual files (tiff or jpeg), in combination with proof of copyright permission. authors are responsible for obtaining image permissions, and are asked to have done so prior to submitting their papers for review. the oklahoma state university image archive is also available for use. please send inquiries about the osu image holdings to prof. tom spector at tom.spector@okstate.edu. the papers published by architecture philosophy are protected by copyright. the content must not have been previously published and cannot be republished without the permission of the journal’s copyright holder. the copyright holder is oklahoma state university. authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permission for the use of images in their papers. original images created by the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines isparchitecture.com editorial stefan koller & tom spector the 2014 conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture and its twin themes of autonomy and morality continue to furnish our journal pages with productive discussion. graham owen’s opening essay “whatever happened to semi-autonomy?” traces a strand of recent architectural discourse by reminding us that architecture theory was not long ago engaged in a serious search for an architectural mode of production existing midway between pure formal autonomy and dissolution in social science. he looks for evidence that such a position is still possible in such efforts as activist architecture. the writings of sarah whiting and robert somol make a prominent appearance in this essay, as well as in pauline lefebvre’s “varieties of pragmatism: architectural objects made moral.” rather than dissect the discourse, as owen does, lefebvre elects to dissect the concept of autonomous architectural objects against the concepts provided by american pragmatism—especially as outlined by john dewey and richard shusterman. she finds promising avenues of exploration made possible by the pragmatist tradition but no clear solution to the problem of seeking agency within architecture itself. finding the pragmatist orientation towards placing opposing tendencies along continuums more useful than isolating them into clear-cut categories, she seeks to discredit a stultifying predelineated moral domain “where some things are included while others are excluded.” a similar conclusion is reached by diana aurenque in her essay on heidegger’s late ethics, ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 2 ed it or ia l “heidegger on thinking about ethos and man’s dwelling”: “to dwell poetically one has to forfeit the very domain of the moral, a domain in which good and evil have already been decided upon.” while no one would accuse such heidegger early and middle work mainstays as being and time, “the origin of the work of art,” or “building dwelling thinking,” of being breezy reads, aurenque and architecture philosophy hope to initiate a correction to the neglect of heidegger’s later works by architectural audiences enthralled with bt, “owa,” and “bdt,” due in no small part to the later works’ reputation for impenetrability, by mapping a wide range of heidegger’s works characteristic of the late period—above all, his commentaries on hölderlin’s poetry. to substantiate these assertions about both the accessibility and resonance for architectural audiences of heidegger’s later work, a piece of that later work, 1970’s “man’s dwelling,” is included here as a companion to aurenque’s exegetical study. although nine of its companion essays in volume 13 of heidegger’s complete works have been rendered in english before, “man’s dwelling” is here translated, by cesar a. cruz, for the first time.1 aurenque herself stays focused on textual interpretation. she deliberately eschews all attempt to deploy her readings of the later heidegger in the service of widerranging reflections, such as those found in the more explorative, at times speculative, readings of heidegger’s mid-to-late works offered by, say, the scholarship of rodolphe gasché, hubert dreyfus, or philippe lacouelabarthe, scholarship that rarely if ever reckons with “man’s dwelling.”2 “man’s dwelling” finds heidegger continuing to explore fundamental questions of building and dwelling raised in 1954’s “building dwelling thinking.” heidegger writes in his nearly-trademarked strategic mode of initially beguiling the reader into following him into a meticulous, even affectionate, examination of a work (or even a single word) from the past for the purpose of providing the necessary critical distance to abruptly turn the reader around to face the existential questions of our time. here hölderlin’s poem “the archipelago,” as its variations unfolded for the poet in the process of writing, serves as his launchpad to tease-out the ideas to which he wants us to attend. but, uncharacteristic for heidegger, in this essay he actually projects the reader towards the future as well as the present and the past. heidegger’s suggestion “that man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way – namely […] unpoetically,” certainly presages similar assertions by such post-humanist-minded architects as peter eisenman against christopher alexander’s nostalgic holism. with “man’s dwelling” and its careful contextualization by aurenque now available to an english speaking audience, many questions open up, 3 isparchitecture.com especially for readers and future contributors to this journal: how does the reading of this additional text change or inflect existing discourses on heidegger in relation to architecture? what does it tell us about his analyses of dwelling and other foundational concerns in architecture philosophy? what does “man’s dwelling” add to the discourse or to the understanding of architecture more broadly? by expanding the textual material to be reckoned with, of which “man’s dwelling” is one piece, aurenque has laid a useful beginning for such inquiries, even if her own concerns are largely propaedeutic to them. we hope that future contributors feel sufficiently encouraged (or provoked) to join a debate on this work, and furnish us with critical commentary and elaborations of their own. aurenque and lefebvre stake out a common ground of phenomenology and pragmatism: the eschewing of a pre-established domain of the moral itself. thus, where others have sought to bring ethics to architecture, both lefebvre’s dewey and aurenque’s heidegger seek to rescue architecture, and dwelling, from a too-prescriptive conception of ethics. they thus subvert and redraw the questions behind the 2014 ispa conference, just as that conference’s call for papers hoped contributors would.3 a similar contestation of architecture ethics resurfaces in the present issue’s final two essays. while dewey, famously, sought to embed aesthetics more fully in life, adorno’s contrary insistence that art maintain a privileged existence beyond the clutches of capitalism informs alberto rubio-garrido’s “autonomy and expression in architecture.” rubio-garrido sees autonomy not as an established concept, but rather as a struggle unleashed in the enlightenment that begins with kant, gains gravity with schiller, and gets a muchneeded reinterpretation with adorno. adorno’s conception of autonomy and emancipation as adorno’s liminal presence in these essays [is] a fascinating development “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 4 ed it or ia l dialectical, counteracting poles presents the prospect of a more complete understanding of the workings of aesthetics and ethics emerging out of— even thriving on—their limits. while christian illies and nick ray’s concluding essay, “obliged to beauty: an aesthetic deontology of architecture” implicitly opposes— and is greatly challenged by—rubio-garrido’s argument for an enigmatic architecture that preserves a fenced-off aesthetic realm in adorno’s mold, the idea of thriving on limits would seem to operate in the background here as well. the authors call into question the autonomy of the aesthetic realm by exploring the possibilities of an obligation to beauty that is itself moral. if such an interpretation holds, it promises to make the familiar tug between function and aesthetics in the design of architectural works no longer incommensurable. thus, a different kind of freedom can emerge by acknowledging a lack of full autonomy. in conjunction with their essay, illies and ray’s new book philosophy of architecture is reviewed, and some of its arguments are examined. we find adorno’s liminal presence in these essays a fascinating development that we hope inaugurates more exploration of the relation of his thought to architecture. more generally, we hope these concerted investigations continue further discussion, and not conclude it, on the subject of autonomy. 2015 saw several developments of importance for ispa. first, the society’s 2016 conference in bamberg, germany was announced. in a purportedly post-modern, post-humanist age, the conference’s focus on the human holds promise for bringing forth refreshingly contrarian thinking. the conference’s announcement and call for papers is reprinted in this issue’s concluding pages. as always with ispa’s biennial conferences, readers of architecture philosophy will be able to read a selection of premier conference papers in an upcoming issue. with the strong growth of society membership in the past two years, ispa was able to sponsor two smaller events in the conference off-year 2015 to enable more frequent personal interaction among members. thus, august 2015 saw the inauguration of an annual ispa symposium series at the wittgenstein house in vienna, the next installment of which is announced in this issue. moreover, readers can look forward to reading the fruits of that event in architecture philosophy’s first themed issue, forthcoming spring 2016, to be edited by carolyn fahey. in the second ispa event, marking the first in north america, an intimate workshop in taos, new mexico convened in august. though the workshop had no stated theme, it was clear that the function of aesthetics as life-expression was either an explicit or implicit topic for 5 isparchitecture.com all participants. this event links this issue’s cover with its centerpiece. it feels unavoidable to speculate that if ever there was an architecture apart from his beloved greek temples that heidegger would find emblematic of true dwelling in the fourfold of gods and men, earth and sky, it would be in something like the taos pueblo. endnotes 1. thomas sheehan maintains an up-to-date document as to which parts of heidegger’s complete works have been translated into english (and where). see thomas sheehan, “heidegger’s gesamtausgabe texts and their english translations,” stanford academia: thomas sheehan, last modified october 2014, https://www.academia.edu/9830630/ heidegger_s_gesamtausgabe_texts_and_their_english_translations_as_ of_october_2014_. 2. for a thorough overview of heidegger’s relevance to architects, see adam sharr, heidegger for architects (new york: routledge, 2007) and for a recent review of heidegger’s reception, especially in relation to architecture, see glen hill, “poetic measure of architecture: martin heidegger’s ‘…poetically man dwells...,’” architecture research quarterly 18, no. 2 (2014): 145-154. 3. carolyn fahey and stefan koller, june 27, 2013, “autonomy reconsidered,” international society for the philosophy of architecture, http:// isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/. reprinted in architecture philosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 135-6. isparchitecture.com whatever happened to semi-autonomy? graham owen writing in the yale journal perspecta in the mid1980s, k. michael hays put forward an argument for “a critical architecture that claims for itself a place between the efficient representation of preexisting cultural values and the wholly detached autonomy of an abstract formal system.”1 in setting up such a relationship between autonomy and criticality, hays was elaborating his mentor stanford anderson’s efforts to promote a pragmatic ethical rapprochement—or compromise—between an autonomous practice that aspired to kantian rigor and purity and the obligations of cultural—if not also social—engagement. “quasi-autonomy,” as anderson had it, or “semi-autonomy” in hays’s variation, offered the possibility of an architecture resistant to instrumentalization in the service of the dominant order. both anderson and hays were alluding to louis althusser’s notion, derived from karl marx, that superstructures in capitalist society, taken in this instance to include cultural activities such as architecture, were “relatively autonomous” from its infrastructure, its economic base: marx conceived the structure of every society as constituted by ‘levels’ or ‘instances’ articulated by a specific determination: the infrastructure, or economic base (the ‘unity’ of the productive forces and the relations of production) and the superstructure, which itself contains two ‘levels’ or ‘instances’: the politicolegal (law and the state) and ideology (the different ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.). […] semi-autonomy […] offered the possibility of an architecture resistant to instrumentalization “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 8 ow en their index of effectivity (or determination), as determined by the determination in the last instance of the base, is thought by the marxist tradition in two ways: (1) there is a ‘relative autonomy’ of the superstructure with respect to the base; (2) there is a ‘reciprocal action’ of the superstructure on the base.2 anderson’s formulation was originally put forward in a 1966 paper written in response to the positivist, even scientistic, interest of the time in “problem-solving” design methods. incorporating and elaborating upon that paper in his perspecta 33 essay of 2002, titled “quasi-autonomy in architecture: the search for an ‘in-between’,” anderson began by noting that: [r]ecurrently, anxieties arise around such issues as these: can architecture be other than a mere servant to commercial/capitalist/ideological forces? […] is not autonomous production the only way to avoid submersion in the material conditions of one’s time? how can a formally driven enterprise like architecture address social issues responsibly (or at all)?3 in the 1966 paper, anderson had cited le corbusier’s carpenter center as exemplary, in that it was not the “frictionless, efficient” result desired in problem-solving design, but rather a building where “all of one’s senses and the whole of one’s perception are engaged,” a building that is “a world, a context, a problem [not yet solved], and we have the happy opportunity to form ourselves against it.”4 in the later article, de stijl, exemplified by gerrit rietveld’s schröder house, and the early works of peter eisenman such as house i (the toy museum in princeton, nj), take on this role: the de stijl and early eisenman works are of fundamental importance to the discipline of architecture. they project new ways of conceiving material form, space, light, and, at least to my mind, implications for use and meaning. significantly, these ‘new ways’ are deployed in such a manner as to give as much or more attention to their generalized potentials as to the specifics they initially served. it is in this that they approach autonomy and establish new references within the discipline.# anderson notes the importance of the intimacy of scale of these examples, and the fact that “a particular use is not defined.” he observes that “[o]ne is acutely aware of one’s own body in, and in relation to, these environments – and with this, also the anticipation of one’s occupation in various modes.”5 his concerns were thus humanist in nature, and the ethical issues as he implied them suggested, first, the virtue of generous contributions to the discipline, and second, to the community, in effect a duty of care to the built environment and to human experience within it. he concluded: “to seek to live only a life of the mind at one pole, or of materiality at the other, or of coercive power from either, is to impoverish one’s self, one’s 9 isparchitecture.com discipline, and one’s smaller or greater community.”6 michael hays, in his perspecta 21 article of 1984, sets up the dialectical opposition between, on the one hand, “architecture as instrument of culture,” where it occurs as “essentially an epiphenomenon, dependent on socioeconomic, political, and technological processes for its various states and transformations” and “reconfirms the hegemony of culture and helps to assure its continuity,” and, on the other hand, architecture as autonomous form, where both design and its criticism are involved with: the comparative absence of historical concerns in favor of attention to the autonomous architectural object and its formal operations – how its parts have been put together, how it is a wholly integrated and equilibrated system that can be understood without external references, and as important, how it may be reused, how its constituent parts and processes may be recombined.7 on one side, he remarks: describes artifacts as instruments of the self-justifying, self-perpetuating hegemony of culture; the other side treats architectural objects in their most disinfected, pristine state, as containers of a privileged principle of internal coherence.8 in seeking a way out of this dichotomy, hays proposes an architecture and a criticism characterized by “worldliness,” and in this respect acknowledges a debt to the thinking of edward said. hays’s exemplar of such a semi-autonomous architecture is, perhaps surprisingly, mies van der rohe. citing the unbuilt alexanderplatz project in particular, as well as the barcelona pavilion and iit’s campus, hays asserts that: mies’s achievement was to open up a clearing of implacable silence in the chaos of the nervous metropolis; this clearing is a radical critique, not only of the established spatial order of the city and the established logic of classical composition, but also of the inhabiting nervenleben. it is the extreme depth of hays proposes the ethical virtue of architectural and interpretive work that does not acquiesce to the interests of hegemonic culture, but at the same time does not withdraw entirely from engagement “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 10 ow en silence in this clearing – silence as an architectural form all its own – that is the architectural meaning of this project.9 implicitly, then, in semi-autonomy hays proposes the ethical virtue of architectural and interpretive work that does not acquiesce to the interests of hegemonic culture, but at the same time does not withdraw entirely from engagement. also implicit in this opening gambit is a duty of faith to the battle cries of modernism’s avant-garde. in his subsequent writings on this theme of critical architecture, most notably in his books modernism and the posthumanist subject, of 1992, and architecture’s desire: reading the late avant-garde, of 2010, hays’s exemplars and his arguments undergo shifts. his exemplars move from mies to hannes meyer and subsequently, in the third book, aldo rossi, bernard tschumi, john hejduk, and peter eisenman. the shifts in hays’s arguments have been charted in depth by louis martin in his essay “frederic jameson and critical architecture” published in 2011. martin notes that jameson’s thinking becomes increasingly important in hays’s later writings, which alter the construction of the dialectical oppositions and which address, in turn, the negative dialectics of the frankfurt school, deconstruction, the pessimism of the italian critic manfredo tafuri, and lacan’s psychoanalytic thinking. throughout this period, eisenman, in parallel with hays, continues to publish on the topic of a critical architecture, convinced that his own work exemplifies such practice. what had remained constant, says louis martin, is that “[c]ritical architecture … seeks change through resistance, negation, and opposition to the forces maintaining the status quo.”10 mary mcleod, however, had summed up well the haunting skepticism of the italian critic: [the tafurian position] views architecture as pure ideology, in which ideology is defined as ‘false consciousness’ – that is, as reflection of dominant class interests. architecture thus plays a negative social role: it becomes an instrument of the existing power structure. even purportedly critical architecture (and in this category tafuri places all utopian impulses in architecture since the enlightenment) contributes in its uselessness and, more seriously, in its deception to the perpetuation of bourgeois capitalism.11 responding to hays’s series of texts seventeen years after their initiation, sarah whiting and robert somol, also writing in perspecta 33, offered a “projective” alternative to “the now dominant paradigm of criticality.” for both hays and peter eisenman, they claimed, “disciplinarity is understood as autonomy (enabling critique, representation, and signification), but not as instrumentality (projection, performativity, and pragmatics). […] as an alternative to the critical project, – here linked to the indexical, the dialectical and hot representation – this text develops an alternative genealogy of 11 isparchitecture.com the projective – linked to the diagrammatic, the atmospheric and cool performance.” 12 where hays had cited mies’s exemplary status, somol and whiting invoke koolhaas, contrasting his response to the skyscraper frame in delirious new york with eisenman’s experiments with le corbusier’s dom-ino frame: “these new york frames exist as instruments of metropolitan plasticity and are not primarily architecture for paying attention to; they are not for reading but for seducing, becoming, instigating new events and behaviors.”13 perhaps even more so than koolhaas, for the purposes of the essay the acting style of robert mitchum (read through art critic dave hickey) is put forward as an exemplar: “‘mitchum architecture’ is cool, easy, and never looks like work […]. here, mood is the open-ended corollary of the cool-producing effect without high definition, providing room for maneuver and promoting complicity with subject(s).” nevertheless, whiting and somol felt it necessary, in their conclusion, to insist that “[s]etting out this projective program does not necessarily entail a capitulation to market forces […].”14 some of whiting and somol’s allies in this cause, however, felt less need to be equivocal.15 in the early 2000s michael speaks in particular set out an aggressive polemic against the notion of critical architecture and, indeed, its entire context of critical theory. speaks’s background included doctoral studies at duke university with frederic jameson, but perhaps of greater ultimate influence on speaks’s thinking were the debunking diatribes of literary critic stanley fish. so motivated, speaks took on the role of advocate for the “new economy” movement of that time, particularly as promoted by kevin kelly in wired magazine. technology was changing everything, according to both kelly and speaks, and architecture needed to be not critical but innovative. in one of a series of articles published in the japanese periodical a+u, speaks wrote: “just as theory confronted technology was changing everything [...] and architecture needed to be not critical but innovative. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 12 ow en philosophy with its slowness and morality, so today does pragmatic entrepreneurial thought confront theory with its historical connection to the dreams and utopian aspirations of philosophy.”16 he cites an essay by alejandro zaera-polo, then of foreign office architects, in which the author constructs what he calls a “niche-seeking map” that can, according to speaks, “be used to create flexible practices that are better able to respond to the new market reality of globalization.”17 in an intriguing passage from the same article, speaks invokes management guru peter drucker. architectural practice under the avantgarde model, informed by critical theory, speaks claims, “is nothing more than what […] drucker calls ‘problem solving’.” for speaks, practice in this model simply takes direction from theory, and “adds little or no value along the way. innovation, drucker tells us, works by a different, more entrepreneurial logic, where, by rigorous analysis, opportunities are discovered that can be exploited and transformed into innovations.”18 speaks had, whether knowingly or not, repurposed stanford anderson’s original opposition of 1966, substituting critical architecture for anderson’s target, the scientistic design methodology of late modernist “problemsolving.” but speaks had also inverted that opposition: for anderson, 1960s problem-solving was too much of the world of corporate capitalism. for speaks, critical architecture’s version of problem-solving was too little of it; the solution was to embrace wholeheartedly the logic of the market. george baird, in turn, responded in his essay of 2004, “‘criticality’ and its discontents,” drawing into his analysis of post-criticality the positions of whiting and somol’s fellow-travelers stan allen, sylvia lavin, and michael speaks. noting that for koolhaas, “if it turns out that ‘criticality’ constrains efficacy, then to that extent ‘criticality’ must give way,”19 baird is nonetheless ready to allow him some remaining capacity for resistance, but is wary of post-criticality’s potential consequences. to what extent, he wonders, will it develop models to measure “the ambition and the capacity for significant social transformation”? “without such models,” he went on, “architecture could all too easily find itself […] ethically adrift.”20 were baird’s apprehensions borne out? what were the ethical attitudes embodied in calls for a projective, post-critical architecture? whiting and somol’s concerns, insofar as they can be interpreted in ethical terms, appear predominantly pragmatic. they address architecture’s capacity to be effective. from their perspective, an avant-gardist position of principled critical distance could not be maintained if architecture was to be recognized as a practice with value in the world, and in this respect they might also be taken as suggesting a utilitarian model. but then there is this business of robert mitchum, of “cool”: social autonomy of a kind in 13 isparchitecture.com one sense, to be sure, though in another requiring a social setting in order to be recognized. but doesn’t cool imply a freedom from constraint; an unruffled individualism untroubled by conscience; a natural gift for getting what you want, by whatever means; even rule-breaking as an aesthetic? is there perhaps a machiavellian streak in their position? for michael speaks, there is no shame in being an operative critic, to use tafuri’s term; no shame in engaging in promotionalism and career brokerage. in a series of interviews in a+u,21 speaks extols the virtues of rapid prototyping and versioning enabled by digital modeling and fabrication, and indeed technological innovation in general. presented as exemplars in this respect are firms such as shop; greg lynn form; neil denari; asymptote; maxwan; and amo, the research arm of oma. speaks’s use of the business model is millennialist, his rhetoric neoliberal with its embrace of competition, technocracy and the market as arbiters of all success. does he present us with innovation as an implied ethical duty of the designer? yet he decries the “moralism” of traditional philosophical intellectualizations of architecture. success in the marketplace is, evidently, a virtue in itself. for speaks, there is no other world to be part of; autonomy, semior otherwise has become an effective impossibility. instead, he presents us with the received ethos of social darwinism. what if we undertake a thought experiment here? what if we take at face value speaks’s cheerleading for the new-economy business model, for digital technology as the central concern for forwardlooking architectural practices, and examine what innovation would really mean? clayton christensen, clark professor of business administration at harvard, is a widely admired theorist of what he terms “disruptive innovation,” innovation from below that undermines and displaces the established leaders in a field. speaks is clearly seeking to be disruptive, to gain market share, so to speak, from [speaks] decries the ‘moralism’ of traditional philosophical intellectualizations of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 14 ow en the established authorities and positions within the field of architectural intellectuals. but christensen, in his book the innovator’s dilemma, notes that in the field of technology, disruptive innovations “result in worse product performance, at least in the near term”22: early japanese cars, for example, early digital cameras compared with film, or the sound quality of cellphones. here we might recall a lecture that architectural critic wilfried wang gave at mit in the early 1990s. wang, a staunch advocate of european builderliness in his formal presentation, remarked in discussion afterwards that, by contrast, rem koolhaas’s buildings would fall apart in a few years’ time. but might we also understand this lower performance as applying to ethics as well? christensen’s second major point is that disruptive innovation creates new markets where consumption in that field had not been occurring before. his colleagues cite the example of the chotukool, a small-battery powered refrigerator produced by a company advised by christensen’s consulting firm innosight. david duncan, a senior partner there, confirms that “[b]y the standards we are used to, it doesn’t perform well. it would never sell [in north america]! but in rural india they have sold 100,000 units in the last year or two.”23 the analogy is once again rough, but could we understand the connection in this instance as being to the proliferation of iconic architecture in places it had not hitherto appeared: kazakhstan, azerbaijan, the emirates, and china, and its ethical performance in those contexts? if there is some insight to be gained for architecture from this thought experiment, how might we understand the motivation of somol, whiting, and speaks’s allegiances? the oedipal nature of their assaults has been noted by baird and others. one aspect, however, has not received so much attention: the fact that the promoters of post-critical architecture— whiting, somol, speaks, stan allen, and sylvia lavin—were all at that time pursuing or already in administrative positions in architectural academe. now i do not wish to impute ethically questionable activity to all academic administrators, nor indeed necessarily to all members of this group. but it is nonetheless worth noting that the business model was also widespread in the university by this time, with all the consequences for tenure, academic freedom, and collegial values which we experience today. the antagonists of semi-autonomy and critical architecture, speaks and company, would need to have become entangled, if not embedded, in fundraising, marketing and the academic equivalent of flexible accumulation. in short, a necessary and perhaps ingratiating closeness to capital would have become part of their daily modus operandi. for some, advocating at least a partial autonomy, and a critical distance, from the 15 isparchitecture.com hegemonic social order might well have appeared, in these circumstances, to be a liability. some reflexive institutional critique appears to be necessary here, although this is a subject for another essay.24 what of the ethics of the actual projects of the projective camp? reinhold martin tackled this question in an essay of 2005, taking to task some of that movement’s exemplars for their involvement in the 2002 exhibition and competition for the rebuilding of ground zero. foreign office, martin noted, accompanied their entry with the exhortation: “let’s not even consider remembering…. what for? we have a great site in a great city and the opportunity to have the world’s tallest building back in new york.”25 greg lynn, for his part, asserted that “the transfer of military thinking into daily life is inevitable.”26 the projects, says martin, “monumentalize, in exemplary ‘postcritical’ fashion, the neoliberal consensus regarding new ‘opportunities’ opened up by techno-corporate globalization. accordingly, the responsibility of professionals in the new world order is confined to facilitating the ‘new’ while washing their hands of the overdetermined historical narratives […] through which this new is named.”27 things came to a head at the projective landscape conference, held at the technical university of delft in 2006 and including hays, somol, whiting, speaks, stan allen, roemer van toorn, and reinhold martin, among others. as reported by the web site archined, willem jan neutelings asked “what should he do if he were asked to build a new head office for the fascist vlaams belang party? while the assembled panellists (twenty in total) fiddled uneasily with their glasses, a high-spirited robert somol bellowed ‘take the job’. somol then turned on michael hays: ‘i don’t care what you think. you do your thing and i’ll do mine, and let’s both have fun.’” reinhold martin observed that the “idea […] that the arrival of capitalism opens an immense field of possibility in which the speaks and company, would need to have become entangled, if not embedded, in fundraising, marketing and the academic equivalent of flexible accumulation “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 16 ow en designer can experiment freely is an outstanding example of ideology.” this criticism michael speaks “heartily laughed away saying, ‘the market is something that happens, and what happens is reality, not ideology’.”28 and finally, what of the arch-exemplar of the post-critical, rem koolhaas? at least from his earliest days in america, koolhaas had exhibited a consciously transgressive enthusiasm for the commercial. delirious new york, of course, assigns the power of a subconscious manifesto to the commercial production of manhattan architecture, and while at the institute for architecture and urban studies, koolhaas had produced an exhibition on the work of wallace harrison. the exhibition, even then, had the nietzschean title “beyond good and bad.” two decades later, writing on the effects of globalization on the city, koolhaas remarks that: [w]e realize . . . that we are now moving into uncharted territory, a territory characterized by fluid conditions – flows of traffic, flows of human beings, flows of money, flows of work. […] confronted with this mutation, this new urban condition, we refuse to recognize that we are powerless to forestall it. […] i would like […] to help make us […] a profession able to formulate perfectly rational answers to perfectly insane questions. for it seems clear that we are increasingly confronted with utterly irrational problems, problems that we no longer have the luxury of refusing.29 as louis martin observes, “the iron cage of an oppressive status quo becomes through koolhaas’s sublime descriptions the terrifying splendours of the real, a real in which there is no situation rotten enough for not containing a new positivity. to negativity and resistance, koolhaas opposes an exhilarating acceleration of the real as the only strategy for achieving change.”30 in a 2004 interview with mark leonard, koolhaas attempted to rationalize his acceptance of the cctv commission, then estimated to be worth $740 million, elaborating on the nature of the opportunity: in the cctv building there is a utopian nostalgia that is the foundation of architecture and in my work in the past there have been very few triggers for that. […] what attracts me about china is [that] there is still a state. there is something that can take initiative of a scale and of a nature that almost no other body that we know of today could ever afford or even contemplate.31 apologists for the koolhaasian position have often invoked the image of the surfer as a redemption or transcendence of that position’s affiliation with globalized capital, and as an attempt to redirect narratives of architecture’s powerlessness. a “new pragmatism,” in the face of the overwhelming complexity of undecidable outcomes, informs the choice of ride.32 the surfer, far from being overwhelmed by the inexorable 17 isparchitecture.com force of events, instead is skillful enough to ride the wave, to use its massive energy and power to enable his or her own (spectacular) performance. of this image, several observations need to be made. first, the surfer presents the (deleuzian) trope of the intuitive calculator, able to judge speed and position with an uncanny ability. second, the flow that the wave exemplifies is indeed inexorable, a force of nature, its direction unchangeable (and, ultimately, determining of the surfer’s own). third, in capitalizing upon this force for his performance, the surfer not only valorizes but also aestheticizes the wave: through his work, he gives it legitimacy.33 the image of the surfer, in its positive valence, is another metaphor of innovation in the face of massive change. but how does koolhaas feel about innovation of the kind that motivated michael speaks: iphones, wireless fridges that remind you what to buy, the internet of things? could it be that, with the passage of time, he has finally fallen off his board? as jay merrick wrote in a review of the 2014 venice architecture biennale, directed by rem: despite his craving for data, koolhaas has become increasingly concerned about what he referred to at the biennale launch event as ‘digital regimes’. and he added: ‘i seriously question if it’s safe and sane to surrender more and more of our information … if our current involvement with digital technology continues, our houses will betray us.’34 for those who feel they have witnessed a different kind of betrayal—by the members of the postcritical international star system who seem willing to build anything for anybody anywhere—a turn to architecture as activism appears to offer an ethical alternative.35 amid present-day efforts to instrumentalize architecture once again—but this time as agent of environmental and social redemption—has the argument for semi-autonomy come full circle? activist architecture does, as in stanford apologists for the koolhaasian position have often invoked the image of the surfer as a redemption [...] as an attempt to redirect narratives of architecture’s powerlessness “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 18 ow en anderson’s model, seek to detach itself from the dominant culture—or at least distance itself from it. what is its economic model, after all? some activist work is funded by grants, which is to say potentially by surplus accumulation of capital channeled—or some might say laundered— through philanthropic entities. other activist work is enabled through pro bono professional services and volunteer labor, which is to say again by surplus accumulation that enables members of one class to donate their time to assist another. could we say that these kinds of activist work follow a traditional development aid model, in which there is a charitable transfer of wealth without necessarily being accompanied by capacity building? if so, would research work in international development ethics come into play on these issues? anderson’s criteria for quasi-autonomy include the capacity for fundamental and generalizable contributions to the discipline. activist work, however, can be characterized as having exhibited an abundance of goodwill and, initially at least, a shortage of theory. have such contributions to the discipline occurred—can they occur—if the existing discourse, the existence of a discipline per se are brought into question by activist praxis? do activist practices, then, mirror the predicament of michael speaks, in that from their perspective there is no disciplinary world in which to place the other foot? what theory and discourse as do exist seem to have emerged from areas such as critical urban studies, but these fields, with their emphasis on bottom-up spatial production, are by nature suspicious of elite professional interests.36 the next ethical frontier, i suggest, is to determine how the design disciplines and professions can get on board, in an intellectually productive way, without leaving some of their most valuable baggage behind, and without hijacking the bus. this baggage includes the fundamental and generalizable contributions that anderson still valued so highly: those “new ways of conceiving material form, space, light, and […] implications for use and meaning” that can establish “new references within the discipline,” but pursued without the exclusive “life of the mind […] or of coercive power” leading to that impoverishment of self, discipline and community he feared so much.37 endnotes 1. k. michael hays, “critical architecture: between culture and form,” perspecta 21 (1984): 15. 2. louis althusser, “ideology and ideological state apparatuses (notes towards an investigation),” trans. ben brewster, in lenin and philosophy and other essays (monthly review press, 1971). originally published in 19 isparchitecture.com la pensée, 1970. accessed june 30, 2014, https://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm. 3. stanford anderson, “quasi-autonomy in architecture: the search for an ‘in-between’,” perspecta 33 (2002): 30. 4. ibid., 33. 5. ibid., 35. 6. ibid., 37. 7. hays, “critical architecture,” 16. 8. ibid., 17. 9. ibid., 22. 10. louis martin, “frederic jameson and critical architecture,” in the political unconscious of architecture: re-opening jameson’s narrative, ed. nadir lahiji (farnham: ashgate, 2011), 198. 11. mary mcleod, quoted in louis martin, “frederic jameson and critical architecture,” in the political unconscious of architecture: re-opening jameson’s narrative, ed. nadir lahiji (farnham: ashgate, 2011), 173. 12. robert somol and sarah whiting, “notes around the doppler effect and other moods of modernism,” perspecta 33 (2002): 74. 13. ibid., 75. 14. ibid., 77. 15. indeed, as ole fischer has pointed out, in “post-critical” work, “[d]iagrams, slogans, logos, and new media are deployed as a kind of ‘mental powerpoint’ to reduce the complexity of architectural projects to recognizable icons, core messages, or brands, and thus to promote a fast, approximative perception and an intensive experience or atmospheric ‘feeling’ – particularly with regard to a broad audience of occupants, consumers and clients,” in contrast to the difficulty and resistance of “critical” work. i thank dr. fischer for drawing my attention, after the first presentation of this paper, to his excellent essay which tackles similar issues at greater length. the reader is directed to that paper for a finely nuanced and more extensive discussion of the theoretical ramifications of “the critical.” see ole w. fischer, “architecture, capitalism and criticality,” in the sage handbook of architectural theory, eds. c. greig crysler, stephen cairns, and hilde heynen (london: sage, 2012), 59. 16. michael speaks, “architectural theory and education at the millennium, part 3: theory practice and pragmatism,” a+u 372, no. 9 (2001): 24. 17. ibid., 22. 18. ibid. 19. george baird, “‘criticality’ and its discontents,” harvard design magazine 21 (2004): 18. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 20 ow en 20. ibid., 21. 21. michael speaks, “design intelligence [parts 1-12],” a+u 387-399 (2002-2003). 22. clayton christensen, the innovator’s dilemma (new york: harperbusiness, 2011), quoted in craig lambert, “disruptive genius,” harvard magazine, july-august 2014, 39. 23. ibid., 41. 24. see, for example, my “after the flood: disaster capitalism and the symbolic restructuring of intellectual space,” culture and organization 17, no. 2 (2011): 123–137. 25. reinhold martin, “critical of what? toward a utopian realism,” harvard design magazine 22 (2005): 107. 26. greg lynn, “a new world trade center,” max protetch, www. maxprotetch.com/site/previous/anewwtc/form/index. html, quoted in reinhold martin, “critical of what? toward a utopian realism,” harvard design magazine 22 (2005): 107. 27. martin, “critical of what?,” 107. 28. “design intelligence – speaks & co in delft,” archined, published march 27, 2006, accessed june 24, 2014, http://www.archined.nl/ archined/5303.0.html. spirited and subtly argued defenses of criticality in architectural practice and theory were also mounted by the contributors to the “critical architecture” conference of 2004 and publication of 2007. on the relationship to autonomy, see particularly the editors’ introductory essays in that volume and those of leach, cunningham, benjamin, heynen, barber, dovey, and rice. eds. jane rendell, jonathan hill, murray fraser, and mark dorrian, critical architecture (abingdon: routledge, 2007). 29. rem koolhaas, “understanding the new urban condition: the project on the city,” gsd news (1996): 13. 30. louis martin, “frederic jameson and critical architecture,” 198. 31. mark leonard, “power housing”, financial times, march 6/7 2004, w6-7. 32. see cynthia davidson, “introduction,” anyhow (cambridge, ma/new york: mit press/anyone corporation, 1998), 10, and john rajchman’s essay in the same collection. 33. passages in this section appeared in my introduction to architecture, ethics and globalization (abingdon: routledge, 2009). 34. jay merrick, “rem loves the smell of information in the morning,” architects’ journal, june 6, 2014, 53. 35. see, for example, “architecture and ethics,” architectural record, june 2014, 167-206. 36. as discussion with colleagues, after the first presentation of this paper 21 isparchitecture.com in delft in 2014, suggested, a further productive conjunction might be made with the arguments of erik swyngedouw regarding the post-political in environmental debates. although the proponents of the post-critical in architecture celebrated the expanded ability of designers to embrace the complexity of issues embodied in any contemporary project, it is through professional and technological expertise that this expansion is achieved. swyngedouw too is skeptical about expertise so mobilized and its ability to neutralize sociopolitical debate. 37. anderson, 5. isparchitecture.com from autonomy to pragmatism: objects made moral pauline lefebvre introduction this paper departs from a problem that architects often face: do they really have to choose between their interest in the production of built objects (in their shape, their spatiality, etc.) and their commitment to broader social concerns? must architects focus on social concerns at the expense of the built object in order to be morally responsible? these questions touch on the relations between autonomy and criticality which have been fiercely debated in recent architectural theory: does criticality rest on autonomy? after introducing these controversies and disentangling the notion of autonomy at their center, i propose to look into the philosophical tradition of pragmatism as offering a way out. following some recent interpretations of pragmatism, this paper addresses the possibility of an immanent critique, the reconciliation of ethics and aesthetics, the way ethnographies show architectural objects as active participants in design practice, and investigates how a pragmatist view of ecology invites sensitivity to objects’ moral claims. 1. “engaging autonomy”: objecthood and responsibility responsibility is acquainted with everything but the object: its relations, its origins, its use, life and context. a focus on the building and its objecthood and certainly on its form is simply irresponsible.1 sarah whiting used these words to introduce a lecture entitled “engaging autonomy,” which she gave at sci-arc in fall 2013. she presented her talk as “a plea to acknowledging the importance of the must architects focus on social concerns at the expense of the built object in order to be morally responsible? “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 24 le fe bv re object, for them not to be thrown out in the name of responsibility.”2 her words demonstrate a real concern regarding architecture’s autonomy and its relation to responsibility; she wonders how to maintain architecture’s definition as a specific practice, with specific concerns and skills (designing space and objects), without being dismissed as indifferent to larger moral and social concerns. whiting is worried about what she calls the “context-object opposition,” which tends to polarize two opposed postures: the autonomous architect concerned with the production of objects versus the social architect immersed in moral negotiations. these two poles define a scale on which it would be possible to situate every architectural practice, a scale between the object and the context, between forms and procedures,3 between autonomy and engagement, but also between aesthetics and ethics (figure 1). this scale represents the frequently discussed “intractable conflict between an aesthetically autonomous architecture […] and an ambitious social agenda for the built environment.”4 by introducing her position as one that is “engaging autonomy,” whiting attempts to bridge the extremes: she articulates an ambition at the level of the object’s singularity and at the level of its context. however, by assembling such a contradictory pair of terms, whiting does not really escape the opposition she tries to tackle between the autonomy of the object and the architects’ responsibility to engage with its consequences. when looking at whiting’s own architectural projects, one can see that they are highly formal and conceptual, using disciplinary games based on historical references (e.g., the x house based on a distortion of palladio’s plan, figure 2)5 or geometrical variations (e.g., the golden house based on the development of the box-like volume of the entrance hall) (figure 3).6 one can thus wonder with what context these objects are engaged at all. whiting’s assessment does keep the object well to one side, and “its relations, origins, use, life and context” to the other. yet, whiting’s concern needs to be considered seriously: how to maintain objects at the center of architects’ preoccupations without isolating them from moral concerns? opting for a pragmatist perspective, this paper will challenge whiting’s assertion by the following programmatic proposition: responsibility is acquainted with the object only as far as that object is figure 1: diagram of context-object opposition. 25 isparchitecture.com figure 2: x house, (unbuilt). figure 3: golden house, 2010, princeton, new jersey. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 26 le fe bv re dependent on its relations, origins, use, life, and context. actually, dealing with this problem pragmatically implies that we care for the consequences of our propositions. therefore, this issue will not just require that we expand our definition of built objects; it will also rely on a redefinition of the ‘moral’, shifting our understanding of the term from a delineated domain in which (built) objects are occasionally and graciously included, and often are not. 2. critical or not: disentangling autonomy whiting developed the notion of “engaging autonomy” as an answer to the criticisms she had to face after she had been involved in a vast debate about architects’ autonomy and responsibility. in 2002, whiting co-authored with robert e. somol a provocative paper in an issue of the journal perspecta entitled “mining autonomy.”7 the editors wanted the issue to “examine the evolving legacy of architectural autonomy and its relationship to architecture’s potential to act as a critical agent.”8 whiting and somol’s paper proposed to overthrow what was then called ‘critical architecture’ in favor of an alternative posture, which they named ‘projective architecture’. critical architects had chosen to act from within tight disciplinary limits and to take an oppositional posture to the rest of culture, a posture based on distance and negation. they founded their ‘criticality’ on the autonomy of the discipline, which allowed detachment from contemporary phenomena. criticality, autonomy, and responsibility were tightly bound together. instead, whiting and somol proposed to “shift the understanding of disciplinarity as autonomy to disciplinarity as performance or practice.”9 more importantly, they refused to rely upon “oppositional strategy.”10 because they rejected such forms of ‘criticality’, their paper became the target of fierce objections against what came to be known as the ‘postcritical’ generation.11 those objections largely rested on the assumption that criticality is the only safeguard against irresponsibility and is inevitably bound to autonomy: if deprived of the necessary distance, architects end up driven by market-forces, vulnerable to the pressures of contemporary society and unable to serve for better ends. whiting and somol were accused of ‘compromising with the real.’12 because they wanted to engage the contingencies of actual situations, they were doomed to lose any criticality, which was bound up with distance and resistance. the detractors of the postcritical were not ready to envision an alternative view on criticality itself; they refused to consider a responsible position which would not be based on autonomy. whiting uses her expression “engaging autonomy” to deny she has ever been ‘postcritical’: she reaffirms her rejection of a distant posture (she wants to engage fully contemporary phenomena) while saving the 27 isparchitecture.com specifics of the discipline and of the objects produced there. yet, her contradictory expression remains trapped within the dichotomy it tends to escape. a convincing way out of this sterile opposition still needs to be worked out; this paper seeks to contribute to that issue. the discussion above can only be fully grasped if two related ways of understanding ‘autonomy’ are disentangled. first, autonomy relates to the strict delineation of the field of architecture. second, autonomy relates to the distance and resistance that are considered to be necessary conditions for criticality. both are fully modern conceptions, inherited from kant: first, his notion of arts’ disinterestedness; second, his view on morality as a capacity belonging to autonomous intentional beings facing moral laws. in this context, arts and morality are neatly separated domains: aesthetics on the one side, ethics on the other. but both rely on a certain understanding of autonomy.13 consequently, the scale between autonomy and engagement drafted earlier needs to now organize itself around (at least) three poles instead of two: autonomy of the field, autonomy of the critical subject, engagement with the context (figure 3). this triangular shape greatly helps to understand the positions taken in the debate: ‘critical architecture’ builds its moral criticality on the autonomy of the field; whiting reasserts the objections largely rested on the assumption that criticality is the only safeguard against irresponsibility and is inevitably bound to autonomy “ ” figure 3: re-organization of context-object opposition. ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 28 le fe bv re specificity of the field (as producing and caring about objects) but not its mission of resistance; the objections against the postcritical (critical practice) reaffirm both the necessity to engage the context and to do so critically, meaning from a position of moral autonomy. yet criticality—and moral responsibility with it—remains bound to autonomy in either case, be it of the field or of the subject. in order to take a position in these discussions about architecture’s autonomy and its relationship to criticality, this paper will examine ways in which some interpretations of the philosophy of pragmatism prove useful to overcome the dichotomies that remain. 3. pragmatism 1: soma-aesthetics for an immanent critique interestingly, this much-commented controversy about criticality in architecture has become associated with pragmatism. at some point, the ‘postcritical’ position and its propositions were indeed grouped under the label “a new architectural pragmatism.”14 this expression relates to pragmatism in the common sense of the word: the young architects involved were reasserting practice over theory and were eager to realize actual buildings. but—more surprisingly perhaps—the ‘postcritical’ has also become associated with american pragmatism, i.e., the philosophical tradition initiated by peirce, james, and dewey in the late nineteenth century and recently revived in various fields of academia. indeed, a few years before somol and whiting’s provocative paper, a major conference was organized in new york, which built propositions for architecture upon the philosophical tradition of pragmatism.15 as this initiative shared a number of the same people and the same issues with the postcritical discussion, it is sometimes considered as a precedent.16 richard shusterman, one of the contemporary pragmatist philosophers invited to the conference, took part in the debate for the very reason that it had been associated with pragmatism. shusterman’s work takes over from dewey’s aesthetic philosophy. shusterman’s position is interesting for the present discussion because he is one among those who picked up dewey’s legacy in order to reconcile ethics and aesthetics. for him, pragmatism has the advantage of opposing the kantian legacy by negating both the idea that aesthetic judgment is disinterested and that ethics is based on general rules of behavior. shusterman considers that art and aesthetic judgment should not be seen as totally distinct from ethical considerations and sociopolitical factors.17 at the conference on architecture and pragmatism, he explains how a pragmatist aesthetics inherited from dewey is closer to the experience of art and how it does not restrict itself to abstract arguments formulated outside of this actual experience. shusterman calls the field that he develops from these assumptions “soma-aesthetics.” nine years later, for a conference at the bauhaus, he elaborates on 29 isparchitecture.com this claim and proposes what it could mean for architecture. he decides to address the postcritical controversy because he believes that a pragmatist insight might prove useful. his view is that somol and whiting’s projective proposition has been abusively called ‘postcritical’ due to the reductive idea that “a critical attitude is supposed to require an external and autonomous position—at the same time detached and disinterested.”18 instead, shusterman’s soma-aesthetics proposes “a model of immanent critique in which our critical perspective does not require one to situate oneself completely outside of the situation at hand, but simply necessitates one to look reflexively at that situation without being absorbed by immediate feelings; this is a perspective where the posture is more decentered than external.”19 his definition of critique is based on the capacity of the body to discriminate among experiences: the body poses critical judgments. he applies this model of “immanent critique” to architecture as he believes—along with the socalled ‘postcritical’—that “[architects] cannot stand outside of what entangles them in the world […] the architect can only be complicit and tangle with it.”20 shusterman thus affirms that pragmatism is far from being incompatible with criticality: it offers a helpful alternative view on criticality. in the same text, shusterman attempts to defend a second aspect of somol and whiting’s projective architecture: their emphasis on the atmospheric quality of architectural production. for shusterman, there is a critical potential in those qualities, which is rarely recognized: “suspicion always weights on these dimensions, which are in principle considered as ungraspable and useless for exercising criticality.”21 this view echoes whiting’s concern that what architects are dealing with (designing objects, spaces, atmospheres) is regrettably not associated with any moral or critical capacity. but shusterman explains why he believes that atmospheric qualities and affective dimensions of architecture do have a critical potential: our attention to these aspects can be practiced; they art and aesthetic judgment should not be seen as totally distinct from ethical considerations and sociopolitical factors “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 30 le fe bv re can become the object of conscious (critical) judgments. for shusterman, the challenge of criticality in architecture is in the development of our sensibility to these somatic perceptions. 4. the problematic conflation of ethics and aesthetics such a reconciliation of ethics and aesthetics features many promises but it still needs to overcome certain objections deriving from the fact that architects are more often accused of confusing ethics and aesthetics than they are of keeping them separated. they often pretend to deal with ethical issues directly through the aesthetic dimensions of their oeuvre. they do this by assimilating good aesthetics with morality, by attributing moral virtues to tectonics and forms. in a book that takes the form of a pamphlet against architecture’s autonomy, jeremy till denounces this fact because “ethics are thus detached from their essential condition of being worked out through shared negotiation and instead are situated in a very controlled environment that positions the architect as arbiter.”22 till denies that ethical properties may be attributed to materials or objects or configurations themselves. he denounces the claim that if a brick wall is carefully built, it is not only a source of aesthetic pleasure or technical mastery but also becomes morally valuable. this critique thus brings us back to the ‘object’. till notes that such a conflation of aesthetics and ethics can only happen “in the parallel universe where morals are attached to objects.”23 and he believes that it is a very dangerous conflation, as architects absolve themselves of a part of their responsibility regarding other humans just because they have been faithful to the tectonic properties of the bricks. or even worse, the bricks are made responsible for the consequences rather than those who designed them. that is what happened with modernist social housing, accused on its own of all social troubles, as if the buildings could be detached from those who decide for them, design and maintain them, live in them. till is radical on this topic: “to put it simply: a brick has no morals.”24 he firmly stands on the side of those who upset whiting by stating that “a focus on the building and its objecthood and certainly on its form is simply irresponsible.”25 actually, till’s problem is not with architectural objects in general but with the way they are considered as isolated from their social setting and from their consequences on the human beings affected. the problem with “objecthood” is when it is all about static objects, produced from the inside of an autonomous field of practice, as if they were independent of external matters. what is needed might then just be, as stefan koller notes, “a proper ontology of architecture [which] will individuate architectural entities in a way that accommodates social relations.”26 the question is thus not just about the possible reconciliation of aesthetics and ethics but 31 isparchitecture.com about the way architectural entities are considered. to readdress our moral relationship to objects, we must reconsider the ontological weight we attribute to them. 5. pragmatism 2: ethnography of architectural ‘things’ in the face of that question, yet another pragmatist thread in architecture might be traced. this one appeared under the form of ethnographic accounts of architectural practices. such work consists in attentive depictions of architects at work. ethnographic accounts borrow their methods from similar works conducted in science and technology studies (sts), and their views from the actornetwork theory (ant).27 the main exponent of this thread is albena yaneva, whose first major publication is subtitled “a pragmatist approch to architecture.”28 these ethnographic descriptions of architectural ‘objects’—architecture’s so-called products and tools: buildings, plans, models, etc.—show how far such objects are from being static. by observing how they are mobilized and circulate in a given situation, the ethnographer can point to the fact that objects are acting upon people; they are not only being used. some of these studies focus on the devices used by architects (models, plans, sketches) and depict such devices as active participants in the design process instead of as mere passive tools.29 others show how a building in the making—which has not been built yet and may not be built—does already have a (moral) life of its own as it gathers lots of concerns around it: following the proactive powers of architectural projects to mobilize heterogeneous actors, convincing, persuading or deterring them, buildings will be tackled here as becoming social (instead of hiding behind or serving the social), as active participants in society.30 these ethnographies show how poorly architects are armed to understand the situations they are in and which involve humans as well as nonhumans, in strangely symmetrical ways. usually, nonhumans are neatly separated from humans: they are considered to readdress our moral relationship to objects, we must reconsider the ontological weight we attribute to them. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 32 le fe bv re as static and passive, they are at best useful, at worse constraining; and if they show any traces of activity at all, it is only in support of humans’ projections. together with bruno latour, yaneva regrets that the object is always detached from the concerns it actively provokes: a building is always a ‘thing’ that is, etymologically, a contested gathering of many conflicting demands. […] and yet we either see the uncontested static object standing ‘out there,’ ready to be reinterpreted, or we hear about the conflicting human purposes, but are never able to picture the two together!31 these descriptions of architectural practices offer a radical perspective on nonhumans and the way they engage moral problems posed to architects at work. the authors, however, do not suggest any form of programmatic ambition, except for a methodological agenda. yet, new ways of representing the practice ‘as it actually is’ can result in surprising accounts for practitioners themselves, who might have to reevaluate their practice. these precise (and potentially powerful) descriptions will hopefully nourish more conceptual (more philosophical) and more speculative works in architecture.32 indeed, when ethnography starts to “repopulate” social sciences with nonhumans,33 it opens many philosophical and moral questions: let us admit these beings do play an active role; are they to be considered ‘moral’ as well? once their claim to be taken as such is heard, the contours of the moral itself are redrawn, precisely along these claims. 6. pragmatism 3: an ecology of things several works in moral and political philosophy address these questions from a pragmatist perspective. two of them seem particularly relevant here: emilie hache’s “propositions pour une écologie pragmatique” and jane bennett’s “a political ecology of things”. both opt for a pragmatist approach departing from empirical descriptions of problematic situations on which they then build their moral or political philosophy. their approaches and concepts are based on a double pragmatist legacy: that of the ‘founding fathers’ (mainly james’s moral philosophy and dewey’s political theory) and that of bruno latour (his pragmatist sociology as well as his pluralist empiricism). although they are not dealing with architecture at all, they address our responsibility regarding ‘things’ when their ability to claim is recognized. they might thus serve as sources for further developments in architecture, regarding the problem addressed here. emilie hache’s work provides a pragmatist account of moral responsibility in the face of the present ecological crisis. hache opts for a version of responsibility that is ‘heteronomous’. it is not based on the autonomy of the moral subject who must be responsible for her actions. on the contrary, responsibility is understood as ‘responsiveness’, meaning that one has to respond to claims that are pronounced by others. and with the 33 isparchitecture.com ecological crisis, more and more things start to make claims. also, things—which used to be mute—are much louder when their existence is threatened; humans also become more attentive when they understand that they are directly concerned. hache borrows this idea from latour’s work in political ecology, where he describes the ecological crisis as “a general revolt of the means”34: more ‘objects’ or ‘nonhumans’ require to be considered as ends; they impose themselves as such. their claims impinge on human beings in the form of concerns: glaciers are becoming moral, as they gather concerns around them. opting for a pragmatist perspective, there is no point saying that glaciers are moral as such. for dewey, values are not prior abstract principles; they are not definitely inscribed into things either; instead they manifest themselves in the way we care for things.35 things thus become moral in situations, to the extent that moral concerns gather around them. but it is unfair to consider them as mere material stuff unable to claim: they have their own path of existence, which is now in danger, and which comes into calling for our attention. a pragmatist ‘heteronomous’ responsibility thus allows us to consider things as being made moral. but their morality is not imposed upon them— projected on them—by human beings, who choose once and for all what can be declared moral or not. instead, moral responsibility lies in the relationship one maintains with things. “the moral dimension comes from a certain way to be well treated by another, from the way one addresses another.”36 an idea of morality built on pragmatist philosophy is thus relational: no one and no thing is moral on its own; the question is always about “becoming moral together.” responsibility relies on the attribution of unforeseen competences to another, forming attributes that did not preexist the relation. an answer to our initial problem starts to appear here: architects’ responsibility also depends on the attribution of moral capacities to ‘objects’ as far as we interact with them. also, it becomes clear that it is not a matter of definitely inscribing ‘objects’ into architects’ responsibility also depends on the attribution of moral capacities to ‘objects’ “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 34 le fe bv re the realm of moral, even under certain conditions; the realm of the moral itself is redefined in a pragmatist way. as william james notes, there is no moral in vacuo and there can be no definition of moral outside of given situations where concerns emerge.37 jane bennett’s work follows arguments close to hache’s and she is very explicit on the agenda this entails. she affirms that “the ethical task at hand here is to cultivate the ability to discern nonhuman vitality, to become perceptually open to it.”38 despite of all the similarities with hache’s pragmatist moral philosophy, bennett’s appeal to “vital materialism” introduces more than a difference of vocabulary. by insisting on things’ vitality or vibrancy, vital materialism tends to attribute to things a certain degree of life which is independent from their relation with humans. yet, bennett situates our ethical responsibility in the “assemblages in which we find ourselves participating,”39 and thus also insists on the relational aspect of responsibility. by defining ethics as “a cultivated discernment of the web of agentic capacities,”40 she insists on the responsibility which a pragmatist moral philosophy imposes on every practitioner: an inquiry on all beings concerned, characterized by an increased attention to their demands to be heard, and followed by the obligation to respond to them. 7. conclusion: considering objects otherwise all these pragmatist insights provide a promising answer to the issue raised by whiting’s concern that “responsibility is acquainted with everything but the object: its relations, origins, use, life and context”. this problem matters and requires a proper answer: can we care for objects and still be morally responsible? would it be possible for architects not to be forced to choose among these concerns, not to consider them as mutually exclusive? as formulated, this problem may lead us to seek moral attributes in objects themselves, in order to include them in the definition of a moral domain populated with moral beings. the question then becomes: under what conditions can an object be considered moral? but this question cannot be asked nor answered in general. it is not enough to reverse whiting’s sentence and argue that ‘responsibility is acquainted with the object, only as far as it is dependent on its relations, origins, use, life and context.’ responsibility is a matter of considering objects otherwise,41 recognizing their agency, hearing their ability to claim, and acting in the face of their consequences. but, opting for a pragmatist perspective, the aim is not to define objects as moral once and for all, to include them in the realm of moral, while leaving the moral domain untouched. indeed, following william james, the moral has nothing to with a delineated domain where some things are included while others are excluded. according to him, situations become moral as soon as claims emerge, because they imply 35 isparchitecture.com obligations to be dealt with. thus, pragmatism does not allow philosophy to decide which objects are generally to be considered moral or not. instead, morality is a matter of situation; the philosopher can only inquire on ever more ways of being moral, ways which are always situated. consequently, morality requires those who are involved in a given situation (designers among others) to note how objects claim and to invent ways to make them matter. it is in this sense only that whiting’s sentence can be reversed, and experimental answers can be tried with in architectural practice. endnotes 1. sarah whiting, “engaging autonomy,” sci-arc media archive (presentation, public lecture series, sci-arc, los angeles, ca, november 7, 2013), accessed august 23, 2013, http://sma.sciarc.edu/video/sarahwhiting-engaging-autonomy-2. 2. ibid. 3. hashim sarkis, “on the line between procedures and aesthetics,” in the pragmatist imagination: thinking about “things in the making”, ed. joan ockman (new york: princeton architectural press, 2000), 92–103. 4. tom spector, “pragmatism for architects,” contemporary pragmatism 1, no. 1 (2004): 133–149. 5. “x house,” ww architecture, accessed august 23, 2013, http:// wwarchitecture.com/projects/x%20house/x%20house.html. 6. “golden house,” ww architecture, accessed august 23, 2013, http://wwarchitecture.com/projects/golden%20house/ golden%20house.html. 7. robert somol and sarah whiting, “notes around the doppler effect and other moods of modernism,” perspecta 33 (2002): 72-77. 8. michael osman et al., “editor’s statement,” perspecta 33 (2002): 7. 9. somol and whiting, “notes around the doppler effect,” 75. 10. ibid. 11. georges baird, “‘criticality’ and its discontents,” harvard design magazine 21 (2004): 16–21. 12. roemer van toorn, “no more dreams? the passion of reality in dutch architecture...and its limitations,” harvard design magazine 21 (2004): 22–31; reinhold martin, “critical or what? toward a utopian realism,” harvard design magazine 22 (2005): 104–109. 13. cf. nathaniel coleman, “the myth of autonomy,” architecturephilosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 157-178 for a more precise portrait of the autonomist project in architecture. my own ‘disentanglement’ of the senses of autonomy, however, differs from coleman’s. 14. william s. saunders, ed., the new architectural pragmatism: a harvard ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 36 le fe bv re design magazine reader (minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press, 2007). 15. joan ockman, ed., the pragmatist imagination: thinking about “things in the making” (new york: princeton architectural press, 2000). 16. a. krista sykes, constructing a new agenda: architectural theory 19932009 (new york: princeton architectural press, 2010). 17. richard shusterman, “the convergence of ethics and aesthetics: a genealogical, pragmatist perspective,” in the hand and the soul: aesthetics and ethics in architecture and art, ed. sanda iliescu (charlottesville: university of virginia press, 2009). 18. richard shusterman, soma-esthétique et architecture : une alternative critique (genève: haute école d’art et de design, 2010), 35. (translated by the author) 19. ibid., 36. 20. ibid., 34. 21. ibid., 46. 22. jeremy till, architecture depends (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 2009), 176. 23. ibid., 174. 24. ibid., 177. 25. whiting, “engaging autonomy.” 26. stefan koller, “architects on value: reducing ethics to aesthetics?,” in ethics, design and planning of the built environment, eds. claudia basta and stefano moroni (new york: springer, 2013), 61. 27. albena yaneva, “understanding architecture, accounting society,” science studies 21, no. 1 (2008): 3–7. 28. albena yaneva, the making of a building: a pragmatist approach to architecture (oxford: peter lang, 2009).2009 29. sophie houdart, “des multiples manières d’être réel,” terrain 46 (2010): 107–122; albena yaneva, made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2009). 30. yaneva, the making of a building, 18. 31. bruno latour and albena yaneva, “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move: an ant’s view of architecture,” in explorations in architecture: teaching, design, research, ed. reto geiser, (basel, switzerland: birkhäuser, 2008), 86. 32. bruno latour’s work is exemplary of such a continued enterprise: departing from a series of ethnographic inquiries into modern practices (science, law, economics, etc.), the anthropologist lately turned into a philosopher: his inquiry into modes of existence turns the empirical material collected into the ontological project of pluralizing modes of existence. 37 isparchitecture.com see bruno latour, an inquiry into modes of existence: an anthropology of the moderns, trans. catherine porter (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2013). 33. olivier thiéry and sophie houdart, humains, non humains: comment repeupler les sciences sociales (paris: la découverte, 2011). 34. bruno latour, politics of nature: how to bring the sciences into democracy, trans. catherine porter (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2004). 35. john dewey, la formation des valeurs (paris: les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2011). 36. emilie hache, ce à quoi nous tenons: propositions pour une écologie pragmatique (paris: les empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2011), 32. (translated by the author) 37. william james, “the moral philosopher and the moral life,” international journal of ethics (1891), reprinted in william james, the will to believe (new york: longmans, green & company 1897). 38. jane bennett, vibrant matter: a political ecology of things (durham and london: duke university press, 2010), 14. 39. ibid., 37. 40. ibid., 38. 41. in a way, my proposition follows david leatherbarrow’s when he proposes an “architecture oriented otherwise,” an architecture “oriented beyond itself,” which would accommodate forces beyond the architect’s control. but only in a way, because leatherbarrow’s notion of orientation focuses more on the way architectural objects inscribe themselves or distinguish themselves from their physical surroundings, and less on the way the physical environment can be taken into account and thereby be made moral. see david leatherbarrow, architecture oriented otherwise (new york: princeton architectural press, 2008). isparchitecture.com heidegger on thinking about ethos and man’s dwelling 1 diana aurenque heidegger’s reflections on dwelling point us to a distinct ethos, a distinct way of being in the world. as he puts it in “letter on humanism,” “dwelling is the essence of being-in-the-world.”2 he thus explicitly relates the theme(s) of ‘being-in’, themes raised in his early work, to that of dwelling, and thus to thinking about ethos. as heidegger frequently reminds us, ‘ethos’ (ἦθος) means “the dwelling of man, his sojourn in the midst of all that is.”3 already at this juncture, it is decisive to hold on to the idea that ethos, understood as sojourn, always relates us to an obligation of sorts.4 this much transpires if we consider that being without sojourn indicates a state of up-rootedness. and a person who is uprooted, without sojourn, is a person who ‘stands’ nowhere, and may well not understand much of her own position either. in the course of the present paper i would like to show, accordingly, that heidegger’s philosophy not only essentially comprises a reflection on ethos, on man’s sojourn in the world, but also that this reflection queries a genuine obligation man enters. that reflection thus queries whether there is an appropriate way of residing or sojourning, and seeks to articulate an exemplary dwelling for man. and if (as remains to be shown) there is furthermore an appropriate way of human sojourn, of ethos, then this trajectory will also contain, or afford, direction and guidance. it contains direction insofar as exemplary ethos denotes something we need to seek. it is not the case that humans, by their very nature, are endowed with an appropriate ethos. ethos is rather, and actually, a becoming—is ethos, understood as sojourn, always relates us to an obligation of sorts. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 40 a ur en q ue something that exists historically, or that happens in existence. dwelling, as heidegger frequently puts it, “is something we have yet to learn.”5 he emphasizes repeatedly how we always are already in the world—always already enjoy a sojourn in it of sorts. and even so, we have to obtain a certain distance from the very form of ethos we are most familiar with, an ethos we enjoy as a matter of course and without much reflection. such lack of reflection accrues from the routines of our everyday life and a certain obliviousness towards being itself. by gaining a distance from that familiar ethos we can make truly ‘our own’ both the world and ourselves. without such distance, everyday phenomena comprising things, fellow human beings, and one’s own being lose the very value that makes them themselves. heidegger beckons us towards a particular form of sojourn not only in his late works, but also in his early freiburger lectures or even in being and time. but his late works, this paper will show, deal with the matter and related themes more directly and explicitly than previous works. dwelling and the fourfold concerns with spatiality exert a formative influence on heidegger’s language in his late works, and constitute a cornerstone of his reflections in those works. in his late thought, the problematization of man’s sojourn receives explicit elaboration. words like ‘dwelling’, ‘sojourn’, and ‘ethos’ now feature in the foreground of his (so-called) ‘ontic-historical’ reflections. while a certain reflection on ethos forms a recurrent theme across heidegger’s thought, it is only in the context of his ‘topology of being’6 that heidegger begins to explicitly reflect on human sojourn and human dwelling. unlike in being and time, heidegger’s late work is no longer concerned with the essential and inessential modes in which dasein or a distinctly human way of being takes on existence. rather, his main concern is now with the essential and inessential ways in which humans design or conceive of their being, their sein. in this regard, dwelling is central. his essay “building dwelling thinking” makes it rather clear that ‘dwelling’ is not merely conceived of as one’s having or possessing an abode or roof over one’s head: it rather designates “the main feature of human existence (dasein).”7 on the one hand, we are to think of human existence as arising from dwelling; on the other, the nature of (making) poetry is to be determined as (a form of) building.8 dwelling, in its inner contours, has to be traced to and thematized as dwelling and (the making of) poetry. just as dwelling can only be obtained through building, true building only happens to further dwelling. heidegger here refers to an etymological relation between ‘i am’ (ich bin) and ‘building’ (bauen).9 in that regard, the 41 isparchitecture.com ‘i am’ that goes with ‘building’ actually denotes ‘i dwell’. he writes, “the way i am and you are, the way in which we humans are on this earth – that is building, that is dwelling.”10 making poetry and dwelling are likewise related in their origin. to make poetry is not merely one (of many possible ways of) “letting oneself dwell”: it rather denotes “the actual ways of letting oneself dwell.”11 heidegger terms the essential and actual (or proper, eigentlich) dwelling a sojourn in the fourfold (geviert). this ‘fourfold’ denotes the gathering of four domains or ‘quarters’, namely heaven and earth, divine and mortal.12 and this gathering receives expression in a “world play,”13 that is, denotes the actual form in (and as) which human existence realizes itself or manifests in a world of things. accordingly, the truth about (human) being becomes manifest in this fourfold: “we thought of the truth of being in worlds[,] of ‘world’ as the mirror play of the fourfold of heaven and earth, of mortals and immortals.”14 more precisely, heidegger conceives of the dwelling in the fourfold as a poetic way of dwelling. dwelling poetically if man dwells in the fourfold, he dwells poetically.15 heidegger takes over hölderlin’s poetics of man’s ‘poetic dwelling’: “full of merit is the man who in his toil manages to produce works.”16 human toil and creation of a work is here interpreted as an accomplishment (such as, for instance, man-made culture). but that accomplishment does not suffice, by itself, to understand human existence or dasein in its foundation, insofar as culture is only a derived consequence of the more original ‘poetic dwelling’ of man. in his lecture on hölderlin (winter semester, 1934-1935), heidegger gives a clue for understanding ‘poetic dwelling’: “by this i mean: the historical existence or dasein of man is borne from a foundation, and directed by that [mode of] being which poets experience ahead [of the rest of us], the ‘i am ‘ that goes with ‘building’ actually denotes ‘i dwell’ “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 42 a ur en q ue which they put into verbal garb for the first time and thereby bring to the people.” 17 it follows that the poetic has to be understood as an originating and measure-bestowing endowment,18 because to found something means “the foundation of what hitherto was not.”19 poetic (use of) language brings to the fore a design or concept of being for an entire community. the way that ‘being’ beckons man (here) corresponds to how the ancients conceived of the divine to beckon in poetic creation. this leads heidegger to say that “the poet […] is a founder of being.”20 if heidegger says (with hölderlin) that poets found “what persists,”21 what exactly does this founding moment denote? for poetry neither discovers, nor invents, the historic dimension of human existence as such. rather, that dimension is being ‘founded’ in this sense: poetry corresponds to the enunciation of being itself. in the unconstrained creation of poetry, the boundary between the merely possible and the real is created anew. the poet’s “dream yields the not-yet-appropriated fullness of the possible and preserves a transfigured remembrance of the real.”22 that remembrance of the real is such that “the possible and (more precisely) what is still to come, arrest our expectations, and arise as one where art bestows history, a dream.”23 this new order of things— heidegger calls it the poets’ “dream”—is “terrible, because for those it shows itself to, the dream rips them out of a careless sojourn in a reality they are used to, and throws them into the horrors of the unreal.”24 the expression “horrors of the unreal” refers to the infinite expanse of ‘the possible’; that expanse appears as “horror” because its fleeting nature cannot be grasped by purposive or practical rationality. the horror it instills is the terror of the unknown and uncertain, a horror man attempts to evade and flee along his life’s path. the poet does not reside or remain in “a careless (mode of) residing”25 but copes with the fleeting nature (and contingency) of human existence through his creative work. for heidegger, dwelling poetically ultimately means sensitive attention to things. this dwelling is a stance “in the presence of the divinities,” a stance of solemnity “towards the nearness of things’ essence.”26 the poet attends (and respects) in his poetic dwelling the gathering of things in a way that respects their diversity and coherence. the poet dwells in a manner that itself is a preservation happening in poetic dwelling. but this is only possible so long as the poet remains awake and sober in relation to those things. accordingly, the stance in dwelling poetically must be sober and attentive: to acquire free use of one’s own ability means to ever more exclusively acquiesce in being open towards what one is assigned – acquiesce in alertness of what is yet 43 isparchitecture.com to come, in a sobriety that […] retains only what is needed. a sober, attentive openness towards the sacred is at once a concentration on the quiet, corresponding to that ‘resting’ on which the poet dwells and thinks. this resting is an ability to remain in one’s own.27 such “learning” of man’s own poetic essence simply requires a radical and attentive willingness to accommodate oneself with the order of the world, an order that arises from the world’s becoming. or, because we already are poets, we have to become poets. this signals, not merely an element of pindar in heidegger’s philosophy, but also the thought that ‘dwelling poetically’ is to remain (persist) in conformity with what is. ‘dwelling poetically’ is something as yet to be attained—it is, for heidegger, something one needs to make one’s own. by dwelling poetically one realizes a return to ‘one’s own’, a state rendered attainable through recognition of the foreign or alien: “to be freely able to draw on one’s own, to first acquire free use of one’s own, first requires confrontation with the foreign.”28 thus man has to become a “traveler,”29 needs “to render oneself, in what is foreign, strong and ready for what is one’s own; for what is one’s own cannot be acquired by a sudden grasp for the (apparent) own.”30 man must appropriate what is his own, and that requires a process of appropriation intimately related to experience of the foreign. such selfappropriation is certainly not easy: “what is one’s own is hardest to find and, thus, easiest to miss.”31 precisely because it is hardest to find, “its search has to be longest, and as long as it’s sought, it won’t be lost.”32 heidegger calls this search for one’ s own a “steady reluctance,” namely “the reluctance of one who dwells long on the same spot, looks forward and backwards, because he searches and persists in a point of transition, a threshold. finding and appropriating one’s own, is at once a reluctant transition.”33 he who is searching for his own, and understands himself to be ‘on his way’ to himself or journeying to himself,34 dwells poetically. for heidegger, dwelling poetically ultimatley means sensitive attention to things. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 44 a ur en q ue heidegger already announced the relation between “self-hood”35 and actual dwelling in his introduction to metaphysics (delivered in the summer term of 1935): “man only reaches himself, and is a self, in a mode of historicity and questioning.”36 man’s self-hood can thus not be attained without a certain stance, an idiosyncratic form of residence or sojourn. only by dwelling poetically can man be brought to accord with his own essence—meaning, can man realize what he always and already is: the most uncanny. “to be the most uncanny – that is the foundational trait of man’s essence.”37 via poetry and the disclosure of historic space—the location of our actual dwelling accomplished in poetry—humans attain access to themselves. poetic dwelling has its own measure in persistence: “return endows the persistence of what is unequal. when that persists, then that persistence alone is in which fate can persist in a state of purity.”38 heidegger calls this “persistence of a persisting fate” “the measure of actual dwelling,”39 as it shows itself in the measure of actual poetic dwelling. and that persistence is precisely a time of celebration, meaning, a time for the unusual and the rare, and thereby the moment in which fertile rupture occurs with one’s customary and familiar relations to the world. the significance—even the reality—of the familiar is put into question, occasioning a return to the uncanny. dwelling poetically is, in that light, this idiosyncratic persisting in the actual place, in the fourfold opened up towards whichever thing we face: “to persist is, now, no longer the mere insistence of the readyto-hand. persistence happens. it brings the four into the light of their own.”40 dwelling and measure heidegger’s reflections engage the ethical also in another respect— with respect to their ideas of measure and measuring. here, the heavenly receives special attention: “man has always already measured himself as (hu)man in relation to something, and in relation to something heavenly.”41 the heavenly, however, is only gathered by a measure—the divine. when heidegger, with hölderlin, tells us that in dwelling man “measures” himself against—that is, competes with42—the deity, heidegger primarily means that existing man always has to find anew the interrelation that gathers things together. that measure is not rendered present by an invention of man—but only occurs in relation to the respective way in which a thing allows itself to be seen. what heidegger calls “measuring” reveals itself in the act of making poetry.43 the poet gathers a measure of all things from the things showing themselves. this measure is, for hölderlin, an unknown god,44 always 45 isparchitecture.com alien and never familiar. equating the divinity with a measure—moreover, an unknown measure at that—is, however, problematic: “the divinity as he who he is, is unknown to hölderlin, and the divinity qua this unknown is verily the poet’s measure.”45 that the divinity should be something revealed by the heavens also means that hölderlin’s divinity—the measure—is to be understood in the respective context of its becoming apparent, in the heavens of the fourfold. the divinity is kept open as precisely an open measure through its dwelling in the fourfold. the poet’s measure is, in this sense, never an external and already decided one, but rather becomes the measure as things command, meaning, [the measure of] the fourfold: “building (das bauen),” which is poetics, “appropriates from the fourfold the measurements for all cross-measurements of the spaces, which in turn assume [their] space through places that bestow them.”46 as heidegger puts it in his 1970 essay “man’s dwelling,” “earthly poets are just those who take measure of a heavenly measure.”47 precisely because the poet knows better than anyone else that there is nothing that is unique and bestows measure and meaning for all time, is he able to ever bestow new being: “it bestows higher clarity, one that enables all things to appear in their own and which provides a measure to all that is mortal.”48 in that regard, the poets’ saying(s) correspond to the voice of being. since being ever appears under new historical guises, there is a never-finished need for repetition, as occurs through being founded poetically. dwelling poetically is the possibility of an actual sojourn of man, in contrast to the careless sojourn in an age of modern technology. in his lecture “wherefore poets?,” heidegger emphatically notes that technology is, so to speak, an illusory or deceptive sojourn of man. it is, “as if there could be – for the relation of essence, by which man is related to the whole of being through the technical what heidegger calls “measuring” reveals itself in the act of making poetry. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 46 a ur en q ue will – a segregated residence in an annex building, an annex able to offer more than a transitory way out of self deceptions (such as taking refuge in the greek pantheon).”49 in poetry, a return to ‘the open’ is drawn—that very open that remains shut in a technical ethos. to dwell poetically thus means to persist in that openness in which things come to the fore first and show themselves in their truth. it is about opening up to, and letting in, the truth of things, the truth of other people, of the world. insofar as the things-that-are (das seiende) are conceived in their relative determinacy in relation to their historic origin, these things remain open towards being, in dwelling and thinking: “in thinking we first learn of dwelling in that region, in which occur the overcoming of being’s fate, the overcoming of the constellation (das gestell).”50 only by man dwelling in the fourfold, a fourfold realized poetically, is the possibility of ethos in an age dominated by ‘constellation’ possible. here, the actual ethos is always already latently present in ‘the constellation’. man cannot but relate to the poetic, cannot but be (in an actual or inauthentic way) poetic, for “even the man of today’s age dwells, in his own way, poetically,”51 as heidegger puts it in “man’s dwelling.” yet, on the border of paradox, heidegger inserts an ethical measure into the poetic, into its very name: “man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way – namely, that is, as per (unter) the name of his dasein, unpoetically.”52 heidegger says, echoing hölderlin, that our mode of dwelling today is “unpoetic.”53 it is a mode in which “man seizes measure from an earth that his machinations leave disfigured.”54 the ‘unpoetic’ dwelling in the ‘constellation’ is a sojourn in which man relates himself to the whole world (all things in it, other people, and his own being) by seizing domination. if the unpoetic nature of our being in the world today is conceived as such, this means that “there is no measure on this earth, but rather that the earth can give no measure when it is quantified on a planetary scale, that the earth is carried away in the lack of measure.”55 poetic dwelling registers this in “the lack of holy names” and “the deity’s death”: only a sojourn in the open region, which smacks of the lack [of holy names], permits insight into that, which today is, but from which it is lacking.”56 in this regard the poet’s role comes to the fore, paradigmatically: the poet is a paradigm and exemplar, for he not merely gazes but also shows, has “the demonstrating gaze for what is open, an openness in which the divinities alone become guests and men can build an abode within which the true is, and of which men can grab hold of.”57 such bestowing of dwelling is the original dwelling of the poet, for this measure originally founds the actual dwelling of man. the poet accomplishes this by having the measure designed with ever a view to allowing himself to get 47 isparchitecture.com close to the, ever differently appearing, world. the poet’s measure, put differently, is ever built anew as the situation commands. poetic speech and its dwelling dwelling poetically, then, receives prominence in poetic speech. “how does man dwell poetically? he dwells thus because he speaks thus.”58 the poet draws on “the free use of his own ability,”59 meaning, he does not use language,60 but rather takes language for what it originally is, namely as endowment. his bestowing through language is set in conformity with being,61 and thus his endowment conforms to “the openness for what he is assigned to, the alertness of what is yet to come.”62 the poetic endowment of words resides thus in the openness for what is to come and ever possible. such openness for the alien and foreign is the poetic dwelling of the poet—a place of residence that the gods visit where they are [our] ‘guests.’63 only the poet, possessing an “essential gaze for the possible,”64 may create the very openness necessary to enable the gods to appear. the possible and the possible foundation of all assembly65 can only appear when room for such an appearance has been opened. the divinities are thus guests in our language. poetic dwelling must first become hospitality, a friendly waiting on and for the gods. whether or not man welcomes the gods with hospitality is his own decision. if he decides in favor then his words respond to the claims of the gods. consequently, man decides in favor of his belonging to the occasion or happening. poetic language serves conformity with that happening in which the gods only begin to speak (and commit themselves) to us. the word naming the divinities’ claim is the word remaining faithful to the particular (and only) selfdisplay of the phenomena. a description of how things are through poetic language is not a seizing, a determination of a thing, but the literal mirroring of that thing in the very manner it appears in. a the poet is a paradigm and exemplar, for he not merely gazes but also shows. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 48 a ur en q ue word’s validity arises for heidegger not in the “public claim of what is written,”66 but purely in the word’s relation or obligation to the thing itself. as heidegger emphasizes time and again, man has to learn actual dwelling as the dwelling of the poet. the poet joyously dwells in that “sparse nearness,”67 meaning, he knows that what appears is not the only possibility of openness (of becoming apparent), in contrast to man who only abides in the public. and since only poetic man “has the demonstrative gaze for the open,”68 it is his task to help other people to build their abodes such that in them is truth. the poet’s role is, however, for heidegger “neither to instruct, nor to educate”, but rather “he permits the reader to let be, so that he may attain by himself an affection towards the essential, to which the friend of the family [the poet] already tends so as to talk to us.”69 others don’t yet know that sojourn in “sparse nearness”—they have to yet learn how to dwell. the poet helps others to return to their home. this home is the proximity to the origin. in that home man recognizes himself, not only as “someone learning of things,” but also as someone knowing that things are “in strife.”70 the fundamental mood of reluctance is “the mood of a thinking come home to the origin.”71 akin to the underlying mood of reluctance in heidegger’s 1936-1938 contributions to philosophy, reluctance here is the “knowledge that origin cannot be experienced immediately.”72 if man persists in this fundamental mood, he knows that the mystery is more encompassing than any specific openness of being, and he remains in a stance open to the possible. in dwelling poetically, man knows that the concealed, the secret, the original, and the indemonstrable can never be transferred completely into the determinate and present. conclusion: dwelling and phenomenological ethos dwelling poetically turns out to be the actual sojourn, the actual ethos of man. man here remains open towards the possible, alert to how individual phenomena become apparent. if we re-examine that ethos more carefully, it becomes impossible to reconcile with the very possibility of an existence bound by rules a priori. the measure of poetic dwelling only ever arises from the respective sojourn in the company of things, and not from a pre-existing measure. to dwell poetically one has to forfeit the very domain of the moral, a domain in which good and evil have already been decided upon. by poetry, “the region will remain open for the presence of the mortals in [that region].”73 and yet this forfeiture of morality occurs in favor of an ethos in which the truth of things, of world and others, can attain their validity in their respective and very own way. in this way poetic dwelling connects to a philosophical ethos—because in this dwelling it is paramount to not miss out on the true self-appearance of the phenomena. 49 isparchitecture.com or put differently: the task is to take up a [form of] residence in which the equanimity74 towards the truth of things is preserved—and not the obstinate will to security. furthermore, the philosophical ethos accentuated in dwelling poetically can be said to receive primary articulation as a phenomenological ethos. how the phenomena themselves are to be perceived can never be dictated externally, but exclusively from the phenomena themselves and the very context or correlation in which they appear to us in the first place. the phenomena and their possible characters are precisely what is preserved in poetic dwelling and its poetic, endowing speech. dwelling is for heidegger of such a kind that man has to take responsibility for himself. dwelling thus carries an insurmountable intrinsic paradox: we always already dwell with what is original; precisely because we do, it remains concealed: “to dwell in one’s own is that which arises last, rarely comes together, and always remains hardest.”75 and that is why dwelling as dwelling has to be yet acquired when it comes to man, so that man can truly be what he already has been—namely, “uncanny” and foreign unto himself.76 “the most uncanny of the uncanny is man himself.”77 in his own being uncanny, foreign, and without home, resides man’s essence, even when man himself may not see this. humans essentially dwell in the fourfold, and yet in the exiguous age of modern technology they dwell without awareness of their own existence: “not yet are the mortals owners of their own essence.”78 it appears as if man dwells asleep in the fourfold. dwelling becomes what is customary,79 and escapes notice. if it does so escape notice, however, the essence of dwelling “can never be pondered as the foundational trait of being human.”80 accordingly, the age of technological domination becomes an age bereft of home and earth. man has become estranged to his own essential dwelling, and this we always already dwell with what is original; precisely because we do, it remains concealed. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 50 a ur en q ue estrangement of his essence constitutes a loss of essence itself. just as home is a becoming—namely a return to one’s own through the unfamiliar and foreign,—dwelling in the fourfold embodies that moment in which we sojourn once again with what is original. beyond that, dwelling in the fourfold denotes a specific dwelling radically different from everyday dwelling under the dominance of technology. to at all recognize the “actual want of dwelling”81 is enough to put us on a path to rescue, even if that rescue can only happen by a re-claiming of essential sojourn, of dwelling in nearness to the truth of being. heidegger’s thought “that the mortals have to ever first search for the essence of dwelling, they have to yet learn how to dwell,”82 directly portends the domain of original ethics and its original ethos. human being realizes itself only by a sojourn in the fourfold and the world of things. man’s essence only becomes manifest through a particular dwelling: “to spare the fourfold – to rescue the earth, receive the heavens, expect the gods, and accompany mortals – this four-fold sparing is the simple essence of dwelling.”83 man has to acknowledge this ‘simple essence’ of dwelling. heidegger’s enlightenment of man’s dwelling indicates the actual and thus highest form of dwelling. heidegger’s own reflections on ethos constitute a gesture indicating direction. there is a concealed and yet actual and original mode of existence, one we have to seek. dwelling in the fourfold is something we have to yet reach. and we will only reach it by coming to recognize it as man’s true dwelling. endnotes 1. this paper builds on my book, diana aurenque, ethosdenken: auf der spur einer ethischen fragestellung in der philosophie martin heideggers (freiburg im breisgau: verlag karl alber, 2001), and was translated by stefan koller. 2. martin heidegger, “letter on humanism,” in the heidegger gesamtsausgabe (ga), volume 9, page 358.—translator’s note: the gesamtsausgabe is an ongoing effort to collect the complete works of heidegger in german. with the exception of “man’s dwelling”, all heidegger translations in this paper are original to the paper, and are from here on referenced in abbreviated form, by ga volume and page number. 3. heidegger, “essay on heraclitus,” ga 55:214. 4. translator’s note: heidegger’s term for ‘being obliged’ denotes our being bound, existentially rather than morally, to something or other—even the world itself, as heidegger explains in “man’s dwelling.” see heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:215. 5. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:163. for an alternative 51 isparchitecture.com translation of this essay see martin heidegger, poetry, language, thought, trans. albert hofstadter (new york: harper row, 1971), 141-160. 6. heidegger, “from the experience of thinking,” ga 13:84. 7. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:193. for an alternative translation of this essay see heidegger, poetry, language, thought, 213-229. 8. translator’s note: as before, an idiomatic verb for ‘to make poetry’ is sorely lacking in english. such a verb exists in german and greek, and denotes not just the creation of verse (rather than prose), but more generally, to make things unconstrained by preconception and established technique. 9. cf. also heidegger, prolegomena, ga 20:213: “i dwell, reside in (and with) the world as my familiar other.” 10. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:149. 11. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:193. 12. heidegger, “the nature of language,” ga 12:202. the term further contrasts an understanding of the world as ‘gestell’, an understanding both ego-centric and dominated by means-ends practical rationality. for discussion of the fourfold, see also heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” “building dwelling thinking,” and “the thing,” as discussed below. 13. ibid. 14. heidegger, “the turn,” ga 11:121. 15. cf. heidegger, “language and home,” ga 13:180. 16. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:89. for an alternative translation, see martin heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, trans. keith hoeller (new york: humanity books, 2000). 17. heidegger, on hölderlins hymnen ‘germania’ and ‘the rhein’, ga 39:184. 18. cf. heidegger, “johann peter hebel,” ga 16:493-494: “true and elevated poetry always accomplishes this one thing only: bringing the nonapparent into appearance.” 19. heidegger, on hölderlin’s hymns ‘germania’ and ‘the rhine’, ga 39:184. 20. ibid., 33. 21.heidegger, elucidations of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:41. 22. heidegger, on hölderlin’s hymn ‘remembrance’, ga 52:121. 23. ibid. 24. heidegger, elucidations of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:113. 25. ibid. 26. ibid., 42. 27. ibid., 118. translator’s note: observe that the german for ‘one’s own’ (das eigene) here and in the sequel allows an impersonal reading where the english does not; comparable to how english translators of being and time have to render heidegger’s decidedely impersonal das man as ‘the they’. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 52 a ur en q ue 28. heidegger, on hölderin’s hymn ‘remembrance’, ga 52:123. 29. heidegger, elucidations of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:23-24. 30. heidegger, on hölderin’s hymn ‘remembrance’, ga 52:123. 31. ibid. 32. ibid. 33. ibid., 124. 34. or, wanderung. see heidegger, “address on hebel,” ga 16:537. 35. heidegger, introduction to metaphysics, ga 40:152. 36. ibid. 37. ibid.,160. 38. heidegger, eludications of hölderin’s poetry, ga 4:105. 39. ibid. 40. heidegger, “the thing,” ga 7:175. translator’s note: (to be) ‘ready-tohand’ is the near literal translation of ‘vorhanden(sein)’, a key term of being and time. see heidegger, being and time, ga 2. 41. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:199. 42. translator’s note: the german ‘messen’ can importantly mean both. 43. heidegger, “…poetically man dwells…,” ga 7:200. 44. cf. ibid., 200-201. 45. ibid. 46. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:171. 47. heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:215. 48. ibid. 49. heidegger, “wherefore poets?,” ga 5:294-295. 50. heidegger, “the turn,” ga 11:71. translator’s note: ‘constellation’ (gestell) denotes the (technological) contrast of the fourfold (geviert). 51. heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:219. in order not to clutter the main text, lengthy quotations from this text have been moved to a separate appendix below. see appendix, section 31, including a less literal rendering of the present line. see further appendix, sections 1-9 on how heidegger sets up his discussion of hölderlin. 52. ibid. see also appendix, section 31. 53. see appendix, sections 22-28. heidegger’s argument here builds on the foregoing analysis in sections 15-21. 54. see appendix, sections 31-32. 55. see appendix, sections 33-35, and cf. sections 29-30. 56. heidegger, “the lack of holy names,” ga 13:235. 57. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:148. 58. heidegger, “solicited prolegomenon to a poets’ reading at bühler heights,” ga 16:470. 59. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:118. 53 isparchitecture.com 60. cf. heidegger, what is thinking, ga 8:132-133. 61. cf. heidegger, “solicited prolegomenon,” ga 16:470: “how does man speak? he speaks in conforming to language. for actually, language speaks. mortals only ever speak by conforming, and by thus having fulfilled their essence in relation to language’s own encouragement.” translator’s note: ‘conform’ and ‘fulfil’ in german are cognates of ‘language’ and ‘speak’: it is impossible to render the ensuing poetic quality of heidegger’s sentences here. 62. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:118. 63. ibid., 120. translator’s note: as will shortly become obvious, heidegger plays here on the german term for hospitality, gast-freundschaft, lit. kindness to strangers, which in greek is xenia (antonym: xeno-phobia): the stranger or xenos is shown hospitality, and the greek gods would typically travel under the disguise of a foreign visitor or xenos. 64. heidegger, on the essence of truth, ga 34:64. 65. translator’s note: gathering (versammlung) corresponds in ancient greek to ekklesia, our word for church, as in ‘ecclesiastic’. 66. heidegger, “solicited prolegomenon,” ga 16:471. 67. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:25. 68. ibid., 148. 69. heidegger, “address on hebel,” ga 16:541. 70. heidegger, elucidations of hölderlin’s poetry, ga 4:36. 71. ibid., 131. 72. ibid. 73. heidegger, “man’s dwelling,” ga 13:215. see appendix, section 12, with sections 10-11, 13-14. 74. translator’s note: gelassenheit is cognate with the earlier ‘einlassen auf’, a verb used earlier to denote how man should be open to things—by letting them be as they are, also in relation to him, as opposed to seeking to control things by technical means or means-ends reasoning. 75. heidegger, hölderlin’s hymn ‘the ister’, ga 53:24. 76. translator’s note: heidegger plays on the german relation of ‘uncanny’ (unheimlich) to the lack of ‘home’ (heim). 77. heidegger, hölderlin’s hymn ‘the ister’, ga 53:83. 78. heidegger, “wherefore poets?,” ga 5:274. 79. translator’s note: in german, ‘gewöhnung,’ a pun on ‘dwelling’ (wohnen). 80. heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” ga 7:150. 81. ibid., 163. 82. ibid. 83. ibid., 161. see again the definition of the fourfold. isparchitecture.com appendix: heidegger’s “man’s dwelling” translated by cesar a. cruz for ease of cross reference between essay and appendix, paragraph numbering has been added to the appendix, as well as page references to the german original in volume 13 of the heidegger gesamtsausgabe.1 [1] [213] hölderlin’s saying – “full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth” – is hardly registered by us, has not been fully fathomed; nor has it entered our collective memory.2 and how could it? in light of contemporary reality – a reality regarding itself, and the very reserves it draws on, as that of a self-made and self-sustained society – the poet’s saying is easily watered down by just about anybody as fanciful. poetry is seen in contemporary society as the production of literature. [2] that hölderlin’s saying is not taken seriously is also testified to by the present stage of hölderlin research. that research groups the saying among the poet’s “questionable works” because its text has not come down to us in manuscript form, or so wilhelm waiblinger emphatically states at the close of his 1823 novel phaedon. by contrast, norbert von hellingrath’s “prologue to a first edition of hölderlin’s translations of pindar” (1911, page 58, note 3), talks of “passages that in essence well could be genuine.” hellingrath’s [214] efforts at researching hölderlin’s oeuvre rested on a distinct poetic approach to the poet himself – a poet (hölderlin) who one day may stand revealed as the poet herald of a future art of poetry. [3] strangely enough, the adjective “poetic” does hölderlin’s saying [...] is hardly registered by us, has not been fully fathomed; nor has it entered our collective memory. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 56 cr uz not occur in hölderlin’s poems in the final text of his published works. nevertheless the stuttgart edition (ii, 635) includes the adjective as variant in line 28 of the poem “the archipelago”, the relevant passage (lines 2529) reading as follows: likewise, heaven’s own, they, the powerful up on high, the silent ones, who a serene day and sweet slumber and foreboding from far away cast over the head of men sensitive and receptive to it out of the fullness of their might, even they, the ancient companions in play, dwell, as before, with you…3 [4] in the first draft, instead of “the ancient companions in play, / dwell,” hölderlin writes “poetic companions in play, dwell.” thus the poetic thought of a poetic dwelling is in no way foreign to the poet. but the adjective “poetic” in the quoted passage qualifies the manner of dwelling of the heavenly bodies, not man’s.4 what then does “poetic companions in play” say if instead it turned out to say “the ancient companions in play” in the final version? [5] in what respect are the “ancient” the “poetic”, and the “poetic” the “ancient”? [6] the heavenly bodies in the poem refer to things that always have been – ‘ones of yore’ – as well as to things that shall return in what is yet to come. they are ones of yore in a twofold sense. their being of yore explains their present state, their everlasting aspect in hölderlin’s phrase of the “ever blooming stars” (draft, ii, 365) goes beyond mere persistence. the ancient companions in play bring, to “men sensitive and receptive to it,” the serenity of day and the night’s slumber and foreboding. these companions donate constancy to mortals across their lifetime, and are thereby poets (or ‘poetizing’ ones). the ancient companions in play “dwell poetically” with the god of the aegean sea, with its islands and the inhabitants. [7] [215] even though the final version of the poem calls the heavenly bodies the “ancients,” this did not eliminate their designation as “the poetic ones.” for the verses that follow (lines 29-42) begin by expressly naming the most supreme of the celestial bodies, “the day’s sun,” the “all transfiguring” sun – and line 38 calls it “the poetizing one.” the sun bestows a clarity that allows all things to shine forth in their uniqueness and gives to mortals their measure. [8] and yet, the poem “the archipelago” expresses itself in more meaningful and complete a manner than a set of inevitably fragmented notes ever could. [9] meanwhile, a question imposes itself. don’t the passages, certified by the poet’s own hand and preceding the final version of this poem, 57 isparchitecture.com diminish or entirely do away with any doubts surrounding the authenticity of the words “in lovely blueness blooms” (employed by hölderlin in a prose text) from which the line “full of merit, yet poetically, man dwells on this earth” was taken? even if this were true, the distinction mentioned above between “the ancient” versus “the poetic” would still remain. [10] according to “the archipelago”, the heavenly bodies “dwell poetically,” with the sun being, as the most supreme of heavenly bodies, “the poetizing one.” the designation “poetic” thus goes with “heaven’s own.” according to the later prose text, “poetic dwelling” goes with the mortals “on this earth.” [11] according to “the archipelago,” the heavenly ones were inclined to impart to those on earth their measure. according to the prose text, mortals concede the imparting of their measure to the heavenly. “imparting their measure in equal ways?” we may ask, ere we pause and hear the text’s own question: “is there a measure on earth?”, and have to immediately ponder the text’s own answer: “there is none.” [12] the poetized ones on earth are only the measure-takers of a heavenly gift of measure. poetized mortals always only bestow meaning by building on something they themselves already received. for hölderlin, the making of poetry is not a creative power that resides in the individual poet. rather, it is a measured building (bauen) the heavenly ones employ, to the full extent of their power, with works of saying being the result of such building. in this way a region is kept open for mortals to sojourn within it.5 [13] [216] that region’s overall inclination ought to be termed a clearing: a clearing in which the heavenly ones incline towards earth’s mortals in a manner both foreign and generous, and where those on earth incline to the heavenly by way of gratitude and cultivation. to a region of such for hölderlin, the making of poetry is [...] a measured building (‘bauen’) the heavenly ones employ “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 58 cr uz inclination belongs, by way of giving and receiving of measure – thus, poetically – that the heavenly and mortals each dwell in their own way and alongside one another. [14] still, isn’t all of this a mere dream, the creation of an arbitrary imagination that is lacking all reality, any prospects of possible realization, every claim to validity and obligation? [15] a single casual glance upon the state of the world today may suffice to compel us towards these questions. yet here we overlook too easily that hölderlin himself became cognizant of what poetry demanded and of its hazards along his path – more cognizant than we ever could become today, reflecting on his thought. [16] the closing stanza of the hymn “the journey” expresses this as follows (hellingrath iv, 171; stuttgart edition ii, 141): heaven’s servants are ever so wonderful, just as all of god’s children. through a dream it comes to him who wants just once to steal from heaven, yet there is retribution for those that through forceful means want to be equal to it; often it is a surprise to the one to whom it has hardly ever come to mind before6 [17] and thus it remains premature, even on hölderlin’s own behalf, to point to, let alone announce as having been uttered with any commitment, the saying “poetically man dwells on this earth”. if we were to mention “poetic dwelling,” the most we could reach by way of assertion at this point is: man today dwells on this earth, but not poetically. [18] [217] and what does that mean? does hölderlin even speak of it? norbert von hellingrath, under the section entitled “fragments and drafts,” presents us with a short text with the heading of “the nearest best.” it goes as follows: [o]pen are heaven’s windows and set free is the nocturnal spirit, who in storming the heavens has our land enticed, and, by having much to say, by being unpoetic, has wallowed in the debris up to this very hour. and yet what i yearn for, it will come, … .7 [19] does “unpoetic,” as used here, mean the same thing as not poetic? in no way. yet, if these terms are to connote different things, in what respects do they demand that we differentiate them? [20] there is an answer readily at hand. the difference lies in the 59 isparchitecture.com manner of negation. a triangle for example is not poetic, but it can never be unpoetic. for, to be that, it must have been able to be poetic – such that it could, in this regard, be lacking something, and fail to comply with the poetic. in the history of thinking, there has long been a distinction between mere negation and deprivation. it remains open to further consideration whether, this distinction in place (one that required plato’s utmost intellectual efforts to disentangle in his sophist), the question concerning the “not” has now been sufficiently settled. [21] we can only learn how to understand the “un” in “unpoetic” in the present case if we succeed in more precisely determining the “poetic”. fortunately, hölderlin himself provides the type of assistance we need. [22] the word “unpoetic” only occurs once in the preserved manuscripts of hölderlin. hellingrath’s “appendix” (iv, 392) records the term’s variants, and comments: “just above the occurrence of unpoetic, the following variants are [218] listed on top of one another: infinite, unpeaceful, unbounded, unrestrained.” [23] how are we to understand the varying nature of these variants? does one variant just go in place of another, with a preceding one extinguished by a subsequent one – such that only the final one remains valid for the text’s final form? [24] the stuttgart edition (ii, 868) sets down these variants as listed “one above the other,” but adopts “unrestrained,” (occurring in the list’s topmost position) instead of “unpoetic” as the text’s authoritative reading (ii, 234 and 237). this might be true if we were adhering to a philological rule (see the stuttgart edition i, 319). but it is not ‘poetologically’ true; it does not reveal what the poet wants to say and record. [25] the variants show hölderlin’s effort at determining the meaning of “poetic” in “unpoetic.” the “unpoetic” names the unessential of the man today dwells on this earth, but not poetically. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 60 cr uz “poetic,” that which in it is uncanny or not “at home.” “unpoetic” is the adjective used to qualify “having much to say,” to qualify how “the nocturnal spirit” speaks, “who has our land / enticed,” – a spirit who is, “in storming the heavens,” hostile, even rebellious against the heavens. [26] in being “unpoetic” the “poetic” does not disappear, but rather the “finite” is dismissed, the “peaceful” troubled, the “bound” undone, the “restrained” wrongfully transforms into the “unleashed.” all this tells us: that which bestows measure is not admitted, the very reception of measure is suppressed. the region that would be so inclined is instead buried under debris. [27] what leaps to mind is how the quoted fragments mentioning the “unpoetic” – fragments certified in manuscript form – belong together with the apocryphal text of the saying, “poetically man dwells.” [28] meanwhile, one difference between the two texts still remains. “the nearest best,” that fragment published by hellingrath, does not speak of man’s dwelling. or at least, so it seems. for exactly that impression is put to rest by that fragment’s text [219] variant entitled “draft hymn” offered by friedrich beissner in the stuttgart edition. the three draft forms (ii, 233-239) were brought together in a convincing manner “based on handwritten idiosyncrasies,” and are to be interpreted as poetry of the “dawn of a newly realized age following the patriotic reversal” (ii, 867 and following). this age, and the care by which we are to enter it, underscores hölderlin’s poetry in the elegy “homecoming.” (see my “annotations to hölderlin’s poetry,” supplemented by the two lectures, “hölderlin’s earth and heaven” and “the poem” in: collected works, volume 4, 5th edition.) [29] hölderlin’s poetry persists in the care shown in the “homecoming.” it is the care shown in establishing those places whereby man dwells poetically, and is shown in the patient waiting for salvation that is a part of this earthly sojourn. the draft “the nearest best” expresses this implicitly by referring to “having much to say” as “being unpoetic.” [30] nonetheless, ever since hölderlin poetized his hymns, it may have been all too clear: this poem says and waits in vain. the saying regarding man’s poetic dwelling remains unfulfilled, it remains just one great illusion. [31] yet the question remains whether in light of this statement we will ever think through the poet’s message with sufficient patience. man of the present age too dwells poetically in his own way, which is to say, assuming his way of being in name only, unpoetically.8 for the sake of his will to produce himself and [produce] reserves that can be cultivated, man seizes measure from an earth that his machinations leave disfigured. he lacks the ability to hear hölderlin’s answer to the question: “is there a measure upon earth? there is none.” 61 isparchitecture.com [32] “having much to say,” what “entices our land,” are in reality only the monotony of language from which everything which is said lies flat: the computer’s language of informatics. the only measure for computing man is the quota. [33] certainly hölderlin had not foreseen or foretold the state of the world today. [220] nevertheless there remains what his saying has established and left for us to keep in our thoughts. much is left to consider, that is, to experience thoughtfully. next for us to consider is: first of all, to think about the unpoetic aspects of our world sojourn as such, experiencing the mechanization of man as his fate instead of dismissing it as merely arbitrary and an infatuation. further, it calls for us to realize that there is no measure on this earth, but rather that the earth can give no measure when it is quantified on a planetary scale, that the earth is carried away in the lack of measure. [34] in the midst of the unpoetic it is insufficient for the poetic to think of the way out in the apparently equalizing dialectics. [35] we still rush past the mystery of the “not” and of what is not. we do not yet experience clearly enough what is suggested to us in the withdrawal because we do not yet know the withdrawal itself. we do not yet know the poetic in the unpoetic. endnotes 1. the copyright for the original german version of this text is held by vittorio klostermann verlag, 2002. this translation was very much a cumulative effort between the editorial staff and contributing colleagues of architecture philosophy, and myself. i would like especially to thank tom spector and stefan koller for their great help in proofreading, verifying, and editing this translation. 2. “hölderlin’s saying”: wort is translated in this in being “unpoetic” the “poetic” does not disappear, but rather the “finite” is dismissed, the “peaceful” troubled “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 62 cr uz essay, of course, as “word,” but primarily as “saying” and “message,” as it refers both to the entire line “full of merit…” and, as heidegger sees it, the message inherent in hölderlin’s poetry. 3. the translations of hölderlin’s three poems quoted in this essay benefitted from consulting previously published translations of each. nevertheless, the translations here are my own, as in each case there were enough differences, sometimes subtle but significant enough differences, that i could not use the previously published poems. for comparison of “der archipelagus” see friedrich hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: poems and fragments, trans. michael hamburger (ann arbor, mi: the university of michigan press, 1967), 212-215. 4. ‘heavenly bodies’ (himmelskörper): literally, celestial bodies (as in section 7). the translation preserves heidegger’s referene to ‘the heavenly’ in hölderlin’s poem (section 4) and his own fourfold. 5. heidegger writes “the region” (die gegend) instead of “a region.” the latter is used here because he is referring to a kind of region or regioning, not a specific locality or place. also, like sections 7 and 10, the present paragraph uses ‘poetize(d)’ to designate ‘dichten(d)’, the verb (and adjectival form of) ‘to make poetry’. cf. aurenque’s essay above, n. 8. 6. for comparison of “die wanderung” see friedrich hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: hymns and fragments, trans. richard sieburth (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1984), 66-67; friedrich hölderlin, hölderlin: his poems, trans. michael hamburger (london: the harvill press, 1952), 188-189; and hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: poems and fragments, 398-399. 7. for comparison of “das nächste beste” see hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: hymns and fragments, 174-175 and 274-275; and hölderlin, friedrich hölderlin: poems and fragments, 544-545. 8. “way of being”: the only use of dasein in this essay. literal translation: “man of the present age too dwells poetically – namely, that is, as per (unter) the name of his dasein, unpoetically.” isparchitecture.com enigma as moral requirement in the wake of ledoux’s work: autonomy and expression in architecture alberto rubio garrido architecture’s alleged capacity to meet ever new cultural and social challenges raises the dilemma between considering architecture a modern art or a vehicle for the realization of social good. the nature of the dilemma and its potential resolution in favor of the preservation of architecture’s artistic autonomy are this paper’s two leading concerns. to pursue them we first need to get clearer what renders art ‘autonomous’. as a concept, autonomy defies easy definition. it acquired multiple meanings in the history of ideas and frequently appeared under various guises, especially throughout the nineteenth century. purity, the absolute, perfection, freedom, selfdetermination, l’art pour l’art, futility, and more: such notions were, and continue to be, understood by reference to art’s struggle for autonomy. yet our understanding of that struggle, indeed of art’s autonomy, remains contested.1 on the face of it, ‘autonomy’ designates a thing’s (or someone’s) independence when determining its own laws. such laws, we shall see, can range over the ontological, the ethical, and even the aesthetic. autonomy expresses the fundamental modern principle of something’s giving itself its own laws and setting its own ends. if this minimal gloss is correct, its application to architecture requires clarification and defense right away. architecture as, or insofar as it is, a particular purity, the absolute, perfection, [...] continue to be understood by reference to art’s struggle for autonomy. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 64 r ub io g a r r id o art faces external constraints and limits on its autonomy; limits it cannot evade. perhaps the most noticeable limitation arises from architecture’s having to fulfill a function. insofar as the product of architecture has to satisfy this prerequisite, that product’s aesthetic form is already to some degree pre-determined. recognition of this fact hardly necessitates subscription to the claim that form ‘follows’ (is conclusively and solely determined by) function. yet that ‘fact’ may explain why functionalism (in this strong sense) remains autonomism’s bête noire in architecture. there are further (and just as obvious) limitations to architecture’s autonomy. let me mention two. firstly, architecture incorporates advances from other disciplines. often, those disciplines and their advances have not previously responded to aesthetic motivation: why should they do so now? secondly, architecture is a public art and as such resists being understood as the expression of individual will or as an isolated element alien to its socio-historical context. such limitations notwithstanding, an architectural theory and practice was established during the twentieth century with a determined effort to reach autonomous architecture, or something very much like it, as its cornerstone. this ‘effort’ began with emil kaufmann’s 1933 founding manifesto from ledoux to le corbusier: origin and development of autonomous architecture.2 since then, others have deepened and multiplied, if hardly clarified, the meaning(s) of ‘autonomous architecture’. indeed, the degree of consensus among later authors, authors as diverse as johnson, rossi, eisenman, hays, and aureli (one could easily mention more), terminates at their referring to the same concept and laying claim to the same sources. that the semantic stability of the term autonomy might be an issue, it seems, is never contemplated. in order to clarify this situation and move the debate beyond a collision of idiolects,3 the present study postulates the need to recover the genuine sense of the concept of autonomy in its philosophical sources—and to (re-)introduce that concept to artistic and historical discussions of architecture only thereafter. to that end, the paper proceeds as follows. sections 1 and 2 recover the kantian concept of autonomy and explain its implications in architecture: among these implications, a ‘requirement of expression’ is shown to reign supreme by the end of section 2. both sections discuss how this concept and its implications measure up against what kaufmann considered to be the two main features of autonomy in architecture. section 3 enlists schiller’s interpretation of kant’s autonomy to take into account the effective risks of autonomy in (and for) architecture. section 4 draws on adorno’s oeuvre to present an alternative to both schiller and kant. section v deploys that ‘alternative’ to demonstrate autonomy as one of the greatest (and definitely ongoing) challenges modern architecture 65 isparchitecture.com has faced since the enlightenment. before we begin, a word of caution. recognizing clear geo-historical differentiation, kaufmann regarded ‘the enlightenment’ as ideologically quite unified, certainly in relation to architecture. this paper follows suit (largely for the sake of argument) but acknowledges that more recent studies rightly urge us to regard the enlightenment as considerably more pluralistic—especially in its relation to ‘the revolutionary’, a relation that strongly exercised kaufmann.4 regardless of whether or not there is one enlightenment or multiple enlightenments, my minimal reliance on the fate of this argument should leave the essence of what is proposed here intact. 1. kaufmann with kant, one: autonomy as self-determination autonomy occupies a central position and gains new points of emphasis and relevance in philosophy from kant’s time onward.5 indeed, kant himself places the concept of autonomy at the very center of his practical philosophy. he claims that human reason is an autonomous source of principles of conduct, both in its value determinations and its active decisions. thus, human autonomy is both the highest value and the condition for all other values, with ‘autonomy of the will’ understood as the supreme principle of morality.6 in fact, kant never spoke about the autonomy of art. so, in a ‘transcendental’ sense, autonomy in art belongs to a broader project of humans’ autonomy from both natural and social determinations. in kant, autonomy implies the spontaneity of its powers given some formal exigencies, and it should be able to establish the laws governing the legitimation of their feasibility, scope, and limits. therefore, if we can distinguish a specific kind, more or less independent, of autonomous power in the field of art, the first type of autonomy should be regarded as fundamentally linked to the autonomous function of the power of judgment as a faculty of the soul distinct from reason and understanding.7 this kantian transcendental order is primarily that the semantic stability of the term autonomy might be an issue, it seems, is never contemplated. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 66 r ub io g a r r id o determined by the subject who transcends; and who, in his experience of reality, allows the object to transcend insofar as it is conceived as that subject’s representation. the work of art should not be considered as an entity sufficient unto itself but as a representation connected with the individual subject. pursuing kant’s line of thought to its conclusion in the artistic field, autonomy turns out to be at first sight a power with no clear regulatory impact on either artistic or political practice. in from ledoux, kaufmann interpreted autonomy with explicit reference to kant,8 and defined it as a form of self-determination that brooks no sociocultural constraint. crucially, kaufmann claimed that such autonomy is manifested in a pure abstraction of creative mechanisms in architecture. in that regard kaufmann’s interpretation of the ‘transcendental’ version of autonomy in architecture might be accused of opening the way for isolating architecture from society. a typical case of this isolation might be, for instance, kaufmann’s description of ledoux’s project retour de chasse: at first glance, the [ledoux’s] hunting lodge [...] seems to be baroque in its general layout. but on closer view we note significant changes. the composition lacks in binding power. although the building masses seem to be grouped in a manner very similar to baroque disposition, and, although the main house rules over the outlying buildings, each block is independent from the other, and from its natural setting.9 in other baroque buildings types, such as a monastery or a palace—where differentiated volumes like the church, the cloister, or dependencies should be articulated—some correspondence between the parts was established, although they could be detached. on the contrary, for kaufmann, ledoux imposes in his projects a ‘repetition’ criterion: as we can see, the pavilion structure is repeated in the three volumes without any alteration, despite the additional volume overlapped onto the central pavilion. supported by a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of kant, kaufmann emphasizes the exemplary nature of the retour de chasse (figures 1 and 2) as an illustration of the transitional figure that ledoux represents between pre-revolutionary and revolutionary architecture. from ledoux, free association of independent elements (against baroque unity) would become the ultimate compositional mechanism. this is what kaufmann called the pavilion system or later the new individualism:10 a configuration where compositional mechanisms such as ‘repetition’, ‘antithesis’, and ‘multiple response’ dominate.11 in other terms, it is an abstract and supposedly autonomous mechanism insofar as for kaufmann these compositional mechanisms emerged in architecture from an internal logic beyond sociocultural constraints. 67 isparchitecture.com figure 1: hunting lodge, perspective view. vue perspective d’un retour de chasse, sheet 110 from claude nicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurset de la législation (paris: h. l. perronneau, 1804). figure 2: hunting lodge, elevation. elévation d’un retour de chasse, sheet 111 from claude nicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurset de la législation (paris: h. l. perronneau, 1804). ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 68 r ub io g a r r id o 2. kant against kaufmann, two: expression as a bond with society architecture, however, holds an inner corrective mechanism against kaufmann’s thesis. and, in fact, this resistance of architecture to ‘selfdetermination’ was explicitly referred to in kant’s critique of the power of judgment. firstly, it is not true that kant proposes a theory of art as disengaged from the social, as kaufmann suggests, in its own interest.12 more precisely, for kant, the underlying content of artistic experience is the relationship between fundamental ideas of metaphysics and morality—above all, the foundational notion that the will can be freely determined by the principle of morality.13 in addition, as kant put it in his ‘analytic of the beautiful’, in the case of architecture a building’s suitability to its purpose is a preliminary condition to any subjective aesthetic judgment. consequently, it is impossible to aesthetically appraise or ‘judge’ architecture without the intervention of reason to evaluate its suitability for purpose, which reveals an inherent and inevitable restriction of architecture’s autonomy. that is why kant illustrated his conception of ‘adherent beauty’ with architectural examples: the beauty [...] of a building (such as a church, a palace, an arsenal, or a summer-house) presupposes a concept of the end that determines what the thing figure 3: pacifère, sheet 40 from ledoux, l’architecture (1804). 69 isparchitecture.com should be, hence a concept of its perfection, and is thus merely adherent beauty [...]. one would be able to add much to a building that would be pleasing in the intuition of it if only it were not supposed to be a church.14 hence, the expression of ‘aesthetic ideas’— as representations of the imagination that give cause for the free interplay of the powers of the soul—should be restricted to (or, at the very least, by) morally significant ideas as in any form of art. however, in architecture, these ‘aesthetic ideas’ must be compatible with the orientation of architecture towards an objective end.15 since what might be called the ‘kantian revolution’ in aesthetics of architecture, the combination of beauty and purpose remains influenced by the expression of moral ideas, taking the aesthetics of architecture beyond classicist theories. with kant, architecture’s primary task is no longer to imitate past perfections (as classicist theories adduced) but its social comprehensibility, which is ultimately the measure of its inseparable bond with society. by ‘aesthetic idea’ kant means: that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible.—one readily sees that it is the counter-part (pendant) of an idea of reason, which is, conversely, a concept to which no intuition (representation of the imagination) can be adequate.16 if boffrand and blondel17 epitomized the vanguard of this shift, ledoux constitutes a paradigmatic and especially elucidative case for the crudeness of tensions present in his work. and yet, when referring to ledoux’s ‘revolution’ in architecture, did kaufmann use a correct interpretation of kant’s major claims isolated above? did kaufmann correctly assume (which is central here) kant’s implied imperative of ‘comprehensibility’ in architecture, a cornerstone of kant’s transcendental order applied to this discipline? let us see what kaufmann stated about (what one could call) ‘the for kant, the underlying content of artistic experience is the relationship between [...] metaphysics and morality “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 70 r ub io g a r r id o requirement of expression’ in ledoux’s work with another example, the pacifère: the massive walls of pacifère and panarétéon do not even allow a guess at the disposition of the interior. the ideal of geometry has got the better of the baroque principle of animation [...]. the exterior of the baroque château clearly expresses the differentiation between the lordly grand salon, the private apartments, and the mezzanine of the servants. the blocks of the revolution are mute. as soon as the architects will renounce the petty devices of “narrative” architecture, the purposes of their structures will no longer be reflected in the outside.18 this assumption of muteness in the pacifère (figure 3) is far from a minor premise in kaufmann’s proposal, as we shall see immediately, although it clearly contrasts with what ledoux himself wrote about the pacifère: if the artists wished to follow the symbolic system that characterizes their production, they would acquire as much glory as the poets; they would elevate the ideas of those who consult them, and there would not be a stone in their works which would not speak to the eyes of persons passing by.19 kaufmann justifies this symbolism in ledoux (evident too in maison des directeurs de la loue or maison des cercles) by relying on two hypotheses: it should be understood as surrender to the rising romanticism or—even worse—as the persistence of baroque criteria. the new trend that can already be identified in ledoux is the paucity of the discretion, in contrast to the baroque culture or romanticism, which led him to “show his feelings openly and often in excess”. for kaufmann, then, expression in architecture is linked to both preand post-revolutionary narrative to the extent that “the purposes of their structure” (or construction) are reflected on the outside. or, in other terms, the identity between the figure 4: prison in aix-en-proence. extracted from vues perspectives du palais du gouverneur et de la prison, sheet 189 from claude-nicolas ledoux, architecture de c.-n. ledoux: collection qui rassemble tous les genres de bâtiments employés dans l’ordre social, ed. daniel ramée (lenoir éditeur, 5. quai malaquais. paris, 1847). 71 isparchitecture.com internal narrative of this architecture with its outer appearance becomes the communicative value of that architecture, as opposed to examples from (in kaufmann’s nomenclature) the revolutionary period, a period whose buildings in his view “are mute.” evidently buildings’ muteness collides with ledoux’s main purpose in developing a ‘symbolic architecture’, in which “there would be no stone in their works [artists’ whose works follow the symbolic system] which would not speak to the eyes of persons passing by.” 3. the empire of the symbol apart from the fact that kaufmann is demonstrably mistaken in refusing to attribute expressive content to ledoux’s architecture, kant’s ‘aesthetic ideas’ theory seems insufficient to take account of this particular interpretation of autonomy in ledoux’s work. in point of fact, with kant it is possible to explain the imperative of expression in architecture, but what is to be expressed remains indeterminate in his philosophy.20 this communicative motivation of art was recovered in the second sense of autonomy formulated by schiller, which indirectly explains the drifting of the concept of autonomy in its reception in architecture. this second conceptualization counteracts the perception of human fragmentation that characterizes modernity. for schiller, autonomy in art would be the precondition for establishing a new utopian alternative to an ailing society.21 this premise—distinct from what kaufmann terms ‘the revolutionary’ and its ideas—focuses all its efforts on the transformation of the material conditions of society and inaugurates the critical aesthetic device based on a negative relationship between art and society. in this way, art is provided with both diagnostic and proactive capabilities based on schiller’s concept of ‘heautonomy.’22 similarly, enlightenment critical rationality is transferred to architecture through a commitment to improving society. in france, such authors as laugier, boffrand, and blondel put criticism into the prison in aix-en-provence [...] clearly transmits threat and ruthlessness. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 72 r ub io g a r r id o action by adopting a firm attitude to intervene in artistic practices in order to promote certain social orientations. as schiller made evident, this renewal should go hand-in-hand with the symbolic role of art through the identification of beauty and truth.23 thus, a great deal of revolutionary efforts revolved around the elaboration of a discourse based in selfdetermination that could transmit an emancipatory message. the link between proportions and feelings or blondel’s theory of caractère responds to the need to establish an identity between the created objects and creation as an autonomous action. indeed, ledoux establishes a symbolic expression inside the process of constitution of the form, with the particularity, unlike his contemporaries, that he moved towards a utopian creation of a new social order, like, for instance, in the prison in aix-enprovence (figure 4), which clearly transmits threat and ruthlessness. the symbol in architecture thus acquires a role, which depends on the work’s functional orientation, beyond its former decorative or formal repertoire. in other words, an explicit function replaces the implicit one of symbolism in previous periods. in this regard, we can draw at least two major implications. firstly, the attempt to create a utopia through figuration plunges the process into a deep paradox. on the one hand, the acknowledgment of the inadequacy of resources for the fulfillment of an ideally conceived future stimulates the utopia. but on the other hand, as in ledoux’s architecture, the wish to present materially such an unattainable future at that very historical moment associates the ideal world with reality, and thus acquires an absolute character that ultimately overrides all alternatives. figure 5: vue perspective de la ville de chaux, sheet 15 from ledoux, l’architecture (1804). 73 isparchitecture.com these aspirations of universalism in ledoux’s architecture are evident in the projects where future becomes a chimera (figure 5). on the one hand then, this brand new expression of a utopia through architecture provides hope for a promised land, while on the other, assumes its unattainability. secondly, precisely because of the legitimation of this universal value of architecture, nature acquires a redemptive character, though not in sense of rousseau—whereby the immersion in the natural cycle would immunize humans against their inner corruption—but in the kantian sense of autonomy. therefore, the return to a mechanism of mimesis with regard to natural processes collides with the intent to break with tradition, launching a new type of determination. as a result of this process, the symbol in architecture was presented in a markedly closed nature, where the signifier (figuration) is identified with the signified (utopia), confirming the enlightenment’s mechanism of particularizing abstract universals. thus addressed, the attempt of reconciliation with society and nature reveals its ultimate reversal process of mythologization, bringing both society and nature back to the realm of what humanity can dominate and manipulate. this reactive movement can be seen in jeannicolas-louis durand or louis-ambroise dubut’s postulates, whose work once captivated kaufmann. the naïve emancipatory impulse became mere ideology on which to support a no longer renovating program. the truth is that, specifically in architecture, the two necessary correctives that schiller puts forward to protect kant’s principle of autonomy from the functional orientation of art—that is, ‘immunity’ and ‘indifference’24—may not be present in a practice that is inseparable from society and its needs. without these correctives, architecture acquires a hegemonic overtone in its messianic positioning, something evident in ledoux’s architecture. as an internal corrective to the tendency to isolation of autonomous art, kant showed what in schiller [t]he symbol in architecture thus acquires a role [...] beyond its former decorative or formal repertoire. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 74 r ub io g a r r id o summons the threat of the mystifying absoluteness, aggravated by the heteronomous nature of architecture, which brings closer (and even equates) morals and aesthetics, expression and utopia. hence, adorno’s critique of schiller,25 perhaps precipitated in the exclusively aesthetic level, becomes extremely relevant in the case of architecture. 4. enigma and social commitment for adorno, all references to the exteriority of art—such as its legitimacy through commitment to society or its compressibility—must be articulated from its immanence as an object. that is why he insists on the need for autonomy “as imprisonment of aesthetics to the realm of aesthetics.” this is, in fact, a requirement to make negative dialectics in art feasible. as opposed to sovereign aesthetics (schiller’s proposal), he states that negativity beyond aesthetics is powerless against social conditions. the work of art must be autonomous to fulfill its function as social criticism. the autonomy of art must account for the status of aesthetics demanding its own rules without compromising its mission of transgressing its own limits, which would constrain its sovereignty. it is not only art that must meet the requirement of autonomy, but the work of art itself should also follow general discourse: “by crystallising in itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as ‘socially useful’, it criticizes society by merely existing.”26 derived from this antinomy of the autonomy in art with a critical purpose, one of the first renunciations that art—and architecture insofar it is a form of art—must accept is communication in its heteronomous sense. adorno harshly criticized the alleged social role of art as communicability; namely, the thesis that art becomes social as soon as it provides an accessible meaning.27 in this there is an evident risk, adorno claimed, for communicative art to grow ideological. art cannot claim both its sovereignty in society and its autonomy. it must present itself as criticizing society by evidencing society’s contradictions. its mere existence constitutes a critique of society by standing against the prevailing codes, instrumentalization being chief among them. art should be art in itself and it should not depend on alien instances of legitimation to be autonomous. in turn, art must be autonomous to preserve in itself a remnant of its social nature. in short, adorno considered autonomy and emancipation as two counteracting dialectical poles. and in this sense, he claimed the independence of all reality, which kant had cast doubt on by placing art in a pre-rational place. yet, at the same time adorno vindicated the truthful content of the work of art, externalizing autonomy in the object: the work of art, then, opens a space of denial as long as it can be presented as another self, something outside historical constraints, providing an alternative in this regard. his aim is to prevent autonomy from becoming 75 isparchitecture.com an accomplice of instrumental rationality, as indeed is the case in ledoux insofar as he sets a new utopia crystallized in his projects under the premises of “welfare” or “progress.” in this sense, the cornerstone of adorno’s argumentation lies in the location of a space of freedom that simultaneously accounts for art’s renunciation of any external commitment and for its integration with reality. in an adornian sense, the lack of functionality in art, alienated and insular, endows it with an internal consistency that, in its autonomy, manifests itself to reality as something impossible to be instrumentalized. art has to pursue the restructuring of life without imposing any structures on that life. it intervenes as a reflection of society, projecting what is denied on who denies it, returning unacknowledged internal contradictions to the source of these contradictions. in this regard, with the theoretical support provided by adorno, the enigma as an epistemological content—opposed to the truth understood as adaequatio—acquires an internal moral status which dissolves the aporia faced by aesthetic modernity and opens the way for the possibility of an autonomy in architecture without compromising architecture’s inherent nature. what explains this ‘inherent nature’? and what is its relation to the enigmatic? i will answer these questions in reverse order, effectively delegating treatment of the first question to section 5. adorno refers to the epistemological status of the enigma in art in many passages of his aesthetic theory, due both to its importance and its complexity. for instance: [t]he need of artworks for interpretation, their need for the production of their truth content is the stigma of their constitutive deficiency. artworks do not achieve what is objectively sought in them. the zone of indeterminacy between the unreachable and what has been realized constitutes their enigma. they have truth content and they do not have it.28 art has its own truth content, but it does not pass through empirical verification, nor through realization of the concept in hegelian sense, as adorno’s critique of schiller [...] becomes extremely relevant in the case of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 76 r ub io g a r r id o both represent an identity theory. there is a truth of art that lies in the formal constitution of the work; that is, an autonomous truth. a recent study by ferris, entitled “politics and the enigma of art,” explains the passage’s likely intent as follows: [p]recisely because art does not affirm any meaning claimed on its behalf, it remains, in a word adorno emphasizes, an enigma […]. this tendency of art to express its uncertainty by asserting a function that would seem to carry all the certainty of self-evidence becomes the sign of art’s inability to recognize its own inmost tendencies.29 ferris highlights how adorno’s stance of art as enigma30 effectively resists kant’s obligation for comprehensibility. this, however, does not leave adorno—or a philosophy of architecture built on his foundations— bereft of communicative potential: in the end, all roads lead to this enigma in adorno. why artworks have and do not have a truth content is because the enigmatic character of art, as adorno defines it, requires that artworks ‘say something and in the same breath conceal it’. their truth content is a saying that does not say what it says, but does say that it says. the content of the artwork is consequently tied to its form by this enigma. as a result, the enigmatic is what constitutes form as constitutive of art. what this means is that, if form is how art is mediated as art, form cannot represent an object. this is because art, for adorno, resists objectification in its very concept. as a result, whatever content art has must be a content that takes away such an object even as it affirms it. this is the task of the enigmatic.31 as we can see here, understood aright, adorno does not challenge so much as modify kant’s obligation for art to be ‘comprehensible’: he alters the demands of what art needs to communicate, and how it does so, to enter meaningful relations with society without lapsing into an identity theory (for adorno, the source of modern instrumentalization). and this, in turn, explains how we can endorse, as my argument urges we should, an analogous demand for art to be enigmatic (in adorno’s sense) also in architecture. that ledoux halfway meets kant’s obligation in just this way was precisely argued above. where this leaves architecture and autonomy more widely remains to be seen. to this we turn next. 5. autonomy and modernity in architecture clearly, for adorno the very possibility of art as enigma did not arrive in literary and musical composition until the avant-garde with beckett and schönberg. in fact, for adorno a pure and rigorous concept of art should be just music32 and, in that sense, (especially) architecture assumes an inner limitation as a specific art: its dependence on function determines in some degree a dialectic between form and matter.33 yet it is also true that adorno never explicitly refused to include architecture among modern arts. moreover, in his analysis of functionalism he assumes that 77 isparchitecture.com architecture and art in general share the same challenges, quoting scharoun’s philharmonic as an example of architecture’s capacity to overcome such challenges.34 adorno’s insistence on the radical defense of the autonomy of art—a defense that motivates inquiry into the enigmatic in the first place—aspires to be an antidote against the specific totalitarian movements (whether from fascism or from the culture industry) that prevailed throughout the first half of the twentieth century. persisting in the separation of spheres and avoiding absolutism is part of adorno’s resistance against regression. this was under the premise of taking the unavoidability of modernity in its emancipatory impulse without thereby obviating the danger of radical isolation. thus interpreted, the avant-gardes evince in their inner struggles the tension between the real and the loss of human identity. from within modernity and in their deepening in the criticism of modernity, the various avant-gardes provide the scale of the insufficiency of their internal project of emancipation. this liberating surge, even in a negative sense, is perhaps the most indelible contribution of the avant-gardes, to such an extent that not even the mannerisms of the 1960s and the attempts to overcome postmodernism have managed to unseat it. the successive crises of modernity merely confirm the relevance of modernity, to the extent that it appears as an unavoidable project.35 even today—and probably more than ever—the recognition of dissatisfaction with what currently exists prevails to the extent that the project of modernity has not been reversed. modernity leads to a perpetual attempt to establish a solid foundation despite the intimate awareness of its futility. this is the case of the avantgarde and it was also at the heart of ledoux’s work. with the dissolution of the classical categories, architecture had to face the new dialectics between rational and sensitive, ideal and real, without any solid anchors. and it is precisely to the extent that architecture cannot abandon its commitment the impossibility of autonomy in architecture transforms its project into a paradigm of modernity. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 78 r ub io g a r r id o to social needs, given its internal heteronomy, that it turns out to be prefigurative for the rest of the arts: in the movement toward the selfabsorption of art that modernity brings with it, architecture paradoxically becomes a different social self. internalizing the antinomy of adorno’s autonomy in architecture, the impossibility of autonomy in architecture transforms its project of autonomy into a paradigm of modernity, which thus becomes exemplary for the other arts. the radical shift represented by the avant-gardes and, in particular, its problematization of the autonomy of art, soon revealed the reverse commitment in architecture, which could be illustrated in ledoux’s work. today, the avant-garde’s vindictive nature is perceived in a heteronomous sense: its integration into the canons of dominant logic invigorated its immunity and expanded its domain. adorno retrieves this internal tearing of modernity and incorporates it into art through its negativity. any attempt of positivity, either from social commitment or the defense of the ideal of progress, would precisely encourage the false expectation of its realization. reconciliation is only possible by experiencing the impossibility of envisaging the way forward. adorno channeled the aspirations of the enlightenment towards confrontation with the world, and in that sense, art becomes indispensable. it is precisely because autonomy belongs to this modern movement that it holds the very paradox of modernity: the foundation of concepts, possibilities, promises, etc., encompasses the threat of their loss. along with the idea of an autonomous architecture, the possibility of a struggle for emancipation and freedom vanishes, as so does the possibility of its total dissolution, as architecture may not find the way to become immediately social. alienated from its original social function and provided with a critical role against society due to its autonomy, a sense of free humanity feeds architecture, while, by its own autonomy, architecture has to deny society the access to that refuge of humanity. or, as adorno would say, as an autonomous art, architecture has to negate society for the sake of a promise of a different society. but, as an intrinsically heteronomous art (as a functional art), architecture must serve society.36 in this sense, claude-nicolas ledoux’s work may be seen to presage the antinomies of autonomy which architecture would face during the avant-garde: the paradox that architecture imposes on its social milieu a hegemonic order which ultimately leads it to abandon its social commitment. although only intuitively, we can say that the situation of architecture during the nineteenth century with regard to the revolutionary period finds its parallel in its present situation since the avant-gardes. to find again its role in society, architecture should regain its social commitment with a new problematization of its autonomy in response to the actual changing paradigms (as could be the consolidation of globalization: there is nothing 79 isparchitecture.com outside modernity, the collapse of the keynesian ideal, the problem of political representation, etc.). the capacity of architecture to meet new challenges involves the dilemma of whether architecture can actually still be considered a modern art—that is, an autonomous art—or whether, on the contrary, we should assume its pre-modern nature and embrace unproblematically the reconciling essentialist paradigms or even the explicitly reactionary ones, as the diatribe between kaufmann and sedlmayr illustrated.37 since the enlightenment, architecture has simultaneously experienced its period of greatest prominence in society and the intimate conviction that it can no longer change anything. modernity bequeathed to architecture an uncertainty which remains unresolved. this uncertainty is likely to contain some modern values as long as it remains indefinite and calls us back to this kind of radical question. we either accept this, or accept that architecture is essentially a pre-modern art. endnotes 1. the historical dictionary of philosophy opens its entry on “autonomie” with a warning of sorts, entitling its opening section “the problematic history of the concept.” see joachim ritter, karlfried gründer, and gottfried gabriel, eds., ‘autonomie’, historisches wörterbuch der philosophie (basel: schmabe, 2007), 431-479. 2. see emil kaufmann, von ledoux bis le corbusier: ursprung und entwicklung der autonomen architektur (vienna: r. passer, 1933). no english translation of this book exists, but fragments thereof surface in english translations of walter benjamin’s (nearly contemporaneous) arcades project. see walter benjamin, the arcades project, trans. howard eiland and kevin mclaughlin (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2002). 3. a ‘collision’ well documented in the papers by coleman, owen, and others presented at the international society for the philosophy of architecture conference in 2014, and now published in architecture philosophy. see nathaniel coleman, “the myth of autonomy,” architecture philosophy 1, no. 2 (2015): 157-178 and graham owen, “whatever happened to semiautonomy,” architecturephilosophy 2, no 1. (2016): 6-20. 4. cf. jonathan i. israel, democratic enlightenment: philosophy, revolution, and human rights, 1750-1790 (oxford: oxford university press, 2012). 5. see ernst feil, “autonomie-heteronomie,” in antithetik neuzeitlicher vernunft: “autonomie-heteronomie” und “rational-irrational” (göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 1987). 6. in his groundwork for the metaphysics of morals (1785), kant formulates the moral law with the help of the concept of autonomy (the so called formula of autonomy): ‘‘the idea of the will of every rational being as a will giving universal law’’ (g 4:431; cf. g 4:432) or ‘‘not to choose otherwise than so that the maxims of one’s choice are at the same time comprehended with ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 80 r ub io g a r r id o it in the same volition as universal law’’ (g 4:440; cf. g 4:432, 434, 438). see immanuel kant, groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, ed. and trans. allen w. wood (new haven and london: yale university press, 2002). 7. i follow here the cambridge edition of the works of immanuel kant and, more precisely, paul guyer’s edition of critique of the power of judgment. see immanuel kant, critique of the power of judgement, ed. paul guyer, trans. paul guyer and eric matthews (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001). 8. early in his monograph, kaufmann draws a parallel between the autonomous morality established by kant and the autonomous architecture he wants to defend in (that is, with respect to the work of) ledoux. see kaufmann, von ledoux, 12. 9. emil kaufmann, “three revolutionary architects, boullée, ledoux, and lequeu,” in transactions of the american philosophical society 42, no. 3 (1952): 525. 10. the evolution of these terms is clearly explained in detlef mertins, “system and freedom: sigfried giedion, emil kaufmann, and the constitution of architectural modernity,” in modernity and ideology, 212231. despite this, it is possible to identify even in kaufmann’s later works the same interpretation of autonomy as a formal configuration (which section i identified as central). 11. as kaufmann states in architecture in the age of reason: baroque and postbaroque in england, italy, and france (cambridge: harvard university press, 1955). 12. recall from section i that kaufmann uses kant’s concept of autonomy in order to justify a new architecture, that of abstract mechanisms that operate autonomously, regardless of any sociocultural constraint. in that sense, this interpretation of the transcendental version of autonomy might have been accused of paving the way for the isolation of architecture from society. 13. see paul guyer, kant and the claims of taste (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997), 60-227 and paul guyer, “the harmony of the faculties revisited,” in values of beauty: historical essays in aesthetics (cambridge university press, 2005), 77-109. 14. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §16, 114-115. 15. function and form in a successful architecture intensify each other more than being just added. see paul guyer, “free and adherent beauty: a modest proposal,” the british journal of aesthetics 42, no. 4 (2002): 357366. 16. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §49, 192. 17. throughout this paper, i intend the ‘younger’ of the two blondels, jacques-françois (1705-1774). 18. kaufmann, “three revolutionary architects,” 520. 19. claude-nicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des 81 isparchitecture.com moeurset de la législation (paris: h. l. perronneau, 1804), 115. the original french reads: “si les artistes vouloient suivre le système symbolique qui caractérise chaque production, ils acquéreroient autant de gloire que les poètes; ils éléveroient les idées de ceux qui les consultent, et il n’y auroit pas une pierre qui, dans leurs ouvrages, ne parlât aux yeux des passants.” 20. this is the main thesis of paul guyer, “kant and the philosophy of architecture,” the journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69, no. 1 (2011): 7-19. 21. friedrich schiller, kallias, oder, über die schönheit: fragment aus dem briefwechsel zwischen schiller und koerner; über anmut und würde (stuttgart: p. reclam., 1971), letters v-vi. 22. against what he stated in kallias, in letters upon the aesthetic education of man, schiller disclaims nature as a source of artistic impulse in order to link autonomy of art with a utopian reconciliation. in order to establish an “ästhetischen staat,” schiller undertakes a project of objectification of the concept of beauty and finds its ontological foundation—and the foundation of aesthetical autonomy—in appearance and play. see friedrich schiller, letters upon the aesthetic education of man (whitefish, mt: kessinger, 2004). 23. see luigi pareyson, etica ed estetica in schiller (milan: mursia, 1983), 6070. 24. see schiller, letters, letters 9 and 26. 25. adorno rejects tout court schiller’s impulse towards the transcendence of art beyond its aesthetic realm. the identification of an area of freedom in art, thus legitimizing its existence through commitment to society counterfeits a totality unreachable from its singular rationality. the idea of freedom, akin to aesthetic autonomy, was shaped by domination, which it universalized. this holds true as well for artworks. the more they freed themselves from external goals, the more completely they determined themselves as their own masters. because, however, artworks always tum one side toward society, the domination they internalized also radiated externally. see theodor w. adorno, aesthetic theory, trans. r. hullot-kentor (london: athlone, 1997), 17-18. 26. ibid., 229. 27. see the example of van gogh’s paintings as the end of identity between narrative content and meaning in artworks. for more details, see the sections entitled “enigmaticalness, truth content, metaphysics” and “coherence and meaning,” in adorno’s aesthetic theory. ibid., 118-162. 28. adorno, aesthetic theory, 128. 29. david s. ferris, “politics and the enigma of art: the meaning of modernism for adorno,” modernist cultures 1.2 (2005): 192-208: here 195. 30. adorno’s german term is ‘rätsel’ and designates for instance the type of riddle the sphinx used in its attempt to snare odysseus. the meaning and intent of her riddles are, to the discerning eye, both opaque and visible. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 82 r ub io g a r r id o 31. ferris, “politics,” 204. the quotation within the quotation is to adorno, aesthetic theory, 120. 32. theodor w. adorno, minima moralia: reflections on a damaged life, trans. e. f. n. jephcott (new york: verso, 2005), §143. 33. this is why, for instance, hilde heynen has argued that adorno ultimately regarded architecture to be unsuitable for entry into modernity and modern art. see hilde heynen, architecture and modernity: a critique (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1999), 198-200. 34. adorno, aesthetic theory, 44. 35. in this sense, kaufmann’s most significant contribution may be the hypothesis of continuity between the enlightenment and modern architecture, thus taking a broad sense of modernity. see kaufmann, architecture in the age of reason. most pressingly, ledoux raises the issue of how we date the entry point of modernity in architecture itself, but i leave this matter for elsewhere. for discussion, see not only kaufmann’s works cited earlier, but also joseph rykwert, the first moderns: the architects of the eighteenth century (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1983). 36. see theodor w. adorno, “functionalism today”, oppositions 17 (1979): 31-41. 37. see sedlmayr’s assessment of kaufmann’s from ledoux in: hans sedlmayr, verlust der mitte: die bildende kunst des 19. und 20. jahrhunderts als symptom und symbol der zeit (salzburg: otto müller verlag, 1951). sedlmayr located precisely in the french revolution’s visionary architecture the origin of the lack of rootedness and authenticity in modern architecture. following his analysis, architecture had reached its autonomous status with loos and le corbusier at the cost of losing its sense of responsibility with the culture and society, and reduced to an empty ideal geometric formal suit. isparchitecture.com an aesthetic deontology: accessible beauty as a fundamental obligation of architecture 1 christian illies and nicholas ray introduction recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the intersection of ethics and aesthetics, especially pertaining to literature, cinema, and now architecture. the idea of an ‘intersection’, especially when construed as ranging over ‘values’, while fruitful, has perhaps limited the field. this paper presents an alternative view, grounded in the idea of a general deontology, with moral and aesthetic duties forming discrete but interconnected parts of such a deontology. more concretely, we argue for an “obligation to accessible beauty.” after having clarified what architectural beauty amounts to (section 1), we will outline the argument for such an obligation (section 2). it will be based upon the moral demand to respect human beings and thus to serve their basic needs, and the need for beauty is one of them. the obligation is strengthened further by the fact that architecture is in the public realm (and therefore unavoidable for people). the notorious subjectivity of beauty does not count against this argument because it is agnostic towards any one ideal of what a beautiful building consists in. it only requires that the architect give beauty due consideration in her design deliberations. while the obligation to accessible beauty is universal to humanity, its satisfaction can be local for any culture. to conclude, we will discuss how this aesthetic while the obligation to accessible beauty is universal to humanity, its satisfaction can be local for any culture “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 64 il li es & r a y obligation can be compared and weighed against other moral demands (section 3). obviously, the suggested obligation to accessible beauty is not a recipe for the avoidance of moral conflict. but by seeing this aesthetic demand to be commensurate with other moral demands, the design problem becomes more tractable. we conclude that apparently irreconcilable demands have to be resolved by appeal to aesthetic solutions. a building’s design is always a synthetic response to varying requirements. thus, when it comes to reconciling conflicting moral and practical demands in architecture, beauty, not morality has the last word. we explore further architectural consequences of this view in our recent work, the philosophy of architecture.2 here, however, our concern is primarily with solidifying the philosophical foundation of this project. 1. the beauty of buildings 1.1 beauty as the prime distinction of architectural design we begin with a claim that what distinguishes architecture from mere building is an intention to go beyond meeting a functional brief or solving a problem. nikolaus pevsner famously declared that a bicycle shed was a building, whereas lincoln cathedral was a work of architecture, which implies that a mundane building could not be beautiful, or, beautiful in the same sense as a cathedral.3 against pevsner, we agree with the generally held view that a distinction should not be based on scale, or on the modesty of a building’s purpose. whenever the craftsperson makes something with especial care, we claim, there is and should be an intention, even if unacknowledged consciously, to make something that others can recognize as beautiful.4 there are several kinds of beauty in architecture, and a simple utilitarian building might well share some, though not all, qualities with much more elaborate and considered structures. an overriding task of the act of building with this particular care might be described as that of enabling people to feel ‘at home in the world’. this might entail a careful consideration of the nature of the context of a building—its setting in a landscape, or in an existing village, town, or city. we are simply not satisfied with mere functionality; we expect architecture to aim at ‘more’. and it seems that fulfilling exactly this task, if this is accepted, is the underlying purpose behind the various types of beauty, described below, which we regard as the aims of architecture. 1.2 varieties of beauty in architecture when we talk about “beauty” in architecture, we must be aware of its complexity—there are different varieties of beauty one can legitimately attribute to or expect of architecture. we make no pretense to replicate the enormous literature that has accrued on those varieties: our purpose is to build the basis for a larger argument.5 65 isparchitecture.com for convenience we might distinguish the following five types. there is formal beauty which accounts for what moves us when architects manipulate volumes to create memorable spaces—such as the pantheon in rome, which is based on a sphere, and which few visitors are unaffected by. related notions of architecture as a spatial art, or as primarily the plastic manipulation of form (as le corbusier sometimes claimed), and the careful articulation of surfaces enter here.6 formal, or compositional, beauty can be found in other works of art, such as sculptures and pictures, but functional beauty is a quality found in the design of useful products, such as implements, and architecture. such objects, and those of (engineering) design, sometimes have a beauty inherent in their efficient workings.7 when buildings and urban spaces serve functional criteria in elegant ways (such as the beautiful drainage system in st mark’s square in venice), they give a particular satisfaction not achieved by purely decorative objects devoid of use. formal and functional beauty can be found in many non-architectural artifacts. but architecture is almost always related to a particular location: it is situated in a context, which renders it capable of exhibiting contextual beauty. architecture theorists speak of the “murmur of a site,”8 of architecture as an ‘art of the ensemble’, and more. the ways that effective architecture relates to its setting, whether urban or rural, and whether by seeking to blend in with it or stand out from it, is one of its most obvious characteristics, and most often a cause of criticism when people feel a wrong decision has been made. put positively, contextual fit (especially with regard to cultural context) can co-account for a building’s beauty.9 there is also time related beauty. given the endurance of much architecture, the way in which a building succeeds in doing so can be a factor in the satisfaction it gives. its age can bestow aesthetic pleasures; materials may display weathering effects when it comes to reconciling conflicting moral and practical demands in architecture, beauty, not morality, has the last word. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 66 il li es & r a y in pleasing ways, and so on.10 finally, there is intellectual beauty. just as elegant solutions are accomplished in mathematics or in the fugues of j.s. bach, architecture can give rise to aesthetic pleasure because it exhibits the solution to a complex set of technical problems. this also pertains to the considered deployment of proportional systems, as in lutyens’s liverpool cathedral and war memorials.11 buildings are complicated artifacts, and some of them can be admired as intellectual achievements over and above their formal beauty. furthermore, some would claim the pantheon is an aesthetically moving work of architecture not just on account of its satisfactory form, as noted above, or its intellectually satisfying geometry, but because as a work it reflects deep trans-cultural meanings: the building’s volume represents the world. this is perhaps a spiritual rather than intellectual type of beauty.12 the different types of beauty can be in correspondence, but they also create a tension. it would seem that it is quite possible to have a formal beauty that is not functional, or particularly rigorous intellectually: this would be evident in a sculpturally compelling structure that was maybe not very useful, such as zaha hadid’s fire station for the vitra organization. buildings can also be formally beautiful, and work well, without being particularly satisfying in the third way: these might be “romantic” works, such as neuschwanstein, the castle built by ludwig ii, that depend to a certain extent on the associations that are summoned up. but a building such as neuschwanstein can be criticized if it is not also skilfully composed— in such cases, it degenerates into mere kitsch. and a laboratory building that was rigorously worked through as a design, and also functioned well, would not necessarily be beautiful formally, even though at various periods architects have argued that we ought to find such buildings beautiful. any building aspiring to beauty must represent some kind of reconciliation of these different types of beauty. this aspiration to beauty is what architects should aim at, or so we will argue. 2. aesthetic deontology 2.1 the obligation to beauty we began by claiming that the intention to make something beautiful is what distinguishes architecture from mere building, even though some have argued that aesthetics should have nothing to do with architecture. hannes meyer, who succeeded gropius as the director of the bauhaus, famously stated that architecture is a “technical, not an aesthetic process.”13 according to meyer, architecture can do without beauty: its essence is the creation of a functional space, its worth is merely ‘what it does’ and how well it does that. here, beauty is a luxury, not a demand. alternatively, beauty might arise naturally, or even necessarily, as functionalists claimed, if the functional aspects are satisfied. 67 isparchitecture.com in contrast to either of these two positions, we argue that beauty, in the senses described above, is the prime goal and obligation of architectural design. we shall refer to this claim, and the moral obligation behind it, as the ‘obligation to beauty.’14 there are different ways to argue for this claim, depending on the kind of ethical theory one presupposes. in aristotelian mode, any human practice aims at some result, this being the implicit goal of the activity. we practice the flute in order to play it better; we make each sculpture not only for itself, but also in order to improve as sculptors. similarly, the result of good artistic practice, that is to say the practice of the art or craft of being an architect, will be a product with aesthetic quality. and if it is the aim of architects to practice their craft to the highest standard they are able to achieve, then architects must strive for aesthetic quality. otherwise it would remain opaque as to why we should regard an aesthetically successful building as ‘good architecture’ in a wider sense. but the obligation to beauty can also be supported by a moral argument of a different variety, one motivated by a concern for human well-being. if we (morally) must promote human well-being, then this includes all human needs and desires.15 after all, that is why buildings should be functional— because as vulnerable, dependent animals, we need a safe and warm and healthy place to live. but we need more: we also have a fundamental need for a pleasing place where we can happily live. as the 20th century dutch architect aldo van eyck put it: “architecture need do no more, nor should it ever do less, than assist man’s homecoming...”16 while it is conventionally thought of as supplemental, beauty is (on this view) actually essential to human wellbeing, for our emotions and our feeling at home, otherwise it would be inexplicable why most people spend so much time and money decorating their homes. the simplistic anthropology of an architect like hannes meyer, with his list of ‘motives’ from 1928, is ludicrously reductive.17 humans need humans need more: they deeply long for beauty. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 68 il li es & r a y more: they deeply long for beauty, a desire that is probably genetically embedded.18 any appropriate notion of well-being will therefore support the claim of beauty being a necessary goal of architecture. 2.2 the obligation to accessible beauty if we endorse this second moral argument, and if the aesthetic quality, or beauty, of a building responds to a moral requirement for promoting well-being, then something important follows: the beauty that the architect must strive for must be accessible. not only do people have strong views about building, they also articulate them forcibly, and this gives us reason to believe that they understand what it is that they object to and what they enjoy.19 architecture’s status as a public art entails moral requirements not adherent to other art forms. whereas we do not have to pick up a prize-winning novel, or listen to a highly-praised piece of music, it is impossible to avoid the buildings all around us. thus people will always be confronted by architecture and their desire for beauty will be frustrated if the architecture they experience is banal or ugly. (to be sure, there are many ways of satisfying the human need for beauty but because architecture is in an important way inescapable, any ugly architecture will be a frustration of this need, whether or not we are able to experience beauty in other areas.) there is therefore an onus on architecture to communicate in a way that, while it may be appreciated on many levels, is accessible, rather than conceived in a private language that only the cognoscenti can appreciate. architects frequently tend towards forming sub-cultures that find certain forms and materials (like bare concrete) beautiful, which the general public may find ugly and unfriendly. but to the extent that buildings are a form of public art, used and seen by many, they must also be capable of satisfying the aesthetic desires of many. an exclusively elitist concept of beauty would not do so and is thus not the morally required beauty. as fontaine’s fable tells us, we need to ensure that people with a variety of capabilities can enjoy the good food we prepare.20 yet, such accessibility needs a pinch of salt. what is accessible is not simply given. it often seems that it is a part of architects’ obligation to beauty to expand the aesthetic expectations of their clients. if they did not do so, people could be condemned to a banal repetition of conventional buildings. thus the best architecture might well assist in a re-definition of what we generally call the beautiful. the idea of an accessible beauty can therefore be seen as a dialogue between the architect, or her building, and the public: whilst it is arrogant for architects to say that people must learn to understand their buildings, it is clear that public taste develops and moves on, so that inspiring works of architecture broaden the area of acceptability for the general public. it is a principal moral task for 69 isparchitecture.com architects, therefore, to judge carefully the aesthetic accessibility of the buildings they propose, and this is applicable for each of the five different types of beauty we identified above. 2.3 challenging the obligation to beauty is there really an aesthetic obligation of the variety we propose? some would claim that the requirement that architects should create aesthetic quality (let alone beauty) in their designs is pointless, impossible, or even dangerous. here are four objections. firstly, one might object that our characterization too easily subscribes to the formalist conception of the aesthetic sense and does not accurately record how people experience a building. much of the way we experience architecture is intuitive. we are “enveloped” in the experience of a work of architecture, as walter benjamin observed21; we do not usually stand in front of it analyzing its divisions into coherent and incoherent parts. in this sense, experiencing a group of buildings is like a walk through a forest, or the exploration of a cave, and could more readily be subjected to psychological analysis than conventional aesthetic descriptions. secondly, even if there can be some objectivity in the differing experiences people have of buildings, the way buildings are appreciated is inevitably culturally conditioned: members of certain castes in india may be more likely to enjoy the rich texture and overwhelming detail of a hindu temple, whereas europeans of an analogous class prefer the plain abstraction of mies van der rohe’s barcelona pavilion. the attempt to find universal qualities of beauty (desirable intricacy, or perfection of proportion) would therefore be quite futile. thirdly, our appreciation is not only conditioned by cultural origin, but also by time. as our technology progresses, forms which were previously impossible or uneconomic to construct become possible. in the past, for example, only limited spans were achievable, so intermediary columns were necessary, and it was natural to adopt some it is a principal moral task for architects [...] to judge carefully the aesthetic accessibility of [their] buildings. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 70 il li es & r a y conventions to decorate them. but now, we might not need columns (in a traditional sense) at all. structures could arise, and warp and twist like a piece of landscape, and the conventions of architectural form are revealed for what they always were—products of the technological limitations of their time. we can also, fourthly, raise the more fundamental objection whether we should aspire to make beautiful buildings at all. isn’t cultural beauty a dangerous camouflage of a rather grim reality? it might be more truthful to the purposes that they serve, and the conditions of their production, that buildings should be ugly. in his analysis of the relationship between aesthetics and political interests, theodor adorno argued that all cultural products, including architecture, were extended instruments of capitalism, necessarily putting those who experience them into the position of passive consumers. “beauty” in this reading is particularly dangerous, because it obscures the brutal face of reality, that is a system of capitalist exploitation and instrumentalization. “ugly” art, in contrast, will be a more truthful revelation of the real conditions of society. his observations of 1944 anticipate the feelings of many in the last seventy years.22 these objections are paradigmatic for the aesthetic debate on architecture and aesthetics. they correspond to fundamental philosophical theories: aesthetic subjectivism would claim that any aesthetic experience remains subjective and no general judgements can be made about aesthetic qualities. aesthetic culturalism is the basis for the second and third objection; it sees aesthetic judgements as being cultural in origin and shaped by an epoch or time. again, any promotion of beauty seems futile from this perspective, at least if it aims at more than the preferences of a group at a certain time. the fourth critique is a variation of ‘ideology-critique’ that the frankfurt school developed; here theories are debunked according to the motives or interests that they serve implicitly or explicitly. let us turn to the first objection. it is obvious that a universal demand for architectural beauty like the one above only makes sense if a generally shared understanding of what beauty amounts to is possible.23 thus at least a mild form of aesthetic objectivism is presupposed by our argument. following kant, we hold that “judgements of taste” can make a claim to general (kant would say “universal”) acceptance—in face of a building like the pantheon, we consider some aesthetic judgements as the ones everyone should make.24 this objectivism seems to go hand in hand with an aesthetic cognitivism, i.e., the view that aesthetic judgements can be (more or less) correct or wrong and that we can meaningfully reason about whether they are. after all, even an analysis of types of beauty as suggested above only makes sense if the aesthetic is not entirely outside the reach of reason. however, this does not mean that aesthetic judgments are entirely independent from the subject and its way of experiencing the 71 isparchitecture.com world. in his defence of objectivism, frank sibley25 rightly points out that aesthetic judgements cannot be inferred directly from non-aesthetic features of an object, but require response-dependent features, that is properties which need the response of the experiencing subjects for being instantiated: “taste, perceptiveness, or sensitivity, of aesthetic discrimination or appreciation” lie at the heart of aesthetic judgments.26 for example, we cannot talk meaningfully about the ‘harmonious proportions of the pantheon (or its color) without some experience of this harmony (or color). we will therefore base our argument on a moderate objectivism that includes the foundational role of experiences. following elisabeth schellekens’s distinction between an aesthetic perception and an aesthetic judgement, we presuppose that aesthetic perceptions provide “the experiential grounding of an aesthetic judgement,” but that aesthetic judgements are the result of a “rational process” which “relies on the possibility of appealing to an object’s salient features in order to check whether our aesthetic perception is well grounded.”27 the essential role of the subject’s experience explains why aesthetic subjectivism and the reference to individual intuitions will always have a strong appeal. aesthetic subjectivism is right in emphasizing the possibility of irreducibly subjective aesthetic experiences or intuitions—we only have to remember peter eisenman’s notable dislike of chartres cathedral28—but regarding aesthetic judgements merely as subjective expressions of preferences explains too little. aesthetic subjectivism leaves many aspects of these judgements, like the striking convergence of aesthetic judgements over time and between cultures, underdetermined. a “reasonable objectivism” (to use schellekens’s term) will have to allow for subjective perceptions and even for impenetrable idiosyncrasies. but it will also acknowledge (at least some) aesthetic features of buildings and other artifacts that more generally evoke aesthetic appreciation. furthermore, reasonable objectivism finds empirical support by isn’t cultural beauty a dangerous camouflage of a rather grim reality? “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 72 il li es & r a y many psychological experiments that contradict the strong subjectivist claims. there seem, for example, to be hard-wired preferences for certain facial features. there is also a striking cross-cultural agreement (at least amongst so-called “informed” and “educated” people) about the aesthetic quality of many artworks or buildings. to be sure, any reasonable objectivism has to account for a great variety of aesthetic preferences— but it will do so within a framework of generally acknowledged aesthetic qualities. and it is these qualities, their analysis and promotion, with which we are concerned. the second and third objections are based upon the observation that the understanding of beauty is neither homogenous amongst people nor unchanging over time. in renaissance times, medieval architecture was derogatorily baptized “gothic” by classicizing italians who blamed gothic tribes for having sacked rome and having created a barbarian style of building—while a.w.n. pugin and other romanticists of the 19th century celebrated its beauty and dreamt of a (neo)gothic world. if ‘beauty’ is an ever-changing concept, does it make sense to demand the design of ‘beautiful’ buildings? indeed it does, and the arguments above support the demand to strive for architectural beauty within the given cultural context. this culturally specific notion of beauty is implied by a practice which is always part of a cultural context (like building a railway station for a society with a certain infrastructure, tradition, life-form, etc.). similarly, when we ground the demand for beauty on the promotion of human well-being, the aesthetic experiences of a culture and time must be taken into account; it is an essential part of people’s identity, and thus well-being, to be situated in a certain culture and tradition. that is why we specified the aim as an accessible beauty. in other words: the demand indicates an ideal whose realisation can look rather different in different situations. some features of a building will be required in most contexts (such as a careful design of details), others will be specific for a certain culture and time (such as the use of a certain style), and others can be highly specific to the situation (the “murmur of the site”). the demand to strive for beauty does not come with an elaborated list of forms that must be globally applied, but asks for sensitive artistic reflection about what constitutes beauty in a particular case. this will include an anticipation of the aesthetic responses of the beholders. but because of the (intended) survival of most buildings over time, the architect should aim at those forms that transcend the fashions of the day and are likely to be accessible for users and beholders of generations yet to come.29 (not an easy task, but then, good architecture is a demanding art and not a simple craft.) let us turn to adorno’s objection. is there something vicious about creating beauty in an ultimately ugly world? obviously, one might question his marxist absolutism about capitalism and doubt whether we can simply 73 isparchitecture.com identify the free market as inherently evil (especially if we cannot easily point to a compellingly successful alternative). but we can accept his political analysis here, for the sake of argument, and look at his fundamental thesis about the intention behind the creation of beauty and about the way the experience of beauty affects us. both seem highly speculative. there’s evidence that even in the most straightened circumstances people aspire to decorate their dwellings. if the lights of (robert venturi’s) las vegas, as much as the skyline of beijing, were created to manipulate people’s feelings, it is by no means obvious why beauty must always be a strategic move to deceive others. but although there are situations in which it serves to encourage the acceptance of an unjust political situation, aesthetic experiences can equally well produce an increased level of awareness or sensibility to the world and, for example, its fragility. it can thereby increase our ability to change it for the better. friedrich schiller famously argued that art and the aesthetic impulse allow the individual to transcend inner and outer constraints, thus increasing his or her freedom. there is no compelling reason why we should let adorno’s single-sided ‘ideology-critique’ delegitimate the desire for beauty. in summary, these more general objections, according to which an obligation to beauty presupposes a questionable aesthetic objectivism, or even promotes a dangerous ideology, do not seem to carry much weight. the subjective/ objective debate is only a marginal concern to the aesthetic deontology that is outlined in this paper. most importantly, the obligation to beauty is not committed to a single version of beauty—even as a universal imperative it allows us to embrace some particularist insights. 3. in search of a prime imperative of architecture if beauty is one moral obligation for architects, we can certainly identify others: we briefly turn to this expanded field of moral duty, before examining deontic conflicts (that is, conflict among the the demand to strive for beauty does not come with an elaborated list of forms that must be globally applied “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 74 il li es & r a y ‘expanded field’ of moral and aesthetic duties for architecture) and their possible resolutions. we will end this section by searching for a prime imperative of architecture that might help to solve these conflicts. 3.1 moral obligations and conflicts building entails a complex set of activities, involving many agents and artifacts, and ranges from design and construction to a completed edifice that may remain as continuous reality. without any claim to finality, this creates (at least) the following reasonable moral demands30: (1) duties arising from professional behavior; (2) duties arising from what a building is (designed) for, and pertain to its use, good architecture, independently from the moral discourse31; (3) moral duties pertaining to the impact of the building on individual users: their health, safety, and general well-being, including their psychological well-being; (4) moral duties arising from the impact of the building on the natural (non-man made) environment; (5) moral duties pertaining to the influence on human behavior, individually and collectively; (6) the cultural or symbolic meaning that buildings express and communicate, by means of choices in form, materials, colors, aesthetic style, and the like. to this we would add (7) moral imagination—that is the faculty which anticipates moral answers to complex challenges by portraying a possible and better life-form, society, or world. moral imagination requires an abstraction from one’s particular situation, an awareness of the values and principles on which one currently acts—as much as an openness to change and the anticipation of different and new ways to deal with current and upcoming challenges (e.g., a library that suggests an ideal of scholarship, a chamber for debate which supposes a society to which we aspire).32 this demand is different from the others in that it is not an obligation but, rather, a luxury (or technically supererogatory): although not all buildings need to inspire our moral imagination, some buildings must do so. again, buildings might satisfy some, and not all, of these moral demands, and often the satisfaction of one moral demand will be in conflict with another. to give an example: environmental concerns or even safety can clash with the cultural meaning of a building.33 this typology might make it easier to analyze questions (and demands) of moral relevance; however, for several reasons things are more complicated. first, things are more complicated because we have to distinguish between what is objectively good or bad and what is subjectively moral or immoral. the first relates something to a universal ethical standard; in this sense slavery was always as wrong as it is now. when we talk about the subjective morality of the agent, however, we contextualize his or her knowledge of norms and values. even an antique slave-owner could then have been a subjectively moral person, simply because he could not have known better 75 isparchitecture.com at the time. that difference is relevant for both the brief and design areas: we can ask whether a brief is acceptable (objectively right) and also whether the architect was justified (subjectively moral) in accepting it. as we have illustrated above, we can ask the same question in the area of design. the answers in both cases can be different and the historical context will become relevant in helping come to appropriate judgements. secondly, things are so complicated because clashes often occur between different types of demands, like aesthetic, moral or functional ones. they sometimes cohere without conflict (it is, for example, as much a moral, a legal, and a functional requirement that engineers design structurally stable buildings). but often they pull in different directions. for example: we might ask whether the gates between the first, second, and third class passengers on the titanic were morally acceptable, though they were demanded by the etiquette of its time. it is therefore no surprise that some of the finest buildings (that respect the obligation to beauty) are erected by blatantly ignoring some fundamental moral demands. 3.2 the difficulty of a reconciliation a well-known difficulty of any clash of normative demands is that there are quantitative issues, which are calculable with reasonable precision, and qualitative issues, which are not amenable to the same kind of measurement. how these demands should be balanced against each other is hard to decide, in particular if the very idea of “balancing” is biased towards quantifiable issues. this is a general problem, but is endemic for architecture because it is partially an art form and partially a functional thing—which makes it particularly open to expectations from both the measurable and the unmeasurable sides. and even within the same type of demand, for example the aesthetic one, we have measurable and unmeasurable components. whereas visual comfort, or the use of materials that are warm to the touch, may be matters that can moral imagination [...] anticipates moral answers to complex challenges “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 76 il li es & r a y be quantified, whether the aesthetic quality of a conjunction of particular sets of forms is quantifiable remains questionable.34 in a similar way, we could say that it is easy to measure whether we have or have not met some ethical demands; but there are others that are less objectively measurable. we are therefore faced with a complex of categorically different criteria even within the same type of demands. these demands are not hierarchically ordered in an obvious way: we cannot simply argue that only those buildings that perform satisfactorily in all measurable ways get themselves into the category where they can be judged in incommensurable ways, because we can all think of buildings that fail in some measurable way, but are nevertheless highly regarded for good reasons.35 that a building is successful technically, on the other hand, is no guarantee that it is going to be of a high architectural standard. what makes things even more complicated is that there can be conflicting demands of other types. we have seen that the obligation to beauty is a moral demand, but morality demands a respect for multiple demands. budgetary prudence, for example, could be a reasonable criterion for a client commissioning architects, and the constraints that lead to that demand could be quite precisely measured—if the client is a charity, say, with a limited budget. to complicate matters even more, full moral obeisance is not guaranteed to be the best course of action. at least in hindsight, we know that many acknowledged masterpieces were only achieved because architects were in some sense irresponsible with their client’s money in the service of a greater ideal—namely creating a work of architecture that transcended its immediate context—which we would find hard to quantify. so the resulting picture is highly complex: we have tensions between different types of demands (moral, aesthetic, economic) and between the quantifiable and unquantifiable. because the different demands are deeply interwoven, we cannot even have a trade off on the level of quantifiable demands, because there can be (more or less) quantifiable moral demands to obey unquantifiable normative demands of other types (e.g., to be economically responsible)—and unquantifiable moral demands to obey quantifiable demands of other types (e.g., for flexible buildings). architecture has not come up with a timeless solution to the tensions between different demands and their clash seems an ongoing theme of architectural self-reflection.36 few areas of human activity face so many and such different demands—and that is possibly the reason it is particularly hard in the case of architecture to find truly unifying, wellbalanced reconciliations rather than biased compromises that give too much weight to some demands at the expense of others. 77 isparchitecture.com 3.3 in search of a prime obligation for architecture if ethics can neither reconcile different demands a priori, nor hope for an objectifiable trade-off, what could do this work? it is tempting to attempt to prioritize the different types of demands. what, in the end, is the highest obligation? one the one hand, it seems that much, or even all demands have a moral basis. remember that the strongest argument for the architect’s obligation to create beauty is itself a moral reason. and moral demands can also be seen as grounding other types of requirements, for example functional ones: to build efficiently, safely, and economically is also a way of respecting other humans, their resources (or the resources of future generations), and so forth. however, it is not clear what exactly follows for this priority in time; in particular, it does not imply that the obligation to beauty must, in the end, be sacrificed for other moral demands. on the other hand, architecture can be regarded as a way of overcoming normative tensions by suggesting an ultimately aesthetic solution. it must always result in a particular design that in some way or other bridges between conflicting demands. and a successful resolution to conflicting duties will be, as stated in the beginning, an intellectual achievement that can give (intellectual) beauty to a building. thus, when it comes to reconciling conflicting demands in a building, beauty, not morality, seems always have the last word. to put it another way, apparently irreconcilable demands have to be resolved by appeal to aesthetic solutions. the purpose of this essay has been to identify accessible beauty as a fundamental obligation of architecture. our argument could point towards the stronger thesis that this is in some way the prime obligation of architecture. though we would not claim to have reached that conclusion, which would require much more than this paper can contain; nevertheless, we hope to have indicated its possibility. architecture can be regarded as a way of overcoming normative tensions “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 78 il li es & r a y endnotes 1. this paper is a revised and condensed version of our “why architects should design beautiful buildings,” in the design turn in applied ethics, eds. thomas pogge, jeroen van den hoven, and seumas miller (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2012/2016), and builds on christian illies, “schön ist gut! ästhetisches bauen als ethische forderung,” (presentation, symposium, basel, switzerland, march 7, 2013). we are grateful to stefan koller and tom spector for very helpful comments. 2. christian illies and nicholas ray, the philosophy of architecture (london: cambridge architectural press, 2014). reviewed by stefan koller and tom spector below. 3. nikolaus pevsner, an outline of european architecture (london: penguin, 1943). 4. by this phraseology, we recognize that, though this is a common and perfectly proper approach, it is not necessary to believe in “beauty” as an essence, or some kind of platonic ideal. we can equally well say, in a somewhat aristotelian mode, that the product of good architectural practice should be buildings that people would conventionally find beautiful. 5. for an introduction to those issues, see graham gordon, “architecture,” in oxford handbook of aesthetics, ed. jerrold levinson (oxford: oxford university press, 2006), 561-569. see also saul fisher, “philosophy of architecture,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. edward n. zalta, september 9, 2015, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/architecture. 6. goethe, who was acutely sensitive to architecture, emphasized its haptic nature in a conversation with humboldt. see johann wolfgang von goethe, gedenkausgabe der werke, briefe und gespräche. bd 22 (goethes gespräche), ed. ernst beutler (frankfurt: artemis, 1964), 241. the classic text exploring the various ways in which architecture can affect us is steen eiler rasmussen, experiencing architecture (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1959). 7. see david pye, the nature and aesthetics of design (oxford: berg 3pl, 2002) for a full discussion of functional beauty in product design. 8. see rafael moneo (presentation, anywhere conference, yufuin, japan, 1992). re-printed in el croquis 20/64/98: rafael moneo 1967-2004 (2004): 635-641. see also francisco gonzález de canales and nicholas ray, rafael moneo: building teaching writing (new haven, ct: yale university press, 2015). 9. how contextual fit (and its relation to architectural beauty) is to be spelled out precisely is an open question. for a spirited defense of a highly partisan position, see roger scruton, beauty (oxford: oxford university press, 2009), 8-14. 10. see mohsen mostafavi and david leatherbarrow, on weathering: the 79 isparchitecture.com life of buildings in time (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1993). 11. see dennis radford, and douglas cawthorne, “unlocking lutyens: a gateway to the hidden legacy of john pell and sir christopher wren” in architecture research quarterly 12, no.1 (2008): 69-85. 12.this could therefore constitute a further category. others would claim this is an overarching category transcending aesthetics, within which every other category is subsumed. the phenomenology of merleau-ponty and the hermeneutic approach of gadamer can be read in this way. see kenneth frampton, a genealogy of modern architecture: comparative critical analysis of built form, ed. ashley simone (zurich: lars muller, 2015), 1827. 13. hannes meyer, bauen und gesellschaft: schriften, briefe, projekte (dresden: verlag der kunst, 1980). 14. for a similar argument for beauty as a moral obligation see martin düchs, architektur für ein gutes leben: über verantwortung, moral und ethik des architekten (münster: waxmann, 2011), 232-235. 15. given such an inclusivist delineation of ‘well-being’, this proposal differs from the first one, which (at most) relates to aristotle’s more specific notion of human well-being or ‘flourishing’ (eudaimonia). that said, the present argument could be reformulated for that restricted notion, though we do not pursue this eudaimonistic variant here. 16. aldo van eyck quoted in herman hertzberger, aldo van eyck, eds. addie van roijen-wortmann and francis strauven (amsterdam: stichting wonen, 1982). 17. meyer’s list is as follows: pure construction is the basis and the characteristics of the new world of forms. 1. sex life 2. sleeping habits 3. pets 4. gardening 5. personal hygiene 6. weather protection 7. hygiene in the home 8. car maintenance 9. cooking 10. heating 11. exposure to the sun 12. services these are the only motives when building a house. meyer was quite optimistic that this would allow for a scientific process of design: this functional, biological interpretation of architecture as giving shape to the functions of life, logically leads to pure construction: this world of constructive forms knows no native country. it is the expression of an international attitude in architecture. internationality is a privilege of the period. […] we examine the daily routine of everyone who lives in the house and this gives us the functional diagram – the functional diagram and the economic programme are the determining principles of the building project. for meyer’s list and commentary, see hannes meyer, “building,” bauhaus year 2, no. 4, quoted in programs and manifestos on 20th-century architecture, ed. ulrich conrads, trans. michael bullock (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1975), 119. 18. christian illies, “the evolution of autonomous beauty. sexual ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 80 il li es & r a y selection versus natural selection,” in the many faces of beauty, ed. vittorio hösle (notre dame, in: notre dame press, 2013), 133-168. 19. in technical terms this presupposes an “internalist” position for people’s belief formation and justification. subscription to “acceptance internalism” would seem a relevant position to hold where the judgment of a ‘public art’ like architecture is concerned. this question could be examined in greater detail, no doubt, as stefan koller has pointed out to us. 20. vicious mister fox’ serves a delicious soup on a flat plate to miss stork. and though she is hungry, she cannot eat it with her long beak. 21. walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” in illuminations, ed. hannah arendt, trans. harry zohn (london: pimlico, 1999). 22. including nathaniel coleman, “is beauty still relevant? is art? is architecture?,” architecture philosophy 1, no. 1 (2014): 81-95. for adorno, see theodor adorno and max horkheimer, “the culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception,” marxists internet archive, last modified february 2005, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ adorno/1944/culture-industry.htm. 23. here we get close to, without endorsing, an analogue in the aesthetic domain to a ‘categorical’ imperative in the moral domain. (on the difficulty of pushing such an analogy too far, bernard williams, philippa foot, and john mcdowell have written eloquently.) but as we now go on to explain, we steer clear of brute categorization by recognizing cultural context. contextualization to cultural specifics also endows a principled deontological framework with the means to absorb some of the explanatory appeal of what is presently known as moral ‘particularism’. 24. for a thorough discussion of kant’s aesthetics, see paul guyer, kant and the claims of taste (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997). 25. f. n. sibley and michael tanner, “symposium: objectivity and aesthetic,” proceedings of the aristotelian society, supplementary volumes 42 (1968): 31-54. 26. frank sibley, “aesthetic concepts,” philosophical review 68, no. 4 (1959): 421. 27. elisabeth schellekens, “towards a reasonable objectivism for aesthetic judgements,” british journal of aesthetics 46, no. 2 (2006): 175. 28. christopher alexander and peter eisenman, “contrasting concepts of harmony in architecture,” lotus international 40 (1983): 60-68. 29. we say ‘most’ because many forms of architecture—paper architecture and exhibition architecture like the weissenhofsiedlung—can legitimately evade any obligation to enduring aesthetic relevance. 30. most of these categories are worked out in more detail in illies and ray, the philosophy of architecture. the seventh category is a new addition. 81 isparchitecture.com for categories of moral relevance see also warwick a. fox, “architecture ethics,” in a companion to the philosophy of technology, eds. jan kyrre berg olsen, stig andur pedersen, and vincent f. hendricks (oxford: blackwell, 2009), 387-391. 31. it should be added that the intended function does not have to be the function that the building realizes; see don ihde, “the designer fallacy and technological imagination”, in defining technological literacy: towards an epistemological framework, ed. john r. dakers (new york: palgrave macmillan, 2006). 32. for the importance of moral imagination see melissa lane, ecorepublic: ancient thinking for a green age (new york: peter lang publishing, 2011). see also jane collier, “moral imagination and the practice of architecture,” in architecture and its ethical dilemmas, ed. nicholas ray (new york: taylor & francis, 2005). 33. see nicholas ray, “the cambridge history faculty building: a case study in ethical dilemmas in the twentieth century” in architecture and its ethical dilemmas, ed. nicholas ray (new york: taylor & francis, 2005). 34. for a discussion of proportional systems, which sometimes make this claim, see p. h. scholfield, the theory of proportion in architecture (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1958). the finnish architect alvar aalto said his wooden furniture was more functional than the furniture designed by his contemporaries in the bauhaus, which was metal-framed and cold to the touch. but he acknowledged that scientific analysis “gave out” at some point: “the demands that the chair failed to meet – excessive reflection of sound and light, high thermal conductivity – are actually merely the scientific names of the elements that together make up the mysterious concept of ‘comfort’.” see alvar aalto, “rationalismen och manniskän” (presentation, annual meeting of the swedish society of industrial design, may 9, 1935), reprinted in alvar aalto, alvar aalto in his own words, ed. goran schildt (new york: rizzoli international, 1998). 35. le corbusier’s famous villa savoye would be an example: it is impossible to waterproof it. 36. taylor and levine for example, claim that the study of the intersection of architecture and ethics enables one to “achieve a more comprehensive understanding of architecture and ethics than traditionally conceived by either moral philosophers or architectural theorists (particularly phenomenologists) alone.” the authors want to see aesthetic issues as an integral part of the function of a building: it would be impossible therefore to design a war memorial that was aesthetically successful if it could also be seen as endorsing an immoral politics. but as we have observed there are well-known instances of (what most people would consider to be) significant works of architecture that were designed to serve autocratic regimes, or contain uses that we would hardly sanction today: the alhambra, ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 82 il li es & r a y or the coliseum, or terragni’s casa del fascio at como. according to the authors, the prospects for philosophical investigation are limited, in any case, since they “question the effectiveness of philosophical enquiry, as commonly practised, for understanding moral values in relation to the built environment.” see william m. taylor & michael p. levine, prospects for an ethics of architecture (abingdon: routledge, 2011), 78. isparchitecture.com book review philosophy of architecture, by christian illies & nicholas ray london: cambridge architectural press, 2014. isbn: 978-0993053009 price: $20.99 reviewed by stefan koller & tom spector most readers of this journal have probably experienced skeptical responses when trying to explain their interest in the philosophy of architecture. what could such a field consist in? why does architecture need philosophy? why does philosophy need architecture? what are the field’s main topics? if only a brief overview of the field existed (is it a field yet?), then we could hand our interlocutors the book secure in the knowledge that, yes architecture philosophy is a field, it has definable boundaries, and contains distinct subject matter. while we would be justified in doubting whether an overview of the subject is achievable, particularly one that confronts outsiders’ skepticism head on, christian illies and nicholas ray have assembled, in their words, a “little handbook.” the primary task of such a project is always to balance the need for brevity while still doing justice to the subject matter. it is a balancing act illies and ray have accomplished with considerable elegance. philosophy of architecture weighs-in at a right-sized 161 pages (including bibliography) for a handbook. it consists of four chapters plus a lengthy introduction that is divided into three overarching sections: an introductory section surveys the ways in which architecture theory has appropriated “philosophical ideas and world views,” the central section discusses how applied ethics and aesthetics have been harnessed to explicate architectural topics, and the final section delineates “philosophical positions illustrated in architectural practice.” while this last section may be of use to philosophers seeking to better understand how to engage architecture to their areas of ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 84 bo ok r ev ie w interest, it is fair to say that the bulk of the book is aimed at delineating philosophical positions to an architectural audience. the first chapter begins with plato’s theory of forms and its influence on renaissance thinking. this focus on absolutes gives way in the eighteenth century to a more historically-aware philosophy informed by kant and hegel which in turn opens the door for the relativism of nietzsche. on the heels of nietzsche, heidegger’s influence on such late-modern thinkers as christian norberg-schulz, karsten harries, and juhani pallasmaa is traced up to the start of the “post-metaphysical age” exemplified in the cultivation of irony found in architectural postmodernism. the second chapter, on ethics, usefully categorizes and discusses six distinct ways in which the study of ethics and architecture is approached: as professional ethics, as a response to a building’s function, its impact on the natural environment, its impact on humans’ physical wellbeing and on their psychological flourishing, and architecture’s symbolic or cultural role. in the third chapter, the classic problems of aesthetics— beauty’s subjective nature, problems of judgment, questions of artworks’ cognitive content—are discussed in relation to the aesthetic appreciation of architecture. topics of crucial import for architects concerning the implicit conflicts between aesthetics and function and between aesthetics and ethics are introduced so that the novice can grasp the essence of these complex issues. the chapter concludes in a well-rounded discussion of modernism’s ambivalence towards the goal of beauty. in the final chapter, the philosophical commitments of architects louis kahn, rem koolhaas, and alvar aalto are discussed to introduce the more general idea that philosophical positions can have both implicit and explicit components relevant to architectural practice. while the philosophical areas illies and ray’s book most heavily focuses on—ethics and aesthetics—are certainly two bedrock (and intertwining) fields of interest for architecture, the liability of balancing brevity and comprehensiveness is such that, inevitably, some philosophical fields of interest to architects will be left out. we could ask, for example, what of phenomenology? sure it has been in retreat lately, but it has certainly been a subject of some interest. environmental ethics has been such a richly developing area in recent decades that, especially considering the urgency of the situation, it probably merits more than a page and a half. feminism gets no mention at all. philosophy of media is similarly absent. even within analytic philosophy (the authors’ allegiance likely falls here) core areas—like metaphysics and epistemology—with some relevance to architectural questions are left for others to address. in this sense, the book serves as a perfect complement to saul fisher’s recent overview to analytic philosophy of architecture in the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy: fisher shines in areas where the book is terse, and vice versa. between the two, 85 isparchitecture.com neophytes to analytic philosophy of architecture could hardly wish for easier initiation. hence, for an overview of the more longstanding areas of philosophical interest, as well as some introduction to recent events in those areas, philosophy of architecture does what a good “little handbook” should do: it presents the fields in such a way that a reader with a budding interest in these matters can delve into them further with the confidence that there is, in fact, a field to delve into. the book avoids idiosyncratic readings of historical key figures and unsubstantiated claims of where contemporary philosophy is, and where it ought to be heading—factors that occasionally tempered the credibility and neutrality of a comparable title, branko mitrovic’s philosophy for architects (princeton 2011). given the introductory nature of both books, all three authors feel compelled to largely privilege the (historical) exposition of philosophical views over these views’ philosophical examination. while natural, this choice rings odd when both books proclaim that examination of arguments (pro and contra) for given views characterizes contemporary philosophical practice at its very best. in fairness, initiating an architectural audience into philosophical practice—or indeed a philosophical one to architectural practice—might well be an unrealistic expectation for a 160-page “handbook”. still, as these books have set our expectations otherwise, a sense of lost opportunity lingers. for all its commendable neutrality, a book such as illies and ray’s cannot completely eschew a philosophical stance—and it is here that the book would have most benefited from some real argumentation. towards the end of the book, the authors propose a view that philosophical puzzles on architecture—especially puzzles arising from conflicting theoretic demands leveled at architecture—must come to an end: only the architectural design can effectively ‘synthesize’ and (to varying degrees of success) integrate or harmonize such theoretic tensions. while it may [the] authors privilege the historical exposition of philosophical views over these views’ philosophical examination. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 86 bo ok r ev ie w seem plausible to posit that architecture is uniquely positioned to render moot philosophical puzzles about architecture, the authors’ suggestion is actually stronger than this. with design positioned as “the core human discipline, being the only activity that properly involves the imaginative conception of ideas, leading to artifacts that are realized as actual construction in the world” (145) the authors want to claim the further step that architecture can help resolve philosophical problems in general. one is reminded of wittgenstein’s saying that “explanations come to an end somewhere.”1 however, where wittgenstein envisaged mystical silence or therapeutic expulsion of cravings for explanation, illies and ray intend for design solutions to fill this gap. this is a tall order for architecture to fill—can it deliver? the authors appear confident on this point; indeed, they herald their book’s achievements in exactly those colors on the back cover. such a proposal raises a host of issues, some of which are broached in their new paper in this issue. one, for this provocative reversal of the age old thesis of philosophy as ‘first science’ (aristotle) or ‘handmaiden’ to the theoretic and applied sciences (locke) to attain credibility, readers will eventually want to see an illustration of the thesis, in a concrete building project from commission to execution. how exactly does such a project, especially at execution stage, synthesize and solve philosophical conundrums? what is more, can such a solution receive articulation in anything other than built form (say, in an architect’s report about her building’s achievements to an absentee client)? if it cannot, and especially cannot receive articulation in verbal form (written or spoken), how can we ascertain that a solution has been found? how, in other words, does the authors’ cryptic proposal at this point not collapse into wittgenstein’s early view on ‘the aesthetic’ as being something that cannot be (meaningfully, determinately) spoken of, but rather demands that philosophy instead become the silent one? if the view does so collapse, how do synthesis and silence coincide? what would constitute acceptable evidence that they do coincide?2 the book, then, ends on a highly intriguing note ripe for future investigation. its final proposal allocates to architecture a much greater role in framing and deciding philosophical questions than any (certainly recent) philosophers have been willing to accord it. architects will likely welcome this recognition of their discipline’s contribution to philosophical dialogue. indeed, it can be reasonably hoped that architects, not philosophers, will develop and substantiate the book’s conclusion towards a more satisfactory and compelling stage. philosophy of architecture thus illustrates, rather than anticipates the end of, the many surprising turns philosophy can take: that even in a “little handbook,” fresh questions emerge; questions liable to stimulate future discussion for quite some time. 87 isparchitecture.com endnotes 1. ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, translated by elizabeth anscombe (oxford: basil blackwell: 1953), §1. 2. such questions were raised, and debated in considerable depth, at the 2015 ispa symposium at the wittgenstein house – though not in response to illies and ray’s work, but in relation to wittgenstein’s own purported ‘quietism’ with respect to the aesthetics of, but not only of, architecture. readers interested in, or finding themselves at the receiving end of, such questions are invited to peruse a selection of that symposium’s contributions in the next issue of architecture philosophy, edited by carolyn fahey. isparchitecture.com call for papers the human in architecture and philosophy: towards an architectural anthropology 20 july – 23 july 2015 bamberg, germany human beings normally live in buildings – structures built specifically for this function. this raises interesting questions. why do we build dwellings (such as the ones we do)? and for whom do architects build houses? these questions view the same phenomenon from two different perspectives: architecture can tell us something about the human condition (in general or in a particular culture) and we can derive insights about architecture from our understanding of human beings. this topic is inspired by two observations and two related questions: 1) many architects, contemporary and historical, claim to focus on the needs of human beings. the resulting architecture, however, often does not meet the needs and desires of the people who live there. for whom should architecture actually build? 2) architecture, traditionally, has played a negligible role in our philosophical understanding of human beings (as also for our sociological, psychological, and other anthropological analyses). although it has always been generally acknowledged that human beings need built dwelling places, more careful analysis of this need is surely necessary. what does it say about human beings that they depend upon the buildings they construct for their own habitation? these observations point to a deficit both in philosophical analysis and in the practical application of philosophy of architecture. a more systematic analysis of both areas could contribute to a better understanding of human beings and to future architectural endeavour better satisfying the needs and wishes of human beings. ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 90 ca ll f or p a pe r s the 3rd international society for the philosophy of architecture international conference seeks to answers these questions (and to pose some new ones) by bringing together architecture and philosophy with a variety of other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, civil engineering, design, law, and psychology. philosophers are far from having reached a consensus about the question as to what human beings are. kant thought this the philosophical question par excellence and that upon which all other questions hang. philosophers do not even agree on how to put this question. are questions about human beings not already presupposing an outdated essentialism? whatever one’s metaphysical position might be, it does seem that this obstinate philosophical-anthropological question remains. even rejecting the question is, in a way, to acknowledge that it is a philosophical problem. human beings normally spend a significant proportion of their lives in buildings. architecture, and the built environment in a wider sense, is therefore of great importance in any adequate philosophical anthropology. when we look at the history of architecture, we find very different (and often fascinating) answers to kant’s question; answers that are implicitly given by the way in which architects and non-architects build or have built. they present an ‘architectural anthropology’ often containing insights beyond philosophy. it is also remarkable how dramatically much architecture often fails to provide an adequate architectural anthropology. very basic needs and desires of inhabitants have not always been satisfied. some architects and builders seem to ignore what human beings are really like. although architects are generally aware of this challenge, and many claim to pay much attention to the needs of the human being, there are hardly any practical systematic endeavors aimed at finding out what these human needs are. most architects operate with a rather vague anthropology and few have attempted to articulate their position within their own writings. to overcome the problem of unsubstantiated, and possibly incorrect, assumptions about human needs, and in order that architecture might relate the better to the human being, we need a developed and theoretically self-aware architectural anthropology. that there has been little in the way of cross-disciplinary encounter between philosophy and architecture is part of the problem. such encounter would contribute to architecture and urban planning better adapted to human beings and would also deepen our understanding of ourselves as beings who build. the built environment is of great importance for the well-being both of the individual and of society. this conference addresses the challenge of this encounter in seeking a 91 isparchitecture.com mutual answer, or at least approach, to the questions of for whom we build and what it is we should be building. prospects we aim to attract architects and philosophers. it is envisaged that architecture be approached through the means, methods, and models of analytical (western) philosophy with a particular focus on (philosophical) anthropology. scholars from across the humanities and social sciences (including, but not limited to, sociology, psychology, anthropology, civil engineering, theology, art history, and design) who are interested in the topic are also welcome. possible topics which papers might address: i. implicit and explicit architectural anthropologies: • what are the implicit or explicit assumptions about the human being inherent in buildings or architectural styles? (eg: van eyck’s orphanage, koolhaas cctv-tower, zumthors thermal bath, etc.) • comparison of the architectural anthropology of different buildings, styles, and cultures • what are, or were, the range of expectations (needs and desires) of human beings with regard to architecture: synchronically through history and diachronically in different cultural settings? • can philosophy assist in the development of a better architectural anthropology? • would architects build differently if they changed their assumptions about what humans are? • the effect of digital architecture on implicit anthropology. ii. cultural differences and their anthropological relevance: • the architectural anthropology of cultures without dwellings (such as nomadic societies) • architectural anthropology in art, literature, and film (for example, the architecture of different species in the lord of the rings) ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 92 ca ll f or p a pe r s iii. classic texts revisited: • what assumptions about the human being can be found in the classic texts on architecture (for example alberti, semper, koolhaas, etc.)? • what have philosophers of anthropology written about architecture? • building and planning regulations and their implicit assumptions about humans. iv. architecture as a source of philosophical knowledge of human beings: • do architects know anything about human beings which philosophy should take more seriously? • can philosophy find new insights into the human condition through buildings (both internationally notable and otherwise)? • what does the fact that human beings have to live with and within architecture mean for them? • can building be regarded as a primary activity of human beings? • evolutionary perspectives on architecture and its interdependence on human beings. v. ideology and architecture: • politics and architecture (e.g. the moma exhibition ‘small scale – big change’ presented ‘new architectures of social engagement’. what about ‘human scale – big change?’) (e.g. implicit racism or discrimination in architecture). • architecture creating new types of human being (e.g. bauhaus and the ‘new human being’ (der neue mensch)). • would architects build differently if they changed their assumptions about the human being? submission the 2016 conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture invites papers which probe these questions, re-draw the assumptions behind them or ask new ones. it welcomes architects and philosophers willing to scrutinize extant (inter)disciplinary boundaries and consensus on these questions and issues. the conference celebrates 93 isparchitecture.com attempts to operate at the intersection of both disciplines, and promotes work ready to give philosophical anthropology and concrete architect(ure)s serious consideration alike. authors are invited to submit a 250-300 word abstract by monday february 1, 2016. please submit your abstract to isparchitecture@gmail.com. the abstract should be prepared for blind review and formatted as a rtf file. please also provide a short cv. submissions should be in english, and presentations will be held in english. a selection of papers will be published in architecture philosophy. date and location • 9am wednesday 20 july to 9pm friday 22 july + day trip on saturday 23 july • city of bamberg, bavaria, germany is a world-heritage site located near to nuremberg and home to the university of bamberg and the villa concordia künstlerhaus. timetable monday 1 february: deadline for abstracts thursday 31 march: notice of acceptance may: circulation of conference program organising committee professor christian illies philosopher, university of bamberg christian.illies@uni-bamberg.de dr. martin düchs architect and philosopher, university of bamberg martin.duechs@uni-bamberg.de ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 94 ca ll f or p a pe r s 95 isparchitecture.com how can architecture be both immortalized and ordinary? “ ” wittgenstein famously argues against metaphysical claims, or those explanations he describes as having gone beyond both the limits of language and of our ability to comprehend. the boundaries of architecture’s language, typically set by our historians, theorists, and practitioners, would by extension also teeter into the non-sensical on crossing the threshold of comprehension. given the possibility of non-sense in architecture discourse, this call for papers asks that architecture’s language be scrutinized according to the loosely analytic method of later wittgenstein. for many lay person, perhaps even lay architect, would claim there is discourse that is either setting new limits to our language surrounding building or falling into non-sense. perhaps there is value in delineating what the boundaries of sense in architecture are? the position against metaphysics, often referred to in the standard reading as the anti-metaphysical critique, suggests that wittgenstein would reject all of architecture theory. yet, a sweeping rejection seems too drastic, even for wittgenstein. given that theoretical work has successfully resonated with us, its audience, evidenced by the fact that we in turn shape building informed by theoretical work, not all theoretical reflection would appear to be meaningless. on closer reading, it is clear that wittgenstein suggests that some forms of reflection do fall outside of his metaphysical critique, suggesting further still that only some forms of theory are contested by his non-sense claim. compounding the matter within the case of architecture, wittgenstein defines architecture in such a manner as to suggest that it is defined beyond its physical reality, or metaphysically. he states, ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 96 ca ll f or p a pe r s “architecture immortalizes and glorifies.” precisely what is immortalized and glorified is necessarily an idea about a thing, or a notion attributed to the building, as opposed to a physical characteristic embodied within it. assuming there is no contradiction with wittgenstein’s anti-metaphysical critique and architecture theory broadly speaking, the paradox of wittgenstein’s writing and his definition of architecture becomes clear. his anti-metaphysical critique values the immediacy of the present and the tangibility of what is physically verifiable, yet he defines architecture as immortalizing and glorifying. how can we understand architecture as both ordinary and immortal? how can architecture maintain its understandings and narratives with the everyday while simultaneously reaching a status of immortality and glorification? the two-day symposium set at the wittgenstein house in vienna looks to bring to architects and designers’ attention the potential significance of wittgenstein’s method of investigation to their work, in terms of both understanding architecture and excelling at its practice. the possibilities for explanation are broad and interdisciplinary, and as such, participants are asked only to narrow their focus to the building, the city, or tectonic exercises. participants are also asked not to limit their discussion to either aesthetics or to ethics, as for wittgenstein, “aesthetics and ethics are one and the same.” organized by dr. carolyn a. fahey. for any questions regarding the call for papers, event, or post-event publication, please email the organizer at carfahey[at]gmail.com. abstracts are due by 01 april 2016 to isparchitecture[at]gmail.com. abstracts should be no less than 200 words and no more than 500 words. authors of accepted abstract submissions will be notified by 01 may 2015 for participation in the symposium. symposium participants are then invited to submit full papers for a special issue of architecture philosophy. full paper submissions will be double-blind peer reviewed and, if accepted, published in the special issue. isparchitecture.com about the authors diana aurenque is assistant professor at the department of philosophy at the university of santiago. cesar a. cruz is a doctoral candidate at the school of architecture at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign. christian illies is professor of philosophy at the university of bamberg. pauline lefebvre is fonds de la recherche scientifique research fellow and doctoral candidate at the faculty of architecture at the free university of brussels. graham owen is associate professor of architecture at tulane university. nicholas ray is reader emeritus in architecture at the university of cambridge and visiting professor at the department of architecture, university of liverpool. alberto rubio-garrido is affiliated researcher at the departament de metafísica i teoria del coneixement, university of valencia. he was previously associate professor of philosophy at the university of valencia, and associate professor of architecture at universitat politècnica de valència. image credits cover photo: tom spector from “autonomy to pragmatism: objects made moral” figures 1 and 4 by pauline lefebvre. figures 2 and 3 courtesy of ron witte and sarah whiting; figure 3 has been acquired by the san francisco museum of modern art. from “enigma as moral requirement in the wake of ledoux’s work: autonomy and expression in architecture” figures 1, 2, 3 and 5 courtesy of © bibliothèque nationnale de france, claudenicolas ledoux, l’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la législation (paris, 1804). figure 4 courtesy of © bibliothèque nationnale de france, claude-nicolas ledoux, architecture de c.-n. ledoux: collection qui rassemble tous les genres de bâtiments employés dans l’ordre social, ed. daniel ramée (paris, 1847). ap . vol 2 . no 1 . 2016 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is the paper written in english to general academic writing standards for the humanities? does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines? review criteria isparchitecture.com all papers should be submitted through the online journal portal found on the society webpage. please direct all general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. there are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special issue, conference proceedings, etc.). submission types authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. full papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word abstract, response pieces should be between 500 and 1,500 words, and book reviews between 1,000 to 2,000 words. general formatting all submissions should be presented in accordance with the university of chicago style. papers should be rtf documents, 12 point font, times new roman, doublespaced, and with no additional or otherwise unique formatting. references should be manually placed in brackets (e.g. [1], [2], and so on) with full 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the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines 1-editorial 2-owen _goback 3-lefebvre _goback 4-aurenque 5-cruz 6-rubio _goback 7-illies & ray 8-book review _goback 9-cfp 10-back matter introduction contemporary architectural practice increasingly makes use of technology for the design and creation of buildings and environments. while many architects see computer aided design as a drawing tool, others embrace parametric design ideologically, and propose it as a theory and method which can offer architectural solutions even in complex urban landscapes. following a competition, the refurbishment of eleftheria square in nicosia was awarded to the office of zaha hadid architects (zha), one of the major offices that takes parametric design ideologically. the choice of hadid’s proposal proved a major controversy among the local population from the announcement of the competition results in 2005 to the square’s completion in 2020. the discussion focuses mainly on the aesthetic appropriateness of the proposal imposed on the historical context, (especially its proximity to the venetian fortifications and the old town) despite the fact that such an urban intervention encompasses many more issues: memory and historicity, society, politics, culture, and aesthetics, as well as design methodology. in this article, i attempt a hermeneutical approach for examining the zha proposal for the square, in order to see it from various perspectives and understand its significance in relation to its cultural context. i will start with examining the history of the site, offering an interpretation of the meaning it had for the local population, as a topos in the public realm. after investigating the main requirements of the competition, i will assess the reception of the project and the dominant arguments used in parametric design in the historic urban domain. the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects stella evangelidou ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 118 ev an ge lid ou fig.1: map of nicosia by giovanni francesco camocio, (ca. 1570 ad) fig.2: giulio savorgnano, nicosia fortifications (1567). colonial openings fig.3: map of nicosia. elefhteria square, competition brief (2005) fig.4: a celebration at eleftheria square (1952) 119 isparchitecture.com the local discussions. in an attempt to understand the architects’ methodological approach, i will explain their design approach, as evident in their theoretical engagement with parametric design. to contextualize their approach, i also will investigate the opposing views of others on such practices. through a hermeneutical approach, and by using a theoretical discourse ranging from philosophers hannah arendt and michel foucault to architectural theorist alberto pérez-gómez, i will relate the project to broader concerns on topics such as place and meaning, the contemporary public realm, the issue of attunement, parametric design, and the socio-political implications of a particular morphology in historical settings. i also will explore how the project, as it has been built, is used by residents of and tourists visiting nicosia. it raises questions about architecture’s ethical role and impact on society in the era of globalization. through this examination, the eleftheria square project in nicosia can be seen as a case study in the promise and pitfalls of employing parametric design in the historic urban domain. historical background—the site as topos even though nicosia, the capital of cyprus, has never been designed as an ideal city, [fig.1] its fortifications were a model of renaissance engineering meant to be improved upon and replicated in ideal cities elsewhere within the republic of venice. designed by the military engineer giulio savorgnano in 1567, the walls were still incomplete three years later when the town was besieged by the ottomans. yet they still remain largely intact to this day. when the old town started expanding beyond its limits in the late-nineteenth century, the british colonial government created openings [fig.2] through the venetian walls in the form of bridges or roads, in order to connect it with the new suburbs. two of these openings were wider than the others. even though they were bridges over ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 120 ev an ge lid ou a moat, they functioned as collective spaces. one acquired the function of a bus terminal, whereas the other functioned as a gathering space in the form of a square. this certainly occurred due to its location: it is an extension of the historical commercial main street, connected to a long avenue that leads out of the city. the square moreover is adjacent to the bastion where until recently the city hall was located. as a result of political hostilities between turks and greeks on the island, a buffer zone has been erected, first in 1963 and then in 1974, that divides nicosia into northern and southern parts. thus, while the historical city center, with its gothic cathedral and piazza, remained within the limits of the turkish occupied territory in the north, the square was appropriated by the greek citizens as the city’s main square in the south. [fig.3] as such, it developed strong socio-political qualities, and became a place where spontaneous demonstrations and celebrations would take place. the bastion, being at a higher level, acted many times as a stage enabling direct contact between the organizers or politicians above and the people in the square below. [fig.4] occasionally, the municipality would organize festivals, during which this urban setting would function as an open-air concert hall. associated with such communal events, the square was then renamed “eleftheria”, which is the greek word for freedom.1 it has been, therefore, a topos in both a phenomenological as well as in a political sense. it was a topos in the phenomenological sense of the genius loci, as defined by christian norberg-schulz: a place which can be determined by its physical characteristics, and yet is more than that. a topos is defined as an existential space that carries intangible qualities which can only be experienced, rather than be determined by geometry and matter. in the case of manmade places, the qualities of a topos encompass the way a group of people draws on both its own virtues and the virtues of the space in which it is settled, thus acting and developing a degree of collective consciousness. places where people have such a relationship with their built environment conjure up a sense of belonging. consequently, such a place holds both the life of the people and the aura of the several historical layers, which reflect its special character and its own distinct spirit, its genius loci.2 since their construction, the nicosia city walls have endured venetian domination, ottoman and british rule, the country’s independence, and the turkish invasion, but also the spirit of the people in social struggle and rejoicing. in addition to its metaphysical qualities, the socio-political activities that took place on the square gave it qualities that defined it as a topos politikos. according to hannah arendt, the life of the polis is possible through such activities of common action (praxis) in the public realm, 121 isparchitecture.com which is the common world that gathers us together. arendt relates public space to the space of appearances, that is, face-to-face human interactions. appearance is a revelation of oneself, of one’s position and essence, to others. however, as seyla benhabib explains, the public realm is a place where self-interest is transformed into a common public goal that transcends the boundaries of faceto-face society.3 it is the presence of others, that see and hear from different positions), and demanding something in common with others to be more permanent than our earthly lives, which assures us of the reality of both the world and ourselves. our perception of reality, arendt argues, depends upon the phenomenality which takes place in the public realm. consequently, our sense of our own existence depends on it. the public realm is thus a political place where the life of praxis (vita activa) becomes a political life (vios politikos). arendt considers praxis as the highest and most important level of active life. as a political action, praxis is the true realization of human freedom. topos politikos transcends the lifespan of one generation, and thus transforms itself into a place of potential earthly immortality.4 eleftheria square has been the public realm of the polis where its citizens, for generations, would gather in order to participate in a democratic expression of their collective concerns. it was, in this way, an intersubjective space which bonded, but also differentiated, the members of the society in the democratic manifestation in the polis. it was through actions marked by their essence of democracy and plurality that the topos gained, in turn, its existential quality. the competition for a new city square and the reception of the winning scheme in 2005, the nicosia municipality announced a competition for a new “bridge-square.” the main challenges of the requirements, as given in the the public realm is a place where self-interest is transformed into a common public goal that transcends the boundaries of face-to-face society “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 122 ev an ge lid ou competition brief, were: i) to respect the monument of the venetian walls, by following the international conventions and the local legislation on antiquities; ii) to design a permanent, two-lane bridge for vehicular traffic; iii) to provide a public space that would allow social interaction during all seasonal climatic conditions; iv) to pay attention to the materials and details, to propose street furniture as well as new programmatic uses; v) the proposed construction and materials had to allow reversibility, since only the bridge for vehicles would be permanent, whereas part of the square was to be demolished in the future after the construction of a new public square, in a new refurbished area outside the walls. [fig.3] as stated before, the competition was won by zaha hadid architects, with a proposal which caused intense controversy between the citizens during and after the realization of the project. [fig.5.] according to the description of the office’s website, the design of eleftheria square represents a “historically significant architectural intervention” which aspires to reconnect the old fig.5: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square and moat park, nicosia (2010-21) fig.6: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square and moat park, nicosia (2010-21). the “dish.” view from the moat 123 isparchitecture.com fortified town with the modern city, by means of a “bold vision of coherence and continuity.” the level of the square, which the architects call “the dish,” has a slight upward inclination toward the moat, so as to act as an amphitheater addressing the bastion [fig.6], and in order to create a dialogue between the old and the new, as the office’s representative explained in an interview.5 according to the same representative, the main structural novelty that was to be introduced was the unorthodox shape of the columns resting on the moat, with a thin tip and opening to a wide diameter at the top. this design was a solution to the problem of excavating into the moat and disturbing the historical layers beneath. he added that the innovative design and construction technique at such a scale was possible only due to parametric design, the method first applied in the phaeno science centre, which zha had just completed in germany. apart from the information shared above, there is no other information recorded regarding the architects’ concept and intentions for the form chosen for the specific project and its integration with the existing urban fabric. the eleftheria square project was nominated by a local jury for the mies van der rohe awards which, as an institution, demands architecture to respond to vernacular, traditional, cultural, and natural elements. the views of the supporters of the project, engaged in the local debate, is well summarized in the jury’s accompanying supportive essay from the local committee, which interprets the upward lifting of “the dish” as a symbolic gesture toward the future, and its circular geometry, which embraces the bastion, as a reference to the past. the essay regards the lower level of the moat as “a secret garden” with its own microclimate and distinct spatial qualities. the jury further praised the aesthetic quality of the details and the secret garden, which give to the overall project an artistic value which is accompanied with spatial experiences and promenades. in such a way, ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 124 ev an ge lid ou it concludes, the project not only “re-establishes the area as a gateway to the old city, but also as a unique destination in itself.”6 on the other side, the opponents of the project criticize the hadid scheme firstly for the way it visually clashes with the monument of the venetian walls “through its scale and materials.” they claim that the venetian walls function at the level of the intimate and the familiar, despite their monumentality, because of the earthy quality of the sandstone, which is also used extensively in the buildings of the old city with the narrow streets. [fig.7-8] the color and texture of the sandstone is in contrast to the coldness of the marble and the gray and white concrete of the new square. [fig.9] they perceive the new square as massive and monolithic, whereas the venetian walls and the old town consist of small units and intimate spaces that relate to the human scale.7 the materials used for hadid’s square, in conjunction with the hyper-aestheticized forms and sophisticated details, have been considered as alien to the locals’ sense of aesthetics and habits. the lack of consideration for the local climatic conditions is another issue. cyprus is sunny most of the year, whereas nicosia, being at the center of the island, is exposed to high temperatures that, in the summer, can sometimes exceed 40oc. indifference to the microclimate of nicosia prohibits people from gathering in the square for at least half the year. the unsuitability of the public square to the weather conditions limits public encounters due to the reflective materials and lack of shade. in addition, this criticism focuses on the fact that the proposed scheme failed to respond to the basic programmatic requirements of the competition, since the construction materials didn’t seem to be reversible, there was no fig.7: materiality and scale in the old town: nicosia within the venetian walls.. fig.8: materiality and scale in the old town: nicosia within the venetian walls.. 125 isparchitecture.com vehicular bridge, and no furnishings were proposed, while compliance with the antiquities law was disputed. it is also important to note that the design at the moat level was not part of the competition, but a later commission added to the project. although the square garnered praise for its formal qualities, the negative criticism weighs more on its human utility. the anthropocentric concern examines the metaphysical quality of the character and sense of the place, as well as the relation between its social and urban aspects, on the phenomenological dimension. from this short analysis of the scheme, one can conclude that issues such as materiality, historical layering, climate, local habits, and ways of socializing and using public space were given little consideration during the design of the new eleftheria square by the winning office. the debate, which took place in the local press and across social media, was often accompanied with both caustic and ironic remarks directed toward the architect and the mayor, who were seen as indifferent elites, distant from the operation of the “real world.” such criticism was related to the extensive time required for the project to be completed, due to the many delays caused by conflicts between the architect, the municipality, and the contractors, which, in turn, caused an increase in cost and the disruption of the city center. related theoretical discourses in the absence of more information from zha regarding the concept behind eleftheria square, examination of the theoretical discourse which constitutes the background of their work is our only option for understanding the designers’ thought process. concurrently, an examination of other theoretical discourses concerning new architecture in historic and sensitive environments can inform a critical perspective on the subject. the reference to, and influence of, the russian avant-garde on zaha hadid’s work since her ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 126 ev an ge lid ou student years has been discussed and analyzed by many theorists and critics. reflecting on her early paintings, hadid confirmed her interest in the concept of fragmentation, abstraction, and explosion, as well as in deconstructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production, which constitute the characteristics of modern architecture. according to zha’s website, “for hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction was an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationships to the world we live in.” “her paintings,” it continues, “were conceived as a manifesto of a utopian world,” and “prefigure the potential of digital processes,” which explains why “technology and innovation have always been central to the work of the office”.8 her collaboration with patrik schumacher in 1988, whose work in parametric design complemented hadid’s approach, enabled the realization of their stylistic projects, and achieved both technological and structural breakthroughs. schumacher’s perspective, as explained in his massive theoretical books parametricism as style—parametricism manifesto 20089 and the autopoiesis of architecture,10 offer insight into the zha approach to architecture. in both works, schumacher claims that today’s architecture has difficulty addressing the complexity of contemporary cities and societies, and therefore needs to reassert its methods. he sees an “inability in modernism and deconstructivism to form a new sustainable view.” therefore, he highlights the need to discover a new comprehensive theoretical system which can describe architecture from within its own internal constitution.11 since architecture, according to schumacher, cannot exist without theory, all buildings before leon battista alberti (1404-1472), the first architect offering a theory of architecture, fall into the category of tradition. schumacher asserts that each previous style in history constitutes a new research paradigm defeating its predecessor. therefore, the “history of fig.9: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square, the level of the square. 127 isparchitecture.com architecture can be thought of in terms of cycles of innovation and shifts between revolutionary periods.”12 parametricism is thus, according to him, the style of our times, because it is considered the architectural avant-garde of the technological era and, in addition, it can explain architecture itself as a distinct, autonomous network of communications. the “autopoiesis” of architecture is architecture’s ability for self-production. this is based on a theory that focuses on architectural communication that observes and analyzes how individual communications depend upon, and reproduce structures such as concepts, values, styles and methods. communications are the drawings, texts, and built works, whereas built works are the set of reference points within the network of architectural communications. conceived as a scientific theory about architecture from “within architecture,” it is promoted as the “end of architectural theories.” reflecting architecture’s evolving patterns of communication in relation to the societal domain, the autopoiesis of architecture and parametricism do not communicate with straight lines and platonic solids as they did in the past, nor with typologies, zones, or territories. instead, the theory involves working with primitives such as “splines, blobs, nurds, and particles” organized by scripts, as well as by “gradient fields of activity and variable social scenarios calibrated with various event parameters.” since architectural elements have become so malleable through parametricism, one can ask for further softening, further differentiation, correlation, script, and so on.13 in this method, there is a cross-connectedness which, unlike phenomenology, always depends on computer data. schumacher suggests that “parametricism” could introduce new ideas to the architectural scene. to him, it “can be summarized in the slogan” of importing an “architectural and urban repertoire that is geared up to create complex, polycentric schumacher claims that today’s architecture has difficulty addressing the complexity of contemporary cities and societies, and therefore needs to reassert its methods. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 128 ev an ge lid ou urban and architectural fields which are densely layered and continuously differentiated.” style, buildings, and cities are described in terms of liquidity, flow, void, openness, and complexity, and their compliance to the tools of parametric design.14 the images in the parametricism manifesto are related to hadid’s utopian painting, london 2066 and many others.15 the “active shake” of the city occurs by using similar parameters to large scale projects where open spaces, streets, railway lines, and water networks are redefined in new relationships and new possibilities in urban experiments. the theoretical ground expressed in hadid’s paintings and schumacher’s manifesto share similar and intense formalistic elements and fluidity with zha’s architectural projects built all over the world. despite the location or country in which they are built, these projects look alike, having similar forms and even photorealistic renderings from the conceptual to the final construction stage. at the same time, the language and notions schumacher uses to describe this methodology are hardly intelligible for people unfamiliar with the technological aspect of digital design. nevertheless, these notions are expected to be understood, at least by the younger generations, since this method is well established in the educational program of architecture schools. nonetheless, this language is far removed from any previous form of architectural production and representation, which remains haptic; it might instead sound more like a technical description of the inside functioning of a machine, rather than one regarding the “insides of architecture,” as schumacher claims. at the opposite end of the argument about the place of science and technology in human life, many twentieth-century theorists have spoken of its negative course, beginning with the shift in consciousness that occurred after descartes and galileo. amongst them, the architectural theorist alberto pérez-gómez further explains the shift that occurred in the architectural field. in his latest work, attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science, he argues that topos, as a qualitative experiential site, was substituted by geometric space, since galileo and descartes saw the universe as a homogeneous geometric void in which all bodies were described by the same mathematical laws. it was under the influence of such epistemological thinking that claude perrault (1613-1688) came to understand architectural representation as a systematized set of sections, along with cartesian planes.16 a century later, according to pérez-gómez, jean-nicholas-louis durand (1760–1834) believed that architectural meaning was dependent only on the efficient, mechanical understanding of structure and cost-effective use of materials. for him, architecture was essentially a social need for a functional shelter. durand implemented sophisticated tools of representation for producing 129 isparchitecture.com innovative work that was unresponsive to its cultural context. he preferred strictly instrumental design mechanisms, with the belief that architecture is the objective space of cartesian geometry. thus, a “building” meant its use, and any emotion was beyond its scope. by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was a common assumption among architects that architectural space could be easily represented through descriptive geometry and axonometric projection based on visual attributes. this, pérez-gómez argues, neglected the emotional aspects and qualities experienced in a real, physical, and transcendental space.17 this translates, today, to the production of digital space and fashionable innovations through architectural software. pérez-gómez, therefore, is surprised by neither schumacher’s ideas presented in autopoiesis nor the popular desire for “intelligent” buildings with “computerized minds” for adjusting to our comfort. he claims that as long as the use of technology enhances telecommunication devices and production techniques, our own sensory and perceptual abilities will be diminished. and since our urban environments emerge from this method of production, which reduces space to a set of coordinates, they remain devoid of qualities which involve all our senses. for pérez-gómez, the crisis of modern science and architecture consists of the fact that parametric strategies and tools generate forms and novel buildings that fail to propose meaningful, attuned environments for human culture. in this way they “exacerbate our sense of despair in view of the meaninglessness of existence.”18 further, such novel structures are in line with strategies for the commodification of architecture within the contemporary neoliberal political spectrum. the art critic hal foster offers an explanation of the process, which is aided by hightech materials and electronic manipulations in order to become signs and symbols. he claims that the structure and the program are distorted in a way for pérezgómez, the crisis of modern science and architecture “exacerbate our sense of despair in view of the meaninglessness of existence.” “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 130 ev an ge lid ou to achieve a sculptural monumental effect which, at times, has a scale that dominates the landscape. formal expression is stressed, above all, in order to impress, while behind the rhetorical façades there are, many times, conventional interiors. thus, the form of the building serves as “a sign that overwhelms the context.” according to foster, this is a winning populist formula with the signature of a star-architect, which serves the marketing policies of “museums, companies, cities, and other corporate entities that want to be perceived, through instant icons, as global players.”19 eleftheria square fulfills foster’s description. moreover, since the mayors and municipality officials have used the name of the architect and the design as a branding tool to promote the square as a tourist attraction, in order to raise the city’s economy and status. the language of the project coincides with that of city branding policies which turn a location into a destination, while at the same time rejecting its own historicity and the meaning of the place. topos, in this case, becomes spectacle. in such a way, architecture turns into an image that serves more the market economy than society. architecture as a language and art form is symbolic, and whether it has a meaningful presence for its users or not, it has its own meaning within the urban context. from the point of view of philosopher hans georg gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics, new architecture in a historic setting can generate multiple interpretations, which are constantly regulated by what a setting has been in the past, and what it wants to be, by means of the architecture of the new intervention. these interpretations might fall into the realm of prejudices. prejudices for gadamer are the pre-conditions of understanding. in the case of new architecture in old settings, we distinguish blind prejudices from productive prejudices only through a dialogical encounter with the past as a whole. life, says gadamer, is the dialogue between past and present. it is through this dialogue that we can define our living values and give meaning to our lives and surroundings.20 to understand the past is a necessary metaphysical basis for life. the context for the new architecture relates to people’s understanding of their setting. yet the relation to the architecture of the past goes beyond the historical period of which people have knowledge.21 gadamer talks about the harmony of all details, with the whole as a criterion for this understanding. failure to achieve harmony means that the understanding has failed. how do we, then, understand the past? for gadamer, it is a process of holistic experiences. understanding tradition is an essential element to understanding existence. this understanding also takes place on visual and tangible grounds, such as materials, construction techniques, texture, colors, spatial disposition, and volumetric articulation.22 in such 131 isparchitecture.com a way, gadamer offers an analysis of the tangible qualities of the genius loci. from a similar perspective, pérez-gómez discusses how, for centuries, the european city functioned as a theater of complex and diverse atmospheres. he explains “atmospheres” as the character, mood, and ambience of a place apprehended by all the senses. atmospheres result from both natural and manmade spaces. besides their materials and details, they include smells, sounds, and habits. these constitute an aesthetic experience which is multisensory and emotional, and cannot be reduced to distant “pictorial” forms. if architecture, he claims, does not aim to deal with local cultures, the lives of people, their habits, places, stories, and history, it will remain detached and contextually alien.23 with the term attunement, pérez-gómez calls for an architecture that is attuned to its location and its inhabitants, and can thus enhance our human values and capacities. architecture remains in crisis, he states, as long as its social relevance is lost to formal innovation and algorithmic parameters that determine the physical environment, while ignoring the meaning of places. the meaning of places rests in the poetics of materials and cultural values. he argues that the understanding of its meaning is possible when architecture is engaged in a dialogical process between present and past, when it operates as a communicative setting for societies. by understanding its meaning, which is a constituent part of our consciousness, we are engaged with the spiritual dimension of life and a process of self-understanding. pérez-gómez delves into an existential reflection on the meaning of life, which is inextricably linked to the meaning of architecture. he thus poses a question for the ethical dimension of architecture and its service to society. to be fully self-aware, he claims, participation in an external environment replete with meanings and emotions is necessary. such transformative atmospheres bring to understand the past is a necessary metaphysical basis for life “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 132 ev an ge lid ou productive change. attuned architecture permits people to be attuned to their worldly actions and habits.24 the “actual world” the current use of the square if we consider gadamer’s and pérez-gómez’s hermeneutical approach valid, it is obvious that the parametric methodology used for eleftheria square did not make sufficient consideration for either history, meaning or attunement. however, an integrated view of the eleftheria square project fig.10: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square. occasional concerts under the square fig.11: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square. late afternoon (2022) fig.12: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square. moat level, weekends in late afternoon (2022) 133 isparchitecture.com is not possible without considering the way it is now being used, including its complementary part on the adjacent moat level. a few months after its completion, the first event organized on the square celebrated a political anniversary. this was the first and last collective event of any character to take place on the square, according to the municipality’s records. after that, the municipality moved all events below the square, on the moat level. since then, on the lower level underneath the square there have been many events of various, other than political, character. [fig.10] some uses that were overlooked by zha in its design, but deemed by the city council appropriate for the moat park, were designed by the municipality, such as a small amphitheater and a playground, which appropriated some edges of the park. the level of the square functions, mainly, as a pedestrian passage-way between the new and the old walled city. during the day, it is usually deserted, especially due to the intense sunshine, [fig.9] but also because it provides no other uses. on weekend nights and afternoons, however, the square attracts many people from the migrant (asian and african) community working in nicosia. [fig.11] the same occurs during weekends, at the level of the moat, which is overrun by migrants taking selfies. [fig.12] these are, perhaps, the most vibrant moments of the square and the moat park, since the locals, who don’t hang out on the square, usually leave immediately after visiting for an event at the moat-park. besides the locals who visited the site when it opened, and despite the attractive drone photos advertising the site taken by the municipality, [fig.5] it seems that it is not a destination for them. likewise at the moat level, although there is an attractive park with fountains, lawns and tree clumps, located on floral-pattern concrete paving—all shapes ordered by parametric design. these observations lead to the question of why the site cannot become a pluralistic collective ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 134 ev an ge lid ou space of exchange and meaning for all. would it be valid to suggest that this might be due to its strong character of a pleasure garden that caters only to visual pleasure, in conjunction with the diminishing importance of the venetian walls as a mute backdrop to the irrelevant scenery in front of it? the deserted appearance of the square during the day turns it into a dystopia, whereas the project’s site as a whole can be defined as a heterotopia. michel foucault, in his work of other spaces, defines a utopia to be an ideal place of a perfect yet unreal society in bliss and describes heterotopias as the real places that have strayed from what is considered “normal” and are approaching the “other.”25 both the square and the moat below fit foucault’s description of heterotopias of the transitory, as well as of the two extreme types of heterotopia, of illusion and compensation, respectively. a heterotopia of the transitory is a place absolutely temporal, disoriented from the eternal, and where time is fleeting, like in a festival. in a heterotopia of illusion we encounter informal, outside of “the normal” social activities in an illusory space which exposes the rationality of the adjacent space. a heterotopia of compensation, according to foucault’s terminology, fits his example of the “colonies:” a perfectly organized space that leaves its mark in the culture, which aims to be an ideal model of organization to which we all must adapt.26 conclusion eleftheria square, as an integral part of the venetian walls, connecting the old city with the new, the city’s history and its memory, carried a profound meaning for the inhabitants of nicosia that can be understood and defined by the notion of topos. the discussion and controversy regarding the refurbished eleftheria square will, perhaps, continue for many years, given its importance to the city. this is so because of its central location as well as its historicity, its continuous cost of maintenance and surveillance, and its function as a public domain in flux in an emerging multicultural city. besides its specificity, the project can be seen as a case study for new projects in historic urban environments designed via a similar parametric approach. reviewing the examination of the project, one could say that several considerations arise regarding the role of architecture in society. on the one hand, there are issues regarding the more technical aspect of the production of architecture and its management. on the other, there are issues related to its humanitarian and spiritual roles. in both cases, the core issue is ethical, and concerns those to whom architecture bears responsibility. issues related to the responsibility of the competition jury to meet the programmatic requirements, the responsibility of municipal 135 isparchitecture.com authorities when the initial budget is exceeded, the management of the schedule, the management of taxpayers’ money, the extension of the project’s scale without a new tender, and the failure to comply with conventions on antiquities, are related to the technocratic aspect, but are not insignificant in the world of architectural practice. on the contrary, they are related to the ethical code of the discipline. even though these issues are not usually heard beyond local societies, in our time of globalized architecture it is worth studying projects of stararchitecture and how and/or why their execution might affect the wellbeing of a society. although the technical aspect is short-term and can, eventually, be handled, the actual built projects and their consequences are long-term. the result of a theoretical and methodological attempt based on “parametricism” for a utopian landscape that would be “self-produced” and can reproduce communication structures, such as concepts and values, seems to become, in the eleftheria square project, a place that segregates society. the public realm, according to arendt’s definition, does not emerge automatically because people gather. instead, it occurs when their opinions are openly expressed, and their collective goal is manifested through actions that are possible due to human diversity and agency.27 the hyper-aestheticized and non-functional forms have displaced political actions from the site. eleftheria square has lost its quality as a topos politikos. despite the promise of the inclusion of human functions into parametric design, it seems that algorithms on a computer screen cannot, at least yet, engage peoples’ histories, their sites with multiple meanings, their memories, or social habits. instead, while aligned with the demands of a marketplace that commodifies architecture, “parametricism” results in an aesthetic homogenization on its top side, while it is only underneath and around its margins that the creation of heterotopias such as those at eleftheria square; the public realm does not emerge automatically because people gather. instead, it occurs when their opinions are openly expressed and their collective goal is manifested through actions that are possible due to human diversity and agency. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 136 ev an ge lid ou heterotopias of the transitory, of illusion, and of compensation. if we consider that human consciousness needs external environments as vessels for meaning and emotion for its self-awareness, as well as dialogue and exchange in a pluralistic environment, these spaces of aesthetic homogenization cannot offer the space for a conscious life on the spiritual, social, and political level. since the political is closely associated with aesthetic experience, and since at the core of the aesthetic experience is life itself, our harmony with our surroundings is an important factor in our psychosomatic health. as pérez-gómez says, an ethical architecture cannot but promote such attunement with our physical places, which are of utmost importance for our well-being. cities with alienating environments cause alienation with culture and result in a sense of purposelessness. they are sources of malaise, contributing to despair. for when architecture functions as a “high-tech drug,” says pérez-gómez, it simply provides comfort in order to avoid boredom and the reality of death.28 if architecture will continue to eliminate spaces that promote human exchange and awareness by replacing them with “intelligent” and “spectacular” places that promote lethargy, narcissism, and illusion, we will probably need to reconsider its role in, and responsibility for, the survival of culture. endnotes 1. after the second world war, and prior to the name “eleftheria” (freedom), the square was named after ioannis metaxas. he was the greek prime minister who rejected an ultimatum to surrender imposed by italy, committing greece to the allies and bringing the country into the war against the nazis and mussolini. thus, the square was for many decades associated with the “no” of the greek resistance and passion for freedom. 2. christian norberg-schulz, genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture (new york: rizzoli, 1979), 6–22. 3. seyla benhabib, the reluctant modernism of hannah arendt. (thousand oaks/london/new delhi: sage publications, 1996), 200–201. 4. hannah arendt, the human condition, (second edition) (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 7, 15, 50–72. 5. σταματίου, ελίνα. ‘ο χρίστος πασσάς των zaha hadid architects αποκαλύπτει τη νέα πλατεία ελευθερίας.’ sell & build – scientific construction magazine, february,27 2011; http://www.sellandbuild. com/interview/5355 (accessed december 18, 2019). 6. cyprus architects association. β’ φάση κυπριακής συμμετοχής – eu mies awards 2022; https://architecture.org.cy/v-fasi-kypriakis-symmetochis%e2%88%99-eu-mies-award-2022/ (accessed june 5, 2021). 137 isparchitecture.com 7. στέλλα ευαγγελίδου, ‘αρχιτεκτονικός διαγωνισμός για την ανάπλαση της πλατείας ελευθερίας και του περιβάλλοντα χώρου.’ o πολιτης (nicosia, june 4, 2005). 8. zaha hadid architects. zaha hadid: early paintings and drawings at the serpentine sackler gallery. https://www.zaha-hadid.com/2016/12/07/zahahadid-earlypaintings-and-drawings/ (accessed december 18, 2019). 9. patrik schumacher, parametricism as style— parametricist manifesto. london. presented and discussed at the dark side club, 11th architecture biennale, venice, 2008. https://www.patrikschumacher.com/texts/ parametricism%20as%20style.htm (accessed december 18, 2019). 10. patrik schumacher, parametricism and the autopoiesis of architecture. sci-arc, los angeles, september 2010. https://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/parametricism%20and%20the%20 autopoiesis%20of%20architecture.html (accessed august 10, 2022). 11. ibid. 12. ibid. 13.patrik schumacher, caa annual lecture 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuw7_f_8qsk&feature=youtu.befbclid=iw-ar193znjfe jsawbzwlvebs32gdedk5f2svfqpz8c0ft1bf uc wdda1hygwwq (accessed december 18, 2019). 14. ibid. 15. zaha hadid architects. london 2066, https://www.zaha-hadid.com/masterplans/ london-2066/ (accessed december 15, 2019) 16. alberto pérez-gómez, attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science. (cambridge, massachusetts: mit press, 2016), 13, 23,119–20. 17. ibid., 108, 127. 18. ibid., 119–30, 225. 19. hal foster, ‘image building,’ in: anthony ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 138 ev an ge lid ou vidler (ed.), architecture between spectacle and use. (williamstown, ma: sterling and francine clark institute, 2008), 167, 175. 20. hans-georg gadamer, truth and method (new york: crossroad, 1986, c1975), 245–53. 21. hans-georg gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics (editred by david e. linge). (berkeley: university of california press, 1977), 95–96 22. gadamer, truth and method, 259–78. 23. alberto pérez-gómez, attunement, architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science, (university of massachusetts, amherst. department of architecture lecture series. fall 2020) https://www.umass.edu/ architecture/umass-department-architecture-lecture-series-fall-2020alberto-p%c3%a9rez-g%c3%b3mez. 24. pérez-gómez, attunement, 216–30. 25. michel foucault and jay miskowiec, ‘of other spaces,’ in: diacritics, vol.16, no.1, (johns hopkins university press, spring, 1986), 22–27 26. ibid., 27. 27. ibid., 198–199. 28. ibid., 8. isparchitecture.com architecture and object-oriented ontology simon weir in conversation with graham harman what is, and what isn’t, an ontology ? sw: ontology is a word that, wherever it goes, changes its meaning. so, to avoid unhelpful confusions some confusions are generative what is an ontology? i tend to think of an ontology mathematically, as the set of all things with nothing outside the set. gh: whereas metaphysics is an ancient greek term famously coined by aristotle’s editors, the word “ontology” first appeared as recently as the 17th century. one aspect of my relation to language is that i like to have a number of synonyms available for every philosophical term in order to avoid repetition. i don’t like the sort of pedantic precision which demands that each term have a single meaning that the author is obliged to define exactly at the outset. as an example, many people draw a sharp distinction between “object” and “thing”; heidegger is the most prominent of these, using “object” in a pejorative sense and “thing” as a more positive term. but i prefer to use object, entity, thing, and unit interchangeably. i also use metaphysics and ontology to mean the same thing, though heidegger and derrida have turned the word “metaphysics” into a kind of insulting nickname for everything that ought to be left behind. ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 54 w ei r a n d ha r m a n sw: to frame object-oriented ontology’s position, let’s begin with realism. most people understand realism: we are in direct contact with the things we touch. once we recognise there are sounds we can’t hear, lights we can’t see, and that there are all sorts of illusions and misapprehensions, we might easily accept that our view of reality is not so direct, but mediated. we produce some kind of image of reality within us, so it might be called representational realism. what may be surprising to readers without philosophical training is that this too is rebuked by the philosophical tradition of anti-realism. gh: my position obviously isn’t a form of direct realism, since for me it is not only humans who cannot make direct contact with reality: the same holds true even for inanimate entities. object-oriented ontology (ooo) is better described as a form of what you call representational realism, with the surprising proviso that not only humans and animals do the representing. when two inanimate objects make contact, they cannot do so directly, since neither has direct access to the features of the other. the idea behind ooo’s realism is that reality is so real that it can’t be exhausted by any particular depiction of it. realism is usually defined as a “belief in a world external to the mind.” but this way of putting it betrays an anthropocentric bias: why should the mind be the only thing with an outside? realism should be treated, instead, as a general theory of objects and relations, such that objects are always withheld from these relations and need a vicarious third term to make relations possible. insofar as reality withdraws from all relation, object-oriented realism might also be called an infra-realism. sw: so object-oriented ontology is an infra-realism. since the real is withdrawn, how do we know it’s there, or how have you induced the presence of a real that cannot be touched directly? gh: this is the same question that led the german idealists to abandon kant’s thing-in-itself: “if we claim to think a thing outside thought, isn’t this already a thought? therefore, there is nothing withdrawn from thought.” in this way, the thing-in-itself implodes into something internal and negotiable, whether in the form of a mere external shock or trauma (fichte, lacan) or in terms of a provisional and immanent limit eventually 55 isparchitecture.com overcome by the labor of the negative through the course of history (hegel). the problem with this popular assault on the realism of the in-itself is that it forgets what philosophy is about: philosophia, meaning the love of wisdom rather than wisdom sensu stricto. socrates does not jest when he says that he only knows that he knows nothing, that he has never been anyone’s teacher, and so forth. readers of plato may recall “meno’s paradox,” in which meno repeats the old sophist’s argument that you can’t look for something if you already have it (because then there is no need to look) and you can’t look for it if you don’t have it (because then you could never recognize it if found). socrates responds with what is really the foundational insight of western philosophy: you never really have or fail to have something absolutely, but you have it to a certain degree and are called upon to enter further into its depths. according to object-oriented philosophy, there are a number of ways in which we can know the real without knowing it directly. this happens in cases where the real falls out of joint with its surface qualities: as in heidegger’s case of the broken hammer, or in metaphor where the object is ascribed strange properties and therefore becomes unknowable yet vaguely compelling. language is often used to hint or insinuate rather than to state directly, though the modern era hates rhetoric so much that it forgets how crucial insinuation and innuendo are to everyday speech. the arts, too, are well aware that many things must be hinted at subtly rather than stated in literal terms. lovers know this as well when sending alluring messages, and comedians know it when telling jokes. to spell heidegger and derrida have turned the word “metaphysics” into a kind of insulting nickname for everything that ought to be left behind. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 56 w ei r a n d ha r m a n things out in literal terms is just one of the tools of human cognition, and not the one most important for philosophy. causation and perception sw: some of the principles of ooo are: there are objects everywhere, all objects are inside other objects, all objects have objects inside them, objects have qualities, but objects are not only their qualities, it is not possible to encounter a quality without an object bearing that quality. gh: that’s a nice list. i would add that humans also count as objects, even if objects of an unusually interesting sort; for this reason, “objects” do not exist in opposition to “subjects.” also, objects and qualities both come in two kinds (real and sensual), and both kinds of objects can have both kinds of qualities (again, real and sensual) so that reality consists of four possible object-quality pairings. on top of this, objects have only a loose relation with their own qualities. aesthetics is first philosophy because it studies these loose relations: how they are generated and under what conditions they break apart. real objects cannot make contact unless mediated by a sensual object, and sensual objects only make contact when mediated by a real one. this still isn’t a complete list, but i can never remember everything at once. as our conversation progresses, more features of objects will undoubtedly arise. sw: are qualities objects? gh: the short answer is “no.” it goes back to one of the many valid insights still to be found in aristotle’s philosophy. he tells us that whereas sad is always sad and happy is always happy, socrates can be sad one day and happy the next. that’s one major indication that socrates is a substance. a substance remains what it is even if – within certain limits, of course – its qualities vary widely. by “primary substance” aristotle means individual things. my parallel term is “real object,” which also refers to individual things. of course, there are a number of differences between the two phrases. first of all, i emphasize the inaccessible elusiveness of real objects, and while aristotle has more awareness of that than many people realize, he does not emphasize the gap between the mind and the object to the same extent that ooo does (coming as we do after both kant and heidegger). second, aristotle is more comfortable with natural than artificial things as primary substances, whereas i don’t think the natural 57 isparchitecture.com vs. artificial divide matters very much: an airplane or a city are real objects no less than a raindrop. third, aristotle does not think there can be primary substances inside of primary substances: he holds that the parts of a substance are only potentially individuals, not actually so. for ooo, however, composition in the part/whole relationship does not negate the individuality of the parts, which remain real objects in their own right even while belonging to larger wholes. despite these differences, ooo is a philosophy of individuals in the same aristotelian line that passes through some of the islamic philosophers, some of the medieval christians, and leibniz. but the long answer to your question is that anything can become an object. that is to say, any quality can turn into a sensual object as soon as we treat it as something enduring that undergoes variation in details. for example, the red of my mazda cx-5 is initially a quality of the car that can be changed without destroying the car or giving it a new identity. but i could focus instead on the rather unique metallic red that mazda came up with for this car, and substantify it by focusing on current variations in the red across the car’s outer surface, or by variations over time when we compare the car’s red when straight from the factory as opposed to now, four years later. furthermore, there is always a point at which sensual objects can become real, often through the mechanism of social acceptance. the joker was initially a sensual object, but is now a real one: not in the sense that such a character actually lurks in the night of new york, but in the sense that movie audiences are able to judge which actor’s portrayal of the joker is the most true to the character, which ones are completely insufficient, and so forth. in this respect even qualities such as “green,” “strong,” or “macho” become real objects object-oriented ontology (ooo) is better described as a form of what you call representative realism “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 58 w ei r a n d ha r m a n that even have their own social histories. sw: causation in the ooo schema is the interaction of two or more real objects. whenever real objects causally interact, a sensual object is generated by their contact, and this sensual object acts as the intermediary between the real objects. this is known as vicarious or occasional causation. also, causation can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. symmetrical causation is all kinds of contact and causation as we normally think of it, and is well described by newtonian physics; asymmetrical causation is perception. gh: actually, causation in ooo can only have two terms. the reason is that all causation begins with the interface between one real object and one sensual object, which is then modified in such a way that there is an indirect influence of one real object on another or of both on each other. i’m aware that people like to give seemingly subtle analyses in which there are multiple causal factors for any event. these days, multiplicity has a very good press and duality a very bad one, so it’s not surprising that everyone goes running for the multiple and the many whenever philosophy is being done. but in fact, when there are multiple factors they must combine beforehand in such a way that only two objects end up confronting each other. sw: this multiplicity is understandable. when i (a real object) am watching (asymmetrical causation) a movie (a real object), the factors are combined. yet when i consider myself as comprised of subcomponent objects, my ears hear the sounds, and my eyes see the images, et cetera. it may be the case that all causal events are multiple causal events, and vice versa. the singularity or multiplicity of causal occurrences looks like a question of perspective. gh: as for symmetrical causation, yes, so-called “physical” causation provides all the easiest examples of this. in fact, i think the symmetry of causation is the important factor here, and what we call physical reality may just be a vulgar nickname for symmetrical causation. but no doubt there are other forms of symmetrical causation than the kind we associate with “matter,” which for me is an almost worthless concept. no one really has any idea what matter would be; for ooo there are only forms. likewise, the human realm provides most of the clearest examples of asymmetry: i as a human can observe long-dead stars, which thereby have an effect on me 59 isparchitecture.com even though i can’t possibly affect them in turn. but there are probably asymmetrical phenomena even in the so-called physical world. in short, i suspect that the overworked boundary between physical and mental is an accidental product of modern philosophy: not because “all is one,” but because the most important dividing lines are located elsewhere. sw: my work in ooo has been drawn from perception to the problem of memory and consciousness.1 consciousness can turn sensual objects into real ones by making memories of them, and vice versa. consciousness is a machine for making post-sensual objects into real objects. when we think about asymmetrical causation, about perception, the difference between a real object and the sensual object of its perception would vary a tremendous amount depending on the real object. looking up at the night sky, it’s obvious that our sensual object is an infinitesimally small thing, and a profoundly different thing, compared to the real object that is out there. but with much simpler objects like the number 5, for example, what would you say are the differences between the real 5 and a sensual 5? gh: let me first say that i wouldn’t agree that when looking up at the night sky the sensual object is an infinitesimally tiny thing. this is true only in the limited sense that our field of vision doesn’t cover much of the sky and can’t penetrate any further than a small portion of the milky way. the sensual object, for me, isn’t limited to what is covered by the senses. the term is “sensual,” not “sensible,” after all. edmund husserl is the one who says that the senses can only experience the shifting adumbrations of perceived objects while the intellect is able to dig all the way down to the essential properties. for ooo, by contrast, the senses and the intellect are both on the sensual side of the equation rather than the real whenever real objects causally interact, a sensual object is generated by their contact “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 60 w ei r a n d ha r m a n side. as for the number 5, i can’t say that there is a fully developed object-oriented model of mathematics at this point. i do agree with most mathematicians that mathematical objects have real existence (this is one of the few points where i am a platonist). but i would not agree that we have some sort of cartesian intellectual intuition that allows us direct contact with the real number 5; that’s quentin meillassoux, not me. the question, then, is how we would describe the supposed difference between the real and the sensual 5. one possible path is shown by imre lakatos in proofs and refutations, where he argues –among other things– that mathematical definitions have to be revised in light of mathematical experience, which suggests that mathematics is more similar to natural science than we might expect.2 if we start to view mathematics in those terms (and i will admit there are certain problems in doing so) then it is easier to see why direct access to the number 5 is less plausible than one might think, just as direct access to gravity or electromagnetism is refuted (in my view, at least) by continued revolutions in these areas. sw: in causation, sensual objects contain real and sensual qualities, so is it possible that causation involves the transfer of some real qualities? can we reliably infer the real from this? in the case of some real objects, like the number 5, are they simple enough that we can locate the real qualities within the sensual object? if i add two 5s in my mind to make a real 10, have real qualities been engaged and retained? do we have a situation where there is no meaningful difference between a real quality and a sensual quality? gh: all sensual objects have both sensual and real qualities. it was husserl who first gave technical precision to this idea. imagine that i rotate a tennis ball in my hand, at different times of day and in various fluctuating moods. these are “adumbrations,” as husserl puts it: the german abschattungen. no matter what the adumbrations of the ball may be at any given moment, i continue to recognize this ball as one and the same. since we are simply talking about experience here, not about reality, i am the one who decides whether or not it is the same ball. if it turns out later that i was wrong, that someone quickly replaced the ball with a different one while i wasn’t paying attention, then this pertains to the level of the real object, which is not what we are discussing. 61 isparchitecture.com but along with the sensual qualities or adumbrations of the tennis ball, it must also have real qualities. there are certain features that could arise that would convince me that it’s not the same tennis ball i initially thought it was: i might realize that my roommate replaced it with another, or maybe it turns out to be a fake tennis ball produced by an artist, or perhaps other such scenarios. husserl’s great error was to hold that the senses give us the adumbrations while the intellect gives us the real qualities. this is merely a symptom of husserl’s rationalist and mathematicist prejudices: he found it inconceivable that there could be any layer of reality impenetrable even to the intellect. returning to your question, there is no possible case where real and sensual qualities are one. this is only possible if we believe in intellectual intuition, which i do not. why not? because i hold that any intuition requires a translation of form. here’s what i mean. people who think that intellectual intuition is possible think that we can clearly and distinctly see, before the mind’s eye, the essential properties of a tennis ball or a dog. now, such people would never claim that they are bringing the actual ball or dog into their brains. what they are saying, most often, is that they are extracting a knowable form from an object and bringing it into the mind, leaving behind only the “matter” of the object. but there is no proof that anything like formless matter exists. in fact, the notion of matter was only invented as a crutch to prove the existence of direct intellectual access! that is to say, the difference between a tennis ball in reality and the tennis ball in the mind is said to consist in the lack of “matter” in the second case, but this is a mere alibi that allows us to think that the form remains the same when extracted and removed from an object. yet the form always undergoes translation, and this is why all sensual objects have both sensual and real qualities. it was husserl who first gave technical precision to this idea. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 62 w ei r a n d ha r m a n intellectual intuition is impossible. in the words of bruno latour: “there is no transport without transformation.”3 there is always the question of whether mathematical objects are a special case, whether they alone permit of direct intuition. i suspect not, but all i can do at the moment is suggest this, not prove it. sw: yes, certainly. it is only in the axiomatic case of simple numbers that i cannot see any difference between some of the real and sensual qualities. unlike all other objects, they seem to be stripped of all depth. continuing with perception, since we, as individuals, are real objects, we only have access to sensual objects which are created by contact with other real objects, and therefore we are truly surrounded by the unreal. even when we look at ourselves, we can only see a sensual object. it seems as if those buddhist and hindu expressions see without seeing, hear without hearing are onto something. without such effortless, causeless perception, we are truly imprisoned in a simulacra wrapping the withdrawn real. this isn’t what baudrillard meant by the term simulacra since he is a nihilist antirealist but in the context of infra-realism, the simulacrum would be the enveloping sensual world around every real object. gh: baudrillard meant a lot to me when i began graduate study. and even though i am now a hardcore realist, i’m still impressed by him. his denial of reality doesn’t bother me that much; in a sense, husserl was already a theorist of simulacra. but there is a reality in baudrillard nonetheless– the reality of the one who observes the simulacra and is seduced by them. we must always remember that baudrillard is the philosopher of seduction no less than of simulation. and what’s so important about seduction? the point is that when we become fascinated by something, we grow so attached to it that we and that thing form a new object, a compound made of ourselves and the thing. why do i call that relation a new object? because it meets all the criteria of objecthood established by object-oriented philosophy: it has emergent properties not found in either me or the thing separately, it is impenetrable to outside description or understanding, and it can have different features at different times. in short, the world of simulacra becomes a realist world as soon as the observer starts becoming personally involved with it, and that’s what aesthetics is all about. sw: if the simulacra become real by becoming a compound with the observer, is that an ontological solipsism? it sounds like psychological 63 isparchitecture.com growth, and broadening experience, makes more of the world real, which certainly seems to accord with our experience. gh: it’s not solipsism, since my experience of an object and yours are still referring indirectly to the same real object. but there is the same difficulty here as with theories of autopoiesis (maturana, varela, luhmann) since we need a clearer understanding of how the real object, despite being cut off from the sensual realm, is nonetheless able to affect and possibly be affected by the new object that is the compound between simulacrum and observer. philosophical de-anthropocentrism sw: one of the aspects of your work that has been broadly supported is its anti-anthropocentrism, the refusal to accept anti-realism’s separation of everything into two categories, human and other. gh: we have learned much about the vast size of the universe. on top of that, there are now reasonable musings about possible other universes, whether on the interiors of black holes or in other dimensions invisible to us here. all of this tends to indicate that our species and planet, even our entire galaxy, are fairly minor constituents of reality. by contrast, modern philosophy revolves around the centrality of humans. the reason, of course, is that it is thought we have direct certainty of human experience but only mediated access to everything else, which suggests a crucial status for human thought. in this way, there is a contradiction between the royal importance of humans on the one hand and our speck-of-dust cosmic tininess on the other. sw: i’ve never been sure what to make of the assumption of direct access to experience; my own experience never seemed direct to me. i used we must remember that baudrillard is the philosopher of seduction no less than of simulation. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 64 w ei r a n d ha r m a n to presume that maybe some other people, like descartes, actually had direct experience, but later after learning some sleight of hand magic, you see that there are always presumptions built into perception, and these presumptions can be activated and challenged.4 gh: the other day i saw an amusing remark on twitter. when hollywood depicts interracial couples, so the person asked, why does there always have to be a white person in the couple? analogously, i would ask of philosophy since kant: when philosophy discusses a relationship between two entities, why does a human always need to be one of them? the answer is that it doesn’t need to be. the relation between two inanimate objects isn’t different in kind from the relation between a human and an inanimate object. the latter sort is not in any way clearer or more immediately given. our access to our own experience is also mediated rather than direct. but since the days of kant, alfred north whitehead is one of the few major philosophers to have seen this point clearly. let me just add the following response to some of ooo’s critics, who make the political complaint that ooo shifts its focus away from human subjectivity at the precise moment that previously subaltern humans are finally gaining full dignity: as if ooo were pulling the rug out from under the feet of the previously oppressed in their very moment of triumph. i would say that this remark is counterintuitive in the bad sense of the term. when ooo shifts the scope of inquiry from humans to the cosmic vastness of all entities, are human differences of race, culture, and gender not shown to be rather minor, and therefore isn’t our human equality more emphasized than ever before? by contrast, if we stick with the modern focus on the human subject, it seems to me we are destined to dwell in the narcissism of small differences, to revel in all sorts of micro-hierarchies within our tiny human sphere. sw: there are a lot of assumptions packed into the political critique of ooo’s infra-realist anti-anthropocentrism that require longer discussion. politics typically engages in motivated reasoning, looking for effective language. but philosophy, like many forms of research, is often focussed differently, looking for something resembling truth, whether truth defined as logical consistency or paradigmatic coherence or something else. in the rise of realism you discussed lee braver’s 2007 book, a thing of this world with manuel delanda, and you both disagreed with the traditional 65 isparchitecture.com realist axiom that truth is correspondence with the external world.5 how would you describe truth in the context of ooo? gh: i’m interested in reality rather than truth. people who favor the word “truth” are usually the ones who think they already have it, and what they call truth becomes a cudgel to beat up those who disagree. reality interests me more because it implies that there is something with which we make peripheral contact: something that disrupts our current model of the world without it being entirely clear what is happening. there are multiple ways to do justice to any reality we encounter, whereas a focus on truth implies that there is only one way. certain portions of mathematics and logic seem to have a very strong claim to truth, but these results are often overexpanded in an effort to formalize the whole of reality in ways that aren’t very successful. sw: you have mentioned that you borrowed the term “ontography” from a fictional character, parkins, a professor of ontography. parkins practices anthropogeography, and diagrams the relationship between humans and their landscapes, an example of anthropocentric philosophy mapping human-object relations without attending to object-object relations. noting the diagramming aspect of parkins’ work, it seemed that ontography could also describe any ontology-oriented art. this is similar to what inspired ian bogost about the term. for a while you both were doing these poetic ontographs called latour litanies, these poetic strings of ostensibly unrelated words, like to make one up on the spot box jellyfish, love, gravel, jedi, street lighting, asteroids. the aim, and correct me if i am wrong, was to produce a list where the objects could not be associated with each other, so humans were not presented as central to all relations, and this was an expression of a flat, i would ask of philosophy since kant: when philosophy discusses a relationship between two entities, why does a human always need to be one of them? “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 66 w ei r a n d ha r m a n non-anthropocentric ontology. with my long immersion in surrealism, i immediately recognised the careful systematization of these lists. as freud supposedly said, in a classical painting i always see the unconscious, in a surrealist painting i only see the conscious. so before reading your later work, i associated the word ontography with these poetic practices with a very personal and slight surrealist flavour to them. you don’t seem to have used these litanies recently. has your feeling about them changed? gh: i am utterly stunned by how stirred up and annoyed some people become by these latour litanies. for instance, there are critics who say that we do nothing more than produce random lists of objects, or who assert that “a list of objects is not an argument.” of course not. the litanies are simply a useful rhetorical technique, and i mean “rhetoric” in the good old classical sense of addressing people’s background assumptions, not in the trivial modern sense of devious manipulation. latour litanies are useful for reminding the reader of how many different types of non-human entities exist, and that’s the purpose they serve whenever they appear in a ooo text. architects and philosophy sw: in twilight of the idols, nietzsche famously stated that architecture is the expression of power and that architects are enamoured with power, which appears to have a subservient tone until you see that in the unpublished will to power, everything is an expression of the “will to power,” so architecture is not special in this regard. gh: i’ve never been all that interested in the concept of power, other than in high school when i was reading nietzsche and taking him too literally like everyone else at that age. maybe that’s because the most interesting things happen to me when my mind is passive and absorbing unexpected insights from others. the intellect is not really about mastery, but about finding new drifts or currents or hidden gemstones in the world, and letting them compel you to new insights. believing that one does not yet have enough power to do anything is too often an alibi for not doing the things already within your grasp. sw: how do you see anti-realism influencing architecture? 67 isparchitecture.com gh: primarily in the sense that form and function (or program) are usually misread in an anti-realist way, in terms of the aspect they present to human beings. a realist reconception of form and function would have to de-relationize them into “zero form” and “zero function,” as i call them. sw: how do you see infra-realism offering alternatives to anti-realism for architectural theory? gh: we need an improved sense of form that is neither purely visual, nor purely conceptual, nor purely about the deliberate subversion of function (as in some of eisenman’s houses). but in fairness to architects, philosophers repeatedly make the same misstep. husserl draws a distinction between intellect and sensation, as though there were really such a big difference between the two. heidegger does the same with practical handling on one side and explicit looking or theorizing on the other, which again isn’t that big a difference. ooo demands a difference between reality itself and any form of human access. whether architects find significant things to do with this in their work is really up to architects. sw: you have in the past remarked about architects making puns of philosophical ideas. i’m not averse to the occasional pun, and have even made my own ooo pun in the form of occasionalist tectonics, taking two elements and sandwiching a wholly new formal language between them.6 sometimes visual or formal work that is purely illustrative lacks depth and subtlety, but some works of art that are truly remarkable started out as illustrations of ideas but somehow hold far more allusive and elusive qualities. was your remark pejorative, or is there something more to this? a realist reconception of form and function would have to derelationalize them into "zero form" and "zero function" “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 68 w ei r a n d ha r m a n gh: it wasn’t meant as pejorative. i was mostly relaying the complaints i’d heard from architects i know, who were bothered for instance by the literal use of folds on buildings in the period where deleuze (author of the fold) was widely read in the field. but insofar as puns can verge on literalism, that’s a problem. i like your occasionalist tectonics idea, and also like tom wiscombe’s idea of half-inscrutable “objects in a sack” hiding behind a building’s outer envelope.7 but ooo is really about the tension between objects and qualities, and there are some ways of deploying such tension that don’t involve anything being hidden in the least. sw: yes, wiscombe’s “objects in a sack” was a lightning strike when i first heard it. probably the most coherent arguments connecting ooo and architecture are found in the writings of wiscombe, david ruy, and mark foster gage, architects i find fascinating. their ideas might seem strange to people outside architecture’s current education system, but are very relevant to those inside it. they all appear to share a fondness for ooo because it provides a rationale for valuing architecture for its qualities rather than its associations. (this is rather like eisenman’s concern for architecture’s interiority, for what is exclusively architectural. eisenman’s approach was a kind of de-anthropocentrism, but it was framed as anti-humanism, which is quite different.) gage also argues that buildings should be judged as buildings, not as diagrams.8 this is apt for architecture education. i wonder if this arises from the tension between being an effective academic and the art of architecture. when you have a lot of projects to assess, one can feel the need to hurry and it helps if you can understand a project quickly, but individual works of great architecture are captivating and even mystifying, and they refuse our attempts to understand them easily, they require study and reflection, and even personal transformation. gh: there are a number of other architects who have played around with ooo: peter trummer is one here at sci-arc, and elsewhere i’ve had multiple discussions with ferda kolatan and michael young, among others.9 in object-oriented ontology: a new theory of everything i highlighted gage and wiscombe because they represent the two most pronounced and opposite tendencies.10 as mentioned, wiscombe favors hidden objects surrounded by palpable surface qualities. yet gage isn’t about hiddenness at all: he gives us a fiesta-like abundance of qualities 69 isparchitecture.com inscribed on the surface. in weird realism i argued that h.p. lovecraft’s horror fiction uses both of these techniques, even though the first is the only one people usually mention.11 sw: what do you think now of wiscombe’s point in “the object turn” about an architecture inspired by ooo having a suspicion of any form of mapping exercises that seem to conjure architecture from the context or from the map itself.12 for many years, architecture students have been fabricating abstract maps of things and using these as visual prompts for design. a weakness of this method is its meaninglessness, and the insistence to look outside architecture. yet i am ambivalent in this critique. leonardo da vinci recommended artists stare at the infinitely subtle shades and markings of rough, stained walls and allow their imaginations to inventively see figures, scenes and events. similarly there is a subtly creative act in seeing turtles, buildings and faces in the shifting forms of clouds. these work as psychological exercises to prompt creativity, and even have a little surrealist flair, but they belong to the earlier, passive and automatist side of surrealism rather than to the later, more active side where effects are actively sought. now that you’ve worked in an architectural school for a number of years, what observations do you have about architectural design processes and the results they entrain? gh: wiscombe did make that point, as did ruy when he argued against architecture becoming a subsidiary of ecology: as if buildings were nothing more than local outcroppings of the broader environment. i agree completely on this score, since no building can be completely site-specific. certain choices have to be made about which aspects of the environment to include or exclude. and of course, rem koolhaas has pointed out that a building also there are a number of other architects who have played around with ooo “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 presses back against its environment and changes it in turn. you ask what i’ve noticed after teaching at an architecture school for five years. quite a few things, actually. architects tend to be very articulate in explaining their ideas, even more so than philosophers, in my opinion. architects are under more pressure to innovate, and therefore they have their antennae out for new ideas more than philosophers do. on the pedagogical level, what strikes me most is that students have a hard time defending forms in their own terms. when pressed, they will usually give a genetic backstory for how they arrived at the form now before our eyes: they started with some everyday object, put it through four or five transformations, and this was the result. this just goes to show how hard it is to speak allusively or indirectly about something, which is precisely what architectural form demands. the best art and architecture critics need to have the souls of poets, because in this case literalism won’t do the job. sw: one of the things you’re known for are the terms overmining and undermining. gh: it is often assumed that the goal of all cognition is knowledge, and ultimately there are just two kinds of knowledge. if someone asks me what something is, i can (a) tell them what it’s made of, or (b) tell them what it does. i call the first of these techniques “undermining” and the second “overmining.” i mentioned earlier that socrates practices philosophia (love of wisdom) rather than sophia (wisdom). there is no platonic dialogue in which socrates ends up with the correct definition of anything. nothing is ever quite definable. as aristotle puts it, things are concrete but definitions are made of universals, which means there will always be an imperfect fit between reality on one side and thought or language on the other. philosophy fundamentally does something other than produce knowledge. and this is even clearer of the arts. there is no way to avoid “mining” in direct propositional speech, since this kind of speech (which i call “literal”) involves making true statements about the properties a thing possesses. but philosophy and the arts are not literalist disciplines, and have more to do with producing a gap or fissure between an object and its qualities. sw: often overmining and undermining are misunderstood as critiques. w ei r a nd h a rm a n 70 71 isparchitecture.com overmining and undermining are critiques of other ontologies, not of thinking or philosophical work as such. gh: by no means is ooo anti-knowledge. knowledge is good and necessary; it simply gives us an incomplete picture of human cognition. to know something is to explain it in terms of something else: its parts, its history, its uses, its effects, its properties, how it looks to us. all of this is great. it allows us to create medicines, build aircraft, analyze social data, and so forth. but we’ve reached the point where many people assume that if something isn’t “science,” isn’t knowledge, then it’s just rubbish. these days we enthusiastically encourage students to pursue stem subjects, while aesthetic taste is left sadly undeveloped. this means that the students who are open to it end up having to learn it on their own. granted, that’s often the best way to learn things. it’s how i learned philosophy, for instance. sw: gage has used overmining and undermining as critiques of architectural culture and architectural education, and this leads us to interesting territory. universities rightly pride themselves on bestowing knowledge, but art and architecture are not forms of knowledge, yet this fact too needs to be taught and understood. how do you think about reconciling this dilemma? gh: it’s probably not something well understood enough yet to be codified in the schools. there is still some intellectual work to be done in grasping the relation between knowledge (which i define as detecting the qualities a thing possesses) and the very different kind of cognition that includes both the aesthetic and the philosophical (defined as grasping or producing a gap between any object and overmining and undermining are critiques of other ontologies, not of thinking or philosophical work as such. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 72 w ei r a n d ha r m a n its qualities). but philosophy is more often guilty of mistaking itself for a form of knowledge than the arts and architecture are. sw: back in 2017, you wrote a reply to bruno latour and albena yaneva’s actor-network theory of architectural design.13 have your views on that changed? gh: no, they have not. it’s always stimulating to read an actor-network approach to any topic, and the latour/yaneva piece is as interesting as any.14 but you just can’t reduce any object, including an architectural one, to its backstory as a project– which is what they try to do in that article. there they are following latour’s familiar strategy of referring to any object as a black box that can be opened, revealing all of the historical complexity within. the problem is that a black box doesn’t just hide its internal components. it also renders many of them irrelevant, while also having new emergent properties that can’t be equated with what’s inside. stated in architectural terms, not all aspects of a building’s history are relevant to the final building, and a building has features that its history does not. latour and yaneva offer a fine vision for an ethnography of architecture, but i doubt there is much that actual architects can do with it. and i say this as someone who yields to no one in my admiration of latour, who in my view is the most important living philosopher, bar none. sw: finally, how do you seen the anti-anthropocentric aspect of ooo engaging with architecture? gh: we’re starting to see more architecture that isn’t aimed directly at humans, such as the “vulkan beehives” of snøhetta. but what i’m more interested in is de-anthropocentrizing the heart of architectural discourse: namely, the concepts of form and function. the irony is that while these terms seem to be meant as opposites in architectural history, they are both relational in character: the form of a building is supposed to be its visual look to the observer or user, and its function is supposed to be the purpose it provides for the client. but in a ooo context, the visual look of a thing is simply an expression of a deeper form, and the specific use is simply one possible incarnation of a deeper functional landscape. what ooo looks for can be called “zero-form, zero-function,” as discussed in my forthcoming book architecture and objects.15 73 isparchitecture.com endnotes 1. simon weir, the ontographers (edinburgh: university of edinburgh press, forthcoming 2022). 2. imre lakatos, proofs and refutations : the logic of mathematical discovery (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1976). 3. bruno latour. aramis, or the love of technology, translated by c. porter. (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1996), 119. 4. simon weir, “art and ontography,” open philosophy 3/2020, 400-412. 5. manuel delanda & graham harman, the rise of realism (cambridge, uk: polity, 2017). 6. simon weir, “object-oriented ontology and the challenge of the corinthian capital,” in make sense, (sydney: harvest, 2020), 114-116. 7. tom wiscombe, “discreteness, or towards a flat ontology of architecture,” project, 3/2014, 34-43. 8. mark foster gage, “killing simplicity: object-oriented philosophy in architecture,” log, 33/2015, 99. 9. david ruy, “returning to (strange) objects,” tarp 2012, 38-42; peter trummer, “the city as an object,” log, 27/2013, 51-57. 10. graham harman, object-oriented ontology: a new theory of everything (london: pelican, 2018). 11. graham harman, weird realism: lovecraft and philosophy (winchester, uk: zero books, 2012). 12. tom wiscombe in: todd gannon, et. al. “the object turn: a conversation,” log, 33/2015, 82. 13. graham harman, “buildings are not processes: a disagreement with latour and yaneva,” ardeth 01 2017, 113-122. 14. bruno latour and albena yeneva, “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move: an latour and yaneva offer a fine vision for an ethnography of architecture, but i doubt there is much that actual architects can do with it. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 74 w ei r a n d ha r m a n ant’s view of architecture,” architectural design theory, 1/2017, 103-11. 15. graham harman, architecture and objects (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, forthcoming 2022). architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members at ispa events. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley assistant editors christoph baumberger, ph.d., eth zürich carolyn fahey, ph.d., newcastle university stefan koller, ph.d., delft university of technology editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk ersoy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com contents august sarnitz 141wittgenstein’s architectural idiosyncrasy 117editorial 123jochen schuffcontesting wittgenstein’s remarks on architecture 169emre demireluse-value and the question of completion 207hilde heynenbook review: the aesthetics of architecture by roger scruton 191reidar duesemiotic naturalism in architecture theory imark jensen, carolyn fahey & tom spector call for papers: building as service carolyn fahey isparchitecture.com the present issue owes its contributions to an international symposium held by the international society for the philosophy of architecture, the society behind architecture philosophy. hosted over the summer of 2015 at the wittgenstein house in vienna, symposium speakers were able to literally demonstrate claims by pointing to the structure around them. the setting stimulated difficult conversations about wittgenstein, architecture, and architecture’s modernism. entitled “use-value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions,” the symposium raised a host of questions related to the notion of function in architecture’s modernist discourse and called upon wittgenstein’s notion of meaning as use to aid in its resolution: given the wealth of new ways of conceptualizing building, its practice, and its meanings, this call for papers prompts authors to reconceptualize the notion of buildings’ functions in terms of use, particularly as is described in wittgenstein’s use theory. by engaging one of philosophy’s richest and most formidable postmodern thinkers-–ludwig wittgenstein-–the discourse surrounding function can move away from architecture’s modernist paradigm that has largely defined how we think about and deal with questions relating to function. wittgenstein-–who remains largely undealt with by the architectural discourse, but whose work has nevertheless had ample development from the discourse surrounding function can move away from the modernist’s paradigm “ ” use-value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions carolyn fahey 118 ed it or ia l within the philosophical discourse-–provides genuine contributions to the understanding of use and meaning. specifically, the wittgensteinian notion of meaning as use moves the discussion away from mechanical or systematic notions grounded in scientific inquiry, and instead focuses analysis on the particular context or language-game within which a building partakes. thus, the hope is to utilize ludwig wittgenstein’s theory of meaning to achieve radically alternative analyses of building’s use, thereby allowing for productive re-engagement with one of architecture’s most fundamentally philosophical questions.1 the symposium’s call simultaneously prompted thinkers to revisit questions relating to wittgenstein’s philosophical significance within the architecture discourse. this special issue seeks to reinvigorate the discourse surrounding the wittgenstein house, not so much with the interest of canonizing the house, but rather as a means of developing a working method for understanding the relationship between philosophy and architecture. the motivating factor—not coincidentally the primary purpose of this journal and its society also—is a foundational question to understanding what architecture is, what its history is, and what it could, or rather, should be. wittgenstein himself participated in the design of a mansion, known widely as the wittgenstein house, making him one of the few famous philosophers to have directly engaged in architectural design. heidegger is also well known for having written on architecture, in his essay “building, dwelling, thinking” but is not known for having engaged the design or construction processes so foundational to understanding architecture. in wittgenstein’s case, it was not well-known that he had had any run-in with architecture until after bernhard leitner’s 1973 publication of the wittgenstein house. previously, and to this day, wittgenstein is best known as a philosopher who made substantive contributions to philosophy of language—ordinary language philosophy especially. when leitner published his text, the architecture discipline momentarily turned its divided attention to the house at a time when the architecture was inundated with post-structuralist theories. architects were intrigued by the possibility that a single person’s work could bridge between the disciplines of architecture and of philosophy and set out to understand how one’s person work could embody both. yet, the methods these thinkers used to analyze the house were in keeping with post-structuralist methods, and the results were tantalizing acrobatic arguments at odds with wittgenstein’s own philosophical 119 isparchitecture.com methods. little traction was gained by the poststructuralist attempts and since then few, with the exception of roger paden’s mysticism and architecture and nana last’s wittgenstein’s house, have attempted to re-conceive this terrain.2 starting off the issue, jochen schuff ’s paper clears the field, so to speak, of the existing literature. the matter-of-fact survey separates theoretical interpolation from what wittgenstein said. to do so otherwise, i would argue, is to proceed in a decidedly unwittgensteinian manner. his strict reading looks to david macarthur’s recently published piece in architecture theory review, as having repeated many of the past attempt’s missteps.3 as readers will see later in the issue, august sarnitz’s paper draws a similar conclusion to that of schuff albeit using original source material and recently translated empirical information on the house and the austrian cultural context. taking a staunch position, schuff seems to believe that everything written on the topic of wittgenstein’s philosophy of architecture falls into the terrain of un-wittgensteinian extrapolation, and therefore should be discounted. it seems that much of what has been produced in philosophical discourse on wittgenstein’s philosophy would then also fall into this category, but it is unclear whether schuff would agree to such a parallel criticism of philosophy. schuff does appear to shift into a moderate position with regards to what can be said of wittgenstein’s and architecture in the second half of his paper, wherein he does indulge in a few analyses of the significance of wittgenstein’s remarks when considering architecture. the shift later in the paper suggests perhaps that his initial staunch position is more moderate. for me, although wittgenstein is not himself a philosopher of architecture, that does not rule out the the matter of fact survey separates theoretical interpolation from what wittgenstein said “ ” 120 ed it or ia l possibility that there is something of philosophical significance on architecture wittgenstein has said. nevertheless, whether any kind extrapolation is permitted, how much and when such extrapolation maybe permitted, or whether wittgenstein’s remarks hold any meaningful application to architecture remains contested and will remain a heated point of debate in any discussion of wittgenstein in architecture. whatever one’s position on the matter, schuff ’s paper will be an invaluable starting point for those entering this field as he carefully surveys and delineates what wittgenstein did say and what can arguably meaningfully be said, without transgressing into the terrain of liberal interpolation. perfectly juxtaposed with schuff is august sarnitz who argues that the wittgenstein house demonstrates some of wittgenstein’s philosophical points using a standard approach to analyzing building. sarnitz is unique in existing literature for not over-attributing meaning to the house, for grounding his attributions of meaning directly in building analysis, and for analyzing the wittgenstein house in light of wittgenstein’s own thinking as opposed to that of loos or other fin de siècle thinkers in vienna at the time. sarnitz provides an analysis of the house, contextualizing it in viennese modernism and traditional austrian building practice. he provides a foundation for understanding wittgenstein’s engagement with building practice, and in doing so corrects the established understanding, and provides the basis for an alternative reading of the house. unique other accounts of the house is sarnitz’s ability to argue for both wittgenstein’s status as an architect and his originality in this position. while the standard reading of the house places it within viennese modernism, or amongst the likes of loos and wagner, the reading typically views wittgenstein as an intellectual member of the viennese modernist movement. yet, sarnitz demonstrates wittgenstein’s intellectual opposition to many of the foundational positions of viennese modernism. he shows us that the wittgenstein house demonstrates a different take on the aesthetics of utility then many of his austrian contemporaries. as such, many existing historical attributions of the wittgenstein house are at odds with sarnitz’s characterization. the next paper explores what can be said of architecture in light of wittgenstein, particularly as pertains to wittgenstein’s theory of meaning. emre demirel approaches the topic from within the 121 isparchitecture.com discipline of architecture and reaches toward a philosophical statement. demirel discusses wittgenstein’s theory of meaning as a means of questioning the notion of tradition in architecture. his theoretical position is demonstrated by examples taken from his native turkey, which serves not only to evidence the theoretical position taken, but further develop the position by working through notions of representation and building analysis. reidar due’s paper runs counter to demirel’s in the sense that his paper approaches the topic from within philosophy and reaches toward architecture. due discusses the conceptual foundations underpinning segments of architectural theory. he looks to the wittgensteinian concept of meaning as use in order to demonstrate the limitations of hegelian notions of architecture, the limitations of which are for him the basis of contemporary architecture theory. he then discusses the role of ideologies in collective thought about building, so as to show the limitations of essentialist notions of architecture as well as the limitations certain “categories”, as the author calls them, have on the way we think about building. due’s categories run parallel to adrian forty’s analysis of the role of words in conceptions of architecture, yet due argues further effectively saying that these categories or words provide the basis of conceptual formations.4 due focuses on the role of the historian in constructing architectural ideologies, leaving the reader to ask whether ideologies are always so construed. hilde heynen’s contribution takes a turn, looking to the disciplinary rift that has for decades, perhaps centuries, divided reflective thinkers. heynen reviews the discourse defining text aesthetics of architecture by roger scruton, marking its recent new edition. the sarnitz demonstrates wittgenstein’s intellectual opposition to ... viennese modernism “ ” 122 ed it or ia l review serves as a short position piece describing why philosophers, albeit not all, so consistently fail to engage architecture. their methodological errors in the approach to a subject they know little appears the cause, and the seemingly lack of engagement with building the symptom. heynen provides a reasoned analysis as to why scruton’s thinking has not resonated, in either the original or recent revised edition, with those in the architecture discipline. she argues that while scruton provides a competently argued account of architecture, the characterization is too limited to be recognizable, perhaps intelligible, to those intimately studied in architecture’s discourse and practice. endnotes 1. fahey, carolyn, march 1, 2015, “use-value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions,” international society for the philosophy of architecture, http://isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/ 2. see my ph.d. dissertation for a detailed survey of literature surrounding the house and the limitations of each contribution: carolyn fahey, the claim of architecture: a new wittgensteinian reading (newcastle upon tyne: newcastle university, 2010). 3. david macarthur, ‘working on oneself in philosophy and architecture: a perfectionist reading of the wittgenstein house’, architecture theory review 19.2 (2015). 4. adrian forty, words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture (london: thames & hudson, 2000). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 isparchitecture.com contesting wittgenstein”s remarks on architecture jochen schuff as the general concern of this journal issue is the relevance of wittgenstein’s thinking for the philosophy of architecture, i will take the task quite literally. accordingly, the aim of my paper is to explore whether there is evidence for systematic ideas about architecture in wittgenstein. reading culture and value, it may well seem as if architecture ranked among the subjects wittgenstein did think about—at least from time to time. i will provide some context concerning the status of these remarks—as well as that of some others not included in culture and value—in wittgenstein’s work. all things considered, there is not much to be found in wittgenstein’s writing concerning the arts or aesthetics in general. there are, to be sure, some editions of student’s notes of lectures on the subject of aesthetics [1], and numerous opinions reported in correspondences and biographies, but only a few remarks devoted to art both in the single book wittgenstein published in his lifetime, tractatus logico-philosophicus, and among the 20,000 pages of text he left in his nachlass. most of these remarks contain reflections about music, especially musical meaning and understanding. in relation, there is even less wittgenstein specifically wrote on the subject of architecture. the fact may be striking, since wittgenstein, while having temporarily abandoned philosophy, famously took part in designing and building the city mansion for his sister margarethe stonborough-wittgenstein in kundmanngasse, vienna, between 1926 and 1928. he even considered himself an architect by trade all things considered, there is not much to be found in wittgenstein’s writing concerning the arts or aesthetics in general. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 124 sc hu ff during this period. there is much to be said, and in fact much has been said about wittgenstein’s architectural practice, but i do not intend to contribute to that discussion [2]. nor will i make reference to the frequent metaphors from the realm of building that wittgenstein makes use of, for instance in the philosophical investigations or in on certainty. in my mind, the parallels between wittgenstein’s activity as an architect and his being a philosopher, or between his architecture and his philosophy, are often overstated. compared to nana last’s reading of the kundmanngasse house as a bridging between different spatialities in wittgenstein’s thought or roger paden’s interpretation of the house as a manifestation of mysticism, there are more modest proposals. in a recent reevaluation of the links between the house and wittgenstein’s philosophy, for instance, david macarthur nonetheless refers to wittgenstein’s “ideas” or “reflections” on architecture, drawing on culture and value [3]. on closer inspection, though, most of the ideas are actually adolf loos’, serving macarthur as a matrix of interpretation for wittgenstein’s own remarks. my aim, instead, is to focus exclusively on what wittgenstein actually wrote about the subject of architecture, and to determine the philosophical status of these remarks in their own right. in the first section of my paper, i will present a survey of more or less everything wittgenstein specifically (in the strict sense) wrote about architecture. most of these remarks, it will turn out, are no more than sketches or rough ideas. some of them belong to the context of art or aesthetics as wittgenstein conceived of it. this connection will be discussed in the second section. in other cases, wittgenstein uses architecture as an object of analogy, or comparison. in the third section, a commentary on one remark comparing architectural to philosophical practice is provided. section iv will conclude that the value of wittgenstein’s remarks read as contributions to a philosophy of architecture is limited; while wittgenstein’s broader reflections on aesthetics are significant in terms of content and method, if often neglected, the same cannot be said of the scattered paragraphs on architecture [4]. i in his early writings, wittgenstein virtually does not mention architecture at all. as far as we can tell, it is only after having finished the house in kundmanngasse that he starts to write down thoughts about architecture, but there are usually long stretches of time in between. in 1930, he notes: “today the difference between a good & a poor architect consists in the 125 isparchitecture.com fact that the poor architect succumbs to every temptation while the good one resists it” [5]. in this aphoristic remark, we are given no hint as to what kind of temptation wittgenstein could have in mind, or what the difference between a good and a poor architect could have been before today. we can only guess whether wittgenstein is thinking of someone or something particular here. shortly after, there is some criticism of contemporary architecture (as an expression of a culture and civilization alien to the author) in the “sketch for a foreword” dating from the same year, probably written for the big typescript [6]. both comments can be read as fragments of criticism, rather than theory. in contrast, a recurrent aesthetic concept is introduced in 1933; wittgenstein notes: “remember the impression made by good architecture, that it expresses a thought. one would like to respond to it too with a gesture” [7]. consequently, in 1938, in a rather sketchy remark, wittgenstein tentatively thinks about, “phenomena akin to language in music or architecture” [8]. then, in 1942, the motive of gesture becomes explicit again: “architecture is a gesture. not every purposive movement of the human body is a gesture. just as little as every functional building is architecture” [9]. here, the link between architecture and gestures seems even closer. moreover, wittgenstein seems to draw a distinction between mere building and architecture, the distinction being that architecture is a gesture, while mere building is not. in a remark existing in several variations, he writes in 1947: “architecture glorifies something (because it endures). hence there can be no architecture where there is nothing to glorify” [10]. one alternative version mentions gestures, too; it reads: “architecture glorifies something because it is a gesture which endures. it glorifies its purpose” [11]. taking up, perhaps, the thought that architecture is some kind of petrified gesture designed with the purpose of glorification, wittgenstein writes in 1948: “a great architect in a we can only guess whether wittgenstein is thinking of someone or something particular “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 126 sc hu ff bad period (van der nüll) has a quite different task from that of a great architect in a good period. you must again not let yourself be deceived by the generic term. don’t take comparability, but rather incomparability, as a matter of course” [12]. the bottom line in this case, however, is not so much aesthetic as linguistic, since wittgenstein claims that one and the same allgemeine begriffswort (“generic term”) can have two different meanings relative to context, so that the term great architect can attribute different qualities to a person depending on the cultural context she is working in. it is not easy to see, though, why wittgenstein is talking about generic terms here; it seems rather trivial that being called a great architect can rest on different accomplishments, or tasks, for it evidently depends on aesthetic judgments. without any context, the remark is rather mysterious; it would have been interesting to know what wittgenstein takes the task of the great architect in a good or in a bad period to be, respectively. all we can assume is that wittgenstein seems to have appreciated van der nüll’s architecture (the most prominent example of which is the vienna state opera) [13]. almost all of these remarks can be found in the collection culture and value. in german, the volume has been published under the more appropriate title vermischte bemerkungen, calling its content what it is: miscellaneous or mixed remarks, mixed not by wittgenstein, but by his editors, georg henrik von wright in this case. this is what they (or he) found worthy of being published after almost everything remotely resembling a book, say, abandoned publication projects or typescripts and even more or less coherent manuscripts like those that have come to be known as on certainty, had already been published. this is not to say that the remarks thus collected, including those on architecture, are not worthy of attention, but that we should keep in mind that they do not constitute something like a book or coherent body of text that wittgenstein devoted to questions of “culture” and “value,” let alone architecture. some of the remarks on aesthetics and music included, in contrast, can be traced back to comparatively rich sequences of reflections on art in wittgenstein’s later manuscripts. there are good reasons for taking these series of remarks to be serious, if condensed, contributions to philosophical aesthetics. joachim schulte and graham mcfee argue convincingly to this effect [14]. additionally, the published lectures can provide an impression of wittgenstein’s position in aesthetics. this holds even if we leave aside the importance for aesthetics of wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-perception in what has come to be known as the second part of the philosophical investigations. nothing of this sort can 127 isparchitecture.com be said about wittgenstein’s more or less isolated remarks on architecture. apart from quantity and context, another criterion for the importance of a thought is the further use wittgenstein is providing for it within his characteristic working method of writing down remarks, clipping manuscripts, reassembling remarks, clipping again and so forth [15]. now, only in a few cases did wittgenstein copy pertinent remarks about architecture into typescripts. it is apparent that most of these deal with the subject rather indirectly. the following remark from a 1930 manuscript will reappear in the so-called big typescript: “work on philosophy—like work in architecture in many respects—is really more work on oneself. on one’s own conception. on how one sees things. (and what one expects of them)” [16]. i will come back to these lines in the third section. the aforementioned remark saying architecture expressed a thought to which one would like to respond with a gesture reappears in ts 219 (which is part of the process of reworking manuscripts and typescripts leading from the big typescript to philosophical investigations) [17]. in ts 229, published under the title remarks on the philosophy of psychology i, wittgenstein takes up the following manuscript note: “one employment of the concept ‘looking in this direction’ is, e.g., as follows: one says, perhaps to an architect: ‘this distribution of the windows makes the façade look in that direction.’ similarly one uses the expression ‘this arm interrupts the movement of the sculpture’ or ‘the movement should go like this’ (here one makes a gesture)” [18]. and, in the same typescript: his name seems to fit his works. —how does it seem to fit? well, i express myself in some such way. —but is that all? —it is as if the name together with these works, formed a solid whole. if we see the name, the works come to mind, and if we think of the works, so does the name. we utter the name with reverence. the name turns into a [the remarks] do not constitute something like a book or a coherent body of text that wittgenstein devoted to questions of culture and value, let alone architecture “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 128 sc hu ff gesture; into an architectonic form [19]. while both of these remarks seem to be concerned with questions from the domain of aesthetics, if in a specifically conceptual way, architecture surely is not their main focus. note that both remarks mention gestures (one way or the other) in the same breath as architecture. with all of this source material in place, first, the idea (or ideas) that architecture is a gesture, or demands a gesture, is related to wittgenstein’s general, if only adumbrated, corresponding ideas about art and especially music. second, wittgenstein’s comparison between the work of the architect and the work of the philosopher will be revisited when considering the context of this analogy in the big typescript. ii the motive of gesture obviously is the one prominent thread in the remarks quoted, so there is reason to suppose wittgenstein took it seriously—at least to a certain extent. in the remarks taken from the later typescripts, he almost seems to take the motive for granted—while being occupied with different subjects. the second of the quotes from ts 229 seems to equate gesture and architectonic form; both serve to illustrate the relation between name and works. this is the light we should see the notion of gesture in. wittgenstein is mentioning architecture in passages where he is thinking about expressiveness in various contexts, not only in the context of architecture itself. if we consider the remarks taken together, we can discern two reoccurring claims that wittgenstein is putting forth. first, that architecture is a gesture. as a gesture, its relationship to building simpliciter can be compared to the contrast between corporeal gestures and purposive bodily movements. yet, second, architecture also provokes, or demands, gestures. good architecture seems to express a thought, wittgenstein feels—he does not claim that it actually does express thoughts—in a way that one feels compelled to respond to it—the thought? the architecture?—with a gesture. a gesture, understood minimally, is a kind of expressive behavior. it is, characteristically, not only an intentional bodily movement, but a movement that will at least accompany and emphasize, sometimes contradict, a particular utterance, sometimes even replace it [20]. in the latter case, a gesture may appear as the appropriate mode of communication, the right expression for what we want to convey. in this sense, a gesture can be an alternative to verbal language. it may be tempting to think that architecture, or art in general, is to be understood as a gesture in exactly this sense. 129 isparchitecture.com initially, wittgenstein’s intuition seems to be something like that—that works of art express something ineffable in spoken language, beyond its limits—thus the aesthetic quietism in the tractatus logico-philosophicus and continuing in the transitional lectures on ethics [21]. in the philosophical investigations, and even more extensively in his remarks on the philosophy of psychology, he acknowledges different forms of expressiveness in language, in expressive behavior, and still even more in art. he begins to conceive of the relationship between art and language in a more nuanced way: it is the differences as well as the similarities we have to take into account. his later thought about aesthetics tackles the question of the expressiveness of art not in competition with language, but in comparison. the notion of gesture is of importance in this respect [22]. the following provides a closer look at the two directions of wittgenstein’s claims: (1) if architecture is a gesture, while a mere functional building is not, we can suppose that they can be told apart by their expressive potential. both are functional or serve a purpose. but wittgenstein seems to use the concept of architecture as a term of praise. obviously, he is drawing a line between mere building and building as an art, restricting the concept of architecture to the second form. this, by the way, stands in stark contrast to loos’ view that architecture is not an art [23]. in its expressiveness, architecture, as wittgenstein indicates, can be compared to music, and both can be compared to language. in a certain sense, people can and certainly do speak of languages of architecture [24]. but in what sense? there seems to be an obvious difference between their respective communicative potentials. a linguistic utterance can express a proposition, definite content, one might think, while it is far from clear whether music or architecture can do so. yet, we should look at it exactly the other way architecture is a gesture [...] architecture also provokes, or demands, gestures. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 130 sc hu ff around, in wittgenstein’s view. one kind of remark wittgenstein keeps reiterating points to a change of direction necessary to understand the analogy between music and language in the right way. take this passage from the brown book: what we call ‘understanding a sentence’ has, in many cases, a much greater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we might be inclined to think. but i don’t mean that understanding a musical theme is more like the picture which one tends to make oneself of understanding a sentence; but rather that this picture is wrong, and that understanding a sentence is much more like what really happens when we understand a tune than at first sight appears. for understanding a sentence, we say, points to a reality outside the sentence. whereas one might say ‘understanding a sentence means getting hold of its content; and the content of the sentence is in the sentence’ [25]. the problem lies in the model of transfer. it is this model that is misleading—and it is misleading in language as well as in the arts. from the philosophical investigations on, and more specifically in his remarks on the philosophy of psychology, wittgenstein discards the idea that expressiveness can be explained by reference to an inner something, connecting thought and external world, and existing before and independently of its actual expression. this is why wittgenstein, as regards the arts, prefers referring to the non-verbal, bodily mode of communication of gestures. instead of overestimating the role of contents, he thus highlights the understanding of expressiveness in a specific context or situation, as stephen mulhall emphasizes: “in such contexts [of aesthetic judgment] he emphasizes two features of the concept’s grammar: the inseparability of a gesture’s meaning from the gesture itself, and the importance of the context of the gesture in accounting for its impact on us” [26]. (2) this is why understanding a work of art, in wittgenstein’s view, starts with our own immediate reactions or responses to it [27]. the way we understand art as expressive is precisely by reacting to it, with one or the other verbal utterance, emotional response, movement, or, for that matter, gesture. interestingly, the notion of an aesthetic reaction, in wittgenstein’s lectures on aesthetics, is introduced by an example from the domain of architecture (or rather building in general). here, wittgenstein imagines an architect at work, in the process of meticulously judging and altering the dimensions of doors and windows. we can imagine that it is exactly the expressed “thought” or “gesture” of a building, its artistic expression, that is thus altered and improved [28]. the dimensions and placement of doors and windows of a house will, again, evoke particular reactions. these can be put or circumscribed or refined in words if we 131 isparchitecture.com are competent critics, but in many cases they will remain what they are: immediate, bodily responses. music, in the brown book and beyond, is the paradigm case for this kind of connection [29]. we are often inclined to think that a musical phrase says something, that it is meaningful [30]. but, although there are certain rules governing composition, meaning is not determined by them. nor is it fixed by the transfer of an emotion or other content from the artist to the listener. instead, musical meaning lies in the structures of the phrase or piece themselves [31]. drawing on a distinction wittgenstein introduces in the brown book, it has been argued that he conceives of aesthetic expression as well as understanding in an “intransitive” sense [32]. this is to say that expression in these cases, although meaningful, cannot be unraveled by some kind of translation, but only pointed to by calling attention to details or by interpretative comments. grasping the meaning of a work, along these lines, will often find its basic outward expression in appropriate gestures. but these are reactions informed by our understanding of music (as well as other arts) in general; their context is the whole culture we share. understanding music means both appreciating its structure and perceiving it according to the cultural context it is part of, the history and practice of music as well as the other arts [33]. gestures figure on both sides of the equation, so to speak. understanding a work of art builds on ways of retracing or following its respective design. if a work of art is a gesture, its meaning is determined by the context of its being made, while simultaneously the expression is present in the work. this is why the appropriate guide to artistic meaning is our own responses to it, in our being immediately involved with an object (or event). but this, to be sure, is nothing specific to architecture. or, to put it another way, when it comes to architecture, wittgenstein generally seems understanding a work of art builds on ways of retracing or following its respective design. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 132 sc hu ff to model its meaning and its understanding on the case of music. the understanding of architecture he is thinking about is an understanding of architecture as art. the basic understanding of artworks, to him, is an understanding of meaningful configurations in their respective contexts, and it starts as a kind of (somatic) resonance with the features of their design and organization [34]. iii this section returns to the remark quoted in the first section, comparing the work of the philosopher to the work of the architect. in the big typescript, the remark reappears. it is given pride of place there, right at the beginning of the chapter called “philosophy” (which is an obvious precursor of the famous remarks on philosophy in philosophical investigations, § 89-133). the remark is singled out as more than a casual or preliminary thought, but is put to service as an opening of reflections on what philosophy is, or should be. (note that this remark was not included in the “philosophy” chapter of the philosophical investigations, while there are a number of other remarks from the big typescript that were.) the title of this first subsection of the big typescript’s chapter on philosophy is: “difficulty of philosophy not the intellectual difficulty of the sciences, but the difficulty of a change of attitude. resistance of the will must be overcome.” philosophy, for wittgenstein, is serious work, but not solely because of the intellectual challenges it may provide, but because of obstacles concerning one’s attitude. the heading thus opens up two topics: a contrast between philosophy and “the sciences” and the topic of a necessary change of attitude. in a tolstoyan tone, it is this change that is presented as meeting resistance of the will. following this heading, there is the remark about architecture again, in its new context: as is frequently the case with work in architecture, work on philosophy is actually closer to working on oneself. on one’s own understanding. on the way one sees things. (and on what one demands of them.) roughly speaking, according to the old conception – for instance that of the (great) western philosophers – there have been two kinds of intellectual problems: the essential, great, universal ones, and the non-essential, quasi-accidental problems. we, on the other hand, hold that there is no such thing as a great, essential problem in the intellectual sense [35]. for one thing, the second part of the remarks distances philosophy from the (presumably natural) sciences, which is a common thread running all the way through wittgenstein’s thinking [36]. rather than solving, or even conceiving of, problems the way the sciences do, wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy aims—as he puts it here—at a change of perspective, 133 isparchitecture.com at a different attitude towards the puzzles we are confronted with. this different attitude clearly involves the rejection of essentialist intuitions. all philosophical problems, wittgenstein seems to imply, are equally important. now the problems of aesthetics, wittgenstein keeps on stressing (see lectures on aesthetics), are not like scientific problems either. they are not to be solved empirically, by research on causes of reactions, for instance [37]. when we deal with art, in wittgenstein’s words: when we are faced with aesthetic puzzles or conduct aesthetic investigations, we are looking for a different perspective, that is for alternative reasons a work is designed as it is we did not think of before. in this respect, as recently explicated by simo säätelä, aesthetics, in wittgenstein, can be seen as a kind of paradigm of philosophy: “[a]n aesthetic investigation, in wittgenstein’s sense, bears a close similarity to a philosophical investigation (also in wittgenstein’s sense): both aim at putting things ‘side by side’ and change one’s way of perceiving” [38]. this, to be sure, is rather what an art critic will do, not necessarily the work of the artist. yet wittgenstein does not sharply distinguish between performance and reception, nor between artistic creation and criticism. what a competent art critic can do is to persuade us of such a different perspective, to give us reasons for seeing something in a new way. she can help us change our attitude, so to speak. being involved in the creation of a work of art includes such critical processes—in this sense, the artist is her own critic. the architect in wittgenstein’s analogy has to train her perception, her way of seeing things—especially in relation to detail: there is nothing inessential, accidental. this is the sense in which her work is a work on herself, on enhancing her capacities of judging and responding to the features of her work. we can see this as a model of how, for wittgenstein, work on philosophy also contains both aspects, procedures of (self)criticism as a part of finding the right philosophy, for wittgenstein, is serious work, but not solely because of the intellectual challenges it may provide, but because of the obstacles concerning one’s attitude. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 134 sc hu ff expression. why is wittgenstein comparing the practice of philosophy explicitly to the work of an architect, and not, say, to that of a composer or a painter? perhaps because the attention to detail here not only concerns artistic expressiveness as an end in itself, but can simultaneously be a matter of the functional value of a building. in this sense, the comparison could be meant to bring out an existential dimension of philosophizing. if so, this could resonate in wittgenstein’s approval of the stanza from henry wadsworth longfellow’s poem “the builders,” which he considered using “as a motto” (whether for one of his books or for himself as philosopher we are not told): “in the elder days of art, / builders wrought with greatest care / each minute and unseen part; / for the gods see everywhere” [39]. iv having started with a list of wittgenstein’s scattered manuscript remarks about architecture, this analysis ends with a particular analogy between art and philosophy. it is not a coincidence, given the argument of the paper. in his typescripts and book projects, wittgenstein mentions architecture directly only in the context of other subjects he is investigating. in the case of the remark quoted from the big typescript, for instance, he is concerned with the methods of philosophy. the allusion to the work of the architect put to use there has to build on an understanding of the subject either working on general intuitions or developed in detail elsewhere. so, the question remains whether the remarks on architecture noted in manuscripts over the years, as presented here, can be viewed as a serious contribution to a philosophy of architecture. frankly, it does not appear so. in itself, the fact that the remarks are too sparse to constitute a coherent body of thought need not compromise their philosophical potential. yet additionally, they remain far too vague to illuminate the practice of architecture. there is, to be sure, the recurrent motive of architecture being a gesture. although this motive only makes sense in the context of wittgenstein’s general ideas about art and aesthetics, and especially about music, in which the notion of gestures is elaborated much further. these ideas, in turn, should be read in the light of the discussions about rules and linguistic meaning in philosophical investigations and about talk of inner states in philosophy of psychology. in a sense, then, granting wittgenstein’s own, rather idiosyncratic understanding of aesthetics, the practice of philosophy can be better understood by comparing it to the practice of art, especially art criticism [40]. it would be exaggerating to claim any special role for architecture in this regard—music is, for 135 isparchitecture.com wittgenstein, the much more interesting case. his remarks on architecture hardly scratch the surface of whatever one could think of as subject matters of a philosophy of architecture, say, problems of the ontology, function, experience, or appreciation of architectural objects, or questions not only of the aesthetic, but also of the ethical, social, or political character of architecture. this is not to say that aspects of wittgenstein’s philosophy in general and his perspective on aesthetics in particular cannot fruitfully be used for elucidating the practice and understanding of architecture—but wittgenstein himself, as read here, is not a philosopher of architecture [41]. endnotes [1] see ludwig wittgenstein, lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief, ed. cyril barrett (oxford: basil blackwell, 1966). see also g. e. moore, “wittgenstein’s lectures in 1930-33,” mind 64, no. 253 (1955) and ludwig wittgenstein, wittgenstein’s lectures: cambridge, 1932-1935, ed. alice ambrose (amherst: prometheus books, 2001). [2] monographs on the architecture (and, sometimes, “philosophy”) of the stonboroughwittgenstein house include: bernhard leitner, the architecture of ludwig wittgenstein: a documentation (london: studio international publications, 1973); jan turnovský, the poetics of a wall projection (london: architectural association publications, 2009); paul wijdeveld, ludwig wittgenstein, architect (london: thames and hudson, 1994); bernhard leitner, the wittgenstein house (princeton: princeton architectural press, 2000); roger paden, mysticism and architecture: the meanings of the palais stonborough (lanham: lexington books, 2007); nana last, wittgenstein’s house: language, space and architecture (new york: fordham university press, 2008); daniele pisani, l’architettura è un gesto: ludwig wittgenstein architetto (macerata: quodlibet studio, wittgenstein himself, as read here, is not a philosopher of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 136 sc hu ff 2011); august sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins: rekonstruktion einer gebauten idee (vienna: böhlau, 2011). [3] see david macarthur, “working on oneself in philosophy and architecture: a perfectionist reading of the wittgenstein house,” architectural theory review 19, no. 2 (2014). [4] for the contrast between wittgenstein’s own aesthetic perspective and what became known as “wittgensteinianism” in aesthetics see, for instance, noël carroll, “art in an expanded field: wittgenstein and aesthetics,” the nordic journal of aesthetics 23, no. 42 (2012); paul guyer, a history of modern aesthetics, volume 3: the twentieth century (new york: cambridge university press, 2014), pp. 432-450. [5] ludwig wittgenstein, ms 107 230, culture and value, ed. g. h. von wright, trans. peter winch (oxford: blackwell, 1998), 5. my quotations from wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts are taken from the bergen electronic edition of wittgenstein’s nachlass (oxford: oxford university press, 1998). translations are peter winch’s from the 1998 revised edition of culture and value, unless otherwise indicated. [6] wittgenstein, ms 109 205, culture and value, 8. [7] wittgenstein, ms 156a 25r, culture and value, 26. [8] wittgenstein, ms 121 26v, culture and value, 40. [9] wittgenstein, ms 126 29, culture and value, 49. [10] wittgenstein, ms 167 11r, culture and value, 74. [11] wittgenstein, ms 167 10v, my translation. [12] wittgenstein, ms 137 76a, culture and value, 84. [13] for a more extensive interpretation of the remark, see joseph masheck, adolf loos: the art of architecture (london: i. b. tauris, 2013), 213-215. [14] see joachim schulte, experience and expression: wittgenstein’s philosophy of psychology (oxford: clarendon press, 1993), 37-45; graham mcfee, “wittgenstein and the arts: understanding and performing,” in wittgenstein, aesthetics and philosophy, ed. peter b. lewis (aldershot: ashgate, 2004). [15] on wittgenstein’s working process, see joachim schulte, “what is a work by wittgenstein?,” in wittgenstein: the philosopher and his works, ed. alois pichler and simo säätelä (heusenstamm: ontos, 2006), 400-401. [16] wittgenstein, ms 112 24r; culture and value, 24. [17] ludwig wittgenstein, ts 219 22. [18] ludwig wittgenstein, ts 229 192, remarks on the philosophy of psychology 137 isparchitecture.com i, ed. g. e. m. anscombe and g. h. von wright (oxford: blackwell, 1980), 5. translations are anscombe’s. [19] wittgenstein, ts 229 269; remarks on the philosophy of psychology i, 68. [20] for a substantial account of gestures and their meaning, see david mcneill, gesture and thought (chicago: university of chicago press, 2005), especially the second chapter. [21] see ludwig wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus (london: routledge and kegan paul, 1961), sections 6.421, 6.522; ts 207. [22] see karlheinz lüdeking, “pictures and gestures,” british journal of aesthetics 30, no. 3 (1990); fabian goppelsröder, “über die gestensprache zur sprachgeste. wittgenstein und die konsequenzen seines alternativen kommunikationsmodells,” paragrana 19, no. 1 (2010). [23] see masheck, adolf loos, 230; david macarthur, “remarks on ‘architecture is a gesture’ (wittgenstein),” paragrana 23, no. 1 (2014). [24] for a quick overview, see edward winters, “architecture,” in the routledge companion to aesthetics, ed. berys gaut and dominic mciver lopes (london: routledge, 2013). [25] ludwig wittgenstein, the blue and brown books (oxford: blackwell, 1958), 167; compare ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, ed. g. e. m. anscombe and rush rhees (oxford: basil blackwell, 1963), § 527. [26] stephen mulhall, inheritance and originality: wittgenstein, heidegger, kierkegaard (oxford: clarendon press, 2001), 169 [27] see simo säätelä, “‘perhaps the most important thing in connection with aesthetics’ wittgenstein on ‘aesthetic reactions,’” revue internationale de philosophie, no. 219 (2002). [28] see wittgenstein, lectures and conversations, 13-14. [29] see lüdeking, “pictures and gestures;” roger scruton, “wittgenstein and the understanding of music,” british journal of aesthetics 44, no. 1 (2004); yves bossart, ästhetik nach wittgenstein. eine systematische rekonstruktion (heusenstamm: ontos, 2013), 213-226. [30] see wittgenstein, the blue and brown books, 166. [31] see ibid. [32] see richard wollheim, art and its objects, (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1980), 73-76; david bell, “the art of judgment,” mind 96, no. 382 (1987), 239-244; kjell s. johannessen, “philosophy, art and intransitive understanding,” in wittgenstein and norway, ed. kjell s. johannessen (oslo: solum, 1994); bossart, ästhetik nach wittgenstein, 195-204. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 138 sc hu ff [33] for an excellent reading of the way wittgenstein comments on two musical examples, see katrin eggers, “‘diese musikalische phrase ist für mich eine gebärde. sie schleicht sich in mein leben ein.’ musik als geste und musikalische gesten bei wittgenstein,” wittgenstein-studien 6, no. 1 (2015). [34] for detailed analyses of the way wittgenstein criticizes and preserves both formalist and expressivist intuitions, especially with respect to musical meaning, see béla szabados, wittgenstein as philosophical tone-poet: philosophy and music in dialogue (amsterdam: rodopi, 2014), especially 87-97; katrin eggers, ludwig wittgenstein als musikphilosoph (freiburg: karl alber, 2011), 203-227. [35] wittgenstein, the big typescript: ts 213, ed. and trans. c. grant luckhardt and maximilian a. e. aue (oxford: blackwell, 2005), 300301. while winch’s translation of the remark differs substantially from luckhardt and aue’s, wittgenstein did not change the wording from the manuscript to the typescript version. the german original reads (in both cases): “die arbeit an der philosophie ist – wie vielfach die arbeit in der architektur – eigentlich mehr eine arbeit an einem selbst. an der eignen auffassung. daran, wie man die dinge sieht. (und was man von ihnen verlangt.)” [36] see for prominent instances wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus, section 4.111; wittgenstein, the blue and brown books, 18; wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, § 109. [37] see wittgenstein, lectures and conversations, 19-23. repercussions of wittgenstein’s view are clearly visible in alva noë’s recent strange tools, not only in the repudiation of scientific approaches in aesthetics, be they of an evolutionary or neuroscientific variety, but also in the proposed model of philosophy as providing “perspicuous representations.” see alva noë, strange tools: art and human nature (new york: hill and wang, 2015), especially 17, 49-71, 120-133. [38] simo säätelä, “aesthetics – wittgenstein’s paradigm of philosophy?,” aisthesis 6, no. 1 (2014), 40. [39] henry wadsworth longfellow, “the builders,” henry wadsworth longfellow, maine historical society, accessed november 18, 2015, http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=118. wittgenstein misquotes the last line of the stanza as “for the gods are everywhere.” i can see no indication of this alteration being intentional. (of course, i cannot rule that out, either.) compare wittgenstein, ms 120 144v; culture and value, 39. 139 isparchitecture.com [40] see kjell s. johannessen, “wittgenstein and the aesthetic domain,” in wittgenstein, aesthetics and philosophy, ed. peter b. lewis (aldershot: ashgate, 2004). [41] i wish to thank eva backhaus, stefan koller, and martin seel, as well as two anonymous reviewers for architecture philosophy, for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 isparchitecture.com wittgenstein’s architectural idiosyncrasy august sarnitz ludwig wittgenstein was deeply embedded in viennese architectural modernism, culturally as well as personally. his assimilation in recent historiography to existing trends within the local architectural movement—namely loos—are based on aesthetic and intellectual simplifications. the simplifications eclipse the distinctive contribution wittgenstein’s palais stonborough makes to architecture, to viennese modernism, and perhaps to philosophy. the present paper seeks to rectify this constellation by re-situating wittgenstein as an architect in his own right by re-sensitizing us to the idiosyncrasy of wittgenstein’s architecture [1]. the paper begins by looking at the wider biographical background setting the foundation wittgenstein’s involvement with architecture in vienna. it scrutinizes his own as well as the family’s wider personal connections to key figures in viennese modernism, with special focus on josef hoffmann and adolf loos. as will be shown, wittgenstein’s relation to these architects is, in stanford anderson’s terms, one of critical conventionalism [2]. wittgenstein builds on the conventions of pre-modern and modern viennese architecture, but re-interprets and re-appropriates each in a highly transformative and critical manner. the house’s design draws from the local design tradition of vienna and wider austria, making it historical without being historicist. the historical qualities of his architectural engagement are highlighted throughout the paper, particularly in part two, where a critical discourse on the architectural and interior qualities embodied in the wittgenstein ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 142 sa r n it z house is proffered. the significance of doing so is to demonstrate that wittgenstein rejects not only ornament and opulence, as comes to define the modern movement, but that he stands apart both aesthetically and intellectually from other modernist architects practising in vienna at the time. this paper will explore the lineage of aesthetic meaning as evidenced by architectural details in the house, with the assumption that these details reveal something of wittgenstein’s underlying rationale. wittgenstein’s relation to loos on monday, july 27th, 1914, one day prior to the outbreak of world war i, wittgenstein and adolf loos met in the elegant and ornately designed café hotel imperial [3]. loos was already well-known in vienna as an avant-garde architect, had gained prominence through his writings (such as the 1908 essay “ornament and crime”), and for his controversial work, such as the 1909-1911 house on the michaelerplatz. the house implemented many of the ideas published in “ornament and crime,” and serves as amongst the first haute buildings rejecting opulence. initially the building was poorly received, and among the critics was wittgenstein’s sister and future client, margaret stonbrough. the house was described as having naked façades and as having material opulence, with marble, mirrors and wood paneling interiors. importantly, it still lacked ornamentation, in the sense defined and decried by loos. the lack of such ornamentation dissociated loos and other modernists from questions of use. thus, loos stood out in vienna for his radical thinking and his work, leading him to recognition across europe and the modernizing world. loos’ difference from others in the viennese context must have made an impression on wittgenstein, who until this meeting with loos had engaged only mechanical engineering and logic as fields of inquiry. the impact of meeting loos’ distinction is apparent as after meeting loos, wittgenstein returned home—a five-minute walk—to his parent’s house. his family’s city palace had interiors much like those of the hotel imperial —and like that hotel, would have likely been rejected by loos’ ideals of simplicity and austerity. the juxtaposition between the contemporary and opulence of empire and monarchy—even for the business elite—was stark and evidently present in wittgenstein’s everyday reality. the next day, austria-hungary declared war on serbia. eleven days later wittgenstein volunteered to serve. during the war, wittgenstein met and befriended paul engelmann to whom he was introduced by adolf loos, and who he would later work with on the wittgenstein house. 143 isparchitecture.com also in the war period, wittgenstein worked on his tractatus, the only work published in his lifetime. he completed the text during the summer of 1918, between july and september during a break from the front. in november 1919, after the end of the war and his release from captivity in august, wittgenstein returned to vienna. within just two weeks, wittgenstein left for a meeting with his friend adolf loos full of expectation, but he was appalled by loos and his ideas about a kunstamt (a state office or ministry for art). wittgenstein writes: a few days ago i looked up loos. i was horrified and nauseated. he has become infected with the most virulent bogus intellectualism! he gave me a pamphlet about a proposed ‘fine arts office’, in which he speaks about a sin against the holy ghost. that surely is the limit! i was already a bit depressed when i went to loos but that was the last straw […] [4]. the episode suggests the end of wittgenstein’s friendship with loos as a person. true to his word, wittgenstein would never meet loos again. his relationship to loos’ aesthetic and architectural ideas, however, is more complicated. while living in the remote reaches of norway between 1912 and 1914, wittgenstein went to great troubles to receive subscription copies of die fackel. the viennese cultural newspaper edited by karl kraus regularly reported on loos and other mainstays of viennese intelligentsia. while rejecting the radical changes in loos’ thinking after world war i, wittgenstein’s attempts to develop a nuanced response to loos’ earlier work, both written and built, continued to interest him. the lingering interest in the development of viennese architectural modernism is manifest in the house as wittgenstein’s entrance hall in the palais stonborough resembles loos’ design decisions at the michaelerplatz. the hall of the wittgenstein [wittgenstein] was appalled by loos and his ideas about a kunstamt “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 144 sa r n it z house has four prominently placed columns and overall meticulous regard for precise dimensions, which demonstrates both resemblance departure from loos’ surface detailing in other regards. looking to kraus’ 1930 summary of loos appearing in die fackel, parallels between wittgenstein’s later writing and the contemporary thought of viennese designers are found: adolf loos and i […] have done nothing more than to show that there is a difference between a urn and a chamberpot. it is in this difference that culture is given a space to play itself out. the others, those with positive knowledge, however, divide themselves between those who would use the urn as a chamberpot and those who would use the chamberpot as an urn [5]. similar remarks are found in wittgenstein’s student recorded lectures on aesthetics a year or two later in cambridge. he observed a deterioration (a verfall in loos’ terms) in the culture and craft of architecture [6]. in doing so, wittgenstein targets the increasing failure of architects and patrons to differentiate a room and its furnishings, which he believed should be differentiated according to their proper use and place [7]. we now, he said, live in an age where dining-room chairs are put up in drawing-rooms and vice versa, with no understanding of what is inappropriate or incorrect about that practice—correctness being, for wittgenstein, a central term of aesthetic commendation, rather than a descriptor of appearance such as beautiful [8]. wittgenstein states: a picture of what happens in architecture […] when thousands of people are interested in the minutest details [, as opposed to a] picture of what happens when a dining-room table is chosen more or less at random, when no one [any longer] knows where it came from. ([…] a period in which everything is fixed and extraordinary care is lavished on certain details […]. a great number of people are highly interested in a detail of a dining-room chair. and then there is a period when a dining-room chair is in the drawing-room and no one knows where this came from or that people had once given enormous thought in order to know how to design it.) [9]. the parallels the above lines to kraus’ and loos’ reflections on urns and chamber pots are rather pronounced and the intellectual genealogy clear. moreover, wittgenstein’s use of the term ‘detail’ may relate to its use in craftsmanship. in craftsmanship the term is used to denote precision and adequacy to resolve design problems, specifically of an architectural character. in light of detail’s meaning for wittgenstein, the term certainly plays a role in wittgenstein’s own architecture. for at the built level, wittgenstein’s own architectural decisions at palais stonborough fully reflect the 145 isparchitecture.com distinctions of spatial use, dictated by a refined understanding and appreciation of propriety, both social and aesthetic, his later lectures on aesthetics reflect upon. the alleged austerity of wittgenstein’s interiors, for instance, is the result of historians’ interpretations of photos of the house preor postuse as wittgenstein’s architecture in its intended state [10]. when furbished by his sister margaret, the house’s furnished interior fully reflected the dictates of good taste and propriety wittgenstein eminently desired and demanded for his architecture, as he expressly wrote to his sister later on: only yesterday i had to think of the house in the kundmanngasse—i don’t know why—and of how pleasingly and pleasantly you have furbished it. in these matters we’re on the same wave length [11]. in contrast to loos, who regarded the wall and the finishes the prerogative of the architect, wittgenstein left such matters at the discretion of the client. margaret, the client in this case, furnishes the house in a manner that is both independent from ludwig’s design intentions and which is in contrast to the loosian standard in vienna at the time. she is particularly expressive with her furnishments on the upper floors where she has her private spaces, and which she adorns with tapestries and furniture that are textured and warm. thus, the standard historical characterizations of the house’s apparent austerity as an aesthetic preference—or preference for the naked wall—appears misconstrued. margaret breaks, ludwig follows: from loos and hoffmann to wagner and perco between 1914 and 1919, a great deal transpired in the wittgenstein family. shortly before the first world war, ludwig’s closest sister margaret bought the villa toskana in gmunden on lake traunsee in austria’s unofficial lake district, the salzkammergut. over nearly two decades, margaret dedicated her the standard historical characterizations of the house’s apparent austerity as an aesthetic preference [...] appears misconstrued “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 146 sa r n it z energies to the renovation and modernization of the historic building. the process concludes in 1925 and is immediately followed by her next architectural project: the palais stonbrough (1926-1928) [12]. with the exception of his time during the war, ludwig would spend every summer in the increasingly modernized villa toscana, and would follow the building’s transformation closely down to the minutest of details. to get the renovation under way, margaret contracted a relatively little known young architect, rudolf perco—and not, as is often suspected, hoffmann [13]. margaret’s choice of perco over the family architect hoffmann (see below) indicates an emancipatory act on her part, and certainly foreshadows her analogous decision to contract paul engelmann over the established radicals like loos. perco’s significance as an architect resides in part in his discipleship with otto wagner, and wagner’s ground-breaking efforts in modernizing viennese architecture. as head of the architecture school at the vienna fine arts academy, wagner in fact founded a school. perco became a star pupil, and perco’s own architectural output at gmunden and beyond demonstrates his wagnerian tutelage [14]. in its orientation, wagner’s program pursued a new orientation in the training and practice of architectural design, one we could dub constructive jugendstil. that is, while wagner’s aesthetics was partly informed by art noveau sensitivities, he sought to anchor his visual design choices in the rationale of construction and function. in his famous postal savings bank (1905), for instance, wagner aesthetically elevates the duct work responsible for the building’s ventilation and heating to aesthetic details. the duct work is designed to look like stelaes, stylized columns and do not recall their function directly, as standard artifacts like radiators do (see figures 1 & 2). here, the building systems hold aesthetic significance and meaning. whereas in hoffmann’s work, it is carefully hidden away under, or under what may be interpreted as surface ornamentation. perco followed wagner’s example in the villa toscana and turned the radiators into aesthetic elements of the architectural interior. as would, in turn, wittgenstein in the palais stonborough’s use of radiators (see figures 1 and 2). so there is a clear lineage, not simply of an aesthetic decision or a built detail as such but also its underlying rationalization. if ludwig’s future engagement with architecture is prefigured by the villa toscana, so is margaret’s. in contrasting perco, margaret acted in favor of a decidedly modernist architect. she takes a difficult step forward in that she contracts out the work to a relatively untried-and-tested architect. she invests her money, free time, and potentially her own reputation on their promises. margaret sets the building agenda as the primary client 147 isparchitecture.com where there is a set of knowns or facts there is a basis for clarity “ ” figures 1 & 2: (top to bottom). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 148 sa r n it z which determines the (re)programming and aesthetics of the informal spaces in both building projects. just as importantly, she departs from hoffmann’s influence. the departure is significant as hoffman was the architect of her fully furnished berlin flat, a wedding gift from her father. hoffmann never worked with, but only for, margaret. margaret in turn would later emancipate herself aesthetically after her father’s death, by nearly entirely leaving behind the wedding gift of a house. except for two pieces of furniture, one of them designed by hoffmann, margaret left everything behind in berlin when re-locating to vienna to the palais schönborn [15, 16]. the viennese architects hoffman and wagner are as important to our understanding of margaret’s future choices (as a patron) as they are to our understanding of wittgenstein’s architectonic idiosyncrasy. let us first discuss wittgenstein’s relation to josef hoffmann’s work. returning to the biographical narrative at wittgenstein’s 1914 horrific and nauseating break from loos, wittgenstein spends ten days at his parents’ lavish country home. the building was partially remodeled by hoffmann, founding member of the wiener werkstätte and member of the secession. hoffmann presented, in many senses, an antithesis to loos both artistically and intellectually. hoffmann realized numerous architectural projects for the wittgenstein family in close cooperation with ludwig’s father and was responsible for his sister margaret’s first apartment in berlin in 1905. hoffman was a major proponent of the gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) where the artist delivers the complete package deal for the client. a building, interior furnishes, cutlery, crockery, and even jewelry are tailormade to perfectly cohere in the total ensemble. the pieces are assembled by the architect, having solicited nothing from the client’s own aesthetic inclinations. the client willingly signed up for the total treatment, wherein the architect designs their entire domestic realm. wittgenstein would later reject the gesamtkunstwerk position—leaving all furnishing and other household objects to the discretion of the house’s patron and tenant. he was morally open to a collaged or unplanned mingling of objects in his house, provided they bespoke a certain quality and contextual propriety. in this rejection of gesamtkunstwerk, he is in keeping with loos’ idea and remaining critical of hoffman that architecture would be confined to what was necessary from a use perspective. the confinement of aesthetics and design to use was not just critical of hoffman, but restricted aesthetic universalism and excess. so much so that aesthetic universalism and excess is banished from the architect’s scope of work. 149 isparchitecture.com wittgenstein viewed loos’ aesthetic confinement not simply as the boundaries of architectural aesthetics, but further as the limits of an architect’s role in building. the limits of the architect’s role is the design of the house, leaving the inhabitants to develop its interior aesthetic as they choose. the demarcating the architect’s scope of work runs parallel to wittgenstein’s position in his earlier writings in the tractatus. wittgenstein views the factual or what is the case, that which one can speak about clearly. his valuing of the factual translates directly into the way he approaches building and the design questions associated with it, such that one might argue that the wittgenstein house has a certain clarity of expression itself. for him, where there is a set of knowns or facts there is the basis for clarity. transitioning beyond the knowns, or the basis for clarity, is otherwise a transition into the mystical. wittgenstein famously critiques attempts to express the mystical, arguing that one must remain silent, at least if one is to speak philosophically. for wagner, some facts manifest from a design brief that the architect cannot merely design around but rather has to expressively accommodate —he called this sachzwang. though wagner had introduced the notion of sachzwang to viennese architecture at the close of the century, wittgenstein’s practice in architecture is complimentary to wagner’s position to a certain extent [17]. indeed, there are architectural echoes to wagner in wittgenstein’s house. looking to wagner’s 1912-1913 lupus sanatorium, there is a precision in the placement of the main columns and cross-beams hitherto absent in viennese architecture, and taken up only again later in wittgenstein’s. regarding both wagner and hoffmann, there is a nuanced taking over of pre-existing viennese ideas that wittgenstein adapted to meet his own situation and goals. at the same time and in contrast wittgenstein apparently saw no reason to copy any other of the renovated villa’s detailing “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 150 sa r n it z to loos, wittgenstein had no personal or biographical confrontation with hoffmann or wagner. while wagner’s early death in 1918 may explain this, regarding hoffmann this is all the more extraordinary since wittgenstein would spend many a summer in the visually opulent interior of a hoffmann design during his summers, at the family’s hunting lodge. nor do we have records of written commentary on hoffmann’s design stance. arguably, wittgenstein was not compelled to articulate his reaction to hoffman’s work in that it did not provoke as loos’ later musings would [18]. at the built level, however, traces of commentary and reaction to both architects exist. without sharing hoffmann’s predilection for jugendstil ornamentalism, wittgenstein carefully observed and copied architectural details of interest to him. traveling to another family-owned building, the villa toscana in gmunden rudolf perco had renovated, wittgenstein recorded a couple of technical details. the details would then re-appear in his own house, especially regarding heating elements, including the famous radiators and window mechanisms. perco’s pioneering contribution was to introduce the so-called french or parisian windows into austria. parisian windows are more generously dimensioned than typical parapet viennese windows, in that they extend from the floor level upwards. vienna’s harsh winter climate and lack of proper interior heating technology had previously disinclined vienna’s architects to use parisian windows. wittgenstein, observing perco’s introduction of parisian windows at villa toscana, would now bring them to his vienna project, and employ parisian windows on all levels (which not even loos had done). finally, perco had deliberately used a fitting that connected each window’s two metal panes, which was an odd choice of materials at the time (see figures 3 and 4). wittgenstein took over perco’s distinctive fitting design and his choice of materials, deviating from loos’ approach which included wooden window fixture. at the same time, wittgenstein apparently saw no reason to copy any other of the renovated villa’s detailing—confirming once more his eclecticism towards the reservoir of viennese modernism and traditionalism. or again, in the palais schönborn-batthyány wittgenstein’s sister previously lived in, wittgenstein observed a built detail then common in viennese architecture of the period—that the first interior door would rest, not on the floor, but on the first step of the short set of stairs leading up to the second interior hall (see figure 5 and 6). (the same was true of the family’s vienna palais at alleegasse 16, now known as palais wittgenstein.) again, this was not purely an aesthetic choice but served utilitarian 151 isparchitecture.com figure 4: view of perco’s window stop fitting. figure 3: interior view of perco’s windows from a distance. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 152 sa r n it z ends—here, to ensure that any residual muck or moisture accrued from rain or storm water would not tarnish the door or seep into the interior. wittgenstein takes over that detail, stripped of all period ornamentation of the preor jugendstil era, in his own house—in a manner, and like so much else of the house, an historical ostension without being historicist. for, as he says in his 1938 lectures on aesthetics, deterioration in architecture occurs “when you get imitations,” that is, wholesale copying of details with no understanding of “where this came from” i.e. what original use or purpose was behind the design detail [19, 20]. in this sense, and with regard to other built details already discussed (and to be discussed below), wittgenstein builds levels of meaning into his architecture, and operates on indirect ostension rather than explicit copying, in line with his later discussions of ostensive explanation in the philosophical investigations [21]. these ‘levels of meaning’ operate on, and their discernment accordingly relies on, an understated familiarity with local viennese architecture, elements of which wittgenstein used with great ease as they were part of the everyday life he was immersed in. to later art-historical interpreters, especially those visiting the house (and indeed town) for a brief period only, wittgenstein’s points of reference will seem elusive, as they must, for anybody not sharing his form of life and cultural frame of reference [22]. finally, points of contact to his (later) philosophical reflections, such as ostensive explanation, need not indicate causal relations of influence—where an idea in architecture ‘leads wittgenstein to’ having an idea in philosophy [23]. rather, wittgenstein exercised a similar stance or orientation in both domains, leading to similar though not necessarily overlapping (let alone, identical) outputs in architecture and philosophy. before investigating the results of wittgenstein’s engagement with architecture, his path toward that engagement will be briefly examined. wittgenstein’s path to architecture with the villa toscana completed in 1925, margaret decided to build a city mansion in a viennese suburb. she approached paul engelmann, a project architect who had frequently worked with loos, but he had a limited oeuvre on his own. around the same time, wittgenstein returns to vienna after an unsuccessful and badly concluded attempt at becoming an elementary school teacher [24]. he writes to a trusted friend and future colleague at cambridge university—none other than john maynard keynes—in late 1925: i have decided to remain [a] teacher, as long as i feel that the troubles into which i get 153 isparchitecture.com figures 5 & 6: view of the palais wittgenstein (above) in contrast to the wittgenstein house (below). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 154 sa r n it z that way, may do me any good. […] if i leave teaching off i will probably come to england and look for a job there, because i am convinced that i cannot find anything at all possible in this country. in this case i will want your help [sc. to secure a job in teaching] [25]. seven months later, a major incident with a student forces wittgenstein to resign as a teacher and exposes him to federal court hearings, which solidifies his grim prediction as to his future employability in austria— certainly where the public sector educational institutions were concerned. in these circumstances, his sister’s offer that same year to act, not just as architectural patron but, as de facto employer for her compromised brother must have appeared as the only reprieve short of exile. margaret’s offer of employment further coincided with the family’s alleged attempts at the time to hush up wittgenstein’s humiliating court case [26]. these are the circumstances in which wittgenstein finds himself architect of a house. wittgenstein’s foray into architecture, in that light, cannot simply be attributed to a purely vocational decision on wittgenstein’s part, but was forced on him by external circumstances. the circumstances shed new light on wittgenstein’s remark that he regarded work on architecture as work on oneself [27]. he may have argued that working on architecture is working oneself, because in his own case, he worked on himself through his engagement with architecture [28]. in 1926 ludwig becomes involved in margaret’s project to build a city mansion at the express invitation of both his sister and engelmann. from this point on, wittgenstein described himself as an architect, and no longer as a teacher, as documented by his paperwork re-establishing his residency in vienna. rather than merely supporting the project at a distance, ludwig gradually takes over the entire design process his friend paul engelmann had already begun. by may 1926, wittgenstein was living in vienna again and had started his new two-year long stint as an architect. wittgenstein’s involvement in the design process at this relatively late stage can be seen as a reaction of sorts to the project’s earlier stages. the sister, having rejected loos and hoffmann alike (the first two ways to approach the project), and then having contracted perco (the third way), now finds a fourth way to approach the building project. ludwig helps to furnish an architectural mantle on which to pin her own ideas. margaret wittgenstein, well embedded in the highly cultured viennese upper class, knew what she would have received from loos and hoffmann. it was chic at the time to contract one of the two architects. collectors of klimt paintings leaned toward hoffmann, who frequently worked with klimt, and 155 isparchitecture.com collectors of schiele leaned toward loos. though well-versed in the aesthetic trends championed by the liberal viennese upper class, margaret wittgenstein deliberately side-stepped them as a patron—and made her brother to understand that she expected likewise of him as her architect. that is, margaret was not just wittgenstein’s immediate reason for engaging architectural design, but served as an ally in a departure from the established norms of viennese modernism. the finished house was to overcome both the architectural and cultural conventions of its time while additionally reflecting the growing emancipation of its owner. the remaining paper inquires as to whether and how the building itself achieves the siblings’ rogue ambitions. architectural analysis, 1: floor plan the building’s floor plan, particularly the ground floor, is complex and dense. wittgenstein faced the problem of creating a flexible world to accommodate the public and private lives of his sister. it was necessary the plan allowed for ready re-interpretation and re-appropriation while also allowing for the following of strict social and cultural expectations. above all, the spatial program reflects margaret’s family and social life. there is social gathering space for her absentee husband, two sons, two foster sons, as well as domestic staff. the plan’s resulting modernity and unconventionality, particularly in the viennese context, emerges as follows. the main floor combines public and private areas. one of the doors in the large semi-public hall opens directly into margaret’s living and sleeping area labeled living room on wittgenstein’s floor plan. an alcove opposite the window contains a niche for her bed, which also served as a couch during the day. the adjacent dressing area, misleadingly [ludwig] served as an ally in a departure from the established norm of viennese modernism. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 156 sa r n it z labeled bedroom on wittgenstein’s plan, is hidden behind a screen. the main floor served as a stage on which margaret lived her life. it was the focal point of her activities, private and public, within the house. the other floors were reserved for her husband, children, and domestic staff. the building is viewed as consisting of two houses: a spatially organized object and a use-object. wittgenstein himself insisted that, for all the plan’s strictness, the house would allow for multiple uses and furnishings, as long as overall strictures on quality and correctness were observed [29]. in terms of spatial organization, the building is understood as an elementary and structural envelope, as a sequence of spaces— of autonomous spaces with defined proportions. the use of concrete furnishes a strikingly abstract background, a basic spatial envelope which draws its characteristics from the precise use of proportion, light, rhythm and tactility. (the characteristics of material use receives special focus in details with an overt relation to mechanical engineering, wittgenstein’s original subject at university: metal doors, metal windows, radiators, sliding elements and elevators.) the distinguishing features between wittgenstein and loos’ approach to building design is perhaps most apparent in the spatial sequence. there is neither a spatial plan nor a central living hall as favored by loos, nor an open plan with free spatial transitions. rather, there is a ceremonial progression of sorts created by a variety of doors and thresholds. wittgenstein designed, with great precision, a sequence of door types that vary subtly at the level of transparency and opacity. there are doors with clear glass, opaque glass, and without glass altogether (see figures 7-9). further, the ground floor living room of wittgenstein’s plan is visually separated from the staircase and thus differs markedly from the type of grand living hall that loos placed prominently in his domestic architecture for vienna’s upper class. finally, wittgenstein’s internal spaces are completely devoid of material padding where loos’ celebrated the sensual and haptic use of materials such as natural stone, colored marble and granite, timber-paneling, leather and other wall coverings (cut and faceted glass and, later, color as a consciously-used spatial finish). architectural analysis, 2: building volume and façade looking at the house, one is primarily struck by the strong plastic appearance of the building, which has a cubist-like form unusual for vienna in 1928. the sculptural effect of the house is comparable only to the contemporary building by adolf loos, the moller house, but which 157 isparchitecture.com figure 7: ground floor plan of the wittgenstein house. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 158 sa r n it z is markedly more reserved. viewed in perspective, the projections and recesses of the building volume result in an apparently random window arrangement. the orthogonal drawings of the façades, on the other hand, reveal axially arranged windows, which enjoy a particularly complex relationship with the interior spaces. the fenestration as a result offers no clues about the sort of room located behind each window. unlike in the work of adolf loos, bathrooms and small ancillary spaces are not represented on the façade by small windows. wittgenstein’s façade is not a functional illustration of the various spaces but rather a composed whole which works with axes and rhythms. on the main floor, there is an unwavering use of virtually identical glazed metal doors on the façade and throughout the internal spaces. the door’s use clearly demonstrates a design decision that cannot be reduced to functionalism and that does not feature in the architecture of adolf loos. the metal and glass double doors are arranged like viennese casement windows. in one instance, the fenestrations are arranged in the form of french doors to the terrace and another as french doors to the hall. the hall is transformed into the external element of the internal space, a sensitively interpretation of the spatial hierarchy and the public and private characters of the rooms. internally, the large living room or library and margaret stonborough-wittgenstein’s living room are the only two spaces whose internal double doors have no glass and consist entirely of metal. by controlling the amount of light passing through the glass doors, wittgenstein directs movement through the house. upon entering the house, the visitor’s attention is drawn to the light to the left of the entry (the glass wall to the terrace) and eventually toward the dining room and the small breakfast room. to the right, the large living room or library can also be entered via glass doors. the programmatic sequencing of the entrance doors and terrace doors continues in the same manner throughout the house. it generates highly deliberate diagonal lines of sight that would have, for instance, allowed margaret to discretely view visitors in the hall from her sleeping area in the curious alcove. the particular line of sight is permitted only when the doors were left open, providing a vantage point from which margaret could oversee the central activities of the house. the sequence of spaces creates an almost cinematic spatial and temporal chronology of uses which is expressed in the diagonal nature of the visual axes: the glass doors establish visual axes from the dining-room, through the hall and into the large living room (library) and from the small living room (margaret stonborough’s salon), through the music room and into 159 isparchitecture.com figure 8: ground floor plan of the wittgenstein house, drawn by emila bruck and doris scheicher. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 160 sa r n it z the hall. as a result we have many intersecting and parallel visual axes, axes that are both linear and diagonal, axes that are both real and (in a sense) virtual. when the doors are open in certain arrangements, the building prevents its viewers to take in the unfolding scene all in a single glance. instead, one has to take in the happenings in discrete visual moments and perspectives, and arrange one’s experience of the house sequentially—as one would, for instance, view a film, one scene at a time, without being able to take in everything at once. architectural analysis, 3: interiors the interpretation of wittgenstein’s interior design is separate from the building’s volume and envelope. the interiors have a fundamental and elementary quality virtually untouched by the furniture. the simplicity of the interiors embodies the greatest difference between wittgenstein and his architectural contemporaries who opposed the separation of architecture and internal finishes. each of their positions were represented on the vienna architecture scene. for josef hoffmann, architecture—the dwelling in particular— should be determined by the artistic predilection of the architect. the predilection could go as far as determining everyday objects such as kitchen utensils, appliances, and textiles. in contrast, loos argued that the walls belonged to the architect, but not such moveable elements as chairs, dining chairs and armchairs. his approach yielded the design of in-built furniture, wall cladding and chimney-nooks. by consciously choosing such objects, loos developed his own closed aesthetic. he had no difficulty incorporating inherited items of furniture or oriental carpets into a new architectural design. his interiors were sometimes characterized by the use of ornamental oriental carpets because the objects were effective status symbols of the bourgeois. wittgenstein gave instructions and guidelines to his sister margaret regarding the furnishing of her own house. the guidelines and restrictions were severe. she was to use neither carpets, curtains, nor chandeliers. his position stands in distinct contrast to loos’ pupil paul engelmann, who would have wanted a loosian interior for margaret but was complicit with ludwig who preferred an autonomous one. wittgenstein’s absolute position regarding carpets and curtains is, however, easy to explain. his architecture had already addressed the functional issue of the curtain—the ground floor windows incorporated vertical black-out elements that were parked at basement level during the day. the anthracite-black artificial 161 isparchitecture.com m: 1:50 viktoria schandl figure 9: axometric of the ground floor of the wittgenstein house. drawing hightlights the column placement in the main hallway. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 162 sa r n it z stone floor with the detailed joint pattern was part of the design in which the reflection of the black stone de-emphasizes the material qualities of the perfectly polished floor, in turn creating the sensation that the floor itself dematerializes. laying a carpet on the floor would have interfered with the dematerialization effect. the laying of carpets on the floor in this example would have would have been inconsistent with the floor’s design, which does something to explain why wittgenstein was strict in his instructions and guidelines for the house. wittgenstein’s approach to the issue of artificial light was similar. the qualities and characteristics of a space are heavily determined by how much and by which route light comes into a room. a room appears differently with light from just one window on one wall, and differently with a floor to ceiling window wall. wittgenstein’s austere decision to have a single unadorned 200 watt bulb at ceiling level allowed for an evenly distributed light in all directions at even intensity; unlike the uneven distribution of shaded lamp shades. wittgenstein’s lighting design, one could argue, is objective, given its neutrality and impartiality to an observer’s relative position in the house. in contrast, all further lighting sources would be induced by candles or standing lamps, were thus highly situational and subjective, and could be adjusted by the owner and guests to suit specific occasions. architectural analysis, 4: level of use furniture itself was not a matter for wittgenstein the architect. here, he allowed his sister—the user of the house—complete freedom. wittgenstein was familiar with his sister’s furniture and art collection because he had often been her guest in her belétage in the palais schönborn-batthyany. he knew how his sister’s house operated at the social level. one cannot escape the feeling and suspicion that wittgenstein saw furniture, users and visitors as merely temporary, and in relative terms, less significant events in an absolute space, which served as a stage. his sister and the furniture changed continuously and yet this elementary space remained unchanged. during a social event the house functioned differently from times when only the family was present. his architecture was to be equally appropriate for both situations: hence the dark, almost black floor, which levels out the objects placed upon it—enveloping them in a world of continuity. margaret stonborough’s visitors, furniture and works of art inhabit the wittgensteinian space almost as if they are egalitarian guests of the building. the approach reveals the radicalism of a modernism, 163 isparchitecture.com which simultaneously takes up elementary and autonomous qualities of the building itself. here, wittgenstein’s artistic intention reveals itself as an abstract creative will triggered by the architectural debate about the viennese modus vivendi. conclusion wittgenstein’s late philosophy urged against understanding our interpersonal communication in language in too fragmented a manner. only by contextualizing our verbal exchanges against a shared and highly specific forms of life can their full meaning or significance be brought to the fore. urging a contextualist position of sorts may hold validity in our engagement with and communication across material culture as well as architecture. this contextualism can fruitfully inform our reception of wittgenstein’s own architecture. informed by a deep affinity to the material culture surrounding him since his earliest childhood, as wittgenstein’s own engagement with architecture undoubtedly was, engaging wittgenstein the architect is not primarily a lesson for us so much as a challenge—a challenge to contemporary historiography [30]. our own understanding of the full genesis and denouement of viennese modernism is still too fragmented for us to understand wittgenstein’s own place in it, and frequently deters us to allocate him such a place at all. wittgenstein’s being at home and ease with a specific culture and its manifold reference points concomitantly accounts for the work’s inaccessibility to those not sharing in the form of life that informed the house’s gestation. in a sense, wittgenstein’s own house may explain why the canonization of buildings in disregard to their highly specific forms of life frequently make for awkward histories and reluctant exclusions. the resilience toward canonizing the house may be rooted in the house’s stubborn refusal to explain itself or render itself into a code easily deciphered wittgenstein’s own house may explain why the canonization of architectural works [...] frequently makes for awkard histories and reluctant exclusions. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 164 sa r n it z by those outside its immediate context. this refusal may account for the continued relevance of not only wittgenstein’s own architecture but of our ongoing attempts to come to terms with it as a site of cultural transfer and transformation. acknowledgments i thank carolyn fahey for probing questions and edits that greatly improved this paper and led me to expand my existing research in new directions, and stefan koller for help with the philosophical content. endnotes [1] the present work builds on my earlier publications: august sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins: rekonstruktion einer gebauten idee (vienna: böhlau, 2011); august sarnitz, “reconstructing wittgenstein as an architect: ludwig wittgenstein and margaret stonboroughwittgenstein—defining and designing a new interior,” in private utopias, ed. august sarnitz (berline and boston: de gruyter, 2015), 106-123. [2] stanford anderson, “architecture in a cultural field,” princeton university, 5 march 1988), stanford anderson archives, disk princeton/ zürich, rev. 20 april 1988. the intended meaning of critical conventionalism is well conveyed by a quote from loos provided by anderson: “tradition is no more the enemy of development than the mother is an enemy of the child. tradition is a reservoir of strength from countless generations, and the firm foundation for a healthy future” (22 n. 15). a comparable dialectic between tradition and transformation in wittgenstein’s philosophical work is discussed by stephen mulhall, inheritance and originality: wittgenstein, heidegger, kierkegaard (oxford: oxford university press, 2002), 27 ff. [3] the encounter is referenced in a letter of wittgenstein’s to ludwig von ficker, as discussed by burkhardt rukschcio and roland schachel, adolf loos: leben und werk (wien: residenz verlag, 1982), 195. see further brian mcguiness, young ludwig: wittgenstein’s life, 1889-1921 (london: penguin, 1988), 209; and sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 145-146. [4] ludwig wittgenstein to paul engelmann, 2 september 1919. (cf. sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, p. 148). the english translation provided here is owed to marjorie perloff, wittgenstein’s ladder: poetic 165 isparchitecture.com language and the strangeness of the ordinary (chicago: university of chicago, 1996), 224. [5] karl kraus, “festschrift zum 60. geburtstag,” for adolf loos (vienna: loecker verlag, 1930), 27. [6] ludwig wittgenstein, lectures and conversations on aesthetics, psychology, and religious belief, ed. cyril barrett (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1967), 9-10. the lectures on aesthetics date to 1938. the similarities between wittgenstein’s writings and (some of) loos’s are well documented in john hyman, “the urn and the chamber pot,” in wittgenstein, theory, and the arts, eds. richard allen and malcolm turvey (london: routledge, 2011), 137-153. hyman’s architectural assessment seems overstated, however: “the design of the house in the kundmanngasse would have been inconceivable without the example of loos’s work, and the influence of his ideas” (137). [7] ibid., 7, n. 2. [8] ibid., 8. cf. hyman, “the urn and the chamber pot,” 137. hyman states: “the emphasis wittgenstein places on technical correctness in design and his readiness to talk about clothing, hairdressing and architecture in the same breath are surely due, at least in part, to loos’ influence.” on loos’ own ideas on daily (fashion) objects of use, see in particular the essay collection on loos, adolf loos, spoken into the void: collected essays, 1897-1900, trans. j. o. newman and j. h. smith (boston: mit press, 1987), with an introduction by aldo rossi. [9] ibid., 7, n. 2. [10] thus hyman writes: “if we compare the stonborough house with loos’ domestic architecture, its austerity and refinement appear a little overwrought.” from hyman, “the urn and the chamber pot,”146. similarly, david macarthur, “working on oneself in philosophy and architecture: a perfectionist reading of the wittgenstein house,” architecture theory review 19, no. 2 (2015): “with regard to the matter of ornament, wittgenstein applies loos’ ideas more systematically and scrupulously than loos himself. wittgenstein’s interiors are, in sharp contrast to those of loos, characterised by an overwhelming impression of austerity, simplicity, and stillness.” [11] ludwig wittgenstein to margaret stonborough, letter dated to circa september 1949, in wittgenstein. familienbriefe, eds. brian mcguiness, m. c. ascher, and o. pfersmann (vienna: hölder-pichler-tempsky, 1996), 200. cf. sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 82. [12] for details and documentation (including floor plans and building permits) of the villa toscana, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 166 sa r n it z 43-44; for a photo of wittgenstein in the building, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 71. [13] e. prokopp, magarethe stonborough-wittgenstein, böhlau, wien, chapter on the villa toscana: the drawings of rudolf perco are very similar to those of josef hoffmann of the same period. the author holds the same opinion. perco’s drawings look “hoffmanesque.” [14] perco’s architectonic contributions were (and, to this day, remain largely) overlooked by architecture historians. within austria, perco regained recognition with the publication of otto antonia graf, die vergessene wagnerschule (vienna: jugend und volk, 1969). see also ursula prokop, rudolf perco 1884–1942. von der architektur des roten wien zur ns-megalomanie (vienna: böhlau, 2001). [15] the two items of furniture include a post-art deco table by dagobert peche. peche, at the time relatively little known, later became a highly sought-after designer: testimony to margaret’s own impeccable taste wittgenstein would later speak so highly of (see letter, quoted above). for photos of the furniture, and traces thereof in margaret’s own drawings, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins 62, 130. [16] for photos of palais schönborn, see sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins. to confuse the building with palace schönbrunn, as monk does, is tantamount to confusing windsor with buckingham palace; had margaret already lived in anything like the latter, transitioning into the later palais stonborough would have conveyed an immense loss in socioeconomic status. [17] see stanford anderson, “sachlichkeit and modernity, or realist architecture,” in otto wagner: reflections on the raiment of modernity, ed. harry francis mallgrave (los angeles: the getty center, 1993), 323361 as well as august sarnitz, “realism versus verniedlichung: the design of the great city,” in otto wagner: reflections on the raiment of modernity, ed. harry francis mallgrave (los angeles: the getty center, 1993), 85-113. on a related note, loos critiqued imagination as a source of architectural ideas, since imagination (for loos) is dissociated from cognition of the realities of fact and use. see adolf loos, “der sattlermeister,” der sturm 1, no. 3 (1910). [18] as an author, wittgenstein was keen to record disagreements, especially when they were egregious (such as on the subject of weininger’s misogynism), and less keen to record agreements or mild disagreements. cf. ludwig wittgenstein, preface to tractatus-logicophilosophicus (london: kegan paul, 1922), 23. wittgenstein states: “what i have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and 167 isparchitecture.com therefore i give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what i have thought has already been thought before me by another.” [19] wittgenstein, lectures, 7. [20] ibid., 7. n. 2. [21] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, ed. and trans. elizabeth anscombe (oxford: blackwell, 2001), §7. [22] what complicates the issue is that the historiography of austrian modern architecture has been shaped by the necessarily selective nature of synoptic studies, frequently composed from an outsider’s perspective, such as carl e. schorske, fin-de-siecle vienna: politics and culture (new york: alfred e. knopf, 1981); or allan janik and stephen edelston toulmin, wittgenstein’s vienna (chicago : ivan r. dee, 1973). these works arguably create too limited a frame of reference for us to understand the diversity and nuance in architectural modernism that wittgenstein and others before him (cf. otto antonia graf, die vergessene wagnerschule) responded to. see further the conclusion below. [23] the causal reading is critiqued by christopher long, “[review of] nana last. wittgenstein’s house,” review of wittgenstein’s house: language, space, and architecture, by nana last in estetika: the central european journal of aesthetics xlvi, ii (2009): 230-233. [24] cf. alexander waugh, the house of wittgenstein: a family at war (toronto: random house of canada, 2010), 148-149. [25] ludwig wittgenstein to j. m. keynes, 18 october 1925, in wittgenstein in cambridge: letters and documents 1911 – 1951, ed. brian mcguiness (oxford: blackwell, 2012), 157. italics added. [26] waugh, the house of wittgenstein, 162. [27] ludwig wittgenstein, ms 112, dated to 14 october 1931, posthumously published in vermischte bemerkungen, eds. georg henrik van wright, heiki nyman, and alois pichler (stuttgart: suhrkamp, 1994), 52. [28] while many details surrounding wittgenstein’s transition into architecture are beyond historical verification, wittgenstein’s oldest sister, hermine, later confirmed that, in her own assessment, margaret seemed ‘psychologically compelled’ to help out her younger brother with the architecture commission, which seems to corroborate the impressions from wittgenstein’s own correspondence. these unpublished family memoirs are preserved in the brenner archives in innsbruck, austria (cf. sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 230). hermine wittgenstein’s relation to the house is of further importance: we owe to her surviving pastel ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 168 sa r n it z drawings the only documentation of margaret’s original furbishing of the house in the 1920s and 1930s (sarnitz, die architektur wittgensteins, 129). during world war ii, the house had been used as a military hospital and it would never be re-instated to its pre-war interior state. [29] see the earlier discussion on the place of ‘quality’ and ‘correctness’ in wittgenstein’s aesthetics. [30] see accounts on wittgenstein’s place in viennese modernism and the fin de siecle vienna, such as that of allan janik, roger paden, and paul engelmann. isparchitecture.com use-value value and the question of completion emre demirel the post-modernist approach to architecture often presents tradition as a problem of image [2]. postmodernism prioritizes the display of stylized images of historic buildings in order to prompt one to deal primarily with the visual appeal of the historic forms rather than the (bodily and emotional) experience of the buildings [3]. tradition is polarized against modernity when it is treated as a reconstruction of past images or styles, which is to say that the appearance of traditional buildings or their object-like material presences are treated as always complete and fixed to a particular point in time when they were built. when tradition is understood in purely visual terms, it loses its relevance in our modern world, becoming instead a static image of the past. the rigidity of historical images creates a sense that tradition has nothing to do with future imaginations, and history’s appeal operates by virtue of its fictive attributes [4]. past images or styles cannot be re-created in the present time. when they are re-constructed today they permanently demarcate the moment to which they belong. on the other hand, the bodily and emotional experiences of such buildings are free of time. such experiences could be re-embodied through new building materials and techniques tradition is polarized against modernity when it is treated as a reconstruction “ ” you say to me: ‘you understand this expression, don’t you? well then – i am using it in the sense you are familiar with’. – as if the sense were an atmosphere accompanying the word, which is carried into every kind of application. ludwig wittgenstein [1] ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 170 de m ir el which are specific to the present time. the possibility of the re-embodiment of our emotional experiences from a traditional environment opens a door to new architectural configurations and the invention of an alternative modernity which is connected to our past. looking from a non-visual but tactile view point, tradition can be considered as incomplete and enduringly open to new completions by offering a negotiable dialogue between the past and future. in order to explore how tradition can be understood in terms of the building’s physical qualities so as to open tradition to future inventive possibilities, wittgenstein’s philosophical proposition of meaning as use is herein used as the basis of argument. wittgenstein’s proposition suggests meaning cannot be predetermined or contain absolute definitions limiting our understanding to fixed mental images or other forms of representation. meaning is provisional, open-ended, and continuously re-configures itself as it is used [5]. the flexibility and fluidity of wittgenstein’s definition of meaning suggests that our understanding of things can be viewed in both complete and incomplete aspects. what is completed is associated with an object-like presence or, in edmund husserl’s terms, with the object of thought, whereas what is not yet complete refers to use, the experience of things, or the act of thought, all of which require active bodily engagement in the environment [6]. before going into further detail, it might be useful to explain briefly what is meant by the word completion. the word complete is defined as “lacking nothing, whole, entire, full, or having all the required or complementary parts included; something undivided, uncompromised or unmodified” [7]. such a definition indicates any kind of situation or process that has already ended. therefore, complete suggests any case that has been fully established in itself or reached an ideal form which has no flexibility or tolerance for further interference. on this basis, paul ricoeur distinguishes between two types of meaning: ideal (complete or absolute) and circumstantial (or situational). according to the first type, the grasp of language occurs in reference to the absolute presence of objects, materials or actions. the absolute is similar to the way a dictionary introduces a term’s meaning within purely objectified and pictoral norms. the second type, on the other hand, suggests a grasp of language based on our experiences of the lived world. accordingly, ricoeur draws attention to the differences between names (words) and sentences. while any single name or word individually refers to the purified object-like presence of the thing as defined in the dictionary, a sentence refers to our lived experiences, our circumstantial engagements with the environment [8]. 171 isparchitecture.com regarding our lived experiences, ricoeur underlines the second concept: the process of completion or fulfillment. he argues that whatever we have experienced in the past remains in our minds or memories and in turn all these experiences cause us to re-embody these through new actions, events, or structures. it is like referring to past experiences for our future actions. what is meant by the term completion is simply the re-embodiment of our lived (emotional) experiences, and this embodiment renews itself continuously [9]. as hannah arendt notes, our lived experiences are like an invisible energy which enduringly holds a potential to be converted into a new concrete entity [10]. applying this approach to tradition, it can be said that stylistic engagements present tradition as a picture: like reality, they develop a kind of normative understanding of tradition. however, our sentimental engagements with traditional environments structure our emotional experiences of them. these experiences are always open to renewals or new completions as they could be re-embodied through new modes of building materials and building techniques. taking wittgenstein’s position as a framework for this analysis, tradition is generally completed as an image or picture reality when it is engaged with its object-like qualities. when tradition is introduced as a display commodity, our encounter with tradition is reduced to a visual understanding. within the terms of visual understanding’s reduction, tradition can only be contemplated retroactively in picturesque re-productions but not in new beginnings. wittgenstein’s approach draws attention to the experiential and participatory qualities of traditional environments [11]. such qualities can never be concretized by specifically defined stylistic orders; they are formless but at the same time formative; our emotional experiences and participation within spaces act like an invisible power that continuously initiates a person into meaning is provisional, open-ended, and continuously reconfigures itself as it is used. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 172 de m ir el re-embodying it as new architectural reality. the question of completion in tradition will be demonstrated with three examples. the first is a miniature painting by the persian artist kamal al-din bihzad (1450-1535), the second is a series of le corbusier’s sketches of istanbul and the green mosque—which were done during his trip to turkey in 1910—and the final example is the 1994 b2 house designed by the turkish architect han tümertekin. at first glance these examples might appear completely different and irrelevant to one another. however, when the sketches are closely analyzed they reveal distinctly similar positions regarding the concept of tradition. the common point between kamal al-din bihzad, le corbusier, and han tümertekin is that they propose an alternative way of understanding tradition which suggests that one considers tradition not as a fixed object-like reality—or what is typically rendered as stylistic images or the outer appearance of building facades—but rather as an experiential reality, which is to say, a reality that is fluid, unfixed, and open to new configurations. from this perspective, kamal al-din bihzad, le corbusier, and han tümertekin share similar grounds in that each envisions architecture not as an object to be seen but rather as an articulation of an emotive terrain [12]. the emotive terrain does not prioritize the optical but rather a full bodily and sensuous contact with the physical built environment. such an approach leads to a perception that traditional architecture is not primarily a physical but rather an existential entity. viewing miniatures through the eyes of wittgenstein the fifteenth century miniature painting by the persian artist kamal al-din bihzad (1450-1535) depicts a famous religious event: the escape of the prophet joseph from his lover zulaykha. zulaykha, the wife of the respected egyptian officer potiphar, falls in love with joseph and seduces him in her house. joseph attempts to flee, but the house is structured in such a way as to make escape difficult (figure 1). although bihzad was a talented painter and well aware of perspective, he opts to depict the cosmos in a distorted manner [13]. the distortion goes beyond the compositional technique typical of miniature paintings. it also relates to his way of conceptualizing architecture. the representation of architecture reveals something of bihzad’s idea about what architecture itself means to the human mind. on closer inspection, bihzad avoids illustrating a literal or realistic representation of the building. he was apparently not interested in how the building could be seen from the outside. rather, his interest lies in what could be 173 isparchitecture.com figure 1: the palace of potiphar and the escape of joseph. illustrated by kamal al-din bihzad (1450 – 1535). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 174 de m ir el emotionally experienced moving from one space to another throughout the building [14]. as seen in the painting, the overall composition is established in the patterning of oblique lines. the movement—or the escape of joseph from one space to another—is sensed through the change of door color, each located on the oblique lines. each oblique wall draws attention to the movement from one closed door to another. the attention to each door creates a feeling as if someone is running from one corner to another in a labyrinth but cannot find a way out. there are many oblique walls and lines that suddenly change colors, creating a chaotic and confined atmosphere. as it is seen in the miniature, the building is not presented as an enclosed space; rather it looks like an unfolded box or an unwrapped three-dimensional shape. it seems that bihzad did not envision the building in the sense of an object, which is apparent in bihzad’s treatment of shape and profile as a topoi or a cartographic map. in paul rodaway’s terms, a topoi is the collection of emotional experiences and sentimental contacts that all draw an unfixed, re-imaginative, shapeless world [15]. according to sufi philosophy, the case of shapelessness always presents the challenges of re-embodiment or finding new form, but perhaps such a challenge is unattainable for any sustained period [16]. the concept of shapelessness is similar to the idea that whatever meaning we attribute to the environment renews itself as we use it, or, in other words, as we sentimentally experience it each time. bihzad’s approach runs parallel to wittgenstein’s idea of meaning as use. looking at this miniature painting from wittgenstein’s point of view, bihzad tries to create a perception of the cosmos which renders itself in an account of use rather than in picturing reality. as explained above, use refers to our bodily involvement with things and activities; it is highly connected to what we experience sentimentally through our environment [17]. as wittgenstein asserted, any temptation to concretize meaning reduces our understanding of it to mental representations [18]. presenting architectural reality as a fixed physical presence is avoided by bihzad. his interest lies in the shapeless presence of the building, as if he wants us to think about the paradox which is, in wittgenstein’s terms, between the non-existence of the intended object and the fullness of the seen object [19]. the way bizhad conceptualizes architecture constructs a kind of vision that recommends how to look at tradition and traditional architecture. in the miniature, what we see is an example of traditional architecture, but it is presented in a way that is dramatically different from the way 175 isparchitecture.com figure 2: le corbusier, majesticsilhouettes of themosques on the”hugehumpedback tostamboul”, 1911. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 176 de m ir el the postmodern has conditioned us to see tradition. the building is presented not in a completed shape; rather, it looks shapeless. the reason for presenting reality in such a way is closely linked to how bihzad wants us to give meaning to (traditional) architecture. it seems bihzad brought architecture into consideration not as a question of the object, which is how postmodernity intends to shape our perception of the traditional environment, but as a question of completion. the question of completion is not concerned with the reproduction of reality (representing as fully as possible the appearance of things and thus repeating past forms and styles) which is already completed; instead, it is primarily concerned with the re-activation of what is sensually experienced, which leads the way toward the configuration of new realities. miniatures and le corbusier’s drawings: re-conceptualizing tradition the analysis of one of bihzad’s miniatures has shown that the building is not presented with a photorealistic impression. it was argued that lack of photorealistic impression is closely linked with how bihzad conceptualizes architecture. he constructs a vision about the built premises that suggests the viewer consider traditional architecture not in the sense of its material reality but in the sense of what we emotionally experience through it. thus, bihzad’s engagement with the traditionally built environment is in this regard parallel to how le corbusier considers tradition. le corbusier’s approach is clearly demonstrated by his sketches of istanbul and the green mosque in bursa during his trip to turkey in 1910 [20]. although the sketches were made using different painting techniques and materials, like bihzad, le corbusier did not picture the buildings in the way they realistically appear. le corbusier’s concern was not the outer appearance of the buildings or their stylistic images, but what he emotionally experienced through his immersion in the historic environment. looking at le corbusier’s sketches more closely, it can be seen that they lack any photorealistic depiction or clearly rendered detail; his record of the existing built environment was always intentionally left incomplete (figure 2). as in bihzad’s miniature, the manner of incompleteness releases the architectural object from its physical existence and converts it into an experience of its emotional ambiance. in doing so, the sketches refresh our engagement with the architectural object in keeping the prospect of wonder alive and arousing different emotional states in each and every moment viewed. thereby, our perception of the architectural figure is not confined to the aesthetic definition of its absolute object-like appearance, and is instead left open-ended to new emotional encounters. 177 isparchitecture.com figure 5: the sultan’s prayer room is noted in le corbusier’s drawing as the darkest place. emotional effect created by the transition from darker to lighter spaces thet primarily indicated in le corbusier’s plan drawing. figures 3 & 4: floor plan of the green mosque in bursa by leon parville (left); plan sketch of the green mosque in bursa by le corbusier (right). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 178 de m ir el the aforementioned attitude of le corbusier can also be attributed to his drawing of the green mosque. le corbusier’s notation on the plan of the green mosque demonstrates that he is imprecise about the exact position of the walls, the location of the outer windows and the doors, and does not elaborate the ornamental details that emphasize the material-like presence of the building. instead, he keenly illustrates the emotional reactions created in the transition from the darker to the brighter and from the brighter to the darker spaces. le corbusier does not intend the drawing to re-construct the object-like presence of this traditional building but rather reconfigure its emotional cartography [21]. for example, the darkest hatch is the sultan’s prayer room, which was clad with dark blue tiles and was located opposite to the large prayer hall clad with white marble (figures 3-5). moving from the lower darker space to a higher and brighter space creates an emotional experience that affects how the building renders itself in our mind. le corbusier’s concern is not what exists as a literal built reality but as a sensed reality. again, the aim of analyzing le corbusier’s drawing of the green mosque is not to show the material le corbusier engaged. instead, it is to reveal his working methods insofar as tradition is concerned. his visual notations demonstrate that his approach to tradition is not architectural but topical [22]. this nonarchitectural but topical vision is in keeping with how bihzad and the turkish architect han tümertekin engage with tradition. overall the point of significance is not le corbusier’s sketching or painting methods. instead, his alternative method of engaging traditional architecture is the point of interest. as elaborated above, le corbusier offers a model for understanding tradition [23]. for le corbusier, tradition is not the fixation of things in representations inherited from the past, such consideration that inevitably causes the development of a standardized position toward tradition highly conditioned by pre-defined patterns. instead, tradition suggests new beginnings for le corbusier. he exemplifies the alternative notion of tradition in his paintings as he does not limit reality to pre-defined norms and patterns or to picturesque definitions. instead, he intended to evoke different emotional reactions each time his paintings were viewed. therefore, his painting is alive and dynamic as it produces new feelings and thus new meanings at each viewing of it. le corbusier’s attempt to re-approach tradition is similar to a wittgensteinian philosophical approach in that both suggest discovery is what makes meaning renewable. putting things into rigid preconceived patterns of what they ought to mean makes our perception of meaning past-oriented because meaning 179 isparchitecture.com refers to the moment when things first appeared to us. like the outer appearance of the building, the patterns are already constructed and mark the moment of the time completed. however, what makes meanings persist through time is perhaps their shapelessness that puts actions in the first place as opposed to meanings. within the context of this issue, how tradition could be future-oriented is the main question of this paper [24]. b2 house the b2 house was built in a small traditional mediterranean enclave, büyükhüsun, in northwestern anatolia. this small settlement is established on a mountain slope, which descends steeply southward towards the aegean sea below. it is a couple of miles away from the ancient greek city of assos located on the coast. büyükhüsun is a traditional town and in keeping with the town’s look and feel, the intention of han tümertekin was to create a traditional house [25]. when the awardwinning house was built, the building’s front facade (figure 8) drew the attention of respected local and international journals. however, tümertekin’s approach to tradition was different. on the one hand, the architect controversially reveals the ways in which modernity has conditioned us to see traditional architecture. on the other hand, his figures 6-8: view of b2 house overlooking aegean sea and lesvos island; distant view of b2 house subtly emerging from landscape; and view of front facade (left to right). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 180 de m ir el figure 9: sketch of b2 house depicting tensions between defined and undefined boundaries. figure 10: view of retaining wall and building suggesting a kind spatial dialogue between the two. figure 11: view of house and rear retaining wall. figure 12: view of house and rear retaining wall. 181 isparchitecture.com approach strongly parallels the way both miniaturist bihzad and le corbusier consider traditional turkish architecture, particularly when looking to a wittgensteinian inspired reading of tradition. approaching the enclave, the settlement’s houses have a landscaped look, as they are camouflaged to blend into the slope’s surface. among them is the b2 house, which stands with a back-like front, aligning with its context. it is not visually insistent and therefore does not dominate over the other buildings. on the front facade, tümertekin refrained from a picturesque definition. the large binding panels made by reed strips create a plain front surface unrelated to any picturesque display of existing traditional dwellings. in the overall simplicity, only the bindings’ colors permit the building to be seen from a distance. before gaining a clear idea of the appearance of the building, the dark-brown color strikes the eye and evokes curiosity. the experience of the building piques interest before one even arrives at it (figures 6 & 7). the starting point for tümertekin is the retaining wall at the back rather than the building itself. however, tümertekin’s intention is more than constructing a simple wall to hold the earth behind. his intention, rather, is to continue the angled pattern of the already existing traditional street. following the street pattern, the building was not designed as an absolutely individual object. it emerges as a seemingly natural outcome of the continuing wall (figure 8). the retaining wall begins before a person arrives at the boundary of the building and in doing so, it prolongs the path that one normally expects to complete at the building’s main entrance. however, when a person arrives at the entrance door, the retaining wall immediately directs attentions to another distant point. the purpose of the retaining wall is not defining a physical boundary but rather topographically the confinment to appearance practiced in an architectural context can be interpreted as the idealization of meanings. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 182 de m ir el narrating the building as evoking a bodily and emotional experience. in fact tümertekin does not want the visitor to face the building immediately. as gill explained by referring to wittgenstein, immediacy is limitation [26]. when we grasp things immediately, our understanding of the things are reduced to the visual level [27]. such understanding is like the way a dictionary presents things as a momental event that allows no freedom to consider them habitually [28]. here delaying the arrival enables bodily involvement with the building, which happens before the visual one. the delay in turn gives time to construct the architecture mentally in the mind before physically experiencing it. the other intention of tümertekin’s retaining wall is to create a streetlike settlement. he addresses the experience of the turkish street. for tümertekin, the street is not a collection of the building facades set sideby-side. rather, he considers it a journey already-begun in order to enact it bodily. neither the retaining wall on the left nor the blind wall of the building on the right is directly related to any appearance of the traditional turkish houses specific to the region. his attempt is not to re-picture them but rather to allow traditional architecture to re-establish meaning as the re-embodiment of what we have bodily and sentimentally experienced through the setting. therefore, the building reveals its meaning not so much when someone looks at its front and other façades individually, as when one actively participates in the journey which starts from the enclave and continues throughout the building. the irregular relationship between the retaining wall and the north face of the building is manipulated in such a way as to create a spatial dialogue that encourages bodily experience. arriving at this point, one faces a lower retaining wall, which is positioned in such a way as to create a passageway to the other side of the building. on first viewing, the convergence of the retaining wall and the building itself gives the impression that the journey to the building site is complete. however, this is not actually so. surprisingly, on approach, the upper wooden deck immediately frames the view far beyond the building, and, together with the lower retaining wall (in the middle), takes the attention away from the building to the sea and to the infinite horizon in the rear (figures 9-12). tümertekin’s intention is not to create a destination that is completed by physical boundaries, but rather to create the sense of an incomplete journey. here the temptation is always to draw attention toward the back of the building. in contrast to a building’s front, david leatherbarrow argues that “the back is hardly an identifiable figure, neither a picture-like 183 isparchitecture.com figure 13: main floor plan of the b2 house. figures 14 & 15: floor plan of traditional turkish house juxtaposed with photograph of traditional turkish house (left to right). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 184 de m ir el display of representational shapes” [29]. yet, for tümertekin, the building does not consist simply of its outer appearance. its appearance constitutes an emotional experience engendered by bodily movement, responding through personal interaction with all aspects of the building [30]. in doing so, more emphasis is given to invisible presence, which is re-configurable ad infinitum over time. for tümertekin architecture does not start when we physically enter the building but rather occurs at the moment we sentimentally begin to experience things related to the building before and after arriving within its physical boundaries. architecture begins when the building begins to alert one’s feelings and evoke some anticipation. in this regard, tümertekin addresses the traditional turkish mediterranean houses in bodrum. the b2 house’s design was based on the same traditional experience, as described by the architect here: i am gradually thinking that architecture lies in the differences between the physical boundary and the perceived boundary. […] first i formulized this a little with the bodrum house; here the boundary of the house physically exists, but these are the boundaries that are set up when only the doors are closed. outdoor and indoor are deliberately interlaced with each other. during day-time the sliding doors of the house around the courtyard remain open and the garden continues into the inside and the inside continues into the garden. this obscurity is so advanced that when all these sliding doors are closing at night-time, the small kid says that his grandmother is setting up a house […]. there are two boundaries; one is physically what you own and the other is what you can see beyond or what you can perceive a location which is yours and not yours [31]. accordingly, architecture has two boundaries. in the first case one can physically see it, and in the other, one can sense it, but cannot show or empirically demonstrate it. mentally, architecture first occurs at the moment of tension between these defined and undefined albeit boundaries. the tension is the same that wittgenstein described as the emptiness of the intended sign and the fullness of presence [32]. accordingly, architecture may not be limited by its physical boundaries. its sentimental boundaries are not stabilized as exactly as the physical ones, and therefore they are incomplete. the experience of boundary continues both before and after. the continuation is what tümertekin sought to achieve using the uniquely placed retaining wall. in fact, buildings are constructed on the definition of physical boundaries which separate inside from outside. however, when too much focus is given to boundaries, architecture reduces itself to a frontal articulation, or an outward appearance. addressing wittgenstein, the confinement 185 isparchitecture.com to appearance practiced in an architectural context can be interpreted as the idealization of meanings. in other words, reducing circumstantial meanings to ideal ones occurs when things are decontextualized from the intended audience and environment [33]. the crucial point for tümertekin is creating a journey before creating the object itself. creating a journey means taking off any façade-like frontal barrier and by doing so initiating a person to move. in one sense, tümertekin’s manner addresses how the miniature artist bihzad perceives architecture, which is façade-less and boundless so that it is presented in a picturesquely less defined and more ambiguous form. it comes into being as an unfolded box or a topoi, a sentimental narration of landscape that contains a collection of emotional moments. in the b2 house, the utility spaces appear withdrawn and are located in the back. as a result, there is large empty living space generated for the daily use. the living space is not divided into smaller rooms, going so far as to have no interior wall or partition separating the terrace. the space is like a large room, except for a wardrobe compulsorily used to separate two bedrooms on the upper floor. in contrast, it is completely left open and tolerant of future arrangements and other incremental adaptations that occur as someone inhabits the space. in that sense, the way tümertekin arranged the house’s layout is attributed to the re-embodiment of the traditional mediterranean turkish house experience (figures 13-15). in those dwellings, all functional places and storage units are placed to the sides allowing for the creation of a large open space in the middle perfect for a variety of social activities [34]. as turkish scholar and architect cengiz bektaş has noted, traditional turkish architecture is so often tempted to eliminate frontal barriers and characterizes itself as an open venue [35]. even furniture is constructed as earth-bounded element; any object used for sitting is not much heightened or separated from wherever it is located. such objects are introduced as part of their ground. less heightened furniture does not sharply separate one space allocated for a specific activity from others arranged in a single living room. so the entire floor is a piece of furniture, not confined to a predetermined activity. more openness increases the opportunities for possible bodily interactions with the space. taking traditional turkish architecture as reference, the intention of tümertekin is not to create architecture in the sense of building, because building to him means to verticalize things or construct spatial elements in a vertical sense. verticalization physically gives space a boundary or physical definition. instead the tendency in experiencing the b2 house is to eliminate a definitive account or sense of ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 186 de m ir el total completion as much as possible. the b2 house interior comes into being in the sense of topology [36], an open venue that continually takes shape as someone interacts with it. perhaps there are other factors, beyond the way of interpreting tradition, contributing to the b2 house’s success. however, when looking at the region where the b2 house was built—büyüksun—many buildings imitate local traditional buildings by using local materials. many originally concrete buildings are clad with traditional facades consisting of stylistic figures and ornaments. the superficial use of material strengthens the stylistic consciousness of tradition created by post-modernist tendencies. that the b2 house exemplifies a model of encountering tradition in building, not in an imitative manner but in an inventive one, remains worthy of exploration. conclusion the philosophical approach of wittgenstein’s meaning as use is a model for an alternative way of considering tradition in architecture. a miniature painting by bihzad, sketches of istanbul and the green mosque by le corbusier, and the b2 house design by han tümertekin were the examples of how wittgenstein’s notion of tradition transpires in architecture. although it seems that these examples appear quite different in material and method, or that they are seemingly irrelevant to one another, they share the same concern and propose a similar approach to tradition. how each handles tradition, as demonstrated here, serves as a model for contemporary practice, which maintains a propensity toward an incessant vacillation between the imitation of the past and the ultratechnocratic conception of the future. the alternative is consistent albeit constantly in flux. it is not limited to an encounter with the historic image of buildings, but is rather concerned with what is emotionally experienced or communicated through them. the emotional reading of buildings could explain why bihzad avoided photorealistic, object-like depiction of the buildings in his miniatures and likewise why le corbusier’s sketches lack any precise depiction. the main interest of these thinkers was not representing a picture of reality but rather the emotional contact between a sensuous body and the built environment. in a similar way, the b2 house comes into being not as a re-figuration of the traditional motifs but as a re-embodiment of the emotional experiences of traditional building. their conceptualization of tradition addresses wittgenstein’s criticism that the fixation of a meaning is a kind of idealization that converts things into frozen mental images. yet, as husserl suggested, anything more ideal 187 isparchitecture.com means more remote and independent from its audiences; idealization is subject to mere objectification. the concern then is not the object-like presence of the traditionally built environment, but the sentimental contact with it however so conceived. as merleau-ponty suggested, our direct bodily (and sentimental) involvement with things is always provisional, indeterminate, and open-ended [37]. merleau-ponty’s idea could be interpreted to mean that the appearances of traditional forms are fixed to a particular time when they are constructed. however, the sentimental connections are renewable; they can be re-collected and re-embodied through new materials and forms specific to the present time. in doing so, they hold out the promise of new architectural configurations derived from traditional architecture. as such, the b2 house can be taken as an example of how tradition can play an inventive role in an alternative modernity. endnotes [1] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, trans. p. m. s. hacker and j. schulte (west sussex: blackwell publishing ltd, 2009), §117. [2] joseph rykwert, the necessity of artifice (new york: rizzoli, 1982). see also david leatherbarrow, the roots of architectural invention: site, enclosure, materials (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1993) and nathaniel coleman, utopias and architecture (london and new york: routledge, 2005). [3] hannah arendt, between past and future: eight exercises in political thought (new york: viking press, 1968). [4] ibid. [5] wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, §43. [6] edmund husserl, logical investigations, vol. 1 (international library of philosophy, trans. j. n. findlay (oxon: routledge, 2001). [7] july 16, 2015, “complete,” dictionary.com, http://www.dictionary.com/ browse/complete?s=t [8] paul ricoeur, “the later wittgenstein and the later husserl on language,” ricoeur studies 5, no. 1 (2014). [9] ibid. [10] arendt, between past and future. [11] máire eithne o’neill, “corporeal experience: a haptic way of knowing,” journal of architectural education 55, no. 1 (2001): 3-12. see also david seamon, “body-subject, time-space routines, and place ballets,” in the human experience of space and place, ed. anne buttimer and david seamon (london: croom helm, 1980), 157-158. ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 188 de m ir el [12] giuliana bruno, atlas of emotion: journeys in art, architecture, and film (new york: verso, 2002). [13] michael barry, figurative art in medieval islam: and the riddle of bihzad of herat (1465-1535) (spain: jcg, 2005). [14] robert hillenbrand, “the uses of space in timurid painting,” in timurid art and culture: iran and central asia in the fifteenth century, ed. lisa golombek and maria subtelny (netherlands: e. j. brill, 1992), 76-102. [15] paul rodaway, sensuous geographies: body, sense and place (london: routledge, 1994). [16] william c. chittick, the sufi path of knowledge: ibn al-arabi’s metaphysics of imagination (albany: state university of new york press, 1989). [17] walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction,” in illuminations, ed. hannah arendt (new york: schocken book, 1968), pp. 217-51. [18] ludwig wittgenstein, the blue and brown books: preliminary studies for the philosophical investigations (new york: harper and row, 1965). [19] ricoeur, “the later wittgenstein and the later husserl on language,” 28-48. [20] le corbusier, journey to the east, trans. ivan zaknic (cambridge: the mit press, 2007). see also le corbusier, towards a new architecture, trans. f. etchells (new york: dover publications inc, 1986). [21] bruno, atlas of emotion. [22] david leatherbarrow, topographical stories: studies in landscape and architecture (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2004). [23] alois riegl, problems of style: foundations for a history of ornament, trans. evelyn kain (princeton: princeton university press, 1993). [24] benjamin r. tilghman, wittgenstein, ethics, and aesthetics: the view from eternity (london: macmillan, 1991). [25] tansel korkmaz, “b2 house: both strange and familiar,” domus, last modified february 24, 2005, http://www.domusweb.it/en/ architecture/2005/02/24/b2-house.html. [26] jerry h. gill, “language and reality: whitehead, wittgenstein, and the analytic,” process studies 43, no. 1 (2004): 59-67. [27] david trotter, “sterescopy: modernism and the haptic,” critical quarterly 46, no. 4 (2004): 38-58. [28] riegl, problems of style. [29] david leatherbarrow, uncommon ground: architecture, technology and 189 isparchitecture.com topography (cambridge: the mit press, 2000), 173. [30] o’neill, “corporeal experience,” 157-158. [31] “han tumertekin söyleşi,” arkitera, accessed may 1, 2009, http://www.arkitera.com/v1/diyalog/hantumertekin/soylesi/html. [32] ricoeur, “the later wittgenstein and the later husserl on language,” 28-48. [33] nicholas f. gier, wittgenstein and phenomenology: a comparative study of the later wittgenstein, husserl, heidegger, and merleau-ponty (albany: state university of new york press, 1981). [34] önder küçükerman, turkish house: in search of spatial identity (istanbul: touring and automobile association of turkey, 1996). [35] cengiz bektaş, türk evi (istanbul: yem yayın, 2016). [36] leatherbarrow, topographical stories. [37] maurice merleau-ponty, phenomenology of perception (london and new york: routledge, 2000). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 semiotic naturalism in architecture theory reidar due this paper seeks to present a kind of skeptical, and, in an indirect way, wittgensteinian perspective upon purpose and meaning in architecture. the argument presented here revolves around the two notions that, first, there are different categories, which we have available for making architecture seem intelligible to us, and, second, that there are distinct historical discourses in which architecture has been made intelligible in specific ways. the implication of this discourse argument will be a skepticism regarding the prospect of an encompassing theory of architecture, or a theory that would fully and adequately capture the purpose and significance of individual buildings. this skeptical argument will build around a distinction i will make between what a rational subject can perceive and what can be said about it—a distinction based on gilles deleuze’s distinction between the visible and the sayable. it is argued that there are four categories of things that can be said about architecture: construction, style, use, and ideology, and that a difficulty of architecture theory is the possible unification of these categories. the problem of unity, it is argued, has been obscured by the tradition of architecture interpretation originating in hegel, and which implies that there is an unproblematic semiotic relationship between construction, style, and meaning such that construction serves the purpose of style and style serves the purpose of embodying the collective aspirations of a community. thinking through this problem in terms of wittgenstein’s philosophy of language will allow us to defamilarize the problem of unity ... has been obscured by the tradition of architecture interpretation originating in hegel “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 192 du e ourselves from the notions that there could be a natural relation between style and meaning in architecture and that there could be an encompassing discourse on architecture such that all the categories of what can be said about buildings would be articulated within a unifying concept. the following paper thus presents the reasons one might have for being skeptical about a theoretical discourse concerning architecture that would do justice to its totality of significance. this discourse skepticism is, it must be said, at one remove from descriptive or prescriptive statements about particular buildings or building styles. thus, unlike, tafuri for instance, philosophy is not claimed (or a theoretical argument grounded in philosophy) is not claimed as assuming the normative power of grading the merits of individual buildings according to general criteria. the relevance of the skeptical program for architectural practice and architectural practitioners is thus indirect. that is not to say, this skepticism about meaning is without consequence for architectural practice. to say it more bluntly, it is believed that modernism and its avatars—functionalism, deconstruction, and the ‘iconic’ style of building—have overstated the power of theory within building practice. the modernist program of the early twentieth century and its continuation in architecture theory of our time can be defined as the effort to provide an aesthetic rationale for an industrial process of production and then to amplify this aesthetic program within a fitting social ideology: concrete is an industrial construction tool. concrete produces an anti-ornamental aesthetic. the anti-ornamental aesthetic is egalitarian. this would be the basic pattern of argument. this theoretical assertiveness and this trajectory from construction—through style to ideology—relies on a conception of the unity between style and meaning, which is herein called semiotic naturalism and which, it is argued, is problematic. meaning skepticism in wittgenstein wittgenstein exhorts us to be skeptical about the notion that there is, or that there must be, some such entity as meaning in order for language to be meaningful [1]. for language to make sense, does not in turn mean that there is a sense which language makes and which we, the linguists or philosophers, could subsequently isolate and study as if it were a selfcontained mental object. it is not clear from wittgenstein’s texts, or from the scholarly interpretations of his texts, what the implication would be of holding this skepticism about meaning. the pragmatic and anti-theoretical stance pervading the philosophical investigations sits uncomfortably with the extraordinary ingenuity of wittgenstein’s thought experiments and search for candidates that purportedly should satisfy justificatory or foundational 193 isparchitecture.com criteria, but which under his skeptical scrutiny always collapse [2]. this painstaking search reveals something other than mere opposition to particular theoretical positions, conceptions of meaning, or conceptions of consciousness. it reveals an attitude of puzzlement or bewilderment regarding that which seems natural. it is true, of course, that wittgenstein’s puritanical sensibility would lead him to search for a higher, simpler, or more essential naturalness in which our thoughts about language would contain nothing superfluous [3]. this sensibility is evident in different ways in both the tractatus and the investigations, but in the latter text, his own method of skeptical scrutiny runs counter to the ideal of simplicity. the significance and purpose of a building is similar to meaning in wittgenstein’s sense in that within a natural, non-skeptical attitude we may think that there is a purpose or a significance that we can isolate intellectually and think about. it is argued that just as wittgenstein encourages us to be skeptical about meaning as an isolated ideal entity, we should also problematize the notion of purpose as a unifying meta-category within the architecture discourse. this problem is addressed in terms of distinct categories and with reference to distinct discourses in which architecture has been made intelligible, or in which one has sought to make architecture intelligible. the semiotic principles at work in these efforts at making architecture intelligible are questioned and problematized. hegel and the semiotics of architecture in studying modern architecture theory, one cannot fail to notice that particular assumptions are made again and again regarding the purpose of architecture. these assumptions are semiotic. the philosophical origin of the semiotic assumptions appears to be hegel’s theory of architecture in his lectures on aesthetics as embodying collective modernism and its avatars ... have overstated the power of theory within building practice “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 194 du e beliefs [4]. the legacy of hegel is rooted in the thought that buildings are meaningful because they are bearers of shared, historically specific aspirations, which make up their purpose and their meaning. within the hegelian perspective, purpose and meaning appear identical, or at least convergent. the hegelian legacy is referred to as ‘semiotic naturalism’ because it consists in taking for granted that buildings convey meaning and that these meanings can be clearly and univocally determined. for instance, in historical research the following is a common thought formation: there is here a natural, that is, non-problematic relationship between a presupposed cultural signified and the concept of the building as signifier. this way of thinking leads us to a view in which style choices such as choices of ornamentation, referring to the three orders of antiquity, or choices concerning internal spatial disposition between rooms, or choices of materials, or even the relation of a building to its surroundings, can be reconstructed as having been made for reasons that are culturally transparent. the building may not be a sign in the sense of a message or a tool of communication, but it appears as a depository of cultural meanings. the cultural meanings can be of various kinds: religious, political, social, etc. the argument for a distrust in this semiotic principle will be given in the last section of this article, where the ideological positions taken in alberti’s theory of architecture are discussed. if the assumption of cultural continuity between construction, style, and ideological meaning is broken, so is also the idea of a building’s cultural intelligibility and transparent readability. one may also say that this skeptical approach to ideology is directly opposed to the marxist social and contextual reading proposed for instance by tafuri. when hegel writes about religious medieval architecture he is inspired by winckelmann’s idealization of greek civilization on the one hand, and guided, on the other, by his own notion that the european middle ages was a spiritually saturated period [5]. his idea of churches summing up the spirit of a community subsequently became influential in architecture theory as a basic semiotic premise. the premise was taken to mean that buildings are constructs made within, for, and in some cases, by a community. that buildings are successful to the extent that they express the beliefs of that community. one follower of this hegelian perspective is the twentieth century architecture historian christian norberg-shulz. in his synthesis, meaning in western architecture, he presents architecture as a cultural response to a given environment. according to this model, the succession of civilizations 195 isparchitecture.com presents different solutions to the question of how to create, and articulate a meaningful space. he describes how, in other words, to appropriate the natural environment and integrate it into forms of construction, that are not merely monumental and not entirely aloof from their surroundings. a less idealistic, more empirically historicist, but also implicitly marxist, account of meaning in architecture is tafuri’s analysis of post-war italian architecture [6]. the analysis is committed to a normative idea of social progress, which is used as a benchmark and tool of distinction for evaluating and comparing social building projects. some buildings are good because they have a style, which implies a commitment to modernity, while other buildings imply a more muted position. tafuri also evaluates projects in the context of a wider historical narrative. in tafuri’s account of italian architects’ ideological responses to urbanization, he envisaged architectural and urban design as embodying rival propositions around the notion of progress. in hegel, norberg-shulz, and tafuri we arrive at the position that buildings are made for ideological purposes and that, in this, they carry meaning. for hegel, buildings are meaningful when they embody religious beliefs. for norberg-shulz, buildings are meaningful when they articulate and appropriate a space. for tafuri, buildings, or design projects, are like actions according to jean-paul sartre: buildings take sides in an ideological battle between progress and reaction [7]. the different approaches to architecture from a historicist, phenomenological, and marxist perspective shares the assumption that the relationship between architectural style and architectural construction—as well as the relationship between these two and whatever can be said about the meaning or significance of a building—is obvious. it is obvious, according to hegel, that aesthetic form expresses a moral ideal. within the hegelian perspective, purpose and meaning appear identical, or at least convergent “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 196 du e it is obvious, for tafuri, that design choice expresses a stance with regard to the opposition between modernity and reaction. it is this obviousness or naturalness of meaning that is problematic and which wittgenstein helps us to think of as problematic. the assumption that buildings and building design must have a cultural meaning is not self-evident. at least, this is what this paper goes on to argue—but in doing so it will be helpful to return to wittgenstein. wittgensteinian dialectic to approach the assumptions and the semiotic naturalism of certain kinds of architecture theory, it is useful to return to wittgenstein to draw from another more specific trait of his thinking in the investigations. the trait of interest is a methodological trait. rather than putting forward views directly and systematically, his thought moves dialectically in relation to a number of putative theories presented in rudimentary form—the most famous of which is the so-called private language argument. the movement through, or via, alternative and rival theoretical scenarios has the obvious advantage over a straightforwardly systematic discourse in that it avoids, or at least postpones, the petition of principle inherent in any dogmatic statement of a systematic set of propositions: as soon as there is a starting-point, something must have been assumed which is not quite explicit in the self-justification of the system. at the outset, the position will not be argued from the plane of a specific conception of architectural meaning. in itself, the argument from potential scenarios has the advantage of bringing into play, simultaneously, different theoretical possibilities and thus to highlighting the element of choice in the formulation of a theory. in this paper on semiotic naturalism, and an alternative to semiotic naturalism, a non-natural and less obvious, less straightforward understanding of the meaning relation in architecture is unfolded, one that is manifest in a certain kind of architecture history. next, semiotic naturalism as consisting of a set of potential scenarios, or theoretical propositions, indirectly addressing a certain semiotic question of intelligibility is considered. categories of architecture discourse we can now think of the hegelian tradition of semiotic naturalism as consisting of alternative theoretical propositions. these are all predicated on the assumption that the problem of how to articulate intellectual and visible space has already been solved, or that it need not emerge. in order to analyze these assumptions closely, we need to consider the categories within 197 isparchitecture.com which we speak about architecture. for architecture is only, and can only become, intelligible in terms of the things which we can say about it. anything we may predicate belongs to some kind of category. the question would be, therefore, what are the discourse categories relevant to architecture? does architectural discourse, that is, the kind of language which seeks to make architecture intelligible, possess its own distinct categories or does it employ categories that are common to architecture and art, architecture and the city, architecture and society, and so on? before suggesting an answer to this question, one can take as an example of a category problem, the concept of modernity. now, we may think of many different sorts of things as modern, for instance, in no apparent order: the modern state, modern lifestyle, modern painting, modern technology. it is clear that within a general historical narrative, all these different phenomena could somehow be related. it is further clear that by doing so the historian will have to make certain fundamental methodological choices regarding the relationship, for instance, between society and politics, between science and society, or between the social and the aesthetic. these are precisely category questions. all of the examples above further present a relevance to the question of architecture discourse in that architecture could be said to have something in common with all of them. one could write monographs on the relationship between the modern state and modern architecture or on the relationship between modern lifestyle and modern architecture. the issue of modernity and the category questions it immediately raises are thus apt at bringing out the precarious ontological status of the phenomenon of architecture as it exists somewhere between art and society. the ontological precariousness is another problem for the naturalist semiotician, for it gives rise to semiotic the assumption that buildings and building design must have cultural meaning is not self-evident “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 198 du e problems of classification. if architecture is like painting, if le corbusier is like picasso, one set of questions concerning meaning will arise. if on the other hand architecture is technology, if mies van der rohe is the apogee of the historical development that produced high speed trains and motorways, another, entirely different set of meaning questions will ensue. the precarious ontological status has to do with the relationship between the primary categories within which we can talk about buildings: construction, style, ideology, and use. it is difficult to conceive of anything that can be said about buildings that does not belong within any of these four categories. it is also difficult to think of a principle according to which we could identify their unity. if we think of the development of architecture theory since the renaissance we find a gradual shift in the relationship between these categories and their relative importance. we also find different efforts at identifying a unity between them. alberti’s work is often considered as marking the beginning of modern architecture theory and his primary focus is construction—but he also introduces the notion of the importance of architecture for human life. the notion is referred to as ideology so in order to distance this analysis from tafuri’s more prescriptive notion of ideology, which is based on a normative battle between socially modern ideas and socially reactionary ideas. at the end of the 16th century, palladio writes about construction in terms of a prescriptive notion of style. in the course of the eighteenth century and in response to the need for domestic houses for a bourgeoisie oriented toward comfort rather than ostentation, architecture theory becomes concerned with pragmatic questions of what is pleasant and practical. issues of style will thus be interpreted in terms of ideological questions concerning use. in twentieth century architectural modernism there is the effort to integrate construction, style, and an ideology of use. le corbusier is famously prescriptive in his ideas of use, and the functionalist school equally presents a formidable unity of construction principles, aesthetic norms, and norms of social life: functions are finite and simple and correspond to a clarity of design, and it is inconceivable that the purpose of a building could be to enhance a messy overlap between many kinds of activities in the manner, say, of a medieval city. the latest modernists, the so-called deconstructionist bernard tschumi and post-modern koolhaas, seek to explore the relationship between construction, style, and ideology while arguing—against functionalism— neither in terms of style nor in terms of use but in terms of a direct relationship between construction and ideology. the ideological principle is in both cases one of freedom of creation. tschumi’s notion that the 199 isparchitecture.com basic grammar of buildings, such as walls and roof, is open to question or his embrace of the principle of the grid in his parc de la villette project implies that construction dictates style and use. koolhaas’ surreal conception of new york as a place designed by the settlers for a future invention and use challenges the functionalist principle that we already know what use is, or should be. this brief sketch of the history of architecture theory and the shifting relations between categories is meant to indicate the motivation behind semiotic naturalism. norberg-shulz and heidegger the grand synthesis of norberg-shulz is based on the idea that the categories of construction and style are inseparable and that both find a common expression in the context of a natural environment, which architecture has the mission to order, manage, structure, in short, articulate. the environmental aesthetic synthesis does indeed make the architecture of different epochs appear purposeful, and in a sense meaningful, as each epoch with its characteristic and distinct style and construction method, appears to offer fresh solutions to the environmental, or one might say anthropological, problem of man’s relation to, and management of, his physical surroundings. norberg-shulz’s theoretical position is referred to here in some detail because it constitutes a particularly explicit and ambitious formulation of semiotic naturalism. with his aesthetic and spatial understanding of heidegger’s phenomenology, norberg-shulz presents a theoretical position that is much more sophisticated and detailed than the vague philosophical reflections on building and living put forward by heidegger himself in his famous article “bauen wohnen denken” from 1951 [8]. in the article, heidegger develops a rhetorical context in which the phenomenon of architecture the precarious ontological status has to do with the relationship between the primary categories within which we can talk about buildings “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 200 du e appears anonymous and traditional, as something objectively manifest—in the way of having already been made—rather than as something planned or invented on the basis of style and construction choices. norberg-shulz, on the other hand, keeps the door open to the perspective of the practicing architect and is attuned, with his flexible concept of articulation, to the element of choice in architectural creation. at the same time, choices appear in retrospect to be culturally coterminous with other contemporary choices: this does not imply that the individual choice is determined by collective beliefs, perhaps, but it at least means that we cannot make sense of the individual choice outside of the context of the culture with which it is contemporary. formulated thus blandly, architecture historians might agree with this principle, but it implies the attribution of a degree of internal coherence to architecture, which is perhaps excessive and which does not do justice to the multiple contingencies of architectural creation. the naturalist assumption norberg-shulz makes is that architecture is successful always or that architecture is identical with successful architecture. there is no reflection upon the relationship between vernacular or folk architecture and stand-alone, deliberately conceived constructions. there is scant reflection on the relation between public and domestic space, since his focus is religious and political architecture: building on a grand scale. in this identification between the general concept of architecture and the narrower, normatively charged notion of successful architecture, norbergshulz turns out to be close to heidegger. for in heidegger we see that the position of normative discrimination between different buildings in terms of their aesthetic merit is problematic. for such a normative aesthetic authority implies that the power of viewing and thinking of an individual subject is somehow higher than the weight of tradition. yet, heidegger would exhort us to think of architecture as a kind of prolongation of the natural environment. buildings and bridges are there in our midst. they impose themselves upon us and create a coherent space and landscape, but they do not offer themselves to judgment. in other words, judgment is not the most relevant attitude that we can have towards them. thus, the aesthetic perspective which privileges style and, on the other hand, the construction perspective, which evaluates craft and technique, are both rendered irrelevant to a large extent within the rhetorical space that heidegger creates for architecture. what heidegger and norbergshulz share is thus a kind of transcendental perspective where the activity of making buildings, on the one hand, and the activity of perceiving and judging them, on the other, are set aside. the phenomenological method consists in part in the transcendental. by putting aside certain 201 isparchitecture.com questions—such as empirical causality—other questions, concerning meaning or the essential properties of phenomena can come into view. in the field of architecture theory, this phenomenological essentialism has the authoritarian implication that aesthetic and ideological discussion will appear irrelevant. architecture appears in its history as a kind of general anthropological phenomenon. it manifests itself outside of the distinctions and disagreements which individuals can make, and which would form the topic of theoretical discussions among architects. cultural intentionality normative or evaluative discussions and reflections appear in the history of architecture in two distinct forms. on the one hand is the discipline of architecture history, which develops as a part of art history, largely in the course of the twentieth century. on the other hand is the kind of architecture theory that is produced by architects. the analysis herein will attend to the former first and come back to the latter at the end of this article. architecture history has been practiced in different rhetorical and methodological modes in different countries, with italian architecture history often being attentive to craft, whereas the german tradition has been predominantly style, and the anglo-american tradition of recent years being positivist and contextualist. the analysis is now primarily focused on the naturalist semiotic assumptions of contextual architecture history. a prominent example of the naturalist semiotic method is ákos moravánszky’s competing visions text devoted to the themes of eclecticism and modernism in large cities of central europe during the early twentieth century [9]. in this work, he reconstructs a complex cultural intentionality underlying the making of individual buildings by the preeminent architects of the time. a normative aesthetic authority implies that the power of viewing and thinking of an individual subject is somehow higher than the weight of tradition “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 202 du e moravánszky’s account keeps alive both the notion of individual creation and the notion of collective belief, a balance which was not achieved in the synthesis of norberg-shulz. he is able to correlate specific choices of ornament or construction with general aesthetic and ideological currents prevalent at the time the building was conceived so as to demonstrate how general trends are taken up and inflected by the personality of individual architects. the architects, moravánszky argues, impose their own personality and idiosyncrasies upon the ideas made available to them in the surrounding culture. the subtle, multifactorial historical approach cannot properly be named simply contextual or positivist, since it is carried by a phenomenological idea, similar to that of norberg-shulz. the complexity of the notion is captured in the title of the book, competing visions. at the horizon of the study is principally the philosophical idea that architecture embodies a vision. the vision is both aesthetic and moral. it is embedded in style and construction. it involves an open question as to what constitutes modernity. it concerns the historical development of large cities and brings into view questions of how one should live in modern society. moravánszky is some senses similar to norberg-shulz in thinking of architecture as a sort of synthesis, but differs from norberg-shulz in that the arena of such a synthesis is neither the appropriation of space nor the articulation of space through choices of construction and style. the arena of synthesis is instead the relationship, that the historian reconstructs, between style and ideology. the relationship, once it is painstakingly reconstructed, can be retrospectively attributed to the agents—the architects and theorists of architecture—so that it appears as the backbone or structure of a complex, cultural intentionality. this ideologically rich intentionality appears as the ground of architectural creation. thus, by placing the focus on ideology rather than construction, while retaining style as a central category, moravánszky is both in continuity with norberg-shulz and decisively different. both start from the assumption that architecture is predominantly a phenomenon of style. yet, norbergshulz interprets style in terms of anthropological needs and moravánszky interprets style in terms of specific ideological commitments. we can elaborate on the divergences between to two thinkers in terms of the four primary categories and the relation between them. in norberg-shulz we find with his concept of articulation a claim that the satisfaction of spatial anthropological needs is simultaneously a feat of style, of construction, and of ideology. for articulation corresponds to anthropological needs and is expressed through style features and construction choices. with 203 isparchitecture.com this anthropological focus on the task of creating spatial articulation, norberg-shulz interestingly downgrades the normative importance of those features of style that are purely ornamental. style is so intimately related to construction through the articulation of space that any style choice would become significant within the context of molding that space. moravánszky’s method, on the other hand, is symbolic rather than anthropological. for him the specific ornamental choices on the façade of a building are ideological signifiers independently of the building’s functionality. thus, with architectural historians such as moravánszky, we find the concrete elaboration of the ontological assumption that buildings are primarily visible, which is to say, buildings are something akin to three dimensional paintings amenable to aesthetic analysis. in a less nuanced version of this type of intellectual history of architecture, such as pelkonen’s book on nationalism and internationalism in alvar aalto, the ideological strand in the argument becomes so dominant that other considerations are clearly subordinate [10]. in moravánszky’s study ideological commitments do not command the analysis [9]. moravánszky’s text deftly and incessantly moves between different types of consideration. it is, however, in the balance and subtlety that the method betrays its semiotic assumptions. for the seamless transition between different categories and apparently effortless integration of different sorts of material is only possible if it is assumed at the outset that style, construction, and ideology cohere and form a necessary unity. the assumption may of course turn out to be the case, but how do we justify such a general, idealistic, semiotic conception of architectural unity? it is this sort of unity that was referred to as a naturalist conception of purpose earlier, that is, an idea of what a building is for. ideologically rich intentionality appears as the ground of architectural creation “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 204 du e architecture ideology the different kinds of theoretical synthesis discussed involve not questioning the possibility of coherence between different categories. these are the categories within which, or at the aid of which, architecture purportedly becomes intelligible in its purpose and significance within the discourse of architecture historians. it is suggested that the synthesis of different categories, which justifies claims for intelligibility within architecture history (and which are referred to as semiotic naturalism) rest upon a denial. or as psychoanalysts might say, foreclosure, of a possible scenario in which the visible and the intelligible might drift apart. such a drifting apart takes place in discourse and is perceivable as a skeptical scenario occurring within the discourse. if that which drifts apart are intelligibility and visibility, there must be also a scenario of something, which is presented to visual perception but which does not immediately fall within the realm of discourse. that being said, the relationship between the primal categories varies greatly both within the history of the discipline of architecture history and in the history of theories produced by architects—which is in some cases distinct from the discipline of architecture history (though not always, as tafuri and norberg-shulz are both examples of). this is the sort of theory now considered in order to argue that it highlights a specific problem of ideology. in its implications, this problem of ideology poses, i will argue, a challenge to semiotic naturalism. as i said, the term “ideology” is used here not in the marxist sense, for instance by tafuri in his discussion of competing stances taken towards urban or social modernity. tafuri attributes definite ideological positions to individual architects and deftly correlates these positions with style and construction choices. my view of architecture is less concerned with positions and choices; it is platonic, rather, in its focus on rival conceptions of the good life or the sort of life that architecture is for or that it should enhance and promote. there may well be many different conceptions of the good life, depending on geographical and historical circumstances. the concept of ideology thus does not come with a theoretical—in tafuri’s case, modernist and social historicist—script, which would provide the ground for identifying individual positions contrastively and contrasting them with others as on a structural grid. ideology, in this context is a conception of life, of what life should consist of, and of how architecture can enhance this good or appropriate life. the ideological conception of life has to be both related to style and construction choices and separate 205 isparchitecture.com from them. alberti’s idea of the good life alberti’s on the art art of building in ten books, which appeared around 1450, pursues a painstaking and detailed reconstruction of everything that the craft of architecture entails as a material process of construction [11]. yet, in doing so, in presenting the meticulous inventory of principles, problems, and prescriptions, alberti also introduces his own presuppositions concerning what matters in life. in short, in the margins of the text we find his ideology. his ideology coheres with his construction principles, but significantly, is not correlated with style, a topic about which he has little to say—and what he says is theoretically bland. alberti’s starting points are climatic and geographical. he shares with machiavelli the notion that place is a category defined by geographical security questions. in alberti’s case, however, it is not only the advent of potential enemies that buildings and towns must be prepared for but also natural disasters, and, more generally, contingencies. in book 3, chapter 7 book 3/7 he thus says, programmatically, about weather conditions: “moreover, it is self-evident, without looking for any less obvious reasons, that the assault of the weather will be responsible for loosening and breaking the bond of anything that has grown or been forced together” [12]. we could of course gloss this statement pragmatically, seeing it in continuity with vitruvian norms of adapting to the environment, but the emphasis here is very different. against the happy common sense of vitruvius, we find here an anxious memento mori, an acute and poignant awareness of the fragility of all things made by humans. there is a kind of existential dimension to alberti’s architectural thinking in which contingency is not far from his mind. the adequate response to contingency in the margins of the text we find [alberti’s] ideology “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 206 du e according to alberti appears to be control—and control is according to him based on knowledge. the required knowledge is by no means limited narrowly to the architect’s craft but includes detailed and specific geographical information. it is a kind of highly specific knowledge which ideally should inform choices of material and hence construction. in book 3, chapter 12 he thus talks about controlling natural conditions when it comes to choosing wood: “the beams should be related if at all possible: that is, they should be of the same type of timber, from the same forest, raised under the same climatic conditions, and felled on the same day, so that by having the same natural strength they will perform their function equally” [13]. there is an elegant slide in this passage from reflections upon conditions to a prescription concerning structure. in fact the arc of alberti’s argument is formed by this integration of control and structure. for construction is for alberti essentially a control of structure. the purpose of this kind of control is a wider sense of control of contingency. hence, in book 3, chapter 14 he develops an analogy between biological organisms and architectural construction with the aim of articulating a concept of structure: “in short, with every type of vault we should imitate nature throughout, that is, bind together the bones and interweave flesh with nerves running along any possible section: in length, breath and depth, and also obliquely across” [14]. his reflections on use and usefulness are similarly climatological and informed by a sense of insecurity and need of protection. in book 5, chapter 2, for instance, he discusses the internal division of private houses: “inside, the dining rooms, storerooms, and so on should be appropriately located where their contents will keep well. where the air is right and they will receive the correct amount of sun and ventilation, and where they can serve their intended uses” [15]. we find a similar climatological idea of usefulness in a reflection on urban planning. in book 5, chapter 7 alberti discusses the location of monasteries in towns: “but i would have any cloister within the city, be it for women or for men, sited in the healthiest possible place, lest emaciation of the body and sleeplessness prevent the inmates from attending fully to their minds, and lest illness make their lives harder than usual” [16]. the running thread of geography and contingency forms the ideological basis of alberti’s thinking. the purpose of architecture is safety. it aims to protect us against decay, illness, natural disaster, weather conditions, and enemies. the ideological conception that he projects and presupposes is that life is precarious, in need of support and security. the good life is essentially one in which one survives. this may be a bleak vision of 207 isparchitecture.com the good life, but it is explicit, articulate, and clear. through his reflections on structure, alberti integrates his ideas of protection and solidity within his precepts on construction. alberti’s aim is to integrate construction and ideology. he thus indirectly problematizes the later programs of categorical synthesis in which style is central, either in relation to construction as in norberg-shulz or in relation to ideology as in moravánszky. returning to wittgenstein, the skeptical conclusion of this comparison between different styles of architectural reflection is that the relationship between the four suggested categories of architecture—construction, style, ideology, and use—is more contested and more controversial than one might think if one starts from the assumptions of semiotic naturalism and the presupposition of coherence. endnotes [1] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophische untersuchungen (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1982). [2] reidar a. due, “at the margins of sense: the function of paradox in deleuze and wittgenstein,” paragraph 34, no. 3 (2011): 358-370. [3] norman malcolm, wittgenstein: nothing is hidden (oxford: blackwell, 1988). [4] g. w. f. hegel, ästhetik (berlin: aufbau verlag, 1965). [5] johann joachim winckelmann, gedanken über die nachahmung der griechischen werke in der malerei und bildhauerkunst (stuttgart: reclam, 2007). [6] manfredo tafuri, storia dell’architettura italiana 1944-1985 (torino: einaudi, 1986). [7] michael scriven, sartre and the media (basingstoke: macmillan, 1993). [8] martin heidegger, vorträge und aufsätze (frankfurt am main: vittorio klostermann, 2000). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 208 du e [9] ákos moravánszky, competing visions: aesthetic invention and social imagination in central european architecture, 1867-1918 (cambridge: the mit press, 1998). [10] eeva-liisa pelkonen, alvar aalto: architecture, modernity, and geopolitics (new haven: yale university press, 2009). [11] leon battista alberti, on the art of building in ten books, trans. joseph rykwert, neil leach, and robert tavernor (cambridge: the mit press, 1991). [12] ibid., 71. [13] ibid., 80. [14] ibid., 86. [15] ibid., 119. [16] ibid., 127. 207 isparchitecture.com book review the aesthetics of architecture. roger scruton. princeton, nj: princeton university press, 2013 (1st edition 1979). reviewed by hilde heynen roger scruton is a well-known and wellrespected philosopher whose work has been extensively studied and commented upon, especially in the field of aesthetics [1]. in this field, scruton’s recently reissued book on architecture is generally appreciated. it is even considered a “classic in architectural philosophy” [2]. scruton’s standing within the field of architectural history and theory, on the other hand, is a point of contention. in this regard, the book is far less extensively studied and certainly not seen as indispensable. in the recent sage handbook of architectural theory, the sixty page section on “aesthetics/pleasure/excess,” for example, only mentions the book in passing, as an example of normative discourse “pitched against the theoretical developments published in progressive architectural journals” [3]. how does one attempt to explain this discrepancy? how is it that a book that clearly impresses many philosophers fails to register broadly in architectural culture? there is of course the possibility that aesthetics as a field matters to architects or artists only like ‘ornithology to birds’ [4]. it seems, however, that the reasons for the discrepancy are more complicated than that. architectural culture supports, after all, a flourishing critical and theoretical discourse with a multitude of journals, books, and series all devoted to discussing the merits and values of particular trends, architects, works, and ideas. this discourse engages quite intensively with a host of philosophical references, and many prominent architects are actively involved ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 208 he y n en in the exchange. how is it then that the parameters of the discourse are so clearly different in philosophical aesthetics and in architectural theory? would one not expect that these fields would be involved in an intensive transdisciplinary dialogue? both try, after all, to make sense of what it is that drives architecture and what makes up its specific qualities. this review will try to delve into this problem after briefly discussing scruton’s position and summarizing the book’s content and merits. when the aesthetics of architecture was first published in 1979 the book was understood as part of a series of publications that all focused on questions regarding the meaning of architecture. semiotics was, at that moment, a central concern in architectural culture, and many authors sought to develop an approach to architecture that could go beyond the functionalism and rationalism of the modern movement. such publications provided the intellectual ground for what became known as postmodernism, and scruton’s book might be seen as part of that endeavor. scruton, however, was different from the other authors in this field (such as norberg-schulz, eco, jencks, bonta, and others) in that he considerably narrowed the type of architecture that he saw as ‘right.’ his book may be simplified as an argument in favor of some form of classicism in architecture, and there are thus only a few contemporary architects whom he would sympathize with. as such, his position is out of sync with the architectural culture of the last decades. classical-minded architects and theorists, just like new urbanists and neo-historicists, belong to a subculture which sometimes manages to evoke popular appeal, but which has not penetrated the academic sphere or the higher echelons of the professional field. the new introduction scruton wrote for the 2013 edition confirms the impression of desynchronization with mainstream culture. here the author is more outspoken in his criticism of modernism and in his alignment with particular architects and theorists than he was in the 1979 version of the book. he mentions such architectural figures as christopher alexander, nikos salingaros, and leon krier as people who share his convictions. these are authors who indeed do not figure among the most prominent individuals in current architectural culture. alexander and krier briefly occupied a position of influence in the 1980s and 1990s—the heydays of postmodernism—but their intellectual impact has largely withered away due to the renewed prominence of modernism and modernity, in all their complexities, as the main point of reference. salingaros is a mathematician and younger collaborator of alexander, who has written several works 209 isparchitecture.com on architecture and urbanism. he calls for a built environment catering to human emotions and providing agreeable and pleasant places to live, and thus fights ‘stararchitects’ as well as all forms of deconstructivism and poststructuralism. again, salingaros’s work seems to have some popular appeal, but it is not widely known or highly regarded within the architectural field as a whole, which rather engages with questions of technology, sustainability, infrastructure, urbanism, or justice [5]. many architects are weary of easy argumentations like saringaros’s because they understand how the call for ‘pleasant places’ can hide utter conservatism as well as resistance against any form of innovation. let us now turn to scruton’s book itself and its arguments. the author helpfully provides a summary in the third part of the book, which rehearses its line of reasoning. i will draw upon that summary to give an overview of his argument. scruton posits in the first chapter that architecture does not derive its nature from being a form of art but rather from an everyday occupation with getting things right—which is basically an aesthetic concern. he thus wishes to start from the aesthetics of everyday life as the basis for his discussions. in the next chapters, he deals with theories that, according to him, detach aesthetics from architecture or that erroneously perceive some concept as central or essential to architecture. he thus dismisses functionalism, rationalism, theories of space and proportion, as well as discourses based upon the art historical concepts of riegl (kunstwollen) and wölflinn (zeitgeist). all of these approaches are ‘vacuous’ because they all fail to adequately describe the experience of architecture. in order to give a positive account of the experience of architecture, scruton reverts to the concept of imagination, which he deems absolutely crucial for his aesthetics. moreover, he claims that it “is because the experience of architecture is imaginative that architecture can be judged right or wrong” [6]. for [scruton’s] position is out of sync with the architectural culture of the last decades. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 210 he y n en aesthetic judgment is based upon imagination, informed by perception, and modified by reasoned reflection. it aims at an ideal of objectivity and at a continuity with moral life—hence its normative quality. with all this, the basis is put together for further dismissals of other competing discourses. freudian and marxist analyses are seen as largely irrelevant to the understanding of architecture because they either generalize beyond aesthetics or devote themselves to a falsification of architectural experience, thus missing the point. the efforts of semiotics to understand architecture as a language likewise turn out to be ‘vacuous’ because they lack a theoretical basis or a critical application. concepts such as ‘representation’ or ‘expression’ are faulted for not adequately connecting aesthetic judgment with the practice of the builder. finally, the concluding chapters argue the importance of detail and the role of style as an indispensable adjunct to architectural knowledge. they culminate in a defense of classicism, which is seen as the only approach to architecture that allows it to connect with a true understanding of the self and with objectivity. this quick summary of course does not properly acknowledge the depth of the author’s knowledge or the fine-tuned details of his specific discussions. scruton is well read in the history of architectural theory, and he is an expert in the tradition of aesthetic philosophy up to kant and hegel. he clearly makes an effort to familiarize himself with architectural discourses such as those of giedion or tafuri. many of his architectural examples are also quite illuminative and help to clarify his arguments. these qualities, however, cannot detract from the book’s weak point: its set-up as a take-it-or-leave-it argument, almost like a mathematical proof that sets out to validate the correctness of a formula by deriving it from previously proven formulas or from axioms. if, as a reader, one disagrees with only one step in the reasoning, that is enough to render the whole argument—and especially its conclusions— unconvincing (or ‘vacuous,’ to use scruton’s own term). this, of course, happened to this particular reader early on in the text. i disagreed with scruton’s analysis of functionalism and the theories of space in chapters 2 and 3. whereas i was still following him in chapter 1—agreeing with his approach to architecture as being based on utility, location, public character, and continuity with decorative arts, which he later sums up as ‘aesthetics of the everyday’—his analysis of functionalism struck the wrong chord. scruton understands ‘theory’ as prescriptive: “architectural theory consists in the attempt to formulate the maxims, rules and precepts which govern, or ought to govern, the practice of the builder” [7]. that means that he is reading texts by architects as if 211 isparchitecture.com they are fully explanatory of the architecture they produce, which is rarely the case. if hannes meyer wrote manifests of functionalism—which he did—this does not in turn mean that all his design projects can be explained as if he just applied his own rules—he did not. it also means, however, that a mere philosophical disputation of the correctness of the theory is not enough to deny the buildings associated with it any aesthetical significance. it is not because modernist theory does not hold that modernist buildings therefore lack any value. this however seems to be an important subtext in scruton’s book. the author also takes issue with giedion’s and zevi’s theory of space, which considers space and spatial articulations as the essence of architecture. “taken literally,” he states, “the theory that the experience of architecture is an experience of space is obviously indefensible” [8]. the reasons for this indefensibility however do not convince me. according to scruton, as soon as one can point to an architectural feature that does not relate to space or spatial experience, the theory is invalidated. he thinks he found such features by referring to materials or by referring to the differences between carved and molded forms. however, for people thinking as architects (i count myself among them), both materials and carved versus molded forms are fine examples of how some details can articulate space in different ways, causing different experiences of space. hence for me the theory of space continues to be a contender for adequately conceiving what the ‘essence’ of architecture might be. because i thus repeatedly found unaddressed objections to parts of scruton’s argument, the whole book seemed to become one large fallacy, constructed to prove the inescapability of what scruton calls ‘classical vernacular’ as the only valid form of architecture. the more i read, the more the text came across as a potentially interesting but largely irrelevant elaboration of an argument, many its set-up as a take it or leave argument “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 212 he y n en parts of which i found too poorly developed to sustain scrutiny. there are other small mistakes and larger misunderstandings in this book that might irritate people familiar with architectural culture. (they are competently summed up by juan pablo bonta in his review from 1981 [9].) rather than further repeating the flaws, however, i would like to point out two major issues that are responsible for the wide gap that separates scruton from much contemporary reflection in architectural theory. the first has to do with the import of modernity, the second with his claim to objectivity. from the turn of the twentieth century onwards, architects and architectural theorists have been talking about modernity. around 1900, berlage, muthesius, loos, van de velde, and many others agreed that industrialization and urbanization gave rise to societies with a wholly different way of life, which hence necessitated a wholly different kind of architecture. there was a widespread consensus that modernity implied a rupture with tradition, and that this discontinuity somehow had to be reflected in architecture. the intensity of the conviction provoked an aesthetics that no longer took classicism to be the ultimate point of reference. the new aesthetic sensibility has since been elaborated in many different ways—avant-garde, modernism, art deco, regionalism, critical regionalism, high tech, postmodernism, deconstructivism, neomodernism, etc.—but across the board the idea that architecture needs to relate—somehow—to modernity has remained paramount. this means that ‘getting things right,’ as scruton says, is only part of the equation for contemporary architects. since dissonance, struggle, and contradictions are so much a part of that modern condition, a new aesthetic register seems to be more adequate, one that can show, in a right way, that things are not all right. such an aesthetic register is more consistent with the philosophical musings of walter benjamin, theodor adorno, jean-françois lyotard, jacques derrida, or gilles deleuze— names indeed prominently present in contemporary architectural culture. secondly there is the issue of objectivity. whereas i agree with scruton that aesthetic judgment assumes in the act of judging a claim to universal validity, i would be much more reluctant than he is to translate the claim into something actually true and objective. as an architectural theorist who has taken to heart the criticisms of rational discourse coming from marxism, feminism, and postcolonial theories, i have a hard time accepting scruton’s writing as possibly universally valid. it rather strikes me as an excellent example of how an intellectual of a specific (hegemonic) class, gender, and culture produces a discourse 213 isparchitecture.com that serves the continuation of the dominance of that class, gender, and culture. i do not believe, in other words, that there really is a general consensus possible about how buildings would ‘feel right.’ i do not believe that the aesthetics of the everyday can be anything else than confusing, contradictory, and hybrid (which, by the way, i see more as an asset than as a problem). all in all, i think scruton’s the aesthetics of architecture narrows architecture to something which most of its practitioners today would not recognize as such—as if architecture essentially deals with only questions of style and detail, regardless of everything else. most architects and theorists would agree that architecture necessarily engages with the real world—that it is crucial therefore to consider political and social issues (such as, who is the client? who is excluded? who is included?), technological and material questions, ecological constraints, contextual considerations, and so on, as part and parcel of what architecture is all about. an aesthetic theory valid for today needs to adequately address these issues, not putting them aside as ‘marginal’ to the ‘essence’ of architecture. i am afraid that scruton’s book does not live up to these expectations, not in 1979 and not now. endnotes [1] andy hamilton and nick zangwill (eds.), scruton’s aesthetics (new york: pallgrave macmillan, 2012). [2] rafael de clercq, “scruton on rightness of proportion in architecture,” british journal of aesthetics 49, no. 4 (2009): 405. [3] john macarthur and naomi stead, “introduction: architecture and aesthetics,” in the sage handbook of architectural theory, eds. greig crysler, stephen cairns, and hilde heynen (london: sage, 2012), 126. [4] barnett newman, “untitled” (presentation, 4th annual woodstock art conference, woodstock, i would be much more reluctant than he is to translate a claim into something actually true and objective. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 214 he y n en ny, august 22-23, 1952). [5] the sage handbook of architectural theory doesn’t even mention salingaros. [6] roger scruton, the aesthetics of architecture (princeton: princeton university press, 2013), 240. [7] ibid., 3. [8] ibid., 39. [9] juan pablo bonta, review of the aesthetics of architecture, by roger scruton, journal of aesthetics and art criticism 39, no. 3 (1981): 328-330. the fact that buildings are so strongly associated with various power holding empires, nation-states and other forms of civilization is widely recognized in the study of both the history of people and their buildings. from pericles’s acropolis to niemeyer’s brasilia, architecture has long been associated with political figures and institutions. buildings such as the british parliament, the russian kremlin, and the u.s. capitol stand out not just as iconic architecture, but also as representative of the politics, institutions, and culture of their nations. architecture and politics are intimately connected, yet precisely how are political concepts captured in the form and function of buildings? certainly utility plays a strong role here. we know that buildings serve the establishment and maintenance of a governing body. but in serving that function, do they also necessarily contribute to maintaining a particular ideological belief system? if we acknowledge that buildings hold both deterministic effect and autonomous disassociation, how do architects and politicians act? to what extent should architects design public structures intended to capture the social and political ethos of the people? do architects have an obligation to address the socio-political in their work, or is this kind of moral obligation misplaced? is it rather that the work of architects is already tacitly, inextricably part of the political isparchitecture.com call for papers: biennial society conference ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 process? and to what end? is the ‘autonomous turn’ in architecture of the 1980s well and truly dead? beyond considerations of functionality, how do rulers utilize building to achieve their political goals and ideals? is building fundamental to realizing ideological goals or a mere part of the process? one might also worry that we read too much into the social and political power of architects and buildings. while power routinely uses architecture to further its agenda, how reliably can we read buildings as instances of specific intentions? architecture can be a highly political art form, but what can be said about the relationship between political intentions and aesthetic merit? are there styles or typologies particularly conducive to establishing and maintaining power? is the association of contemporary democracy with classical greek and roman architecture appropriate or warranted? and is the style’s reverence intrinsic or learned? could the romanesque not equally as well serve the same purpose? assuming that buildings are already intrinsically enmeshed within the governing body’s authority, can a single building work against that same authority? can a building undermine a regime more readily than it can legitimize it? some may argue that the berlin wall marked the end of the communist rule over eastern germany, but how much weight can we ascribe to a building’s maintenance of a governing body? does time sanitize architecture that came into existence in the service of repugnant regimes? how effective, for instance, are efforts to rebuild iraq? do contractors design buildings that are consistent with the social and political climate of the people? can the people interpret these buildings independently of their feelings about the builders? could it be that the very act of building in iraq may be taken as an offense by some in the iraqi nation-state? although not all instances of international exchange are as contentious as this one, can architecture be incompatible with particular political concepts or systems? finally, what of the relation between architecture, power and capital? does the globalization of capital and in its wake, of architecture, render architecture’s connection to any individual state obsolete? or to put it another way, is everything becoming an expression of the values of global capital? the intent of this interdisciplinary conference is to gather philosophers, architects, urban planners, and critics to consider these questions regarding building’s service to political ideologies, governing authorities, and sociopolitical contexts. the event will be held in one of the most iconic and representative projects of the international style of 20th century modern public architecture: walter netsch jr.’s united states air force academy—a premier education facility— in colorado springs, colorado. the conference itself will be held in the latest addition to the academy: the new polaris hall—a 45 million dollar addition isparchitecture.com designed by som that remains true to netsch’s original vision. the stunning new addition breathes new life into a pristinely preserved modernist campus, a detailed analysis of which is featured in the journal of the american institute of architects. in addition to the conference, presenters and participants will have the rare opportunity to tour the academy, including the well-known academy chapel with its four distinct worship spaces. full consideration will be given to all proposals (500-700 words) received by 15 january 2018; acceptances announced no later than 12 february 2018. send your proposal as an attachment prepared for blind review to isparchitecture[at]gmail.com. a selection of papers will be published in a special issue of architecture philosophy, edited by prof. tom spector, dr. mark jensen, and dr. carolyn fahey.. isparchitecture.com about the authors jochen schuff is a research associate in the philosophy department at the goethe university in frankfurt am main. august sarnitz is professor of architecture at the academy of fine arts at the university of vienna. emre demirel is assistant professor of architecture at hacettepe university. reidar due is lecturer of film aesthetics in the department of medieval and modern languages in magdalen college at oxford university. hilde heynen is professor of architecture at the catholic university of leuven. image credits cover photo & design: carolyn fahey from “wittgenstein’s architectural idiosyncrasy” figures 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 & 9: august sarnitz figure 7: city of vienna, ma 37 figures 3 & 5: stonborough family from “use-value and the question of completion” figure 1: national egyptian library, cairo figure 2 & 4: société des auteurs dans les arts graphiques et plastiques figure 3: ve a. morel et cie figure 5: turkish ministry of culture and tourism figures 6-12: han tümertekin figure 14: kemal aran figure 15: cemil güven architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is the paper written in english to general academic writing standards for the humanities? does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines? review criteria ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 isparchitecture.com please direct all submissions and general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. there are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special issue, conference proceedings, etc.). submission types authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. full papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word abstract, response pieces should be between 500 and 1,500 words, and book reviews between 1,000 to 2,000 words. general formatting all submissions should be presented in accordance with the university of chicago style. papers should be rtf documents, 12 point font, times new roman, doublespaced, and with no additional or otherwise unique formatting. references should be manually placed in brackets (e.g. [1], [2], and so on) with full citation information placed in the references section at the end of the document. photo guidelines and image permissions images should be at least 300 dpi and read well in greyscale prints. the images should be submitted as individual files (tiff or jpeg), in combination with proof of copyright permission. authors are responsible for obtaining image permissions, and are asked to have done so prior to submitting their papers for review. the oklahoma state university image archive is also available for use. please send inquiries about the osu image holdings to prof. tom spector at tom.spector@okstate.edu. the papers published by architecture philosophy are protected by copyright. the content must not have been previously published and cannot be republished without the permission of the journal’s copyright holder. the copyright holder is oklahoma state university. authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permission for the use of images in their papers. original images created by the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines the journal of the international '.::>ociety for the f'hilo'.::>of'hy of architecture \x/ittgenstein on architecture jochw s dj11ff \x/ittgenstein's architectural idiosyncracies a11gnst sar11itz use-value and the question of completion ev1t·e demirel semiotic naturalism in architecture theory reidar om book review hilde h,y11n1 volume 2 number 2 isparchitecture.com designing a common world: public responsibility and the aim to objectify architecture hans teerds introduction many architectural offices today tend to present their works as the inevitable result of the program brief and building site. often, they showcase their designs on their websites, in architectural magazines, in lectures, or on internet blogs as the sum of a few logical steps, adjusting a simple volume (the possible envelope according to local restrictions) towards a final form (a response to programmatic and site-specific characteristics). these designnarratives often are illustrated with simple and schematic line-drawings, emphasizing the logic of the final result. it is of course a simplified version of the design process, a ‘narrative’ only possible in hindsight. the tendency beyond, i think, is an eagerness to withdraw from the ‘subjective,’ with its associations as grounded in mere personal preference in the presentation of the project, in favor of reason and logic, which operate in the open, outside the subject. the same tendency can be recognized in the effort by other offices to present their projects as the outcome of working methods grounded in a strict and seemingly scientific analysis of big data, made possible by the unprecedented power of computers to envision and manipulate data (in real time), and ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 98 te er ds to map and manipulate information flows. (figure 1) once again, some of these offices use such computational models to evoke the impression that the design work is the logical, even irresistible, outcome of an objective and extensive analysis of information. some even suggest that in the (near) future architectural designs can be generated through artificial intelligence. no architects required (or better said: only software engineers needed)! and thus, the narrative goes: the design process will be objectified in such a way that the obvious subjectivity of the designer is excluded from the process in favor of the much more subtle subjectivity of the computational model. it is the old quest of ‘architecture without architects’, this time not in favor of a vernacular architecture, local traditions and spontaneous building processes, but in favor of the promises of the black box of big data. to these two claims that aim to overcome the subjective aspects of architectural design (or as stated, of the architectural designer) we might add a third direction: the renewed interest in participation trajectories. both in scholarly research, as well as within architectural practices, there is a growing interest in the development of open design trajectories wherein stakeholders (beyond the usual: clients, investors, and planners but also future residents and users) are invited to intensely participate. this interest in participatory design, moreover, is not limited to the design phase. the product itself, the building, should be built in an ‘open’ system, where users can easily adapt the spaces to their wishes in time. many examples of the tendencies above can be given, both from the field of practices as well as from academia. however, as i do not want to pinpoint offices to a singular take, i leave it to the imagination of the reader to frame these tendencies in architectural practice to actual cases. although these three attempts are very different in character, a shared aim can be recognized: the aim to reduce the subjective aspects of architectural design by (in theory) minimizing or altering the role of the designer from creator to something more like ‘facilitator.’ such a ‘humbleness’ that emerges from the field functions as a corrective to the era of ‘starchitects’, wherein the creativity and genius of a single architect was emphasized, alongside a worldwide inclination towards the ‘new’, ‘novel’, and ‘original.’ the 2008 world-wide financial and economic crisis that followed the collapse of the lehman brothers bank in the usa made very clear how hollow such a perspective was. architecture simply had become an empty shelf: the ‘surplus’ aesthetics attached to buildings, the icing on the cake. although this can be understood in economic (and even marxist) terms as the ‘surplus’ value, which could be made profitable in terms of marketing and branding, it of course hardly can be seen as a ‘proper’ understanding of the significance of architecture for inhabitants, users, society. after 99 isparchitecture.com all, due to the crisis, it immediately became clear that such a surplus value was only profitable in the case of the few designers that had become a brand in themselves. or better said: there seemed to be no language left wherein the significance of architecture could be explained, neither to the inhabitants and users, nor to society as such, and, in line with that, also not to clients, constructors, investors, developers. architecture had turned into a ‘statue of nebuchadnezzar’: beautiful, spectacular, impressive, powerful, glamorous, but only loosely rooted in society (if rooted at all). consciously addressed in articles in the media and (new) assignments to architects, or unconsciously touched upon in discussions, it seemed that the ‘subjectivity’ of the architectural designer was to blame. and thus, we can understand (and probably also value) the above-mentioned ways to organize and present design differently: they are mostly sincere attempts to overcome the crisis in architecture and to (re)connect to the client and user, to each other, as well as to society. the subjectivity of the designer has become the ‘whipping boy’ of architectural design. these reflections implicitly divide architectural practices into two very different approaches: the artistic practice versus the engineering practice. schematically, both positions can be seen as the outer ends of a spectrum. on the one side the architect is presented as creative genius producing original and unforeseen (architectural) proposals (model: the ‘starchitect’, ayn rand’s fountainhead) which need to be characterized as ‘art’, while on the other side one would find the architects that simply understand their practices as consultancy offices, and their work as a form of engineering. these architects get the project done, straightforwardly fulfilling the wishes of the client (model: a ‘service they are mostly sincere attempts to overcome the crisis in architecture and to (re) connect to the client and user, to each other, as well as to society. “ ” figure 1: grasshopper program computational architecture ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 100 te er ds office’).2 whereas most of the architectural offices, obviously, operate in the grey zone of this spectrum (aiming to do a good job with regard to both ends of the spectrum), the above signalized tendency in practice heads towards this latter end of the spectrum. this tendency walks a dangerous path because the removal of subjectivity entails the loss of the underpinnings of architectural responsibility. in order to unravel this idea i will lean upon two perspectives offered in the writings of the philosopher hannah arendt. first i will use her distinction between the earth and the world. this distinction and her understanding of the world as a world-of-things offer a perspective wherein the practice of architecture can be understood as world-construction, a valuable external reference frame for the professional field of architecture. this perspective at first sight might seem to offer an argument to reduce subjectivity in design, but that, as we will see, is at odds with arendt’s own perspective. a certain balance between objectivity and subjectivity is needed. in order to define that balance, i secondly will use her unfinished reflections on the human faculty of ‘judgment’. this last perspective offers a key to the aspect of subjectivity in design, wherein subjectivity and responsibility are intertwined. this perspective is important, as it opposes the move to align architectural design with the repressive and dangerous tendencies endemic to technocratic engineering. before i set up this argument, three brief remarks. first: the tendencies described above are not novel at all. amongst others, the writings of the architects george baird and giancarlo de carlo and historians kenneth frampton and robert gutman have stressed the tension between the artistic and the functional throughout the 19th and 20th century, and pondered attempts to either transform architecture to a more scientifically or socially ‘just’ professional field, or reduce it to a solely artistic one. current trends, while not novel, are intensifications of these tensions.3 secondly, it is the subjectivity of the designer that i focus on even though it must be recognized that the building process is shot-through with subjectivity: subjective are the aims and wishes of the client, investor, developer, of the public official that formulates the restrictions for a particular site, and of the politician that wants to develop a lasting monument before time in office has finished. design, however, is a particular instrument within the building industries. it is a tool that architects have, a tool that bridges the different viewpoints. this is an important given. even in times wherein the subjectivity of architectural design is under attack, we need to understand the unique capacities of design. third, it of course is clear that this ‘designer’ almost never is a single 101 isparchitecture.com architect. in most cases, design is teamwork, work of an office with project architects, assistant designers, interns, drafters. so when addressing ‘the architect’, i have in mind both the single designer, as well as the collaborative. the things of the world how can we understand the context of architecture: what is its significance beyond the beautification of buildings, urban spaces, and cultural landscapes? the writings of hannah arendt offer an appropriate perspective in this regard, through which the cultural and political meaning of the profession can be understood. the canadian architect and theoretician george baird stated in his 1995 book the space of appearance that arendt has been one of the very few philosophers of the 20th century to include “the things of the world”4 in her political philosophy. in other words, within political reflections in philosophy and other academic fields, theories hardly grasp the tangible world, the things that surround us. arendt’s perspective then stresses the tangible world as politically relevant. in order to understand this relevance, let us first explicate what she meant by ‘things of the world’. in her writings, arendt distinguishes the ‘world’ from the ‘earth’, a distinction she partly based on the writings of philosopher martin heidegger, who had been her professor during her studies. the distinction roughly is between the natural and the cultural, the globe versus the human interventions, human affairs, and relationships. but where heidegger offers a negative reading of this distinction, arendt ponders the world in a clearly positive perspective.5 where heidegger takes the classical philosophical stance and understands the humble and stumble, rumour and noise of public life, as disturbing the this tendency walks a dangerous path because the removal of subjectivity entails the loss of the underpinnings of architectural responsibility. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 102 te er ds vita contemplativa, she, on the contrary, aims to celebrate the participation in public life and the engagement in the world and its wanderings, the vita activa. a perspective overlooked and neglected within philosophy, according to arendt – and not without consequences. the whole political development in europe in the first half of the twentieth century urged her—as a jew born in germany, searching for refuge in france and the united states—to become politically aware, and publicly active.6 so what does the distinction mean for her? to her the earth stands for the natural circumstances of the globe, depicted by the cycle of nature. for arendt this is not an idealistic situation, as she stresses the need to transform that globe into a habitable place. this transformation establishes the world. the world thus is the earth made fit for human habitation and the human community.7 through human intervention, through the creation of artefacts (houses, furniture, infrastructure), the earth is transformed into a human world. the distinction between the two terms thus roughly corresponds to the natural and the cultural spheres. arendt emphasizes the different qualities that belong to both entities: it is the cyclicality of nature versus the perpetuity of culture, the survival of species versus the permanence of the human artefacts. for arendt ‘things’ are not just objects, but they are part and parcel of that artificial ‘world’. human artefacts establish the world. in addition to this basic principle, arendt draws attention to two perspectives of artefacts that qualify this world, which also turns them into a prerequisite for sensible political life —the relationship baird stressed. 1. for arendt the world always is a world shared with others. or in her terms: the world always is ‘in-common.’ human artefacts, that at once establish a world, immediately also establish commonality. “to live in the world,” arendt writes in a famous quote, “means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.”8 arendt stresses that this ‘table’ not only is to be seen as a spatial commonality (to be collected around an artefact-in-common)), but also as a commonality that stretches in time (we have the object not only in common today, but we share it also with previous generations, as well as with those to come).9 both continuities (or commonalities) of the world are rendered by arendt as prerequisites for sensible political life. the intangibility and vulnerability of “action and speech,” that arendt frame as the crucial activities of political life, requires a durable and common stage.10 politics, for arendt, does not 103 isparchitecture.com primarily relate to parliament and government, to town hall and council, but to “the coexistence and association of different men,” which certainly relates to the intangible interaction between human beings (like in the political arena) but also is related to the tangible (public) artefacts and institutions that structure and organize the world and orients their inhabitants.11 the world of things, in other words, is at once the stage of politics as well as the concern of politics. 2. while the first point stresses artefacts as such, delivering a stable stage for the realm of politics, the second perspective qualifies these artefacts. they are not neutral atoms in space, but have a particular shape, history, tactility, or to be short: presence. they appear to the human being through their form—a form that is particular and recognizable, and that can revive particular memories and narratives.12 according to arendt, this particularly counts especially for such artefacts as memorials, monuments, and works of art. she thus underlines the capacity of artefacts—in particular: works of art—to reify stories and narratives, to memorize actions of the past, and to make history present today. artefacts are carriers of meaning, memory, heritage, orientation, order, and identity, they can revive (collective) memories and evoke remembrances.13 this aspect of the ‘things of the world’ is related to a crucial capacity of the human being; the possibility to tell a story. the life of the individual—a narrative in time between birth and death—is an example of such a story, but also the ‘the life of the polis’, which obviously is the story of particular histories. the crucial aspect of the narrative is not only the possibility to contemplate actions within time, but also that it can be shared with others. this, for arendt, transforms the life of the polis into a political life.14 this capacity to tell stories is foremost a capacity of the human being, ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 104 te er ds but, as arendt also stresses, such narratives are the “everlasting essence of the work of art” in the context of politics.15 needless to say that works of art indeed often consciously reify (historical) narratives, and that such works of art have been important to the realm of politics and the selfunderstanding of human communities. however, we do not have to limit our understanding at this point to figurative art, greek poems, or the plot in movies. the particular shape of artefacts (works of art as well as everyday artefacts) can be a ‘holding place’ for narratives: objects can evoke remembrances, and thus are able to make particular histories present, but they also can evoke future perspectives, which unfold and are addressed in stories too. to summarize, artefacts not only offer stability and permanence, but also memory, remembrance, structure, and orientation in the world. both layers of understanding of the ‘things of the world’ value artefacts in a very sensible and concrete way, engaging aspects of spatiality, materiality, tactility, tangibility, and the capacity of narration, as well as the inherent aspects of production and use. all these aspects in one way or the other may contribute to the commonality and durability of a political community or disturb it. architecture as world-construction this perspective upon the ‘things of the world’ offers a valuable path to construct a cultural and political—and therefore also ethical— framework to understand the work of the architect, not only for architects working on grand cathedrals, but also for those developing and designing not-so-grand bicycle sheds.16 arendt stressed that works of art are the most worldly human artefacts, particularly since they are objects not intended for commonplace utility but only to be accessed in a disinterested attitude, and therefore will not be damaged through use and spoiled by use or consumption. works of art therefore are, if kept well protected from natural influences, the most durable objects on earth, and thus will offer the most stable underpinnings for society.17 arendt nevertheless does not limit the twofold aspects of the ‘things of the world’ solely to works of art, but only placed them in hierarchy above the other works of the human being. with these concepts in mind, let us stretch arendt’s perspective to the field of architecture. we first need to recognize how important architecture is with regard to the establishment of the world (and in the 105 isparchitecture.com context of an existing world, the maintenance and continuation of it). the built environment after all literally shapes the world for its inhabitants. it constructs the everyday places of human life, as well as the monuments that structure political life, the memorials, the buildings of the parliament, the offices of public institutions. it structures the cities and neighbourhoods, where people live, work, enjoy a movie, or go to court, as well as the landscape, where the food grows, the natural reserves are, the slopes for skiing. architecture builds the museums, where the works of art are exhibited, and it delineates the public squares, where people can gather. architecture, in other words, mediates between the human being and the earth, as well as between the human being and the human community. it creates the private spaces of the home, as well as a context for meaningful collective life. it offers room for actions to unfold, for stories to be enacted, for history to take place, for experiences to be gained —and by doing so, through all the events that take place on their stairs and balconies, their wooden floors and tile pavements, against their walls and columns, (hi)stories are written. the patina of the materials, the traces of use on the stairs and floors —they are not entirely negative, as arendt seems to argue: it is particularly through these traces of decay and use that history is made present, that memories and remembrances of users, inhabitants, and communities are evoked.18 buildings and cities, landscapes and works of infrastructure—they all first accommodate the human community, but second also offer a ‘holding place’ for memories from the (recent) past. works of architecture (both grand and humble), we might conclude, simply relate users and inhabitants with the earth and with each other spatially through the placing of walls, doors, windows, roofs, pavements, and so on. this relation not only is established at this point in time, but also over time, with generations of the past as well as arendt stressed that works of art are the most worldly human artefacts “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 106 te er ds of the future. architecture plays a role both in a tangible and material sense (by the very structures), as well as in a mental sense (by being sites of heritage, memory, and so on). architecture, therefore, should be understood as ‘world-construction.’ if architecture, a term which here includes the fields of planning, constructing, urban design, and landscape architecture, is worldconstruction, then it needs to carefully engage with the world it brings into existence in order to keep it fit for human inhabitation and political interaction. architectural design then cannot be indifferent to the worldin-common, but requires an attitude of engagement towards the worlds it both touches and creates. from this perspective, we can usefully define three tasks for the professional field of architecture: 1. this perspective stresses the value of the existing (built) environment as the context of the social network of the inhabitants as well as a ‘holding place’ for stories, memories, remembrances. it thus offers an argument for a careful renovation, restoration and refurbishment of existing buildings, urban structures and cultural landscapes. the existing built environment is not a tabula rasa, nor neutral ground, wherein architecture intervenes. 2. importantly, this is no argument for stasis. in her reflections on culture, arendt stresses that two perspectives align in culture: the careful maintenance of the existing intertwines with the intervention that creates room for the new. the second task for architectural practices thus is to embed the new in the existing.19 this of course creates a new composition, a new entity—but with respect to what has been, and how that has been established.20 3. for the third task, we need to take one step further. to acknowledge that through the shape of artefacts narratives can be told, is to challenge the architect to both understand and take responsibility for the narratives inherent in their proposals. this charge, of course, counts for all interventions in the world, but from a political perspective, it particularly counts for the design of public buildings. after all, public buildings— townhalls, schools, libraries,—through their form also reify particular narratives, as for example a well-designed public school will narrate the importance of education in our society (moreover, the structure of the school does influence the possibilities of education, but also narrate what educational system we are after—think of the early school-designs of the dutch architect herman hertzberger), while a rundown public school building simply seems to show that public funding of the school is not prioritized.21 just as townhalls of the past perfectly reify the relationship between local power and the citizens and cathedrals do the 107 isparchitecture.com same for religion and the community of believers, new townhalls and churches also reify comparable narratives.22 they are carriers of the organization of the current human community and thus expose what has been assigned as important for this community. as political philosopher bonnie honig argues in her recent sydney lectures in philosophy and society: “public things are the infrastructure of democratic life, and they underwrite the signs and symbols of democratic unity, that, for the moment, still survive.” and while she relates this perspective with the previous mentioned need for a stable underpinnings of the political realm, she writes: “things … stabilize the web of meanings in which we live and into which we may act.”24 these three tasks: valuing the existing built environment for its embedded meanings, sensitively engaging that environment with new revisions, and care for the narrative quality of architecture, are crucial assignments for every architectural intervention in the world. what designers propose never is neutral. it must always deal with structures from the past, as well as their inherent narratives, while at once adding new narratives that in their turn reify the current relationship to the earth (and its environmental issues) and the world (as a world-in-common). the challenge of subjectivity according to george baird, this perspective “electrifies the architectural project,” ethically. rightly so: while individual wishes, needs and ambitions as well as commercial perspectives, profits, and business cases are the genesis of most architectural assignments, there is always spillover.25 architecture—even in the most isolated circumstances—always is tethered to the world-incommon, and thus is establishing, maintaining, and intervening in the world, which in turn has ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 108 te er ds political and cultural meaning. architecture thus is an inherently political and cultural endeavor, the import of which forms the basis for its unique ethos, for not only does it assert that architecture significantly establishes or maintains the world-in-common, but also that architecture can become an agent of destruction to the commonly shared world. it can disturb the possibilities for establishing political life and obliterate the (collective) stories that are stored in the world. this is what justifies holding that the architectural project thus reaches beyond the immediate interests of the stakeholders: through its impact on the commonly shared world. this of course not only offers an ethical perspective upon the architectural designer’s work, but also is applicable for other parties involved in the building process, from commissioner to building manager, and from constructor to politicians who decide upon the building regulations, or the ambitions with regard to urban renewal, social housing, or public buildings. arendt’s perspective offers a framework for a (self )critical approach to each building assignment—a horizon against which a project (from program brief to design, and from construction to demolition) can be evaluated, challenged, and valued, as it both challenges the ‘what/why’ as well as the ‘how’ of a project. although this perspective of ‘the world in common’ might call for sensitivity amongst designers to the larger context of their work, it does certainly not plea for objectivity in design. baird, argues that neither a radically subjective position, nor a supposedly objective approach are appropriate responses vis-à-vis the idea of a shared world.26 obviously, to develop participation processes, create open-building structures, make use of data modelling, and present architecture through a logical explanation can be valued positively as exhibiting awareness of a certain architectural ethos. these strategies are particularly welcome against an architectural era that uncritically engaged with the new and the novel, the oeuvre and the artistic. however, there is a clear downside to these attempts to wipe out subjectivity as well: if objectification of design is the endgame, it comes with a reductionist perspective and risks dissipation of designresponsibility. this assertion is based on three considerations: 1. according to arendt, the world is characterized by plurality: it is site-specific and time-specific due to the natural circumstances of the earth, the development of the world, the cultural and political development and engagement with the world, the development of tools and instruments (technology) that make minor and major interventions possible, as well as through the histories and events that unfolded within the world and thus upload the world with narratives. although the ‘facts’ of these differences 109 isparchitecture.com can be traced in comprehensive analyses, or can be collected in the numbers of ‘big data’, their cultural, social and political meanings, that is to say, what gives them ethical import, are out of reach of these instruments. without acknowledging the personal and collective narratives, the cultural and political aspects of the built environment, architecture is stuck in reductionist and purely materialist perspectives. this particularly is the case if the design-instruments (as data-mining, logical reasoning, participation) are magnified, and rather than being mere tools to achieve an ethical end become regarded as self-justifying processes. in all of the mentioned cases in the introduction to this article, there is the risk to reduce the reality of the world to objective facts: either to the ‘factual’ perspective of participants in the development process, or to the overwhelming amount of ‘facts’ that are collected through data mining, or finally to the ‘facts’ that are seemingly the inevitable result of logical investigation in program, site, and use. 2. simultaneously with such a reductionist perspective, these methods and attempts to objectify architecture also disturb the ethical understanding of architect’s practice since the process of ‘design’ is misunderstood. when the design-method is so magnified, the process should follow its predefined path. such a process is repressive; it strongly steers while diminshing the freedom to do things differently, to be surprised by one’s findings. this steering both removes opportunities for personal reflection and simultaneously taking responsibility for one’s decisions. one can hide behind the outcome of data mining, the wishes of the participants, the facts that are taken from the context and program, or behind the investors or client—any of which somehow ‘automatically’ lead to the proposed project. this of course is a bit of a simplified presentation: there still is ‘design’, but it operates on a higher level of abstraction: the design of the used methods and instruments, the selection if objectification of design is the endgame, it comes with a reductionist perspective and risks dissipation of designresponsibility. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 110 te er ds and development of the computational program, the selection of data scraped, the way data are connected, the ‘architecture’ of the algorithm. this is a way of defining the organisation, a matter of decision making, and interpretation—and their impact on the world can be devasting. however, now the design decisions do not operate in the open, but are kept at a remove from the actual projects. a new and obfuscating layer, defining the algorithm or the structure of the design method, is added between the designer and the end-object. it distances challenging and subtle matters of subjectivity, biases, ethical dilemmas from the actual design task. this remove easily hides the subjective and ethical aspects of the project from the public eye, particularly if these methods and instruments are seen as objective, even if not scientifically truthful, and thus are neither challenged nor questioned—not in the discussions within the designer’s office, nor in the (everyday) talks to clients, neighbours, and society. this, i would argue, is hiding behind the instruments, and behind the outcome of the application of these instruments, without taking responsibility for one’s own decisions (not on the level of the design of the method and instrument, nor on the use of the outcome of the implementation of these methods and instruments). in other words, if method and instrument are presented as factual and scientifically truthful, the outcomes easily can be understood as ‘objective facts’ too. what then is left to the designer except implementation? the architect will operate a design-machine, and needs to follow what is prescribed—simply turning the diagrams or directions into structures (if this is still needed, one might imagine that artificial intelligence even this step in the design process can take over). he or she probably will follow a self-prescribed path (through the definition of the algorithm)—but without taking responsibility that this path is inherently subjective and hence to be challenged continuously. 3. arendt’s perspective of the world-in-common clearly at once both challenges the subjective intervention in this world, as well as the aim to be objective. it not only provokes the idea that design simply can be the ‘just’ interpretation of big data, or that it can be the application of computational models and logical reasoning, but offers a ‘critical’ reading to all other instruments through which the professional aims to define a more or less ‘objective’ underpinnings of his designs. arendt also is critical of the immediate and unquestioned application of theories, dogmas, philosophies, particular design methods, and so on. all these ‘instruments’ can form an obstacle between the designer and the world, particularly when the tools are overvalued and the complexity of the world is reduced to singular perspectives. architectural design, understood as ‘world-construction’ 111 isparchitecture.com is a matter of immediate engagement with the world-in-common, and reflection on its existing structures, meanings, its rootedness in the past, and how it can be strengthened, enhanced, continued, while immediately offering space to new needs and wishes. architects simply are challenged to apply their work with caution, not to destroy the precarious threads that connect us with the past, neither to insert the failure-projects of tomorrow, nor to lose their rooting in society.27 this, for architects seeking to execute the ethical fullness of their charge, clearly is a balancing act between the objective and the subjective. the perspective that design deals with concrete artefacts that are in-common challenges designers to organize the ethical questions as clearly and concretely as possible within each design project (and not hidden in abstraction, or obscured in the instruments and methods), while communicating openly and accessibly about the subjective aspects of the activity of design (and how to deal with them from an ethical perspective). architectural judgment how then can we understand architectural design, if it is a balancing act between the objective and the subjective? the design process often is understood as a black box, wherein imagination and experience, taste and other subjective aspects, play a role. generally speaking, architectural design is not understood by the broader public, as is tangible in all sorts talks about architecture in the media or in personal conversations in which the architect after all never is never challenged by his audience to respond to the costs of one iconic building, the terrible leaking of another, the un-functionality of again another spectacular building? however, if we zoom in to the actual process of design, we obviously immediately understand that the design first and arendt’s perspective of the world-incommon clearly at once both challenges the subjective intervention in this world, as well as the aim to be objective. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 112 te er ds foremost is embedded in the wishes of the client. architects actively define and shape the intervention in the existing environment according to a program brief, along the lines of wishes of clients, investors, developers, and other stakeholders. this perspective at first sight seems to limit the responsibility of the architect. after all: most of the outcome of the designprocess is already given and predefined in a program brief (particularly in complex projects, these program briefs are like books containing hundreds of pages with prescriptions). however, design is not simply the answer to a particular program brief, as there are many answers to that same program brief, as architectural competitions clearly show. 28 this simple given of the multiplicity of possible outcomes already shows how crucial the position of the designer is, despite his currently often limited power in the process of development. besides the very activity of sketching and investigating, two aspects of design are crucial with regard to the world-in-common: • through the design process, often contradictory and conflicting viewpoints and insights evolve, as the needs of the client are addressed as well as the wishes of the future users and inhabitants, the concerns of the neighbours, the ambitions of local politics, the constraints of the existing situation, the regulations of local rules and laws, and so on. design investigates possibilities and opportunities, and through these investigations, new, unforeseen, and unthought-of perspectives open up— perspectives that might unite contrasting positions. • through design, moreover, the question of imagination is posed: what do we envision as the outcome of the project, what should it narrate, what does it stand for (and how does it contribute to the world-in-common)? in one way or the other, decisions have to be made upon the directions of the design process. to treat these issues as jigsaw puzzles that can be solved through mathematical logic, smart reasoning, or through complex computation is to abdicate architectural judgment: to make choices, to decide upon what is important, to value the several perspectives, and to be able to discuss these issues publicly. it will be useful to introduce at this point another term borrowed from arendt’s writings: her reflections on political judgment. these reflections, although not fully developed because of her sudden death in 1975, incorporate ideas about the public access as well as the intersubjectivity of such judgments. in particular, two aspects of judgment— the accessibility of the decision as well as its intersubjective character—are pressing questions regarding architectural design. arendt based her understanding of political judgment on immanuel kant’s proposition of aesthetic judgment. the crucial feature arendt 113 isparchitecture.com adopts from kant’s perspective is his idea of the “intersubjective validity [of judgment] in the public realm.”29 aesthetic judgment, for kant, is not limited to the application of personal taste (although the development of taste is crucial), but always is related to the larger context of society. it requires an active engagement with this community, particularly through the application of an enlarged mentality. this latter term open to an important perspective, particularly in regard to the activity of design. what is important at this point is that arendt also argues that politics, upon which she is focused, should not be understood as a realm of ‘truths’ in a scientific sense. “truth in the sciences is dependent on the experiment that can be repeated by others; it requires general validity. philosophic truth has no such general validity. what it must have … is ‘general communicability’.”30 surely, facts do play a role in the realm of politics—as clearly can be derived from the omnipresence of ‘alternative facts’ in today’s political institutions. however, even if all participants stick to the same facts, paradoxical and even contractionary perspectives can be developed. facts after all require both interpretation and validation. in politics, it is much more about the weighing of facts and understanding their relationships, particularly in relationship to the world and its wanderings, than it is about finding and defending the truth. in politics, moreover, understanding the facts and their relationships does not lead to a political program or decisions that can organize society in all its plurality. on the contrary, for arendt the political arena is not about facts and figures, but about conflicting interpretations and contradictory perspectives. this approach thus requires the capacity to make decisions not solely on the basis of facts, but also with regard to conflicting perspectives and within complicated situations. political judgment, arendt therefore argues, is bound to a certain community. one judges “as a member of this community and ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 not as a member of a supersensible world.”31 being part of a community urges us to understand the subjective aspects of our own position in the world, and urges us to take “the viewpoints of others into account.”32 arendt stresses that the capacity to acknowledge other perspectives rightly requires a specific human capacity that she calls after kant the “enlarged mentality.” “the ‘enlargement of the mind’ is accomplished by “comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man.”33 the striking perspective arendt stresses here is that she seems to take this process of judgment very literally. to take other viewpoints into account is not to think about other perspectives (or to take note of these perspectives), but literally means entering the problem at hand from the standpoint of other positions in the world. this describes a process of active engagement: to re-place oneself to another position, to re-write the story from that very perspective. judgment requires the ability to place oneself in the place of others, in order to think from their position in the world. this is a crucial perspective: judgment implicitly requires a public. the plural public is at the heart of judgment processes—if not literal, then through the human faculty of imagination. “by the force of imagination it makes the others present and thus moves in a space that is potentially public, open to all sides.”34 the crucial point for our reflection on architectural design is arendt’s next step: it is one thing to replace oneself to other positions, and to be able to think from within these positions, but the question how to judge is still open. it still requires judgment to make up one’s mind and to make decisions. judgment requires a space to reflect, think, test other points of view, as it eventually also requires expertise, experience, knowledge, and intuition. such a judgment requires engagement and reasonable training, as it does not depend upon general rules but on “thinking the particular.” since in judgment imagination and intuition are involved, it is understood as requiring faculties of the human being that are shaped through active engagement in the world and participation in public life, as well as fueled through experience and knowledge. through such an engagement in the world, one is able to recognize the particular, and to imagine the particular from different points of view. it is only through such a process, arendt argues, that judgment becomes “communicable:” it can be communicated to others, as it is based on the thinking from different perspectives and on the development of and reflection upon multiple possibilities. this communicability takes the form of a persuasive activity: it is able to appeal to the variety of perspectives within society, even if it has judged that some m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 114 115 isparchitecture.com of the perspectives seem to be other than just.35 if we now turn back to architectural design, we easily can see the parallel. on the architect’s drawing table literally lay a variety of perspectives at hand: the client’s, the users’, the inhabitants’, the local politics’ perspective, and the neighbors’. the architect listens to their voices and challenges the project from their point of view. in the end, however, it is the design that needs to bring these (often conflicting) perspectives together, against the horizon of the world-in-common (in space and time) and not the design tool, the algorithm, the survey, or the sorted data. design is an activity that sometimes unfolds somehow in solitude (within the office, at the drawing table, in meeting rooms, and so on), but that inherently also requires a continuous, imaginative conversation with its context, with the world-in-common. it requires imagination to “make the others present,” and by doing so making the architectural office and the subsequent meeting rooms (of clients, engineers, planners, politicians) where the design is developed, a public space.36 it is through the making present of the public at the heart of the process of design, that the design also can be made public, that the design is communicable, that it is accessible to be discussed publicly.37 conclusion returning to the three examples of resistance against subjectivity i described at the outset: obviously, we can’t lump all three examples together as a singular tendency completely. especially the attempt to open up the design process for the participation of future users and inhabitants seems to stand out. new technologies appear especially promising in this regard where they help to streamline processes of interaction, discussion and debate, and how new techniques, developed in the all attempts that aim to diminish the subjective from design will fall into the trap of technocratic engineering, wherein a reductionist and materialist vision is embraced, and responsibility is endlessly displaced. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 116 te er ds gaming industries, also can be applied to architectural and urban planning processes. moreover, in several countries around the world new ways of developing buildings appear, where in cooperative ways future inhabitants strongly work together, and are completely involved in the processes of developing and designing, and even financing and constructing their future housing. however, this does not diminish the role of design in these processes. moreover, it is clear that if all these voices have to be heard, the complexity of the design process increases. how to incorporate the different and often opposing viewpoints into a single design? it is in this perspective that we can validate the parallel between architectural design and political judgment, as pondered by hannah arendt. judgment requires the training of the human faculty of ‘enlarged mentality’ and imagination. to judge means to be able to think from different perspectives, not to define the average of these perspectives, but in order to come to an informed judgment. a similar case can be made for design. design requires the ability to think from the perspective of the stakeholders, as well as from a more general context (as the world-in-common). it requires imagination to make these perspectives present. however, in the end it needs to judge, it needs to make decisions. such ‘informed’ judgments do not only mean to be informed about the different perspectives at stake, but also are informed through personal experiences, taste, knowledge, skills, and so on, that is to say, subjectively. all attempts that aim to diminish the subjective from design will fall into the trap of technocratic engineering, wherein a reductionist and materialist vision is embraced, and responsibility is endlessly displaced. it is particularly in the very moments where the subjective enters judgment that a public and political discussion on architectural proposals is possible, and that architects can be held responsible for their ideas and proposals. conversely, architectural design requires balancing between stakeholders and the public, between the earth and the world-in-common, the world as it is gained from the past, and the world as it can be in the future. this balancing act requires personal engagement in the world, which will feed the architectural knowledge that can be gained through studies and experience, which is gained through extensive practicing, studying, and reflecting upon the world. endnotes 117 isparchitecture.com 1. many examples of the tendencies above can be given, both from the field of practices as well as from academia. however, as i do not want to pinpoint offices to a singular take, i leave it to the imagination of the reader to frame these tendencies in architectural practice to actual cases. 2. cf. dana cuff, architecture: the story of practice (cambridge ma: mit press, 1991), 28-35d. 3. george baird, ‘“la dimension amoreuse” in architecture’, in: charles jencks and george baird (eds.). meaning in architecture (london: barrie and rockliff, the cresset press, 1969); george baird, the space of appearance (cambridge ma: mit press, 1995); giancarlo de carlo, ‘architecture’s public’, in: peter blundell jones, doina petrescu and jeremy till (eds.) architecture and participation (abingdon: spon press, 2007); kenneth frampton, ‘the status of man and the status of his objects: a reading of the human condition’, in kenneth frampton, labour, work, and architecture. collected essays on architecture and design (london, new york: phaidon press, 2002); robert gutman, architectural practice: a critical view (new york: princeton architectural press, 1998). 4. baird, the space of appearance, 21. 5. julia kristeva, hannah arendt (new york: columbia university press, 2001), 77. 6. elisabeth young-bruehl, why arendt matters (new haven/london: yale university press, 2006), 82-84. 7. hannah arendt, the human condition (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 2. 8. ibid., 52. 9. ibid., 167. 10. ibid., 173-174. 11. hannah arendt, ‘introduction into politics’, in: hannah arendt, the promise of politics (new york: ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 118 te er ds schocken books, 2005), 93. 12. arendt, the human condition, 73 13. ibid., 95; cf. paul holmquist, ‘towards an ethical technique: reframing architecture’s “critical call” through hannah arendt,’ in: the plan journal, 1 (1) 2016, 19. 14. kristeva, hannah arendt, 41. 15. ibid., 41. 16. i of course refer here to nicolaus pevsner’s famous distinction between architecture and building, as defined in the first paragraphs of his book on the history of european architecture: nicolaus pevsner, an outline of european architecture (harmonstworth: penguin books, 1968), 15. 17. arendt, the human condition, 167. 18. every architect today will at this point hear an echo of aldo rossi’s famous reading of the monumental buildings in a city as the carriers of (collective) memory. aldo rossi, the architecture of the city (cambridge ma: mit press, 2007 [1962]). 19. hannah arendt, ‘the crisis in culture: its social and its political significance’, in: hannah arendt, between past and future. eight exercises in political thought (new york 2006 [1961], penguin books), 208-210. 20. hannah arendt, ‘culture and politics’, in: hannah arendt, reflections on literature and culture (stanford: stanford university press, 2007), 190. 21. see herman hertzberger, the schools of herman hertzberger (rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2009). 22. this of course is perfectly understood by the trump administration and their attempt to ‘make federal buildings beautiful again’ – although one can question whether the choice of narrative is appropriate. see: https:// www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14466-will-the-white-house-ordernew-federal-architecture-to-be-classical (accessed march 12, 2020). 23. bonnie honig, public things, democracy in disrepair (new york: fordham university press, 2017), 17. 24. ibid., 42. 25. baird, the space of appearance, 22. 26. ibid., 22. 27. ibid., 285. 28. this of course is one of the reasons that design cannot be brought back to a formula: program briefs as well as the local circumstances require interpretation, and thus judgment from the designer. there are as many 119 isparchitecture.com answers to an assignment as there are architects (and even more, as also architects themselves often come up with multiple possibilities). 29. seyla benhabib, ‘judgment and the moral foundation of politics in hannah arendt’s thought’ in: ronald beiner and jennifer nedelsky (eds), judgment, imagination, and politics (new york/ oxford: rowman & littlefield publishers, 2001), 194. 30. hannah arendt, lectures on kant’s political philosophy (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1992), 40. 31. ibid., 67. 32. ibid., 42. 33. ibid., 42-43 (arendt quotes immanuel kant’s critique of judgment, §40). 34. ibid., 43. 35. ibid., 72. 36. ibid., 43. 37. ibid., 67. ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 120 te er ds architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies in the u.s. possible. the journal also acknowledges the support of the dfg (german research foundation) and bamberg university that made the conference “the human in architecture and philosophy” possible (bamberg, germany, july 19th to 22nd 2016). furthermore, the journal acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members at ispa events. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey, adapted for this issue by martin düchs. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university this issue is printed in germany by bamberg university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley guest editors martin düchs, dr., bamberg university christian illies, prof. dr., bamberg university assistant editors christoph baumberger, ph.d., university of zurich carolyn fahey, ph. d., newcastle university stefan koller, ph.d., delft university of technology editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk ersoy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com contents pau pedragosa 25presence or meaning in architecture 1editorial 9karsten harries, roger scruton & christian illies karsten harries and roger scruton on architecture and philosophy 49mari hvattumon durability 77marion rousseltoward a post-human era? 61henry dicksfrom anthropomimetic to biomimetic cities martin düchs & christian illies isparchitecture.com we build for humans—for the most part. temples, zoological gardens, and multi-story car-parks seem to be exceptions. they are built for gods, animals, or cars. but then, even they are indirectly for humans. they are meant to be used by humans who worship there, gaze at giraffes, or park their cars. so in the end, architecture will always have to consider human beings as its recipient, observer, and user. architects simply cannot avoid thinking about the human being. after all, it makes a big difference, what characteristics and needs, necessary life circumstances and life forms, what expectations of privacy or ideal social life, and even what emotions, hopes, fears, and visions we take as central for human beings. our understanding of human beings will be the focus for entirely different architectural forms and ways of building. but to reflect upon ourselves and who we are is, essentially, a philosophical question. according to kant, “what is man?” is even the central question of philosophy. therefore, to think about the human being is an ineliminable concern for architecture and philosophy of architecture alike. but it is also a concern which has not been addressed very often in the last decades. that is why it has been the topic of the 3rd international conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture. from july 19th to 23rd 2016 we invited some 100 scholars from all over the world to bamberg university, germany, to think about and discuss “the human in architecture and philosophy.” architecture has raised the question about the concept and the place of the human being in its in the end, architecture will always have to consider human beings “ ” the human in architecture and philosophy: steps towards an “architectural anthropology” martin düchs & christian illies ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 2 ed it or ia l efforts in many ways. contemporary architecture is very often based upon the explicit claim to have put the human being at the centre of designing and building. and this is by no means new as architectural history and theory show. to take just a few examples: le corbusier and the ciam wrote within their athens charter that, “architecture must once again be placed in the service of man,”1 and even the sharpest critics of ciam-inspired modern architecture seemed to search for the human being in architecture. the austrian artist friedensreich hundertwasser, for example, wrote a manifesto “give the houses back to the human beings.”2 many houses or even the works of some architects are marked as especially “humane.” alvar aalto is praised for being on his way “toward a human modernism.”3 the british-swedish architect ralph erskine is widely recognized as someone who designed humane buildings and is even called “the humane architect.”4 but although a lot of people would agree with this judgement, we can hardly tell exactly why his or aalto’s architecture are regarded as more humane than other members of team x--such as peter and alison smithson. they too tried to make a more humane architecture but somehow are widely perceived as having come up short.5 last but not least, one could point to the fierce discussions concerning the rightful interpretations of rudolph wittkower’s architectural principles in the age of humanism.6 the claim that architecture is made for human beings seems simultaneously obvious and in need of justification. what is the relevance and what is the content of architects’ claims about building for human beings? for whom do and did we build if not for human beings? in the service of which concept or idea of human beings should architecture be placed (e.g., for sober rational beings, for creatures with emotional needs, for more atomistic or social beings)? and rather generally: what does it mean to build for humans? is judging a work of architecture to be humane expressing anything more than a personal preference? there are so many questions and no easy answers. it might seem surprising that all these questions have no obvious philosophical answer because it has long been central to philosophy to answer exactly kant’s question “what is man?”7 many subsequent philosophers have tried to take up the challenge and to give answers. in the mid-twentieth century, even a veritable branch of philosophy called “philosophical anthropology” emerged in germany that has been entirely dedicated to the study of the kantian question. philosophers such as max scheler, arnold gehlen, and helmut plessner (partly also ernst cassirer and hans jonas) wrote their most important works about us humans and our characteristics. they tried to combine the results not only of modern evolutionary biology, ethology, and sociology but also 3 isparchitecture.com of history, cultural anthropology, psychology, and ethnology with the classical conceptions of humans as free and rational beings.8 but the heyday of philosophical anthropology seems to have gone. the latter half of the twentieth century was dominated by philosophical thought that dismissed such attempts at elucidating the essence of mankind as hopeless. such thinking denies the existence of a fixed human identity that we can grasp, understand, or even talk about. there is no human essence; only history. instead, we should look at what sociology, cultural anthropology, or evolutionary biology could tell us about the human condition.9 this thinking takes several forms. some antimentalists suspect an outdated essentialism or idealism that is based upon an entirely wrong metaphysics. radical naturalists agree, though with other arguments—for them there is no independent entity, like humans, and natural science has the last word (as quine claimed at some point). others take a dualistic stance according to which the realm of nature and of our cultural (socio-political) sphere have nothing in common and are to be looked at separately. for them, the only interesting questions about humans are attempts to locate them in (and explain them from) political or sociological conditions. all philosophical anthropology has to become sociology, as habermas famously claimed.10 others, like wittgenstein, look for linguistic questions or forms of life as the basis for philosophical refection on humans. and some, following heidegger, would even argue that it is dangerous to ask about “the” human being because he or she is essentially open and un-definable. everyone is simply what he or she makes out of himself or herself. any attempt to encapsulate the human being (or human nature) would only serve to limit him or her and to miss what we really are.11 the radical openness of humans as self-constructing beings does not allow for any characterisation of human beings as such, they claim.12 these are it has long been central to philosophy to answer exactly this question: what is man? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 4 ed it or ia l just some philosophical positions of the twentieth century—but they all agree that we cannot ask what we are and expect meaningful answers. the absence of anthropology from most contemporary philosophy creates a rather tricky situation. on the one side, contemporary philosophy tells us that all attempts to define what is characteristically human will fall short. but on the other side, we deal with humans every day and should know what that means (and actually do have some idea of it). furthermore, architects have to create buildings for beings of some description—a task which comes to seem altogether paradoxical if humans are, for us, a kind of black hole or invisible phantom that no one can possibly catch. building for a phantom is an otherworldly challenge. philosophy, it seems, cannot get off the hook of the kantian question. it is, after all, the paradigm human practice of reflecting on fundamental questions and challenges and thus of giving orientation to people. who else should do it? simply to run away (“catch me if you can!”) and to argue that humans are no possible object of reflection cannot suffice. the pertinence of the challenge demands better, even if we never get a final answer to the big question. that is probably also why some philosophers like noam chomsky in very recent years dare to ask again: “what kind of creatures are we?”13 that is why the 3rd international conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (see the call for papers at http://isparchitecture.com/events/3rd-international-conference/) has turned to human beings in architecture. it is, as we might say, an approach to the big question by the side entrance. our philosophical focus is not human beings as such, or human nature, but humans at home: human beings as those for whom we design and build houses which they use and where they stay. at the conference, this side entrance has turned out to be a rather successful door. even if the conference did not answer the big question—unsurprisingly—the papers and discussions showed us a wide range of fascinating facets of the human being in architecture and philosophy. on the one side, it helps us to formulate more clearly what architecture is meant to do. on the other side, it contributes to an important aspect of philosophical anthropology, namely that humans are beings that build houses. we need some kind of shelter, but houses are almost always more than a merely functional hut. they are deep expressions of our being and of our aspirations, what we belong to and how we conceive individual life and the life of a community. although it has always been generally acknowledged that human beings built dwelling places, more careful analysis of this need is revealing a lot about us. issues 3.1. and 3.2 of architecture philosophy contain a selection of papers developed out of the conference that did most to reveal its many facets. 5 isparchitecture.com we have selected them on the basis of their originality and quality, but we have also aimed at illustrating the variety of methodological a p p r o a c h e s . “ a r c h i t e c t u r a l anthropology,” as we might call it, is a field very much in the making and it seems too inappropriate to determine one kind of approach as the only possible one. that is also the reason why we are grateful to be able to include a dialogue at the outset between karsten harries and sir roger scruton about this fundamental question; namely on how to conceive of a philosophy of architecture and architectural anthropology. the two founding fathers, or at least great inspirers of two different schools of architectural philosophy (a more analytical orientation from scruton and a more phenomenological tradition from harries) rightly deserve to have the first word in this debate. true to form, we find that scruton approaches architecture as a demand on its justification, while harries begins with questions of home and of place. yet, should we be surprised to find that, starting from oblique angles to one another they find much convergence? this dialogue leads naturally to a paper that takes its starting point from another encounter of two great philosophers. pau pedragosa scrutinizes the discussion between ernst cassirer and martin heidegger about philosophy and the human being that took place in davos (switzerland) in 1929. figure 1: bamberg university ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 6 ed it or ia l his paper’s title, “presence or meaning in architecture,” encapsulates the fundamental oppositions in that debate that can be drawn from heidegger’s and cassirer’s ideas about the human being. drawing on the two philosophical giants’ different philosophical anthropologies, pedragosa argues for cultivating two different ways of understanding culture and, hence, architecture. cassirer‘s and heidegger’s antithetical conceptions of the human being can be described as the human activity for worldconstruction against the human receptivity for world-interpretation. finding merit in both conceptions, pedragosa follows cassirer to propose an understanding of architecture as a symbolic form that constructs new meanings; that buildings are the bearers of meaning. but he also finds much to recommend in heidegger’s approach; that architecture is less concerned with construction and more with the origin and the questioning of building; that the building is an irreducible presence of itself that opens up the environment. pedragosa argues that, while at the time of the debate it was widely perceived that heidegger had won, in the hard-won wisdom of the ensuing century, a more balanced appraisal is warranted. the exchange between two established philosophers and pedragosa’s paper examining established philosophic controversy surrounding the human in architecture are followed by selections that seek to expand the possible approaches to our topic. how important to our sense of home is the simple expectation that our architecture outlive us? mari hvattum’s paper “on durability” looks at how time is inscribed in human artefacts. starting with the sensible observation that architecture, in most cases, lasts longer than the people building it she makes a case for considering that in an age when the extremes of the ephemeral and the eternal are cultivated in equal measure, there may be reason to look again at the particular kind of durability pertaining to the human-made. this involves studying, not so much works, as work: how human making, as both gottfried semper and hannah arendt have reminded us, transforms ephemeral acts into (relatively) durable worlds, and how the past, whether we know it or not, inhabits the present. she does this by drawing on the specific example of the destruction and reconstruction of the famous bridge of mostar, bosnia; employing it as something of a case study for discussing how architecture provides essential touchstones for temporal beings. even though humans may not have a static nature, our relation to nature itself—that is to say, the world that goes on without us—is too important a topic to go unaddressed. henry dicks, in his paper “from anthropomimetic to biomimetic cities: the place of humans in 7 isparchitecture.com cities like forests,” observes that even though in recent years biomimicry has emerged as a powerful response to the problem of sustainability and today exerts an important influence on both architecture and urbanism, its implications for the humanities have been largely overlooked. taking a historical approach, the first key argument of this article is that throughout western history the dominant model for the polis, qua both city and state, has been the human being and that it was also this basic model that underlay traditional understandings of the place of humans in cities and states. with the transition to biomimetic cities and states, the key model of which is the forest ecosystem, the question of the place of humans arises once again. in response to this question, dicks proposes a speculative philosophical anthropology based on a combination of heidegger’s thinking of the clearing and recent insights from the study of human evolution and prehistory with a view to grounding a new model of the polis not simply on the forest, but rather on the forest and the clearing. his invocation of the heideggerian forest and clearing in this regard is likely to spark future debate. we then conclude the first volume with marion roussel’s “towards a post-human era? digital architects and the future of mankind,” which looks at possible futures. roussel believes that in this age of unprecedented technological progress, we can no longer ask “what is man?” without examining what we think man will become. in the field of architecture such an examination necessitates considering both what and for whom we will be building in the decades to come. looking at the future world visions from the commentary of digital architects from the 1990s to the present day, this paper aims to show how these architects have already been imagining the future of mankind. it attempts to shed light upon our present state of evolution and the expected outcome of that evolution. taken together, we believe these papers illustrate that addressing the question of what we mean now by the human in architecture can and must run the full gamut of humans’ time on the planet; from the prehistory of the clearing in the forest to the strange possible futures made possible by modern technology. it is a question as relevant ever. endnotes [1] le corbusier, the athens charter (1943), §87. based on studies undertaken at the congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (ciam) in athens, 1933. accessed on moderist architecture, https://modernistarchitecture. wordpress.com/2010/11/03/ciam%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9ctheathens-charter%e2%80%9d-1933/. [2] our translation. for the original, see friedensreich hundertwasser, gebt den menschen die häuser zurück (münchen: pattloch, 2003). [3] alvar aalto, toward a human modernism, ed. winfried nerdinger (new york: prestel, 1999). [4] mats egelius, “ralph erskine: the humane architect,” architectural design profile vol. 9 (london: architectural design, 1977). [5] team 10 meetings: 1953-1984, ed. alison margaret smithson (new york: rizzoli, 1991) and alison margaret smithson and peter smithson, the charged void: architecture (new york: monacelli press, 2001). [6] rudolf wittkower, architectural principles in the age of humanism (new york: norton, 1971); geoffrey scott, the architecture of humanism. a study in the history of taste (london: architectural press, 1980); and alina alexandra payne, “rudolf wittkower and architectural principles in the age of modernism,” journal of the society of architectural historians 53, no. 3 (1994): 322–342, doi: 10.2307/990940. [7] immanuel kant, “logik,” akademieausgabe band ix (berlin: 1900ff.), aa ix s.25. [8] for an extensive view on the tradition of philosophische anthropologie see joachim fischer, philosophische anthropologie: eine denkrichtung des 20. jahrhunderts (freiburg im breisgau: alber, 2009). some of the most important books include max scheler, die stellung des menschen im kosmos (bonn: bouvier, 1991); arnold gehlen, der mensch. seine natur und seine stellung in der welt (bonn: athenäum, 1962); helmuth plessner, die stufen des organischen und der mensch. einleitung in die philosophische anthropologie (berlin: de gruyter, 1965); and ernst cassirer, an essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture (new haven: yale university press, 1992). [9] michael tomasello, a natural history of human thinking (cambridge: harvard university press, 2014). [10] cf. jürgen habermas, “anthropologie, philosophische,” in das fischer lexikon: philosophie, ed. alwin diemer and ivo frenzel (frankfurt am main: fischer, 1958), 18–35. [11] martin heidegger, über den humanismus (frankfurt am main: klostermann, 2000). [12] ibid. [13] noam chomsky, what kind of creatures are we? (new york: columbia university press, 2015). isparchitecture.com building thinking asking: what is the right way to do philosophy of architecture? a panel discussion between karsten harries and sir roger scruton moderated by christian illies karsten harries: when i was asked to participate in this session, i was told our conversation had to do with “building thinking asking: what is the right way to do philosophy of architecture?” what does the title mean to the philosophy of architecture? the question of course presupposes that there is the right way—i am not at all sure that there is. philosophers have concerned themselves with all sorts of things. they can write about sports, about the philosophy of cooking, just about anything is suitable fodder for philosophers of different types. now philosophers have concerned themselves especially with the different arts. this is what aesthetics stands for. and it has long martin düchs (l) introduced and christian illies (r) moderated the panel discussion between karsten harries (cl) and roger scruton (cr) ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 10 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on been recognized that architecture is one of the arts. but it had also been recognized that architecture is the art that poorly fits with the other arts in many ways because it is so dependent on the demands that the world puts on architects. so it is essentially an impure art. at least if you measure purity by a concern for beauty. so it is the one art that, perhaps more than any other, has to be sent into the world. that is to say, architecture has to recognize not only the physical neediness of man that’s obvious, but the spiritual neediness of man. that is more definitive. so given an understanding of beauty as ideally a self-sufficient presence, the sort of understanding that we can trace back, for instance, to baumgarten, architecture’s descent into the world must be considered as something like an unfortunate concession. the architect has to almost contaminate his concern for beauty, so understood. i think architecture invites us to question this understanding of beauty, not just for architecture, but to question in general the understanding of the work of art as an ideally self-sufficient aesthetic object. architecture’s descent into the world raises this question: must the understanding of beauty not be questioned that has played such a powerful role in the evolution of aesthetics; must it not be challenged? should beauty have a different function? in this connection i have argued that beauty should be understood as re-presenting the beautiful object—here i appeal to ernesto grassi for support—that the beautiful object forces us to look again. the object re-presents itself. it refuses to go away. and i think that when we go to vierzehnheiligen and banz abbey we will have a chance to experience that effect of beauty on these buildings. their beauty forces us to look again. they won’t leave us alone. so i want to say that the philosophy of architecture more than any other philosophy of art invites us to rethink the nature of beauty in general, also the essence of aesthetics. i also want to raise some questions about the relationship of architecture and philosophy. for a long time architecture and philosophy have gotten along quite well without worrying too much about each other. and many architects today still do not worry about philosophy at all. does that say something important? to be sure, there is something like a ‘philosophy envy’ among a certain small group of architects, or a theory envy, so that this group is open to philosophy in a way that invites questions. that deserves discussion. but that’s a little bit different from my first point, so i think we probably should stop there. christian illies: thank you karsten. i think, after having raised the issue of beauty, we cannot possibly stop roger from commenting on that. roger scruton: everything that karsten said was really interesting, i 11 isparchitecture.com don’t think i disagree with him in any way. but perhaps i should say a little bit about how i came about my interest in this topic, because it is unusual for an analytical philosopher to address aesthetics. karsten is much more used to the phenomenological and art historical way of approaching things, where the meaning of architectural objects is clearly part of how we experience them. analytic philosophy, which was my training at cambridge, or at least when i was growing up, largely ignored questions of aesthetics. and certainly the idea that you should be interested in the objects around you was disapproved of. but i’ve always been interested in the objects around me. when i was sixteen and first became aware of the world, it was architecture that principally impacted upon me. i was living in a little town, marlow, on the river thames near high wycombe—in a scruffy little working class house for the working poor. and around me was the beautiful old english gingerbread town of marlow. however, the developers were at work pulling it all down and putting up their glass and steel facades and concrete girders. that awoke me to the idea that the world is perhaps not as permanent as i had hoped, and that all kinds of evil forces were at work pulling it apart. that thought was deep in me throughout my career as an undergraduate. and when i started doing research in philosophy i decided, yes, i will do aesthetics because maybe that would will help me to understand what i felt when i had seen the uglification, as kundera calls it, of the world in which i was living. eventually that led to my book on architecture. but i was hampered by my training, i have to say. karsten was lucky, he wasn’t hampered by having a training in analytic philosophy. he looked to be sure, there is something like a ‘philosophy envy’ among a certain small group of architects “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 12 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on at the ‘things themselves’ as heidegger would say, or husserl at least, and extracted from them his philosophical ideas. i had to come down from the scaffolding that analytic philosophy erects above everything and bring my logical distinctions to earth. i had to apply them to what i read about what architects say and what architectural critics say. but i was rescued by one particular architectural critic and that is ruskin. i am sure you’ve all come across him—a slightly crazy but incredibly cultivated victorian writer for whom architecture really was an expression of the moral life. he had problems with women. but in architecture he saw the fruit of what we are as human beings. he tried to express it in the seven lamps of architecture and in the wonderful book the stones of venice. those are books that everyone should read. i had the sense that this is what philosophy should be like. how could i bring my analytical training to bear on the kinds of questions ruskin was raising: questions about the spiritual, historical meaning, the social significance of buildings, and the way in which for him the holy spirit enhances what we build? for ruskin, buildings were not made of stone; they were made of some spiritual substance which happened to have borrowed stone temporarily in order to manifest itself to us. that’s a hegelian thought, of course. i am sorry to hear that hegel fled from bamberg. but his writings on architecture show that he wasn’t that sensitive to this particular art-form. in the end i came around to see that heidegger’s wonderful essay on “building dwelling thinking” contains deep truths that we analytic philosophers have to rediscover. it is very hard though, and we have a discipline that we have to fight against to rediscover those truths. so, i’ve been wrestling downwards from that great analytical skeleton to the place where karsten has been “wallowing” successfully for some years. harries: for me, my interest in architecture is way older than my interest in philosophy, and it has continued to be a very intense interest. it began very early. it began—i recall the exact moment—it began when i was 7 years old—we had left burning berlin and found a home in bad königshofen. there’s a church outside bad königshofen, the pilgrimage church mariä geburt in ipthausen, and that church overwhelmed me. we were not religious. it was not a religious experience, and it wasn’t an aesthetic experience. it seemed as if i had stepped into another world. as if something touched me that i had not experienced. nowhere in berlin had there been anything like that. later, when i went to munich to the max-gymnasium and saw churches like the abbey church of kloster andechs, these churches repeated the experience to some extent. that intense experience of 18th 13 isparchitecture.com century churches in southern germany antedates my interest in philosophy. i could imagine myself working today in art history—indeed in any number of history studies. my interest in philosophy emerged partly because i was also very interested in mathematics. i tended towards philosophy because i thought it less confining. after i had come to america with my parents, had studied at yale, and begun to teach there, my colleagues in philosophy were more interested in painting as the purer art, but the architects felt the need for something like a philosophical core in our architecture school’s undergraduate program. so i was approached by the director of undergraduate studies kent bloomer—i had just published the meaning of modern art and grown a little tired of teaching this material. i was asked whether i would teach a beginning course in the philosophy of architecture in the architecture school. so that’s how it all began. the ethical function of architecture was, basically, the result of my course notes. it was written very much in connection with the development of that course. but it was not identical with it. since the book was reasonably successful, it led to requests for lectures and essays that kept me going. in recent years i’ve done a lot of other things, but have always drifted back to this topic. scruton: that’s very interesting because, i suppose, i was awakened to the problems of architecture by my experience of seeing the town demolished. it wasn’t from great works of art that i learned to care about building, but from ordinary natural streets. but they nevertheless were home, and there was something ‘unheimlich’ about their destruction. that really awoke me to the ethical significance of architecture. obviously ruskin was writing about great works of architecture, just as you write. i spent some time in rome after leaving it wasn’t from great works of art that i learned to care about building, but from ordinary natural streets “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 14 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on university, and was overwhelmed by the fabric of the city, and especially the roman baroque and borromini as its greatest exponent. but i came back with the thought that if you can’t defend the ordinary, vernacular, uninteresting architecture which we all appreciate without noticing it, then you haven’t done architecture justice. the americans see beautiful buildings from the past as landmarks and say to themselves, “this has got to be preserved.” so you’ll see a rather beautiful courthouse surrounded by horrible towers of mirror glass which completely destroy its character, and i want to say: “that wasn’t the point.” this courthouse only made sense because of all the things that surrounded it. if we can only treat architecture as a collection of great works of art then we have missed what really matters. harries: on that we completely agree. i do want to invite us to think a little bit more about how works of architecture relate to the vernacular. for instance, my wife and i explored the area around bamberg a bit and we noticed how the churches related to the red roofs of the houses around them. what moved us was the way architecture related to the vernacular—the way the roof of some church related to these other red roofs. there’s this important dialogue going on between the vernacular and works of architecture. but sometimes the latter get in the way of more modest buildings. these get blocked by these works of architecture, by works which refuse, really, to engage with the vernacular. there is a problem when you get a building that just sits in the city, doesn’t move, and doesn’t engage its surroundings in an important way. it just sits there and wants to be appreciated as a self-sufficient aesthetic object. what we are talking about, what i want to talk about, is that architecture should answer to, should speak to the vernacular. buildings should recognize they are not just sitting alone. they should also respond to the weather. this can be seen with the strongest architecture in central europe—consider, e.g., fischer von erlach’s italianate villas. it is interesting to look at the way his southern work was appropriated by viennese architects. they realized that the weather made it impossible to create italian forms in the north. the weather just wouldn’t allow certain domes or made their upkeep very expensive. the ice would tear them apart. for the same reason, the fabric of the french cathedrals is not very suitable to the kind of climate we have here. the baroque architecture in southern germany and especially the austrian baroque is a beautiful answer to those who tried to build italian architecture and failed to consider how the weather would tear it apart. and the result is the typical or what we think of as the typical 15 isparchitecture.com south german and austrian baroque. the weather comes into the picture, and that is to say, also, the vernacular. this means that the architect should be sensitive to the climate, consider the way the vernacular relates to the climate. the weather helps give works of architecture their special voice. illies: you’ve both approached architecture from a very personal experience. but what role does philosophy play in this experience? part of what you say could have been said without philosophy. is was simply about how educated people should approach architecture. that seems to raise no specific question for philosophy, rather, more generally, the problem of aesthetic education. or is there a specific role for philosophy in it? and what would that exactly be? harries: we can see the issue with our architecture students. there is the idea of the work as something that we ought to discuss in isolation, as a beautiful object. they want to create a beautiful object by bounding space in certain ways. that seems to be the task for many of these students. and there is a presupposition here, namely the aesthetic understanding of the successful work of art as ideally a self-sufficient object. it is here upheld, even if there are concessions to functions and so on. but i would challenge this. here i think a philosopher’s task is a little bit like yeast. he should raise questions that make architects more mindful. some of these questions involve philosophical assumptions. this is a self-critical function of philosophy. scruton: i was going to say that there is an aspect of philosophy which is neglected by architects and which should not be neglected because architecture is an application of practical reason, you’ve both approached architecture from a very personal experience. but what role does philosophy play in this experience? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 16 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on about which philosophy has something to say. consider the questions: “why do this?” “why add that detail?” “why go on in this way?” philosophers have had a lot to say about those questions. for example, they have distinguished reasons about means from reasons about ends. architecture was invaded by the functionalist heresy at a certain stage, which made all practical reasons into reasons about means. functionalism was part of the utilitarian disease, which had a long gestation period in the nineteenth century. ruskin was battling against that disease. of course there are important means to our ends, but there are also the ends themselves. we have to understand them. we have to reason about them. when you lay a table, for example, or when you put your clothes on in the morning, you are not reasoning about means, you are reasoning about ends. you are saying: “how should this be, in itself ?” “how should it be and therefore how should it look?” and you are always, as kant says, looking for agreement in judgment. you try to imagine the others into the arena with you. of course karsten is right, weather is always important. function is always important. but function is not the end of the architect. harries: this relates to something we said before. we spoke of the vernacular and how it makes you feel at home. and you need to feel metaphysically at home. and when you spoke of laying out a table for a nice meal, somehow this makes us also feel more at home in that room. that’s an accomplishment. and it is an accomplishment if we build and from the very beginning keep in mind that function; if we build not just to provide shelter, but bound space in such a way that we feel somehow more at home. scruton: yes. harries: it is crucial to bound space in such a way that we feel somehow more at home, not that we necessarily will feel more spiritually at home. but that remains an important function of architecture. illies: you criticized the idea of the self-sufficient aesthetic object, which removes architecture from exactly that function. but is that not also a problem of all aesthetic decisions? when i say, “the window has to be exactly there, because there it is right. it cannot be an inch further to the left. this is its place,” am i already moving too much towards the self-sufficiency of the object and away from the homeliness? it must be like this because it has exactly the right light, or something like that. is there some sort of tension between these two forms of thinking? scruton: yes. now you see, when you are doing philosophy, or philosophy about architecture, you are asking the question: “how do you 17 isparchitecture.com reason about the intrinsic rightness of something? what are the constraints? is it just that you are trying to create a home, or is it about something else?” to me, that is what aesthetics is about. and i think analytical philosophy is probably in need of correction here. however, i may be the only one who thinks that. [laughs] the question you raised puzzles me. interestingly enough, wittgenstein in his few remarks about aesthetics, fixes on that very example. he thinks of a door. what guides me in designing and making a door? and he says, you don’t ask whether it is beautiful or not. you ask: “is it right? does it look right to you?” “does it fit in?” the functionalists think they can settle such questions by procedures and that’s what’s wrong with them. when there is no procedure for answering a question, there may be a real question nevertheless. harries: here we must recognize how conditioned the question of what is right or wrong is by historic circumstances.take the example of vierzehnheiligen. balthasar neumann had planned a cruciform basilica with the altar to the fourteen saints to be placed in the crossing, as one might figure 1: vierzehnheiligen, banz, germany ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 18 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on expect. but the architect in charge of executing neumann’s plans, gottfried heinrich krohne, whose own earlier design had been rejected, missed the sacred place by quite a few yards by moving the church to the east, which caused the sacred spot to fall into the nave. apparently, this protestant architect did not take it to be all that important: what did a few feet matter. but they did matter. what was to be done? the executed plan hints at the ingenious solution at which neumann arrived. he made things right. here you have an understanding of what is right that is very different from the sense of right that would be part of a society that doesn’t bring the religious into the story. neumann could not say, “oh it doesn’t matter, a few yards to the east or the west”—because here the architecture had to respond to precisely this very specific sacred place. we no longer reckon with place in that way. take the example of a house. the place has significance for any number of reasons. and then you ask, “what’s right?” there is no simple answer. it depends on the context in which the question gets raised and then different answers will be given in a different context. scruton: what animated me when i wrote the aesthetics of architecture was in part the sense that people give phony answers to the question, “what is right?” they invent something like corbusier’s modulor, in order to justify the nonsensical things that they do. i think we should recognize that people take refuge in systems, when it is precisely the systems that are wrong. alberti wrote beautifully about this when he said that what matters in architecture is the appropriate. he hardly ever uses the word “beautiful” or any equivalent of it. but the appropriate object in the appropriate place matters and that should guide architecture. for that it is very hard to find rules. maybe you are saying that the rules have to be constructed post facto. we generalize from what has been successful. that’s what the rococo style in this room exhibits. no architect, i hope, had anything to do with this—a local builder did it. harries: it’s not rococo. scruton: late baroque, then. illies: the problem i have with “feeling at home” is that some people feel at home in buildings i think they shouldn’t feel at home in. especially in the standard architecture of today—with its appalling inappropriateness. harries: since you mentioned it, i think this is a good place to pursue this question, a question that heidegger has discussed in “building dwelling thinking”. first of all, he gives us a very broad definition of 19 isparchitecture.com ‘building.’ and he points out that philosophy and architecture, both in a sense, have built—one in a conceptual space, the other one in a real space. from the very beginning people have tried to orient themselves in space by bounding it in various ways to make themselves feel at home. and they have not just done that by building in the literal sense by raising structures, but they have also done so conceptually, mainly through language, by slowly controlling their environment. they are both ways of grappling with the task of making this world into a home. this need has been a fact from the very beginning and it remains a need architecture must meet to prove itself. scruton: i think that the word ‘wohnen,’ which is in the title of heidegger’s essay, could also be translated as “settlement.” i think that’s really what he had in mind, and that’s something that all human beings need. we are, naturally, settled beings. we can be launched into nomadic existence in desperate situations. but our natural condition, and that is especially true of european civilization, is settling in one place. and maybe the story of romulus and remus, of how the settler took advantage over the wanderer, tells us something. settling means having boundaries, and recognizing within those boundaries that we are sharing things. we don’t share everything. we don’t share our wives and children and the rest of our domestic assets. nevertheless of the things we do share the most important is often the temple—which is the mark of our settlement. that is why with heidegger we can say that it’s important to get the sacred place to be in the right place. harries: i am surprised to hear you quoting heidegger! we are, naturally, settled beings “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 20 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on scruton: i am an educated man! [laughs] harries: today it seems to me that we face, thinking of architecture, two challenges: one is the increasing scarcity of space. i think that architects are still profligate in their use of space because they don’t realize that space is becoming a scarce resource. i think that this is something that architects can learn from history: to reckon with space as a scarce resource. we aren’t just talking about cars and air pollution, but space itself. and the other challenge is in a way an opposite challenge. we are liberated, as never before, by the digital revolution. it opens up an entirely new space. so there is a tension here between, on the one hand, the increasing scarcity of space and, on the other hand, that opening up of space which promises a new freedom. there is the call of freedom that speaks on the one side. and there is the opposite call to be settled in one place. i think the successful architecture of today should not try to find a solution in the middle, but has to recognize that that tension is part of a successful life. that we cannot have it one way or the other, that that thought shortchanges us. so we have to give space to freedom, and also to the need to have a home. we need both. without that we impoverish ourselves. scruton: i think that one of the things that troubled me when i first started thinking about this is an incident that occurred in 1979, i think, when i published the aesthetics of architecture. i was reading gideon’s book space, time and architecture. i thought here was somebody who didn’t really understand physics and who is playing around with concepts beyond his grasp. he made it look as if architecture is simply about space and not about that much more important thing, which is the boundary that encloses space. gideon gave the sense of conquering the world, of opening up and of making it our own, when in fact all the great architecture we know from the past history was putting boundaries around space, making it smaller. people had to make it smaller in the middle ages. those little hilltop towns in italy, which everybody loves, contained an awful lot of people—a thousand or two thousand people in that tiny little area. they had to be in that area because it was the only thing they could defend. but by being crowded in that space, they made their piled-up homes beautiful, and i think all were at home there. italians now may go to america and make a fortune, coming back to build some absolutely appalling bungalow in the valley underneath. but still their heart is in that little village on the top. i think that idea that we enclose space, that we make it smaller, so as to adapt it to ourselves, is a really important part of the architectural motive. 21 isparchitecture.com harries: yes, i agree with what you said, but i think we shouldn’t forget that other metaphor, which finds its expression in an understanding of the church in the image of jacob’s ladder, a ladder that escapes the earth and that opens it up [gestures to the sky]. you will see in the church of vierzehnheiligen how self-consciously the architect opens up the architecture to the infinite. illies: that sounds as if karsten becomes a hegelian and roger turns into a heideggerian. we should close the conversation before the transformations get out of hand, and open it to the audience. audience questions question: what about heidegger’s “terror of time.” where do you think it belongs? does it belong to architecture or philosophy? harries: where does it belong? it belongs to both. i think it is part of the human situation. question: that means it belongs to space as well? harries: i think the two are related. as a matter of fact, the separation of time and space is itself very problematic. i talk a lot about that. how space and time are one. in other words, i am not satisfied by separating the arts of space and the arts of time. i think space enters into music, and time enters into architecture. and so the “terror” comes to both. question: you both mentioned vernacular architecture. i want to ask, what do you think about the role of tradition and style? it imposes rules: rules which allow us to understand and still to create homely architecture. scruton: i think it’s a fundamental question. when rules are a priori rules, worked out without consulting the object, and preceding the practical problem, you might justify them perhaps in functional terms. but there are also certain rules ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 22 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on in architecture that define tradition rather than reasoned solutions. they are not a priori maxims, but the collective wisdom over the many years— people worked them out by trial and error. architects see (for example) that when you make a room like this you should have a molding that goes along just below the ceiling, which has got three or four parallel lines in it, so as to bring the wall to an end. that’s something discovered over many centuries. and until modernism came along it was accepted. those are the sort of things that are, i would say, legitimate rules in architecture. they are not a priori rules, they are the résumés of experience—that’s what a tradition is. why do human beings need traditions, and when is it right to depart from them and when is it wrong to follow them? these are the big questions of the twentieth century. question: you spoke of the spiritual in architecture. can there be such a thing as exclusively secular architecture? scruton: jolly good question. [to harries] shall i just say something? harries: you start. scruton: i have in recent years been quite intrigued by that question because i am very much impressed by what the classical tradition achieved. in all its forms. in particular, in vernacular architecture. you are familiar with the vernacular georgian house. it uses details which are mimicked in the next house. there’s something similar with the german baroque cities. but the origin of the repeated details is not secular. it is holy. the details come from the greek and roman temples in the neoclassical case or from the baroque churches in the german case. so it looks as though the deeper ground of vernacular architecture does not come from the secular world. it comes from something holy—whether you say it was handed down by god, or just say it comes from the religious instinct. funnily enough, if you look back at the book of exodus, at the moment when god hands down the tablets of the law to moses, he hands down at the same time the design for a temple. he says “i don’t just want you to stop committing adultery and am not only speaking of the other things you’ve been doing. i want you to build a home for me, and here’s how you do it with columns, architraves, and capitals.” it’s very much a metaphor, but we do think ultimately that the origin of architectural grammar has to be divine. today we live in a secular society that doesn’t believe there is a divine origin of things. so somebody could say that this leaves us in the wilderness harries: i would give a somewhat different answer with less emphasis on the classical tradition. but i would also say that it is a mistake to divorce the sacred from the beautiful. and that the vernacular buildings 23 isparchitecture.com that roger speaks of, in some measure, all recognize the beautiful. in unpacking this, i don’t consider myself particularly religious. i would emphasize the re-presentational function of the beautiful; that is where we should begin. when i deck out a table for a festive meal, that is what i do: i invite people, as it were, to feel good in that room at that table. i think that’s what vernacular architecture does too. that’s what a good, wellplaced door does. scruton: a festive meal, though, traditionally, allows you to see a state of grace. harries: yes, and i would welcome that. i think that we recognize the importance of the distinction between the sacred festal and less festal times. and the same thing goes for spaces. this is part of a successful life. illies: would you say that a similar thing happens even in modernist architecture, where you don’t start with divine points of reference? but architects still need, do they not, some normative points of reference? you look for certain qualities to replace the divine points of orientation, for example the ideal of ‘equality.’ they can give a kind of orientation for an entire building. so you still have an orientation in normative ideals—functionless ideals which are then incarnated in the entire building. harries: i would like to then turn to particular examples. i would agree with you here, but what i would not overlook is the offering of the site. it’s not just the materials, it’s not just the setting, it’s the recognition of the site and its constraints. the building then re-presents the landscape; it lets us look more happily at it. a good building is not like a scar on the land, it lets you look more happily at that land—at the same land. i think quite a few modern architects succeeded very well at that. so i would not restrict it to a certain style. i mean i happen to like the eighteenth century, but if i ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 24 k a r st en h a r r ie s & r og er s cr ut on were to build myself a house today, it would be modern. scruton: well, yes, i would disagree with that bit! [general laughter] question: if we were to look at architecture today, it is on the one hand characterized by different approaches with different priorities. on the other hand, we have to try to integrate architecture. what shall we do? should we try to correlate the different approaches in a more substantive way, or should we remain constant on this different approach? scruton: hegel says in the introduction to the “elements of the philosophy of right,” when philosophy paints its gray in gray, then has a form of life grown old—meaning that philosophy comes after life. it’s a reflection upon it, and it is not the premise upon which life begins. i think this is also true about the philosophy of architecture. you don’t want architects to begin from a philosophy of architecture. you want them to be architects. philosophers meditate on what they are doing, and perhaps make sense of it. but there is always a danger in trying to start from a philosophy of something and then arriving at the thing. one of my writings consists of a book on the philosophy of wine. i’ve never thought that someone could start making wine by learning the philosophy of it. but of course wine is an incredibly pregnant object for a philosopher to think about, and also to drink. so the philosophy comes afterward. of course you can come to the conclusion, through philosophy, that this architect is doing something really interesting and this one is perhaps doing something wrong or whatever, but those are not topics that architects themselves need to be very interested in. harries: i would just want to add that, yes, philosophy should come afterwards, but i think it should come afterwards with its questions. that is, it should make the architect a little bit less sure of himself. it should invite him to call into question certain assumptions. for example, the attitudes towards space of the students in our architecture schools. i think it needs to be challenged. it needs to be questioned. so i see the function of philosophy in architecture schools to be a little like yeast that makes the dough rise, as it were. iillies: thank you very much. we’ve had fascinating conversions between karsten and sir roger and heidegger and hegel. but it is time to come to an end. let us do what roger warned us not to do; we inverse the order. we’ve had philosophy, and now we turn to wine. acknowledgment: the editors would like to thank tom spector whose transcription made this article possible. isparchitecture.com presence or meaning in architecture pau pedragosa 1. the davos debate ernst cassirer and martin heidegger met in 1929 for a public debate in the town of davos in the swiss alps.1 over time the debate took on a legendary character and has become a key episode in the european history of ideas. cassirer and heidegger defended two antithetical images of the human being, which are also two antithetical images of culture and hence of architecture. the davos debate was a great cultural antagonism of the weimar republic. on the one side cassirer, heir of kant and goethe, a humanist of the enlightenment and a cosmopolitan jew. on the other side the anti-humanist and provincial heidegger. four years later, heidegger embraced the nazi revolution and cassirer was forced into exile.2 it is tempting to draw political conclusions from both philosophies (and we will draw some conclusions at the end of this paper), but to contemporaries of the 1929 debate, the confrontation was philosophical, not political.3 heidegger’s thinking implied a radical break with and destruction of the past, but this break had not yet received the political form he gave it in 1933.4 in general terms the davos debate involved the clash of two different conceptions of philosophy: between humanist philosophy and the existentialist, non-humanistic philosophy of the new era. what heidegger criticized during the 1920s were the ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 26 pe dr a go sa humanist ideas of progress and freedom. in a direct encounter with cassirer, the most eminent representative of neo-kantian “rationalism,” heidegger presented himself as the author of a fundamentally new kind of philosophy destined to replace the remaining “rationalist” tendencies in husserlian phenomenology as well.5 heidegger in fact “won” the debate against cassirer and the young students at davos agreed with his revolt against the “rationalism” of the neo-kantian tradition.6 heidegger gave voice to the generation struck by the violence of the first world war, which was seen as a huge break with tradition.7 this perspective of a new generation led some toward fascism and others toward communism, while others, like cassirer, stood for the democratic parliamentarian politics of the weimer republic. cassirer was not only one of the most eminent representatives of the classical liberal intellectual tradition in germany, he was also a representative of modern political republicanism. he owed his academic career to the weimar republic, because he was offered a professorship at the newly founded university in hamburg in 1919. he defended weimar in the university on the occasion of the tenth anniversary celebration of the republic in august 1928. against the popular view that the weimar republic was “un-german,”8 he argued that the idea of a republican constitution had its origin in the german philosophical tradition.9 the confrontation in davos turned on the interpretation of kant’s philosophy. yet the debate was more enduring and broader than the technical matters of philosophical interpretation, and touched on the central issue of what it is to be human. their essential disagreement was that, for cassirer, the human being is essentially a being endowed with a capacity for creation. for heidegger, the essence of the human being is a special kind of receptivity by virtue of which the human stands within the “openness of being.” where cassirer puts activity, creativity and freedom, heidegger proposes passivity and receptivity.10 the disagreement between them defines two opposing anthropological conceptions: the human capacity for world-construction against the human receptivity for world-interpretation. 2. ernst cassirer from 1919 until his exile in 1933 (the whole period of the weimar republic), cassirer held a chair in philosophy at the newly founded university of hamburg, located in one of the most liberal towns in germany. it was during this period that he brought out the three volumes 27 isparchitecture.com of the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume one: language, 1923; volume two: mythical thought, 1925; volume three: the phenomenology of knowledge, 1929. with this mature work, cassirer distances himself from the neo-kantian marburg school to which he belonged. this is not to deny the continuities between cassirer and neo-kantianism. the essential philosophical position of the entire neo-kantian tradition, also shared by cassirer, is transcendental idealism, which states that we only understand of the world what we put into it through our own reason, concretized by kant as applying concepts spontaneously to what is passively received by the senses. it requires the dualism of intuitions and concepts. kant’s copernican turn means that nature is not something we experience passively, but something to which we ascribe concepts in order to understand it. we understand what we put in nature, rather than what nature gives us. cassirer points this out: what is true for us is only what we ourselves have created.11 both the neo-kantian marburg school and cassirer reclaim science as an essential transcendental creation of human reason. but cassirer distances himself from kant and neo-kantianism by relaxing the scientism of the marburg school in favour of a more pluralistic theory of cultural expression, including a historical variation to the fixed kantian a priori. cassirer takes a new and original step from the critique of reason to a critique of culture. cassirer defines the human being by his special capacity to create, in complete freedom, worlds of meaning. these worlds become the objective culture of myth, religion, art, language, and science. he terms these objective cultural worlds “symbolic forms.”12 for cassirer, to be human is to be an animal symbolicum, an animal distinguished by the spontaneous capacity for symbolic expression. this the davos debate involved the clash of two different conceptions of philosophy “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 28 pe dr a go sa capacity has developed historically: as the human being passes from the mythic to the modern-scientific understanding of the world, it undergoes a process of enlightenment, an emancipatory awakening to its role as creator of its own symbolic reality: the history of human culture is “the process of man’s progressive self-liberation.”13 even though cassirer understood the sequence of symbolic forms as a historical narrative from myth to science, during the 1920s and by the time of the davos debate he defended a pluralistic approach and tended to see mythical thinking and rational thinking as co-existing forms of reflection and of approaching reality. it was only after the third reich that he became much more critical about mythical approaches (mainly in his last book, the myth of the state.) he then argued that the mythic symbolization of reality had to be overcome by scientific reason in order to prevent philosophical and, much more dangerous, political irrationalism. as we will see at the end of this paper, cassirer interpreted heidegger’s philosophy and nazism as such irrationality. both were made possible the irruption of myth in modern times. 2.1 from substance to function this narrative of human beings’ historical emancipation was already in place in cassirer’s previous work of 1910, substance and function,14 in which cassirer explains two ways of concept formation: the traditional and the modern one. cassirer begins by discussing the problem of concept formation and by criticizing, in particular, the “abstractionist” theory on which concepts are arrived at by ascending inductively from sensory particulars. this is the traditional manner of concept formation, the aristotelian logic of genus and species. any science based on this theory of concept formation can only be descriptive and classificatory, and proceeds by abstraction, forming ever-higher generic concepts (ascending from the sensory particulars to ever higher species and genera). this theory is also an expression of realism, where reality is thought to exist in itself, and the concepts “mirror” or “copy” nature as the realm of things conceived as substances. the substance is the fixed and ultimate substratum of changeable qualities. from this results a metaphysical “copy” or mimetic theory of knowledge, according to which the truth of our sensory representations consists in a relation of pictorial similarity between them and the ultimate things or substances lying behind our representations.15 cassirer is concerned to replace this mimetic theory with the 29 isparchitecture.com “constructivist” theory: in opposition to the logic of the generic concept, which, as we saw, represents the point of view and influence of the concept of substance, there now appears the logic of the mathematical concept of function. however, the field of application of this form of logic is not confined to mathematics alone. on the contrary, it extends over into the field of the knowledge of nature; for the concept of function constitutes the general schema and model according to which the modern concept of nature has been moulded in its progressive historical development.16 with the new concept of function, we achieve the truth of an object, not by picturing a realm of metaphysical substances constituting the enduring substrate of the empirical phenomena, but rather in virtue of an embedding of the empirical phenomena into an ideal formal structure of mathematical relations.17 this is the modern manner of concept formation, which is not descriptive and mirroring but constructive. this type of concept formation constructs concepts and thereby things. what are constructed in this method are relations of things. the relations are not in the world, but constructed by pure thinking. they are logical relations and nothing existing in nature. this concept-formation defines the logic of scientific knowledge in modernity: the new symbolic language of mathematics and physics, which is totally formal.18 metaphysics of substance implies a mindindependent reality, which imposes its conditions on conceptualization. the theory of function, on the contrary, is totally a conceptual abstraction or symbolization to which reality adapts. 2.2 symbolic forms cassirer’s theory of scientific development therefore ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 30 pe dr a go sa presupposes the gradual desubstantialization of reality and its replacement by a symbolized, purely conceptual theory of relations. science gradually breaks free from a substantive conception of reality. just as the functional theory replaces the “copy” theory of knowledge, so does the more general theory of meaningful representation developed in the philosophy of symbolic forms. we overcome the mimetic theory of knowledge by the insight that science must work up our sensory impressions into freely created theoretical structures. similarly, all symbolic forms must subject the mere sensory given to the free creative activities of the transcendental subject.19 in the third volume of the philosophy of symbolic forms, the phenomenology of knowledge, cassirer explains the plurality and historically evolving symbolic forms according to three main symbolic capacities or functions of the transcendental subject: the expressive function20 (ausdrucksfunktion), the representative function21 (darstellungsfunktion) and the significative or meaning function22 (bedeutungsfunktion.). these functions give rise to three main world-presentations: the mythical world, the intuitive world, and the theoretical world. the more primitive ones give birth to the more sophisticated ones.the most basic and primitive type of symbolic meaning is expressive meaning, which is the product of the expressive function. the experience of events in the world around us is charged with affective and emotional significance, as desirable or hateful, comforting or threatening: [t]he world of mythical experience is not grounded in either representative or significance-giving acts, but in pure experiences of expression. what is here present as ‘reality’ is not a complex of things provided with determinate ‘marks’ and ‘characteristics’, on the basis of which they can be recognized and distinguished from one another; rather, it is a manifold and profusion of originally ‘physiognomic’ characters.23 the following symbolic meaning, the representative meaning, is the product of the representative function of thought that takes us out of the original mythical world and into the stable and enduring world of substances, identifiable and distinguishable as such. it is in natural language that this symbolic meaning of representation is most clearly visible.24 through natural language we construct the intuitive world of ordinary sense perception. we distinguish the enduring substance, on the one side, from its variable manifestations from a different point of view and on different occasions on the other, and we thereby arrive at the fundamental distinction between appearance and reality.25 31 isparchitecture.com the third and final meaning of the symbolic forms is the product of the significative or meaning function of thought and consists in the pure relational concepts characteristic of modern mathematics, logic, and mathematical physics that are finally freed from the bounds of sensible intuition.26 the language of mathematical-physical theory transcends all expressive and representative meaning exhibited in the mythical and intuitive worlds, and we thereby finally attain the stage of pure signification of the theoretical world. the purely logical relations replacing all “picturing” of a substantial reality finds their most precise and exact fulfilment in modern mathematical logic.27 3 meaning or presence in architecture 3.1 function or substance: hans blumenberg’s interpretation of the davos debate in order to draw some consequences from cassirer’s as well as heidegger’s philosophy for architecture we will follow the suggestive and, for our purposes, very fruitful interpretation of the davos confrontation given by the great german historian of philosophy hans blumenberg. this philosopher interprets the debate using cassirer’s categories of “substance” and “function”: “against the distinction between the concepts of ‘substance’ and ‘function’ which had already been introduced by cassirer in 1910, heidegger decided, with luther, in favour of substance as the first and the unique category, against the functional propagation of categories into ‘symbolic forms’ – and in favour of […] the conventions of the realists.”28 according to blumenberg, cassirer sides in favour of “function,” “meaning,” and “idealism” whereas heidegger favours “substance,” “being,” and “realism.” for cassirer, modern science has transformed reality into a symbolic order, which is not the reality in itself, but only its signifier. our for cassirer to be human is to be an animal symbolicum, an animal distinguished by the spontaneous capacity for symbolic expression. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 32 pe dr a go sa capacity to create symbols consists in creating meanings or signs that point to reality but they are not reality itself. heidegger, by contrast, understood philosophy not as the study of our capacity to create meaning, but as the phenomenological description of that which “shows itself.” what shows itself is reality,29 not just a symbol or a sign of it. cassirer’s preference for the “functional propagation of categories into symbolic forms” presupposes the primacy of human agency, whereas heidegger’s decision “in favour of substance as the first and the unique category” and his study of what shows itself presupposes the primacy of human receptivity. following this thread of interpretation we can distinguish two types of architecture that, together with both images of the human being, underlie either creativity, meaning, function and abstraction or receptivity, reality, substance and presence. the first one, in cassirer’s guise, is internationalist and trusts in the human capacity for world-construction. architecture is conceived as a materialization of new and creative meanings and the architect is a free agent for the construction of new worlds. the second, more heideggerian, conceives architecture as environment-interpretation. architecture is here understood as world disclosing, a world that is always already there, and the architect as the interpreter of that world or environment as it shows itself. in the first case architecture proposes new ways of living, buildings are the bearers of new meanings, and the emphasis is in the meaning that buildings convey. in the second case the building just shows itself; it is an irreducible presence of itself that opens up the environment. where cassirer emphasizes the creation of new meanings oriented toward the future, heidegger opposes with the priority of the origin; the interpretation of what is already there. he emphasizes paying attention to the presence of what is there and shows itself before proposing new constructions. 3.2 architecture as meaning we now try to draw some consequences of cassirer’s philosophy for architecture. our task is to apply cassirer’s philosophy to architecture, beyond what he in fact said about this kind of art. the reason for this application is that cassirer includes architecture in the symbolic form of art: [w]e can interpret certain spatial forms, certain complexes of lines and figures, in one case as an artistic ornament and in another as a geometrical figure, so endowing one and the same material with entirely different meanings. the spatial unity, which we build in aesthetic vision and creation, in painting, sculpture 33 isparchitecture.com and architecture, belongs to an entirely different sphere from the spatial unity, which is represented in geometrical theorems and axioms. in the one case we have the modality of the logical-geometric concept, in the other the modality of artistic imagination –in the one case, space is conceived as an aggregate of mutually independent relations, as a system of “causes” and “consequences”; in the other, it is conceived as a whole whose particular factors are dynamically interlocked, a perceptual, emotional unity.30 but our claim is that, when dealing with modern architecture, we have to take into consideration technology as well. modern architecture seems to require a convergence of the symbolic forms of art and technology. as far as we know, cassirer himself did not study this convergence but he prepared the theoretical ground for such study. in that sense cassirer’s philosophy has much in common with modern architectural theory and, in particular, with the bauhaus, the great school of design and architecture whose history and final fate of exile runs parallel to that of cassirer and to the weimar republic itself. cassirer’s philosophical orientation is best expressed by the neue sachlichkeit (the new objectivity), a social, cultural, and artistic movement committed to internationalism and to a more objective and scientific organization of architecture and the social life through the project of uniting art and technology.31 this convergence of both symbolic forms, art and technology could be termed “functional aesthetics”32 or described by the familiar motto “form follows function.” that form follows function means that forms are not based on imitations or on mimetic qualities of a substantial reality as produced in traditional paintings, sculptures, and architectural ornamentation, but rather that form is the result of constructing relations, that is, form is the result of function in cassirer’s sense of “function,” as opposed to “substance”: functional forms are an ” the spatial unity, which we build in aesthetic vision and creation, in painting, sculpture and architecture, belongs to an entirely different sphere from the spatial unity, which is represented in geometrical theorems and axioms. “ ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 34 pe dr a go sa aggregate of different elements mutually related. the works of the artists, designers, and architects of the bauhaus are above all a realisation of the functional aesthetic approach. as an example, consider marcel breuer’s furniture and walter gropius’s lights in the bauhaus’ dessau building. both breuer’s and gropius’ designs show modular pieces of furniture and lamps as industrially produced series that create what we might call a functional space. a functional space is based on relations among parts according to repetition and variation. this kind of design allows the construction of furniture (tables, chairs, lamps) and the arrangement of space by fitting together the pieces in different ways. there is not only one way—say one substantial, “real,” way to relate the pieces—but rather different users have many equall valid possibilities for combining the pieces and creating their own spaces by sliding the modular elements. design is not mimetic of a “real being” because the same elements (tables, chairs, or lamps) related otherwise would create a different space. we can understand this kind of industrial design (or, more generally, functional aesthetics, and the slogans “form follows function,” “art and technology: a new unity,” “new objectivity”) as a functionalized symbol or as a sign without a real signified. it is a sign in the sense of cassirer’s citing of helmholtz’s theory of signs to explain scientific theories: this tendency [explaining objectivity in terms of “pure formal relations”] appears especially pregnantly in helmholtz’s theory of signs […]. our sensations and representations are signs, not copies [abbilder] of objects. for one requires of pictures [bilder] some or another kind of similarity with the pictured object […]. the sign, by contrast, requires no substantial [sachlich] similarity in the elements, but solely a functional correspondence in the two-sided structure. what is established in this structure is not the particular intrinsic character of the designated thing, but rather the objective relations in which it stands to other similar [things].33 philosophically considered we cannot interpret the production of such designed objects within the framework of the metaphysics of substance or the mimetic or pictorial theory of knowledge because the object and the space are the result of relations and combinations, and they open up the possibility of freedom to change, improve, and transform the space. the space is thus constructed rather than determined by conditions already existing. functional space is the result of first bringing together independent parts. the space designed is therefore not holistic but rather mechanic—functional—because the part (the modular piece) is prior to 35 isparchitecture.com the whole. before considering the second type of architecture, let’s take a brief look at heidegger’s philosophy. 4. martin heidegger in 1927, two years after cassirer published the second volume of the philosophy of symbolic forms, dedicated to myth, heidegger published his first important work, being and time. for heidegger, to be human is to be gifted with a special sort of receptivity or openness to the world that heidegger calls the “disclosedness” or “unveiling” of being. the phenomenon of disclosedness is deeper than our rationality and practical action. heidegger calls “dasein” the human being as capable of this opening capacity. for heidegger, human beings are defined by finitude, which is to say we discover ourselves in the midst of conditions we have not created and cannot figure 1: bauhaus, dessau ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 36 pe dr a go sa hope to control. my having been born in a particular year, in a particular land, to particular parents—everything that heidegger designates as the “thrownness” (geworfenheit)34—is no mere accident that can be overcome. the contingencies of history and the everyday cannot be transcended in such a way as to reveal some underlying essence—like the transcendental symbolic capacity of cassirer’s subject—but rather constitute me from the ground up. 4.1pragmatic world and existential space heidegger begins his philosophizing with the analysis of the everyday situations in which the human being is involved.35 in such situations the world disclosed to human beings is not the world of scientific explanation (the symbolic form of modern science, in cassirer’s terms) but instead the “environment” (umwelt). the environment shows itself in our practical involvement or dealing (umgang) with the things. in such involvements the things of the environment appear not as objects but rather as thingsin-use, as equipment or tools (zeug). heidegger’s basic thought is that the human relation with worldly things is primarily a relation of practice and concern, and not a theoretical one. we understand things not as objects of theoretical analysis, but rather as they first appear within a context of practice. to reinforce this idea, heidegger introduces the famous distinction between the “ready-to-hand” (zuhanden) statuses of things as understood in an equipmental fashion versus the “present-at-hand” (vorhanden) manner of being of entities as they are disclosed for perceptual cognition, theoretical inspection, and consideration.36 the ready-to-hand is our everyday understanding, and that understanding is the primordial way things appear to us, while the presentat-hand is a consequence of theoretical dissociation from the more basic relation. the theoretical cognition of the merely “present-at-hand” is a derivative mode of dasein, a modification of the more basic, essentially pragmatic mode of involvement with the “ready-to-hand.” equipment appears always in a context of interconnections. this context is a totality within which each tool has a sense. the totality thereby assumes a transcendental status in that the whole is a condition for the possibility of understanding any one of its parts. the environment is a holistic structure of concern, in which objects are always understood in a context, before the explicit knowledge of any discrete item we may pick out for inspection.37 for heidegger the whole is prior to the part. the functional designs of breuer and gropius mentioned earlier run counter to this holistic space of the everyday since the part (the modular furniture) 37 isparchitecture.com exists prior to its arrangement. the holistic character is of great importance for understanding the kind of space that belongs to our everyday, or, as heidegger puts it, our “existential spatiality.”38 this existential spatiality is a series of environmental regions where dasein realizes its concerns, plans, and expectations, and it is fundamentally different from and prior to, its scientific understanding as functional space. existential spatiality is fundamentally different from the cartesian notion of extension or its more developed scientific-functional version. this conception of space does not apply to a being whose primary relation to the world is one of involvement because cartesian space always places things at a measurable distance, whereas existential spatiality determines distances in terms of dasein’s context of significance.39 existential spatiality is the precondition for our understanding of cartesian space, because the former is an existential condition for understanding at all. whatever formalized structures of measurement we might create, such structures were themselves merely a way of “thematizing” the spatiality of dasein’s everyday existence. there can be, therefore, no breakthrough from existential spatiality to space, because an existential condition is by definition constitutive and could not be abandoned. of course heidegger does not deny the possibility that one could develop a purely mental representation of formalized space. but this representation is not something more real than the existential spatiality. heidegger saw the existential structure of human understanding as constitutive rather than, as with cassirer, evolving toward scientific abstraction. 4.2 authentic and inauthentic existence: existential time if we conceive dasein not as primarily theoretical or cognitive but rather as oriented for heidegger, human beings are defined by finitude “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 38 pe dr a go sa towards pragmatic engagement and projects, then our conception of time (of “existential time” as well as the conception of “existential space”) is not just the thought of the line of time, and temporal finitude is not just the thought of an eventual limit to this line of time. finitude is rather dasein’s concern with its own death, the radical possibility that the on-going pragmatic projects will cease to be.40 in facing existentially such possibility, the pragmatic subject is removed from the context of pragmatic involvement that defines the everyday understanding of himself. in “being-towards-death,” dasein is revealed to him for what he is: as thrown into the world. in the normal course of events, dasein takes the context of its projects and practical activities for granted, a framework that is fixed and simply given. in “being-towards-death,” dasein steps out of this given context, which is then recognized as neither fixed nor given. dasein recognizes that its normal or everyday context is simply one possibility among others, one that is thereby subject to his own free choice. facing death thus opens up the possibility of an “authentic” existence in which dasein’s own choices rest on no taken for granted context at all. in “inauthentic” existence, by contrast, dasein operates unquestioningly in its everydayness as a context of projects taken as given. heidegger describes the inauthenticity of everydayness in terms of the “others” as “they” (das man): in utilizing public transportation, in the use of information services such as the newspaper, every other is like the next. this being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own dasein completely into the kind of being of “the others” in such a way that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, disappear more and more. in this inconspicuousness and unascertainability, the they unfolds its true dictatorship. we enjoy ourselves and have fun the way they enjoy themselves. we read, see, and judge literature and art the way they see and judge. but we also withdraw from the “great mass” the way they withdraw, we find “shocking” what they find shocking. the they, which is nothing definite and which all are, though not as a sum, prescribes the kind of being of everydayness.41 facing death singles out my existence as my own and makes possible the withdrawal from the uniformity of the “they,” from the “great mass.” it is thus on the basis of “being-towards-death” that the distinction between “authentic” and “inauthentic” existence is defined.42 5 architecture as presence we can now distinguish a second type of architecture, inspired by 39 isparchitecture.com heidegger; this kind of architecture goes against its modern conception as the construction of functional spaces or as the fusion of art and technology; it is less concerned with construction and more with the origin and the questioning of building. heidegger wrote about architecture in the essays “the origin of the work of art” and “building dwelling thinking.” but our purpose is not to follow this or that work but the essential core of his thought that we find relevant for architecture, as it is expressed in being and time in the terms we have just explained. the main points relevant for architecture are the difference between a holistic and a functional space; and the difference between authentic and inauthentic existence, where authenticity means questioning the taken-forgranted assumptions and contexts of our everyday projects. if the kind of architecture that exemplifies cassirer’s position was the bauhaus-inspired modernist design, then we can propose a more recent architectural project, one critical of modernity, as an example to illustrate heidegger’s thought: anne lacaton and jean-philippe vassal’s 1996 project for the place léon aucoc in the city of bordeaux, france. the place léon aucoc is a triangular village space lined with trees, benches and a place to play. the house facades lining the place were a good example of sober collective housing. lacaton and vassal said: the question was: how is it possible to make an embellishment of the square? and the answer after three or four months of working research was to say: there is nothing to do. and our project is to do nothing. it’s our project and please, you have to do it like we want. and it has been done like that.43 the architects decided to exclusively carry out simple maintenance tasks: changing gravel, cleaning facing death singles out my existence as my own “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 40 pe dr a go sa more often, taking care of the trees, slightly modifying the circulation, and so on, with the aim of improving the way people meet. this kind of passivity is not indifference but rather an active non-intervention. lacaton and vassal say: what does the idea of “embellishment” boil down to? does it involve replacing one groundcover with another? a wooden bench with a more-up-to-date design in stone? or a lamp standard with another, more fashionable, one? nothing calls for too great a set of changes. quality, charm, life exist. the square is already beautiful.44 the architects’ choice of non-intervention is existentially “authentic” in the sense that this decision rested on not taking for granted the architect’s professional context at all. in “inauthentic” existence, the architect operates unquestioningly in the everyday professional work in which the construction of “something” is taken for granted. this project both shakes and radically subverts architecture’s customary state of affairs by implying a step backwards towards questioning before constructing. we can understand this architectural project as a questioning of what building is and of what architecture is. these radical questions depended on a fresh interpretation of the place: what the place requires rather than what the architect’s freedom wants. of course, the place and the programme may require the construction of a building but it just as easily may not. this radical project by lacaton & vassal exemplifies a broader attitude in architecture, one which consists in opening up to a given environment, in listening to place, to its sheer presence, and responding to it. the holistic character of the environment is of great importance for understanding this kind of architecture. the whole of the environment is a condition for the possibility of understanding any one of its parts that the architect might build. and these parts open up this whole through different ways and architectural strategies. this totality should not be understood just in terms of physical environment but in a much broader sense, which includes culture and the existential human situation as such. architecture “mimics” this whole. whereas for cassirer architecture as functional space is a new construction rather than determined by conditions already existing, for heidegger, on the opposite extreme, architecture is determined by these preconditions; that is, it “mimics” or responds to the priority of the whole or of “reality.” heidegger expresses this whole and its architectural response in these terms: the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its own places – sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight; these are discovered in circumspection and treated 41 isparchitecture.com distinctively in terms of changes in the usability of what the sun bestows. […] the house has its sunny side and its shady side; the way it is divided up into “rooms” is oriented towards these, and so is the “arrangement” within them, according to their character as equipment. churches and graves, for instance, are laid out according to the rising and the setting of the sun – the regions of life and death, which are determinative for dasein itself with regard to its own most possibilities of being in the world.45 6 cassirer versus heidegger on myth heidegger’s description of the holistic character of the environment, of our everyday space, is shockingly similar to cassirer’s description of mythical space: there is no cosmology, however primitive, in which the contrast of the four main directions does not in some way emerge as the cardinal point of its understanding and explanation of the world. […] the east as the origin of light is also the source of life – the west as the place of the setting sun is filled with all the terrors of death. and this opposition of night and day, light and darkness, birth and death, is also reflected in countless ways in the mythical interpretation of the concrete events of life.46 despite their surface similarities,47 the use of these conceptions is radically different. in these radically different conceptions of myth resides the final explanation of the philosophers’ opposing visions of architecture and of human culture in general. figure 2: place léon aucoc ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 42 pe dr a go sa the description of myth is very important for cassirer since it reveals not only the primitive stage that was reached many centuries ago but also the unmediated experience of perception. myth embodies the concreteness of life before the categorization of theoretical consciousness. myth is the lowest and most primary form of symbolic existence and it is the ground of any other form of culture. all other symbolic forms only come into existence by working through myth. cassirer is convinced that in the history of human culture the rise of conceptual abstraction is a welcome progress. he is committed to philosophical modernism and understands modernity, and thus modern architecture, as the triumph over, and a displacement of, myth. as we said before, cassirer holds this view during the 1920s but in a moderate way, accepting the plurality of symbolic forms. it was only after the nazi seizure of power that he became critical of mythical thought: to move from myth to higher forms of symbolic consciousness is a demand placed upon human beings; it is the call to work oneself—as an individual, as a civilization—out of myth and to come to light, to enlightenment, as living a life in culture.48 it is a demand to keep the forces of myth at bay. heidegger’s primordial space, by contrast, cannot be overcome but only concealed or forgotten. such forgetting is symptomatic of what heidegger calls the “fallenness” of dasein. the scientific calculation and objectification of space robs the world of its “worldhood” and transforms the existential space into functional space. heidegger wishes to return us to a purer and more authentic state of being, one located not in some mythic past but under the surface of everyday life. for heidegger mythical existence is a simplified model of the human existential structure but essentially remains the same. whereas for cassirer the path from myth to science is an inevitable and welcome progress of mind, and the culmination of the human capacity to create worlds, for heidegger this process is rather more like a lapse, a regrettable breakdown in the otherwise constitutive structures of human being. the functionalist symbolization of reality that cassirer sees as a high achievement is, for heidegger, a historical impoverishment in human understanding. in fact, heidegger says that such a break from existential space to a modern scientific one is not progress but a loss and an alienation from both the world and individual existence. what heidegger calls thrownness and passivity is for cassirer a primitive and mythical conception of humanity that denies both its responsibility and emancipation. what cassirer calls freedom and creativity is for heidegger an old metaphysical misconception that hides the essential human finitude. 43 isparchitecture.com 7 final consideration on politics we have seen the antagonistic understandings of cassirer and heidegger on both architecture and on culture broadly considered. it is not our intention to decide which one is preferable because only together do they define the complete image of the human being and how it shapes its place in the world. if we compare metaphorically human beings’ life and history as a play in two acts, the night from which culture springs and the day that overcomes the night, we can say that cassirer draws attention to the second, the day of culture, and heidegger to the first, the night from which it springs. one looks at what has flourished, the other at its roots.49 human culture involves both. that said we would not like to finish this paper without a last commentary on politics. cassirer’s continuous confrontation with heidegger, in the context of the weak parliamentarian politics of the weimar republic, had more than purely philosophical motivations; they were at opposite ends in social and political terms as well. in his last work, the myth of the state, written in his american exile, cassirer writes: in all critical moments of man’s social life, the rational forces that resist the rise of the old mythical conceptions are no longer sure of themselves. in these moments the time for myth has come again. for myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. it is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity.50 from his exile cassirer interpreted the irruption of nazism as the irruption of myth in modern times and judged heidegger’s philosophy as encouraging myth’s staying power. cassirer’s philosophy helps us to prevent political radicalisms such as xenophobia and radical nationalism that today, when europe is again in crisis, threaten our societies. i would like to conclude by saying that cassirer was overall a moderate humanist and defender in these moments the time for myth has come again. for myth has not been really vanquished and subjugated. it is always there, lurking in the dark and waiting for its hour and opportunity “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 44 pe dr a go sa of the enlightenment, and even though he thought that science is the highest stage in human consciousness, he rejected the reductionist views of scientism on the one side and of myth’s irrationalism on the other. in the early twentieth century, these two reductionisms appeared in the guise of positivism and lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life). cassirer condemned both because they elevated a single symbolic form into an absolute conception of the world, presenting a partial truth as though it were total. this is something we can learn today at the beginning of the twentyfirst century from the debate that took place early in the twentieth. endnotes [1] for a thorough understanding of the davos debate see the excellent book by peter e. gordon, continental divide. heidegger, cassirer, davos (cambridge and london: harvard university press, 2010.) see also michael friedman, the parting of the ways. carnap, cassirer, and heidegger (chicago and la salle: open court, 2000), 1. friedman writes: “davos, switzerland; march 17–april 6, 1929. an intensive “international university course,” having the express purpose of effecting a reconciliation between frenchspeaking and german-speaking intellectuals, was sponsored by the swiss, french, and german governments. the high point of the occasion was a series of lectures presented by ernst cassirer and martin heidegger, followed by a disputation between the two men.” [2] edward skidelsky, ernst cassirer: the last philosopher of culture (princeton and oxford: princeton university press, 2008), 196. [3] see deniz coskun, “cassirer in davos: an intermezzo on magic mountain (1929),” law and critique 17 (2006): 1-26. [4] skidelsky, the last philosopher of culture, 196-197. [5] friedman. the parting of the ways, 3. [6] peter gay, weimar culture: the outsider as insider (new york and london: w.w. norton & company, 1968). gay explains that one of the main tensions during the weimar republic was the generational conflict between fathers and sons. this conflict was represented in davos by the figures of the old philosopher cassirer and the young heidegger. [7] skidelsky, the last philosopher of culture, 196-197. [8] jeffrey herf, reactionary modernism: technology, culture, and politics in weimar and the third reich (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1984). 45 isparchitecture.com the author explains how the right-wing intellectuals of this period, the so called “reactionary modernists,” argued that the enlightenment tradition was un-german. the enlightenment belongs to “civilization,” a term used to characterize the tradition of nations such as france and the united kingdom while german is defined by kultur, term understood as the opposite of zivilisation. [9] friedman, the parting of the ways, 4. [10] gordon, continental divide, 7. [11] sebastian luft, the space of culture: towards a neo-kantian philosophy of culture (cohen, natorp, and cassirer) (oxford: oxford university press, 2015), 45. see also friedman, the parting of the ways, 99. [12] gordon, continental divide, 13. gordon writes: “the philosophy of symbolic forms represents the effort to interpret all of human creativity after the transcendental model. culture is an ever-expanding and pluralistic field of symbolic expression, which obeys certain laws of formation, the a priori principles of human spirit.” [13] ernst cassirer, an essay on man: an introduction to a philosophy of human culture (new haven: yale university press, 1944), 228. [14] ernst cassirer, substance and function & einstein’s theory of relativity (chicago: open court, 1923). for a commentary on this work see friedman, the parting of the ways, 94. see also luft, the space of culture, 157-161. [15] cassirer, substance and function. for cassirer’s treatment of substance and the realist position see part i, “the concept of thing and the concept of relation” and chapter i, “on the theory of the formation of concepts,” 3-9. [16] ibid. 21. [17] friedman, the parting of the ways, 95. [18] luft, the space of culture, 157-161. for example, the atom, as a concept, is not a name for a thing, which one could identify in nature, no matter if one had the most powerful microscope. the atom is a name for an idea, a theory, for the relation of different elements that make up reality. the thing “atom” is a construction in the framework of a theory. [19] friedman, the parting of the ways, 103-109. [20] ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume three: the phenomenology of knowledge. (new haven: yale university press, 1957). see part i, “the expressive function and the world of expression.” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 46 pe dr a go sa [21] ibid. see part ii, “the problem of representation and the building of the intuitive world.” [22] ibid. see part iii, “the function of signification and the building up of scientific knowledge.” [23] ibid. 68. [24] ibid. 119. see also friedman, the parting of the ways, 104, 105. [25] cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms, 142. [26] ibid. 284. [27] ibid. 46. [28] hans blumenberg. “afinitäten und dominanzen” in ein mögliches selbst-verständnis: aus dem nachlass (stuttgart: philip reclam, 1996), 161168. see gordon, continental divide, 349: blumenberg reprises and old theological controversy that took place 400 years earlier between martin luther and ulrich zwingli, over the character of christ’s presence in the eucharist. the confrontation was between the orthodox view that the body of christ is really present in the bread and wine, and the unorthodox view according to which christs’s embodiment is merely an illusion, that the bread and wine only signify his body and blood though they are not literally so. [29] for a discussion of the realism of heidegger see the crucial §44 of heidegger, “dasein, disclosedness, and truth,” in being and time (new york: harper and row, 1962). see also the arguments given by friedman, the parting of the ways, 54-58. friedman says that heidegger “rejects (in §44) the “copernican revolution” in favor of an apparently “direct realist” conception of truth.” from friedman, the parting of the ways, 54. friedman also writes that “heidegger is a “direct realist” in so far as he begins with the idea of “being-in-the-world.” we do not start with a cognitive subject together with its contents of consciousness, but rather with a living practical subject necessarily engaged with its environment.” from friedman, the parting of the ways, 55. [30] ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume one: language (new haven: yale university press, 1955), 96. see also ernst cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume two: mythical thought (new haven: yale university press, 1955), 166. here cassirer directly links art and architecture together. [31] we can also find a close bond between the modernist architect adolf loos and cassirer. in ornament and crime, (adolf loos, ornament and crime: selected essays. riverside: ariadne press, 1997). loos writes: “i 47 isparchitecture.com have discovered and given to the world the following notion: the evolution of civilization is synonymous with the elimination of ornament from the utilitarian object.” we find a parallelism between the historical narrative of the elimination of the ornamental with cassirer’s historical emancipation from myth and religion in order to achieve the enlightenment of reason and science. according to this interpretation, architecture should be freed form ornamentation in the same way that philosophy should be emancipated from myth. see peter galison, “aufbau/bauhaus: logical positivism and architectural modernism,” critical inquiry 16, no. 4 (1990): 726. the author compares in this article the bauhaus theory of design and architecture with the philosophy of logical positivism. even though cassirer criticised the scientism of the logical positivists, there are some points in common between both. [32] birgit leitner, “ernst cassirer and (?) the bauhaus: the question of functional aesthetics,” proceedings of the european society for aesthetics 3 (2011): 167. [33] cassirer, substance and function, 304. [34] heidegger, being and time, §29. [35] for the following discussion of the everyday pragmatic situations in which dasein is involved see heidegger, being and time, §15-16. [36] for the conversion of the “ready-to-hand” to the “present-at-hand,” see heidegger, being and time, §16 [37] gordon, continental divide, 221-224. [38] heidegger, being and time, §§22-24. [39] ibid. §18. [40] ibid. §§46-60. for the analysis of “being-towards-death” and the possibilty of “aunthentc” existence. [41] ibid. §27, 119. [42] friedman, the parting of the ways, 50-51. [43] https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=37# [44] ibid. [45] heidegger. being and time, §22. [46] cassirer, the philosophy of symbolic forms: volume two: mythical thought, 98. [47] in 1925, while heidegger was working on the manuscript of being and time, the deutsche literaturzeitung sent him a copy of the second volume ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 48 pe dr a go sa of the philosophy of symbolic forms dedicated to myth. it is certainly a possibility that cassirer influenced heidegger. see skidelsky, the last philosopher of culture, 205. [48] luft, the space of culture, 164. [49] rudiger safranski, un maestro de alemania: martin heidegger y su tiempo (barcelona: tusquets, 1997), 226-227. [50] cassirer, the myth of the state (new haven: yale university press, 1944), 280. on durability mari hvattum “an attempt to grasp eternity” on november 9, 1993, the mostar bridge fell. for months it had withstood heavy artillery, withstood in the same way that it had endured wars, floods, and disasters ever since its erection in 1566.1 but that afternoon it finally gave in; its collapse was broadcasted on television screens all over the world. some days after the event, the croatian journalist slavenka draculić picked up a newspaper with two pictures on the front cover. one showed the body of a woman, killed in the ongoing war; the second was a photograph of the destroyed bridge. to her own dismay, draculić found herself crying as much over the bridge as she did over the dead woman. it made her feel slightly guilty, prompting her to reflect on her own reaction: “why do i feel more pain looking at the image of the destroyed bridge than the image of the woman?” she asked herself, and continued: “perhaps it is because i see my own mortality in the collapse of the bridge, not in the death of the woman.” draculić added: “we expect people to die. we count on our own lives to end. the destruction of a monument […] is something else. the bridge, in all its beauty and grace, was built to outlive us; it was an attempt to grasp eternity. […] a dead woman is one of us – but the bridge is all of us, forever.”2 in a collection dedicated to the human in architecture, draculić’s “eternity” offers, i believe, a poignant point of departure. we do indeed expect the built world to persist on november 9, 1993, the mostar bridge fell “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 49 hv a tt um longer than we ourselves do. people die, but the things they built tend to last a little longer. it is a twofold that says something crucial about the role of architecture. in the next few pages i want to use this particular kind of “eternity” as a point of departure for thinking about that which lasts and that which perishes, and the ways—or at least some of the ways—in which it happens. relative permanence architecture may last longer than the people building it, but it is not eternal. buildings are subject to all sorts of changes: weathering, war, neglect, changing uses and needs, economic upand downturns, the force of gravity and the law of materials. in her book the human condition (1958), hannah arendt writes about the relative permanence that characterizes the human-made. “the durability of the human artifice is not absolute,” she points out, yet artifice gives to human life—fragile as it is—a certain stability and solidity.3 “the things of the world,” says arendt, “have the function of stabilizing human life, and their objectivity lies in the fact that – in contradiction to the heraclitian saying that man can never enter the same stream – men, their ever-changing nature not-withstanding, can retrieve their sameness, that is their identity, by being related to the same chair and the same table.”4 the durability of the human-made—the fact that the things we make last longer than us and are modelled on things that last longer still—is what for arendt upholds a human world. at first glance, arendt’s observation may seem staggeringly out of sync with her times. more often than not, twentieth century architects and artists took the exact opposite stance, celebrating the ephemeral over the durable and looking towards the future rather than the past. “our houses will last less time than we do, and every generation will have to build its own city,” proclaimed antonio sant’elia triumphantly in his manifesto for futurist architecture from 1914.5 to many modernists, ephemerality was a badge of honour, testifying to the dream of an architecture that responded strictly to the here and now. when the english architect william holford characterized the modern monument as a “momentary crystallization of a scientific fact,” he testified to this belief.6 if the historical monument spoke of eternity, the modern monument, paradoxically, must speak strictly of the now. the fascination with the transient carries well into the present. a quick look at contemporary architectural publications, exhibitions, or student projects gives a strong sense that the ephemeral has a great deal more 50 isparchitecture.com appeal than the durable. but there is another side to the coin. for if modernity is “the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent,” as charles baudelaire famously stated, he also reminded us that its other half is “the eternal and the immutable.”7 and modernity has indeed sought eternity: the eternity of scientific facts, for instance, or the eternity of a petrified past, safely stowed away in the museum. in architecture, the desire for eternity is perhaps encountered most directly in modern preservation, with its dream to fixate the historic monument as an unchanging entity, available for contemporary veneration. i will try to steer clear of both poles in this dichotomy, addressing neither the ephemeral nor the eternal. or rather, the “eternity” that i will speak of—the eternity that draculić hinted at as well, i think—is not the pretend eternity of the musealized monument but rather what hannah arendt called durability, that is, the relative permanence of the human-made world. “the things of the world”, says arendt, “have the function of stabilizing human life” “ ” figure 1: old bridge in mostar, ca. 1974 ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 51 hv a tt um the durability of making let me try to be a bit more specific. for what—if we stick to the realm of architecture—is it that endures? the buildings themselves? their materials and constructions? matter can certainly endure for a very long time, like the stones of the cave tombs in barnenez, supposedly the oldest building in the world, or the tar-saturated wood of the nearly 1000 year old norwegian stave churches. ancient matter has a fascination of its own—alois riegl, for one, considered the appreciation of “age value” as a particularly modern sensibility.8 the memory of matter can endure even longer, like aldo rossi’s famous example in the architettura della citta of how traces of a roman amphitheatre continue to structure the city, even when the original stones and bricks are long gone.9 rossi drew on a long tradition of seeing type as a harbinger of durability, a dominant position in architectural thinking throughout much of the modern period.10 this is not, however, the only way to think about durability in architecture. here i will focus on a little handful of thinkers who, each in their own way, proposed that what endures in architecture is not just matter, or type, but human action: ways of doing things, ways of making oneself at home in the world. if hannah arendt wrote of the reification of work into a world of things that in turn stabilizes and lends durability to human life, then we can perhaps speak of architecture as a reification of human action into built form. the three nineteenth century thinkers that i will discuss in the following—the german art historian karl bötticher; his fellow countryman, the architect gottfried semper; and the norwegian ethnologist eilert sundt—did just that. and although only one of them could be considered an ethnologist by profession, all three drew on the new discipline when trying to understand the origin and development of architecture. in fact, their thinking on architecture could be seen, if not as fully fledged ethnologies (or anthropologies) of architecture, then at least as attempts to integrate the human into architectural thinking in ways that broke sharply with the academic neo-classicism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. if theorists such as marc-antoine laugier or antoine chrysostome quatremère de quincy had envisioned architecture as an imitation of primordial architectural form—most famously the primitive hut—these mid-nineteenth century thinkers saw architecture as an imitation, rather, of human action. 52 isparchitecture.com baumkultus der hellenen karl bötticher is most famous for his books on greek tectonics, published in several versions from the mid-1840s onwards.11 here, however, i will discuss a much more idiosyncratic work by bötticher, namely der baumkultus der hellenen from 1856. despite its small size and seemingly obscure topic, this book presented a fierce criticism of nineteenth century art history, which had, according to bötticher, ignored the link between ritual action and architecture. the obsession with style and appearance had led to a neglect of the purpose for which man builds, he argued. in the eyes of the ancients, ritual practice could not be separated from the building or artefact accommodating it, and understanding ritual action was thus a prerequisite for understanding architecture, the greek temple in particular.12 cultic practice and its physical setting formed one indivisible knot of meaning and should be studied accordingly. that more holistic approach was exactly what bötticher set out to achieve. he traced the decorative apparatus of the temple back to the ephemeral adornment of sacred trees: ribbons, bells, and garlands embellishing places for ritual and sacrifice. he considered such arrangements architectural pre-forms, motives that would later be reified into architectural form in the temple. “bäumen seien die ersten tempel der gottheiten gewesen” (trees were the first temples of the dieties) he stated.13 by suggesting that the adornment of holy trees was the beginning of architecture, bötticher invoked a notion of origin that broke sharply with neoclassical thinking. the origin of architecture, far from being found in architecture itself, resides in the ephemeral arrangements of worship.14 bötticher’s thinking on the origin of architecture turns our conventional ideas about ephemerality and durability upside down. what lasts, here, is not matter, construction, or type, but ephemeral human ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 53 hv a tt um acts, metamorphosed into the architecture of the temple. it is a delicious idea: the most durable thing in architecture is a ribbon or a bell, fluttering in the wind. durable metamorphoses bötticher did not develop his ideas on ritual into a fully-fledged theory of architecture. as many scholars have pointed out, der baumkultus remains a somewhat isolated work within his oeuvre.15 for bötticher’s contemporary, gottfried semper, however, the ritual origin of architecture would become a central premise. in semper’s view, architecture is essentially about the stuff people do in order to make themselves at home in the world. and the most primordial way of doing that is to imitate. primitive man imitates the order of the world around him, writes semper: the rhythmical shifts of day and night, the cycle of the moon, the ebbs and flows of the sea. he continues, “[p]rimitive human beings […] delight in nature’s creative law as it gleams through the real world in the rhythmical sequence of space and time movements, in wreaths, a string of pearls, scrolls, round dances, the rhythmic tones attending them, the beat of an oar [...] these are the beginnings out of which music and architecture grew.”16 by imitating nature’s rhythms in the things he does and makes—in dance, knots, or tattoos on his skin—man makes for himself a specifically human realm. architecture emerges gradually out of these ephemeral acts, as a metamorphosed reification of human action. the origin of architecture, then, is not found in building, but in man’s attempt at coming to terms with the world around him through rhythm and ritual. weaving is one of semper’s key examples of how the ritual act is translated into physical form.17 beginning with the rhythmic movement imitating the order of the natural world, the weaver produces an enclosure—the wickerwork wall, for instance—which in turn establishes a human domain separated from the natural world. weaving, then, is simultaneously a ritual imitation of cyclical time and the technical origin of the architectural wall. it runs through the history of architecture as a constant motif, yet is continuously transformed and metamorphosed into new guises through the process of material transformation, or stoffwechsel, as semper called it. the wickerwork enclosure, then, ossifies into chinese lattice work, assyrian stone reliefs, pompeiian frescoes, and sixteenth century portuguese tiles, continuing to echo even in the modern wallpaper. through history, architecture retains its role as enclosure yet it is never exactly the same—it goes through a never-ending material 54 isparchitecture.com metamorphosis and carries all the memories of its previous stages with it, at any point of its development.18 so what is it that endures, here? not matter, certainly: the material is but a medium in this metamorphic process. what endures is human work, ossified in a chain of ever-changing materialities. rather than looking for the origin of architecture in architectural form, semper located it in human action, thus overturning key principles of neo-classical thinking.19 in one of his late essays he stated this quite explicitly: “in a most general way, what is the material and subject matter of all artistic endeavour?” he asked, and answered, “i believe it is man in all his relations and connections to the world.”20 patterns of use the nineteenth-century discipline that most vigorously explored ‘man in all his relations and connections to the world’ was of course ethnology, or kulturgeschichte as it would be called in german and scandinavian-speaking countries. both semper and bötticher were influenced by contemporary ethnology. scholars have for instance pointed out semper’s reliance on the german ethnologist gustav klemm, whose allgemeine kulturgeschichte der menschheit (1843–1851) elaborated on the ritual origins of art and postulated dance and knots as the dual origin of architecture. klemm described artefacts as “mimetic narratives” and as primary vehicles for man’s orientation in the world.21 if architects read ethnology, ethnologists also sometimes read architectural history. at least that is the case for the norwegian ethnologist eilert sundt (1817–1875), a younger contemporary of semper and bötticher.22 neither an architect nor a historian, sundt nevertheless made a significant contribution to understanding the relationship between architectural form and human action. he what endures is human work, ossified in a chain of ever-changing materialities “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 55 hv a tt um also gave quite an original answer to our initial question of what it is that endures in architecture. sundt studied theology and earned his living as a protestant minister. his reputation as pioneer of norwegian social science, however, he earned from his empirically scrupulous studies of everything from marriage habits and mortality statistics to norway’s gypsy population and the social conditions of the urban poor. among his many books is one on vernacular architecture in the norwegian countryside published in 1862. it is called om bygnings-skikken paa landet i norge, a title perhaps best translated as “on the manner of building in the norwegian countryside.”23 on his many travels up and down the country, sundt tells his readers, he had been struck by the underlying regularity of vernacular buildings. although each hamlet, farm, and building was to some extent different from every other, they all adhered to a common pattern. the regularity was noticeable not least in the organization of the domestic interior. sundt observed how building form, furniture, and permanent elements such as fireplaces, windows, and entrances followed the exact same template, reflecting the social structure of rural norwegian society. “i cannot tell how surprised i was when i first realized this house custom [hus-skikk]” he wrote: once you have gotten to know how things are arranged in one house, you know for certain how all houses of a similar kind are organized. when i now travel through the gudbrandsdalen region and see an old-fashioned house, it is as if i can see through the walls and know, that here, by the door, stands the great cabinet; there in the corner is the main seat; in the other corner, the master bed, etc. it is as if the houses were made of glass.24 while in the city, people build “after their own heart,” sundt writes; in the countryside, building is governed by ancient traditions that regulate not so much the building itself as the way of life that in turn regulates building. sundt called this reciprocal process ‘skikk.’ it is a tricky concept to translate, but comes close to tradition, or custom. ‘skikk’ refers to ways of doing things, ways of arranging social phenomena into certain patterns that can be embodied in buildings and things. it is tempting to adopt arendt’s vocabulary: ‘skikk’ is human work transformed into a built world. the durable factor in sundt’s architectural analysis was not wood or stone, but ways of translating life into recognizable—and indeed durable—configurations. in an almost proto-structuralist fashion he describes how the ‘skikk’ governs life, how life governs architectural form, and how architectural form in its turn gives stability to life. it is a slow cycle that is not unchangeable but nonetheless relatively stable. interestingly, sundt sees this mimetic stability between life and artifice 56 isparchitecture.com as a waning phenomenon. modern man does not adhere to any ‘skikk,’ he writes. in the modern city, houses reflect individual habits and desires, and have thus no durability outwith the life of the individual: “it is different in the cities: the houses are more singular and the people as well – each with their own habits and needs, […] one in this way, the other in that way.”25 modernity, for sundt, represents a break with the durability of ‘skikk.’ it is replaced by individualist transience, but also, we may add, by a compensatory search for eternity. for sundt’s farmhouses, that eternity came in the form of the museum, where so many of the interiors he studied would end up. mimesis of praxis “[b]uildings and paintings and poetic texts, as much as rituals, are cables that hold a society together through time” write alexander nagel and christopher s. wood in their book anachronic renaissance.26 nagel and wood are particularly interested in artworks that—explicitly or implicitly—evoke multiple temporalities, like the way roman spolia in early christian churches acted as veritable time machines, connecting and doubling time and tying the present to multiple pasts “like a homeopathic remedy for discontinuity.”27 in the modern city, houses reflect individual habits and desires, and have thus no durability without the life of the individual “ ” figure 2: section of farmhouse, norway taken from sundts book ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 57 hv a tt um semper’s material metamorphosis, bötticher’s reified ritual arrangements, and sundt’s long-enduring “skikk” are all examples of such multi-temporal conditions. their durability has nothing to do with the fixed eternity of the museum or the immobilized past of the historical monument. instead, all these examples demonstrate architecture’s capacity to accommodate and preserve human action, giving shape to our attempts at making ourselves at home in the world. aristotle said that the tragedy was “not an imitation of men but of actions and of life.”28 much the same could be said for architecture in the way i have outlined it here, as a “mimesis of praxis,” it is an imitation of human action. all of us back to the question: what is it that endures in architecture? a brief glance at semper’s theory of stoffwechsel, bötticher’s ephemeral tree decorations, or sundt’s “skikk” has taught us that it is neither matter nor form. it is rather—very much like hannah arendt proposed—the fact that work and works tie us to a shared duration, not a singular, monolithic past, but a heterogeneous, multi-temporal, contentious past. perhaps that can help us understand slavenka draculić’s reaction to the destruction of the mostar bridge. “why do i feel more pain looking at the image of the destroyed bridge than the image of the woman?” she asked herself, emphatically stating that while “the dead woman was one of us, the bridge was all of us, forever.” in what way was the bridge all of us? by means of its symbolic role as a bridge between east and west, muslim and christian—a sort of super-symbol of a multi-ethnic balkan? perhaps, but that is not the whole story. as the architectural historians hans-henrik egede-nissen and emily macas have both pointed out in their respective phd dissertations, this symbolism is not uncontroversial.29 political scientist heiko wimmen put it even more strongly: “this popular image probably reveals more about the western need to reduce a complex and multi-layered structure to clear-cut oppositions, which can then be, as it were, bridged.”30 it seems to me that draculić’s “all of us” may point to something more than simply the bridge as a symbol of ethnic conflict and its potential reconciliation. rather than a horizontal “us,” she evoked a vertical “us” linked through time as much as through geographical or ethnic divides. the bridge was an attempt to grasp eternity, she wrote—a complex, contested, and relative eternity in this case, but nevertheless an eternity involving “all of us.” it was perhaps this contentious but significant common-ness that made unesco forego their usual requirement of material authenticity and inscribe the reconstructed mostar bridge into 58 isparchitecture.com the world heritage list. what lasts in architecture is not stone, but rather memories, rituals, dreams, and acts metamorphosed into matter and form a thousand times over. at a time when we seem to oscillate between a fascination for ephemerality and a longing for museum-like eternity, it may be good to keep this relative permanence in mind, particularly when thinking about architecture and its relationship to the human. endnotes [1] the mostar bridge was erected for sultan suleiman the magnificent in 1566 by the architect mimar hajrudin. the bridge was hit several times during the 1992-95 bosnian war, both by the serbian-backed yugoslav peoples’ army (jna) and the croatian defense council (hvo). for more information, see “nomination dossier: the old city of mostar,” unesco, january 2005, http:// whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/946rev. pdf. i am indebted to hans-henrik egede-nissen, whose ph.d. dissertation “autentisitetens relevans: på sporet av et endret fokus for kulturminnevernet,” presents a thorough analysis of the destruction and reconstruction of the mostar bridge. see hanshenrik egede-nissen, “autentisitetens relevans: på sporet av et endret fokus for kulturminnevernet” (ph.d. dissertation, oslo school of architecture and design, 2014), 175-234. [2] slavenca draculić, “falling down. a mostar bridge elegy,” the new republic, december 13, 1993. [3] hannah arendt, the human condition (chicago: university of chicago press, 1989), 136. [4] ibid., 137. [5] antonio sant’elia, “l’architettura futurista: manifesto” (milan, july 1914). english translation in ulrich conrads (ed.), programmes and manifestoes what lasts in architecture is not stone, but rather memories, rituals, dreams, and acts metamorphosed into matter and form a thousand times over “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 59 hv a tt um on 20th-century architecture (london: lund humphries, 1970), 38. on the convoluted history of the manifesto and its reception, see esther da costa meyer, the work of antonio sant’elia: retreat into the future (new haven: yale university press, 1995), 141-168. [6] william holford, “in search of a new monumentality,” architectural review vol 104, no 621 (september 1948): 125 [7] charles baudelaire, painters of modern life, trans. j. mayne (london: phaidon, 1995), 12. [8] alois riegl, der moderne denkmalkultus: sein wesen und seine entstehung (wien und leipzig: braumüller, 1903), 9 and 16-18. [9] aldo rossi, the architecture of the city, trans. d. ghirardo and j. ockman (cambridge: the mit press, 1982), 89. [10] see, for example, anthony vidler, “from the hut to the temple: quatremère de quincy and the idea of type,” in the writing of the walls: architectural theory in the late enlightenment (new york: princeton architectural press, 1987), 147-64; anthony vidler, “the third typology”, oppositions 7 (1976): 1-4; and adrian forty, “type,” in words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture (london: thames & hudson, 2000), 304-11. [11] karl bötticher, die tektonik der hellenen, vols. 1-2 (potsdam: riegel, 1844-1852). second, revised edition: berlin: ernst & korn, 1874-1881. [12] karl bötticher, “einleitung,” in der baumkultus der hellenen nach den gottesdienstlichen gebräuchen und den überlieferten bildwerken dargestellt (berlin: weidmann, 1856), 1-6. [13] bötticher, “umriss des hellenischen baumkultus,” in der baumkultus der hellenen nach den gottesdienstlichen gebräuchen und den überlieferten bildwerken dargestellt (berlin: weidmann, 1856), 9. [14] ibid., 7-25 [15] see, for example, hartmut mayer, die tektonik der hellenen: kontext und wirkung der architekturtheorie von karl bötticher (stuttgart and london: menges, 2004), 16. [16] gottfried semper, “prolegomenon” in der stil in den technischen und tektonischen künsten; oder, praktische aesthetik: ein handbuch für techniker, künstler und kunstfreunde, vol. 1 (frankfurt am main: verlag für kunst und wissenschaft, 1860), xxi-xxii. english translation in gottfried semper, style in the technical and tectonic arts; or, practical aesthetics, trans. and ed. h. f. mallgrave and michael robinson (los angeles: getty 2004), 82. [17] semper presented his ideas on weaving in several places, see, 60 isparchitecture.com for example, der stil §54 and §57-61, as well as “the four elements of architecture,” in the four elements of architecture and other writings, trans. and ed. harry f. mallgrave and wolfgang herrmann (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1989), 103-104. [18] a poignant presentation of semper’s notion of stoffwechsel and bekleidung is found in §66, “excursus über das tapetzierwesen der alten,” in der stil in den technischen und tektonischen künsten, vol. 1 (frankfurt am main: verlag für kunst und wissenschaft, 1860), 276-322. [19] this point is elaborated in j. rykwert, “gottfried semper and the conception of style,” in gottfried semper und die mitte des 19. jahrhunderts, eds. a. m. vogt, c. reble, and m. frölich (basel: birkhaüser, 1976), 68-81. [20] gottfried semper, “on architectural styles,” in the four elements of architecture and other writings, trans. and ed. harry f. mallgrave and wolfgang herrmann (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1989), 269. [21] gustav klemm, allgemeine kulturgeschichte der menschheit, vol. 1 (leipzig: teubner, 1843), 2-3. [22] the links between semper and sundt have been explored by the swedish art historian rudolf zeitler in the unpublished lecture “om eilert sundt og g. semper” (1979, typewritten manuscript held at the norwegian directorate for cultural heritage archive in oslo), though from quite a different vantage point than the present comparison. [23] eilert sundt, om bygnings-skikken paa landet i norge (christiania: malling, 1862). [24] ibid., §5, 14. in the original text: jeg kan ikke sige, hvor jeg blev forundret, da jeg første gang blev opmærksom på og opfattede denne hus-skik. [...] det er så i disse bygder, at når man først har gjort sig fortrolig med hver tings plads i et hus, så veed man med det samme, hvordan det er i alle de andre huse af samme bygningsmåde. når jeg nu kjører igjennem gudbrandsdalen og i forbifarten ser på et hus, at det hører til dette gammeldags slag, med stue og kleve, hvilket er tilfælde med de allerfleste, og når jeg fremdeles ser, hvordan huset er stillet, eller hvad der er fremsiden og bagsiden hvilket kan skjønnes på dørens eller vinduernes eller skorstenspibens plads, så kan jeg ligesom se ind igjennem væggen og vide, at her ved døren står fremskabet, der ved hjørnet er høisædet, i hjørnet hist borte står husbondens seng o.s.v. det er, som om husene skulde være af glas. [25] ibid., 14-15. in the original text: anderledes i byerne: husene mere ulige og menneskene ligeså med ulige vaner og fordringer, mere udviklet forskjellighed i sind og tænkemåde, en så, en anden så. i den fjerne landsbygd kan en velstående og en fattig bonde have det så temmelig ens i sit hus og sit daglige liv, i hovedstaden derimod kommer forskjellen mellem den ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 61 hv a tt um rige og den fattige, den dannede og den udannede o.s.v. tilsyne på hvert punkt. der er vexel-virkning her: under bylivets bevægede forholde kunne de forskjellige anlæg og sindsretninger udvikles frit, og frit sees da enhver at indrette sit hus og sit hele husliv, som han bedst veed og kan; men de udvortes forskjelligheder, som herved opstå, skabe igjen forskjellige vaner, tilbøieligheder, lidenskaber, og hermed påskyndes hin sindets og tænkemådens udvikling, så forskjellen mellem de enkelte mennesker bliver altid større og større. [26] alexander nagel and christopher s. wood, anachronic renaissance (cambridge: the mit press, 2010), 15. [27] ibid., 183. [28] aristotle, poetics, trans. j. hutton (new york: norton, 1982), 1450a. [29] egede-nissen, autentisitetens relevans, 210. emily gunzburg macas, “the old bridge,” in representing competing identitites, (ph.d. dissertation, cornell university, 2007), 198-255. [30] heiko wimmen, “new nations, imagined borders: engineering public space in post-war mostar, bosnia-hercegovina” (paper presented at the beirut conference for public spheres, beirut, lebanon, october 22-24, 2004), quoted in macas, representing competing identitites, 217. from anthropomimetic to biomimetic cities the place of humans in “cities like forests” henry dicks introduction in biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature, janine benyus argued that the key to sustainability is to learn from the 3.8 billion years of “research and development” already carried out by nature.1 since the publication of her book, biomimicry has been heralded as “the mantra for silicon valley and other regions of the techno-sphere”2 and as a “revolutionary concept” capable of underpinning a “second industrial revolution.”3 in keeping with this, biomimicry is also attracting increasing attention from architects and urbanists. the famous architecture critic, charles jencks, has noted that “the basic trend of the time [is] towards biomimesis,”4 and there is a growing tendency amongst both architects and urban theorists to see natural ecosystems—especially forests—as models for the city.5 perhaps the most significant limitation of current thinking in and around biomimicry is that it focuses almost exclusively on technological innovation. turned resolutely towards the future via the concept of sustainability, biomimicry practitioners—usually engineers, designers, architects, or urbanists— typically focus on how basing artificial entities or systems on natural models can provide a coherent response to the ecological destruction wrought by conventional technologies. if biomimicry is as important as its advocates believe, however, then it also raises important questions for the humanities, throughout western history the dominant model for the polis, qua both city and state, has been the human being “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 62 di ck s including such disciplines as urban and architectural history, anthropology, political theory, sociology, and philosophy. if buildings and cities are henceforth to be based on “natural models,” then how is this different from what went on in the past? did architects and urbanists previously design things without reference to models or did they just use different models? if the cities of the future are to be based on natural ecosystems, then what place might humans occupy in these cities and how might the emergence of these cities affect human self-understanding? and, given the important but often overlooked relation between the polis qua city and the polis qua state, what implications might the rise of biomimetic urbanism have for political theory? with a view to responding to these questions, this article will be split into three parts. in the first two parts, i will argue that the traditional model for both the state (part 1) and the city (part 2) is the human being. then, in the third part, i will briefly examine the emerging model of the natural ecosystem, and in particular the forest, before going on to consider—via an articulation of heidegger’s thinking of the clearing with some recent theoretical insights into human evolution—how this new model calls for a radical shift in human self-understanding. 1 anthropomimicry in political and social philosophy the polis of the ancient greeks was both city and state. this is not to say, however, that there was not a certain distinction between the two. for thinkers like plato and aristotle, the community of citizens that made up the state was far more important than the buildings and streets that made up the city; politics was far more important than urbanism. this split between politics and urbanism has been exacerbated in more recent times as the geographical coincidence between city and state eroded and the nation-state became the primary political unity. the result is the almost complete divorce between political philosophy, on the one hand, and architecture and urbanism, on the other. this is not to say, however, that political philosophy and urbanism have followed totally different paths. indeed, ever since the ancient greeks, thinking about the state and thinking about the city have evolved in parallel, conceiving their object in very similar terms: both the state and the city have been conceived via the same foundational model—the human being. the first major manifestation of “anthropomimetic” political philosophy occurs in plato’s republic.6 seeking a response to the question of the nature of justice, plato argues that the ideal state would be composed of three classes—philosophers, auxiliaries, and businessmen—each 63 isparchitecture.com of which corresponds to a “part” of the human soul—reason, courage, and moderation. justice, he goes on to argue, results from each class “minding its own affairs,” for doing so gives rise to that state of harmony and balance between the different parts of the state that plato sees as the essence of justice. harmony and balance between the different parts of the human soul thus constitute a model for the organization of the state and therewith also an answer to the question of the nature of justice. a similarly “anthropomimetic” approach to political philosophy was also common in the middle ages, a famous example being john of salisbury’s policraticus, which drew an extensive analogy between the organs of the body and the organs of the state.7 modern political philosophy was also strongly marked by this approach. hobbes’s leviathan famously opens with the description of the state as an “artificial man,”8 and rousseau’s 1755 article in the encyclopédie on political economy likewise contains an extended analogy between the organs of the state and the organs of the human body.9 moreover, it is also important to note the role played by speculative anthropology in modern political philosophy. the state was conceived in analogous terms to the human individual in the state of nature. as individuals entered the social contract, thus leaving the state of nature behind, the state of nature did not completely disappear but was instead elevated to the international level; the war of all against all would henceforth take place between nations, not individuals. in the wake of the french revolution, as representative democracy fitfully emerged as the dominant form of politics in the west, an important shift occurred in political philosophy away from the nature and role of government towards what hegel and marx called “civil society.” indeed, for marx, all traditional history had focused on the “super-structural” issues of religion, politics, and harmony and balance between the different parts of the human soul thus constitute a model for the organization of the state “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 64 di ck s ideology, thus overlooking the relations and forces of production that make up the economic “base.” the separation of civil society from the state, and therewith also the shift from the “political question” to the “social question,”10 in turn made possible the emergence of sociology. from its very inception, sociology supposed a specific model for society: the physiological one of the organism. grappling with the newfound separation between state and society, saint-simon developed a theoretical understanding of the latter via the concept of “social physiology” (la physiologie sociale).11 in order to understand society scientifically, he thought, it was necessary to use concepts drawn from physiology, an approach which led him to inquire into the various “organs” of the “social body,” while at the same time seeing political economy, law, and public morality as the basic “rules of hygiene” of this same social body. strongly influenced by saint-simon, auguste comte may have abandoned the expression “social physiology” in favour of the neologism “sociology,” thus founding the latter as a stand-alone discipline, but he did not abandon the organismic model.12 for comte, the very possibility of sociology as a positive science depended on seeing society as an “organism,” an approach that led him to import a wide number of key operational concepts—organs, illnesses, etc.—from physiology. likewise, in de la division du travail social, durkheim also took up this physiological view of society, arguing that the division of labour in the “social organism” corresponds to the functional division of the “biological organism” into different members and organs.13 for our purposes, there are three key points to underline regarding anthropomimetic political and social philosophy. the first is that specifically in political philosophy, one finds a strong tendency to focus on the soul or mind of the human individual and its mimetic counterpart at the level of the state. plato, for example, focuses on what he sees as the three different parts of the soul and their mimetic counterparts in the state. likewise, while rousseau’s article on political economy draws an extensive analogy between the parts of the human body and the parts of the state, his political philosophy—as developed most notably in du contrat social—focuses rather on analogies between the mental faculties of human individuals and their corresponding attributes in the state, the most notable example being his invocation of the individual will as a model for the “general will.” the second is that the emergence of sociology in the nineteenth century did not amount to a change of model—away from the “anthropological” one favoured by political philosophers from plato to rousseau and towards a new and different “physiological” or “biological” one—but rather a shift in focus within the same basic model, 65 isparchitecture.com such that the traditional emphasis on the mind, and therewith also on the activities of government and science, was replaced by a focus on the body, and therewith also on socio-economic activity, particularly the work. the third key point is that all the political and social philosophy discussed above sees the political or social community as composed solely of human beings. plato’s state is composed of people, not things. the parts of hobbes’s state that correspond to the different parts or attributes of the human individual (the soul, memory, joints, nerves, strength, etc.) are all people (the sovereign, counsellors, magistrates, etc.),14 hence the famous depiction of the state on the frontispiece of leviathan as a composite of human individuals. similarly, in comte and durkheim’s work, the parts of the social organism that they think correspond to the parts of the biological organism are all different categories of people. in short, human beings provide not just the form but also the matter of the traditional view of the state. 2. anthropomimicry in urban theory the first key manifestation of anthropomimicry in architecture and urban theory occurred in early renaissance italy in the work of such important and influential figures as leon battista alberti, filarete, and francesco di giorgio martini.15 according to the french urban historian françoise choay, the fundamental explanation for this phenomenon lies in what she calls the “scandal of homo artifex.”16 unlike other species, whose constructions follow paths determined by their nature, humans are free to build things however they choose. so, whereas the laws that govern the construction of beehives or ant nests are determined by the nature of the species, humans, as uniquely autonomous agents, must give themselves their own laws of construction. this in turn raises the question of what laws and guidelines they should give themselves. the response, choay ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 66 di ck s explains, was that the construction of artefacts should follow the form of the human body, for the human body was considered the most perfect form in all of nature, primarily on the grounds that it combined the fundamental attributes of all the various different spheres of creation, from the growth of plants and the sentience of animals to the rationality and spirituality of bodiless angels.17 the result was an approach to the planning and design of cities that would dominate western architecture for hundreds of years: the form of the city should follow the form of the human body. there was, however, a complication with this “anthropomimetic” approach to urban planning and design. unlike vitruvius, who saw the human body as a purely formal or aesthetic architectural model, the architects and urban theorists of the early italian renaissance also looked for functional equivalents to the different parts of the human body.18 the complication was that it was not easy to find meaningful points of comparison between internal organs of the human body and corresponding functional parts of the city. there was, as choay notes, a “blank” in the city where the internal organs should be.19 four hundred years later, this blank was eventually filled in. the moment of transition is most clearly visible in the contest between antoni rovira i tras and ildefonso cerda for the renovation of barcelona in the mid-nineteenth century. rovira’s project accepted the basic methodology of the early italian renaissance: the renovation of barcelona was to follow the ideal aesthetic form of the human body. as antonio lopez de aberasturi explains: “[f]rom the head – the forum to the peripheral members, the proportions of its [the proposed city’s] elements are modelled on the proportions of the human body, in conformity with the teachings of the great treatises of classical architecture.”20 (my translation) cerda, on the other hand, introduced a functionalist approach. the city should not have the aesthetic form of the human body, but rather the functional efficacy of the biological organism. the urbanist, in this new framework, takes on the role of both “anatomist” and “doctor” of the “urban organism.” his role is first to dissect the city, to analyse its biological functions—its systems of consumption, digestion, circulation, evacuation of waste, and so on—and then, in the case of pathology, to intervene in such a way that the city may be cured of any “illness.” so, just as auguste comte’s founding of sociology as a positive science required society to be seen as an organism, so the emergence of urbanism as a positive science—which choay traces back to cerda’s teoría general de l’urbanización—likewise required the city to be seen in this same physiological way.21 67 isparchitecture.com but the city, as theorized by the nascent science of urbanism, was not just any old organism. indeed, as the development of urban infrastructures over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has testified, the principal technological developments in the thinking and practice of urban planning and design typically evoked the model of the specifically human or animal organism. for example, the mid-nineteenth century british hygienists, and frederick ward in particular, proposed new forms of centralized urban water systems whose pipes were based on the model of “arteries,” “veins,” and “capillaries,” whose steam-powered pumps used to transport water uphill were based on the “heart,” and whose impermeable paving, which was thought to protect the city from disease, was modelled on the “skin.”22 perhaps the greatest example of this way of thinking, however, is to be found in le corbusier’s urbanisme, which describes the city as a “human organism,” its buildings as “cells,” its roads as “arteries,” its parks as “lungs,” and the urbanist as its “doctor” or “surgeon,” depending on the severity of the treatment required. in the book’s appendix, le corbusier even provides various diagrams of the internal organs of the human body, explicitly referencing them as models on which his practice as an urbanist is grounded.23 in view of the above analyses, it is clear that the evolution of western thinking about both states and cities has followed a similar path. indeed, while some moments in history have given rise to particularly intense moments of activity for the former (e.g., the enlightenment) and others for the latter (e.g., the renaissance), it is also true that there have been periods of strong convergence, most notably the mid-nineteenth century, which saw the simultaneous emergence of both sociology and urbanism, viewed as positive sciences, thanks in large part to a shared grounding in the physiological model of the organism. this is not to say, however, that history does not also reveal significant unlike other species, whose constructions follow paths determined by their nature, humans are free to build things however they choose “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 68 di ck s theoretical differences between the polis qua city and the polis qua state. we have already seen that the mid-nineteenth century marked a change in focus from the enlightenment vision of the human soul or mind as model for the workings of government to the sociological vision of the functional differentiation of the biological body or organism as model for the social division of labour. in the case of urban theory, by contrast, the shift is not from mind to body, but rather from the outward, aesthetic form of the human body to its internal, functional organization. a second major difference concerns the composition of the anthropomimetic state in contrast to that of the anthropomimetic city. whereas the former is composed solely of human beings, the latter is composed rather of houses, temples, fortresses, city walls, market places, and other artificial constructions, though later also infrastructure, most of which was inanimate, as in the case of transport, water, and energy networks, though some of which was composed of living beings, as in the case of the new urban parks, whose creation was justified throughout the western world on the grounds that they constituted the “lungs of the city.”24 3 the biomimetic polis and the question of the human it is not hard to see that modelling cities and states on human individuals is ecologically problematic. viewed ecologically, humans are “consumers.” to base cities and states on the model of human individuals is thus to create urban and socio-political systems whose continued existence depends on the extraction and consumption of vast quantities of energy and materials from their environment and which also generate huge quantities of waste and pollution. conversely, to base cities and states on natural ecosystems would be to create urban and socio-political systems which generate their own usable energies and materials while also recycling their wastes in processes analogous to natural nutrient cycling. to get a brief idea of the power of this new model, let us briefly consider the potential implications of braungart and mcdonough’s motto, “[i]magine a building like a tree, a city like a forest,”25 for sustainable energy systems. according to this model, every building would capture all or almost all of the energy it requires using solar panels, whether photovoltaic or, in the future, using techniques closer to natural photosynthesis. as for distribution, just as in the forest the rhizosphere connects the trees together such that excess sugars may be passed on to mycelium in the soil and thereby also on to other trees, so “energy positive” buildings would pass on their excess energy to buildings that do not meet their own energy requirements via a distributed underground grid. and finally, 69 isparchitecture.com just as in the forest the mobile organisms—the insects and animals—obtain their energy in the first instance from the plants, so in a city like a forest, the mobile elements— cars, trams, drones, etc.— could also obtain their energy directly from the buildings. while it would in theory be possible to develop all sorts of other examples of how forest ecosystems could help us re-think the technological foundations of our cities and states, the key question that the remainder of this article will seek to address is rather the anthropological one of the “place” humans might occupy in the biomimetic polis, and therewith also the issue of how basing the polis on forest ecosystems calls on us to re-think our self-understanding. before developing a response to these questions, it is important to recall two key features of the basic anthropology supposed by modern political philosophers: first, the key opposition that structures this anthropology is that of a body shared with the rest of nature and a mind unique to humans; second, human individuals— qua syntheses of bodies and minds—provide both the form on which the state is modelled and the matter of which it is composed. in this manner, the state provides a place where these dual aspects of the human may find fulfilment: bodily fulfilment may be attained via the activity of consumption we share with animals and mental fulfilment by the intellectual activities—politics, science, art, etc.—that humans alone possess. in view of this, it could perhaps be thought that the biomimetic polis runs the risk of going to the opposite extreme of the anthropomimetic polis (i.e., of excluding the human altogether). if the basic models for the different elements of the state are provided by nature—plants, animals, fungi, etc.—and not by the figure 1: the construction of the city of savannah, georgia in an area of cleared forest ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 70 di ck s human, then what place might the biomimetic polis accord to humans? in response to this question, the key argument sketched out in the remainder of the article is that it is possible to think the place of the human in “cities like forests” via the development of a speculative philosophical anthropology that combines heidegger’s ontological thinking of the “clearing” with various anthropological insights that have emerged from the study of human evolution and pre-history. 4 the clearing in anthropology and philosophy in “the end of philosophy and the task of thinking,” heidegger describes the clearing as “the open region for everything that becomes present and absent.”26 this becoming present, he thinks, depends on humans’ unique ability to understand being (i.e., the “as”), for it is “as” things—as tools, as other humans, as animals, as gods, etc.—that beings show up in the clearing. it is widely assumed in the secondary literature on the subject that the clearing in the forest is ultimately just a “metaphor” for this uniquely human ability to understand the “as.”27 on this reading, the clearing in the forest is simply a figurative representation of beingin-the-world, and in particular of its spatiality. in what follows, we will see that it is possible to draw on contemporary interpretations of human evolution and pre-history in order to interpret the clearing not as mere metaphor, but rather as a literal and insightful description of the “there,” understood as the space where the “as” reveals itself. for the first four or five million years since our hominid predecessors separated from the common ancestor they shared with chimpanzees, the driving force behind human evolution was the thinning out of the tropical forests of africa and therewith also the transition from an arboreal lifestyle to one which increasingly took place in open environments.28 according to the french paleo-anthropologist pascal picq, it was precisely the completion of this transition to open environments—and not an increase in brain size, the generalization of tool-use, bipedalism, language, or any other single factor—that defines the genre homo,29 and therewith also what are widely referred to as “early humans.” the emergence of “modern humans,” approximately 1.5 million years later, again marked a significant shift in our ancestors’ relation to the environment. if “anatomically modern humans” emerged approximately 200,000 years ago, it was not until approximately 50,000 years ago—during the depths of the last ice age—that so-called “modern behaviour” emerged. then, as soon as the glaciers receded some 12,000 years ago, a dramatic increase in the human population came about thanks largely to the widespread practice of 71 isparchitecture.com deforestation, whether to create space in which to dwell, hunt, and gather or to adopt the agriculture and architectural techniques characteristic of the neolithic revolution.30 the clearing, on this view, is not a metaphor for the space where humans dwell, for the genre homo is not only biologically adapted to living in the clearings or open environments opened up several million years ago by climate change, but also, and largely because of this adaptation, has in its most recent incarnation— behaviourally modern humans—constantly sought to clear forests, a practice that has now spread so far and wide that human habitation of clearings goes largely unnoticed.31 but the clearing is not just a physical habitat, an open environment to which members of the species homo sapiens are biologically and culturally adapted, for it must also be seen in heideggerian terms as the space where being “reveals itself,” thus “opening itself ” to understanding. in what follows we will not seek to understand the complex philosophical issue of the “self-disclosure” of being in its entirety, but rather to analyse one important feature of this process that is particularly important for the present inquiry: concomitant with the self-disclosure of the “as” there emerges the possibility of seeing one being “as” or “like” another being. this feature of the self-disclosure of being resonates with the argument put forward by the cognitive anthropologist steven mithen that what ultimately distinguishes modern humans from early humans is “cognitive fluidity.” by cognitive fluidity, mithen means the ability to combine the various different categories of thought and forms of intelligence so as to produce original syntheses.32 so, whereas mithen thinks that the neanderthals had what he calls a “natural history intelligence,” a “technical intelligence,” and a “social intelligence,” each of which was more or less as fully developed as that of modern humans, he also thinks they were unable to combine these various different forms what place might the biomimetic polis accord to humans? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 72 di ck s of intelligence and the categories of thought on which they depend to produce novel syntheses. it is not hard to see that it is this openness of the “as,” this cognitive fluidity, which gives humans the unique ability to blend together their understandings of nature, of technology, and of humanity, that constitutes the ontological ground for the creation of both the anthropomimetic and the biomimetic polis. it is what makes it possible to conceive cities and states based on the model of the human individual, understood as a composite of an animal body and a human mind, just as it is also the ontological ground that allows humans to conceive cities and states based on the model of the forest, understood not just as a natural ecosystem, but also as containing clearings and therewith also the open relationship to the “as” that is unique to humans. with this in mind, it would seem that the transition from an anthropomimietic to a biomimetic model of the polis makes possible a new way of thinking about what distinguishes humans from nature: in contrast to the traditional distinction between the mind and the body, the new distinction would be based instead on the opposition between the forest and the clearing. after the “mind/body” dualism of modernity, which identifies the human with the mental and the natural with the bodily, there may thus emerge what i propose to call an “enlightened naturalism” (naturalisme éclairé), which, as the word “naturalism” suggests, seeks to explain the emergence of the human in naturalistic terms via the study of human evolution, while at the same time also making it possible to think about what is ontologically distinctive about the human—the open relation to being—via the concept of the “clearing” (clairière). conclusion whereas the traditional model for the polis was the “anthropomimetic” one of the human being, the emergence of biomimicry has led to the possibility not only of taking the forest as a model for the polis, but also of understanding the genesis of this model from out of the clearing, understood not only as an open environment, but also as the space where the “as” discloses itself, thereby making it possible to see one thing “as” or “like” another thing. this in turn calls for a radical shift in human self-understanding: rather than seeing ourselves as composites of an animal body and a human mind, we may henceforth see ourselves as former forest-dwellers who have come to dwell in open environments and who, in doing so, have ultimately acquired an open relation to being, hence the possibility of conceiving states as “artificial men,” societies as 73 isparchitecture.com “organisms,” cities like “forests,” and so on and so forth. from this perspective, rather than trying to overcome the much-maligned mind-body dualism of modernity in the name of either reductionist monism (e.g., scientific naturalism) or postmodern pluralism, the task we face is rather to theorize an “enlightened naturalism” (naturalisme éclairé), which articulates naturalistic explanations of human evolution with ontological thinking about the “clearing” (clairière). moreover, as far as the relation between architecture and philosophy is concerned, although heidegger’s significance for architecture has been much discussed,33 the idea that building takes place in clearings and that there may be an important link between clearings in the naturalistic and ontological senses has, to my knowledge, yet to be explored. from vitruvius34 to le corbusier,35 it has commonly been assumed that the first ever buildings were constructed in forest clearings, but this has not been linked to the ontological sense of the clearing, and thereby also to the question of the being of buildings, and in particular to their openness to being seen “as” imitations of the perfect human form, “as” cells in an urban organism, or “as” habitable imitations of the trees that made way for them in the first place. lastly, it is of course also important to consider how the model of the forest may allow us to rethink not just architecture and urbanism, but also the polis in the political sense. could the model of the forest biome help provide a model for the political economy of entire nation states and in particular for their agricultural and industrial production? and, if the forest is the model for the polis, could the clearing perhaps provide a model for the agora, understood as the economic and political space of markets, parliaments, tribunals, and so on, where the essential discussions and decisions of its human inhabitants take place? the emergence of biomimicry has led to the possibility not only of taking the forest as a model for the polis, but also of according humans a place within this model “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 74 di ck s endnotes [1] janine benyus, biomimicry: innovation inspired by nature (new york: harper perennial, 1997). [2] dickson despommier, the vertical farm: feeding the world in the 21st century (new york: picador, 2011), 34. [3] freya mathews, “towards a deeper philosophy of biomimicry,” organization & environment 24, no. 4 (2011): 364-387. [4] charles jencks, the story of postmodernism (chichester: john wiley, 2011), 225. [5] see michael braungart and william mcdonough, cradle to cradle: re-making the way we make things (london: vintage, 2009); luc schuiten and pierre loze, vers une cité végétale (wavre: madraga, 2010); vincent callebaut, paris 2050: les cités fertiles faces aux enjeux du xx siècle (paris: michel lafon, 2015); and maibritt pedersen zari, “ecosystem services analysis: mimicking ecosystem services for regenerative urban design,” international journal of sustainable built environment 4, no. 1 (2015): 145–157. [6] plato, the republic, trans. desmond lee (london: penguin classics, 1974). [7] john of salisbury, policraticus: of the frivolties of courtiers and the footprints of philosophers, trans. cary j. nederman (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1990). [8] thomas hobbes, leviathan or the matter, form & power of a commonwealth ecclesiastical and civill (london: andrew cooke, 1651). [9] jean-jacques rousseau, “discours sur l’economie politique,” in du contrat social, ed. robert derathé (paris: gallimard, 2007), 66. [10] serge moscovici, essai sur l’histoire humaine de la nature (paris: flammarion, 1977). [11] claude henri saint-simon, de la physiologie sociale: œuvres choisies (extraits 1803-1825), ed. georges gurvitch (paris: presses universitaires de france, 1965). [12] auguste comte, leçons de sociologie: cours de philosophie positive (paris: flammarion, 1995), 47-51. [13] emile durkheim, de la division du travail social, (paris: editions norph-nop, 2011). [14] the only significant exceptions to this are money and goods, which hobbes depicts as the “blood” of the “artificial man.” [15] jütte has documented how in late medieval europe houses were often 75 isparchitecture.com conceived by analogy with human beings, but he also notes that it was only with the renaissance that the “boom” in anthropomorphic architecture truly began. see daniel jütte, “living stones: the house as actor in early modern europe,” journal of urban history, 42, no. 4 (2015): 659-687. [16] françoise choay, “la ville et le domaine bâti comme corps dans les textes des architectesthéoriciens de la première renaissance italienne,” nouvelle revue de psychanalyse 9 (1974): 239-251. [17] ibid., 247. [18] ibid., 244. [19] ibid., 246. [20] antonio lopez de aberasturi, “introduction,” in la théorie générale de l’urbanisation d’ildefonso cerdà, trans. antonio lopez de aberasturi (paris: editions du seuil, 1979), 22. [21] françoise choay, la règle et le modèle: sur la théorie de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme (paris: editions du seuil, 1996). [22] frederick ward, discours prononcé à la séance d’ouverture du congrès international de bienfaisance, (bruxelles: librairie européenne, c. muquardt, 1856), 9-31. [23] le corbusier, urbanisme (paris: flammarion, 1994). [24] catherine ward thompson, “linking landscape and health: the recurring theme,” landscape and urban planning 99 (2011): 191. [25] michael braungart and william mcdonough, cradle to cradle, 139. [26] martin heidegger, “the end of philosophy and the task of thinking,” in basic writings, ed. david f. krell (oxford: routledge, 1993), 442. [27] see richard capobianco, engaging heidegger (toronto: university of toronto press, 2010), 89; thomas sheehan, making sense of heidegger: a paradigm shift (london: rowman and littlefield, ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 76 di ck s 2015), 20-21. [28] jean-jacques hublin, quand d’uutres hommes peuplaient la terre (paris: flammarion, 2008). [29] pascal picq, au commencement était l’homme (paris: odile jacob, 2009), 99-100. [30] michael williams, deforesting the earth: from prehistory to global crisis (chicago: university of chicago press, 2002). [31] robert harrison, forests: the shadow of civilization (chicago: university of chicago press, 1992), 245. [32] steven mithen, the prehistory of the mind: a search for the origins of art, religion and science (london: thames and hudson, 1996), 203. [33] see miguel de beistegui, thinking with heidegger (indianapolis: indiana university press, 2003); adam sharr, heidegger for architects (oxford: routledge, 2007). [34] choay, “la ville et le domaine,” 239-251. [35] le corbusier, vers une architecture (paris: flammarion, 1995). towards a post-human era? digital architects and the future of mankind marion roussel in this age of unprecedented technological progress, we can no longer ask “what is man?” without examining what we think man will become. in the field of architecture such an examination necessitates considering both what and for whom we will be building in the decades to come. since the expansion of information and communication technologies in the beginning of the 1990s, the most forward-thinking architects have been asking these very questions. more specifically, digital architects have been among the first in the field, if not the first, to become interested in the effects of technological advancements not only on architectural design and the built environment of the future, but also on society as a whole and on our physical, psychological, and cultural evolution. thus they have constructed future world visions often impregnated with post-humanist and transhumanist currents of thought. these future world visions are valuable resources in our quest to grasp and understand the contemporary conception of mankind and of mankind’s possible futures. through such commentary this paper aims to show how digital architects have been imagining mankind’s future from the 1990s to the present. it will attempt to shed light upon our current state of evolution and its expected outcomes, regarding especially how we relate to the natural and to the artificial. we can no longer ask ‘what is man?’ without examining what we think man will become “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 78 r ou ss el these relationships have already been profoundly transformed by new technologies and they will be transformed more and more. from the possibility of new modes of being made possible by cyberspace, which architects dreamed of during the 1990s, to the fantasy of a world populated by a new bio-mechanic species of life and truly living buildings, the statement made by the artist roy ascott that “[w]e are only interested in what can be made of ourselves, not what made us” takes its full meaning.1 cyberspace: the possibility of new modes of being the digital turn in architecture occurred at the beginning of the 1990s as a result of the democratization of personal computers.2 it was contemporaneous with the development of the internet and virtual reality technologies, leading, during the course of that decade, to the theorization of cyberspace. the cyberpunk author william gibson, who popularized the term “cyberspace,” described it as “[a] consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation” and “[a] graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.”3 born around the beginning of the 1980s in science fiction literature, it was depicted as a new level of reality, an entirely new space of living, but an immaterial one which existed in addition to our physical one and was produced by the global interconnection of computers from all over the world. in fact, during all the 1990s, cyberspace provided a basis for reflection on the topic of the transformation of space under pressure of the ict (information and communications technology) and of the hybridization of virtual and physical spaces. moreover, it nourished a new imagination related to a likely transformation of mankind itself as a result of these virtualization processes. in the fields of architectural and urban theory, a number of research papers and publications emerged in this decade. cyberspace: first steps by michael benedikt (1991),4 being digital by nicholas negroponte (1995),5 and city of bits by william mitchell (1996)6 demonstrated the involvement and interest of architects in this emerging digital society and its implications. the publication of the issues of the architectural design review “architects in cyberspace,” in 19957 and “architects in cyberspace ii” in 1998,8 bringing together the contributions of the so-called “cyber-architects” (marcos novak, neil spiller, john frazer, karl chu, etc.), celebrated the “digital turn” in architecture as well as the community of thought that gathered around the topic of architecture, ict, and digital architecture. these works were mostly focused on the issue of dwelling, seeking 79 isparchitecture.com to redefine what it means to inhabit at a time when the virtualization of space was seen as capable of creating a transformation in man. immersion in virtual spaces and, therefore, the mind-body problem, were examined with a view to the future of man (individual, subject, or species) and his technological hybridization. it is not surprising, then, that the architectural design issue “architects in cyberspace” ended with a paper by stelarc entitled “towards the post-human: from psycho-body to cyber-system,” in which the artist announced the obsolescence of the biological body and the entry of the human into a postevolutionary era.9 c r e a t i n g visions of the world to come, reflecting on the evolution of mankind and society, the “cyberarchitects” flirted with trans-humanist currents of thought and definitions of the post-human. d i f f e r e n t i a t i n g itself from philosophical-cultural post-humanism and from technological post-humanism, trans-humanism promotes the enhancement of human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities through techniques such as stem-cell therapy, genetic engineering, psycho-pharmacology, anti-aging therapies, neural interfaces, machines, and other mechanical enhancements.10 by taking control of the evolutionary process and thus liberating the human species from its biological limitations, transhumanists aim to attain a post-human existence whose visions range from the post-human as a figure 1: trans-vitruvian man ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 80 r ou ss el cybernetic organism; a digital, disembodied entity; to even a new biological species.11 in the process, the definition of the human would evolve, perhaps in unpredictable ways. most of the digital architects believed that the emergence of cyberspace would truly transcend everything we know.12 “what would architecture be in this sphere of virtuality?” asked karl chu in 1995, before answering: “no one knows for sure, however one thing is certain, traditional conceptions of territory, of dwelling, of identity, of the phenomenology of existence and being will no longer be the same.”13 thought as a true phenomenological, perceptual, and phenomenal environment, cyberspace opened the possibility of new modes of being, and even of, in michael benedikt’s words, “another venue for consciousness itself.”14 marcos novak, pioneer of virtual reality and algorithmic architectural conception, exemplified this idea with a virtual environment called “dancing with the virtual dervish: worlds in progress” (1991-1994) in which performers were compared to mystic sufis in trance, immersed in a vision, an inner journey, exploring the meanderings of the human mind. generated from musical algorithms and l-systems (a formal and generative grammar used to model and simulate growth in plants), this environment was made up of an increasing number of chambers interconnected on the rhizome model, without any narrative hierarchy or determined development, and without beginning or end, thus leading to ways of being in space totally different from what we experience daily.15 for the british artist roy ascott, in the same spirit, cyberspaceinduced transformations in the concept of inhabiting were considered so important that architecture needed to be fully rethought and urban strategy to be re-conceptualized.16 in fact, according to ascott, new perceptual and cognitive abilities should have emerged from our relation to information and communication technologies, expanding our sensory apparatus and connecting our individual bodies. the ability to be both here and there at the same time, which cyberspace should have permitted, should have enabled new ways of thinking and perceiving. the “post-biological faculty of cyberception,” as called by ascott, should have constituted a true “qualitative change in our being.” he claims, moreover, that: [n]ot only are we changing radically, body and mind, but we are becoming actively involved in our own transformation. […] our consciousness allows us the fuzzy edge on identity, hovering between the inside and the outside of every possible definition of what it is to be a human being. we are all interface. we are computer-mediated and computer-enhanced.17 by the late 1990s, it was conceded that what cyberspace architects 81 isparchitecture.com had dreamed of was nothing but a fantasy. the inspiring word “cyberspace” became a synonym for the more prosaic internet, making it clear that there was no distinct virtual space separated from our physical one. it was also conceded that what happened in the electronic space of data and information networks in fact happened in our daily space, now hybridized by virtual technologies. even william gibson recognized that “[c]yberspace, not so long ago, was a specific elsewhere, one we visited periodically, peering into it from the familiar physical world. now cyberspace has everted. turned itself inside out. colonized the physical.”18 the installation “trans-ports” presented at the venice architecture biennial 2000 by the dutch artists kas oosterhuis and ilona lénárd, founders of the onl agency, is a striking example of this merging. trans-ports was an experiment in datadriven architecture: its structure was thought as reconfigurable in real-time in actual space as internet users manipulated its online 3d model. concomitantly, data collected in the physical space would also modify the structure, this modification being reverberated online, changing the 3d model. then the connectedness and interdependence between physical and virtual spaces would be made obvious. moreover, the “trans-ports” inner skin was designed as a giant and continuous screen projecting information from websites or webcams, completely immersing visitors in data. this inner skin is conceptually very close to the hypersurface architecture theory developed by stephen perrella during the 1990s, where architecture was conceptualized as a media surface melting the virtual and the built environment into a single hybrid space. even if the fantasy of cyberspace had vanished, the insights developed by roy ascott remained deeply relevant. beyond the traditional naturalartificial debate thenceforth thought as obsolete, william gibson recognized that cyberspace has everted. turned itself inside out. colonized the physical “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 82 r ou ss el what persisted was the idea of an intentionally and technologically directed self-transformation of humankind; and this some years before the german philosopher peter sloterdijk wrote two essays on that very same proposition respectively entitled rules for the human zoo19 and the domestication of being.20 according to sloterdijk, anthropogenesis is the result of anthropotechnics: human beings produce their own identity by means of technics (technological techniques). neither technics nor technology would be “against” man: we would not be dealing with dehumanization by technology. on the contrary, such self-transformation would fully be part of a greater, and genuine, effort to strive for a better humanity. the architect rachel armstrong expressed a very similar idea in 1998. she stated that “all mechanised individuals, regardless of their degree of integration with technology, remain fundamentally human.[...] this transformation of the body is not an artificial process; on the contrary, it is a natural extension of our humanness. our species has elevated itself on the earth by its capacity to use machines, not by its innate genetic programming.”21 yet, due to, for example, the emergence of new species of life, be they digital, mechanical, or bio-mechanical, the place of man on the earth could well change faster than we expect, and in such a radical way that it could lead to the extinction of humankind itself. toward new species of life: toward the death of mankind? in 2002 kas oosterhuis declared that, “[d]igital life may well assimilate us completely in the end, so that we no longer need to pretend that we are the be-all and end-all of evolution.”22 this architect, clearly, shared a theory of personality like that of vernor vinge or ray kurzweil, who popularized the hypothesis of ‘singularity.’ singularity is the idea that we are at the dawn of a ‘technological leap’ determined by the exponential growth of computer power that will result in the emergence of artificial super-intelligences. proponents of singularity believe that, at some point, progress will be the accomplishment of these artificial intelligences only, with humanity becoming obsolete. in the same way, we would no longer be in charge of our own future: the super-intelligences would decide for us; choosing to annihilate us, absorb us, or let us live as they saw fit. this technological post-humanist concept of the post-human is quite different from that of trans-humanism or from that of philosophicalcultural post-humanism. in fact, whereas trans-humanism embraced the project of creating radically enhanced humanity, and whereas in philosophical-cultural post-humanism the concept of the post-human serves as a basis for a new narrative that would not engage “the literal 83 isparchitecture.com end of man but the end of a particular image of us,”23 technological post-humanism envisions the very disappearance of the human species. its project, therefore, is not concerned with the human but with the production of an artificial alterity that would not only be no longer human but would in fact supersede us, leading to a completely postanthropocentric, non-human world. karl chu does not explicitly embrace that singularity idea, but his future world vision seems close to that of technological post-humanism. since the late 1990s he has been announcing the advent of a post-human era which he has termed the ‘hyperzoïc era’. this hyperzoïc era, a “brave new world more fantastic and hyperbolic than anything we have seen in the history of human civilization,”24 would be not unlike the cambrian era—an explosion of diversification and complexity. it would be characterized by “the profusion of a new type of life; the artificial life of abstract machines and architecture, which will be reflected in a new type of bionic economy of the mecanosphere, coinciding with the biosphere.”25 he reiterated the same ideas in 2004: finally, with the convergence of computation and biogenetics, the world is now moving into the so-called post-human era, which will bring forth a new kind of bio-machinic mutation of organic and inorganic substances. […] it is only a matter of time before the world will witness biomachinic mutation of species proliferating into every facet of what so far has been the cultural landscape of humanity. architects take note: this is the beginning of the demise, if not the displacement, of the reign of anthropology, which has always subsumed architecture. […] the potential emancipation of architecture from anthropology is already affording us to think for the first time of a new kind of xenoarchitecture with its own autonomy and will to being.26 the emphasis put on the possibility of creating the world is now moving into the so-called post-human era “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 84 r ou ss el new species of architectural life (that is, living buildings) from scratch, through the use of genetic engineering and synthetic biology, is very interesting. even more interesting is the idea that, in the same way, architecture, which, according to chu, “has always been a subset of anthropology,” “especially from the standpoint of its mythical inception,”27 would no longer be subsumed by anthropology. this idea is not, however, developed further and nothing is said about what could become of human beings in this new environment, except that it “may lead to conditions that are so precarious and treacherous as to even threaten the future viability of the species, homo sapiens, on earth.”28 while also largely adhering to a post-anthropocentric trans-humanist view, marcos novak’s reflection on these issues is more intriguing. according to novak, we would become alien. in 1998, referencing nietzsche, he wrote that if the project of modernity might be characterized by the desire to build the super-man, our (post-modern) time would in turn be characterized by the desire to build what he calls “the alien.”29 in 2002 he stated, again referencing nietzsche and the end of theo-centrism, that the production of the alien, encompassing all aspects and areas of our reality, would lead to the death of mankind. “allocentrism” would then replace anthropocentrism, undermining the traditional definition of the human.30 “the death of mankind” is not intended, however, to suggest some sort of “literal, alarmist, and paranoid apocalyptic fear.” it implies, rather, that mankind is an ongoing project,31 and that this ongoing project, according to the architect, would tend toward the alien. this idea can be linked, first, to what the french philosopher michel foucault claimed in the order of things: that is to say that “man is an invention of recent date. and one perhaps nearing its end.”32 “man is […] a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and […] he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form.”33 thus, to say that mankind is an ongoing project tending toward the alien is to say that our understanding of what is mankind, our conception of man, is shifting. secondly, in order to understand what it means to become alien, the whole conceptual landscape of marcos novak needs to be examined, beginning with its central notion of ‘transmodernity.’ developed in the middle of the 1990s, ‘transmodernity’ refers to the idea that our era is characterized by all that the prefix ‘trans-’ entails: ‘beyond,’ ‘across,’ ‘through,’ ‘so as to change.’ under the pressure of new technologies and hybridization of virtual and actual spaces, all the traditional taxonomies (dead/alive, natural/artificial, human/non-human, etc.) would be erased, giving birth to new conditions, new situations, 85 isparchitecture.com new events, new bodies, and new identities. thus, the main effect of transmodernity would be the “production of the alien.” to sum up, our world would become stranger and stranger, and so would we: “[t]his is no surprise: transmodernity is about becoming: becoming alien.”34 in “speciation, transvergence, allogenesis: notes on the production of the alien,” novak stated that if in the past our interest has been focused on evolution as a continuous process of adaptation (relying on such concepts as fitness), today it is diversity and the discontinuous mechanisms of speciation which might retain our attention. drawing an analogy with biological processes (an analogy which requires, however, further explanation), novak claims that: [t]o say that we are a transmodern culture is thus to say that we have placed ourselves into a period of rapid and intentional cladogenesis. to say that transmodernity is characterised by the production of the alien is to say that our cladogenesis is directed towards what i term allogenesis.35 big bang 2.0: building a brave new world? ‘cladogenesis’ refers to a mode of evolution by branching, in which a parent species splits into two distinct species, the new species then being fed by the same genetic material as the one from which it originated. the neologism ‘allogenesis’ refers to the emergence of new species from every available material—genetic, epigenetic, or even non-genetic. allogenetic processes are more discontinuous than cladogenetic and can lead to the emergence of “alien” species. this does not, however, mean that we would be dealing with a radical rupture but rather that the continuous movement of becoming, now incorporating new technologies, would direct mankind towards exceptionally rapid changes. although intentionally and technologically ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 86 r ou ss el initiated by human design, allogenesis might result in beings which would be impossible to predict. it would moreover concern not only mankind but also the production of other species. as novak announced in 2008: established species were once mutant. there is a deep relationship between how the new is conceived, produced, introduced, and established in nature and how the new emerges in culture […] we have finally developed tools powerful enough not only to represent or describe the processes of development and speciation by which the new enters the world, but to simulate them, and then, beyond that, to actually embody them. we will not stop at simulating the evolution and mechanisms of life; we aim to manufacture new species of life itself.36 novak’s discourse is very similar to that of karl chu. novak and chu in fact worked on similar projects that involved the growing of truly living buildings. one example of this ‘alloarchitecture’ (novak’s term) is the project “allobio” (2001-2004), which is defined as an anticipation of the convergence of the virtual and the actual, the psychological and the cybernetical, the architectural and the biological. it may be one of the first examples of what neil spiller calls ‘post-digital architecture’: not architecture without any digital component, but a synthesis between the virtual, the actual, the biological, the cyborgian, the augmented, and the mixed.37 “allobio” was described as the first specimen of a hybrid singular species, an ‘allo-living’ creature at the intersection of architecture and biotechnology. “allobio” might pave the way for buildings which would no longer be manufactured but would grow as plants or animals grow and would couple the virtual and the actual within reflexive and evolving spaces, fed both by data from computer networks and from events taking place in physical space. allobio might be said to have an awareness, a consciousness, and an intentionality of its own. as truly intelligent architecture, [it] would have evolving personalit[y] that wouldn’t just behave differently in response to our behavior, but would also change and strive to change us. we would not command [it]; rather we would be in dialogue with [it]. sometimes we would persuade [it] to do as we wish; sometimes [it] would persuade us. this statement is indicative of the desire to establish more respectful relationships with our environment, beginning with our buildings. beyond the ecological imperative which guides architects such as dennis dollens, michael hensel, rachel armstrong, and alberto t. estévez,38 there appears to be a desire to create a new world, which is not only our own making but also a product of an ongoing dialogue with these kinds of alien architectures. 87 isparchitecture.com the idea that it might be possible to create a new world, or that a new world might be about to emerge thanks to biotechnology, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and informatics, is not unique to chu and novak. it is also shared by roy ascott. according to ascott a new big ‘b.a.n.g.’ would result from the convergence of bits, atoms, neurons, and genes, hybridizing the dry silicon digital domain of computers and the wet biological world of living systems. the birth of this new world might be so transformative that human identity itself might be pushed to a much more complex level. for ascott the questions “[w]hat is to be human?” and “how do we deal with the responsibility of redefining nature and life itself ?”39 emerge as key questions for our era. both are of equal importance and are deserving of being treated urgently both in scientific and in artistic fields. as ascott wrote: “the artificial is now part of our nature, and nature is in large part artificial.”40 moreover: “in as much as we are a part of nature, we wish now to be consciously involved in its co-evolution, which is to say in our own selfdefinition and reconstruction.”41 the fact that the questions “what is it to be human?” “what will man become?” and “what do we want nature to become?” were addressed jointly merits some attention. now, more than ten years after the publication of ascott’s paper, it is possible to create new species of life almost from scratch with the help of what are called ‘living technologies’ (synthetic biology, genetic engineering, etc.).42 through these technologies nature is in fact compelled to adapt to mankind: “technology, often depicted as the enemy of nature, will bring us closer to it, but it will be a nature entirely re-described, and re-aligned to our post-biological sensibilities.”43 even in the context of ecological crisis, nature is seen as something to enhance so that it can continue to meet our needs. between 2003 and 2014 the genetic the artificial is now part of our nature, and nature is in large part artificial “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 88 r ou ss el architectures research group (which includes alberto t. estévez, dennis dollens, and karl chu) developed bioluminescent lemon trees which could be used for street lighting by implanting in their cells genes extracted from jellyfish which produce a fluorescent protein (gfp). between 2007 and 2010 the same genetic architectures research group led experiments to develop living tissue and cell masses as a building material, allowing living walls to be constructed autonomously, or rather to grow on their own. this latter project is quite similar to that of the new york architecture firm terreform one named “in vitro meat habitat” (2008), which is a prototype of organic architectural skin made of pig cells via 3d printing. in 2015 the american-israeli architect and designer neri oxman presented “mushtari”, a life-support system made for intergalactic travelers and consisting of a prosthetic organ filled with synthetically modified micro-organisms. pointing out that the two bacteria at work in this project never meet in the wild, she said: “think of it as evolution not by natural selection, but evolution by design.”44 this statement is representative of the way living species are instrumentalized. no matter how important the ethical and philosophical questions raised by the possibility of engineering life may be, architects such as amstrong, estévez, oxman, and michael hensel do not seem to be eager to develop critical reflection on their practices. similarly, however ‘alive’ buildings might become, they would not become free from subservience to human beings. significantly, in her book living architecture: how synthetic biology can remake our cities and reshape our lives, rachel armstrong asked: “perhaps our homes could care for us, come to our rescue, or even love us?”45 in other words the end of anthropocentrism which karl chu announced has not yet come. as, as it would seem, our human mindset is not changing, there would seem to be little possibility that we could in fact build a better world. conclusion during the last thirty years avant-garde architects have been working on what and for whom they will build in future decades. during the 1990s architects dreamed of a totally artificial and immaterial world. thus freed from terrestrial anchorage, enabled to become pure information, mankind would have become post-human, as post-biological beings in a computer simulation run by machines (undeniably like the fantasy world of the matrix).46 during the 2000s it was realized that this would not be so. the exponential growth of technologies, new and old, was making everything we know—the artificial, the natural, or the hybridized—more 89 isparchitecture.com and more complex. our gaze therefore turned to the biological realm as the place where we might create new forms of biomachinic life, questioning and subverting our relationships to the world, to nature, and to ourselves. during the 2000s, however, we were not able to produce these new forms of life, and marcos novak’s “allobio” building, for example, remained but an imaginary architecture. as, however, science and technology improve, it may yet be possible to re-engineer the biology of the whole of nature and to build a ‘nature 2.0.’ it would, then, be time to ask important questions— those very same questions which architects have always pondered. what kind of world do we want to live in? what kind of relationship with nature do we want to have? what pathway do we want to follow concerning our own evolution? a new paradigm is needed, as chu suggested, for our role as active agents in the transformation of our environments and, indeed, of our universe at large.47 such as new paradigm is necessary for at least two reasons: firstly, because those who are currently shaping the new world often fail to take stock of their responsibilities, and, secondly (and perhaps more importantly), as pointed out by roy ascott, because what we will do to our environments is part of the definition of what we will ourselves become. while much seems unclear, one thing at least is certain: the way we will transform nature will influence our own evolution. endnotes [1] roy ascott, “the architecture of cyberperception,” architectural design 65, no.11/12 (1995): 38. [2] it must be acknowledged that if the democratization of the personal computer was the condition for the possibility of the digital turn— this democratization permitting every architect and while much seems unclear, one thing at least is certain: the way we will transform nature will influence our own evolution “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 90 r ou ss el every architecture firm to have a computer—the digital turn would of course never have happened without the development of 3d modeling software that allowed architects and firms to design forms on screen that would be impossible to hand draw, even making it possible to add a temporal dimension to the design. see antoine picon, digital culture in architecture: an introduction for the design professions (basel: birkhauser, 2010); and mario carpo, ed., the digital turn in architecture 1992-2012 (london: john wiley & sons ltd, 2013). [3] william gibson, neuromancer (new york: ace books, 1986), 51. [4] michael benedikt, ed., cyberspace: first steps (cambridge: the mit press, 1992). [5] nicholas negroponte, being digital (new york: alfred a. knopf, 1995). [6] william mitchell, city of bits (cambridge: the mit press, 1996). [7] architectural design 65, no.11/12 (1995). [8] architectural design 68, no.11/12 (1998). [9] stelarc, “towards the post-human. from psycho-body to cybersystem,” architectural design 65, no.11/12 (1995): 90-96. [10] hava tirosh-samuelson, “transhumanism as a secularist faith,” zygon 47, no.4 (2012): 716-717. [11] robert ranisch and stefan lorenz sorgner, “introducing postand transhumanism,” in postand transhumanism: an introduction, eds. robert ranisch and stefan lorenz sorgner (new york: peter lang, 2014), 7-8. [12] according to john frazer, however, cyberspace was not the cause but the symptom of this profound transformation: “the parallel world of cyberspace […] is just one manifestation of deep cultural and technical changes which are reshaping our understanding of our world,” he wrote in 1995, stressing that this paradigm shift is characterized by “the shift of perception from an universe of objects to one of relationships.” see john frazer, “the architectural relevance of cyberspace,” architectural design 65, no.11/12, (1995): 76. [13] karl chu, “modal space: the virtual anatomy of hyperstructures,” architectural design 65, no.11/12, (1995): 69. [14] michael benedikt, “cyberspace: some proposals,” in cyberspace: first steps, ed. michael benedikt (cambridge: the mit press, 1991), 124. [15] marcos novak, “dancing with the virtual dervish: worlds in progress,” in immersed in technology, art and virtual environments, eds. marie anne moser and douglas macleod (cambridge: the mit press, 1996), 303-308. 91 isparchitecture.com [16] ascott, “the architecture of cyberperception,” 40. [17] ibid. 38. [18] william gibson, “google’s earth,” new york times (new york, ny), august 31, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/ opinion/01gibson/html?scp=1&sq=william+gibson&st=nyt. [19] peter sloterdijk, “rules for the human zoo: a response to the letter on humanism,” trans. mary varney rorty, society and space 27 (2009): 12-28. [20] peter sloterdijk, die domestikation des seins. für eine verdeutlichung der lichtung (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2000). [21] rachel armstrong, “body machine,” ad architectural design 68, no.11/12 (1998): 92. [22] kas oosterhuis, “yes, we build spaceships,” in architecture goes wild (rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2002), 30-37. [23] ihab hassan, “prometheus as performer: towards a posthumanist culture?,” the georgia review 31, no.4 (1977): 845. [24]karl chu, “the turing dimension,” archilab, published 2000, accessed october 20, 2016, http://www.archilab.org/public/2000/catalog/ xkavya/xkavyaen.htm. [25] karl chu, “x phylum,” domus 822 (2000): 42-45. [26] karl chu, “metaphysics of genetic architecture and computation,” perspecta 35 (2004): 78. [27] ibid. [28] ibid. 76. [29] marcos novak, “alien space: the shock of the view,” circa art + technology supplement 90 (1998): 12-13. [30] see marcos novak, “speciation, transvergence, allogenesis: notes on the production of the alien,” ad architectural design 72, no.3 (2002): 66. novak writes: renaissance humanism, the anthropocentric production of the philosophical notion of man, followed an era preoccupied with the theocentric production of the philosophical notion of god. the birth of man eventually led to the collapse of theocentrism, which nietzsche characterised as the ‘death of god’, thus, i suggest, beginning a series: the production of god (pog) is followed by the production of man (pom); the production of man leads to the death of god (dog); the production of man is followed by the production of the alien (poa), which, in turn leads to the death of man (dom). […] ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 92 r ou ss el in other words, centrifugal allocentrism is now displacing anthropocentrism, just as anthropocentrism displaced theocentrism, with the alien taking the place of the nietzschean overman, and extending itself past all human limits to encompass all aspects of our constructed reality. [31] ibid. 67. [32] michel foucault, the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences (new york: routledge, 2002), 422. [33] ibid. xxv. [34] marcos novak, “transarchitectures and hypersurfaces, operations of transmodernity,” architectural design 68, no.5/6 (1998): 85. [35] novak, “speciation, transvergence, allogenesis,” 67. [36] marcos novak, “alien beauty: immanent design. alloatomic transarchitectures for automutant (allo)selves,” in manufacturing – share festival 2008, ed. bruce sterling (turino: share festival, 2008), 143. [37] neil spiller, “plectic architecture: towards a theory of the postdigital in architecture,” technoetic arts: a journal of speculative research 7, no. 2 (2009): 95-104. [38] marcos novak, interview by alessandro ludovico, neural, published april 2001, accessed october 20, 2016, http://www.neural.it/english/ marcosnovak.htm. [39] for all of them, the artificial life of architecture may be one of the answers to the ecological crisis. on that matter, see denis dollens, “architecture as nature: a biodigital hypothesis,” leonardo 42, no.5 (2009): 412–420; alberto t. estévez, “genetic architecture: new ecologic-environmental architectural design & new cybernetic-digital architectural design,” in genetic architectures, ed. alberto t. estévez (santa fe: lumen books; barcelona: sites books/escola tecnica superior d’arquitectura, 2003), 4-19; rachel armstrong, living architecture: how synthetic biology can remake our cities and reshape our lives (new york: ted books, 2012); michael hensel, “(synthetic) life architectures: ramifications and potentials of a literal biological paradigm for architectural design,” architectural design 76 no.2 (2006): 18–25. [40] roy ascott, “moistmedia, technoetics and the three vrs,” isea2000, published 2000, accessed october 27, 2016, http://www. isea2000.com/actes_doc/01_ascott.rtf. [41] ibid. [42] see mark a. bedau, john s. mccaskill, norman h. packard, and steen rasmussen, “living technology: exploiting life’s principles in 93 isparchitecture.com technology,” artificial life 16, no.1 (2010): 89-97. [43] ascott, “moistmedia, technoetics and the three vrs.” [44] neri oxman, “design at the intersection of technology and biology” (presentation, ted2015, vancouver, canada, march 2015), accessed march 09, 2016, https://www.ted.com/talks/neri_oxman_design_at_ the_intersection_of_technology_and_biology?language=en. [45] armstrong, living architecture. [46] the matrix, directed by lana and lilly wachowski (burbank, ca : warner bros, 1999), dvd. [47] chu, “the turing dimension.” isparchitecture.com about the authors sir roger scruton is a writer and philosopher and a fellow at the ethics and public policy center in washington karsten harries is professor of philosophy at yale university and has been chair of the department of philosophy. pau pedragosa is philosopher and architect and professor of theory and history of architecture at the school of architecture at the polytechnique university of catalonia mari hvattum is professor of architectural history and theory at the oslo school of architecture and design henry dicks is teaching fellow in philosophy at university jean moulin lyon 3 marion roussel is an architect and a research associate in the lab body technics and body issues at the paris descartes university. image credits cover: drawing is taken from jacques-francois blondel, cours d´architecture (1771) “building thinking asking” images of panel discussion: bamberg university “presence or meaning in architecture” figure 1: bauhaus image courtesy shutterstock.com figure 2: place léon aucoc image courtesy a. lacaton and j-ph. vassal “on durability” figure 1: the picture of old mostar bridge was published under: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:mostar_bridge_approximately_1970-1980.jpg figure 2: section of norwegian farmhouse was taken from eilert sundt, om bygnings-skikken paa landet i norge (christiania: malling, 1862). “from anthropomimetic to biomimetic cities” figure 1: the picture is in the public domain and was published under: https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:a_view_of_savannah_as_it_stood_ the_29th_of_march_1734.jpg “towards a post-human era?” figure 1: image of vitruvian man, janeb 13 / pixabay all other images by tom spector ap . vol 3 . no 1 . 2017 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate 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images created by the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines 0-front matter 1-editorial 2-harries and scruton 3-pedragosa 4-hvattum 5-dicks 6roussel 7-back matter introduction. why a right to the city? before there were cities, it is hardly likely that anyone ever expressed the thought that they have a right to one; and in the roughly six-thousand-year history of urban environments, no such idea of a right to the city was formulated until the french marxist sociologist henri lefebvre proposed just this, in 1968. and when lefebvre did so, this was in energetic but rather vague fashion, as much a rallying cry for the disaffected and marginalized as the expression of a clear-cut moral or legal concept on which to base detailed social design or change. vague or not, lefebvre’s proposal found great favor among urban planners, international civil servants, public advocates, and others—somewhat independent of political or economic bent. what is the attraction—why do some believe that there is a right to the city? in what follows, i sketch a version of the right to the city (rttc) that i take to be (a) feasible, (b) generic, and so (c) broadly amenable to many of its adherents; further, i suggest how it is that this entails special sorts of responsibilities or obligations for architects and others tending to our built environment and the spaces—especially public space—so structured and defined. along the way, i provide a brief account of some historical motivations for embracing the right to the city, as well as reasons for endorsing my generic account. for the moment, i offer the quick suggestion that typical reasons for supporting a right to the city are grounded in traditional rights considerations: for one, benefits of urban life point to a positive architectural responsibilities and the right to a city saul fisher ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 64 fi sh er right, along the lines of an entitlement; and for another, dangers and impediments to life—and quality of life—in the city point to a negative right, along the lines of freedoms from harm and liberties to voluntary engagements. how all this has a particularly urban focus and character, and how such a right or rights translate into specifically architectural responsibilities, depends at least in part on the sorts of things cities are and how they are constituted, or so i will argue. i begin, though, with a set of ground rules for any putative right to the city, basic principles as such one should uphold and not violate. 1. right to the city: initial parameters, historical background, and a proposal a. assumptions. i start with a small set of parametric assumptions about what a right to the city should look like, which thereby provide ground rules for crafting such a right. i take these assumptions as more or less self-evident or, at least, as relatively obvious candidate parameters. the good or the best city. first, the right to the city is a right to a particular range of possible cities with desirable or requisite characteristics. a right to a city which guaranteed no more than an urban hellscape would be useless, cynical ‘right.’ note that this suggests that rttc is, broadly speaking, an entitlement or claims right, where the positive good is a city that, for those with the rights to it—presumably its citizens—is in the balance a place more good than bad to live and work in. a further variation in this direction is to posit a rttc that guarantees the best possible version of whatever city to which the right pertains.1 communal. second, rttc is a community-focused, publicly oriented right, which individuals hold but as pertains to their current or prospective group membership qua urban citizens.2 it’s unclear that hermits, survivalists, rural dwellers, and exurbanites have rttc; and the case of suburbanites is marginal, an intriguing case given their symbiotic relationship with the city.3 in short, rttc is a right attaching to people who live in cities, hence live together in densely-populated communities. given a communal orientation, rttc should likely reflect historical, heritage, cultural and emotional motivations and stakes of the groups in question, with corresponding entitlements. as i argue, however, positing group claims rights does not entail all and only group obligations; further, the optimal way to meet such claims may not be in the aggregate, that is, not by the city as a whole entity but through the actions and choices of its parts and constituent members.4 65 isparchitecture.com future-facing. third, rttc is forwardlooking. any rights such as we claim are not necessarily—and not limited to—the city as it exists now, but as it will exist in the future. this is partly a function of the imperfections of cities and a rttc claim on the best possible city. but it’s also a reflection of the city’s dynamic character— its shifting and growing over time, and becoming more and less accessible, more and less capable of housing or otherwise serving its citizens, more and less well arranged to promote the good life. taken together, these parameters tell us that a rttc should provide those with greatest investment in the city—the citizens—with guarantees to ongoing improvements and enhancements of goods and engagements, as well as amelioration or elimination of harms, such that quality of life progresses rather than stagnates or declines, so that an urban life is a worthy and rewarding one. b. the lefebvre construal and alternate takes looking at actual, historical articulations of a rttc—from lefebvre onward—we see some degree of conformity with these parameters, at least in spirit, and if only in one or another fractional form. lefebvre, for his part, while initially giving us rttc, may not be its best proponent. first, as loren king and others have noted, his marxism makes for poor rights advocacy.5 the classic marxist sees rights as a frivolity of bourgeois democratic politics, detached from realities of material goods distributed and controlled by the capital class. second, and more compellingly for the non-marxist, he does not say that in which a rttc consists nor, as attoh notes, how it would work out in practice.6 it’s not surprising that, on a marxist reading, we aren’t told about particular entitlements or liberties. at all events, we are left with the question of what, quite, this is a right to. nor are we told who has these rights, though it is fair to assume that, for lefebvre, lefebvre, for his part, while initially giving us the right to the city, may not be its best proponent. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 66 fi sh er this is primarily interesting as a right insofar as it represents an unfulfilled commitment to the dispossessed and the working class. one thing lefebvre does tell us, on the other hand, is that those who have rttc have it because they are participants in construction of the city as an urban project of living and working together.7 this is a crucial observation for just about any version of an rttc as it highlights the reasons that cities came into being and continue to grow as the dominant form of human settlement: cities exist for the advancement of material and cultural wellbeing. his point is that intentionally and intensely concentrating populations in the same places—namely, cities—introduces claims on how people should live and prosper in those contexts. of course, not all is well in the city. another thing lefebvre tells us— following his marxist-style analysis—is that while citizens build the city and gain the benefits of living in the urban environment, they are also exploited by the capital class in so doing and are alienated from the city though it is their own project.8 accordingly, rttc for lefebvre consists in a right for urban citizens to direct life in the city as engaged with, and unalienated from, their urban environment.9 with these few and imprecise notions, there is much room for interpretation and variation. for example, we might direct or shape life in a city so as to not be alienating through direct behavioral interventions like rules, laws, intentional cultural shifts, and the like—but alternatively we might think it more effective to deploy environmental interventions as crafted in architectural and planning design. two broad traditions have taken up the lefebvrian rttc, also focusing on the city as the increasingly principal context of human settlement and the greatest source of wealth, creativity, power, as well as other human emile aillaud, la grande borne, grigny (1971) 67 isparchitecture.com phenomena, productions, and endeavors.10 for one, marxists have tended to extrapolate from or build on lefebvre’s view within their set of conventions, for example, by explaining the role of surplus value in urban productivity and positing the rttc as a right to that value and its management.11 for another, a range of urban planners, geographers, political activists, and others have articulated more specific rights as they take to realize a vision of eliminating, punishing and disenfranchising injustices, such as lefebvre associated with alienation and exploitation in the city or by its capital class. examples of such specific rights include rights to housing, transportation, communications, participatory decision-making, participatory urban design, and protection from harms (e.g., excessive state force). while stimulated by lefebvre’s critique, however, these latter views generally assume neither diagnoses nor solutions along marxist lines. as with the lefebvrian proposal, the latter, non-marxist views stay within the lines of the parametric assumptions laid out here, motivated by a goal-state, sensitive to the dynamism of the city, and communally oriented. yet they also move beyond lefebvre, in concretely specifying goods, services, liberties, or freedoms to which citizens have a right qua citizens. c. a generic proposal. a third approach is to craft a generic rttc that, while also inspired by lefebvre, is not wedded to his framework, to marxist tenets, or to any of the specific entitlement or liberty-oriented rights in particular as may also be inspired by that framework. to this end, consider a traditional view of rights (following, e.g., hohfeld)12 as comprises the positive and the negative, emphasizing claims on entitlements on one hand and ensuring maintenance of liberty and protection from harm on the other. a more recent addition to this array in the rights literature has it that, in addition to attending to concerns of or for individuals, a complete range of rights reflects the right to the city for lefebvre consists in a right for urban citizens to direct life in the city as engaged with, and unalienated from, their urban environment. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 68 fi sh er concerns of or for communities as aggregate parties. along these lines, and in pursuit of a maximalist right to the city, we would likely want that right to comprise constituent sub-rights as advance claims, meet communitarian concerns, and guarantee liberties.13 i propose that this basic taxonomy points to an umbrella conception of a right to the city that includes at least these basic sub-rights: urban access, as entitlement claim; urban inclusion, as community right; and urban flourishing, as a liberties-assuring and freedom-from-harms right. a fullblown defense of these sub-rights is beyond the present scope; here i note a few definitional points and take note of one common denominator relative to urban public space. first, access is particularly suitable as a fundamental entitlement or claims right in the urban context because the city’s density and intensity is not only a positive economically and culturally but a negative as well, building and accelerating scarcity of resources—be they necessary or merely desirable. insofar as scarcity is managed by reference to moral or justice considerations, we want a right to access the city’s resources as a guarantee of moral or just distribution, for example, to protect those least likely to secure access otherwise. second, inclusion is suitable as a community right in the urban context because the purpose of cities, at root, is to bring people together for commerce and culture— such that marginalizing and excluding people is antithetical to the core urban goals. hence we want a right that serves to guarantee that, even if living in distinctive communities for solidarity purposes,14 all citizens are included in the broader urban community to the extent that they choose or as is otherwise socially optimal. much more may be said about what inclusion entails here. suffice it to mention, in this context, various police raid in grigny, quartier de la grande borne (2016). 69 isparchitecture.com forms of openness, availability, and welcoming as comprise but are not limited to: involvement in decision-making of import to the urban whole or significant parts thereof; participation in and consumption of the urban host culture and other constituent cultures; access to economic and social opportunities of the city; and engagement with infrastructure and networks of the city. and as a third sub-right, flourishing is suitable as a libertiesassuring and freedom-from-harms right in the urban context because the city only flourishes— e.g., economically, socially, culturally—when its citizens can flourish. this in turn requires a negative right or rights of individuals and communities to enjoy protection from harms and liberties to act in ways that promote thriving and success, as well as a positive right to such entitlements as are accorded to city dwellers and promote citizen success and thriving.15 it merits noting that, as a common denominator, all these sub-rights point to, and may be exploited to sustain, the broad claim of the urban dweller on public space. for example, city dwellers have a right to access public space, as a scarce commodity more typically contracted than expanded by urban development; city dwellers may only realize a right to urban inclusion if there is sufficient and fitting public space in which to freely commune; and the city and its dwellers can only truly flourish— optimize their thriving and success—where citizens may pursue work, study, and leisure beyond their own private spaces—free from the limits of solitude and constraints on personal room to move and share, e.g., ideas, innovation, or culture. this picture is consonant with at least one prominent rttc view that takes city-wise rights to primarily consist in rights to public space.16 to be sure, this is a very general account of only three possible sub-rights of a rttc. others might be articulated; these have the merit of accounting for a broad range of urban life. to see this, as well as how ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 70 fi sh er these rights may be engaged, it’s helpful to consider cases where they are not, that is, where the rights are not recognized or else are recognized but infringed. thus, we have: developer. rita, a major developer in a major city, is planning a giant housing and commercial development of a large area of the city heretofore left in a state of disrepair and disuse. elected officials have given carte blanche to rita to develop the site however they see fit. the public has been left out of any semblance of a decision-making process. operative rttc sub-rights here concern inclusion and community. street gang. a new, violent street gang menaces a previously prosperous area, and the residents are afraid to leave their houses. police and social workers are ineffective and, while the gang grows in popularity and financial success, the neighborhood loses its vibrant street life and spirals downward as a desirable place to live. the operative rttc subright here, as highlighted by their violation or neglect, pertains to flourishing. note, however, that in street gang, the scenario need not have been located in a city; the setting could have been suburban or even rural. we can fix this in the following scenario: public housing gang. as in street gang, public security in the area deteriorates. unlike the generic location in street gang, though, this scenario is specifically set in urban public housing, where the density of population heightens the probability of criminality, and the deteriorating security environment induces social, economic, and psychological depression. operative rttc sub-rights here are related to flourishing, specifically in urban contexts. métro. jean-marie waits at a métro station for a train that never arrives. unbeknownst to him, the city has discontinued that train line and is preparing to demolish the station shortly. henceforth jean-marie will need to walk to work, 7 km away. the operative rttc sub-right here concerns entitlement, specifically to affordable and convenient mass transit service in a modern city. these cases give a small taste of the diversity of scenarios where quality of life, integration and inclusion, and just benefits of city life—all as particular to urban contexts—are degraded for some parties x because of the actions or inactions of other parties y. (in addition to these negative scenarios, other sorts of scenarios will highlight a positive picture, wherein rttc-type rights are realized or sustained; see appendix a.) two points merit our attention in all these cases. for one, such cases arise in specifically urban contexts, and because of the nature of people living and working 71 isparchitecture.com together—which, as we have noted, is largely due to density and intensity of populations and their interactions. for another, the dereliction of y as the cause of the failure to realize or sustain x’s rights points to y’s responsibilities or obligations to x and all other citizens relative to the corresponding rttc sub-rights as having not been realized or sustained in such cases. in brief, as the dereliction of y prevents the relevant sub-rights of x from being satisfied, we sense that y is to blame, that is, to be held responsible. before moving on, let’s revisit the proposed parameters for a viable rttc, namely, that such a right should promote the best possible city, should be communal in orientation, and should be futurefacing given the organic and not-so-organic change in the life of a city. all three sub-rights proposed here—to access, inclusion, and flourishing— are contributing and perhaps necessary factors for optimizing the city and city life. further, access and inclusion are manifestly community and communally-oriented. it may be harder to specify that or how these particular sub-rights are constitutive of a future-facing rttc, though it is also hard to imagine articulating or satisfying any future-facing rttc that fails to build upon, or at least recognize, prior commitments to access, inclusion, and flourishing of urban dwellers. 2. identifying and assigning responsibilities or obligations so far, we have the picture of a broad rttc as an umbrella right, comprising at least three sub-rights, including a right to entitlements, community, and flourishing. what attaches these rights to the city context in particular is a function of urban conditions, most prominently a population density that entails or generates problems, needs, and desiderata, that is, the stuff of special rights. and— as is traditionally held relative to rights generally— satisfaction or advancement of such rttc sub-rights relies on parties having relevant responsibilities architects and those with similar occupations are highly visible in this regard, as they plan and shape the physical and broadly experiential characteristics of the city. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 72 fi sh er or obligations. in this domain, failure to meet those responsibilities or obligations results in citizens failing to flourish, to attain or maintain community membership, or to receive such goods or services as are expectable in a justly ordered urban life. two principal tasks arise relative to talk about rights-wise responsibilities or obligations: first, the what—identifying those responsibilities or obligations corresponding to particular rights; and second, the who— identifying the parties with significant responsibilities or obligations in this regard. both tasks represent complex questions with dizzying arrays of possible answers—as many as there are variables factoring into urban planning and design and city management, financing, servicing, and so on. one specific challenge in identifying and assigning rttcwise responsibilities or obligations is the great diversity of urban actors (agents) pursuing different tasks relevant to the wide variety of sub-rights, in providing goods and services, promoting inclusion, or facilitating flourishing. thus, politicians, bureaucrats, social services, corporate and small business owners, educators, health providers, public safety personnel, and many others populate a long list of people with such responsibilities. among these professions and roles, architects and those with similar occupations (urban planners, urban designers, etc.)—whom i’ll refer to as ‘architectural agents’—are highly visible in this regard, as they plan and shape the physical and broadly experiential characteristics of the city.indeed, there is a special moral claim on architectural agents relative to rttc-wise responsibilities and obligations: they draw the contours of possible ways cricket in the streets of mumbai 73 isparchitecture.com that citizens can organize and conduct their lives and work in the city, and in this way they support or prevent the possible pursuit of activities by all other agents as may contribute to the satisfaction of rttc-wise responsibilities and obligations. this sort of meta-responsibility is additional to their ground-level rttc-wise responsibilities in the urban context. in this set of meta-responsibilities, however, architectural agents are not alone. one other family of actors with similar meta-responsibilities is the financial services industry, without whom nothing is possible in city life, including realization of architectural plans. so architects’ responsibilities may be outweighed by those of others with greater power to determine the fate of cities and popular rights to them. even if not outpaced in such fashion, architects are clearly not the sole actors responsible for realization of rttc-wise sub-rights, whether at the ground-level or the meta-level. a further difficulty in assigning rttc-wise responsibilities to architectural agents concerns the temporal. the city and its population shift over time, and with demographic, social, economic, and other shifts come changes in the identity and nature of those holding the right to the city, and the array of sub-rights to which they may justly lay claim. thus it is unclear to whom architects of a given moment might have responsibilities—particularly in accounting for future population shifts—or how the duration of such responsibilities should be gauged. a third challenge in this regard concerns the appropriate degrees of rttc-wise responsibility to be shouldered by architectural agents. for example, it cannot be fair to assign such responsibilities to individual architectural agents, however influential, relative to the entirety of a city, even if—as with oscar niemeyer and brasilia—they have designed the city’s basic plans and major structures. nor is it fair, conversely, to assign such responsibilities ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 74 fi sh er to the architectural professions in collective fashion, for we then excuse each architect from standard individual obligations. neither individual architects nor architects in the aggregate considered as the profession overall can assume or be assigned the full range of such rttc-wise responsibilities as we would apportion to architectural agents. 3. a compositionalist approach to city-wise rights and responsibilities. how, then, to apportion rttc-wise responsibilities or obligations to architectural agents—by what means and to what degree? my proposal reflects a key aspect of the aforementioned scenarios (developer, public housing gang, and métro): while some such instances where rights are upheld or denied have a system-wide or city-wide origin or developmental path or set of consequences, many—perhaps most—such instances arise out of highly localized circumstances. in short, rttc-related scenarios arise as much relative to a bus stop or a single office tower as they do relative to the urban water system or the city’s entire zoning code. it is those highly localized scenarios where architects and others with architectural agency have the most frequent and robust obligations relative to rttc and its family of sub-rights. to make this suggestion work, such that architects and other architectural agents can assume—at the micro-scale—the sorts of obligations we take to follow from rttc, we need to build on two more fundamental claims. first, we need to show that architectural agents have a kind of efficacy to begin with that allows them to meaningfully contribute to realization or sustaining of rttc sub-rights. second, we need to show that what architectural agents do as individuals or in small groups at the micro-scale rolls up to the realization or sustaining of rttc sub-rights. the first fundamental claim is, at root, an empirical point. in the early interactions between architects and environmental psychologists (1970s), there were worries about the feasibility of ‘architectural determinism,’ the view that architectural forms and the spaces they shape can have regular and predictable effects on behaviors of those experiencing the forms and spaces. while there is cause for caution as elsewhere in the behavioral sciences, a wealth of scientific and commercial data supports the general notion that our range of choices and actions may be influenced environmentally—and that even subtle design interventions in the built environment may shift behaviors.17 insofar as realization or sustaining of rttc sub-rights entails enabling, encouraging, or preventing citizens from undertaking particular behaviors, the empirical accounts of ‘architectural determinism’ tell us how architectural agents take on such responsibility. the second fundamental claim involves more of a conceptual move, 75 isparchitecture.com drawing on (1) a picture of rttc in which our judgment that either the umbrella right or subrights are satisfied is divisible by spatial and temporal regions, together with (2) a compositional notion of architectural objects. first, we know that we can divide judgment about rights satisfaction by regions (spatial or temporal) given that rights are mostly, if not always, realized only partially and to varying degrees depending on location and timeframe. while this is typically seen as a real-world imperfection for any rights regime, this feature also allows us to think about satisfaction of rights in such limited domains—of a given place or a given time—as successes within those domains. and since, in the case of realizing or satisfying rttc-wise sub-rights, we cannot expect architectural agents (whether as individuals or in the aggregate) to satisfy such rights—either across the whole of a city or for the entire duration of its existence—spatially and temporally modest targets are called for. second, in a compositional account of architectural objects, we have a ready instrument for taking apart the city along spatial or temporal lines—such that we can reasonably apportion rttc-wise responsibilities to architectural agents at a level (spatially) and over a duration for which expectations and accountability are realistic goals. a compositional account of architectural objects, as relative to cities in particular, says that urban built environments are composed of built structures as unitary individuals or collections thereof, such that, as aggregates of those unitary or collective individuals, cities are shaped by those individuals. the idea is that cities, as wholes, are shaped by the parts they comprise.18 this is a three-dimensional, spatial picture, but it is trivial to expand this compositionalism to a fourth, temporal dimension: the character of cities is shaped over time by earlier instantiations of the urban built environment, both where the earlier elements of that environment survive, as well as where they cease to exist and putting these two elements together, we can reasonably apportion responsibility to architectural agents for rttcwise sub-rights. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 76 fi sh er make way for new elements. compositionalism contributes to our ability to judge the satisfaction of rttc-wise sub-rights by giving us a means of gauging whether built structures (or collections thereof ) may help to raise or lower satisfaction of city-wise rights within bounds—that is, on a partial or fractional basis. the idea is to then ‘roll up’ (sum across) that degree of rights-satisfaction, by taking those structures as parts contributing to the city or its regions one piece at a time, creating conditions for, e.g., strengthening inclusion, providing just benefits attached to city life, and promoting flourishing. putting these two elements together, we can reasonably apportion responsibility to architectural agents for rttc-wise sub-rights. the first element is recognizing that architectural agents can shape behaviors in ways that contribute to or detract from realization of rights special to the urban context, e.g., to housing or mass transit or access to cultural resources. the second element associates satisfaction of such given sub-rights with particular buildings or collections of buildings, or sets of buildings at a particular time. in this way, we can tie realization of rights, and corresponding responsibilities to that end, to particular architectural agents where they are actually in a position to assume such levels of responsibility. further, compositionalism allows us to assemble an aggregated reading of architectural agents’ successes, on a city-wide basis, in furthering the rttc of a given city’s citizens —as spread across different sub-rights as well as the component parts of the city. 4. problems here are at least three prospective problems with this view. first, architects generally accept a range of responsibilities, of course, though not in an absolute sense that some advocates associate with at least some rights in the moral and political philosophical tradition.19 consider, in this vein, city-wide and system-wide scenarios as invoke rttc subrights and recognizably feature city-wide and system-wide agents with corresponding obligations we might take to be absolute per their rightswise stipulation. for example, a rttc sub-right to access to healthcare in the urban context (relative to, say, asthma prevention and mitigation in distressed neighborhoods) may well be recognizable as an absolute right—one not defeated by other considerations. on the other hand, for scenarios that invoke rttc sub-rights on the local or building level, the responsible architectural agents are unlikely to have corresponding obligations in any traditionally absolute sense. given that utility is a core professional and heritage-wise goal for architects, obligations are pro tanto in their worldview—they go only as far as they go, and can be defeated 77 isparchitecture.com for the greater good. so, there is at least a cultural gap here, if we think that architectural agents have indefeasible obligations relative to rttc sub-rights. second, i have suggested here that compositionalism gives us a means of summing across judgments of architectural agents as satisfying (or not) rttc sub-rights in given spatial or temporal regions, rather than tying satisfaction of rights to the city-wide scale alone and then unrealistically pinning responsibilities for such on architectural agents (singly or all together). but we might not think that we can speak meaningfully of rightssatisfaction as the sort of thing one can sum across, even if we can differentially gauge levels of rights satisfaction across distinctive spaces and times. how we see this summation problem will turn, i suspect, on whether we think of rights regimes as meaningfully satisfied at all if they are fractionally satisfied only in this or that neighborhood, only by this or that built structure. we can only sum across rights satisfaction for the city as a whole in this way if we rule out the notion that rights only satisfied for some populations are not satisfied universally hence not satisfied at all. finally, it may be that i have insufficiently demarcated responsibilities attaching to architects in particular—as against those attaching to other ‘architectural agents’ such as urban designers or planners. these are, after all, different roles. one way to carve up the attendant responsibilities, for example, might reflect the scale of the corresponding design tasks.20 that said, the borders of architectural and urban design and planning disciplines are famously porous, especially in the domain of localized urban projects such as london’s barbican centre, new york’s lincoln center, or paris’s la villette. so, practice may point to a need for vagueness here. a more pertinent response is principled: the compositionalist framework i have drawn upon should do the work of apportioning responsibilities for satisfying rttc to different sorts ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 78 fi sh er of architectural agents in accordance with (a) the urban design element as distinguished possibly by scale but equally possibly by function, systemic role, liability, or still other factors; and (b) the attendant rttc sub-rights as come into play with each such design element. even similar ‘puzzle pieces’ as compose a city will likely prompt different responsibility assignments to different roles across, for example, urban cultures and contexts.21 5. conclusion i close with a brief revisit of the street gang and public housing gang scenarios, which taken together, i propose, highlight the character of architectural agent’s rttc-wise responsibilities in the specifically urban context. recall that the difference between those two scenarios is that the first could take place in all manner of locations, whereas the second is at least in part the product of a city setting, which from an environmental psychology perspective has gone very much awry. at issue is (a) the degree to which a built environment that resembles an urban rat trap for human beings may accelerate, worsen, and perpetuate criminal activity or other socially deviant behaviors by some of the local citizenry, and (b) the degree to which architects and planners of said environment have responsibilities for designing in ways so as to lessen the probabilities of such behaviors and their consequences. if citizens of all backgrounds and housing settings have rights to flourishing in the city, as entails a further right to public safety, then we have identified some level of responsibility for realizing such rights as may be apportioned to architectural agents. this is, to be sure, only a piece of the puzzle: others will have relevant responsibilities and these are just some few rttc-wise sub-rights among many others. but if we start at this level of analysis, we will be en route to identifying the many puzzle pieces of responsibility attached to the actions and choices of architects relative to the fullest range of rttc-wise sub-rights. that will give us a picture of ways that, at the micro-scale, architects and those in related professions contribute to realizing or thwarting realization of rights to the city. appendix a. scenarios of rights secured and sustained. cultural festival. a marginalized immigrant community sustains its cultural traditions in private homes and makeshift community spaces. the city invites community members to participate in the summer cultural festival in the park. regular cultural programming by the immigrant community, open to all, ensues and the community’s cultural threads are further woven into the greater urban fabric. the operative rttc sub-right here concerns inclusion. 79 isparchitecture.com small-scale retail. the city’s produce and dry goods street market is thriving thanks to a zoning law that keeps rents low on the market stalls and protects the market’s contributions to affordable and animated city life that is at once dense and human-scale. the operative rttc subright here concerns flourishing. garbage. the city’s sanitation department fails to collect the garbage for two years due to inadequate landfill capacity. quality of life declines rapidly as the garbage mounts, hindering transportation and circulation of goods and services. after mass demonstrations and public pressures, a new landfill location is identified for safe disposal, and garbage collection and processing are resumed. the operative rttc subright here concerns entitlement. endnotes 1. while the best possible city could be at least more good than bad, the optimized good city and the best possible city are not necessarily equivalent. beyond the present scope: which is more desirable may be a contextual matter, or decidable by logical or material considerations. 2. david harvey argues, from one marxist perspective, that rttc is a collective right and not an individual right; cf. david harvey, ‘the right to the city, new left review 53 (2008), 23-40. 3. mark purcell sees citizens’ claim on rttc as grounded in their contribution to urban experience and urban space; if so, the suburban claim is strengthened; cf. mark purcell, ‘excavating lefebvre: the right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant,’ geojournal 58 (2002): 99-108. 4. margaret cuonzo sees rttc in holistic, ecological terms—inclusive of the city and all its citizens at once; cf. margaret cuonzo, ‘the right to the city and the rights of the city.’ in deborah mutnick, margaret cuonzo, carole griffiths, ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 80 fi sh er timothy leslie, jay m. shuttleworth (eds.), the city is an ecosystem: sustainable education, policy, and practice, (london: routledge, 2022), 105-115. 5. loren king, ‘henri lefebvre and the right to the city.’ in sharon m. meagher, samantha noll, and joseph s. biehl (eds.), the routledge handbook of philosophy of the city, (london: routledge, 2019), 76-86. 6. kafui a. attoh, ‘what kind of right is the right to the city?,’ progress in human geography 35 (2011) 5: 669–685; cf. 674. 7. while in marxist orthodoxy, the city is a material artifact assembled by its inhabitants, lefebvre takes the city as more of an artwork than a mundane instrument or tool. cf. henri lefebvre, le droit à la ville (paris: anthropos, 1968), 54-55. 8. lefebvre, le droit à la ville, 108, 120-121. 9. ibid., 120-121; attoh, ‘what kind of right’, 674. 10. some rttc advocates focus on a right to cities in particular as opposed to rights to generic places (as also include rural, suburban, unsettled places, etc.). i propose that cities’ density and intensity effects—e.g., on social, economic, cultural, and communal conditions, information and communication facility, and so on—demand our rights-wise attention. density and intensity are core characteristics of cities that (a) brought them into being—ostensibly, a net positive, as well as (b) produced many pressing problems of urban life. 11. the locus classicus for subsequent marxist defenses of a lefebvrian rttc, particularly in a geography tradition, is david harvey, ‘the right to the city’; cf. also david harvey, rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution (london: verso, 2012). don mitchell focuses on public space, emphasizing rttc as a means of contesting privatization (cf. don mitchell, the right to the city: social justice and the fight for public space (london: guilford press, 2003), esp. 13-41). other authors view the lefebvrian right in the context of european marxism of his day. chris butler stresses the french autogestion tradition (chris buttler, henri lefebvre: spatial politics, everyday life and the right to the city (abingdon, uk: routledge-cavendish, 2012), esp. 133-159); daniel mullis sees a continuity with the italian operaismo refrain: daniel mullis, ‘prendersi la città’ (‘recht auf die stadt. facetten und möglichkeiten einer parole,’ emanzipation, 3 (2013) 2, 57-70). jeanpierre garnier offers a marxist dissent, rejecting a lefebvrian addressing ills of capitalist urbanization as prone to serving as “…alibi, wishful thinking, or fiction”; cf. jean-pierre garnier, ‘le droit à la ville de henri lefebvre à david harvey. entre théorisations et realization,’ l’homme & la société, 1 (2014) 191: 59-70. 81 isparchitecture.com 12. wesley hohfeld, fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning, walter wheeler cook, ed. (new haven: yale university press, 1919); for an overview, cf. leif wenar, ‘rights,’ stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (2005); http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights. attoh (‘what kind of right’) suggests how the rights literature may ground rttc. 13. a distinctive model has it that a single right with different aspects accommodates the varied traditional goals of rights. 14. defined by, e.g., ethnicity, sub-culture, age, etc. 15. thanks to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting the positive right entailed here. 16. see mitchell, the right to the city (2003). for further notions of public space and rights thereto, see evelyn s. ruppert, ‘rights to public space: regulatory reconfigurations of liberty’, urban geography, 27 (2006) 3: 271-292; and elsewhere in this issue. 17. even as some worry about a strict determinism, empirical evidence mounts for enhanced propensities to specific behavioral, cognitive, or emotional responses to architectural design; cf. sarah williams goldhagen, welcome to your world: how the built environment shapes our lives (new york: harpercollins publishers, 2017); and debra flanders cushing and evonne miller, creating great places: evidencebased urban design for health and wellbeing (abingdon: routledge, 2012). 18. saul fisher, ‘architecture and philosophy of the city.’ in meagher, noll, and biehl, the routledge handbook of philosophy of the city, 131-142. 19. see, e.g., russ shafer-landau, ‘specifying absolute rights,’ arizona law review 37 (1995): 209-24; for a rejection of absolute rights; see, e.g., judith jarvis thomson, the realm of rights (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1990). 20. thanks to an anonymous reviewer for noting ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 82 fi sh er this issue and suggesting a scale-based articulation of responsibilities. 21. assigning such responsibilities to architects prompts yet other concerns. architects are almost never solely responsible for satisfying moral claims as attach to even fractional rttc. their responsibilities may be outweighed by those with greater power to determine the fate of cities—or broad, popular rights to them. further, the temporally and demographically diffuse nature of rights holders—the shifting city populace over time—make unclear to whom architects might have responsibilities, or how the duration of such responsibilities should be gauged. is beauty still relevant? is art? is architecture? nathaniel coleman the good and the beautiful although notions of the good and the beautiful might seem impossible to discuss in our non-foundational age, the continuing relevance of beauty can sit comfortably alongside postfoundationalist, post-metaphysical, and more generally post-modernist thought, no matter how much a tendency for slipping back into a structuralist mind-set may be evidenced. the relevance of beauty and the good are in fact paradoxically intensified when thought beyond metaphysics, not least when the practical or pragmatic value of both categories is considered. the work the beautiful and the good can accomplish in our attempts to reimagine professions and their products remains vital. for example, all efforts to wrench architects and architecture out of their moribund state might well depend on an understanding of both categories for any chance at success.1 the problematic of what the ‘good architect’ is, or might be, in the present epoch arises out of disciplinary doubt and reflection on poor results. any discussion of the figure of the architect must inevitably also include a consideration of what ‘good architecture’ is, or might be. nevertheless, current discourses on both tend to be strangely dissociative, as if architecture could be autonomous, or that novelty or a formalist view of architectural aesthetics is enough to preclude discussion of architecture’s social dimension or the social obligations of architects—beyond the limiting perspectives of the marketplace.2 ideas of the ‘good’ in terms of architectural practice and its ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 82 co le m a n results bedevil our capacity to judge as we waiver between ideas of radical subjectivity and absolute ideals. however, when the ethical dimension of both the good and the beautiful are recollected, it becomes possible to imagine them as bound to the fortunes of propriety, to appropriateness. doing so is even possible today, albeit as situational, rather than absolute. the problem of the good and the beautiful in architecture today reveals something of its intractability and thus also suggests a pathway to its solution. in an effort to rescue aesthetics from a street level conception, my interest here is the problem of beauty, more so than the problematic of thinking of aesthetics in terms of questions of beauty as ‘mere beauty.’ such propositions position beauty as if it were simply a matter of ‘the look of a particular object,’ or were interchangeable with impulsive ‘liking’; as though ideas of beauty could have no reach beyond formalist aesthetics, sensualist proclivities, or radical subjectivity. yet, despite its compartmentalization in recent times, the ethical dimension of beauty has persisted at least from the greek philosopher socrates (died 399 bc), via plato (died 347 bc), to the renaissance architect and theorist leon battista alberti (1404-1472), and onward from there to nineteenth century social critics john ruskin (1819-1900) and william morris (1834-1896), and arguably beyond them to architects le corbusier (1887-1965) and aldo van eyck (1918-1999) as well. each was as preoccupied with the aesthetical (as a matter of beauty) as much as the ethical (as also a matter of beauty). but this only works if we think of beauty as a sense of wholeness or at least the striving toward it, as socrates did, summarized by alberti as ‘that to which nothing may be added nor taken away but for the worse’ . perhaps surprisingly, this definition of beauty turns on an ideal of comprehensiveness that can also accommodate the parts out of which it is made. it could continue to help us to judge works of architecture, whether radical or conservative, postmodern or deconstructive, etc. indeed, even in an epoch in which no syntonic universal ideal of beauty prevails (in which all master narratives are subject to question), the superlative aim of completeness persists as a guide to practice and as a way to judge its results alike. only in this way could wittgenstein’s claim that ‘ethics and aesthetics are one and the same’ be credible.3 in order to work through the problem of beauty, to rescue it from claims of its apparent meagreness, cases for tradition and hermeneutics are made. on the one hand, the thinking of ananda kentish coomaraswamy4 is a proponent of tradition and inheritor of the lineage from plato to morris. on the other, gianni vattimo,5 is as much intrigued 83 isparchitecture.com by a hermeneutics of tradition as by generalized communication and a weakening of the strong thought of western metaphysics, with its attendant inescapable propensity for violence. vattimo and coomaraswamy share a revaluation, or rethinking, of art that rescues beauty from being ‘merely,’ and as such, suggests how architects might begin to reclaim the richness of their task, albeit in a dispersed way, to act on behalf of the beautiful and ethics simultaneously, and in so doing, rescue the pervasive claims of architects to be acting on behalf of the people from being little more than empty words forming banal slogans primarily conjured up to justify simply doing business. one kind of art and shock: daniel libeskind, toronto crystal ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 84 co le m a n art and shock: vattimo in a passage that begins to confound the conventional divide between the ethical and aesthetical, vattimo charts a pathway to enhanced encounters with art (including architecture) that do not simply move beyond the aesthetic but which are suggestive of much fuller experiences, precisely because the ‘theoretical, moral, and emotional,’ —the ethical—is acknowledged: true, on the one hand, enjoying the work always implies or in some sense even comes to a head with an act of aesthetic contemplation, in which the work imposes itself by virtue of its formal perfection, without further referring to anything that might disturb the satisfaction or stillness connected with such a state. up to this point, vattimo outlines a fairly conventional depiction of the nature of aesthetic experience. however, as the paragraph progresses he turns from an exclusively aesthetic understanding toward an ethical one as well: on the other hand, it is equally true that the encounter with a great art work always represents not only an ‘aesthetic’ but also a theoretical, moral, and emotional experience, which engages the person at all levels and leads us to speak of art’s truth, of its cosmic nature, and of its ontological meaning. the value of the recognition outlined above lies in liberating art from a ‘formalist view of beauty,’ that limits understandings of it to an ideal of beauty entrapped within the ‘aesthetic sphere’ and thus as removed from the real, or the potential of having any significant impact on it: hence, in concrete experience the work resists being confined within the limits of the formalist view of beauty, it moves out of the ‘aesthetic sphere’ in which it is enclosed and holds its truth appeal, in the broadest and fullest meaning of the word.6 art’s ‘truth appeal’ resides in its opening up of vistas onto new worlds. or as vattimo puts it, “the work [of art] opens a new “epoch” of being as an absolutely originary event, which cannot be reduced to what it already was, and it grounds a new order of relationships within beings, a true and actually new world.”7 the newness of this world, that art founds, captivates experiencing subjects of it by shocking them. accordingly, for vattimo the term that defines ‘the encounter between the reader and the work ... is “stoss,” shock or quake: the artwork suspends in the reader all natural relationships, making strange everything that until that moment 85 isparchitecture.com had appeared obvious and familiar.’8 it is worth noting that the ‘shock’ that occurs in encounters with the previously unknown that art opens up, does not necessarily have anything to do with so-called ‘shock art,’ which shocks in its way by referring to ‘natural relationships,’ rather than suspending them, and by intensifying the ‘obvious and familiar,’ rather than making either strange. however, it is vattimo’s description of intense encounters with art as a ‘shock’ that is of the greatest interest. art and shock: coomaraswamy in his own attempts to challenge an aesthetic view of art coomaraswamy also found it necessary to refer to ‘shock’ to describe an alternative. according to him, ‘for the most part, our ‘aesthetic’ approach stands between us and the content of the work of art, of which only the surface concerns us.’9 for coomaraswamy, the surface, apparent beauty, invites attention, but the real experiential payoff (as much emotional as intellectual) resides in getting close to the ideas that motivate the object and which it makes visible to the senses, which in turn moves, or shocks, us during our encounters with works of art. as coomaraswamy argues, ‘it is not only in connection with natural objects (such another kind of art and shock: calatrava’s quadracci pavilion the work [of art] opens a new “epoch” of being as an absolutely originary event, which cannot be reduced to what it already was, and it grounds a new order of relationships within beings, a true and actually new world.—vattimo “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 86 co le m a n as the dew-drop) or events (such as death) but also in connection with works of art, and in fact whenever or wherever perception [. . .] leads to a serious experience, that we are really shaken.’10 coomaraswamy uses the pali word saṁvega ‘to denote the shock or wonder that may be felt when the perception of a work of art becomes a serious experience,’ which, of course, is quite similar to vattimo’s description of such encounters.11 it is perhaps quite difficult for us to experience works of art in the way either vattimo or coomaraswamy describe encounters with it. as kuspit suggests, the commodification of art, and the overabundant stimuli available to us through electronic and mechanical production and reproduction of art works, has made it all but impossible for us to gain access to the truth of art, or the shocking nature of this.12 even so, most of us have had encounters with works of art that have left us moved, even shaken, and these tend to be the most memorable, because the profoundest. if even one of these experiences can be recollected, coomaraswamy’s conviction that “saṁvega [shock, wonder], then, refers to the experience that may be felt in the presence of a work of art, when we are struck by it, ‘as a horse might be struck by a whip’ will have resonance for us.”13 more so, such recollection might begin to suggest what the aim of art, its vocation ought to be (and for architecture as well): to make the world strange so that we might see it anew, in all its depth and seriousness, such that we might believe with coomaraswamy that, “in the deepest experience that can be induced by a work of art (or other reminder) our very being is shaken (saṁvijta) to its roots.”14 what about architecture? the conceit of philosophers is that architecture is, of course, an art, more so one of the fine arts, even though in practice today it would be hard to describe much of what is built in the name of architecture as having convincingly been conceived or constructed under the sign of the fine arts – to say nothing of being serious in the ways described by vattimo and coomaraswamy above. rather than tangle with this issue here, i would like to consider a conception of architecture advanced by vattimo that could suggests how it might escape from its entrapment within the logic of capitalism (with its habit for destroying communities): [w]hat is left to legitimize our projects? precisely those conditions of belonging ... which are disclosed as we walk around the neighbourhood and notice that there, there used to be an old store, that here, there are traces, ruins, histories.15 [a]ll that is left is to understand legitimation as a form of the creation of 87 isparchitecture.com horizons of validity through dialogue, a dialogue both with the tradition to which we belong and others.16 [e]dification has two principal meanings – to build and to be morally uplifiting. both are quite closely tied in today’s rather vertiginous coming and going between architecture and philosophy... . that is, edification must be ethical, entailing communication of valuechoice. in the present situation of thought on the one hand and architectonic experience on the other ... the only possibility of edifying in the sense of building is to edify in the sense of ‘rendering ethical,’ that is, to encourage an ethical life: to work with the recollection of the past, with the expectations of meaning for the future, since there can no longer be absolute rational deductions. there follows then edification as a fostering of emotions, of ethical presentability, which can probably serve as the basis for an architecture determined not by the whole but by the parts.17 saṁvijta at kahn’s kimbell museum ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 88 co le m a n the idea of architecture developed by vattimo above is both more humble and more radical than anything coming from within the discipline of architecture, across the whole spectrum, from the most commercial practices, to those that are ostensibly avant-garde, to the apparently socially engaged as well. it is vattimo’s conception of tradition—as a common ground of belonging, dialogue, and invention—that returns thinking about architecture to ethics, which holds out the promise of a renewed relevance for architecture and beauty alike. one, however, is left wondering why architecture in these days seems all but incapable of thinking such thoughts on its own, suggesting also that at its best, philosophy could help it to do so. the disembodiment of beauty the relevance of beauty for architecture is far from spent. as ‘a vision that has been a source of inspiration to all western philosophy’, perhaps plato’s definition of beauty, as developed in the symposium, remains at the essence of understanding art and life.18 but if in the present aesthetic preoccupations can seem to limit the basic appeal of art (or architecture) to the eye (as it does music to the ear), it is here that plato, and his commentator, neo-platonist philosopher marsilio ficino (1433-1499) following him, cease to provide a way for recuperating the relevance of beauty in the present. obviously, sight and hearing are less physically engaged than taste, smell, or touch, making the first two the obvious preference of idealists. by privileging the senses of sight and hearing to those of taste, smell, and touch plato and ficino severely limit the possibilities of full-bodied experience. in this regard, art critic adrian stokes (1902-1972) reminds us that all the senses are integral to an appreciation of both life and art. the persisting problem of plato for art and architecture is the persistence of the idea that the highest ideal of beauty is an appreciation of it divorced from the sensuous—the body —and taken up by ideas and the mind alone. as one commentator summarizes: from plato comes the view of the realm of ideas set off from the world of the phenomenal which is but an imperfect copy of the archetype. this distinction corresponds to that between the material and the immaterial. in the platonic tradition the note is persistent that the body is a clog.19 arguably, plato’s reification of ideas transforms them into beauties lacking in objects. if the aim of creativity is beauty, understood – following plato – as associated with the good, it is difficult to imagine how any notion of beauty can dispense with the body as its origin. if beauty 89 isparchitecture.com originates with notions of the body, how could a philosophy of beauty that exiles the body actually be about beauty (or perhaps even about knowledge)? if self understanding and understanding of the world begin with the body, evolving into mental contents that are transformable into symbols that make art possible, then arguably, theories of beauty that abolish the body (and with it the world of objects), are of little use to the invention and elaboration of art. articulating just this dilemma in a critique of greek philosophy, philosopher ortega y. gasset (1883-1955) elaborates on the relation between ideas and things, the mind and the body, and thoughts and actions: when the greeks discovered that man thought, that there existed in the universe that strange reality known as thought (until then man had not thought, or, like the bourgeois gentilhomme, had done so without knowing it), they felt such an enthusiasm for ideas that they conferred upon intelligence, upon the logos, the supreme rank in the universe. compared with it, everything else seemed to them ancillary and contemptible. and as we tend to project into god whatever appears to us to be the best, the greeks with aristotle, reached the point of maintaining that god had no other occupation but to think. and not even the experience of the “lesser” senses: tactile experience at ando’s ft. worth modern by privileging the senses of sight and hearing to those of taste, smell, and touch plato and ficino severely limit the possibilities of full-bodied experience “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 90 co le m a n to think about thingsthat seemed to them, as it were, a debasement of the intellectual process ... . this doctrine has been given the name ‘intellectualism’; it is idolatry of the intelligence which isolates thought from its setting, from its function in the general economy of human life. as if man thinks because he thinks, and not because, whether he will or not, he has to think in order to maintain himself among things ... . we do not live in order to think ... we think in order to succeed in subsisting ... [and] surviving.20 ficino’s famous commentary on plato helps to situate gasset’s criticism of ‘intellectualism’.21 for ficino, the real is unreal, which encouraged his attempt to prove that the appreciation of beauty is ‘highest’ when incorporeal, even if language, as reality, makes the disrealization of objects all but impossible: things remain as bodies, material, and existent. the indefeasible physicality of thought and beauty renders ficino’s preference for dis-realization peculiar: the eyes see nothing but the light of the sun, for the shapes and colors of bodies are never seen unless illuminated with light, nor do they come to the eyes with their own matter itself ... in this light, since it is separate from matter, the order is completely independent of body.22 above all else, the preceding negates bodily experience. it is a peculiar intellectual exercise to imagine that since light is reflected off objects, we do not actually perceive them, as they apparently do not actually exist, except as the light the eye perceives. the problem here is that even in darkness, a body, an object, even beauty, can be perceived. as a platonist, ficino is obligated to disregard the senses of taste, smell, and touch. in this regard, philosopher leon ebreo (ca. 1465ca. 1521) described taste, smell, and touch as “the three material senses”; on the other hand, he called sight and hearing “the spiritual senses”.23 echoing plato and ebreo, ficino writes; love is the desire for enjoying beauty, love is always limited to the [the pleasures of] the mind, the eyes, and, the ears. what need is there of the senses of smell, taste, and touch? odors, flavor, heat, cold, softness, hardness, and the like qualities are the objects of these senses. none of these is human beauty, since these qualities are simple, and human beauty of the body requires a harmony of various parts. love regards as its end the enjoyment of beauty; beauty pertains only to the mind, sight, and hearing. love, therefore, is limited to these three, but desire which rises from the other senses is called, not love, but madness.24 91 isparchitecture.com the return to embodiment ficino’s idealism (as introduced in the preceding section) turns on an impoverishment of experience that if operative would deprive us of our appreciation of flowers, food, and lovemaking – to say nothing of buildings and dancing – as expressions of beauty and as pathways toward different and deeper understandings of the world, ourselves, and others. further, as much as beauty may derive from a divine sense of goodness, it also comes from an appreciation of the natural world, of landscape, and the body. a deep appreciation of the beauty of each of these things requires the senses of ‘odors, flavor’s, heat, cold, softness, and like qualities’, not to mention ‘sight and hearing.’ any conception of the experience of beauty, or of anything else that rejects the fullness of the senses inevitably permits only a partial experience of the world. in contradistinction, stokes takes up an argument for the body in his work on michelangelo (as elsewhere in his writing): it is likely that images of the body belong to the aesthetic relationship with every object; emotive conceptions of physique are ancient in us; awareness of our own identity has always been upon the flesh; the outer world of objects was conceived in the first place as an extension of our bodies. this early view, the experience of the body: peter zumthor’s vals baths ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 92 co le m a n of course, bears no resemblance to an adult impression. but art tends to return some of the way back to the sources of feeling and perception.25 stokes consistently argues for the corporeality of art and for an art of intensity embodying total outward expression. well-versed in most aspects of his subject, stokes also turned his attention to what he believed were some of the questionable aspects of platonism, renaissance theory, and neo-platonism: stress upon mathematics, both in the case of alberti; and piero, by itself explains nothing of their art. similarly platonism, neo-platonism, was but a necessary garment, the cover of nameless joy in things; paradoxically, since the philosophy of plato is far from the senses, allowing no more value to the sensible world than to the individual, that other god of renaissance man.26 despite stokes’ observations, it might be reasonable to conclude that neither philosophies of beauty nor objects of beauty any longer occupy the center of considerations of art or culture. this modern condition arguably begins with the advent of science as we know it and with the secularization of society. in the west, this new condition parallels the loosening of the church’s temporal powers and the rise of industrialization, and began to take definitive shape during the late seventeenth century. the separation of mind and body that persists throughout philosophies of beauty, originates the crisis of meaning in art and architecture that continues to persist. plato’s model is of man ascending from earthly conceptions to heavenly ones. at a certain moment of elevation the process requires transcendence in the form of disengagement of the mind from the body, of ideas from reality, with ideas ultimately taking precedence over objects and the experience of them. gasset considers the modern manifestation of this tension between ideas and objects as follows: under the name reason, then of enlightenment, and finally of culture, the most indiscreet deification of the intelligence were effected. among the majority of the thinkers of the period ... culture [and] thought ... came to fill the vacant office of a god who had been put to flight.27 the desire to liberate the mind from the body, in order to free ideas, was acceptable, if filled with foreboding, so long as all-knowing continued to be tied a-priori to the body. these ties were both effected and supported by a sense of god, that concept above man, and deriving from us, which once promised to keep the human world from descending into chaos. without 93 isparchitecture.com such a conception we are on our own. the more the emergence of the modern world is explored, the more the loss of god has left moderns flailing about for something to hold on to, and for something to bind us to the earth. god, once perceived as the center of all and the origin of love, and therefore of beauty, creativity and human beings, was reason enough for virtuousness. without the comforting anchors of god and religion—which gave purpose to art and architecture over and above what the state could provide—enlightened moderns are left wondering how we could have ever lived with god, and simultaneously how it could be possible to live without him (her), despite the many horrors justified in the name of religion. with the advent of reason and the victory of ideas, humans have become ever more estranged from those parts of thought that were once bound to love, beauty, goodness, and personal conceptions of god; ties that were, often enough, the source and justification for humane character. reification of ideas, and the deification of them that followed, greatly concerned gasset, who intuited the extreme danger of such operations, in particular leading to the dehumanization of art: “the idea instead of functioning as the means to think an object with, is the desire to liberate the mind from the body, in order to free ideas, was acceptable, if filled with foreboding, so long as all-knowing continued to be tied a-priori to the body “ ” the body surrogate: sensual form at norman foster’s sage gateshead ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 94 co le m a n itself made the object and the aim of thinking.”28 conclusion philosophers of beauty have often seen beauty as a means to an end – the conduit from earthly to divine love. for most, moving from the corporeal to the incorporeal must follow one route: from the feet to the head. so long as ideas about ideal beauty proceeded along this route, lesser sensual forms deriving from the body had a place. the heady—at times earthy—sensuality of the body, and its manifold references could still find a place in thoughts about art and beauty, without apparently contradicting ancient philosophy. however, the dominance of absolute reason, with its corollaries of quantification and abstraction has loosened connections between real and idealized beauty. paradoxically, as thinking and making drift skyward to the realm of pure forms (pure ideas) desire has become dissociated from attainable objects (including from the body): a disconnection intensified by the increasing dominance of screen time in everyday life, which inevitably atrophies the senses other than seeing and hearing. mind dissociated from body, ideas from reality, and the spirit from the everyday, encourages scientistic thought processes disconnected from the sensuous reality of persons, and things. ultimately, recuperating the relevance of beauty for inventing art and architecture, no matter how irrelevant they may appear, turns on rekindled awareness, “that memory helped reality to retain the things received by the five senses.”29 although ‘the five senses and memory’ have largely been outsourced to virtuality and digital data, voltaire’s pronouncement in memory’s adventure is even more relevant today than when first published in 1775. mnemosyne’s admonishment in the story is especially apropos: “imbeciles i forgive you; but this time remember that without the senses there is no memory, and without memory there is no mind.”30 the dominion of thought processes masquerading as scientific, as if objective, measurable, and uncontaminated by emotion calls out for a rejoinder; recollecting beauty and its mirror in the body would be a good place to start. endnotes 1. a condition adeptly theorized by manfredo tafuri (1935-1994), amongst others. 2. autonomy is a fallacy i will leave aside for the moment. 3. wittgenstein, l. [1921] tractatus logico-philosophicus, abdingdon: routledge, 2001. §6.421, p. 86. 4. coomaraswamy was born 1877, columbo, ceylon – died 1946, needham, massachusetts 5. vattimo was born 1936, palermo, italy 6. gianni vattimo, art’s claim to truth (new york: columbia, 2008), p. 158. 7. ibid., p. 152. 8. ibid. 9. a. k. commaraswamy, ‘saṁvega, “aesthetic shock,”’ harvard journal of aesthetic studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1943), n. 2, p. 174. 10. ibid., p. 176. 11. ibid., p. 174. 12. donald kuspit, ‘secrets of success: paradoxes and problems of the reproduction and commodification of art in the age of the capitalist spectacle,’ available online at: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/art-and-capitalistspectacle2-8-11.asp (accessed 09 may 2012). 13. a. k. commaraswamy, ‘saṁvega, “aesthetic shock,”’ harvard journal of aesthetic studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1943), p. 178. 14. ibid. 15. gianni vattimo, ‘project and legitimization i,’ lotus international 48/49 (1986), p. 121-122. 16. ibid., p. 124. 17. ibid., p. 125. 18. albert hofstadter and richard kuhns, philosophies of art and beauty (chicago: university of chicago press, 1976), p. 68. 19. roland h. bainton, early christianity (new york, toronto and london: van nostrand, 1960), pp. 12-13. 20. ortega y gasset, ‘the self and the other’ [1952], in the dehumanization of art and other essays on art, culture, and literature (princeton university press, 1968), pp. 194, 195, 196. 21. marsilio ficino, commentary on plato’s symposium (de amore), 1475, in philosophies of art and beauty, eds. a. hofstadter and r. kuhns (chicago: university of chicago press, 1976), pp. 204-238. 22. marsilio ficino, de amore, in philosophies of art and beauty, p. 222. 23. joseph rykwert, the first moderns: architects of the eighteenth century (cambridge, ma: mit press, [1983] 1991), p. 13. 24. ficino, de amore, in philosophies of art and beauty, pp. 207-208. 25. adrian stokes, michelangelo [1958], in the critical writings of adrian stokes, vol. iii (great britain: thames and hudson, 1978), p. 33. 26. adrian stokes, art and science [1949], in the critical writings of adrian stokes, vol. ii (great britain: thames and hudson, 1978), p. 194. 27. gasset, ‘the self and the other’, p. 197. 28. gasset, ‘the dehumanization of art’ [1925], in the dehumanization of art and other essays on art, culture, and literature (princeton university press, 1968), p. 18. 29. voltaire, memory’s adventure [1775], in candide, zadig, and selected stories, trans. donald a. frame (new york and toronto: signet classic: new american library, 1961), pp.325-326. 30. ibid., p. 328. architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members at ispa events. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley assistant editors christoph baumberger, ph.d., eth zürich carolyn fahey, ph.d., newcastle university stefan koller, ph.d., delft university of technology editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk ersoy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com contents matt waggoner 27how not to be at home in one’s home: adorno’s critique of architectural reason 5editorial 9sean akhane-bryen and chris l. smith the space of the lacerated subject: architecture and abjection 47roger paden on the use and abuse of historical monuments for life 81tom spector et. al.should architects refrain from designing prisons for longterm solitary confinement? an open letter to the architecture profession 67dominique moran, yvonne jewkes, and colin lorne designing for imprisonment 89brian irwin architecture as participation in the world: merleau-ponty, wölfflin, and the bodily experience of the built environment tom spector 103 125 reviewed by thorsten botz-bornstein book reviews: the philosophy of chinese architecture by david wang thinking like a mall by steven vogel reviewed by tom spector isparchitecture.com we are living through a radicalized, unsettling moment in western politics as what seemed the drift of history towards democracy, greater individual freedoms, increased fairness and greater international cooperation is at least temporarily reversed. as we finished production of this issue, ispa was also concluding its 4th biennial conference at a most overtly political venue— the united states air force academy—which is simultaneously a mecca for modern architecture lovers as well as an indisputable seat of the projection of american power. this fact was underscored as our philosophical discussions were occasionally interrupted by fighter jets buzzing the campus. thus, it should make sense that even in the slow-moving world of applied philosophy, the times would lead us to produce this most overtly political issue. this development was not by design but rather by accretion—but one we eventually embraced as a legitimate extension of the exploration of the conjunction of architecture and philosophy. the issue begins at a broadly theoretical level but gradually becomes more pointedly critical culminating in a first-ever (for architecture philosophy) open letter to the architecture establishment. to begin, sean akhane-bryen and chris l. smith take up the concept of abjection in “the space of the lacerated subject.” as theorized by julia kristeva, abjection is the necessary demarcation process, one that begins in infancy, of distancing oneself from what is not true and proper to the individual. but this process is susceptible to cooption. architecture can be pressed into the our philosophical discussions were occasionally interrupted by fighter jets buzzing the campus “ ” architecture and the political tom spector ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 6 ed it or ia l service of abjective strategies to banish difference or conversely, to create totalizing environments that serve power. architecture, they argue, is not only a “potential abject, but also the instrument or vector of abjection.” bataille’s writings on architecture and abjection are employed to craft an alternative to bad abjective strategies. in a related vein, matt waggoner discusses adorno’s solution to the problem of living in a system of unfair power relations as the imperative “how not to be at home in one’s home.” adorno made no real distinction between the problems of dwelling and morality. waggoner argues that, for adorno, “the proper relation (to property in an age of inextricable entanglement with illegitimate power relations is)…to refuse the logic of possession and of exclusive habitation by assuming the status of a visitor in one’s own home.” given the many truly awful immigrant and refugee crises across the world, this imperative applies at least as pointedly to the dilemmas of international immigration as it does to making room for strangers in more intimate settings. given loos’ famous assertion that “only a very small part of architecture belongs to the realm of art: the tomb and the monument” we thought it both appropriate and, given events in charlottesville, virginia in 2017, timely, to include roger paden’s thoughtful proposals for the treatment of confederate monuments in american towns in “the use and abuse of historical monuments for life.” here, paden resources nietzsche, perhaps an initially unlikely choice, to help him propose a way out of the dichotomy presented between the antiquarians (who engage history as connoisseurs) and the revisionists (who advocate removal of such monuments altogether) with an approach that “serves life” by incorporating such monuments into larger works. while the apdsr (architects planners and designers for social responsibility) has urged the american institute of architects to take an ethical stance against the design of prisons for solitary confinement and capital punishment, the institute has resisted getting drawn into what it sees as a divisive issue. for dominique moran yvonne jewkes and colin lorne, this situation is just another example of architects’ aversion to moral introspection. “designing for imprisonment,” discusses the current state of architects’ capacity for moral leadership by using the controversy over prison design as centerpiece. in the spirit of their essay, the open letter to the american institute of architects following moran’s essay written by one of the editors and a group of his students makes a moral case that the institute should come down decisively against the design of prisons for the torturous practice of long-term solitary confinement. the intention of this piece is not to create a litmus test for readers but to explore 7 isparchitecture.com legitimate implications of moral philosophy applied to architecture. we hope it opens new avenues for reader response. following this plea to the architecture profession, brian irwin’s “architecture as participation in the world: merleau-ponty, wölfflin, and the bodily experience of the built environment” brings the essays back to a more serene, hope-filled tenor as he invites the reader to consider the renewed possibilities for participating in, instead of visually consuming, architecture by combining insights by the great phenomenologist with those of the great architectural historian. the issue concludes with two book reviews: a review of david wang’s the philosophy of chinese architecture by thorsten botz-bornstein and a review of steven vogel’s thinking like a mall. taken together, these essays make a case for the benefits of the philosophical consideration of the political dimensions of architecture. they also form something of a bridge between the bamberg essays in volumes 3.1 and 3.2, focussed on the human in architecture, and the next planned volume emanating from the colorado springs conference. they have certainly helped demarcate new areas from which to explore the conjunction of architecture and philosophy. tom spector taken together, these essays make a case for the benefits of the philosophical consideration of the political dimensions of architecture “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 8 ed it or ia l isparchitecture.com the space of the lacerated subject: architecture and abjection sean akahane-bryen and chris l. smith introduction in powers of horror (1980),1 the psychoanalyst julia kristeva presented the first explicit, elaborated theory of ‘abjection,’ which she defines as the casting off of that which is not of one’s “clean and proper”2 self. according to kristeva, abjection is a demarcating impulse which establishes the basis of all object relations, and is operative in the lacanian narrative of subject formation in early childhood via object differentiation. (i am a subject: me. that is an object: not me.) abjection continues to operate post-oedipally to prevent the dissolution of the subject by repressing identification with that which is other, and particularly that which is only tenuously other: the abject. though kristeva’s theory is braided into problematic freudian premises, this essay will argue that abjection remains operative independent of the oedipal model. the focus of freudian psychoanalysis has largely been on the anxieties of being extracted from other subjects, usually the mother. it has concerned itself far less with the anxieties of extracting oneself from the blankets, nursery walls, and doors which were equally a part of the real of infancy. we follow kristeva and georges bataille in asserting that the necessary differentiations which occur between selves and other subjects in early childhood (especially the mothers and fathers and psychoanalytic fixation) also—or first—play themselves out in the differentiations of selves from objects (our blankets, nursery walls, and doors). in doing so, we contest the centrality of the oedipal family triangle in subject formation, and recognise ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 10 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h a more general and parsimonious model of subjecthood implied by the theory of abjection—a model in which architecture necessarily plays a more substantial role, as both an object and instrument of abjection. the subject ‘en process’ though kristeva may be described today as poststructuralist, her early work on abjection is in keeping with lacan. in powers of horror, abjection is introduced as a preface to lacan’s account of the genesis of the subject. according to that account, object relations emerge in the mirror stage, when an infant mistakenly identifies with a reflection of herself—in a literal mirror, or some other mimetic representation—and begins to imagine herself as an object which might be viewed from another perspective. kristeva accepts this, but recognises that the oedipal model, even as revised by lacan, cannot account for the whole progression of consciousness from an experience of undifferentiated sensation to that of a self discerning objects and other subjects. instead, kristeva asserts that the mirror stage is a secondary repression preceded by abjection, a “primal” repression3 which makes difference (differentiation) itself possible and “sets in motion, or implicates, the entire freudian structure.”4 kristeva goes as far as to say that the freudian narrative is “exploded by its contradictions and flimsiness”5 without abjection to precede it. nevertheless, she declines to abandon the narrative altogether, leaving its linear progression of stages intact and only placing her account of the development of subject/object differentiations before it in time. significantly, kristeva credits georges bataille as the first philosopher to have “specified that the plane of abjection is that of the subject/ object relationship (and not subject/other subject).”6 as such, the earliest beginnings of the subject involve an extraction not from other subjects, but what will become objects: do we not find, sooner (chronologically and logically speaking) [than the mirror stage], if not objects, at least pre-objects, poles of attraction of a demand for air, food, and motion? do we not also find, in the very process that constitutes the mother as other, a series of semi-objects that stake out the transition from a state of indifferentiation to one of discretion (subject/object)—semi-objects that are called precisely “transitional” by winnicott?7 according to winnicott, a paediatrician and psychoanalyst, an infant still in a state of indifferentiation experiences subjective “omnipotence,”8 believing that her own desire produces what is desired. the security blanket is a ‘transitional object,’ an infant’s first ‘not-me’ possession which eases 11 isparchitecture.com the disillusionment of omnipotence and mediates the transition from undifferentiated sensation to the discernment of ‘me’ and other ‘not-me’ objects. the transitional object already operates symbolically, standing in for the “object of first relationship”9 (traditionally the breast). winnicott suggests that the symbolic operation of the transitional object belies an antecedent repression: when symbolism is employed the infant is already clearly distinguishing between fantasy and fact, between inner objects and external objects, between primary creativity and perception. but the term transitional object, according to my suggestion, gives room for the process of becoming able to accept difference and similarity. i think there is use for a term for the root of symbolism in time, a term that describes the infant’s journey from purely subjective to objectivity; and it seems to me that the transitional object (piece of blanket, etc.) is what we see of this journey of progress towards experiencing.10 to kristeva, abjection is that “root of symbolism in time.” it is the repression which must occur before anything can operate symbolically, the first recognition of difference in that traumatic moment when that which threatens the definition of the ‘clean and proper body’ (le corps propre) is cast off (ab-jected)11 by the animal impulse to protect the budding cognitive edifice that is the subject. “even before things are—hence before they are signifiable—[the not-yet-subject] drives them out, dominated by the drive as he is, and constitutes his own territory, edged by the abject.”12 the casting off is traumatic because in a state of undifferentiation, what is abjected is necessarily also the self. i expell myself, i spit myself out, i abject myself within the same motion through which “i” claim to establish myself. … during the course in which “i” become, i give birth to myself amid the violence of sobs, of vomit. mute protest of the symptom, shattering violence of a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in i expell myself, i spit myself out, i abject myself within the same motion through which ‘i’ claim to establish myself “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 12 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become integrated in order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. it abjects.13 from here, kristeva follows lacan to a conclusion which poststructuralist philosophers vehemently eschew—that the object relation is, as it was put by lacan, “a means of masking, of parrying the fundamental fund of anguish.”14 a “desiring quest,”15 doomed to anguished failure, for what lacan called the objet petit a, the unattainable ‘object-cause of desire.’ in kristeva’s words: the abjection of self would be the culminating form of that experience of the subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural loss that laid the foundations of its own being.16 this acceptance of the premise of primordial lack is a focus of much criticism of kristeva’s philosophy.17 in contrast, poststructuralist philosophers and psychoanalysts such as gilles deleuze, félix guattari, and (anachronistically) georges bataille18 generally posit a plenitude out of which subjectivity is folded.19 to properly address this debate—in particular, to discern the extent to which the dispute is rooted in style of articulation rather than in fundamental disagreement—is beyond the scope of this essay. perhaps it will suffice to say that some ‘desiring quest’ for that which would destroy the subject as we know it if reclaimed (reunion with the mother, the world) is necessary to render abjection an operable concept. in fact, the theory of abjection appears to be entirely consistent with at least bataille’s conception of subjecthood—abjection being, in this case, an impulse which limits our access to the plenitude from which we emerged: the first labor established the world of things, to which the profane world of the ancients generally corresponds. once the world of things was posited, man himself became one of the things of this world, at least for the time in which he labored. it is this degradation that man has always tried to escape. in his strange myths, in his cruel rites, man is in search of a lost intimacy from the first.20 bataille and kristeva recognise abjection and the accession to the symbolic (language, discursive logic) as necessary preconditions of culture, but also that the repression is not so total that it cannot be undone. far from it, kristeva argues that the subject is always ‘en process’—by which is meant both ‘on trial’ and ‘in process.’21 the chaos of the undifferentiated real is always lapping at the edges of the self. “we may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it—on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.”22 the abject clings to the subject, lacerating it, necessitating the constant defensive action 13 isparchitecture.com of abjection. it is both horror and a siren’s song. tellingly, kristeva observes that the abject is “edged with the sublime,” which “has no object either.”23 it is the gallows humour which underlies all humour, and the reason eroticism shares so much territory with degradation and death.24 to kristeva, the spectre of the undifferentiated real is first and foremost a danger which threatens to bring about the death of the properly constituted subject. bataille also recognises the subject as fragile and contingent, but is more motivated to remind us that a great ocean of ecstatic experience remains dammed up around us while subject/object relations remain ‘properly’ constituted. he reminds us that “[c]oitus is the parody of crime.”25 no subject without a space it is not so, contrary to what is generally meant by the word ‘abject’ (filthy, low, wretched), it is not hygiene, according to kristeva’s definition, that determines what is abject. rather, the abject is that which “does not respect borders, positions, rules,”26 and threatens the legibility of a system. here, kristeva draws on the pioneering work of the anthropologist mary douglas (chiefly in purity and danger of 1966)27 on pollution avoidance in ‘primitive’ cultures. douglas is careful to distinguish between purification and hygiene (modern germ theory): if we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. this is a very suggestive approach. it implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. where there is dirt there is a system.28 … i have tried to show that rituals of purity and impurity create unity in experience. so far from being aberrations from the central project of religion, they contrary to what is generally meant by the word ‘abject’ (filthy, low, wretched), it is not hygiene, according to kristeva’s definition, that determines what is abject “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 14 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h are positive contributions to atonement. by their means, symbolic patterns are worked out and publicly displayed.29 the insight that symbolic systems are “worked out” (not just “displayed”) and ritually maintained by expelling dirt lends support by analogy to kristeva’s theory that subjecthood is established and shored up by abjection. to kristeva, not only is there a system wherever there is dirt, the impulse to expel the dirt preceded and inaugurated the system. the corpse is the ultimate abject—just as death is the ultimate elision of the subject with the world—not because it is infectious, and neither because it is a symbol of death (yet), but because it “show[s] me what i permanently thrust aside in order to live.”30 perhaps more importantly, douglas’s work affirms the hypothesis that abjection is at work at every scale, across bodies and non-bodily objects: … [a]ll margins are dangerous. … matter issuing from [the orifices of the body] is marginal stuff of the most obvious kind. spittle, blood, milk, urine, faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of the body. … the mistake is to treat bodily margins in isolation from all other margins.31 in fact, there would seem to be nothing in the infant’s experience of undifferentiated sensation to categorically privilege the mother’s nipple as the first object of abjection, and so as the symbolic locus of post-oedipal abjection. abjection, then, is general to the subject’s intimacy with the world. this implies that architecture is a potential object of abjection—a potential abject.32 the artist victor burgin goes as far as to describe first abjection as a “demarcation of space,” and engages the dictum: “no space of representation without a subject, and no subject without a space it is not.”33 a burning cathedral the abjection of space presents a troubling corollary. in reverse, it reveals architecture to be not only a potential abject, but also the instrument or vector of abjection. just as blood, tears and come are abject to bodies, traitors, scapegoats, and parvenues are abject to bodies politic. just as shit and slough are flushed away and occluded by architecture, it is architecture again which surveils the suitably constituted subject and excludes or imprisons the category-transgressing other. social and subjective abjection “follow the same logic, with no other goal than the survival of both group and subject.”34 unfortunately, writes kristeva, “the absorption of otherness proposed by our societies turns out to be inacceptable by the contemporary individual, jealous of his difference—one that is not 15 isparchitecture.com only national and ethical but essentially subjective, unsurmountable.”35 the complicity of architecture in this problem is perhaps obvious after foucault, but it is bataille, as ever, who cleaves to the deepest root of the problem. bataille problematised architecture by writing on the prison (among other typologies). but bataille’s prison has nothing to do with foucault’s panopticon, and is instead, in denis hollier’s words, “an ostentatious, spectacular architecture, an architecture to be seen.”36 the prison is both the display of the general condition of the human subject and the “generic form of architecture … primarily because man’s own form is his first prison.”37 hollier writes: the greatest motive for bataille’s aggressivity towards architecture is its anthropomorphism. the article “architecture” describes it as an essential stage in the process of hominization, as a sort of mirror stage that might be called in a parody of lacan’s title “the architecture stage as formative function of the we, man’s social imago.” in this sense, even though he seems to denounce the repression exercised over man by architecture, bataille is really intervening against the catachresis requiring that man only take form with architecture, that the human form as such, the formation of man, be embedded in architecture.38 that is, bataille’s animus towards architecture is rooted in his fundamental revolt against the operation of abjection in the accession of the subject to culture. architecture is at once formative of the subject/society and that through which the subject/society generates its norms. in the cited article, bataille describes architecture in general: it is clear, in any case, that mathematical order imposed upon stone is really the culmination of the evolution of earthly forms, whose direction is indicated within the biological order by the passage from the simian to the human form, the latter already displaying all the elements of architecture. man would seem to represent man would seem to represent merely an intermediary stage...between monkey and building “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 16 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h merely an intermediary stage within the morphological development between monkey and building.39 the declination to acknowledge the distinction between living bodies and buildings is not merely a provocation. if the prison is the generic form of architecture, the cathedral must be the most profuse and comprehensive imposition of “mathematical order … upon stone,” and the culmination of the “morphological development” encompassing humanity and architecture. considering the cathedral in the context of what bataille calls the ‘general economy’ of mediaeval european life reveals a mode of abjection which cuts across stone and flesh. a salient characteristic of the gothic cathedral at its highest development was its fractal scalelessness, or the quality of being governed at every scale by the same repertoire of geometric rules, such that a singular order could be observed in the smallest baldachin as in the tallest tower—an order exhibiting only a tenuous, grudging relationship with the dimensions of the human body. every detail from the general arrangement of the plan to the profile of mullions might be derived procedurally, through the scaling, tessellation, rotation, and superimposition of polygons believed to be numinous. in principle, a single module (such as a square defining the width of a choir) could underlie the whole cathedral, rotations or divisions of which would determine the size of every element. so comprehensive and predictable was this craftlore that the historian françois bucher suggests, “to exaggerate one might say that a single finial preserved from a crumpled tower could suffice for a reasonably close reconstruction of the total structure, provided its position within the system were known.”40 except for logistical purposes, it was not necessary until the moment of construction to assign a measure to the module of the cathedral, which in theory could be infinitely large and infinitely detailed. with no change whatsoever to the logic of its design, a cathedral could be expanded to absorb any surplus. what bataille finds objectionable in the cathedral is only an exaggeration of the bad faith he finds in all architecture—indeed in all work, or what he calls ‘icarian’ projects. these are organised teleological acts which result in the ‘deferral of living to later’ (la remise de l’existence à plus tard). according to bataille, icarian projects circumscribe us in closed, ‘restricted’ economies which blind us to the real of the ‘general economy.’ restricted economies are the economies of accountancy; posed in the zero-sum terms of equilibrium, of profit here equated with loss there. they are also the economies of much psychoanalysis founded on the corresponding notions of a stable subject, developmental progression, and primordial 17 isparchitecture.com loss. the remit of the general economy is wider than the field of traditional economics: economic science … restricts its object to operations carried out with a view to a limited end, that of economic man. it does not take into consideration a play of energy that no particular end limits: the play of living matter in general, involved in the movement of light of which it is the result. on the surface of the globe, for living matter in general, energy is always in excess; the question is always posed in terms of extravagance. the choice is limited to how the wealth is to be squandered.41 figure 1: jan van eyck, saint barbara (1437) saint barbara, out of scale with the building site behind her, is enlarged to indicate her numinous importance. the measure of the human body is incidental to the scheme of the cathedral, which is perpetually under construction. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 18 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h bataille insists that because in general, energy and wealth are always in excess, some share of it must be consumed without profit, or ‘sacrificed’ according to his use of the term. the fundamental problem of political economy then, is how to sacrifice the surplus so that living is not deferred to later. for bataille, this requires the removal of the surplus from circulation in the realm of exchange values—an extravagant consumption which is a means to no end, which burns brightly like “the sexual act … in time,” like a “tiger in … space.”42 this ‘useless’ consumption nevertheless has the use value of briefly restoring intimacy with the real. in fact, a failure to sacrifice the surplus leads to ruination: these excesses of life force, which locally block the poorest economies, are in fact the most dangerous factors of ruination. hence relieving the blockage was always, if only in the darkest region of consciousness, the object of a feverish pursuit. ancient societies found relief in festivals; some erected admirable monuments that had no useful purpose … their existence in excess nevertheless (in certain respects) has perpetually doomed multitudes of human beings and great quantities of useful goods to the destruction of wars.43 the cathedral is one of many modes of sacrifice available to society, some more ruinous and ethically bankrupt than others. the enormous cost of a cathedral cannot all be held against its account, since some portion of that spectacular consumption was necessary to avoid even worse ruination. (better a cathedral than a crusade.) perhaps this is why bataille does not attack the cathedral head-on as an instrument of theocracy, but instead uproots it, and all architecture with it, by locating the problem in something like abjection. fundamentally, what is objectionable is the repression of the sovereignty of the subject exercised by its idealism, its presumption of an a priori ideal form for matter. as hollier emphasises, this is only an ossification of the anguished relation human subjects already have to abjects, as architecture is ‘anthropomorphic.’ architecture, like all symbolic practices, is a “frock coat”44 of form and meaning thrown over the unassimilable real. but the cathedral is particularly egregious because it is totalising (claims total moral authority) and monist (establishes a system of infinitely regressive geometries capable of assimilating all matter, all difference, at any scale). in this sense, the cathedral is the icarian project par excellence. a canon of seville is said to have uttered, in 1402, “we shall build so large a cathedral that those who see it in its finished state will think that we were mad.”45 not by accident, one of the events which turned bataille towards contemplating the limits of human experience was the shelling of notredame de reims, where he received baptism in the summer of 1914 amid 19 isparchitecture.com a crowd of soldiers.46 (he would later recognise his conversion as bad faith.) german artillery arrived within range of reims and soon after, on the 20th of september, the cathedral burned. by then bataille and his mother had evacuated reims, ‘abandoning’47 his blind, paralytic father to apparent doom. bataille recalls the “filthy, smelly state to which [his father’s] total disablement reduced him (for instance, he sometimes left shit on his trousers).”48 the abjected real father, as it were, put the lie to the name-of-the-father. “still,” remembers bataille, “i believe he faced up to it, as always.”49 joseph-aristide bataille’s immanent sovereignty, it might have seemed to his son, was analogous to a perpetually burning cathedral—a cathedral in the grip of a violent sacrifice which put the lie to the word of the father, which left only a father with shit on his trousers. the ghost of his father was no doubt on bataille’s mind when he fixated on the man with figure 2: hans bellmer, the woman at the cathedral, 1948, reprinted by permission. the woman and cathedral are equals in the composition, but this time because the cathedral is foreshortened. the cathedral and woman are elided, both constituted through the force of abjection imposing itself on the hypergraphic horror vacui of the real. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 20 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h shitty breeches in salvador dalí’s painting, the lugubrious game, seeing in him an emasculation fundamental to the human condition.50 andré breton and the surrealists (including dalí himself) were disgusted by and rejected the interpretation, exposing themselves to criticism by bataille as being ‘icarian’ themselves. to bataille, their surrealism only served to exchange one restricted economy for another which happened to privilege creative inspiration in dreams. bataille’s revolt was more total, and general to abjection. base materialism thankfully, bataille points us to a “loophole”51 in the symbolic which promises to restore the sovereignty of the subject, if only momentarily. it is a narrow path “traced by the painters,”52 which might also apply to architects: nothing is more common than for a painter to accept the reduction of his being to painting. living in a world in which to paint is one possible function, he chooses it as his limit. […] from this moment he defines this means as an end, for he must deny his servility. […] nevertheless, it is not as futile as it seems at first. this domain of means at least offers a loophole. all traditional means are asserted as a law which one can possibly breach, and this painter, attached as he is to his scorn for what painting is not, finally comes out of by means of a negation of the limit he wanted to uphold. at this moment his passion ceases to be painting, and becomes liberty …53 a sovereign architecture ought to be, in hollier’s words, a “bastille in no way different from its own storming.”54 the paradox may be a rhetorical simplification. (we recall that the native american potlatch is “at once a surpassing of calculation and the height of calculation.”)55 a sovereign architecture, though still an icarian project, is an architecture which ‘negates the limit the architect wants to uphold.’ it is a cathedral which perpetually burns, a wall which perpetually crumbles, just as the abject perpetually clings to and tears at the frayed edges of the subject. in the oedipal narrative of subject formation, the revolt begins with a matricide (the objectification of the mother) and culminates in a single event, the patricide. but to bataille and kristeva, revolt is a part of the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of the subject. revolt serves to subvert and perhaps reform the symbolic order it ruptures through, and is the implicit goal of art which exploits the potential of non-sense 21 isparchitecture.com and non-meaning—including, as hollier observes, bernard tschumi’s parc de la villette. tschumi writes, “good architecture must be conceived, erected and burned in vain. [our italics] the greatest architecture of all is the fireworker’s: it perfectly shows the gratuitous consumption of pleasure.”56 both bataille and kristeva prescribe revolt—a confrontation with the abject, which bataille spoke of in terms of ‘low’ or ‘base materialism,’ and which imogen tyler described critically as “affirmative abjection.”57neither bataille nor kristeva were the first to observe that the accession to culture entailed a concomitant denial of our base material, or to suggest its (temporary) undoing. hollier observes: in april 1929, emmanuel berl published his pamphlet, the death of bourgeois thought. the death of bourgeois morality followed a few months later. its conclusion, entitled ‘defence of materialism’, proposed a materialism that deserves bataille’s label of base materialism, a materialism of an aggressive vulgarity which berl presents as the proletarian weapon par excellence, the only ideological weapon of any weight against the bourgeoisie.58 but bataille in particular was aware that this weapon of the proletariat cuts both ways. every explicit attempt at affirmative abjection either fails as it were to consummate its revolt, ultimately reinforcing the symbolic order it was designed to subvert, or simply reverses the hierarchy to establish another. abject art, so-called, usually succumbs to the first pitfall. in response to an exhibition of such artworks, hollier asks, “what is abject about it? everything was very neat; the objects were clearly art works. they were on the side of the victor.”59 the problem is not of course that the artworks were insufficiently repulsing, but that in exhibiting them, they were constituted as objects rather than abjects, and inscribed in a particular closed political economy. presumably the artworks were to be viewed from a ... a cathedral which perpetually burns, a wall which perpetually crumbles “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 22 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h distance rather than licked. conclusion it may be that affirmative abjection is definitionally futile. culture cannot be sustained outside the symbolic order, and a project to escape project is still a project. but we infer from bataille that architecture may be incited to do, at the very least, a little more. doesn’t its deep complicity in fact render it a singularly suitable instrument for material political action attenuating the cruelties of abjection—if only because it is most guilty? drawing further on bataille, we pose an alternative inflection to the project of affirmative abjection. lacan suggested that the conscious subject is structured as text, just as the structuralists established the intellectual habit of reading buildings as texts. whereas a text might be persuasive, teleological, or metaphorical, a document is, in theory, according to hollier, “aggressively realist,”60 something which “cannot be invented.”61 documents expose “the radical incongruity of the concrete: all at once, the most ordinary beings resemble nothing at all, cease to be in their places.”62 a building which is a document would be one which declines to wear its frock coat—one which aggressively negates symbolic operation, so that what is formless, different, or meaningless cannot be appropriated, cannot be commodified. (a cathedral, we might say, is absolved of symbolic operation when it burns.) such a building, so designed (or ignited) as to frustrate its own operation as an instrument of abjection, might be a venue for sacrifice, for the “gratuitous consumption of pleasure.”63 but unlike the parc de la villette, which may be analogous to the avant-garde non-sense poetry kristeva once championed (but has since cooled on), a building which is a document would not so much carve meaning out of its signifying containers (a kind of surrealist project), but rather expose the wounds of abjection which it already bears. a building which is a document might be a space for the kissing of bared wounds. endnotes 1. kristeva, julia. powers of horror: an essay on abjection. translated by leon s. roudiez. new york: columbia university press, [1980] 1982. 2. (propre) “usually, in expository prose, the context removes the ambiguities that poetic language thrives on. kristeva is not averse to using polysemy to her advantage, as other french theorists like derrida and lacan have also done. the french word propre, for instance, has kept the meaning of the 23 isparchitecture.com latin proprius (one’s own, characteristic, proper) and also acquired a new one: clean. at first, in powers of horror, the criteria of expository prose seemed to apply, but in several instances i began to have my doubts about this. when i asked kristeva which meaning she intended the answer was, both.” leon s. roudiez, translator’s note to powers of horror, by julia kristeva (new york: columbia university, [1980] 1982), viii. 3. kristeva, powers of horror, 10. 4. ibid, 33. 5. ibid, 32. 6. ibid, 64. 7. ibid, 32. 8. winnicott, d. w., playing and reality (london: routledge, [1971] 2010), 15. 9. ibid, 12. 10. ibid, 8. 11. kristeva, powers of horror, 13. abject: ab-ject, from the latin roots ab (away) and iacio (to throw). 12. ibid, 6. 13. ibid, 3. 14. lacan, seminar of 1956-57, quoted in kristeva, powers of horror, 33. 15. ibid, 35. 16. ibid, 5. 17. the problematic gendering of kristeva’s model of abjection has also been criticised. see for example: tyler, imogen. “against abjection.” feminist theory 10, no. 1 (2009): 77–98. doi: 10.1177/1464700108100393. 18. “there is something anachronistic in associating bataille [1897–1962], a writer who died even before people started to talk about structuralism, with poststructuralism.” denis hollier, against architecture: the writings of georges bataille, trans. betsy wing (cambridge, ma: mit press, [1974] ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 24 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h 1992), ix. 19. the spatial aspects of the philosophies of kristeva, deleuze and guattari are compared in: west-pavlov, russell. space in theory: kristeva, foucault, deleuze. amsterdam: rodopi, 2009. 20. georges bataille, the accursed share: an essay on general economy, trans. robert hurley, vol. 1, consumption (new york: zone books, [1967] 2007), 57. 21. ‘process’ is an english loan word (see note 2). 22. kristeva, powers of horror, 9. 23. ibid, 11, 12. 24. on laughter and the kristevan abject: john limon, stand-up comedy in theory, or, abjection in america (durham, nc: duke university press, 2000), 73–75. 25. georges bataille, “the solar anus,” in visions of excess: selected writings, 1927–1939, ed. allan stoekl, trans. allan stoekl et al. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008), 5. 26. kristeva, powers of horror, 4. 27. douglas, mary. purity and danger: an analysis of concept of pollution and taboo. london: routledge, [1966] 2009. 28. ibid, 44. 29. ibid, 3. 30. kristeva, powers of horror, 3. 31. douglas, purity and danger, 150. 32. for example, the symptoms of abjection in architecture have already been theorised in terms of the erotic and unheimlich by architectural theorist anthony vidler’s discussion of roger callois’ theory of “dark space” and “legendary psychasthenia.” anthony vidler, the architectural uncanny: essays in the modern unhomely (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1992), 173. 33. victor burgin, in/different spaces: place and memory in visual culture (berkeley: university of california press, 1996), 52. 34. kristeva, powers of horror, 68. 35. julia kristeva, strangers to ourselves, trans. leon s. roudiez (new york: columbia university press, 1991), 2. 36. denis hollier, against architecture: the writings of georges bataille, trans. betsy wing (cambridge, ma: mit press, [1974] 1992), x. 37. hollier, against architecture, xii. 25 isparchitecture.com 38. ibid, xi–xii. 39. georges bataille, “architecture,” in encyclopædia acephalica, eds. robert lebel and isabelle waldberg, trans. ian white et al. (london: atlas, 1995), 35. the passage originally appeared in the journal documents (no. 2, may 1929), co-founded and later solely edited by bataille. 40. françois bucher, “medieval architectural design methods, 800–1560,” gesta 11, no. 2 (1972): 41, doi:10.2307/766593. 41. bataille, the accursed share i, 23. 42. ibid, 12. 43. ibid, 24. 44. georges bataille, “formless,” in visions of excess: selected writings, 1927–1939, ed. allan stoekl, trans. allan stoekl et al. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008), 31. this passage originally appeared in documents no. 7, (december 1929). 45. quoted in the frontmatter of: erlandebrandenburg, alain. the cathedral: the social and architectural dynamics of construction. translated by martin thom. cambridge: cambridge university press, [1989] 1994. 46. the cathedral was the subject of bataille’s first published text, written some time before 1920 when he apostatized. see: hollier, against architecture, 14–19 (in which the text is reproduced). 47. georges bataille, story of the eye, trans. joachim neugroschal (new york: penguin classics, [1928] 2014) 78. 48. ibid, 72-73. 49. ibid, 78. 50. georges bataille, “the lugubrious game,” in visions of excess: selected writings, 1927–1939, ed. allan stoekl, trans. allan stoekl et al. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2008), 24–30. 51. georges bataille, “andré masson,” in the absence of myth, (london: verso, 2006), 180. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 26 a k a ha n ebr y en a n d sm it h 52. bataille, “architecture,” 36. 53. bataille, “andré masson,” 179–180. 54. hollier, against architecture, xi. 55. georges bataille, the accursed share: essay on general economy, trans. robert hurley, vol. 2, history of eroticism (new york: zone, 1993), 47. 56. bernard tschumi, “fireworks” [1974], extract from a space: a thousand words, (london: royal, 1975). cited in: bernard tschumi, architecture and disjunction (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1994), 262. 57. tyler, “against abjection,” 77-78. 59. denis hollier, “the use value of the impossible,” in bataille: writing the sacred, ed. carolyn bailey gill (london: routledge, 1995), 147. 59. denis hollier quoted in: martin jay, “force fields: abjection overruled,” salmagundi no. 103 (summer 1994): 244. 60. denis hollier, absent without leave: french literature under the threat of war, trans. catherine porter, (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1997), 141. 61. ibid, 140. 62. ibid, 139. 63. tschumi, “fireworks,” 262. how not to be at home in one’s home: adorno’s critique of architectural reason matt waggoner adorno wrote prolifically about modernism in culture and the arts, but little has been written about whether or in what form he might have addressed architectural concerns. the project of exploring this potentially fruitful intersection has been helped in the last couple of decades by authors from philosophy and critical theory contrasting his ideas about dwelling with heidegger’s and by architectural theorists considering the import of his aesthetic theory.1 if these fall shy of the more immediate connections to architecture that some have hoped to uncover, this is because adorno almost never wrote about specific buildings and their designers (which is the kind of specificity that you do find in what he wrote about music and literature). neither did he publish any texts dedicated exclusively to architecture or dwelling, which is not to say that he never wrote about them or that architectural concerns are absent from his work. adorno’s writings on dwelling and architecture live here and there, emerging and then moving on to surface later, if not often as direct commentary then as a kind of architectural gaze his thinking sometimes employs. dwelling and architecture exist like exiles in his writings even though the question of dwelling— of what it means to inhabit social and space-time worlds as embodied beings—lies as much at the core of adorno’s philosophy as it did in heidegger’s. in adorno’s case, the fact that dwelling resides there as restlessly as it does is a stylistic impression of the theory itself. the question of dwelling... lies as much at the core of adorno’s philosophy as it did in heidegger’s “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 28 w a gg on er i begin by revisiting one of his instances of sustained architectural specificity. though it is no more than a couple of pages, minima moralia’s (1951) aphorism a18, “shelter for the shelterless,” is packed with observations about houses and housing that epitomize adorno’s incisive brand of cultural criticism.2 i suggest the passage should firstly be seen in relation to the opening sections of le corbusier’s towards a new architecture (1927).3 adorno’s pronouncement at the start of “shelter for the shelterless” that “dwelling, in the proper sense, is impossible today” is usually set against heidegger’s desire to recover an original, pure dwelling practice. from 1949 (the year adorno returned to germany) until 1951, they were both working on problems of dwelling, culminating in the publication of minima moralia in the spring of 1951 and heidegger’s delivery of the lectures “building dwelling thinking” and “... poetically man dwells ...” later that year.4 but the question of whether they consciously responded to one another in these texts and what level of interaction they might have had may well be less significant for the purposes of analysis and interpretation than the fact that corbusier’s text was by all appearances a common touchstone for both of them. when adorno also writes in “shelter for the shelterless” that “the house is past,” for instance, he echoes corbusier’s claim that “the house will fall to dust.”5 to acknowledge points of convergence between adorno, heidegger, and corbusier is not to equivocate, and indeed, the fault lines between adorno and corbusier are conspicuous (just as they are with heidegger). corbusier identifies housing as the architectural question, a “problem for the epoch.” setting an agenda for architecture in the 20th century, towards a new architecture sets up the house as one of modernity’s central “problems,” which modern architecture was poised to solve by harnessing processes of mass production. by contrast, “shelter for the shelterless” insists that dwelling in modern life is a problem without a solution. more to the point, and bearing in mind germany’s “final solution” and stalin’s “death solves all problems,” adorno held that what has to be resisted are the usually ominous implications of guarantees of a wholesale solution. adorno’s anxiety about the problem solving attitude was not simply a reaction to the historical events and conditions that shaped his life. it was also, for him, a philosophical claim (a counterpoint to the positivistic tendencies of his day) nicely summarized in his early examination of husserl’s philosophy: the idea that a philosopher must produce a fixed set of irrefutable findings ... presupposes that all the tasks he sets for himself can be fulfilled, that there can be an answer to every question he raises. this assumption, however, is disputable. 29 isparchitecture.com it is possible that there are philosophical tasks which, although arising necessarily in a coherent process of thinking, can not be fulfilled; thus, they lead to an impasse … which has its roots in inherent antagonisms of the problem itself.6 this is the root of adorno’s much-discussed negative utopianism. it is why he regarded the highest tribute that can be paid to utopia as the refusal to entertain premature substitutes or to gloss over the persistence of contradictions forestalling its genuine realization. the paradoxical expression of such an act of fidelity is that in order to be true to utopia, one has to resist it. while this could be seen as a manifesto for architectural pessimism—an inability to countenance corbusier’s hope for an engineered utopia—from adorno’s standpoint it is about safeguarding against the falsification of utopia. the goal was to preserve the real and future possibility of a society transformed so that living with others and otherness, without doing so at anyone’s expense, is both publicly supported and privately possible. in a word, the obstacle to such possibilities for adorno is most certainly capitalism, but more precisely it is the necessity in market societies to secure shelter through exchange and what he calls (for reasons discussed below) the “property relation.” adorno’s generation of intellectuals witnessed capitalism at a time when it was rapidly and very effectively learning how to manage the internal contradictions that marx suspected would lead to its self-incurred demise. to adorno and his colleagues in the 1920s and 1930s (the frankfurt school’s formative years), the hope of a successful transition away from capitalism seemed increasingly fraught as the various countermovements protesting the liberal model proved themselves to be deformed versions of the same “identitarian” (totalizing, universalizing) logic of equivalence implicit in capitalism. as long as the underlying contradictions dwelling in modern life is a problem without a solution “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 30 w a gg on er of society were going to remain unaltered in any substantial way for the foreseeable future, faithfulness to the idea of the right life was going to necessitate refusals to accept its semblance, no matter how well-planned or well-intentioned the proposals. his rejections of the idea of a “blueprint” for utopia suggest that he sensed an affinity between two trends: on the one hand, the sweeping programs advanced by political parties claiming to once-and-for-all solve the problems of modern society (interpreted as cultural degradation in germany and inequality and alienation in russia); on the other hand, the similarly sweeping proposals advanced by architects for master-planned communities and cities (corbusier’s ville radieuse in 1930, wright’s broadacre city in 1932). one of adorno’s concerns about architectural blueprints for utopia was that they failed to account for the persistence of fundamental contradictions like those inherent in the property relation. his other concern about this penchant for master plans was that they seemed to harbor the same totalitarian tendencies as the parties. still, corbusier’s criticisms of the “cult of home” and his insistence that the problem of housing remained unsolved resonates with part of the argument of “shelter for the shelterless,” whose title, it is worth noting, is borrowed from a chapter of siegfried kracauer’s the salaried masses (1930). kracauer tutored adorno in philosophy during the latter’s precocious teen years, poring over such onerous texts as kant’s critique of pure reason. kracauer was a trained and practicing architect in those days and the salaried masses would become one of the first critical examinations of the birth of middle class labor environs like the office space.7 it interrogates the fin de siècle social fantasy that cubicle life provided respite and greater self-determination than the oppressive drudgery of the factory space, an assumption kracauer challenges by stressing the mechanization of office work, kafkaesque means of control implemented by office planners and new managerial systems, and the onset of an even more paralyzing workincited ennui. similarly, “shelter for the shelterless” insists that shelter fantasies cannot be abstracted from the material conditions that make optimistic programs of escape, refuge, or shelter-based “problem solving” acts of wishful thinking. the conditions informing adorno’s spatial-architectural pessimism in “shelter for the shelterless” include the wartime decimation of the housing stock (germans, including heidegger, called it a “housing shortage,” which adorno thought was specious, a way of ignoring the past); the exclusions and the violence of state-sponsored nativism (promoting authentic ties to home and homeland); the mechanizing 31 isparchitecture.com effects of technology and mass production on all forms of interiority (including the invasion of the factory model, with its compulsory discipline and injunction to produce and be useful, into the private sphere); and the inescapable means-end logic of the property relation. adorno’s adamance about the underlying conditions of dwelling and the impossibility of extricating oneself from their contradictions responds as much to heidegger as to corbusier, despite the obvious tension between heidegger’s concerns about technological reason and corbusier’s technophilia. adorno’s disagreement in both instances is not with the claim that we were not building right, but with the claim that we have the capacity to definitively resolve housing’s problems here and now as if they had only to do with misguided conceptions of genuine or optimally efficient dwelling and not with the economic foundations of society. “shelter for the shelterless” illustrates the unresolved nature of dwelling’s problems by throwing a spotlight on some of the attempts to evade them and how they fail. german post-war “traditional residences” are contaminated by the “musty pact of family interests.” regardless of one’s relation to what took place in them, one cannot live in them free of guilt. “functional modern houses” like corbusier’s machines for living in facilitate the “straying of the factory model into the private sphere.” “period-style houses” that have been restored and then purchased as historical novelties are mausoleums embalming their inhabitants alive. “hotels and furnished rooms” sought after in some avant-garde attempt to sidestep the trappings of bourgeois ownership make a mockery of those who really have been driven into homelessness or provisional housing situations. bombed-out cities and the abandoned structures of what had recently been labor and concentration camps, but are now too politically toxic to repurpose, have become omens of the fate of all housing. like architectural blueprints for utopia...failed to account for the persistence of fundamental contradictions “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 32 w a gg on er the job that one needs in order to avoid homelessness in a society that commodifies shelter, these neglected structures serve as concrete symbols of the disposable nature of everyone and everything in late modernism after they no longer prove useful. and finally, adorno cites the bauhausinspired craft movement in architecture, furniture, and design that had set out to eschew form in favor of function but eventually backslid into stylized, curvilinear ornamentation, which is precisely what corbusier, loos, gropius, and others indicted as bourgeois pretension.8 adorno offers the reader a compendium of what are still contemporary tactics for evading the contradictions of dwelling. we could read these six pseudo-solutions as descriptions of various chic-urban attempts today on the part of city planners, private developers, architects, and shelter consumers to make dwelling strategies seem like solutions to bigger problems. the argument of “shelter for the shelterless” is that none of them resolves anything because the underlying issues remain unchanged. nothing escapes the predicament of dwelling in modern life and our attempts, clever and noble though they may be, are shabby conceits and naively complicit. he credits the inadequacy of these solutions to the structural constraints of the property relation, which is of course something most architects admit and have experienced first-hand. there are two explanations for adorno’s preference for the term “property relation.” first, when the institute for social research relocated to columbia university in the 1930s (because it was forced to shutter when national socialism rose to power), it began avoiding anything that could have been perceived in the u.s. context as overtly marxist terminology. they self-censored terms like communism and revolution, even substituting seemingly innocuous terms such as “market society” and “capitalism” for a variety of more generic designations like “exchange society,” “instrumental reason,” and the “property relation.”9 but the second reason adorno preferred the language of the property relation is because it allowed him to accentuate the claim that property is indeed a relation, not a thing, which is to say that property is the quintessential example of what adorno and his colleagues, inspired by georg lukacs’ writings on the subject, called reification.10 heidegger opens his remarks in “building dwelling thinking” by saying that dwelling is about belonging. the difference between adorno’s philosophy of dwelling and heidegger’s has, in a nutshell, to do with adorno’s suggestion that belonging in communitarian and contractual models of inclusion and ownership is an extension of the logic of possessive exclusion. although to belong is surely to be in a relation of sorts, 33 isparchitecture.com to belong in those ways is to be incorporated—to “rest in the preserve of being” (heidegger) or to be assimilated as an appendage of the self (locke)— thereby nullifying the otherness and particularity (the “non-identity,” in adorno’s phraseology) of the thing or person that belongs. to insist on the word “relation” when speaking of the system of private property is to recognize that everything that belongs (a home or a homeland, for instance) is only naively and ideologically the exclusive domain of those whose claims of belonging are deemed legitimate. all property, including every home and every homeland, exists in relation to what lies beyond it, which our ways of speaking and thinking about them disavow. adorno’s reflections on the nature and scope of the property relation go beyond architecture’s often complacent recognition of the constraints of client expectations and market demands. the deepest problem of housing in a capitalist society is that it is a basic need that can only be purchased as a commodity (by most) with wages—money earned by finding purchasers for another commodity, labor—in a market that will not always need to increase production to full employment levels and is sometimes economically compelled to decrease it by shrinking the labor force.11 this is the double bind of a market-based shelter economy. in addition to the basic economic contradiction that makes dwelling, in the proper sense, impossible, adorno unpacks the moral facets of its conundrum as well, insisting that regardless of one’s relation to it (as property owners, renters, or participants in one of shelter’s sub-economies—squatting, camping, living in rehabilitated refuse) every relation to home (and to homeland) is implicated in a system that entails one kind of unsheltering or another. he argues, for instance, that there is no morally responsible way to own because ownership is inherently exclusive, always taking something from ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 34 w a gg on er someone somewhere in the social ensemble (contrary to locke’s claim in the second treatise that it does not); that the application of techniques of mass production to housing strips them, as it does all commodities, of a singular relation to the owner, negating the claims of genuine belonging; that there is no way out of entanglement since to try and extricate oneself from the system of shelter and shelter impropriety would leave one intolerably exposed; that the interiors of houses have become scenes of pseudo-autonomy from an external world that has, nonetheless, thoroughly intruded upon interiority. “wrong life,” adorno concluded, “cannot be lived rightly.”12 economically, morally, and in many cases physically, we are all somehow unhoused. it was perhaps too hasty, though, to have suggested that adorno rejects all forms of problem solving. he does offer something, but as one should expect from a consummate dialectician, it takes the form of a paradox. in “shelter for the shelterless,” he holds that the solution to the predicaments of housing will consist in living in one’s home in full knowledge that if one owns (for instance), one does not singularly own anything, and that in some sense it is owners who are objectified and who become possessions. looking beyond its effects on owners, ownership participates in the unsheltering of others (a claim that can be illustrated in many ways, one of which is the well-studied regional correlation today between increases in property values and subsequent increases in eviction rates). there is no way out of these kinds of entanglement, so the only responsible course of action, adorno claims (to the consternation of many of his left-wing peers and readers, still today), is to participate in an “uncommitted, suspended way,” and “not to attach weight to it.”13 this would be hardly different than the knee-jerk architectural shrug were it not for an astonishing additional claim he makes: one must “learn how not to be at home in one’s home.”14 a good deal can be said about this deceptively compact formulation: it appears to have originated from kierkegaard’s stages on life’s way (1845), which adorno quotes in his first post-habilitation book-length study of kierkegaard (kierkegaard: construction of the aesthetic, 1933); walter benjamin includes it in his arcades project (finally published in 1999 but written in the 1930s), not citing the original but adorno’s rendition of it; adorno revisits it in minima moralia (in “shelter for the shelterless”) two decades later, ostensibly as a way of responding to nietzsche’s pride at having never been a homeowner, but more broadly in response to the aforementioned pseudo-solutions to the moral conundrums of housing in post-war germany; and it resembles 35 isparchitecture.com freud’s concept of das unheimliche, the uncanny, which is to say not homelike, strangely familiar, or not at home with oneself (many of the frankfurt school’s members, including adorno, were greatly influenced by freud, who in a 1919 essay describes the uncanny as an experience of strangeness in the ordinary).15 i think we have to read adorno’s dictum as an entreaty to take up relations to homes and homelands—to how we “construct” them geographically and architecturally, as well as to how we inhabit them—in ways that are not just open to neighbors, strangers, and other kinds of visitors, including those who have been excluded or rendered obsolete by various incarnations of the property relation. even more radically than that, it means that we will need to see ourselves as visitors in our own homes, guests of a sort with no more exclusive claim to them than others. his is an ethic of displacement and a politics of unbelonging that starkly contrasts with communitarian and contractual traditions of right, where moral responsibility is predicated either on a sense of belonging within a community of shared norms and identity or on the abstract logic of an equivalent exchange of possessions. adorno’s argument is that in both cases, communities and contracts are constituted on the model of the property relation, where the good is dependent on claiming sovereignty over this place, this identity, this property, claims that rely on necessary exclusions. what would be the outcome of such a dramatically reconstituted understanding of property, home, belonging and dwelling? the ethic of displacement points, i suggest, toward the formation of anticommunities, ad hoc and provisional aggregations of those who are commonly displaced and for which the foundational value that binds people together is not identity but non-identity, living with difference. like the uncanny, it would make the ownership participates in the unsheltering of others “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 36 w a gg on er ordinary strange and the stranger at home. this idea of informal, ad hoc communities and alternative kinships appears throughout adorno’s writings, including his reflections on american exile after returning to germany (in which he wrote warmly about the reception he received and about the spirit of collaboration he experienced, despite arriving with a very different methodological and theoretical orientation than what was practiced in the u.s. at that time).16 the question he leads us to ask is how we might live (and design living arrangements) in ways that subvert the logic of exclusive possession, even though there is no way to escape it under present conditions. since choosing not to dwell is not an option, and since there is no dwelling in modern life that escapes the property relation, how can we “be at home,” how can we rethink its meaning and practice—but also how can we develop, design, and build housing that installs some new practice of being at home so that home is not a possession that excludes but a relation that invites intimacy amid environs of otherness? how can new paradigms of constructing dwelling systems, structures, and arrangements allow for the mobilization of reciprocal styles of residence, where residents are visitors and visitors are welcomed. to do so would be to address the “problem of the epoch” by modeling housing on the precarity of the unsheltered exile rather than on the security of the native/owner with so-called authentic ties to place and property. are there pathways from adorno’s post-war philosophy of housing to the present? i will not labor over the obvious associations with contemporary social and political movements like sanctuary cities, the right to the city, and the right to housing, except to affirm that these are certainly benefactors of the kind of reasoning that one finds in adorno’s writings on housing, hospitality, and dwelling. i can think of other examples as well. richard rothstein’s the color of law (2017) includes a section near the end of the book in which he permits himself to speculate on how housing segregation could be rectified if there was political determination to do so. he imagines policies aimed at incentivized means of rolling back local zoning practices and federal tax benefits that promote segregated housing patterns. this could be accomplished by making tax subsidies conditional on the inclusion in wealthy areas of a sizable percentage of affordable housing stock and by mandating aggressive measures to attract racially diverse tenants. rothstein argues that, although the supreme court does not currently recognize it, the legal justification for such assertive measures is based on the fact that it was de jure policies backed by federal and local 37 isparchitecture.com governments that for decades created and sustained housing segregation, and thus government has a 14th-amendment obligation to rectify the consequences of its new deal-, civil rights-, and even post-civil rights-era illegalities. the intergenerational effects of inclusive housing (through access to better-funded schools and community resources for the children of relocated tenants, for instance) would be enormously impactful.17 to be sure, even this does not escape entanglement since it involves displacing families from neighborhoods in which they may have deep roots in the community, but it also requires wealthy neighborhoods to open themselves to changes that would fundamentally alter the makeup of those communities as well. measures that make dwelling inclusive (particularly in middle and upper-middle class white neighborhoods) by dismantling and repairing the harms of housing segregation would be consistent, i think, with what it could mean in a practical, present-day sense to learn how not to be at home in one’s home. in the period between 1964 and 1968, prominent voices in the civil rights movement, including president johnson himself, became intensely vocal about the incapacity of the new civil rights laws— outlawing discrimination in public accommodations and extending the right to vote—to overcome segregation and its direct effect on income and opportunity inequality.18 martin luther king, jr. argued that expanding the quantity, access, and king’s rhetoric routinely employed architectural metaphors “ ” figure 1: martin luther king jr. memorial, washington, d. c. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 38 w a gg on er location of low income housing in the u.s. was a necessary step toward racial and economic justice. usually known for its theological imagery, king’s rhetoric routinely employed architectural metaphors as well, such as when he said that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring”19; and when he lamented to harry belafonte that after all of their efforts and the eventual passage of the civil rights laws in the 1960s, he realized that economic inequality linked to housing segregation would continue unabated. he worried that they had done little more than integrate into a “burning house.” (figure 1). in 1967, king adopted the image of a “world house” which informed an essay of the same name: a famous novelist died. among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “a widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” this is the great new problem of mankind. we have inherited a large house, a great “world house” in which we have to live together—black and white, easterner and westerner, gentile and jew, catholic and protestant, moslem and hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.20 the image of a world house asks us to see human beings as common inhabitants of the earth who are mutually affected by one another’s suffering and insecurity. it is an image of living with difference, which is not only suggestive of welcoming and responding to the other. implicit in its concept is the idea that i can lay no exclusive claim to a singular instance of housing, homeland, social belonging, or citizenship since there is but one planetary mesh of interconnected housings. king tries to reimagine the shelter of physical residence, political recognition, and economic wellbeing that white society assured for itself at others’ expense as a site of ordinariness that has to become uncanny, defamiliarized. as a radically exteriorized conception of what it means to be housed, this image is reminiscent of what adorno tries to accomplish with a seemingly very different kind of spatial-architectural metaphor. adorno’s “no man’s lands” are playful in their discourse with the meaning of utopia, which is another kind of no-place. to impute utopian significance to places whose historical references include dumping grounds and the space between two fronts in trench warfare (where the carnage of bombed buildings and disfigured bodies abound) is tongue-incheek, a conscious attempt on adorno’s part to insist that utopias will not yet come in the form of successfully implemented solutions to sweeping 39 isparchitecture.com problems. for now, they will appear in the rubble of failed solutions, the refuse of damaged life. “the resurrection of the dead,” adorno wrote, “will take place in the auto-graveyards.”21 but no man’s lands are not only scenes of destruction and obsolescence. they are also sites of contiguity, non-spaces of in betweenness that lie beyond the boundaries of regions of exclusive possession and control. to inhabit the no man’s land is thus to exteriorize the self, to abandon the security of the carapace for the vulnerability and precarity of border regions. no man’s lands are deconstructive zones of contact and cross-contamination where binarily conceived relations no longer hold, relations between subject/ object, self/other, mind/body, resident/stranger, life/death, reason/affect, utopia/dystopia, home/ exile. adorno’s no man’s lands acknowledge that our materiality is an inescapably shared feature of our existence as embodied beings, making us both dependent on and responsive to that which is outside us. this is true because of our need to seek food and shelter amid external environs and social arrangements and because of historically specific intrusions into interiority—mental, affective, and aesthetic interiority through the culture industry, architectural interiority through the mass production of houses and the penetration of the spaces of work and life by new forms of influence and control, and the interiority of social and political belonging, when in the name of authentic ties to home and homeland one is dislocated, either into exile or to the concentration camp. this is why, rather than kierkegaard’s constructions of selfhood through images of interiority (his touchstones tended to be the accoutrements of the 19th-century bourgeois apartment), adorno preferred kafka, whose characters could not find refuge. they were instead expelled onto barren surfaces, exoskeletal and exposed. in reference to kafka, adorno once called upon the image of no man’s lands to describe the the image of a world house asks us to see human beings as common inhabitants of the earth who are mutually affected by one another’s suffering and insecurity “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 40 w a gg on er unlocatable position of characters who suffered an “unsuccessful death,” having been so thoroughly depleted and made obsolete that, though not physically dead, they exist in a kind of socially dead/undead state.22 but like the unsuccessful deaths in kafka’s stories, adorno sees promise in the precarity and dislocation of no man’s lands. he sees them, for one thing, as scenes that expose us, and for that reason they also expose the real nature of embodied life. the shared frailty of bodies and of the environs upon which they depend is a reminder that to be an embodied being is to be something that lives outside itself (this is another sense in which adorno used the phrase no man’s land, to describe the experience of exteriorization). in other words, embodied life contains within its phenomenology a template of what we mean by dwelling. the necessity of corporeal beings to seek housing in a place, in relations of both physical and social geography, is never purely subjective and cannot be individualized. the sensorium of embodied subjectivity is not even something that happens on its own; it is enlivened by contact with and exposure to other bodies and bodily states. embodiment bears an essential relation to dwelling because to inhabit a body is to inhabit bodies as such, a common corporeality stitched together by the reflexivity of the touch and by collective modes of meeting shared needs and responding to shared vulnerability. the human experience of dwelling begins with embodiment, with the fact that consciousness is inseparable from the somatic and the sensorial, which are, like everything physical, inherently responsive to, dependent upon, and passively and actively bound up with that which is external to consciousness. modes of dwelling in bodies and in space are not those of enclosure and sovereignty but of cohabitation and an ethically enlivening non-sovereignty. no one ever singularly inhabits a body because embodiment is not, as we like to imagine it, a state of being a self-sufficient thing. its existence is inseparable from and can only be constituted as such within a matrix of contact and connectivity that can either prove sustaining or detrimental, depending on the quality of the bonds. what we should add to this is that the scope of that which stitches me into the world is not exclusively the interfacing of organic bodies. it includes the kind of tethering that binds bodies together by housing them in time and space. there are other ways that i come to exist as a place-holding being in the world and that i am delivered into and hopefully preserved in such constitutive contact with it and with others. for if, as judith butler argues in senses of the subject, it is not the case that there is already a pre-existent “i” prior to being touched, but that the touch instead enlivens me as a feeling, sensing self, then we must 41 isparchitecture.com also maintain that there is no way to conceive of the human being apart from the kind of tethering and contiguous relations that enable me to inhabit the external world.23 we are fastened to one another by virtue of our common embodiment, but our bodies are also intertwined with one another and with the world inside a global tissue of connected environs that includes such things as streets, neighborhoods, cities, infrastructures, and coverings, the matrix of shelters and shelter arrangements in which we dwell. it is within these structures that we reside with varying degrees of satiety and security, some more enlivening than others. just as the body does not enclose us from others, shelter does not enclose us from that which surrounds us and in relation to which we are only ostensibly distant and distinct. rather, dwelling is the activity and shelter the fabric with which the self is extended into and implicated in worlds of being and belonging, which i take to be what king envisioned when he adopted the image of a world house and what adorno envisioned when he upheld no man’s lands as potentially fruitful shared experiences of propulsion into scenes that exteriorize us, over which none of us can claim exclusive nativity or possession. this brings me, finally, to the other architecturally compelling feature of no man’s lands in adorno’s works. it is that adorno’s models of living with difference—aggregations of the commonly dislocated and the kinds of alternative bonds that crystallize among them—invite redefinition of the meaning of housing and home, of the designed character of dwelling and the social arrangements it facilitates. repositioning exilic states as the foundation for ethical responsibility, adorno inverts the relation between home and exile such that our model of home is fashioned after the non-exclusive relations that characterize communities of shared displacement. this aspect of adorno’s philosophy of dwelling is just as consistent with king’s interest in an expanded and exteriorized conception of the utopias... will appear in the rubble of failed solutions, the refuse of damaged life “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 42 w a gg on er house as it is with different models of family and kinship (which were also present in king’s reflections on the world house). for it is on the basis of a traditional concept of kinship that homes and homelands have historically acquired their meaning as scenes of common identity and exclusive claims of the right of belonging and possession. learning how not to be at home in one’s home will necessitate, then, learning how to forge bonds of belonging that are predicated on intimacy and proximity between aliens and strangers rather than kin and countrymen. reimagining houses and housing as no man’s lands enlists us in the project of reconstituting the social arrangements that have traditionally organized and orchestrated shelter, and it includes risking their contamination with conceptually promiscuous alternative cohabitation structures. these would no longer be arrangements whose bonds are rooted in exclusive claims of cultural and genetic belonging, nor the claims of contractually legitimized, inherited or purchased belonging. it is difficult, for obvious reasons, for us to imagine dwelling and housing apart from the logic of possessive exclusion rooted in relations of the family and private property. we know that under the circumstances, when territorial sovereignty, patriarchal vestiges, and the property relation circumscribe every form of dwelling, we would intolerably expose ourselves to insecure states if we did not participate in the shelter-based economy according to its rules. this is why adorno’s “solution” cannot take the form of a master-planned blueprint for utopian dwelling. what he offers us instead is an architectural counter-image to the blueprint by comparing the task of reimagining dwelling and housing to images from land surveys. the blueprint is an abstraction, a rationalization of reality, whereas aerial photographs of the surface of the earth capture the materiality of the terrain. in “notes on kafka,” having likened the unsuccessful death to a no man’s land, adorno argues that kafka’s stories function like wartime aerial photographs of demolished cities, neighborhoods, buildings, and homes. he describes this function as the production of an impossible view from the standpoint of an as yet unforeseeable utopia, “hell seen from the perspective of salvation.” his writing “feigns a standpoint from which the creation appears as lacerated and mutilated as it conceives hell to be.” recalling jews in the middle ages who were tortured, executed, and hung head down, adorno tells us that “kafka, the land-surveyor, photographs the earth’s surface just as it must have appeared to these victims during the endless hours of their dying.”24 when adorno describes these views of the extremes of exposure, suffering, and insecurity as the standpoint of salvation, he is suggesting that we need to invert our notions of pessimism and optimism. genuine optimism does not conceal 43 isparchitecture.com realities beneath abstractions and pseudo-solutions. its conception of utopia is not that of the blueprint but of the preservation, if only in thought (whose focal point is like an image from afar), of an as yet unforeseeable transformation of the material conditions for dwelling and cohabitation. “to include [kafka] among the pessimists, the existentialists of despair, is as misguided as to make him a prophet of salvation” since “the light-source which shows the world’s crevices to be infernal is the optimal one.”25 ever since the ideal cities of corbusier and wright, the “optimal solutions” of architecture to the problems of housing have not captured the depth of the damages incurred by dwelling because of its enmeshment in the property relation. rothstein and others remind us how those blueprints, once approximated in the development of new deal housing programs and postwar suburbs, led to the even deeper entrenchment of racially exclusive property relations. with the aid of federal support and local zoning practices, the approaches they inspired contributed to the intransigence of segregated housing patterns and the intergenerational economic debilitation of african americans that resulted from those patterns. in no small part, ideological notions of the proper family model played a role in justifying the exclusions of housing as well, both because of racially coded discrimination against single parent families and because of the inviolable status accorded the nuclear family and individual property, effectively shielding them against government’s ability to prevent or police the segregationist practices of developers, real estate agents, banks, and neighborhood associations. adorno’s critique of architectural reason is an immanent critique that thinks through the categories and concepts of architectural perspectives and practices. what is architecture to adorno’s ‘solution’ cannot take the form of a masterplanned blueprint for utopian dwelling “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 44 w a gg on er do when its entire task is beset by the ineluctable contradictions of the property relation? adorno’s answer is that architecture must do what art did during the period of high modernism and what artists at its periphery (such as gordon matta-clark) have intimated in their works. architecture must become anti-architectural, not in the sense that it no longer plans, designs, and builds dwellings and dwelling arrangements, but that it does so in ways that feign an impossible standpoint (rather than blueprinting false solutions) by reimagining dwelling as no man’s lands of exteriorized contiguity and dwelling’s ideal social arrangements as alternative kinships. it has to learn how not to be at home in its traditional mandate to build spaces that reinforce our preconceptions of proper social space. dwelling in the proper sense may be impossible today, but its future may be what is, til then, deemed improper. endnotes 1. samir gandesha, “leaving home: on adorno and heidegger” in adorno and heidegger: philosophical questions (redwood city, ca: stanford university press, 2007, pp. 101-28); hilde heynen, architecture and modernity: a critique (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1999). 2. theodor adorno, minima moralia: reflections from damaged life (new york: verso, 1974). i use “shelter for the shelterless” to translate “asyl für obdachlose” rather than jephcott’s “refuge for the homeless.” for an extended investigation into “shelter for the shelterless,” see waggoner, unhoused: adorno and the problem of dwelling (new york: columbia university press, 2018). 3. le corbusier, towards a new architecture, frederick etchells, trans. (new york: dover, 1986). most readers will be familiar with the history of the text and its title. originally published in french in 1923 as vers une architecture, the first english translation by etchells appeared in 1927, in which the title was interpreted as towards a new architecture. in 2007, getty published a new english translation returning corbusier’s title to the original toward an architecture. when referring to the book’s title in what follows, i follow the etchells translation since it remains the most widely used version of the text in english. 4. martin heidegger, poetry, language, thought. albert hofstadter, trans. (new york: harper collins, 1977, pp. 141-160, 209-227). 5. heidegger questions the role of the house in a far less pointed and pithy way in “building dwelling thinking”: “today’s houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun, 45 isparchitecture.com but do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them?” (p. 144). 6. theodor adorno, “husserl and the problem of idealism,” journal of philosophy (vol. 37, no. 1, january 4, 1940: pp. 5–18). 7. siegfried kracauer, the salaried masses: duty and distraction in weimar. quintin hoare, trans. (new york: verso, 1998). 8. adorno, 1974: pp. 38-39. 9. the institute for social research was the institution, founded in frankfurt under the auspices of its university, that gave birth to the group of scholars known as the frankfurt school, some of whom were less directly connected to the institute than others. see martin jay, the dialectical imagination: a history of the frankfurt school and the institute for social research, 1923-1950 (berkeley: university of california press, 1973). 10. georg lukacs, history and class consciousness: studies in marxist dialectics (cambridge, ma: mit, 1971). 11. marx, of course, goes one step further when he argues that even labor shrinkages are economically strategic for capital. they create what he calls an industrial reserve army: unemployed (often homeless or insecurely sheltered) workers who are ready at a moment’s notice to report to the factory or the office as soon as their labor is again required. 12. adorno, 1974, p. 39. 13. ibid. 14. ibid. 15. theodor adorno, kierkegaard: construction of the aesthetic. robert hullot-kentor, trans. (minneapolis: university of minneapolis press, 1989); walter benjamin, the arcades project. howard eiland and kevin mclaughlin, trans. (cambridge, ma: belknap press of harvard university press, 1999); sigmund freud, “the ‘uncanny’” in the standard edition of the complete psychological works of sigmund ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 46 w a gg on er freud, volume xvii (1917-1919): an infantile neurosis and other works, pp. 217-256. i suspect there are still more reference points for the quote that i am not yet aware of. 16. theodor adorno, “scientific experiences of a european scholar in america” in critical models: interventions and catchwords (new york: columbia university press, 1998, pp. 215-242); adorno, “foreword” in prisms. samuel weber and shierry weber nicholsen, trans. (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1967, pp. 7-8). 17. richard rothstein, the color of law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated america (new york: liveright publishing, 2017). 18. see ira katznelson, when affirmative action was white: an untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-century america (new york: w. w. norton and company, 2006). 19. michael eric dyson, come hell or high water: hurricane katrina and the color of disaster (new york: basic civitas books, 2007). 20. martin luther king, jr., “the world house” in where do we go from here: chaos or community? (boston, ma: beacon press, 1968, p. 177) 21. adorno 1967, p. 271. 22. adorno 1967, pp. 270-271. 23. judith butler, senses of the subject (new york: fordham university press, 2015). 24. adorno 1967, p. 271. 25. ibid. isparchitecture.com on the use and abuse of historical monuments for life: nietzsche and confederate monuments roger paden the practice of preserving various parts of urban landscapes for historical purposes raises a variety of normative, metaphysical, and conceptual questions that invite philosophical analysis. the normative questions are particularly interesting. why should we preserve historical sites? what sites are worth preserving? how should they be preserved and interpreted?1 in this essay, i apply nietzsche’s theories of history and culture as found in the first two untimely meditations to provide a fresh critical framework to some normative questions raised by a particularly difficult instance of historical preservation; namely, the preservation of confederate monuments. this framework allows me to argue that some monuments should be removed from their prominent public sites, while others should be retained and reinterpreted. nietzsche on the advantages and disadvantages of history nietzsche’s work might seem to be a strange place to look for ideas concerning historical preservation. he wrote very little about cityscapes (and what little he did write is largely confined to an early work, the first meditation on david strauss; and he wrote nothing at all about historical preservation.2 his most systematic writing about history is found in the second meditation, “on the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” which begins with a rather unpromising quote from goethe: “i hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 48 pa de n activity.”3 as the study of history is rarely thought invigorating, it might be supposed that nietzsche would be an opponent not only of the study of history, but of historical preservation, as well; but this supposition would be mistaken as he immediately goes on to argue that, if history does not invigorate, it is a costly superfluity and luxury [which must be hated by us] because we still lack even the things we need and the superfluous is the enemy of the necessary. [however,] we need history ... but we need it ... for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away from life and action.... we want to serve history only to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value the study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate... 4 in fact, nietzsche held that history is essential to a well-lived life, but that only some approaches to history can serve life, while others are always dangerous to it. moreover, he believed that any approach can become dangerous if relied upon exclusively. the point of the second meditation is to show how history – and what kinds of history – can be useful. in that meditation, nietzsche argues that humans differ from other animals, not because we are essentially rational while they are not; rather, we differ because we have far better and more complex memory. this seemingly small psychological difference, however, has great consequences: humans are “historical animals,” while other animals, lacking a sense of history, live entirely (and happily) in the present. it also follows that these other animals are incapable of significant historical action and cannot grow or change as a species in historical time, while humans live in a world with both a past and a future and, consequently, can plan alternative futures. at the limit, humans can make a project of themselves: unlike animals, they can engage in historically-significant, transformative action. nietzsche argues that, to live historically-significant lives, our lives must contain both “historical” moments that involve remembering history and “unhistorical” moments that involve forgetting or ignoring history. to plan, we must be aware of our situation and this requires knowledge of our past, but, to act and create, we must forget – even dismiss – parts of that past. thus, the “historical and the unhistorical are necessary in equal measure for the health of an individual, of a people, and a culture.”5 however, because he believes that the modern age suffers from “an excess of history,”6 he focuses his argument on the claim that too much remembering is dangerous; that “there is a degree of ... historical sense which is harmful and ultimately fatal.” 7 nietzsche distinguishes several approaches to history. two unnamed approaches, which are wholly harmful to life, are described in the first 49 isparchitecture.com and second meditations, and when he criticizes “the oversaturation of an age with history,” i believe that it is these two unnamed approaches that he has in mind.8 the first—and less important of the two— i will call “scientific history.” on nietzsche’s view, scientific historians are “idler[s] in the garden of knowledge,” “pedantic micrologists,” “who stand aside from life so as to know it unobstructedly.”9 but, because the facts they seek are objective, isolated historical facts, unrelated to life and action, they can only be a harmful distraction. i will call the second, more important, approach, “teleological history.” as daniel breazeale points out in his introduction to the untimely meditations: though the second untimely meditation is sometimes read as a blanket rejection of “historicism,” this is far from the truth. what nietzsche rejects ... is not the basic thesis that every aspect and expression of human life is unavoidably conditioned by history, but rather, the progressive or whiggish consequences that are typically—albeit, in nietzsche’s view, quite illicitly—drawn from this thesis. it is not historicism per se to which he objects..., but rather the unexamined teleology that usually accompanies it.10 since hegel and the neo-hegelians took such a teleological approach to history, throughout the second meditation, nietzsche repeatedly criticizes their views, which present history as the inevitable unfolding of a pre-established and providential plan. especially dangerous versions of this history, on nietzsche’s view, portray this unfolding as essentially complete, as having arrived at what hegel called, “the end of history.” nietzsche criticizes this approach on a number of grounds. most important, he claims that “it implants a belief … in the old age of mankind, the belief that one is a latecomer and epigone” who believes he or she is living at the end of history.11 since, in this approach, this belief is accompanied both by the notion that “as things are they had to nietzsche held that history is essential to a well-lived life, but that only some approaches to history can serve life “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 50 pa de n be, as men now are they were bound to become, [and] none may resist this inevitability”12 and by the notion that the present age possesses “the rarest of virtues, justice, to a greater degree than any other,”13 epigones are led to the belief that new, historically-significant action is both impossible and undesirable; and this, in turn, leads to “the total surrender of the personality to the world-process”14 thus, as a teleological approach comes to dominate a person or a society, “the instinct for creation will be enfeebled and discouraged”15 and will be replaced by a “cynical ... prudent practical egoism, through which the forces of life are paralyzed and at last destroyed.”16 epigones seek “self-contentment,” while avoiding disturbing “enthusiasms”; indeed, “stupefaction is ... the goal” of those who take this approach.17 this self-satisfaction, however, is purchased at a great cost: because epigones are incapable of historically-significant action, they are condemned to an a-historical, animal-like existence. in the second meditation, nietzsche explicitly discusses three approaches toward history that, unlike the first two, are useful or even “necessary for life.”18 the first is “antiquarian history.” the antiquarian turns to history to “preserve and revere.”19 the advantage of antiquarian history is that it can help create a community by presenting it as the result of a whollypositive history and, in doing so, it can give its members an identity. the antiquarian can look back to whence he has come, to where he came into being, with love and loyalty.... by tending with care that which has existed from of old, he wants to preserve for those who shall come into existence after him the conditions under which he ... came into existence.... the history of his city becomes for him the history of himself; he reads its walls, its towered gate, its rules and regulations, its holidays, like an illuminated diary of his youth and in all this he finds again himself.... here we lived, he says to himself, for here we are living; here we shall live, for we are tough and not to be ruined overnight. thus, with the aid of this “we,” he looks beyond his own individual transitory existence and feels himself to be the spirit of his house, his race, his city.20 nietzsche holds that this “antiquarian sense of veneration of the past is of the greatest value when it spreads a simple feeling of pleasure and contentment over the modest, rude, even wretched conditions in which a man or a nation lives.” it not only gives “less favored generations and peoples” the courage to endure, but it “restrains them from roving abroad in search of something they think more worth having,” thereby dissipating their energies and abandoning their identity.21 it protects a people from being unfaithful “to its own origins and ... given over to a restless, cosmopolitan hunting after new and ever newer things.”22 51 isparchitecture.com antiquarian history can have certain disadvantages, however. it does not make distinctions as all parts of the antiquarian’s history are equally revered and, because nothing is criticized, nothing is understood. more important, by undermining the power of judgment, antiquarian history undermines continuing and especially higher life..., [as it] no longer conserves but mummifies.... for it knows only how to preserve life, not how to engender it; it always undervalues that which is becoming.... thus it hinders any firm resolve to attempt something new [and] paralyzes the man of action...23 the second form, “critical history,” is adopted by “a being who suffers and seeks deliverance.”24 nietzsche argues that if, “he is to live, man must possess and from time to time employ the strength to break up and dissolve a part of the past: he does this by bringing it before the tribunal, scrupulously examining it, and finally condemning it.”25 this approach remembers the past only in order to condemn its evils. it provides several advantages to its practitioners: it supplies an antidote to antiquarian history, but more important, it frees people from the past and opens up an unbounded future. but it also has several disadvantages. because “every past is … worthy to be condemned, for that is the nature of human things, [this approach to history suggests that] it would be better if nothing existed.”26 but by rejecting too much of the past, it leaves critical historians without a horizon to orient their actions: it rejects the existing, historically-grounded self and replaces it with a new one that is so weakly grounded that it turns to mindless cosmopolitan consumption.27 the third approach, “monumental history,” is adopted by those who wish to “act and strive.”28 focusing on great individuals and their struggles, this approach makes use of the past to inspire: it finds greatness there and argues that we, too, can be great, if only we “flee from resignation” (the belief ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 52 pa de n that historically-significant action is not possible) and use “history as a specific against it.”29 this approach has several advantages: it can give us the courage to act in historically-significant ways; it can distance us from our current situation; and it can bring about a new world in which lesser individuals can lead happy lives. but it also has certain disadvantages. the past is always different from the present and the historical analogy on which this approach depends is false. more important, monumental history, on its own, cannot guide us and does not lend itself to planning. thus, it can lead to great mistakes and pointless destruction. nietzsche claims that each of these three approaches has a role to play in a well-ordered life and society. we need antiquarian history to help ground us in that which is valuable in our lives; critical history to distance ourselves from our mistakes; and monumental history to inspire us to significant action. but, we need to balance each approach against the others. if monumental history dominates, change can become irrational and may lead to disaster. if critical history dominates, we can lose both identity and community. if antiquarian history dominates, we can lose our ability to face the challenges of the present effectively. in order to understand nietzsche at this point, it is essential to understand what he means by “life” and why he values it; and to do this it is necessary to read the two meditations together as they develop parallel distinctions that are central to understanding that concept. in the second meditation, nietzsche contrasts cosmopolitans with people who understand and properly use history, while in the first, he contrasts “cultural philistines” with “geniuses,” who understand and properly use culture.30 in each pair, the second term denotes someone who lives life well, while the first denotes a person who does not. the descriptions overlap to a great degree. nietzsche claims that epigones inevitably become cosmopolitans who live for the present moment (understood to be the last historical moment) and seek pleasure through the satisfaction of immediate felt needs. as such, they are “given over to a restless ... hunting after new and ever newer things ... thought more worth having.”31 given nietzsche’s contrast between historical and a-historical beings, cosmopolitans are a-historical beings who live less-than-human lives in which the “forces of life are paralyzed and at last destroyed.”32 the cultural philistine is described in similar terms. these philistines “devised the concept of the epigone-age [in which they think they are living] with the object of obtaining peace and quiet.”33 they do this to reject the life of the restless, searching genius; and then repress even the memory of that rejection. desiring only “selfcontentment,” they declare that “all seeking [for a truly better life] is at 53 isparchitecture.com an end.”34 characterized by “a lack of style or a chaotic jumble of all styles,”35 both cosmopolitans and philistines reject self-transformation, and this rejection paralyzes and destroys their life force. this notion of self-transformation is central to nietzsche’s concept of life. he describes life as a “plastic power” and claims that the greatness of “a man, a people, or a culture” can be measured by the degree to which they possess it.36 this plastic power is inwardly-directed, as it names “the capacity to develop out of oneself in one’s own way, to transform and incorporate into oneself what is past and foreign, to heal wounds, [and] to replace what has been lost...”37 this notion of life is connected to nietzsche’s notion of culture, as he not only believes that a good life requires a vital connection with true culture, but his notion of life is modeled on the idea of culture: it is the epitome of a good life as it involves a continuous transformation which aims at a “unity of artistic style in all the expressions of the life of a people”; at “a stylistic unity within which the manifold phenomena which characterize it are harmonized.”38 while nietzsche points out that this stylistic unity cannot be attained through systematic and oppressive exclusion, he nevertheless thinks that it can be attained only through struggle, as we always find ourselves in states of partial disunity and disorganization. this “grand style originates [only] when the beautiful carries off the victory over the monstrous”; only when life creates a new order out of existing disorder.39 a good life is one that seeks to create an integrated beauty from a chaos of existing forms. pursuing this project requires many things. negatively, it requires the rejection of the “modern” all-consuming search for pleasure; it requires the rejection of the life of the cultural philistine or cosmopolitan.40 positively, what it requires can be determined by reference to the three ways in which history can be useful to life. as emphasized by this notion of selftransformation is central to nietzsche’s concept of life “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 54 pa de n antiquarians, we (as individuals, peoples, or cultures) need a stable and valued foundation in our identity.41 as emphasized by the critical historian, we need to be able to consider and devalue parts of our history and identity. finally, as emphasized by the monumental historian, we need the courage to reject a life of pleasure so as to pursue “life.” historic preservation in the united states oddly, given our self-conception as a future-oriented society with little time for the past, the united states, like nietzsche’s germany, seems “oversaturated” with history – and with the wrong kinds of history. this can be seen in the many political battles that are fought over the proper interpretation of our history, in which each side – rather than seeking to promote “life” in nietzsche’s sense – attempts to “use” history to support its political program, while charging the other side of “abusing” history when it does the same. in these battles, american preservationists have typically adopted two approaches toward history described by nietzsche. the dominant approach has been teleological; a secondary approach, antiquarian. serious preservation work began in the u.s. during the early nineteenth century with attempts to preserve mount vernon and independence hall. these projects were undertaken by members of upper-class eastern society, and the approach they took to historical preservation—in which they sought to preserve those sites and structures that played important roles in the development of the nation—still dominates the practice. according to william murtagh, “patriotism fueled the energies of nineteenth-century preservationists to the excluding of any other interest.” preservationists adopted this approach because they believed that “it is good policy in a republican government to inculcate sentiments of veneration for those departed heroes who have rendered service to their country in times of danger.” to achieve this goal, they sought to protect the houses of worthy political or military figures, along with important political buildings and battlefields, treating them as “shrines or icons.” the dominant theme of these efforts has been a “secular pietism” which sought to preserve buildings thought “worthy of attention for transcendent [i.e., nation building] rather than intrinsic reasons.”42 such an approach to preservation fits particularly well with the historically dominant self-conception of the united states that understands the country through phrases drawn from a religious context: our county is like a ‘city on a hill’ with a unique ‘manifest destiny.’ this approach is clearly teleological in nature, but as the united states achieved 55 isparchitecture.com hegemonic status, this approach increasingly took what nietzsche thought its most pernicious form, which portrays us as living in “an epigone-age” or, as a best-selling book of a few years back put it, as living at the end of history.43 according to nietzsche, both these approaches, but especially the latter, would have the effect of producing a cynical, self-satisfied cosmopolitanism that would make self-transcending actions (“life”) increasingly difficult for both individuals and cultures. beginning in the early twentieth century, a second form of preservationism took an antiquarian approach toward history and should be understood as part of a wider project to raise the status and power of the post-civil war south. central to this project is “the myth of the lost cause,” which attempts to put the south’s defeat in the civil war in the best possible light. it does this by arguing for a set of mythical ideas including the idea (1) that slavery was a benign institution; (2) that slavery was an institution in decline; (3) that slavery was not the cause of the south’s secession; (4) that, in the face of demographic and industrial differences, the south could not have won the civil war; (5) that lee was one of the greatest generals in history, who bravely fought for a “lost cause,” while grant was an incompetent brute; and (6) and that southerners and southern society were morally superior to their northern counterparts.44 partisans of this myth have adopted a preservationist program similar to that of the dominant culture. they have sought to preserve the mansions and plantations of important political figures, but they have placed a relatively greater emphasis on military sites, placing statues of confederate generals in public places, and displays featuring confederate battle flags. as nietzsche notes about antiquarian approaches to history in general, this project can help preserve the antiquarian’s identity, but it does so at some cost. david lowenthal has argued: oddly, given our selfconception as a future-oriented society with little time for the past, the united states, like nietzsche’s germany, seems ‘oversaturated’ with history “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 56 pa de n in recoiling from tragic loss or fending off a fearsome future, people the world over revert to ancestral legacies. as hope of progress fades, heritage [nietzsche’s “antiquarian history”] consoles us with tradition.... [however, this search for historical justification is] oppressive, defeatist, [and] decadent.... breeding xenophobic hate, it becomes a byword for bellicose discord. perverting the “true” past for greedy or chauvinist ends, heritage undermines historical truth with twisted myth. exalting rooted faith over critical reason, it stymies social action and sanctions passive acceptance of preordained fate.45 and indeed, southern antiquarian history has helped perpetuate racism, while stifling education and economic growth. a nietzschean, however, would reject the myth of the lost cause for a different reason, namely, that like all antiquarian histories, southern antiquarian history undermines “higher life” and “paralyzes the man of action.”46 as lowenthal put it: “miring us in the obsolete, the cult of heritage immures life within museums and monuments.”47 the myth of the lost cause, like most antiquarian histories, does not aid “life.” moreover, contrary to what nietzsche argues, this antiquarian history has not protected the south from consumerist cosmopolitanism as its partisans have adopted the same practical egoism that nietzsche thought the most reprehensible consequence of cosmopolitanism. the myth of the lost cause gives some southerners a relatively shallow identity and explains their supposedly-unjust relative poverty, powerlessness, and cultural subordination, only to allow them to more easily pursue their consumer interests. indeed, the only difference between this antiquarian history and the more dominant teleological history is the dating of history’s end: both present us as epigones, living at the twilight end of meaningful history; both produce “stupefaction”; and both make historically-significant, transformative action difficult. on the use and abuse of confederate monuments following the 2016 murder of nine black parishioners at the emanuel ame church in charleston sc, the debate over the preservation of confederate monuments intensified. several photos of the murderer with a confederate battle flag led to protests at public sites featuring this flag, particularly at the state house in columbia, and these protests raised questions—and inspired further protests (and counter-protests)— concerning the many confederate monuments located on public sites. perhaps the most significant of these protests, which occurred in charlottesville, va in 2017, was triggered by the city council’s decision to remove a statue of confederate general robert e. lee and to rename 57 isparchitecture.com the park where it stood. this decision attracted the attention of a number of white supremacist groups who, seemingly with president trump’s blessing, protested against the statue’s removal. one of these white supremacists killed a counter-protestor. the issue ostensibly at stake in most of these controversies is whether such statues should be kept in place, removed to other sites, or simply destroyed.48 from a nietzschean perspective these controversies reflect two approaches to history: southern antiquarians seek to preserve the statues in place, while their opponents, who have adopted a critical approach, call for the statues to be removed or destroyed. antiquarians offer several arguments in favor of their position. first, they argue that attempts to remove these statues amount to an attack on “southern” heritage and identity. note, for example, how the intentionally provocative phrase chanted by neo-nazi protestors, “jews will not replace us,” reflects nietzsche’s antiquarian who asserts that “here we lived, here we are living, and here we shall live, for we are tough and not to be ruined overnight.”49 in addition, southern antiquarians argue that removing these statues amounts to an attempt to “erase history” and is, therefore, an attack on truth. critical historians who favor removing these statues respond that these statues are monuments and, as such, do not simply record history (as the erasure charge implies); instead, they memorialize it. monuments commemorate; they celebrate, honor, or valorize events, often by depicting a person who played a significant role in them. these figures are valued for the role they played in these historically-important dramas; their personal character is of secondary importance. statues of lee, for example, are erected, not because he was an especially virtuous person, but rather because he was a noteworthy confederate general. moreover, by expressing value judgments, monuments serve ’miring us in the obsolete, the cult of heritage immures life within museums and monuments’ “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 58 pa de n the needs of contemporary politics. this service can be seen in the history of confederate monuments raised during the jim crow period so as to refashion contemporary southern society around a fixed, fundamentalist identity looking favorably on slavery and most at home when surrounded by racist institutions and practices. when this identity was again challenged during the civil rights era, these monuments were given legal protection to make their removal difficult, thereby adding a new layer to the institutional racism associated with this identity. given that the purpose of these statues is to valorize particular historical events in support of a specific southern identity associated with existing oppressive institutions, attempts to remove them are best understood, not as attempts to erase history, but as attempts to oppose these institutions.50 southern antiquarians try to respond to this argument with a reductio ad absurdum: if monuments valorize and if slavery is evil, then we should remove all statues that celebrate slave owners, including those of washington and jefferson and, if this is true, we would soon have to remove all memorials. the objection to this slippery-slope argument is obvious: these statues valorize washington and jefferson, not as defenders of slavery, but for other, highly significant, historically-transformative actions. putting this objection aside, however, note how the antiquarian’s argument reflects nietzsche’s claim that critical history is problematic because, since every past is worthy of condemnation, it soon rejects all history. but nietzsche, unlike the southern antiquarian, makes this claim in support of a broader point; namely, that, since the critical approach tends to sever all connections to history, it is dangerous to life: “men and ages which serve life by judging and destroying a past are always ... endangered men and ages.”51 the real problem with the two approaches to history that have shaped the controversy over confederate statues is that neither approach “serves life.” at best the antiquarian approach might preserve, or “mummify,” a (particularly unacceptable and vexed) form of life and identity, while critical history, because it destroys its own historical horizon, tends to produce a weakened personality that itself cannot tolerate criticism. but these criticisms raise two questions: first, philosophically, how should history be approached? and second, how can these philosophical criticisms help solve the essentially historical/architectural controversy over confederate statues? as to the first question, at the end of his critique of critical history, nietzsche writes: for since we are the outcome of earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations ... and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is not possible 59 isparchitecture.com wholly to free ourselves from this chain. if we condemn these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alter the fact that we originated in them. the best we can do is to confront our inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge, and through a new, stern discipline combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a new second nature, so that our first nature withers away.52 it would seem that, here, nietzsche is arguing that these two approaches need to be combined, if they are to support life; that it is necessary to both criticize one’s history and to ground oneself in it. we must understand not only that our identity grows out of our past but also that it cannot simply be identified with it. in addition, we need the courage to take on the task of developing a new identity out of our history—of bringing unity to the historical manifold—and this, nietzsche argues, is only possible with the aid of monumental history. in addition, we must separate the notion of growth and development from the teleological notion of inevitable fate: we must incorporate notions of inescapable struggle and contingency into our history. but how can such a complex approach to history be represented in an urban landscape? how can monuments help us accomplish this task? consider another example: the appomattox memorial in alexandria va is a bronze statue of an unarmed confederate soldier standing on a stone base with inscriptions on four sides. modeled on a painting by john elder of a soldier viewing the appomattox battlefield after lee’s surrender, the statue portrays a soldier standing with crossed arms, equipment hanging from one shoulder and one hand holding a hat. (figure 1) his head is bowed, his eyes look down. his expression is often described as “somber” or “contemplative.” the inscriptions state that the memorial was “erected to the memory of confederate dead of alexandria by their surviving critical history is problemmatic because, since every past is worthy of condemnation, it soon rejects all history “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 60 pa de n comrades” and, claiming that “they died in the consciousness of duty faithfully performed,” list 100 names. the memorial is set at the center of an intersection where, at the beginning of the war, local troops assembled in advance of an invading union army to march south to join lee, and the soldier looks south along the path they took. originally set on a broad median, the site of the memorial was greatly reduced to accommodate the construction of a new parkway, eventually named after jefferson davis. on the intersection’s southwest corner stands the lyceum, alexandria’s history museum.53 the memorial was erected by the robert e. lee camp of the united confederate veterans (ucv) in 1889, early in the jim crow period. realizing that the statue would be controversial, the ucv successfully petitioned the virginia house of delegates to protected it from being removed and, indeed, although it was thought a fine work of public art when in was erected, it has long been controversial. this controversy came to a head in late 2016, following the charleston murders, when the city council voted to remove the statue to another location and rename the adjacent parkway.54 as with other recent controversies, this controversy took the form of a debate between antiquarians and critical historians, and conventional alternatives would have us choose between the antiquarian preservation of the statue as is, or its critical removal. a third approach that nietzsche’s thinking opens us to—one that “serves life”—would be to incorporate the existing memorial into a larger work of art by taking advantage of the remaining, narrow landscaped median immediately south of the memorial. this median should be the site of two low panels displaying friezes visible to passing pedestrians and motorists. the western (southbound) side of these panels should contain scenes of slaves being marched south from the auction houses of alexandria, home to one of the largest slave-trading operations in the country. the eastern side of the panels should contain scenes showing self-emancipated slaves traveling north on the underground railroad, an important route of which ran through alexandria. to the south of these panels, in the middle of the next intersection, a new statue should be erected showing members of the 29th and 31st brigades of “u.s. colored troops,” who helped defeat lee’s army at appomattox. an account of alexandria’s role in both the slave trade and the civil war, and an account of history of the statue and these recent changes, should be available at the adjacent lyceum, and at the alexandria black history museum, a few blocks north. this new work of urban art avoids the pitfalls of dichotomous thinking that contributed to the debacle in charlottesville by weaving 61 isparchitecture.com together nietzsche’s three approaches to history so as to make a complete monument that serves life. critical history would be served by the low panels showing slaves being marched south. these panels would make the evils of slavery visible, and their presence near the soldier would indicate the cause of the war. as could be made clear at the nearby museums, their height and orientation, relative to the soldier, and delayed construction would gesture at their ‘invisibility’ perpetuated in repressive bad faith by the myth of the lost cause. antiquarian history would be served by retaining the contemplative look of the soldier. pondering his loss in this cause, he might now be understood as realizing that the ‘duty’ which he “faithfully performed” was embedded in a controversial identity, shaped and imposed by economic interests that may have differed from his own. he now faces the future with a new task: mummification or the development of a new, more vital identity based on a more complete understanding of history. monumental history would be served by the statue of the black soldiers at the southern end of the ensemble, by the slaves emancipating themselves as they travel north on the railroad, and, possibly, by the confederate soldier figure 1: appomattox memorial, alexandria, va ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 62 pa de n now given an opportunity for a new identity. this new memorial would also reject the teleological history of most memorials by showing that the conflict at the heart of the memorial is not yet fully resolved: the myth is still with us; the soldier has not yet begun his new life. the task of forging a new american identity rooted in the crimes and ideals, the struggles and the values of the past is not yet complete, nor is its outcome clear. the purpose of the new monument is to lead people to contemplate these ideas. of course, this statue possesses several unique advantages (its emotional qualities and location) that make it easy to re-purpose. other statues would be more difficult to redesign and some are best taken down. in some cases, there may simply be no room to add new materials. in others, the statues might simply be too caught up in the myth of the lost cause, too antiquarian, or too racist to be successfully transformed. public artists can be very creative people and may be able to salvage many existing statues, but in judging their proposals the important question to ask is: “does this proposal transform this monument in such a way that it serves life?” if not, it should be removed or destroyed.55 nietzsche’s theories of history and culture can help us understand that cities need to incorporate history into the urban fabric and that both historical preservation and memorialization have central roles in the urban design. memorials can fulfill this role, but only if they aim at engendering the life goal of vital, unified, and beautiful identities. as the united states continues to ponder the role of confederate monuments in its urban spaces, nietzsche’s life-serving approach to history provides a useful alternative to the debilitating stand-off between subservience to history and cosmopolitan forgetfulness. endnotes 1. william j. murtagh, keeping time: the history and theory of preservation in america (hoboken, nj: john wiley and sons, 2006), p. 5; see also charles b. hosmer, presence of the past (new york: putnam, 1965). 2. friedrich nietzsche, “david strauss: the confessor and the writer,” in friedrich nietzsche, untimely meditations, edited by daniel breazeale. translated by r. j. hollingdale. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1997): 1-55. hereinafter, “strauss.” [3] friedrich nietzsche, “on the uses and disadvantages of history for life,” in nietzsche, untimely meditations: 57-124, p. 59. hereinafter, “history.” 4. nietzsche, “history,” 59. 63 isparchitecture.com 5. nietzsche, “history,” 63. 6. nietzsche, “history,” 67, 7. nietzsche, “history,” 62. 8. nietzsche, “history,” 83; and nietzsche, “strauss,” 30-35. 9. nietzsche, “history,” 59, 68, and 117. 10. daniel breazeale, “introduction.” in nietzsche, untimely meditations: vii-xxxiii, p. xv. 11. nietzsche, history, 83. 12. nietzsche, “history,” 107. 13. nietzsche, “history,” 83, 14. nietzsche, “history,” 107. 15. nietzsche, “history,” 95. 16. nietzsche, “history,” 83. 17. nietzsche, “strauss,” 10-11. 18. nietzsche, “history,” 75. 19. nietzsche, “history,” 67. 20. nietzsche, “history,” 72-3. 21. nietzsche, “history,” 73. 22. nietzsche, “history” 74. 23. nietzsche, “history,” 75. 24. nietzsche, “history,” 67. 25. nietzsche, “history,” 75-6. 26. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 27. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 28. nietzsche, “history,” 67. 29. nietzsche, “history,” 68. 30. nietzsche, “strauss,” 11. 31. nietzsche, “history,” 73-74. 32. nietzsche, “history,” 83. 33. nietzsche, “strauss,” 10. 34. nietzsche, “strauss,” 10-11. 35. nietzsche, “strauss,” 6, 36. nietzsche, “history,” 62. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 64 pa de n 37. nietzsche, “history,” 62. 38. nietzsche, “strauss,” 7-8. 39. friedrich nietzsche, “the wanderer and his shadow,” in friedrich nietzsche, human, all too human. translated by r. j. hollingdale. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1996): 301-395, p. 334. 40. william arrowsmith, “introduction,” in friedrich nietzsche, unmodern observations. edited by william arrowsmith. (new haven: yale university press, 1990), p. xi, quoting “history,” 60. 41. nietzsche, “history,” 63. 42. murtagh, keeping time, pp. xxvii, xxviii, and 11-24; also see hosmer, presence of the past, pp. 298-303. 43. francis fukuyama, the end of history and the last man, (new york: free press, 1992). 44. edward h. bonekemper, the myth of the lost cause: why the south fought the civil war and why the north won (washington, dc: regnery history, 2015); and caroline janney, remembering the civil war: reunion and the limits of reconciliation, (chapel hill, university of north carolina press, 2013), pp. 251-254. 45.david lowenthal, “the heritage crusade and its contradictions.” in max page and randall mason, giving preservation a history, (new york: routledge, 2004): 19-43, p. 19. 46. nietzsche, “history,” 75. 47. lowenthal, “the heritage crusade,” p. 19. 48. monica hesse, “a quandary set in stone,” washington post, 5/9/2016, c1; christopher phelps, “removing racist symbols isn’t a denial of history,” the chronicle of higher education, jan 29, 2016, pp. 48-51; sarah fenton, “the confederacy, its symbols, and the politics of public culture,” aha today, 1/9/2016. 49. nietzsche, “history,” 73. 50. in fact, the erasure charge is more accurately applied to the attempts to preserve these statues, as these monuments materialize an ideology that attempts to erase the history of slavery. this is consistent with another of nietzsche’s criticisms of antiquarian history; namely, that it “possesses an extremely restricted field of vision” (nietzsche, “history,” 74). 51. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 52. nietzsche, “history,” 76. 53. office of historic alexandria, “the confederate statue,” https://www. 65 isparchitecture.com alexandriava.gov/ uploadedfiles/historic/info/brochures/ confederatestatuebrochure.pdf/, accessed 5/12/2015. 54. sullivan, patricia, “alexandria will seek to move confederate statue and rename jefferson davis highway,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ virginia-politics/alexandria-will-seek-to-move-confederatestatue-and-rename-jefferson-davis-highway/2016/09/17/ fec35310-7b53-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html?utm_ term=.1b5f0e67d0e7rnon/ accessed 9/26/2017. 55. the controversy surrounding the confederacy memorial carving at stone mountain, georgia that gained prominence during the 2018 governor’s race between a white male and a black female candidate may be one such example admitting of no life-serving solution. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 82 m or a n e t. a l. isparchitecture.com designing for imprisonment: architectural ethics and prison design dominique moran, yvonne jewkes, and colin lorne introduction architectural ethics has only begun to consider in earnest what it means, in a moral sense, to be an architect.1 the academy, however, has yet to adequately to explore the ethical problems raised,2 to evaluate the types of moral issues that arise, and to develop moral principles or moral reasons that should guide decisions when encountering these moral issues inherent in certain project types. this is the case despite the practice of architecture entailing “behaviours, our choices of which may be illuminated by ethical analysis.”3 although distinguishing practice from product allows ethical critique of the practice involved in designing buildings, and recognises the significance of the architect’s moral agency, there remains very little empirically-based understanding of how the figure 1: hm low moss prison ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 68 m or a n e t. a l. architect, once identified as a moral agent, operates as such, and still less about the circumstances in which ‘professional’ conduct may be at odds with ‘ethical’ behaviour. architects encounter moral dilemmas in everyday practice, in designing buildings to address clients’ briefs. although they may undertake moral consideration when accepting or declining commissions, analyzing this process is in its infancy in architectural and ethical scholarship, consequently little is known about how architects balance moral concerns against the need for profitable work. although mcneill has characterised the architects’ refrain ‘if we didn’t design it, someone else would’ as a “worrying abdication of ethical responsibility,”4 it could alternatively be viewed as exhibiting direct moral concern, that if they themselves do not undertake a particular commission, another architect (or possibly nonarchitect) would, and possibly with much worse consequences, under what wisor has termed the “moral problem of worse actors.”5 prison design, as a building type, thrusts the ethical role of the architect sharply into focus. design is a key element in prison modernisation programmes, and a staple for many firms. but architects’ involvement is not without controversy. the problematic nature of prisons themselves, (their questionable effectiveness in deterring criminal behaviour or enabling rehabilitation, and the ethically dubious practices which may take place within them), has meant that the legitimacy of incarceration is continually debated. as physical objects of the carceral estate, prison design offers a compelling ‘test case’ for how the role of the architect can be legitimately conceived as ethical. it seems little progress has been made since banham registered his concern that the architecture profession acts as a “black box,”6 drawing and making objects rather than designing in relation to social and ethical issues. although the profession readily assumes responsibility for aesthetic design of buildings as commodity-objects, as well as legal obligations surrounding delivery, architects as professionals are more uncertain about their moral responsibilities towards those who inhabit or are affected by their buildings.7 to counter the ‘black box’ mentality jeremy till has called for architects to deploy architectural intelligence as responsible agents concerned less with the production of abstract objects, and more with their role in enabling wider social processes, thereby engaging their ongoing complicity with the social consequences of their actions.8 the ethics of architecture and the built environment considering what sorts of conceptions about architectural ethics might 69 isparchitecture.com prove effective in allowing us to gain some perspective on the ethics of prison design requires us to review previous thought on this topic. thomas fisher argued that in his continental ethics, karsten harries treated architecture “primarily as a product, not a practice,” resulting in an ethical perspective “that attaches moral values and their realisation to buildings, not to the people who build them”9(our emphasis). although the relationship between ethics and aesthetics has long preoccupied scholars of architectural ethics, as evidenced by wasserman et. al.’s assertion that “a building’s aesthetic embodiment is a part of its virtue, its ethical value,”10 in creating buildings which are aesthetically pleasing, there may be a tendency to equate their beauty with notions of their healthiness, sociability, democracy, sustainability and social justice, just as there is sometimes an assumption that buildings which are less aesthetically pleasing are somehow ‘worse’ on these counts. however, fisher described the attachment of moral value to buildings as a form of “mysticism;”11 a building might be “inhumane in that it is bleak and uninhabitable. it does not follow, nor is it intelligible to suggest, that the building itself has inhumane values.”12 it is, he argued, on the basis of this misassignment of values that harries offered an ‘impossible vision’ of artefacts reflecting values without the moral input of the individual (moral) agents who created them. fundamentally, harries’ approach failed to recognise the significance of the architect’s moral agency in the practice of architecture. fox concurred that the built environment is not an appropriate focus of moral concern; the “non-rational, non-sentient, non-living, non-self-organising, non-self-renewing, built environment is not... of moral consequence in its own right.”13 he continued: “questions regarding built environments should only enter into moral discussion in so far as these environments are considered to matter to, impact upon, or in some way affect, those kinds of beings or entities fisher described the attachment of moral value to buildings as a form of ‘mysticism’ “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 70 m or a n e t. a l. in respect of which we think we have direct moral obligations.”14 this urge to focus on architectural practice and the moral agency of the architect points up an important distinction between ‘architecture’ and the practice thereof, with both fisher and fox having argued that philosophical ethicists have not yet adequately explored the ethical problems posed by architectural practice. instead, most of the attention has been confined to such legal considerations as intellectual property and to responsibilities to clients; core elements of business ethics for the design of any building, not just a prison, and equally applicable to architects, building contractors, and any other professionals involved in design and construction. fisher, however, claimed that architecture merits its own branch of applied ethics, arguing that it has special issues as a consequence of the idiosyncrasies which distinguish it from the arts, sciences and social practices. previous attempts to address architectural ethics have, he argued, failed to produce worthwhile outcomes. the way to identify architectural ethics, he contended, is to “place architectural practice, and thus the architect as moral agent” and not just legal or professional operator, at the centre of focus15 (our emphasis). as carroll put it, “there can be no question that architects as designers of built environments can use their skills for good or ill, morally speaking.”16 the identification of architectural practice, rather than product, as the location of ethical agency is a useful philosophical advancement, but the practical operation of this agency is opaque. professional architectural codes of conduct or of ethics, such as those introduced by the royal institute of british architects (riba), or the american institute of architects (aia), are relatively ineffectual in relation to the architects’ moral obligations.17 these codes of conduct represent general guiding principles and rules of conduct which express the considered opinion of the profession primarily on business ethics, in part to protect the profession against liability problems. in the main, they focus on business, fiduciary, insurance or liability functions. as codes of conduct, these stipulations are rigid and do not facilitate individual, flexible ethical choice. motivation for obedience is driven by compulsion, membership requirements and punishment for violation. these codes of conduct tend to focus on protecting the client (the person who procures the services of the architect) and as a result they often appear deficient as vehicles for advancing the greater good. clients’ priorities, however, may be short-term, exploitative, commercial, and detrimental to user wellbeing or to environmental concerns. in this case, serving the client through fulfilling this kind of code of conduct may be highly antithetical to achieving these worthwhile goals. while codes 71 isparchitecture.com contain platitudes towards the environment and the public, they contain little incentive beyond telling architects to act within the law. thus, till’s assertion that acting professionally is different from acting ethically, and that the two operate according to different parameters, makes sense here. professional conduct is determined by adherence to various codes, whereas ethical conduct addresses the wider responsibilities of the architect, to those “in respect of which we think we have direct moral obligations”18 including those beyond the immediate client. the omission of these wider responsibilities towards others who stand to benefit or suffer from architects’ buildings gains particular poignancy when applied to consideration of those who have little say in the matter of whether or not they want to inhabit them. thus, ethically motivated architects must, at minimum, concern themselves with a social ethic extending beyond the short term fiscal exchange of architectural commissions. as till pointed out, “a client may argue that they are not paying for an architect to address these broader ethics, and an architect may say that the whole idea of wider responsibilities smacks of idealism”19 the point is though, that issues of social ethics are inherent in the design of any building, and just to ignore them does not mean that they will go away. better then to face up to them, and in this way deal with the tension between the values and priorities attached to the professional codes and those implicit in social ethics. 20 by ‘social ethics’, till meant the ethics concerned with social context and social implications, and which pertain to a collective vision of a ‘good’ society in contrast to ethics which focus on the on the more contractual concerns regarding what we owe to one another. although till did not refer here to any particular circumstance of architectural commissioning in which professional conduct with philosophic study of... the design of prisons, is embryonic “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 72 m or a n e t. a l. clients was at odds with ethical behaviour in the social sense, the role of architects in designing prison buildings can be beneficially examined in exactly these terms. in the remainder of the paper we therefore consider prison design as a test case for the social ethics of architectural practice. architects’ social ethics of prison design if the ethics of architecture is a nascent philosophical field, then the philosophical study of the practice of architecture within the correctional field, namely the design of prisons, is embryonic. philosophical discussion of architectural ethics rarely focuses on any particular type of building, in line with taylor’s assertion that buildings themselves cannot be the targets of moral criticism: “moral criticism presupposes moral agency, and so is only appropriately applied to people and their actions, not to inanimate objects.”21 although judging it appropriate to critique of the practices of the people involved in designing buildings, he argued that buildings as inanimate objects are morally innocent. having said this, taylor hints, in his demonstration of this point, at the ethically questionable nature of prisons; “a building constructed for an evil purpose, such as a dungeon, might later be used for a good purpose, such as an exhibition space or a chapel, and vice versa.”22 (our emphasis) if for taylor a dungeon serves an ‘evil purpose’, then he is in accord with retired architect and writer arthur allen, who surveyed the history of architectural scholarship as it pertains to imprisonment. allen found that “the provision of architectural service to institutions that aggravate rather than resolve the problems they are asked to manage is a complex issue arising in the operation of confining buildings.”23 in a survey originating with the idealism of nineteenth century penal institutions, he observed that there was no published architectural concern on the subject of the suffering caused by prisons until a discussion in 1973 in the magazine architectural forum, which urged that “architects consider withdrawal from design of prisons for non-violent inmates.”24 allen argued that the “proposition that architects can and should consider the record of success or failure of their clients’ intentions and operations is at the heart of this problem.”25 in narrowly observing their internal professional codes of conduct, in terms of integrity, honesty and diligent design in matters of structural safety and so on, some architects still, he argued, pretend innocence of the conflict between professional and social ethics in their work. in 1977, allen began publishing about the moral agency of architects with respect to incarceration. he questioned the architect’s “traditional 73 isparchitecture.com obedience”26 in the case of prison building, noting that although they built them, architects seldom wrote about or discussed prisons. encouraging architects to be more attuned to the prison debate of the time, he argued that …if [the prison debate] concludes that imprisonment is unavoidable, then i can agree that decent architecture will have its place. if prisons, however, are found to be ineffective instruments of misery, then architects must question their part in the prison business.27 addressing the moral agency of architects, he later wrote that “the architectural profession is unusually silent, even evasive, concerning the moral character of its clients;”28 and considering the language architects use to discuss clientele, and architecture’s apparent isolation from social debate, he argued that: if architects design prison cells, which in their dreadful simplicity are designed for solitary confinement, then surely architects and architecture are implicated in the mental and physical destruction which occurs in these cells. if there is any doubt about the cruelty of solitary confinement, or of imprisonment, i suggest that architects read social, rather than architectural, criticism.29 he effectively argued that by using a technical jargon to describe buildings, architecture creates a professional mystique which avoids making reference to the moral or political character of the patrons of architecture, contributing to what he described as “a wide language gap between architects and writers on the issue of imprisonment.”30 terms such as ‘good design’, ‘pure, crisp and clean design’, and ‘visual logic’, enabled the architect to refrain from “comment on the moral and ethical character of captives and captors,” and to “flatter the institution with limited moral and ethical comment on the nature of its prison designs.”31 he also argued that euphemistic language is used by architects in public relations terms, in deflecting that the ethics of the practice of architecture within the correctional field has thus far been largely overlooked by the academy strikes us as remarkable. “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 74 m or a n e t. a l. attention from troubling issues; for example in architectural designs where groups of cells are called ‘villages’ and corridors between ‘villages’ are called ‘walks’ or ‘streets’ – labels, through the use of which, he posited “we are only fooling ourselves.”32 he concluded that: if architecture continues to support questionable institutions and movements, and to defend them with euphemistic and specially constructed ethical languages, then the profession’s part in deception and its self-centred indifference to moral and ethical issues cannot be defended on moral and ethical grounds.33 that the ethics of the practice of architecture within the correctional field has thus far been largely overlooked by the academy strikes us as remarkable. in 2004, adpsr (architects/designers/planners for social responsibility) launched a prison design boycott for alternatives to incarceration in the united states, asking architects and allied professionals to refuse prison work. it asked architects to decline death chamber and supermax prison commissions on the grounds of human rights violations. supermax prisons are considered to inflict torture through long-term solitary isolation and the carrying-out of death sentences, which are considered to be prima-facie torture. this pledge campaign was not specifically aimed at the american institute of architects [aia], but it asked the aia to amend its code of ethics and professional conduct to prohibit the design of these facilities. later, in 2013, adpsr added a separate petition campaign asking aia to amend their code of ethics to specifically prohibit the design of spaces intended for killing, torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” is a key human rights standard widely held to include solitary confinement of the kinds currently used within the united states, including but not limited to supermax prisons. the campaigns triggered intense media debate but in december 2014, the aia rejected the proposals. although dialogue between aia and adpsr continues, the aia position is essentially that ethical decisions rest firmly with architects’ practices, and with individual architects . in narrowly observing their internal professional codes of conduct, architects can, allen argued, pretend innocence of the conflict between professional and social ethics in their work. his suggestion of pretended ‘innocence’ perhaps invites an unwarranted scapegoating of architects, hence we argue for a better understanding of the contextual nature of the constraints architects face in acting in accordance with the moral values they may hold. although we may speculate about these constraints, very little is understood of the socially embedded nature of ethical stances in relation to architectural practice, and the contextual nature of these 75 isparchitecture.com stances, for example, in relation to prevailing punitive philosophies. punitive sentiment (i.e. the attitudes towards imprisonment widely held in a given context), and the nature of the processes through which prisons are built (e.g. privatisation, private financing, design and build contracts, competitive tendering) may predetermine the role of the architect and the nature of his or her involvement in prison design. in the highly incarcerative settings of the us and uk, architects’ reluctance to address these issues may be due to the lucrative nature of projects generated when imprisonment is used politically to placate public anxiety. in essence, challenging public authorities and fellow professionals on substantial moral issues may damage business. the commissioning of prison buildings varies in different contexts, shaping the capacity for architects to introduce design creativity into the process, and defining the nature of their involvement. in order to design with a concern for social ethics in mind, architects will need early involvement in a building project to creatively engage with and query the client’s brief, rather than adopting a narrower technical role in relation to predetermined plans. such an approach allows architects to include the client as part of the commission, rather than focus only on the building itself, thus enabling consideration of architecture’s social ethics. the potential for such an approach, given the various financing and contracting processes in place in different contexts, may have profound implications for architects’ deployment of moral agency in relation to the social context of imprisonment. in the uk, for example, the private finance initiative process means that consortia of contractors and architects tender for prison projects whose basic design has already been determined prior to the tender being offered by the ministry of justice, thus minimising architects’ creative in the highly incarcerative settings of the us and uk, architects’ reluctance to address these issues may be due to the lucrative nature of projects generated “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 76 m or a n e t. a l. input, and perhaps also assuaging their sense of responsibility for the built outcome itself. this process only allows architects to participate as providers of an efficient process with predetermined outcomes. in the lower incarceration setting of denmark, by contrast, tenders for prison commissions ask bidders to deliver their own designs for the prison, ab initio, with the result that architects have a much freer hand, and with it, a concomitant sense of responsibility. at the state level in the us, the design ab initio system prevails, but designs which appear too ‘lenient’ will not be successful: “at the end of the day, my clients are my clients. we’ve been told we can’t make it look too good, because the public won’t accept it.”34 it seems only reasonable to assume, then, that architects operating in different commissioning environments will see their moral responsibilities—as well as their options—differently. in other words, architects’ ability to introduce more ‘humane’ elements into prison design in denmark may act to assuage the ethical concerns felt by their counterparts in the u. k. if architects’ ethical concerns are assuaged in this way, we believe that it is not necessarily through a form of the ‘mysticism’ of attaching moral value to a building so roundly critiqued by fisher but through the anticipation of genuine improvements in people’s lives that accrue because of architects’ actions. thus, the case of prison design suggests that concern over the ethics of not only architects’ actions, but also the products of those actions due to their long-term consequences over peoples’ lives is not at all misplaced and should be part of an ethicallymotivated architect’s deliberations. even the usually ethically-neutral subject of aesthetics becomes morally relevant in the case of prisons. it may be the case that restrictions imposed by clients on the design of prisons (e.g. predetermined plans offered for tender, issues of ‘public acceptability’ of designs, tight build budgets, preferred/cheaper layouts and finishes) may reduce the appeal of prison design to architects seeking to deliver humane, aesthetically pleasing buildings. conversely, it is possible that architects focus on prison aesthetics to the detriment of concern for the lived experience of prisoners. through the aesthetics of their prisons, architects communicate the purpose of imprisonment and the relationship between prisons and the community.35 aesthetically bland, functional, and rather nondescript exteriors of recently built uk prisons, for example, may be read as indicators of a loss of public empathy for prisoners. conclusion: prison design as architectural ethics in practice architecture still lacks its own branch of applied ethics, in which 77 isparchitecture.com architectural practice, and the architect as moral agent, are focal. whilst these issues are usually considered in rather abstract terms, we argue that prison design brings them more clearly into focus, enables advancement of discussion of the ethics of architecture, and enhanced understanding of the ethics of architectural practice. it does so in the context of the transition from ideal to nonideal theory in ethics and political philosophy, describing principles for the design of institutions and the conduct of persons in a moral and political order that is realistic, rather than utopian, and that asks how long-term ideal goals might be achieved, or worked toward, in ways that are morally permissible and politically possible as well as likely to be effective.36 with the exception of mcneill, there are few studies which consider how the architect, once identified as a moral agent, thinks and operates as such, and accordingly we know little about the moral issues arising from architecture’s idiosyncrasies. professional codes of conduct are generally expected to address these issues but, operating largely to protect the consumer procuring architects’ services, and the profession against liability, they address business ethics rather than issues that arise out of architects’ design function. learning the declarative form of the professional codes of conduct cannot address the complex ethical demands of architectural practice.37 ethical conduct addresses social context, which exists beyond the short term fiscal exchange of architectural commissions, and involves longer term vision. negotiating these commissions is not straightforward. the need to make a profit may compromise architects’ ability to act on ethical concerns, compelling them to explore nonideal situations, the ways in which these dilemmas are addressed and worked through in relation to actual commissions accepted or declined, as well as any derivative duties discharged. even the usually ethicallyneutral subject of aesthetics becomes morally relevant in the case of prisons. “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 78 m or a n e t. a l. it is clear that some architects grapple with these questions and are fully aware of the ethical dilemmas they face. indeed it seems that prominent architects debate this point – for example, at a recent discussion about conscience in architectural practice, audience members commented that “beautiful things can do ugly things”38 and “architects are whores of the arts, we have a conscience as long as clients want it.”39 in his summing-up the chair stressed the importance of social value in design, and another speaker stated: “we serve. it is our job to decide who we serve, and how.”40 clearly, the appetite exists for giving due consideration to the effects of our actions. we opened with a question about architects’ negotiation of their moral roles. tracing the nascent development of the philosophical field of architectural ethics, it is clear that philosophical discussion locates social responsibility with the individual architect as a moral agent--a stance confirmed both by the comments of professional architects, and by the reluctance of the aia to assume any responsibility for the ethical conduct of its members beyond the standard professionalism of business ethics. we argued here that taking prison design as a ‘test case’ enables a more grounded understanding of architects’ navigation of ethical dilemmas beyond professional business practice, dilemmas which require them to address their wider responsibilities and to decide to whom, beyond the immediate client, they consider themselves to have obligations. in our view these obligations extend to both the prisoners who inhabit their buildings and suffer incarceration individually, and to a society which bears the collective burden of the economic and social costs of imprisonment. as professional architects’ discussions of conscience make clear, architects’ ethical roles beyond their professional responsibilities remain underexplored, as evidenced by the lack of academic debate over the ethical role of the architect in prison design, and despite longstanding discussion of the ethics of imprisonment itself. endnotes 1. see, for example, harries, karsten, the ethical function of architecture. cambridge, mit press. 1998. wasserman, barry, p. j. sullivan, & gregory palermo, ethics and the practice of architecture, john wiley & sons, 2000. fox, warwick, (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000. spector, tom, the ethical architect: the dilemma of contemporary practice. princeton architectural press, 2001. matteson, j. t. & donovan, m. z., “ethics and the architect,” architectural record, (10), 2002, 96. taylor, w. m., & levine, m. p., prospects for an ethics of architecture, routledge, 2012. 79 isparchitecture.com sadri, h., “professional ethics in architecture and responsibilities of architects towards humanity” turkish journal of business ethics, 5 (9), 2012, 86-96. schrijver, laura, “architecture as an object of research: incorporating ethical questions in design thinking” in basta, c. & moroni, s. (eds.) ethics, design and planning of the built environment, springer, 2013, 79-9. stein, s. m. & harper, t. l., designing for meaning: the designer’s ethical responsibility in basta, c, & moroni, s (eds.) ethics, design and planning of the built environment springer, 2013, 143-166. 2. see, for example, mcneill, d., “globalization and the ethics of architectural design,” city, 10(01), 2006, 49-58. till, jeremy, architecture depends. mit press, 2009. lagueux, maurice, “ethics versus aesthetics in architecture,” the philosophical forum vol. 35, no. 2, 2004, 117-133. fisher, s., “how to think about the ethics of architecture” in fox, w. (ed.). ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182. koller, stefan, “architects on value: reducing ethics to aesthetics?” in ethics, design and planning of the built environment 57-75, springer, 2013. basta, c. & moroni, s., (eds.) ethics, design and planning of the built environment (vol. 12) springer, 2013. spector, tom, c. fahey & s. koller “why architecture philosophy?” architecture philosophy 1 (1), 2014, 5-8. 3. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.). ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182. 4. mcneill, d “globalization and the ethics of architectural design,” city, 10(01), 2006 49-58, 57. 5. wisor, s., “the moral problem of worse actors,” ethics & global politics, 7 (2), 2014, 47–64. 6. banham, reyner, “a black box: the secret profession of architecture,” in m banham, p barker, l sutherland & c price (eds), a critic writes: essays by reyner banham. university of california press, 1996, 351. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 80 m or a n e t. a l. 7. awan, n., schneider, t., & till, j., spatial agency: other ways of doing architecture. routledge, 2013. 8. till, jeremy, architecture depends, mit press, 2009. 9. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182.175. 10. wasserman, barry, p. j. sullivan, & gregory palermo, ethics and the practice of architecture, john wiley & sons, 2000, 86. 11. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182, 175. 12. ibid. 13. fox, warwick, (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 207. 14. ibid. 15. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182, 177-8. 16. carroll, noel, “architecture and ethics: autonomy, architecture and art” in architecture philosophy 1(2), 139-156, 140. 17. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 170-182, 177-8. 18. fox, warwick, (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 207. 19.till, jeremy, architecture depends. mit press, 2009, 182. 20. ibid. 21.taylor, n., “ethical arguments about the aesthetics of architecture,” fox, w (ed.) ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000, 193-206, 194. 22. ibid. 23. allen, arthur, “architecture and confinement , an open letter to the profession of architecture,” 2014, https://www.academia.edu/11115882/open_letter_at_3_to_the_profession_of_ architecture, 3. 24. allen, arthur, “architecture and confinement , an open letter to the profession of architecture,” 2014, 81 isparchitecture.com https://www.academia.edu/11115882/open_letter_at_3_to_the_profession_of_ architecture, 4. 25. ibid. 26. allen, a., “prison design and the architect,” the canadian architect, july 1977 https://www.academia.edu/7214030/prison_design_and_the_ architect, 1977, 1. 27. allen, a., “prison design and the architect,” the canadian architect, july 1977 https://www.academia.edu/7214030/prison_design_and_the_ architect, 1977, 2. 28. allen, a., “the language of architecture,” the canadian architect, july 1981, 26, 1. h t t p s : / / w w w . a c a d e m i a . e d u / 7 2 1 4 0 4 6 / the_language_of_architecture 1981, 2. 29. ibid. 30. allen, 1981, 5. 31. ibid. 32. allen, 1981, 6. 33. allen, 1981, 7. 34. architect jeff goodale, quoted in the new york times 10.6.2009). 35. jewkes, y. & d. moran, “should prison architecture be brutal, bland or beautiful?” scottish justice matters, 2(1), 2014, 8-11. 36. simmons, a. j., “ideal and nonideal theory,” philosophy & public affairs, 38(1), 2010, 5-36. 37. for example, cobb, henry n. (1992) “ethics and architecture,” harvard architecture review, 8, 1992, 44-49. boyer, e. l. & mitgang, l. d., (1996) building community: a new future for architectural education and practice. the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching, 1996. fisher, saul, “how to think about the ethics of architecture,” in fox, w. (ed.), ethics and the built environment. routledge, 2000. spector, tom, the ethical architect: the dilemma of contemporary practice. princeton architectural press, 2001. saint, andrew, (2005) “practical wisdom for architects: the uses of ethics,” in ray, nicholas, (ed.), architecture and its ethical dilemmas, taylor & francis, 2005, 7-22. fox, w. a., “architecture ethics,” in j. k. b. olsen, s. a. pedersen & v. f. hendricks (eds.), a companion to the philosophy of technology, ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 82 m or a n e t. a l. wiley-blackwell, 387-391. till, jeremy, architecture depends. mit press, 2009. fisher, thomas, ethics for architects: 50 dilemmas of professional practice. princeton architectural press. 2010. chan, j. k. h., “teaching ethics in architecture: contexts, issues and strategies.” journal of the nus teaching academy, 3(3), 2013, 85-99. 38. spoken by richard woolf as reported in intelligence ribaj120 series/ collective conscience article “only way is ethics?” by eleanor young, riba journal published 1.11.2013, 68. available at https://darkroom.ribaj. com/ 39. spoken by peter tompkins, ibid. 40.spoken by maxwell hutchinson, ibid. isparchitecture.com should architects refrain from designing prisons for long-term solitary confinement? – an open letter to the architecture profession tom spector, aia, with craig borkenhagen, mark davis, carrie foster, jacob gann, tou lee her, aaron klossner, evan murta, ryan rankin, maria cristina rodriguez santos, connor tascott,sarah turner, and spencer williams in a profile in the november, 2012 issue of the magazine architect, activist-architect raphael sperry, a founder of the group architects planners & designers for social responsibility (apdsr) discussed his petition to amend the aia’s code of ethics and professional conduct to include a figure 1: pelican bay state prison prison ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 82 sp ec to r e t. a l. prohibition on “the design of (prison) spaces intended for long-term solitary isolation and execution.”1 this issue is both serious and timely. it deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. the purpose of this letter is to provide the the architecture profession a condensed analysis of the possible justification for taking the action mr. sperry advocates. after review and consideration, we are persuaded that mr. sperry’s proposal does merit action by the aia. far from the prison system’s causing architects to perpetuate injustice, the design of incarceration facilities is a building type showing real creativity and concern for prisoner rehabilitation. the article in architect mentions several firms engaged in such work but many others can be found to impress the observer with the variety and vitality of this specialty.2 thus, while certainly not without its structural deficiencies, charges that the american justice system is incorrigible and that it can only corrupt architects’ best intentions do not withstand scrutiny and should not form the basis for any aia calls to action. the proposal promoted by apdsr, however, is more targeted than this. specifically, mr. sperry is asking aia members to foreswear designing facilities for long-term solitary confinement and for the administration of the death penalty on the concept that these punishments amount to human torture, and that architects cannot make themselves part of any torture apparatus. approval of the sperry proposal, then, depends on two important assertions: that long-term solitary confinement is torture, and that architects, by virtue of their professional roles, have a special responsibility in this situation to oppose policy enacted by democratically elected state and federal governments. to maintain the focus and brevity of this document, the controversies surrounding the death penalty will not be addressed. we will only take up the case against solitary confinement. prison design for long-term solitary confinement—also called disciplinary segregation—in the united states can be traced back to the philadelphia prison of 1829. though much studied and even emulated in europe at the time, the practice fell into disrepute in the early twentieth century. it was only revived in the late twentieth century during the great rise in imprisonment and consequent boom in prison construction. in the u. s., more than 80,000 inmates live in some form of disciplinary isolation.3 approximately 25,000 of these are housed in what has come to be known as “supermax” prisons.4 though conditions differ from prison to prison, a widely accepted definition of solitary confinement is “the physical and social isolation of individuals who are confined to their cells for 22 to 24 hours a day.”5 typically, prisoners do not enter long-term 83 isparchitecture.com solitary confinement from initial sentencing. they are placed in solitary as a quick fix to end a variety of disruptions they cause within the prison system. even teenagers are regularly placed in solitary for extended periods.6 humans are fundamentally social beings. much of our sense of reality, of emotional stability and sense of self derives from fairly constant interactions with other people. thus, it comes as little surprise that, deprived of this crucial source of reality, people who are already displaying adjustment difficulties would quickly become even more unhinged from reality in disciplinary segregation. the permanent psychological impact of solitary confinement is well-documented.7 even those who enter disciplinary segregation with an apparently strong and stable sense of self will begin to experience a constellation of psychiatric problems in a short period of time. isolation panic and delirium are but two manifestations of “confinement psychosis,” a medical condition typified by “psychotic reaction characterised frequently by hallucinations and delusions, produced by prolonged physical isolation and inactivity in completely segregated areas”8 symptoms of psychological distress can begin in only a few days. a report to the united nations proposed 15 days “as the limit between solitary confinement and prolonged solitary confinement.”9 stuart grassian found in his interviews of 49 inmates of the pelican bay “supermax” prison in northern california that “seventeen were actively psychotic… in urgent need of hospital treatment, and twentythree others suffered serious psychopathological reactions to solitary,”10 surely, we feel compelled to conclude, a disciplinary system which results in most of its prisoners suffering severe psychological trauma is indistinguishable from torture. we are far from alone in this conclusion. the inter american court of human rights has similarly stated in several cases that prolonged ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 84 sp ec to r e t. a l. solitary confinement, in itself, may violate article 5 of the american convention on human rights: “prolonged isolation and deprivation of communication are in themselves cruel and inhuman treatment, harmful to the psychological and moral integrity of the person, and a violation of the right of any detainee to respect for his inherent dignity as a human being. such treatment, therefore, violates article 5 of the convention...” the un human rights committee has objected to “... the practice of solitary confinement which affected the physical and mental health of persons deprived of freedom and which amounted to a cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” perhaps the most comprehensive statement against solitary confinement was expressed by the istanbul statement on the use and effects of solitary confinement, adopted on december 9, 2007 at the international psychological trauma symposium, istanbul. it has been convincingly documented on numerous occasions that solitary confinement may cause serious psychological and sometimes physiological ill effects. research suggests that between one third and as many as 90 per cent of prisoners experience adverse symptoms in solitary confinement. a long list of symptoms ranging from insomnia and confusion to hallucinations and psychosis has been documented. negative health effects can occur after only a few days in solitary confinement, and the health risks rise with each additional day spent in such conditions. individuals may react to solitary confinement differently. still, a significant number of individuals will experience serious health problems regardless of the specific conditions, regardless of time and place, and regardless of pre-existing personal factors. the central harmful feature of solitary confinement is that it reduces meaningful social contact to a level of social and psychological stimulus that many will experience as insufficient to sustain health and well being.11 despite the united states’ ratification in 1994 of the convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment passed by the united nations in december 1984,12 the u. s. supreme court has steadfastly refused to engage the issue of solitary confinement as torture. in cases involving solitary confinement, it has in modern times repeatedly reasserted the state’s interests over those of prisoners and the right of the prison administration to institute whatever punishment deemed necessary, including solitary.13 thus, its use is still sanctioned by the high court making its torturous features a continuing issue here.14 the frequent use of disciplinary segregation, its predictable effects on inmates’ psychological states, and its resulting identification with torture poses a dilemma for professionals whose work engages the american 85 isparchitecture.com penal system. medical professionals, who are charged with safeguarding individuals’ well-being, are wholly unable and unwilling to certify who is and who is not able to withstand the psychological stresses of solitary confinement. though in some cases, such medical intervention might be a blessing, singling out individuals as too psychologically fragile for solitary implicitly certifies the rest as fit to withstand its rigors—and this is simply antithetical to physicians’ ethics.15 as a result, such decisions are left for prison administration solely. similarly with architects. the aia code of ethics’ ethical standard 1.4 specifies that “members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors.” since any mainstream interpretation of human rights includes the right not to be tortured, and since long-term solitary confinement can be counted on to inflict substantial psychological pain, a recognized form of torture, the logic behind asking architects to forego design of prison facilities for long term solitary confinement appears to be a straightforward extension of the aia’s existing code of ethics. we recommend that the aia adopt mr. sperry’s proposal. it is a stand that is long overdue. endnotes 1. karrie jacobs, “prison break,” architect. nov 2012. 134-141. 2. jim lewis, “behind bars…sort of,” new york times magazine, june 10, 2009. see also: http:// weburbanist.com/2011/09/23/not-just-jail-12modern-futuristic-fascinating-prisons/ (november, 2012). 3. angela brown, alissa cambier and suzanne agha, “prisons within prisons: the use of segregation in the united states,” federal sentencing reporter, v24n1, october 2011. 46. 4. daniel p. mears, “evaluating the effectiveness of supermax prisons,” urban institute justice policy ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 86 sp ec to r e t. a l. center, march 2006, 4. 5. united nations general assembly department of public information, “special rapporteaur on torture tells third committee use of prolonged solitary confinement on rise, calls for global ban on practice,” ga/ shc/4014, october 18, 2011. 6.“the new york city department of corrections, for example, reported that in fiscal year 2012, which ended in june, more than 14 percent of all adolescents were held in at least one period of solitary confinement while detained. the average length of time young people spent in solitary confinement at rikers island was 43 days.” –“us: teens in solitary confinement” human rights watch, october 10, 2012. www.hrw.org/ news/2012/10/10/us-teens-solitary-confinement 7. stuart grassian’s report on his career study is perhaps the most complete: “psychiatric effects of solitary confinement,” journal of law and policy, v22, n325 325-383. for other studies on the health effects of solitary confinement, see peter scharff smith “the effects of solitary confinement on prison inmates. a brief history and review of the literature” in crime and justice vol. 34, 2006 (pp. 441-528); craig haney “mental health issues in long-term solitary and ‘supermax’ confinement” in crime & delinquency 49(1), 2003 (pp. 124-56); stuart grassian “psychopathological effects of solitary confinement” in american journal of psychiatry 140, 1983 (pp. 14504). even attempts to justify solitary appear not to stand up to scrutiny. see november 29, 2010 “aclu and experts slam findings of doc report on solitary confinement.” www.aclu-co.org which criticizes a report written by maureen o’keefe et al. entitled “one year longitudinal study of the psychological effects of administrative segregation,” denver: state of colorado, october 31,2010. 8. scott, g. & gendreau, p. “psychiatric implications of sensory deprivation in a maximum security prison.” canadian psychiatric association journal, v14, 1969: 337-341. 338. 9. united nations general assembly department of public information, “special rapporteaur on torture tells third committee use of prolonged solitary confinement on rise, calls for global ban on practice,” ga/ shc/4014, october 18, 2011. 10. grassian, 349. 11. available at: http://www.univie.ac.at/bimtor/dateien/topic8_ istanbul_statement_effects_solconfinment.pdf 12. part 1 article 1 of the un convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment states: “for the 87 isparchitecture.com purposes of this convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. it does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.” http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_ doc.asp?symbol=a/res/39/46 13. hilary mcconnaughey, “punishment narratives: tracking supreme court jurisprudence concerning solitary confinement,” colgate academic review, v8, fall 2010. mcconnaughey concludes, “in sum, the supreme court expanded the concept of solitary confinement so that it is warranted for a variety of infractions and can be an expected part of a person’s sentence.” (99). 14. recent supreme court attitudes toward solitary confinement reverse, somewhat, the opinion expressed in the nineteenth century, when it observed that solitary confinement “was an additional punishment of the most important and painful character,” in re medley, 134 u.s. 160 (1890) http://laws.findlaw.com/us/134/160.html 15. jeffrey l. metzner md and jamie fellner esq. “solitary confinement and mental illness in u. s. prisons: a challenge for medical ethics,” journal of the american academy of psychiatry and the law online, v38n1 104-108. march 2010 isparchitecture.com architecture as participation in the world: merleauponty, wölfflin, and the bodily experience of the built environment brian irwin introduction many discussions of merleau-ponty’s treatment of the bodily experience of space turn to his opus phenomenology of perception, where he most explicitly takes up the theme. yet in merleau-ponty’s own view this treatment, while providing rich and valuable insights into spatial experience, remains unsatisfying: ultimately phenomenology of perception does not escape a dualism that, despite the work’s inestimable contributions to the philosophy of embodied experience, situates it within a flawed tradition running back through husserl, kant, and descartes. as merleau-ponty himself puts it, “the problems posed in ph.p. are insoluble because i start there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction.” 1 only in his later philosophy, particularly with his development of the ontology of the flesh, did he approach the fulfillment of his goal to leave this distinction and all its cartesian corollaries behind once and for all. if we want to derive from his work an approach to architecture that doesn’t recapitulate these cartesian assumptions, that instead seeks to understand architectural practice and experience as important ways in which we belong to the world, then it is to his later philosophy that we should turn. in this essay i want to emphasize in particular that our mode of engaging with the world, in merleau-ponty’s later writings, can be understood as one of participation, as i argue in the first section. ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 90 ir w in in considering how this principle might apply to architectural theory in practice, i turn to heinrich wölfflin, whose “prolegomena to a psychology of architecture” suggests a way of thinking about architecture in participatory terms. i conclude with a few remarks about how these ideas may be applied to the contemporary world of architectural theory and practice. drawing out the theme of participation in merleau-ponty’s later philosophy it is a bit ironic that vision figures so prominently, even in the very titles of two of merleau-ponty’s last works —the visible and the invisible and “eye and mind”—considering that in these writings he makes a radical departure from the ocular-centrism that has for so long characterized the western philosophical tradition. in merleau-ponty’s use, though, vision functions as a synecdoche for sensing in general. in the ontology of the flesh, the visual and the tactile are bound up in a general sensing which is embedded in the “flesh of the world,” the term merleau-ponty uses to signify that element in which sensing and sensible, subject and object, occur together, wherein “between the seeing and the seen, between touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a blending of some sort takes place – then the spark is lit between sensing and sensible, lighting the fire that will not stop burning.”2 indeed, the tactile can be taken as primary insofar as it is by means of the tactile that the embeddedness of vision in the world is explicated. the visible “envelops, palpates, espouses the visible things.”3 merleau-ponty asks: what is this prepossession of the visible, this art of interrogating it according to its own wishes, this inspired exegesis? we would perhaps find the answer in the tactile palpation where the questioner and the questioned are closer, and of which, after all, the palpation of the eye is a remarkable variant. … [b]etween my movements and what i touch, there must exist some relationship by principle, some kinship, according to which they are not only, like the pseudopods of the amoeba, vague and ephemeral deformations of the corporeal space, but the initiation to and opening upon a tactile world. this can happen only if my hand, while it is felt from within, is also accessible from without, itself tangible, for my other hand, for example, if it takes its place among the things it touches, is in a sense one of them, opens finally upon a tangible world of which it is also a part.4 compared to vision, the immediacy and density of contact with things through touch better reveals the common dimension of the sensing and the sensed. for the hand that touches is manifestly a thing in the world – a thing we can see, and indeed a thing we can touch (with the other hand). it meets resistance when it slaps against the table in the same way that 91 isparchitecture.com the ball meets resistance when it lands in the palm.5 this commonality of touching and touched – their mutual embeddedness in the place of contact – is what makes it possible for the tactile world to open up to sensing. this phenomenon, in fact, is enough for us to overthrow our naturalistic idea of the thing as object, as essentially separate from ourselves, since we find ourselves suddenly among the world of objects, and this, as he says elsewhere, “results in an ontological rehabilitation of the sensible.”6 this is the crux of merleau-ponty’s later ontology – or not crux but what he terms chiasm: the flesh of the world finds expression in both sensing and sensible as two sides of the same coin. while there is a gap (he uses the term écart) between these two sides, they are nonetheless characterized by “overlapping or encroachment, so that we may say that the things pass into us, as well as we into the things.”7 it is a relation of intertwining, such that there is not an ontological separation between the self and the world, but an emergence of self from the world (and of the world from self). as he says in a working note to the visible and the invisible with the header “the chiasm,” “a relation to being is needed that would form itself within being.”8 the experience of tactility is the best example of this relation because it most clearly depends on our moving about within the world, discovering its resistances and textures through grasping, stroking, or palpating actions, and providing resistances of our own through our acts of touch. given the nature of this bodily engagement with the world, it is very difficult to imagine that we simply represent the world through touch, or that a world of objects is translated by touch into a tactile representation. only once we see this do we see that vision and the visible operate according to the same principle; that, in fact, “the palpation of the eye is a remarkable variant” of the tactile encounter with things, and vision does in fact participate in the sensible world as surely as does touch. for at in the ontology of the flesh, the visual and the tactile are bound up in a general sensing which is embedded in the ‘flesh of the world’ “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 92 ir w in a fundamental level, as the example of tactility demonstrates, this is just what it is to sense: to make contact with the world, to be among things rather than before them. after all, i am visible as a seeing thing, even if by physiological circumstance i am not directly visible as a seeing thing to myself; as merleau-ponty notes, “[i]t is a marvel too little noticed that every movement of my eyes—even more, every displacement of my body —has its place in the same visible universe that i itemize and explore with them.”9 just as it is only by belonging to the world of touchable things that the hand is able to feel, so the eyes can only see by virtue of their being within a visible world. so we see that this sort of belonging is characteristic of sensing in general; that the sensible world is open to us as sensing beings because of our chiasmic relation to it from within—an active participation, a movement that always takes us beyond ourselves in the incessant palpation of our surroundings. and, as actions are carried out by our whole moving, sensing body, rather than merely any isolated sense, the unity of the body is entailed in any sensory experience. the senses interpolate each other, and operate according to each other’s modes. thus we see the tactile qualities and feel the visible qualities of things; or as merleau-ponty puts it “there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible, which is encrusted in it, as, conversely, the tangible itself is not a nothingness of visibility, is not without visual existence.”10 the chiasm, in which sensing and sensible are intertwined, also allows for the intertwining of the senses with each other. as he notes elsewhere, “cezanne said that one could see the velvetiness, the hardness, the softness, and even the odor of objects. my perception is therefore not a sum of visual, tactile and audible givens: i perceive in a total way with my whole being; i grasp a unique structure of the thing, a unique way of being, which speaks to all my senses at once.”11 to “see,” then, is to be intertwined through all our senses with the world around us. vision therefore does not involve rendering a picture or representation of the world, which would entail standing outside of it, at a distance. merleau-ponty takes descartes’ dioptrics as paradigmatic of “thought that wants no longer to abide in the visible and so decides to reconstruct it according to a model-in-thought.”12 on the cartesian view, there is a separation between “the thing itself ” outside us and that which occurs for the mind, “that other thing which is only reflected light rays and which happens to have an ordered correspondence with the real thing.”13 such a conception leads descartes to hold outline and form as most essential in engravings, for they “present the object by its outside, or 93 isparchitecture.com its envelope” in contrast to which coloring is merely incidental decoration.14 but we don’t perceive the world from the outside, we perceive it—and can only perceive it— by participating in it. in being “[i]mmersed in the visible by his body, itself visible, the see-er does not appropriate what he sees; he merely approaches it by looking, he opens onto the world.”15 in contrast to cartesian representationalism, “i do not see [space] according to its exterior envelope; i live it from the inside.”16 for the painting that moves us is not the one that most accurately renders the form of the object, but that which binds us with the things of the world, in which the world has been allowed to express itself through the expressive body of the painter. merleau-ponty quotes klee, who says of artistic expression, “a certain fire wills to live; it wakes. working its way along the hand’s conductor, it reaches the canvas and invades it; then, a leaping spark, it arcs the gap in the circle it was to trace: the return to the eye, and beyond.”17 being expresses itself in a gesture that ties together the individual and the world such that “it is impossible to say that here nature ends and the human being or expression begins.”18 it is in the resonances that leap from the world to inhabit the artist, course through her and emerge back into the world again, that artistic expression is achieved. though the thought is inspired by painting, the principle applies to experience generally: it is through chiasmic participation in the world through moving acts of perception and gestures of expression, that meaningful inhabitation is accomplished. heinrich wölfflin and architecture as participation in the world if we don’t presuppose, as so much of western thought has, a representationalism that places the subject and the world in ontological opposition to each other, and instead start from the we see the tactile qualities and feel the visible qualities of things “ ” ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 94 ir w in merleau-pontian perspective that, as fleshy beings, we are part of the world and belong to it, what will be the consequences for how we conceive the built environment? rachel mccann, in applying the lessons of merleauponty’s later philosophy, speaks of architecture as a “carnal echo,” which emphasizes that the power of an architectural work emerges from the intertwining of human beings with their surroundings.19 we can see in the analysis by the 19th century art historian heinrich wölfflin that, in fact, traditional western architecture has been motivated, consciously or not, by a logic of carnality. in “prolegomena to a psychology of architecture,” wölfflin argued that the forms that had defined traditional architecture since classical times reflected the ways in which we relate to the world as embodied beings, especially through what we would now call a proprioceptive sense. what had sometimes been reduced, in wölfflin’s estimation, to a question of being “pleasing to the eye,” was in fact a question of how we relate to structures as motile upright creatures. as he wrote, “physical forms possess a character only because we ourselves possess a body. if we were purely visual beings, we would always be denied an aesthetic judgment of the physical world. but as human beings with a body that teaches us the nature of gravity, contraction, strength, and so on, we gather the experience that enables us to identify with the conditions of other forms.”20 wölfflin is giving expression here to an idea that is consonant with the fact that we do not stand before the world as cognizing observers, but belong to it as participants. for our manner of understanding structures is not purely conceptual; rather, it proceeds from our own experience as fleshy beings with our own mass and weight. as he writes, “we read our own image into all phenomena. we expect everything to possess what we know to be the conditions of our own well-being.”21 we understand the physical world in terms of the categories we share with it; so, for instance, we “have carried loads and experienced pressure and counterpressure, we have collapsed to the ground when we no longer had the strength to resist the downward pull of our own bodies, and that is why we can appreciate the noble serenity of a column and understand the tendency of all matter to spread out formlessly on the ground.”22 this natural experience of weight, of the downward pull that roots us and that is both condition and constraint for our upright, vertical postures, is expressed in traditional architecture not just in the column, but also, for instance, in the use of rustication at the lower portions of buildings. by emphasizing the mass of materials, rustication produces a sense of bottom-heavy stability, a sense that is not just established visually, 95 isparchitecture.com but proprioceptively, involving our own sense of balance, and a sense of movement as well. similarly, arches over doors and windows discharge the weight of materials around the apertures so that they protect movement (entrance and egress of our bodies, or even just of our line of sight) without being oppressive, while elements conveying a freer sense of movement, expressiveness, and even whimsy are typical of the upper portions of buildings built in traditional western styles. this logic is expressed in louis sullivan’s prescriptions for office building design, for instance, which kent bloomer describes as “an expression of taut firmness at the bottom, an expression of efflorescence and ornament at the top,” allowing the building as a whole to express an “upward awakening.”23 for wölfflin, “[o]ur own bodily organization is the form through which we apprehend everything physical.”24 this apprehension, he claims, is a sort of empathy, and it is self-evident in our relations to others: children can’t see someone cry without bursting into tears themselves; people adopt the expressions of strangers around them; a person who is hoarse speaks and we clear our own throats.25 but it extends as well to our interactions with objects, structures, and everything else in our world as a general characteristic of our experience. hence, for instance, an architectural asymmetry “is often experienced as physical pain, as if a limb were missing or injured.”26 there is thus an anthropomorphism that is essential to the meaning of structural forms – an anthropomorphism that is present whether we will it to be there or not.27 we read the relation of height to width in a building, for instance, as a relation between a sense of ascent and repose. this kinesthetic sense in turn connotes a whole personality: an upright orientation is vital, active, dignified. a horizontally-oriented building, on the other hand, may connote restfulness or calm (or there is thus an anthropomorphism that is essential to the meaning of structural forms – an anthropomorphism that is present whether we will it to be there or not” “ ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 96 ir w in perhaps inertia and sloth – and whether the former sense is evoked or the latter we might chalk up to the quality of the design). the perfect square, meanwhile, is distinctive for lacking a clear anthropomorphic orientation: it “is called bulky, heavy, contented, plain, good-natured, stupid… we can not tell if the body is reclining or standing.”28 think of what it means, in this light, to say that a building “faces” the street, or that we stand at the “foot” of the stairs leading up to the entrance, or that, as juhani pallasmaa says, “[t]he door handle is the handshake of the building.”29 structures lend themselves to these metaphors because they reflect us back upon ourselves through a close and profound resonance. a door or window that has a vertical orientation, for instance, frames the upright form of the human body, an effect that may be emphasized through the use of arches or transom windows that extend and emphasize headspace: every aperture is a kind of potential aedicule. the picture windows that became popular in the postwar period, on the other hand, suggest a supine form, and thus bear a sensation of inertness. or think again of how the freest movement of energies—the rhythmic and organic character of foliated ornamentation, for instance—are natural to the upper portions of buildings in traditional architecture, a reflection of the fact that, as wölfflin points out, the most expressive part of the human body is the head.30 if, on the other hand, a design is indifferent with regard to this anthropomorphizing tendency, we may read it as “turning its back on us,” seeming “cold” or “lifeless,” being orientationally “indecisive,” as the form of the square is for wölfflin; that is to say, we imbue the meaning of structures with human characteristics, even if they are only notable for their absence. whatever these characteristics might be, they solicit us to respond in an embodied way, much like a person who engages us in a conversation, with their particular tone and body language and so forth. the question of whether a structure solicits a disposition in us that enhances our sense of bodily well-being is the question of whether that structure is dignifying. we can reflect again on the flesh of the world from the merleaupontian perspective. consider the flesh of buildings: in their weighty mass, their anthropomorphic form, and not least their function as places of human inhabitation, they are chiasmically intertwined with our own flesh. they are organic in this sense, and organic in this specifically human way: as products of thought and language (which are themselves expressions of bodily capacities, from the merleau-pontian perspective), they express human ideas, the carnal existence of those ideas made manifest in the material world, and made manifest precisely for the sake of our 97 isparchitecture.com own inhabitation in the world. for this reason, the flesh of architecture perhaps gives clearest expression to what it means to belong to the world, to participate in it, to continue into it and to be a continuation of it. the architect peter zumthor describes architecture as “a kind of anatomy... really, i mean the word <body> quite literally. it’s like our own bodies with their anatomy and things we can’t see and skin covering us— that’s what architecture means to me and that’s how i try to think about it. as a bodily mass, a membrane, a fabric, a kind of covering, cloth, velvet, silk, all around me. the body! not the idea of the body – the body itself! a body that can touch me.”31 zumthor conceives of architecture as an extension of our bodily organization into the world. (figure 1) but architecture is also the manner in which the world draws us to inhabit it. and in this intertwining of body and world is the possibility of a certain kind of expression, an elevation of the experience of inhabitation as such. concluding remarks the chiasm, merleau-ponty says, is “an exchange between me and the world, between the phenomenal body and the ‘objective’ body, between the perceiving and the perceived,”32 and the flesh is the “element”33 in which the chiasmic intertwining between the body and the world takes place. such an ontological perspective lends credence to wölfflin’s analysis of the bodily logic of traditional western architecture: if our bodies participate in the world from within, rather than across the distance that would separate an ontologically distinct subject and figure 1: wachendorf feldkapelle interior, by peter zumthor ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 98 ir w in object, then it would make sense to understand architecture – the practice of providing the means of inhabitation for human bodies – as expressing the “basic conditions of organic life;”34 that is, as being organized according to the same principles as those by which our bodily experience is organized. moreover, when wölfflin’s treatment of architecture is cast in terms of merleau-ponty’s later ontology (a philosophical project which, of course, he antedates by more than half a century), it can help us to conceive just what it would mean to think about – and do – architecture from such an ontological orientation. this orientation can help to diagnose a particular peril of contemporary architectural practice: the emphasis on the conceptual over the concretely material. pallasmaa has argued that over the last century, architecture has increasingly become “an art form of instant visual image.”35 in adopting this purely visual disposition, we are rendering our structures “repulsively flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, unreal.”36 this disposition is expressed especially in a commitment to abstract form, an uncanny echo of the cartesian “model-in-thought” that merleau-ponty criticizes.37 the overemphasis on the visual, absent a synesthetic engagement with the other senses, is emblematic of a dualistic separation between the object outside of us and our mental experience of that object. what leads descartes to regard outline and form as the most essential elements in engravings also leads architects toward the supremacy of the purely visual. consider, as an example of the trend, rafael viñoly’s comment that his recent prominent addition to the new york skyline, 432 park avenue, (figure 2) is based on “the purest geometric form: the square… the body of 432 park avenue remains abstract and radical – a pure product of the grid.”38 the elevation of geometrical abstraction as an aesthetic ideal stands in telling contrast to wölfflin’s characterization of the square as “bulky, heavy, contented, plain, good-natured, stupid.” what appeals to viñoly from a perspective of intellectual abstraction is indecisive and “stupid” when considered from a perspective of embodied engagement. this tendency is exacerbated by something loureiro has pointed out: that the technologies employed in architectural design have increasingly subsumed the creative and poetic craft of the architect in such a way as to elevate the visual image of the architectural work above the built work itself. “now,” he writes, “it is the picture that generates the building. photo-realistic 3d renderings… are ‘models for photographs,’ and not depictions of architectural ideas.”39 meanwhile, rob imrie has found that discussion of the body is all but absent in architectural education, and in the thinking of many contemporary architects.40 99 isparchitecture.com but if we regard the human body as participating in the flesh of the world, and thus as intertwined with things, including architectural works which are so essential to our experience of inhabitation in the world, we will acknowledge that this intertwining occurs through all the senses, and that these senses seek out, in wölfflin’s phrase, “the conditions of our own wellbeing.”41 we might find the conditions for well-being in ornament, for instance, which can play such an important role in the kinesthetic sense of an “upward awakening” in a building, to use bloomer’s phrase. we might find it, as well, in the use of natural materials which integrate a haptic sense; as pallasmaa says, “stone, brick, and wood… allow the gaze to penetrate their surfaces and… enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter.” the textures of these materials are of the natural world. they have a depth that is lacking in concrete and glass: “natural material expresses its age and history as well as the tale of its birth and human use.”42 these materials take us beyond the visual, beyond the bird’s-eye view of the tabletop architectural model and the flat forms of geometrical abstraction, into that synesthesia that characterizes our sense of belonging as participants in the world. of course, wölfflin was writing in the 19th century, and could speak of the principles of western architectural design as adhering to a generally continuous tradition going back to classical times. figure 2: 432 park avenue, new york ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 100 ir w in but i am not sugggesting that the lesson to draw here is that architecture needs to return to its traditional forms to recoup a sense of multisensory engagement and of participation between human beings and the built environment. if the various modernisms and post-modernisms that have arisen since wölfflin’s time have tended toward obliviousness with regard to this function of architecture, by ceaselessly challenging convention they have also opened up the field to as many new architectural possibilities as can be imagined. architects like pallasmaa, zumthor, steven holl, and many others have found in this realm of possibilities new ways of giving expression to the idea of architecture as participation in the world. as varied and heterogeneous as embodied experience is, these possibilities will surely never be exhausted. so, finally, we might find the conditions for our well-being by asking a new range of questions. rather than asking what a work of architecture represents, we can ask: what spirit of participation in the world does it elicit, and how does this relate to the purpose of the structure? how does it engage us through all of our senses? what ideas are expressed through the body? to ask such questions is to ask how architecture performs its essential function: to structure our inhabitation of the world. it is also, notably, to acknowledge an ethical dimension intrinsic to architecture. for if architecture is properly attentive to this function, then it is attentive to producing well-being for every human. there could be no more ethical a task. endnotes 1. merleau-ponty, maurice. the visible and the invisible, alphonso lingis, trans (evanston: northwestern university press, 1968), 200. 2. merleau-ponty, maurice. “eye and mind,” in the merleau-ponty aesthetics reader, johnson, galen a. and michael b. smith, eds. (evanston: northwestern university press, 1993), 125. 3. ibid., 133. 4. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 133. 5. perhaps we only understand the notion of resistance in things in the world because we experience it as bodies. merleau-ponty describes the body as an “exemplar sensible, which offers to him who inhabits it and senses it the wherewithal to sense everything that resembles himself on the outside” (merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 135). these comments suggest a kind of bodily logic which we extend or project onto the world, and by which we come to understand the world, an idea that resonates with wölfflin’s theories on architecture. 101 isparchitecture.com 6. merleau-ponty, maurice. “the philosopher and his shadow,” in signs. (chicago: northwestern university press, 1964), 166-7. 7. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 123. 8. ibid., 215. 9. ibid., 134. 10. ibid. 11. merleau-ponty, maurice. “the film and the new psychology,” in signs, richard c. mccleary, trans. (chicago: northwestern university press, 1964), 49-50. 12. merleau-ponty, “eye and mind,” 130. 13. ibid., 131. 14. ibid., 133. 15. ibid., 124. 16. ibid., 138. 17. ibid., 147. 18. ibid. 19. mccann, rachel. “entwining the body and the world: architectural design and experience in the light of ‘eye and mind’,” in intertwinings: interdisciplinary encounters with merleau-ponty, gail weiss, ed. (albany: suny press, 2008), 267. 20. wölfflin, heinrich. “prolegomena to a psychology of architecture,” in empathy, form, and space: problems in german aesthetics 1873-1893, harry francis mallgrave and eleftherios ikonomou, trans. (new york: getty center for the history of art and the humanities, 1994), 151. 21. ibid., 152. 22. ibid., 151. 23. bloomer, kent. the nature of ornament. (new york: w. w. norton & company, 2000), 83. ironically, the modernists’ cri de coeur that form must follow function derives from sullivan’s declaration that “shape, form, outward expression, design, or whatever we may choose of the tall office building should in the very nature of things follow the functions of the building” (sullivan, louis. “the tall office building artistically considered,” in kindergarten chats and other writings, (new york: ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 102 ir w in dover, 1979), 208.). sullivan’s point was that visual functionality could be enhanced by ornament, not that any expression that wasn’t structurally necessitated ought to be suppressed. 24. wölfflin., “prolegomena,” 157-8. 25. ibid., 156. 26. ibid., 155. so ubiquitous is the desire to find symmetry in things, wölfflin observes, that in the case of that rare object that on the face of it defies symmetry – the one-handled mug – we unconsciously treat the handle as the “back” of the mug, so that a lateral symmetry is maintained (ibid., 164). 27. this anthropomorphism extends to other objects as well, and even to geographical regions: yi-fu tuan notes that cities give the impression of having a front and a back, and “[m]ost people in the united states probably regard the northeastern seaboard as the nation’s front” (tuan, yi-fu. space and place: the perspective of experience. (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1977), 42). 28. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 168. 29. pallasmaa, juhani. “an architecture of the seven senses,” in questions of perception: phenomenology of architecture, steven holl, juhani pallasmaa, and alberto perez-gomez. (new york: william stout, 2006), 33. 30. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 176. 31. zumthor, peter. atmospheres, 11. accessed july 11, 2015. http://ebookbrowsee. net/gdoc. php?id=466463785&url=982c587b925fe3103a612676616e5bd. 32. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 215. 33. ibid., 139. 34. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 160. though wölfflin is concerned with western architecture, it would be interesting to apply his insights to nonwestern traditions. 35. pallasmaa, juhani. “hapticity and time,” architectural review 207 (2000). see also his argument in eyes of the skin (london: academy editions, 1996). 36. pallasmaa, “seven senses,” 29. 37. merleau-ponty, visible and the invisible, 134. 38. garutti, francesco. “rafael viñoly/432 park avenue/new york,” abitare, june 2013. 39. loureira, felipe guimarães de souza fernandes. “the image in power: vilém flusser and the craft of architecture,” architecture philosophy 1(2) (2015): 222. 40. imrie, rob. “architects’ conceptions of the human body,” environment and planning d: society and space, 21 (2003), 47-65. 41. wölfflin, “prolegomena,” 152. 42. pallasmaa, “seven senses,” 29. book review book reviews a chinese philosophy of architecture: past, present, future david wang new york: routledge, 2017. hardcover: $180. paperback: $50 in this book, david wang attempts to derive a philosophy of architecture from chinese sources. the attempt is made at a moment when revivals of old ways in china are once again discussed in academic literature (for example, billioud and thoraval in their the sage and the people: the confucian revival in china, which appeared in 2015). wang’s book cannot be read as a textbook showing how to systematically apply certain confucian or daoist ideas to modern architecture. instead, it should be read as a philosophical reflection on contemporary architecture delivered from a chinese point of view. the book contains many fresh considerations and provocative ideas about how non-western sources can challenge well-established western architectural theories. the book is divided into three parts: past, present, and future. the first part explains traditional chinese architecture and contrasts it with western paradigms. the “present” part is concerned with the opening of china towards the west and the influence of postmodernism. the “future” part talks about influences like virtual reality but also about the possibility for future development of a chinese philosophy of architecture. on the one hand, the book is inspired by jianfei zhu’s architecture of modern china: a historical critique (2009), which suggests a new “criticalist” approach to architecture. on the other hand, bo ok r ev iew s 104 wang does not address the theme of criticality that was important not only for zhu but also for critics of chinese architecture like peter eisenman who had once declared chinese architecture conservative and accommodating because it lacks a tradition of resistance. for eisenman, the critical consciousness linked to european enlightenment is missing in the chinese tradition.1 wang’s comparative approach has a different starting point, which is not the enlightenment but plato. wang wants to go back to the roots of all differences, which is plato’s essentialism and its absence in china. in particular, wang employs plato’s distinction between matter and spirit to contrast chinese philosophies of architecture with western ones. wang makes the following four distinctions: first, in china, “excellence of being is not always dependent on infusions of moral value into material objects” (65) because the platonic distinctions between matter and spirit do not exist in chinese culture. this assertion put chinese architecture on a completely different track missed by most western architects. second, while the confucian notion of the morally perfected person is important, the value of that person is entirely internal and will not manifest itself materially. wang puts much weight on the quotation of a certain wan juren (source not documented) who would have written about confucius’s notion of ren that the virtuous nature is purely internal. according to wan juren, confucius does not suggest that one should “externally pursue any kind of technical perfection or realization of material end,” (5, the source is referenced as zuangzi). the essence of things is not defined philosophically (as it was by aristotle) and, as a consequence, no values or virtues can act on material or on architecture. instead, “in china moral instantiation [remains] in between relational social roles” and the “moral focus is on people and their social enactments.” (5) chinese architectural conceptions are fluid because there are no essences like beauty or the good but everything depends on the social situation. third, in the west, spirit is individual, while in chinese architectural thought spiritual components appear as constellations. feng shui, for example, “is about losing human individuality into the larger cosmos.” what matters is not the essence, but the “positioning alone assures beneficial outcomes” (5). fourth, the platonic idea of reason leads to a concept of timedependent progress towards ideals, which does not exist in china either. due to its platonic idealistic heritage, materiality held negative book reviewconnotations as it is always opposed to the spiritual and non-material truth and able to retard progress. therefore, western architects attempted to introduce much non-material light, a goal not found in chinese architecture, which is most obvious in western religious architecture. (43) thus, with these four contrasts, wang draws a sharp distinction in intent between western platonic essentialism and chinese relational truths. but such an orientation invites the question: without such platonic essences, some essential foundations, will those purely “relational” truths not lead to relativism? wang offers a few provocative conclusions. for example, what is called pastiche style in the west cannot be called such in china because “chinese philosophy accommodates this style of affairs.” (6) logically, you cannot have a pastiche unless you have some theoretical framework that informs what is not pastiche. there is no ideology of style in china, which means that anything goes as long as it is “relationally” justified: “prior to 1840, chinese structures were not motivated by an ideology of style.” (7) after 1840, there is a proliferation of styles but no indigenous theoretical tradition to guide design thinking. this is how the chinese could reinvent postmodern hybridity without being postmodern. the hybridity we find in china is “not a self-conscious choice” and therefore not really postmodern (124) in conception. instead it is simply due to a lack of purified aesthetic ideologies. this relativism is pushed one step further when wang legitimizes an aesthetics of clutter. since there is no aesthetic ideology of proportion and since the wen (cultural pattern) is clearly openended, clutter becomes a positive term. the chinese notion of wen is an untranslatable term meaning, in different contexts “pattern,” “structure,” “writing,” and “literature.” the pattern of wen is found not only in culture but also in animals, vegetation, and cosmological phenomena. wang applies this bo ok r ev iew s 106 in an unusual context. the clutter on chinese sidewalks is “teeming with activity” (66) and wang holds that wen can be understood as “a cluttered array of things.” (80) in chinese architecture, everything moves towards a fluiditybased paradigm, which can be contrasted with the essentialist styles of western architecture in which purified or fixed notions of style tended to be justified by essentialist concepts of styles based on (platonicaristotelian) philosophies. chinese architectural reality is fluid as it is determined by the ying and the yang, which produces no essence but just qi. qi is a cosmological notion providing coherence among all things. it translates as “breath” and is used in the sense of “energy flow” in traditional chinese culture, especially chinese medicine and martial arts. after all those considerations of fluidity and interrelatedness one could perhaps conclude that chinese architecture is organic. if this is the case, wang could have developed this line of thought further. a fluid and dynamic perception of architectural space is precisely what organic architecture, initiated by frank lloyd wright and developed by generations of architects, always wanted. organic architecture promotes harmony between all elements, natural and architectural, precisely in the way in which wang describes the qi flowing out of the play of ying and yang. as is, those tantalizing connections between east and west go unexplored. it is in the context of fluidity that wang also makes interesting statements about different preservation cultures in east and west. fluidity-based architectural paradigms will find the preservation mentality pervasive in the west too restrictive: “in a correlative world in which fluid change is fundamental, wood gives way to fire, fire to soil, in a cyclical process.” (23) is the daoist penchant “to let things be” (67) favoring preservation or against preservation? there is no clear answer to this in wang’s book. however, in all his elaborations on fluidity and dynamism there is a paradox. european styles change while chinese styles have remained relatively constant until the modern era. if architecture is so fluid in china, why did styles remain constant? instead they evolved in nonfluid europe. stylistic evolution in the west owes much to an artistic self-consciousness arising out of the tradition of resistance of which eisenman spoke. wang acknowledges the stable character of chinese architectural styles. his answer to the paradox of fluid architectural conceptions not bound by platonic essences that nevertheless led to stylistic stasis is to explain the idea of fluidity within an overall largely static book reviewconception by reference to the cosmic fabric called fen, which buddhism-informed neo-confucianism saw as a familial-social cosmic system guaranteeing unchanging social roles. (52) each fen conducts itself in correct li-rituals. similarly static are the yingzao fashi, (營造法式) a 12th century manual of building standards, which formalized imperial construction as an expression of social hierarchy. another reason for stasis is the imperative of moral excellence that philosophies about the li tended to express in the form of theoretical logic. here wang points to xunzi, who believed that architecture can be subsumed under the embrace of li-ritual: “a benefit of this approach is that moral excellence is embedded in the theoretical logic.” (143) what seems to matter most for wang is that there is no platonic essence in chinese thought able to formulate the good and the beautiful. since nothing philosophical could be said about the goodness and beauty of material, chinese literati never embraced architecture as a contemplative pursuit. architecture was seen as a craft, which gave it a lot of freedom. this is possibly true. however, was the west that unfree? ideas concerning the good and the beautiful have changed a lot over the centuries in the west. true, european culture tended to justify aesthetic truths in terms of philosophical truth (since plato), which is not the case with the more vague buddhist-confucian prescriptions. at the same time, this lack of philosophical back-up might be the reason why, as wang points out, modern chinese architecture has not yet found its own vocabulary. (123) i want to conclude by returning to the concept of the organic. jianfei zhu’s “relational critique” seems to point more consistently to the idea of an organic whole. wang also mentions liu xiaohu from wuhan who uses terms like feng shui and xiao (filial peity) in organic contexts (143). the hangzhounese architect wang shu is also often bo ok r ev iew s 108 mentioned as a protagonist of the “fluency” inherent in chinese architectural culture. would a real alternative architectural thinking moving beyond platonism but incorporating “criticality” with the organic not be the next step in this search for a philosophy of chinese architecture? wang does not take this step. he derives a critique of the western tradition from chinese sources. however, calling this a “a chinese philosophy of architecture” seems to be too ambitious. an aesthetics of clutter and fluidity-based paradigms can inspire interesting critiques but it will take more work to develop those critiques into real philosophies. endnotes 1. peter. eisenman, “critical architecture in a geopolitical world” in cynthia davidson and ismail serageldin (eds). architecture beyond architecture: creativity and social transformations in islamic cultures. london: academy editions, 1995. thinking like a mall: environmental philosophy after the end of nature steven vogel boston: mit press, 2016. paperback: $24 reviewed by tom spector steven vogel agrees with what warwick fox called attention to two decades ago, a view which i believe all we architecture-philosophy types share: that an environmental ethic is both incomplete and of little effect without a robust account of the human-made environment incorporated into it. thinking like a mall attempts such an account, not so much by describing the relationship between the built and self-determining environments as by dismantling the divide between them. vogel takes his title from aldo leopold’s treatise “thinking like a mountain,” in which leopold describes his personal journey out of an ego-centric view of nature to one understood in more relational terms. if vogel can make the case that that a shopping mall (that much unloved building type) is no less and no more natural than leopold’s mountain, then he can well extend the argument to include all built environments. while he makes progress on these fronts, we may yet hesitate to agree he has book reviewlaid the problem to rest. vogel argues that mainstream environmental ethics has tried to create a sense of separation between humanity and nature to justify its prescriptions. “what ends nature is nothing other than the human touch, a touch that, rather midaslike, has the uncanny ability to transform the natural into something outside of nature.” (11) this divide creates an insoluble contradiction for environmental ethics in its current formulations. it seems that either we think of nature as everything that exists by and for itself without the interference of humans, or else we make room for a larger conception of nature that also includes what humans do as being part of nature. but here’s the problem: if we consider humans as part of nature, then there’s no reason to consider, say, hydroelectric dams as any more unnatural than beaver dams and cities are no more or less than the habitats we create that are most natural for us. but if we leave human activity out of the equation, then it becomes problematic to find untouched nature, and to determine how far back we have to go before the influence of mankind spoiled it. after all, it appears highly likely that humans caused the extinction of the wooly mammoth in pleistocene times. environmentalists have avoided this contradiction by trading on an equivocation. they use “nature” to mean “wild, untouched and self-determining” when it suits them, but then they make an aboutface and insist that humans are part of nature when it comes time to formulate an action plan. he sees an “odd inconsistency” if the nature we are called on to preserve is nonhuman nature. the environmentalists who worry about the destruction of nature also believe that “humans need to learn to live more in accordance with nature.”(11) human anthropocentrism, the unwillingness to accept that bo ok r ev iew s 110 we should live more within the natural order of things rather than seek to transform them more to our liking, is the source of the problem. “but if the production of a toaster or the changing of a temperature or the restoring of a prairie involves the transformation of nature into something that is no longer natural, then it is not at all clear that humans are embedded in nature.”(12) here is the crux of the contradiction: if human actions are outside nature, then what could it possibly mean to advocate that we live more in tune with nature? conversely, if we humans are in fact part of nature, then so are our buildings—and this leaves the environmentalists without a cause. there is no basis for bemoaning technology. some environmentalists would have it that the value of untouched nature is its independence. others, its diversity or richness. therefore, we have an obligation to help preserve its diversity. but how do we get from this definition to an obligation? what if we try to assert that there is something wrong with human-created global warming that extends beyond its effect on other humans and into its effect on the natural order of things? we could say, “yes, but its going to be very destructive,” but in the larger sense, this assertion is simply untrue. it will be just as productive as it is destructive. so we could amend that statement and say that it will be very disruptive, which is certainly true, but disruption is itself entirely natural and goes on all the time out in nature. so we could amend it still more and say that it will be disruptive at a speed and scale rarely found in nature, and that is also certainly true, but then that is not always the case either—nature can be astoundingly disruptiveand in short order: every time a volcano blows, for example, or a 100-year drought occurs. so, if there’s nothing we are doing or causing that nature doesn’t already, then where is the foul? thus, vogel thinks we do well to abandon the word “nature” altogether as a source of guidance for an environmental ethic. but he notes one last way the word nature is used, and this is why environmentalists have been resistant to abandoning it: it is often used normatively, natural is associated with what’s right, and unnatural is associated with what’s wrong. but taking nature as a guide for right and wrong human action is going to lead to some pretty odd results. think of what a spider does with its prey. so, he says, trying to act more ‘naturally’ in this sense scarcely seems like a good idea. vogel concludes that nature is a useless concept, not only because there seems to be so little of it remaining, not only because we cannot seem to decide whether we are part of it or not, but also because it book reviewprovides no moral guidance—only circularity. it becomes something more like a religion based in a set of unprovable assumptions and less like a set of rational reasons underlying prescriptions for how we should act. he wants to drop nature, and adopt “environment,” which includes the built environment, into an environmental philosophy. thus, if we want to ground an environmental ethic, it will have to be that certain actions and products are bad or good for us humans—and we will just have to bring the rest of nature along with us. it is logically impossible to protect nature’s independence from us. all environment—shopping malls as well as the amazon river basin are equally potentially capable of moral consideration. part of my hesitation in fully embracing this line of thought lies in how vogel analyzes the concept of nature: much like a blender analyzes an avocado. you hate to congratulate him for liquifying a perfectly useful idea (within its limits) into something unrecognizable. most any concept can be found to contain contradictions and irrationalities when pushed to its limits, but this should not cause us to abstain from the entire notion— which is what vogel wants us to do. his point that environmentalists conveniently equivocate is well taken, but should that not be a reason to demand clarity from them and not necessarily a reason to abandon the term “nature”? i still think there is a commonsense meaningfulness to being in touch with or alienated from nature that finds expression in such useful antidotes as the boy scouts, the national parks, treks into wilderness, dismay when native species are overrun by invaders, the desire to clean up roadside trash, immense sadness at the barrenness caused by coral bleaching, and so many more instances. are we really supposed to give up on the idea that getting to appreciate what goes on outside of human purposes provides a source of moral import even if not a source of moral guidance? bo ok r ev iew s 112 where i really want to take issue, however, comes in the last chapters, where he reduces environmental ethics to democratic politics. he says that since mountains and wolves cannot speak for themselves, then only humans in dialogue can speak up for them. this idea seems to leave no point of triangulation from which to critique what those humans in dialogue decide for the wolves. in fact, i find this surprisingly naive— philosophically as well as socially. it almost seems a desperate move. apart from this disappointment, however, he does quite a nice job analyzing the tragedy of the commons in relation to global warming. he argues that the problem is not that any individual’s contribution to the problem is negligible, and therefore futile to hold accountable, but rather it is the lack of mechanisms by which individuals can band together to act for the common good that lead to tragic results. as i was reading this section, i realized that the tragedy of the commons just is the state of nature. isparchitecture.com about the authors sean akahne-bryen march, university of sydney dr. chris l. smith, associate professor of architecture and technê, the university of sydney matt waggoner, professor of philosophy and humanities, albertus magnus college roger paden, emeritus professor of philosophy, george mason university. dominique moran, professor, university of birmingham yvonne jewkes, professor, university of bath dr colin lorne, university of manchester brian irwin, john jay college of criminal justice, cuny thorsten botz-bornstein, gulf university for science and technology image credits cover: the washington monument: tom spector martin luther king memorial: tom spector appamattox memorial: roger paden hans bellmer, the woman at the cathedral, hans bellmer/adagp. copyright agency, 2018. hmp low moss: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/ hmp_low_moss_from_the_air%2c_2012_%28geograph_2965671%29.jpg wachendorf feldkapelle interior: till niermann [gfdl (http://www.gnu.org/ copyleft/fdl.html) or cc by-sa 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0)], from wikimedia commons 432 park avenue: grissjr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ file:432parknov2017.jpg#filelinks ap . vol 4 . no 1 . 2019 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is the paper written in english to general academic writing standards for the humanities? does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines? review criteria isparchitecture.com please direct all submissions and general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. there are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special issue, conference proceedings, etc.). submission types authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. full papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word abstract, response pieces should be between 500 and 1,500 words, and book reviews between 1,000 to 2,000 words. general formatting all submissions should be presented in accordance with the university of chicago style. papers should be rtf documents, 12 point font, times new roman, doublespaced, and with no additional or otherwise unique formatting. references should be manually placed in brackets (e.g. [1], [2], and so on) with full citation information placed in the references section at the end of the document. photo guidelines and image permissions images should be at least 300 dpi and read well in greyscale prints. the images should be submitted as individual files (tiff or jpeg), in combination with proof of copyright permission. authors are responsible for obtaining image permissions, and are asked to have done so prior to submitting their papers for review. the oklahoma state university image archive is also available for use. please send inquiries about the osu image holdings to prof. tom spector at tom.spector@okstate.edu. the papers published by architecture philosophy are protected by copyright. the content must not have been previously published and cannot be republished without the permission of the journal’s copyright holder. the copyright holder is oklahoma state university. authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permission for the use of images in their papers. original images created by the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines book review book reviews a chinese philosophy of architecture: past, present, future david wang new york: routledge, 2017. hardcover: $180. paperback: $50 in this book, david wang attempts to derive a philosophy of architecture from chinese sources. the attempt is made at a moment when revivals of old ways in china are once again discussed in academic literature (for example, billioud and thoraval in their the sage and the people: the confucian revival in china, which appeared in 2015). wang’s book cannot be read as a textbook showing how to systematically apply certain confucian or daoist ideas to modern architecture. instead, it should be read as a philosophical reflection on contemporary architecture delivered from a chinese point of view. the book contains many fresh considerations and provocative ideas about how non-western sources can challenge well-established western architectural theories. the book is divided into three parts: past, present, and future. the first part explains traditional chinese architecture and contrasts it with western paradigms. the “present” part is concerned with the opening of china towards the west and the influence of postmodernism. the “future” part talks about influences like virtual reality but also about the possibility for future development of a chinese philosophy of architecture. on the one hand, the book is inspired by jianfei zhu’s architecture of modern china: a historical critique (2009), which suggests a new “criticalist” approach to architecture. on the other hand, bo ok r ev iew s 104 wang does not address the theme of criticality that was important not only for zhu but also for critics of chinese architecture like peter eisenman who had once declared chinese architecture conservative and accommodating because it lacks a tradition of resistance. for eisenman, the critical consciousness linked to european enlightenment is missing in the chinese tradition.1 wang’s comparative approach has a different starting point, which is not the enlightenment but plato. wang wants to go back to the roots of all differences, which is plato’s essentialism and its absence in china. in particular, wang employs plato’s distinction between matter and spirit to contrast chinese philosophies of architecture with western ones. wang makes the following four distinctions: first, in china, “excellence of being is not always dependent on infusions of moral value into material objects” (65) because the platonic distinctions between matter and spirit do not exist in chinese culture. this assertion put chinese architecture on a completely different track missed by most western architects. second, while the confucian notion of the morally perfected person is important, the value of that person is entirely internal and will not manifest itself materially. wang puts much weight on the quotation of a certain wan juren (source not documented) who would have written about confucius’s notion of ren that the virtuous nature is purely internal. according to wan juren, confucius does not suggest that one should “externally pursue any kind of technical perfection or realization of material end,” (5, the source is referenced as zuangzi). the essence of things is not defined philosophically (as it was by aristotle) and, as a consequence, no values or virtues can act on material or on architecture. instead, “in china moral instantiation [remains] in between relational social roles” and the “moral focus is on people and their social enactments.” (5) chinese architectural conceptions are fluid because there are no essences like beauty or the good but everything depends on the social situation. third, in the west, spirit is individual, while in chinese architectural thought spiritual components appear as constellations. feng shui, for example, “is about losing human individuality into the larger cosmos.” what matters is not the essence, but the “positioning alone assures beneficial outcomes” (5). fourth, the platonic idea of reason leads to a concept of timedependent progress towards ideals, which does not exist in china either. due to its platonic idealistic heritage, materiality held negative book reviewconnotations as it is always opposed to the spiritual and non-material truth and able to retard progress. therefore, western architects attempted to introduce much non-material light, a goal not found in chinese architecture, which is most obvious in western religious architecture. (43) thus, with these four contrasts, wang draws a sharp distinction in intent between western platonic essentialism and chinese relational truths. but such an orientation invites the question: without such platonic essences, some essential foundations, will those purely “relational” truths not lead to relativism? wang offers a few provocative conclusions. for example, what is called pastiche style in the west cannot be called such in china because “chinese philosophy accommodates this style of affairs.” (6) logically, you cannot have a pastiche unless you have some theoretical framework that informs what is not pastiche. there is no ideology of style in china, which means that anything goes as long as it is “relationally” justified: “prior to 1840, chinese structures were not motivated by an ideology of style.” (7) after 1840, there is a proliferation of styles but no indigenous theoretical tradition to guide design thinking. this is how the chinese could reinvent postmodern hybridity without being postmodern. the hybridity we find in china is “not a self-conscious choice” and therefore not really postmodern (124) in conception. instead it is simply due to a lack of purified aesthetic ideologies. this relativism is pushed one step further when wang legitimizes an aesthetics of clutter. since there is no aesthetic ideology of proportion and since the wen (cultural pattern) is clearly openended, clutter becomes a positive term. the chinese notion of wen is an untranslatable term meaning, in different contexts “pattern,” “structure,” “writing,” and “literature.” the pattern of wen is found not only in culture but also in animals, vegetation, and cosmological phenomena. wang applies this bo ok r ev iew s 106 in an unusual context. the clutter on chinese sidewalks is “teeming with activity” (66) and wang holds that wen can be understood as “a cluttered array of things.” (80) in chinese architecture, everything moves towards a fluiditybased paradigm, which can be contrasted with the essentialist styles of western architecture in which purified or fixed notions of style tended to be justified by essentialist concepts of styles based on (platonicaristotelian) philosophies. chinese architectural reality is fluid as it is determined by the ying and the yang, which produces no essence but just qi. qi is a cosmological notion providing coherence among all things. it translates as “breath” and is used in the sense of “energy flow” in traditional chinese culture, especially chinese medicine and martial arts. after all those considerations of fluidity and interrelatedness one could perhaps conclude that chinese architecture is organic. if this is the case, wang could have developed this line of thought further. a fluid and dynamic perception of architectural space is precisely what organic architecture, initiated by frank lloyd wright and developed by generations of architects, always wanted. organic architecture promotes harmony between all elements, natural and architectural, precisely in the way in which wang describes the qi flowing out of the play of ying and yang. as is, those tantalizing connections between east and west go unexplored. it is in the context of fluidity that wang also makes interesting statements about different preservation cultures in east and west. fluidity-based architectural paradigms will find the preservation mentality pervasive in the west too restrictive: “in a correlative world in which fluid change is fundamental, wood gives way to fire, fire to soil, in a cyclical process.” (23) is the daoist penchant “to let things be” (67) favoring preservation or against preservation? there is no clear answer to this in wang’s book. however, in all his elaborations on fluidity and dynamism there is a paradox. european styles change while chinese styles have remained relatively constant until the modern era. if architecture is so fluid in china, why did styles remain constant? instead they evolved in nonfluid europe. stylistic evolution in the west owes much to an artistic self-consciousness arising out of the tradition of resistance of which eisenman spoke. wang acknowledges the stable character of chinese architectural styles. his answer to the paradox of fluid architectural conceptions not bound by platonic essences that nevertheless led to stylistic stasis is to explain the idea of fluidity within an overall largely static book reviewconception by reference to the cosmic fabric called fen, which buddhism-informed neo-confucianism saw as a familial-social cosmic system guaranteeing unchanging social roles. (52) each fen conducts itself in correct li-rituals. similarly static are the yingzao fashi, (營造法式) a 12th century manual of building standards, which formalized imperial construction as an expression of social hierarchy. another reason for stasis is the imperative of moral excellence that philosophies about the li tended to express in the form of theoretical logic. here wang points to xunzi, who believed that architecture can be subsumed under the embrace of li-ritual: “a benefit of this approach is that moral excellence is embedded in the theoretical logic.” (143) what seems to matter most for wang is that there is no platonic essence in chinese thought able to formulate the good and the beautiful. since nothing philosophical could be said about the goodness and beauty of material, chinese literati never embraced architecture as a contemplative pursuit. architecture was seen as a craft, which gave it a lot of freedom. this is possibly true. however, was the west that unfree? ideas concerning the good and the beautiful have changed a lot over the centuries in the west. true, european culture tended to justify aesthetic truths in terms of philosophical truth (since plato), which is not the case with the more vague buddhist-confucian prescriptions. at the same time, this lack of philosophical back-up might be the reason why, as wang points out, modern chinese architecture has not yet found its own vocabulary. (123) i want to conclude by returning to the concept of the organic. jianfei zhu’s “relational critique” seems to point more consistently to the idea of an organic whole. wang also mentions liu xiaohu from wuhan who uses terms like feng shui and xiao (filial peity) in organic contexts (143). the hangzhounese architect wang shu is also often bo ok r ev iew s 108 mentioned as a protagonist of the “fluency” inherent in chinese architectural culture. would a real alternative architectural thinking moving beyond platonism but incorporating “criticality” with the organic not be the next step in this search for a philosophy of chinese architecture? wang does not take this step. he derives a critique of the western tradition from chinese sources. however, calling this a “a chinese philosophy of architecture” seems to be too ambitious. an aesthetics of clutter and fluidity-based paradigms can inspire interesting critiques but it will take more work to develop those critiques into real philosophies. endnotes 1. peter. eisenman, “critical architecture in a geopolitical world” in cynthia davidson and ismail serageldin (eds). architecture beyond architecture: creativity and social transformations in islamic cultures. london: academy editions, 1995. thinking like a mall: environmental philosophy after the end of nature steven vogel boston: mit press, 2016. paperback: $24 reviewed by tom spector steven vogel agrees with what warwick fox called attention to two decades ago, a view which i believe all we architecture-philosophy types share: that an environmental ethic is both incomplete and of little effect without a robust account of the human-made environment incorporated into it. thinking like a mall attempts such an account, not so much by describing the relationship between the built and self-determining environments as by dismantling the divide between them. vogel takes his title from aldo leopold’s treatise “thinking like a mountain,” in which leopold describes his personal journey out of an ego-centric view of nature to one understood in more relational terms. if vogel can make the case that that a shopping mall (that much unloved building type) is no less and no more natural than leopold’s mountain, then he can well extend the argument to include all built environments. while he makes progress on these fronts, we may yet hesitate to agree he has book reviewlaid the problem to rest. vogel argues that mainstream environmental ethics has tried to create a sense of separation between humanity and nature to justify its prescriptions. “what ends nature is nothing other than the human touch, a touch that, rather midaslike, has the uncanny ability to transform the natural into something outside of nature.” (11) this divide creates an insoluble contradiction for environmental ethics in its current formulations. it seems that either we think of nature as everything that exists by and for itself without the interference of humans, or else we make room for a larger conception of nature that also includes what humans do as being part of nature. but here’s the problem: if we consider humans as part of nature, then there’s no reason to consider, say, hydroelectric dams as any more unnatural than beaver dams and cities are no more or less than the habitats we create that are most natural for us. but if we leave human activity out of the equation, then it becomes problematic to find untouched nature, and to determine how far back we have to go before the influence of mankind spoiled it. after all, it appears highly likely that humans caused the extinction of the wooly mammoth in pleistocene times. environmentalists have avoided this contradiction by trading on an equivocation. they use “nature” to mean “wild, untouched and self-determining” when it suits them, but then they make an aboutface and insist that humans are part of nature when it comes time to formulate an action plan. he sees an “odd inconsistency” if the nature we are called on to preserve is nonhuman nature. the environmentalists who worry about the destruction of nature also believe that “humans need to learn to live more in accordance with nature.”(11) human anthropocentrism, the unwillingness to accept that bo ok r ev iew s 110 we should live more within the natural order of things rather than seek to transform them more to our liking, is the source of the problem. “but if the production of a toaster or the changing of a temperature or the restoring of a prairie involves the transformation of nature into something that is no longer natural, then it is not at all clear that humans are embedded in nature.”(12) here is the crux of the contradiction: if human actions are outside nature, then what could it possibly mean to advocate that we live more in tune with nature? conversely, if we humans are in fact part of nature, then so are our buildings—and this leaves the environmentalists without a cause. there is no basis for bemoaning technology. some environmentalists would have it that the value of untouched nature is its independence. others, its diversity or richness. therefore, we have an obligation to help preserve its diversity. but how do we get from this definition to an obligation? what if we try to assert that there is something wrong with human-created global warming that extends beyond its effect on other humans and into its effect on the natural order of things? we could say, “yes, but its going to be very destructive,” but in the larger sense, this assertion is simply untrue. it will be just as productive as it is destructive. so we could amend that statement and say that it will be very disruptive, which is certainly true, but disruption is itself entirely natural and goes on all the time out in nature. so we could amend it still more and say that it will be disruptive at a speed and scale rarely found in nature, and that is also certainly true, but then that is not always the case either—nature can be astoundingly disruptiveand in short order: every time a volcano blows, for example, or a 100-year drought occurs. so, if there’s nothing we are doing or causing that nature doesn’t already, then where is the foul? thus, vogel thinks we do well to abandon the word “nature” altogether as a source of guidance for an environmental ethic. but he notes one last way the word nature is used, and this is why environmentalists have been resistant to abandoning it: it is often used normatively, natural is associated with what’s right, and unnatural is associated with what’s wrong. but taking nature as a guide for right and wrong human action is going to lead to some pretty odd results. think of what a spider does with its prey. so, he says, trying to act more ‘naturally’ in this sense scarcely seems like a good idea. vogel concludes that nature is a useless concept, not only because there seems to be so little of it remaining, not only because we cannot seem to decide whether we are part of it or not, but also because it book reviewprovides no moral guidance—only circularity. it becomes something more like a religion based in a set of unprovable assumptions and less like a set of rational reasons underlying prescriptions for how we should act. he wants to drop nature, and adopt “environment,” which includes the built environment, into an environmental philosophy. thus, if we want to ground an environmental ethic, it will have to be that certain actions and products are bad or good for us humans—and we will just have to bring the rest of nature along with us. it is logically impossible to protect nature’s independence from us. all environment—shopping malls as well as the amazon river basin are equally potentially capable of moral consideration. part of my hesitation in fully embracing this line of thought lies in how vogel analyzes the concept of nature: much like a blender analyzes an avocado. you hate to congratulate him for liquifying a perfectly useful idea (within its limits) into something unrecognizable. most any concept can be found to contain contradictions and irrationalities when pushed to its limits, but this should not cause us to abstain from the entire notion— which is what vogel wants us to do. his point that environmentalists conveniently equivocate is well taken, but should that not be a reason to demand clarity from them and not necessarily a reason to abandon the term “nature”? i still think there is a commonsense meaningfulness to being in touch with or alienated from nature that finds expression in such useful antidotes as the boy scouts, the national parks, treks into wilderness, dismay when native species are overrun by invaders, the desire to clean up roadside trash, immense sadness at the barrenness caused by coral bleaching, and so many more instances. are we really supposed to give up on the idea that getting to appreciate what goes on outside of human purposes provides a source of moral import even if not a source of moral guidance? bo ok r ev iew s 112 where i really want to take issue, however, comes in the last chapters, where he reduces environmental ethics to democratic politics. he says that since mountains and wolves cannot speak for themselves, then only humans in dialogue can speak up for them. this idea seems to leave no point of triangulation from which to critique what those humans in dialogue decide for the wolves. in fact, i find this surprisingly naive— philosophically as well as socially. it almost seems a desperate move. apart from this disappointment, however, he does quite a nice job analyzing the tragedy of the commons in relation to global warming. he argues that the problem is not that any individual’s contribution to the problem is negligible, and therefore futile to hold accountable, but rather it is the lack of mechanisms by which individuals can band together to act for the common good that lead to tragic results. as i was reading this section, i realized that the tragedy of the commons just is the state of nature. architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies in the u.s. possible. the journal also acknowledges the support of the dfg (german research foundation) and bamberg university that made the conference “the human in architecture and philosophy” possible (bamberg, germany, july 19th to 22nd 2016). furthermore, the journal acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members at ispa events. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey, adapted for this issue by martin düchs. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university this issue is printed in germany by bamberg university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley guest editors martin düchs, ph.d., ludwigs-maximilianuniversity, munich christian illies, ph.d., oxford university editors christoph baumberger, ph.d., university of zurich carolyn fahey, ph.d., newcastle university stefan koller, ph.d., delft university of technology editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk ersoy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com contents aleksandar kostic 136aporia in architectural design 94editorial 106gerry adlerarchitecture is concealed unto itself: helmuth plessner and his influence on twentieth-century architecture 160graham owenthe anthropology of a smoke-filled room: ethnography and the human at oma 214roger scrutonaesthetic education and design 190karsten harriesut architectura philosophia? questioning the relationship of architecture and philosophy martin düchs & christian illies original papers conference paper philosophie engagé isparchitecture.com some have said that it was fire and water which were initially responsible for bringing men together into communities, but we, considering how useful, even indispensable, a roof and walls are for men, are convinced that it was they that drew and kept men together. 1 these remarks on architecture’s social function are taken from giovanni battista alberti´s de re aedificatoria, in which he searches for underlying principles behind the architectural categories and concepts of vitruvius. this passage expresses both an underlying principle of social life and awards architecture a unique role in relation to society: because four walls and a roof bind a group of people together they are a force that fashions a society. alberti, however, bases society also on a strong notion of the individual human being; and thus for him, architecture’s second, and equally important focus must be the individual. this focus is, as he emphasizes, a necessary precondition for the socially important varietas (variety) of the city. in the beginning of the fourth of his ten books, dedicated to the scrutiny of “works of a public nature”, he writes: it is obvious that buildings were made to serve man. […] buildings were designed for life´s necessities, others offer themselves for practical requirements, while still others are for occasions of pleasure, […]. yet, when we look around at the quantity and the variety of buildings, it is easy to understand that […] the range of different works depends principally on we [...] must begin here, by considering human variety in greater detail “ ” the need for a philosophical anthropology of architecture martin düchs & christian illies ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 95 ed it or ia l the variation within human nature. if we wish to give an accurate account of the various types of buildings (as was our intention) and of their constituent elements, our whole method of investigation must open and begin here, by considering human variety in greater detail; since buildings arose on man´s account, and for his needs they vary; so that they may be dealt with more clearly by distinguishing their individual characteristics.2 for alberti, only if the individuality of human beings is taken as the starting point, can architecture fulfil its social role; and only then do we understand the task of architecture properly.3 good architecture and good cities care for both society and individual human beings; but the individual must come first. alberti was inspired by the ideals of early modernity which celebrated the re-birth (re-naissance) of individual accomplishment. it was a time when man became a self-aware individual as jacob burckhardt famously stated in the civilization of the renaissance in italy in 1860—at the same time proposing alberti as a true renaissance-man (uomo universale).4 alberti set the tone for subsequent thinkers up to the modern period. the 20th-century’s concern about the role of architecture for society is like a distant echo of his thoughts, but in a lopsided way. modernity often focuses too much on society. equality becomes the prime value and for some the collective gains absolute priority over the individual. not much has changed when we reflect on the digital revolution and other major transformations relating to architecture in the 21st century. debates are largely dominated by ideas and texts of architectural modernity and its tradition that remains biased towards the collective over the individual. for le corbusier or hannes meyer5 and other heroes of this tradition, the individual human plays a subordinate role, despite occasional contradictory utterances (for example in the athens charter).6 to be sure, this is a somewhat simplified picture that forces at least three reservations: first, architectural modernity is not a homogenous movement. one can distinguish at least five strands of early architectural modernity at the beginning of the 20th century: constructivism, functionalism, rationalism and biomorphic and sculptural architecture.7 and especially within biomorphic architecture we can find architects like hugo häring who take the biological functionings of the single human being as their starting point.8 despite this variety of approaches it seems fair to talk about architectural modernity in a more general sense to identify its predominant form (sometimes called “international style” or “neues bauen”), promoted by walter gropius, hannes meyer and le corbusier as dominant figures who sought to tie modernism to social change. second: since world war two, additional varieties in the form of postmodernism or deconstructivism have 96 isparchitecture.com emerged. these movements can be defined as reactions to modernity. however, in retrospect, they did little to challenge its basic precepts. third: several outstanding modernist architects did place the single human being in the centre of their (mostly practical) efforts. alvar aalto, for example, stressed the importance of individual human beings (as nicholas ray has pointed out9). in his address to his old school, the jyvaskyla lyceum, aalto says that in order to make a “cultural contribution” one needs an “unwillingness to ‘move with the stream,’” that can ultimately be transformed into a “love with a critical sensibility […] it is a love that lasts, as it rests on a critically tested foundation. it can result in such a love for the little man that it functions as a kind of guardian when our era’s mechanized lifestyle threatens to strangle the individual and the organically harmonious life.”10 ralph erskine and aldo van eyck embody other prominent examples who consciously aimed to balance concern for both society and the individual as alberti demanded. but these architects are to be regarded as exceptions from the rule. their works are explicitly judged as “humane architecture” in order to distinguish it from the mainstream,11 which means that the latter is obviously seen as somehow less humane and— again—one reason for this is that in general social considerations are regarded as more important than “considering human variety in greater detail.” thus, we can grant the architecture of modernity is more complex than our initial remarks might have suggested while continuing to assert a dominant discourse biased in favour of the social. there are at least three reasons for this bias. first of all architectural modernity continues to derive much of its impetus as a political project that aims at improving the structure of modern societies by architectural means.12 industrialization had brought about modern mass societies, migration to the cities, and diverse social problems of all sorts; and the focus on improving society and the collective is a trademark of the 20th century, not only in architecture but cross post-war intellectual life. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 97 ed it or ia l there was an increasing need to respond to them–socialism, incorporated in architectural modernity, became the most prominent attempt to do so. this impetus continues today in architecture’s insistence that it be part of the solution to global warming and to homelessness. secondly, the dominant architects of the modernist socialism subscribed to the idea that the individual s a product of society and not vice versa. the individual’s reality is an “ensemble of social relations,” as marx famously remarks. as a consequence, architectural modernism understood itself as part of the project to create a better human being, via creating a better architecture for a new society without, for example, unjust privileges. this orientation also explains why equality became the dominant aesthetic guideline for this project. equality, however, can often be mistaken for sameness, and an architecture exclusively guided by this idea tends to create over-homogenous environments. finally, the focus on improving society and the collective is a trademark of the 20th century, not only in architecture but also across post-war intellectual life. most humanities, but philosophy in particular, have replaced the “paradigm of the epistemic subject” (that dominated 18th and 19th century philosophy) by the new “paradigm of inter-subjectivity,” as karl-otto apel famously calls it.13 language is the grand topic of the early 20th century, the age of the linguistic turn; and since language is, by its very nature, a social not individual reality, the turn pushes philosophical reflection towards society. wittgenstein’s “form of life”, habermas’ “discursive community,” or even heidegger’s critique of the modern subject are prime examples of the new paradigm. inspired by nietzsche and heidegger, foucault has even claimed that there is no such thing as the human being: “as the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. and one perhaps nearing its end. […] one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”14 alternative approaches that emphasize the individual human had a short life in the 20th century. most notably, the so-called philosophical anthropology, a school of thought between 1920 and 1960, did not have a lasting influence. its main representatives, max scheler, arnold gehlen, helmuth plessner, ernst cassirer, and hans jonas (the two latter being both members of the tradition in a wider sense), tried to conceptualize what it means to be an individual, yet also a group-oriented social being, in an age of modern science. this movement was never given much attention by anglo-saxon philosophy and stopped rather abruptly on the continent when people like jonas and cassirer had to emigrate and then philosophers 98 isparchitecture.com and sociologists of the frankfurt school began to dominate the philosophical discourse. in a famous paper from 1958, habermas tellingly argued that philosophical anthropology should be entirely replaced by sociology because there is no relevant notion of the individual outside society–and it took him decades to moderate his conviction.15 and this still seems where architectural theory stands today. we find plenty of debate on formal questions, but when it comes to what architecture is about (or what building is for), most discussions focus on society. the topics of the venice biennale for architecture over the last 20 years provide ample evidence: except for the “fundamentals” exhibition in 2014 (rem koolhaas) and partly the exhibitions “out there: architecture beyond building” (aaron betsky 2008) and “next” (deyan sudjic 2002), all of the biennales dealt with either societal or formal problems: “reporting from the front” (alejandro aravena 2016), “common ground” (david chipperfield 2012), “people meet in architecture” (kazujo sejima 2010), “cities, architecture and society” (richard burdett 2006), “metamorph” (kurt w. forster 2004), and “less aesthetics more ethics” (massimiliano fuksas 2000). and so alberti’s second criterion for good architecture and good cities, a focus on the wellbeing of the individual, is still unjustly neglected. a research field that would continue the tradition of philosophical anthropology and apply it to architecture simply does not exist.16 do we need any such endeavour? we believe that it is as much required for any profound philosophy of architecture as for architectural figure 1: venue of the 3rd international ispa-conference “the human in architecture and philosophy”. bamberg: villa concordia ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 99 ed it or ia l theory. alberti can still remind us why architectural sociology, or a philosophy of architecture that focuses on society while neglecting the individual will always be insufficient. on a theoretical level, the relationship between the individual and society seems much more complex than much 20th century sociology and philosophy has assumed. evolutionary and developmental psychology, amongst others, have shown that there are innate individual human needs, desires, and tendencies that have some correspondence in society, but are not simply their product. if architecture wants to respond adequately to this complex interactive relationship between society and the individual, it will have to develop more individualistic and flexible theories than mainstream modernism has been able to supply. environmental psychology has shown that our relationship with buildings is both personal and individual. that is why a traditional sociological theory of architecture will not do. the problem is sharpened by the two conflicting tendencies that characterize our globalized world: one tendency towards multi-culturalism and the other towards an atomistic, uniform consumerism. both tendencies dissolve traditional, more homogenous societies. they demand new architectural strategies of community-building and of guarding people against an overwhelming standardisation and enforced conformism. all of that speaks for an important role of architectural philosophy: it should pave the theoretical way for a more balanced view by adding a practical focus on the individual and the possibilities of creating space for all her needs and desires, thus for the good life within a community. this new research field might be called philosophical architectural anthropology. there is already a research-field called “architectural anthropology” in the anglo-saxon world, but as yet, it is more a sociological or ethnological endeavour than a philosophical. what we need is an investigation that is at least supplemented by philosophical considerations. this is something that is also argued for from within the already existing field of architectural anthropology: the anthropology adjectivized as architectural should be a critical, ethical anthropology that keeps asking fundamental, philosophical questions about what being human and communicating through culture mean and what is best for humans in terms of what is habitable. therefore, anthropology should add to interdisciplinary roots and evolutionary interests—characteristics that accompanied its birth a century ago—an ethical dimension that will provide a new set of questions to evaluate the huge ethnographical and archaeological corpus of information on the diverse human habitats created over the years.17 a first step towards a philosophical architectural anthropology was 100 isparchitecture.com made at the 3rd international conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture from july 19th to 23rd 2016 at bamberg university, germany, with the topic “the human in architecture and philosophy.” some papers have already been published in 2018 in a special issue of architecturephilosophy (apj, vol. 3 no.1/2017); this is the second selection of papers that come out of the conference. we open with gerald adler’s “architecture is concealed unto itself: helmuth plessner and his influence on twentieth-century architecture.” adler presents the architectural implications of german philosopher helmuth plessner’s philosophical anthropology. plessner (1892-1985) saw the human being as characterised by an “excentric positionality,” because humans, unlike animals, are able to self-distance, to be “out of their centre.” having simultaneously different perspectives on oneself constitutes the conditio humana, according to plessner. he specified this ex-centric positionality in the form of three anthropological laws that are also in the centre of gerald adler’s analysis: the law of natural artificiality, the law of mediated immediacy (or immanence and expressivity, the law that is most interesting for the philosophy of architecture,) and the law of nothingness and transcendence, which “drives man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects.”18 buildings are obvious examples of such objects, produced within each society’s architectural culture. adler’s assessment of the importance of plessner’s thought for architecture not only introduces a much-neglected twentieth-century philosopher to an english-speaking audience, but also provides reflections that lie at the very heart of what we call a philosophical architectural anthropology. following adler, we continue our focus on the individual, this time, however, on the individual this new research field might be called philosophical architectural anthropology “ ” creator with aleksandar kostić’s “aporia in architectural design.” an aporia, the experience of irresolvable internal contradictions, emerges when a designer, presented with apparently contradictory requirements, is unsure how to proceed further with her design, and finds that striking out in a new direction is necessary to overcome her perplexity. thus, an initial source of a designer’s dismay becomes both the occasion and demand for creative problem-solving. but, the resolution of this kind of puzzlement in architecture can only arise if the designer understands the conundrum and is fully engaged with the aporia. to explain the creative potential of aporiai, kostić draws on the accounts that plato and aristotle give us in their works before moving into a detailed account of a classic aporia in architecture where the ionic order must turn a corner. he then generalizes from this example to suggest that “aporia has intrinsic value for design and therefore that it should somehow be present in the more abstract subject matter of design itself.”19 graham owen’s paper, “the anthropology of a smoke-filled room: ethnography and the human at oma,” moves us decisively back to a contemporary situation by employing the conceptual tools of bruno latour’s actor network theory and the participant-observation work of albena yaneva to dissect the labour practices and ensuing working conditions of the celebrated dutch architectural office. the article contrasts the relative absence of discussion of issues of labour and working conditions in other studies of oma with their prominence in recent work by observers of architectural education and by activist academics such as peggy deamer, paolo tombesi and mabel wilson. a clearly ethical concern with the well-being of individuals underlies this discussion, not of architectural objects, but of potentially abusive processes which give rise to architectural objects. the last two papers derive from keynotes from the 3rd international ispa-conference by two great figures in the philosophy of architecture who, not at all coincidentally, happen to be two champions of the human individual in architecture. they have consciously kept their oral style. in his reflections on “ut architectura philosophia? questioning the relationship of architecture and philosophy”, karsten harries considers the mutual inspiration of philosophy and architecture, their relationship and their mutual contributions to one another. to look at philosophy’s contribution to architecture more closely, harries begins by asking what it means that architecture should build for humans. by reference to observations by vitruvius, hegel, and le corbusier, harries argues that “the requirements of human dwelling resist their reduction to the need 102 isparchitecture.com for physical shelter or functional frames for certain activities. not only the body, the spirit, too, needs shelter, shelter especially from the terror of time.” he then considers how architecture might influence philosophy. harries looks at heidegger, his important source of inspiration, and focusses on the need of humans to dwell and find a place—physically but also self-reflectively, thus philosophically. in his the ethical function of architecture (1997), a classic of the heidegger-based phenomenological tradition of the philosophy of architecture, harries had argued for the power of buildings to interpret the most fundamental truths of human existence, and to give humans a place and thus ethical orientation. does that assertion still hold or is our modern society un-representable by architecture? harries renews his earlier position powerfully by focussing on the challenges of modernity that seem to refuse a dwelling-place. consequently, our world is most adequately represented by the decorated shed (a term popularized by robert venturi), a functional building with a superficial aesthetic addition. this shed becomes a “potent figure for the spiritual situation of this age, which tends covers up the spiritual poverty that is the price of our objectification of reality, with an often borrowed aesthetic veneer.” but we are in need of more, he argues. humans still have to find a meaningful place. to what extent architecture, or even reasonbased philosophy, might still be able to provide the much needed orientation, must remain somewhat open. while karsten harries is a founding father of contemporary phenomenological philosophy of architecture, roger scruton’s the aesthetics of architecture (1979) plays the same role for the entire analytic tradition of philosophy of architecture. the title of his keynote from the bamberg-conference, “aesthetic education and design,” indicates his central contribution to a philosophical architectural ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 103 ed it or ia l anthropology: we need a fundamental architectural education, scruton argues, “in which pattern, composition, and the idea of fit are given a proper place, and in which function and utility are regarded as the consequences of beauty and not prior requirements that must be independently fulfilled.” only such an education can work as an “antidote” to the kind of “depersonalised madness that had possessed the schools of architecture and town planning in the wake of the second world war.” its desire has been and still is, he critiques, a “total solution” and thus a “total control in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying whole settlements and cities.” since this madness is inhuman, to fight it via education (and in keynotes) becomes a moral obligation. the new education must “transmit a culture that embodies shared conceptions of life and discovered solutions to life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how to live at peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you dislike them.” given scruton’s well-known public engagement for re-establishing beauty in the public space, it comes to no surprise that his keynote turned into philosophie engagé, a passionate philippica for a new education and for beauty as a primary goal in architectural design. and since few escape the vigour of his pen and voice, his keynote obviously provoked critical responses at the bamberg-conference. this provides an excellent basis for a debate about his theses. in a future issue of architecture philosophy we would like to present several responses to scruton’s plea for changes to architectural education and his attack on the apparent failure of most architectural modernism. we hope in this way to further a stated goal of the journal to provide a forum for ongoing discussions and continue these exchanges in subsequent issues. next to contemplation, engaged argumentation, debates and disagreement are the elixir of philosophical life. according to thomas kuhn, strong debates and heavy disagreements can also mark the crisis of an existing paradigm and the search for a new one. it seems fair to argue that architecture is currently in a crisis and struggling about what sort of answer it can provide in the modern world shaken by environmental, societal and political crisis, in which the over-challenged, homeless individual still has to find his or her place to dwell. and this place must be built. we hope that a flourishing philosophical architectural anthropology will contribute to it being a good one. martin düchs and christian illies isparchitecture.com endnotes [1] leon battista alberti, on the art of building. in ten books, translated by joseph rykwert, neil leach and robert tavernor (cambridge, mass, london: mit press, 1988 [1452]) prologue, 3. [2] ibid., book iv, chap. 1, p.92. [3] hanno-walter kruft, a history of architectural theory. from vitruvius to the present. (new york: princeton architectural press., 1994), 49. [4] see: jacob burckhardt, the civilization of the renaissance in italy (new york: modern library, 2002 [1860]). [5] the writings of the former bauhaus director (1928-1930) hannes meyer are probably the most striking example for the ideas mentioned. in his essay “die neue welt” from 1926 he states for example as follows: „die gemeinschaft beherrscht das einzelwesen. […] das sicherste kennzeichen wahrer gemeinschaft ist die befriedigung gleicher bedürfnisse mit gleichen mitteln. das ergebnis solcher kollektivforderung ist das standardprodukt.” hannes meyer, „die neue welt“ in: das werk 13 (7, 1926), 205. online: http://www. cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/autoren/meyer/ meyer1926.htm. [6] see especially the §87 of the athens charter of the ciam. le corbusier, the athens charter (new york: grossman publishers 1973), 101. [7] see: jürgen pahl, architekturtheorie des 20. jahrhunderts (münchen, london, new york: prestel, 1999), 54. [8] see peter blundell-jones, hugo häring. the organic versus the geometric (stuttgart: ed. axel menges, 1999). [9] nicholas ray, aalto (new haven: yale university press, 2005). [10] quoted in göran schildt, ed.: alvar aalto in his own words (new york: rizzoli international, 1998). ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 105 ed it or ia l [11] see: mats egelius ed., ralph erskine: the humane architect. ad architectural design vol 47 (11-12, ad profile 9. london, architectural design, 1977). see also: winfried nerdinger, ed.: alvar aalto. toward a human modernism (munich, london, new york: prestel, 1999) [12] le corbusier concludes his seminal book toward an architecture from 1923 with considerations about architecture as the key to solve societal problems: “c’est une question de bâtiment qui est à la clé de l’équilibre rompu aujourd’hui : architecture ou révolution.” le corbusier, vers une architecture (collection de “l’esprit nouveau”. paris: éditions crès, 1923) [13] see: otto apel, „die kommunikationsgemeinschaft als transzendentale voraussetzung der sozialwissenschaften,“ in transformation der philosophie, (vol. 2, 1972), 220–263. [14] michel foucault, the order of things. an archaeology of the human sciences. (london routledge, 2006), 442. [15] jürgen habermas, “philosophische anthropologie“ in alwin diemer und ivo frenzel, ed., fischer lexikon philosophie (frankfurt a.m.: fischer, 1958), 18–35. [16] there is social or cultural anthropology of architecture, but these sciences dwell upon different issues and mostly place, again, society in the centre. [17] mari-jose amerlinck, “the meaning and scope of architectural anthropology,” in mari-jose amerlinck, ed., architectural anthropology (westport, ct: bergin & garvey, 2001), 1–26. [18] helmuth plessner, die stufen des organischen und der mensch: einleitung in die philosophische anthropologie (berlin: de gruyter, 1928), reprinted 1975 (berlin: de gruyter), sammlung göschen 2200. [19] the quote is taken from aleksandar kostić’s paper in this volume. isparchitecture.com architecture is concealed unto itself: helmuth plessner and his influence on twentieth-century architecture gerald adler introduction nestling in, moving along, feeling one’s way, occupying space, the thousand ways of living within our postures and giving the silent image of spaces and planes through such postures an immediate connection to me, these are the ways to understand architecture. we always have to feel such an image and its ideal system of expression on our own body in order to taste the sense of a building. the purely ornamental, the effect of light, the qualities of materials form a meaningful structure, if not consciously, then in a more or less immediate reaction to the artificially formed world of space.1 by any measure, this is an inspiring, evocative, and illuminating text that feels absolutely of the moment. that it was written almost one hundred years ago by an aspirant former student of zoology on his way to obtaining a chair in philosophy at the university of göttingen, gives pause for thought. the writer was helmuth plessner, and the field of study he made his own was philosophical anthropology. the purpose of this paper is to elucidate plessner’s thinking and the relationship philosophical anthropology had with architecture. biographical sketch helmuth plessner was born into an affluent family of jewish descent in wiesbaden, in 1892. nestling in, moving along, feeling one’s way, occupying space, the thousand ways of living within our postures [...] “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 107 ge r a ld a dl er a bright schoolboy, he went on to study medicine, and then zoology and philosophy in heidelberg. on the eve of the first world war he moved to göttingen to study phenomenology under edmund husserl. he was appointed professor of philosophy in cologne in 1926, having already published his first major work, the unity of the senses (die einheit der sinne, 1923). within two years at cologne he had published what is generally regarded as his magnum opus, the levels of the organic and man (die stufen des organischen und der mensch, 1928). seven years later he was dismissed from his post, and, after a short stay in istanbul, was offered refuge in holland with a chair in sociology in groningen. as the war progressed, he went underground in holland but returned to germany in 1951. numerous writings followed, leading to his collected works being published by suhrkamp by 1985, the year of his death.2 plessner, who wrote his key texts in the years of the weimar republic, has been largely absent within architectural discourse, especially in comparison with the attention afforded his contemporary, martin heidegger, with whom plessner shares some common interests, particularly as regards the architectural implications of his thinking. his work on the concept of what he termed ‘ex-centricity’ is the cornerstone of philosophical anthropology; indeed, similar to heidegger, plessner’s language—his images and metaphors—make explicit references to human spatial relationships, and indeed to the culture of architecture. plessner deserves to be seen in the light of the great upsurge in philosophical enquiry and critical thinking emanating from weimar germany in the 1920s, alongside the likes of theodor adorno, walter benjamin, ernst cassirer, arnold gehlen, martin heidegger, siegfried kracauer, and max scheler.3 plessner’s house before dealing with plessner the philosopher let us consider the house he commissioned for himself and his wife in göttingen (figure 1). on his return to postwar germany in 1951, plessner took up the newly-founded chair in sociology at the university of göttingen, married monika tintelnot, and commissioned the architect lucy hillebrand (1906-97) to build their house in the eastern suburbs of the town. hillebrand was an inspired choice, being both local as well as a convinced and thoughtful modernist.4 from the north entrance side the house appears single storey; this belies the fact that it is built into a sloping site. it is rendered white, with a low-pitched hipped roof: sachlich, simple and straightforward, a 1950s rendering of a 1920s neues bauen house. the layout of the (upper) ground level is surprising, the orthogonal lines of the exterior softening 108 isparchitecture.com into an organic essay of a curved staircase leading down to the guest bedrooms beneath. the private quarters of plessner, hard by the entrance, give onto a free-planned workroom. beyond, visible through glass doors and panels, is a narrow gallery lined with bookcases, enveloping the top section of a doubleheight void overlooking the guest and reception areas beneath (figure 2). these give directly onto the garden. the house is one of a family of villas designed by hillebrand in post-war west germany, all of which continue the theme of external restraint combined with internal freedom of layout.5 evident from the plan, the house abounds in fluid spatial transitions from one area to the next;6 its organic composition resembles that of the houses of hans scharoun and hugo häring, and as the sociologist heike delitz has recounted, “hillebrand designed by virtually dancing through her spaces. bodily movement in space was her guiding principle; […] plessner explained ‘designed’ more precisely, in that she drew for him, and they ‘spurred each other on’ figure 1: lucy hillebrand, plessner house, göttingen (1951-52). view of house from garden. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 109 ge r a ld a dl er in this creative work, as monika plessner has recounted […] a bauhaus, then, instead of heidegger’s hut.”7 delitz’s point with this final, acid aphorism is that plessner’s engagement with modernism and the development of architecture was a positive and creative one, immersive in the practice, theory and politics of contemporary design, as opposed to the freiberg professor’s haughty withdrawal from it in his todtnauberg retreat.8 in the words of tom spector, “while plessner was engaging the modern condition, heidegger was retreating from it. while heidegger bemoans modern alienation, plessner tells us that such alienation is actually the human condition. whereas heidegger wants to get at the headwaters of conventions, plessner prefers to take us as we present ourselves. where heidegger retreats, plessner is convivial.”9 plessner’s göttingen house, in its ‘natural artificiality,’ its ‘mediated immediacy,’ and its ‘utopian transcendence,’ resembles in all its complexities the houses of josef frank, with their inner spatial gymnastics contrasted with their external simplicity of form, plane, and line (figure 3).10 we shall deal with these three concepts, the lynchpins of plessner’s philosophical anthropology, in the main section of this paper, and then explain the relevance of the vienneseborn architect frank (1885-1967). plessner was straightforward and uncomplicated in his understanding that “[a]rchitecture, on account of rationally understandable functional concepts, presents the object with its meaning, a house, a staircase, a garden.”11 for plessner, these ‘functional’ elements are also clear conveyors of ‘cultural’ meaning: we see a staircase, and know that it will take us up to the floor above. it is wonderful to imagine plessner and hillebrand ‘dancing’ the göttingen house into being. and yet plessner had already described such an embodied approach to space, anticipating maurice merleau-ponty’s later writings, as the extraordinary passage from his 1923 book the unity figure 2: lucy hillebrand, plessner house, göttingen (1951-52). view from plessner’s workroom to the library gallery and the garden beyond. 110 isparchitecture.com of the senses quoted at the start of this paper makes clear. plessner built an edifice through his work in philosophical anthropology based on human positionality. it is complex and nuanced, and has ramifications for architecture that are similarly complex and nuanced and that are, moreover, suspicious of radicalism for its own sake. having given a sense of plessner’s architectural interests and preferences, it is now time to delve into his concepts of philosophical anthropology and the all-important term ‘positionality.’ plessner’s philosophical anthropology philosophical anthropology deals with questions like ‘what is man?’ and ‘what is man’s place in the nature of things?’ as opposed to the more philosophically fundamental ‘what is being?’ the german sociologist joachim fischer (president of the helmuth plessner society from 2011 until 2017) has distinguished philosophical anthropology (the capital letters denote its distinctiveness), the figure 3: lucy hillebrand, plessner house, göttingen (1951-52). upper floor (main entrance level) plan. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 111 ge r a ld a dl er special movement within german philosophy of the 1920s, from a more generalised philosophical interest in anthropology.12 following fischer’s distinction, this paper will capitalise ‘philosophical anthropology’ to demarcate philosophical anthropology (no capital letters) from plessner’s particular take on it. plessner’s claim for philosophical anthropology is that it provides “a clarification of the position of man in the world.”13 plessner formulated his thinking about philosophical anthropology at the same time as martin heidegger conceived his fundamental ontology, although it derives from very different premises. in brief, where heidegger’s ontological starting point is man’s temporal sense of being (‘dasein’, roughly, ‘being’, or ‘being-there’, to use a word of heidegger’s) in the world, plessner begins with man’s spatial relationships, with other humans, creatures, and the wider environment. with this in mind, it is all the more surprising that he has been so neglected by architectural culture, especially in light of the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities of recent years. plessner came from a background in the natural sciences, a field of knowledge requiring plain and straightforward language, a language that, moreover, has to act as an adjunct to non-verbal forms of communication, such as drawings, diagrams, and photographs, akin to architectural communication.14 immersed in transcendental philosophy in parallel with and subsequent to studies to those in medicine and zoology, plessner sought to answer goethe’s wish that kant’s critique of pure reason (kritik der reinen vernunft) be completed by a critique of the senses (kritik der sinne).15 in a nutshell, this was to be plessner’s contribution to knowledge, initiated with his the unity of the senses and substantiated with his main text the levels of organic being and man five years later.16 in this book we find plessner’s one substantive contribution to philosophical vocabulary: the word ‘ex-centric’ in the sense of “out of the centre.”17 the levels failed to sustain the same degree of interest as the key contemporaneous work of phenomenological philosophy, heidegger’s being and time, either in the field of philosophy or, as this paper focuses on, that of architecture.18 the reason, perhaps, is due to its interdisciplinary nature: plessner was a trained biologist, and indeed of the seven chapters of the levels, it is only the final one, ‘the sphere of man,’ that fully fleshes out his philosophical anthropology. man’s ex-centric ‘positionality’ plessner posits that, at the (human) observable scale of biological life, each organism’s position relative to that of others, and to the environment, 112 isparchitecture.com is a decisive factor in our understanding its motivations and dasein. viewed in terms of an ascending hierarchy in the natural world, plants have fixed positions in the world, whereas animals move freely. they have, according to plessner, different kinds of ‘positionality.’ human beings have the additional characteristic of being aware of their positionality and of being able to reflect upon it. they have ‘ex-centric positionality.’ seen in the context of architecture, the concept of man´s ex-centric positionality has interesting implications, both for the way we perceive our position in the world, in reference to our surroundings, and in the way designers conceive, propose, and make such environments. first of all, architecture provides a way of understanding ex-centricity through the developing means of representing buildings in the early decades of the twentieth century where, in avant-garde circles, the axonometric projection began to be favoured by architects in preference to the perspective, as a means of conceiving and representing the objective realities of a building’s formal composition.19 the axonometric, famously, is a more analytical representation of a building from which we are able to scale off accurate dimensions, and does not depend upon the single human observer and viewpoint demanded by the perspective. it is emblematic of a disinterested abstraction, ‘ex-centric,’ as opposed to the perspective’s centredness on the human (and one particular human’s) eye. the human viewpoint of the perspective, as opposed to other apparently more dispassionate and objective architectural projections, is the main topic of robin evans’s groundbreaking study, the projective cast, and alberto pérez-gómez and louise pelletier’s book architectural representation and the perspective hinge.20 these were published in the late 1990s, in the wake of a renewed and sustained interest in architectural drawing for its own sake, on the part of avant-garde human beings have ‘ex-centric positionality.’ “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 113 ge r a ld a dl er architects and students, and on the brink of the computer revolution in architectural practice that would fundamentally change the way buildings are imagined and produced.21 in recent years, the ubiquity of digital means of representation and architectural production has multiplied the questions regarding man’s position with respect to architecture, in an era where images are commonly projected onto flat screens and scaled up or down at will into virtual space.22 we cannot claim that buildings and places have any views of their own positions in the world, be they objective or subjective. what may be argued, though, is that people who imagine or make buildings and places, ‘architects,’ have, in modern times and places, steadily developed an ex-centric view of their work that has tended to locate them outside, and separate from, the work itself, and, moreover, with heightened abilities to reflect on their work dispassionately. to be ‘outside the work itself ’ means having the mental ability to regard the world dispassionately, where ‘outside’ is seen as being increasingly separate from the sentient self, while ‘heightened abilities’ may be understood as belonging to the increasingly independent and ‘professional’ architect, no longer (quite so) subservient to the whims and interests of a powerful and socially superior patron. such an ‘ex-centric’ position is a particularly twentieth-century, ‘modern,’ disposition of architects as practitioners, theorists, and historians who stand broadly against the ‘autonomy’ of architecture, seeking instead to couple it with other disciplines, most notably sociology in the 1960s, linguistics in the 1970s, critical theory in the 1980s, and so on. the ‘criticality’ at large in the humanities and social sciences has noticeably extended into architectural design and has gained increased traction in the last decades. examples from the last decades would be post-modernism in architecture, where criticality issuing originally from linguistics has been a powerful influence upon architectural theory and practice (for instance, in the work of charles jencks, denise scott brown, and robert venturi). ‘critical architecture’ has had a significant impact on post-1980s design theory and practice, where psychoanalysis, feminism, and most notably derridean deconstruction has had a profound influence upon architects as diverse as jennifer bloomer, daniel libeskind, and peter eisenman.23 the architect, as artist and agent, is emblematic of a renewed philosophic interest in the question of “how to combine the perspective of a particular person inside the world with an objective view of that same world, the person and his viewpoint included. it is a problem that faces every creature with the impulse and the capacity to transcend its particular point of view and to conceive of the world as a whole.”24 114 isparchitecture.com plessner’s emphasis on space and position as opposed to time and occasion is probably his most important contribution to architectural culture, and is the subject of the next section of this paper. the finitude of human beings published in the same year as the now more famous being and time, plessner’s the levels similarly explores the philosophical implications of man’s finitude. the substantive difference is that whereas heidegger sees finitude in its temporal sense (‘we will all die’), plessner regards our spatial limitations and relationships as more compelling (‘we are all located in different places, and in a constantly changing relationship to those places’).25 he goes on to maintain that ‘human beings live in three worlds: an outer world (aussenwelt), an inner world (innenwelt), and the shared world of culture (mitwelt).26 this more nuanced and holistic sense of the world, derived from a biological understanding of plant, animal, and human life-forms, challenges cartesian dualism and is furthermore at odds with descartes in an additional elaboration. plessner maintains there is a ‘double aspectivity’ to life, at least as it appears to us humans. we experience the world ‘from an inner and outer perspective’ and have a double vocabulary when describing ourselves in the world.27 there are contrasting outer-world concepts such as ‘body’ (‘körper’) or ‘living body’ (‘leib’) and inner-world ones such as ‘soul’ (‘seele’) and ‘lived experience’ (‘erlebnis’); and, as far as the mitwelt (a word translated by jos de mul as ‘[shared] world of culture’) goes, ‘i’ (‘ich’) and ‘we’ (‘wir’). this is indeed an elaboration, or perhaps a circumvention, of the mind-body problem bequeathed by descartes. plessner’s three anthropological laws in the final chapter of the levels, ‘the human sphere’, plessner outlines his three anthropological ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 115 ge r a ld a dl er laws that follow from his understanding of man’s ex-centric positionality and his finitude. these are (i) the law of natural artificiality, (ii) the law of mediated immediacy, and (iii) the law of the utopian standpoint. 1. natural artificiality the law of natural artificiality, in a clear nod to heidegger’s thinking, states that man uses artificial means (technology) to overcome his ‘constitutive homelessness’.28 as an excentric being standing in disequilibrium, out of place and time, constitutively homeless, [man] has to “become something” and form his own equilibrium. […] man wishes to escape the unbearable excentricity of his being, he wishes to compensate for the dichotomy [hälftenhaftigkeit] of his own lifeform and he can only manage to do this with things that are sufficiently heavy to weigh on the scales of his existence.29 plessner goes on to specify what it is that supplies this corrective to man’s ex-centricity: culture. to put it simply, as jos de mul does in his introduction to his edited book on plessner, “[t]he world of culture and technology is the expression of the desire of human beings to bridge the distance that separates them from the world, their fellow man and themselves.”30 what better combination of culture and technology is there than architecture? plessner understands architecture as ‘artificial,’ certainly, but its artificiality is natural to man as he is currently constituted. here plessner makes common ground with his contemporary, the philosopher arnold gehlen, for whom man, the deficient being (‘mängelwesen’), has to build his own world, before he can ‘be’: “man is naturally a cultural being.”31 plessner’s law of natural artificiality is an ontological response, one that answers man’s existential need for a secure place in the world. plessner recognises that since man is compelled, through his type of existence, to lead the life that he actually lives, that is, to make what he is – since he only is when he accomplishes things–he needs a complement of an unnatural nature to which he is unaccustomed. because of this he is by his very nature, by dint of his form of existence, artificial. as an ex-centric being that is not in equilibrium, standing in the void, placeless, timeless, constitutively homeless, he has to “become something” and to create his own equilibrium. and he creates this only with the assistance of unnatural things that emerge from his creation when the results of this creative making are granted their own heft.32 plessner makes it absolutely clear that culture, the very essence of natural 116 isparchitecture.com artificiality, requires both mind and hand; it is, as he puts it, “sucked out of the fingers: intelligence and manual dexterity lie at the root of the origin of the use of tools and of culture.”33 2. mediated immediacy: immanence and expressivity plessner’s second anthropological law, mediated immediacy (subtitled ‘immanence and expressivity’), speaks of the centrality of culture and technology in enabling man to express himself and his ex-centric position in the world. “man can only invent insofar as he discovers,” in other words, man can only mediate things and conditions that are immediately available to him.34 “[man’s] productivity is only a pretext by which discovery becomes occurrence and gains substance,” a sentiment that finds an immediate echo in the writings of his contemporary, the architect hugo häring (18821958).35 häring asks us to “call on things and let them unfold their own forms. it goes against our nature to impose forms on them, to determine them from without, to force upon them laws of any kind, to dictate to them.”36 form finding has become the mantra of organic architecture ever since and shares its vitalism with that of plessner and others from the first decades of the twentieth-century.37 however, we would be mistaken in thinking that the architectural implications of plessner’s second law are limited to the organic: let us not forget the adjective ‘mediated’ that plessner couples with ‘immediacy.’ cultural activities may well begin with the world as experienced, but they soon develop trajectories of their own, ‘aesthetics’ if you will, in order to express and make intelligible any particular ethos. certainly, reading the speech that he gave at the german werkbund’s twenty-fifth anniversary conference in berlin, in 1932, it is evident that plessner alludes to the architecture of the bauhaus, and to the benefits of the flat roof, while criticising the overtly aesthetic tendencies of the international plessner’s three anthropological laws 1. natural artificiality 2. mediated immediacy 3. utopian standpoint “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 117 ge r a ld a dl er style and its followers. for instance, in answer to the question of a how a designed object should appear, and what it should look like, plessner (ironically) replies, “it should be beautiful!” he then goes on to explain that “this painterly view is somehow to be seen as superseded. […] a room is there for living in. a chair is there for sitting in.”38 by the end of the section on this second law, plessner has expanded his thesis. he can now claim that, as a “law, […] in the end people do not know what they do, but only experience it through history.”39 this second law is one that poses problems for those seeking a single architectural direction from plessner, for surely the demands of extreme functionalism, exemplified by the organic architecture of häring, compete directly with those of formalism and historicism. however, for plessner, culture is always at least one step removed from the body’s physiology; his phenomenology never leads to an over-simplistic manifestation of function, which for him is always historically embedded. the architectural import of his second law leans more towards the claims of history and the memorability of received forms of buildings, and chimes with plessner’s own maturing views by 1932 elaborated in the following section, with an inclusiveness and largeness of character that leads to an ‘open’ architecture, and one, moreover, that is able to accommodate historical precedent. plessner is reticent as to what ‘open form’ might actually mean for architecture. in his werkbund speech in which he alluded to such epicentres of avantgarde design as dessau, rotterdam, and amsterdam, plessner praised asymmetrical layouts and (especially) the flat roof, both emblematic of bauhaus architecture, as examples of ‘openness.’ the flat roof, in particular, lacks a conventional termination, and so is open to possibilities of buildings being stacked one on top of another.40 this second law is, therefore, ambiguous regarding its implications for architecture. on the one hand, and of great relevance to one strand of the neues bauen, it has an obvious relationship with the organic functionalism of häring; on the other, with the demands of history and the importance of a continuing tradition, it represents the antithesis of functionalism. josef frank’s interwar work—about which more later— comprising well-wrought buildings and pithy writings, represents perhaps the ideal balance between the demands of invention and of tradition. one aspect of tradition that links viennese aesthetics with plessner’s demand for expressivity is the mask. here one thinks of plessner’s playful and insightful essay “the smile,” concerning the subtleties of the facial expression that is for him the most human of all our (dis)guises.41 the mask was certainly something that adolf loos railed against in his 118 isparchitecture.com writings even if his executed buildings, with their spatially rich interiors of raumplan, their mixed palette of materials, and with their owners’ eclectic furnishings, are all ‘hidden’ by the white-painted render of their exteriors.42 his buildings, especially the houses, invariably have clear boundaries, even if these boundaries belie complexities within. loos believed that the exterior of a building should have a neutral public presence. this would be apostrophised by the professor of literature helmut lethen as ‘public coolness,’ which plessner “[sought] to turn […] into a medium that accepts vitalizing boundaries.”43 the mask for plessner acts as an essential distancing mechanism, a human mediation of the immediacy of the external world (aussenwelt) that allows human beings to be in the world. for lethen, plessner’s sociological discovery of roles as a protective medium is informed by nietzsche’s claim that every profound spirit needs a mask; his anthropology centres on this paradox: ‘only masked is man entirely real’. oscar wilde’s motto – ‘man is least of all himself when he speaks in his own name. give him a mask, and he will tell the truth’ – echoes through plessner’s code of distance.44 human beings’ ex-centric positionality is due to the ‘membrane’ that separates them from their environment.45 the german architect heinrich tessenow’s executed buildings, drawings and writings—an oeuvre that reached its maturity exactly contemporaneous with plessner’s halcyon years of the 1920s—have uncanny echoes of much of the philosopher’s work.46 in an earlier essay, “objectivity or truth in craftsmanship,” tessenow (1876-1950) wrote: “it would be more beautiful, we would form closer human bonds, if we were able to openly show our sorrows and joys or the pipes of our houses and streets etc, everything that concerns us as humans; but we lack the ability to do so, lest such frankness embarrass or hurt us, and so we ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 119 ge r a ld a dl er have much to hide.”47 tessenow acknowledges the mask-like function of architecture that conceals the dreary if not dire facts of human life, and so makes it possible for us to live. his thinking concedes that suppression is necessary in order to allow meaningful expression to emerge, and concurs with plessner’s view that there must be “in every artistic reading […] a distortion of the work, a partisanship, a choice, an emphasis, in a word a distancing alienation, in order to see the object.”48 it is in the city of vienna, the birthplace of psychoanalysis, that ‘mediated immediacy’ found its most obvious outlet, though without the directness and polemical purity that are the hallmarks of weimar germany’s protagonists of the neue sachlichkeit (new objectivity), cognate with interwar modern architecture (neues bauen). within viennese critical writings, too, there is frequently a mismatch between texts and buildings. texts are by their very nature one step removed from the objects they describe or analyse, and so tend to be more polemical and uncompromising than the buildings designed by the same author. one only has to compare loos’s shrill and hectoring writings, for instance, “ornament and crime,” with the architect’s nuanced buildings and interiors, embedded in viennese traditions of biedermeier (the comfortable bourgeois aesthetic of central europe, between neoclassicism and romanticism) as they undoubtedly are.49 on the other hand, in the era of ‘red vienna,’ exactly contemporary with weimar germany in the 1920s, we have the suave cynicism of frank, who later wrote (in his swedish exile), in his famous essay “accidentism”: “the formal rules of art have been preserved through tradition, even though their validity cannot be proven; for that reason, there can be no art without recourse to tradition. since these rules have been consistently observed from the earliest times up to the present day, one can regard them as axioms.”50 frank’s pragmatic and non-partisan views clearly relate to plessner’s more nuanced thinking at the dawn of nazi rule in germany, a point that will be elaborated in the final part of this paper. the tenor of frank’s writing is on a par with the wry wit evident in his buildings and other design work: his architectural thinking is always mediated via understandable and stylistically knowing writings and buildings. this accords well with plessner’s ‘mediated immediacy’ of his second anthropological law, and his recognition that culture and technology are key human faculties that comprise our ontology. 3. utopian standpoint: nothingness and transcendence the third and final law of man’s utopian standpoint is the one that connects plessner most profoundly with questions of philosophical 120 isparchitecture.com ontology. it builds on the mediating role of the second law with the implication for architecture that it is to be located firmly within a historical tradition. its subtitle, ‘nothingness and transcendence,’ seems more distant from the scientific underpinnings of the previous laws, and yet man’s ex-centric being can only result in a belief in transcendence, as a bulwark against nothingness (i.e., the belief in god), or its profane equivalent, a hope in and striving for a brilliant (and atheist) future. “the ex-centric form [of] human existence drives man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects.”51 buildings are obvious examples of such objects, produced within each society’s architectural culture. architecture is central to plessner’s philosophical anthropology as it simultaneously acts in the inner, outer, and ‘with-worlds,’ with the architect as ex-centric agent: “[human existence’s] ex-centric form compels man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects […] its constitutive rootlessness bears witness to the reality of world history.”52 history, together with its twin, memory, is a central human faculty that affords us utopian transcendence, and with this third law, plessner’s philosophical anthropology broadens out to encompass man’s historical nature. it is the law he expresses most succinctly (at some five pages right at the end of the levels, it is significantly shorter than the preceding two laws), but the one to which he returns in his postwar writings in a more expansive mode. he considers the implications that man’s ex-centric position has for history, and for historiography, in his book the belated nation where he states that “only one thing remains of life: memory.”53 and in a late essay he writes: thus man never returns. we have to renounce the romanticism of alienation and homecoming inherent in marxism and admit to ourselves its illusionary human existence’s ex-centric form compels man to engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through a system of artificial objects “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 121 ge r a ld a dl er character. in its optimistic linkage of progress and homecoming marxism is based on an outmoded anthropology, which, still under hegel’s spell, ignores the consequences of insight into the impenetrability of man and the essence of his historicity.54 this is (late) plessner, at his most hard-boiled and without any illusions. it is in complete contrast to the romanticism of heidegger that suggests that appropriate architecture could provide such a refuge from modernity. such a homecoming, expressed in the late 1960s but harking back to the antagonistic polarities of late weimar germany, would be satisfied neither by the nostalgia offered by ferdinand tönnies’s ‘community’ nor by the rigidities of marxist society.55 instead, according to lethen, “plessner contrasts the identikit picture of community as a symbiotic companionship with an idea of society that lacks idyllic features. it is an open system of unencumbered strangers.”56 an open political and social system, moreover, that finds its architectural equivalence in the open form typified by walter gropius’s bauhaus ensemble (1925-26) at dessau. this characterises plessner’s pragmatic turn away from the abstract idealism inherent in marxism to a transcendence which is just out of our reach, lying in the future of some utopian dream, or as plessner concluded in the belated nation, “[e]ven in the apparent finality of fundamental dogmatism [the philosophy of life] remains linked to historical change and in truth ready to awaken those unknown forces that herald what is coming.”57 what might this mean for architecture? in his werkbund speech, plessner claimed that “we have to underline one more point that is important for the success of this train of thought: the dissolution of the private ties through the technical world, the limitation of the private space of human existence, the eradication of private relationships and in place of these eradicated private relationships the gradual coming into being of a public realm.”58 he went on to discuss the bankruptcy of aesthetics, since the aesthetic attitude is no longer valid, it has become in a quite definite sense a private matter. it is the preserve of people of taste, of those who possess time, money and education, who take pleasure in fine things and know what to do with them: however, it is no longer the preserve of the public sphere, no longer the preserve of that unassuming subjectivity of the masses, in which we all participate, like it or not.59 so far, so sachlich. however, in what at first sight appears to be a volteface on the part of plessner, towards the end of his speech he appears to subvert, or soften, his argument: 122 isparchitecture.com but the things with which we are concerned here […] are greater than the things of politics and of political ideology. not only do we have the firm belief, but we already know that the new form-making and the search for new form does not rely upon the socialist train of thought. the hope that this new formworld can only be completely brought about by dint of a proletarian revolution […] we can no longer entertain.60 plessner’s decoupling of the neues bauen from marxist ideology is quite startling in the light of his foregoing polemic. the views of the werkbundists present at the speech are not known, but they— and plessner—must have seen the writing on the wall: hitler had become chancellor by the end of january 1933, and the werkbund was subsequently disbanded.61 yet had the werkbund audience been familiar with plessner’s writings, and with his carefully plotted development of his anthropological laws stemming from his understanding of man’s ex-centricity, then they would have taken his words—prophetic, from our post-communist perspective—in their stride. nine years earlier, one year after the publication of his the unity of the senses, in 1924, he had published limits of community: a critique of social radicalism. it is worth quoting some of its opening remarks, in order to gain the full impact of plessner’s withering assault on dualistic thought, and on the dire consequences such thought would have on political and social life, and, by implication, on architecture: by radicalism we mean generally the conviction that the truly great and good only come about by conscious recourse to the roots of existence; the belief in the healing power of extremes whose method is to make a stand against all traditional values and compromises. […] social radicalism […] is the native world-view of the impatient, sociologically: of the lower classes, biologically: of youth. […] radicalism means dualism. [it is] contemptuous of the conditional, of the ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 123 ge r a ld a dl er limited, of small things and steps, of restraint, or reticence, of unconsciousness, joyful, but only of great things, devout, but only to the mighty, purist, therefore pharisaic, principled, therefore inhibited, fanatic, therefore destructive. the enemy of radicalism is nature.62 plessner is here announcing a new social construct for man, one that recognises its artificiality while acknowledging its anthropological roots in the biological and the natural. conclusion the burden of this paper has been to introduce a relatively unknown philosopher, and to outline the implications his thinking had for architecture. plessner’s philosophical anthropology had little effect on his architect-contemporaries, although aspects of his three ‘laws’ had clear resonance with the buildings of the neues bauen in germanophone europe of the interwar years. we began the paper with a passage from plessner’s the unity of the senses of 1923, one that seemed to presage much of the ‘phenomenological’ architecture we are currently experiencing, followed by the postwar house designed for him and his wife monika by the architect lucy hillebrand. we end with some examples of the work— writings and buildings—of the viennese architect josef frank, already alluded to several times. frank’s ‘compromised’ architecture is less well known than the designs and writings of his viennese peers, most notably adolf loos. the ‘compromise’ (regarded by frank as a virtue) is with stylistic purity in the buildings and dogmatic correctness in the writings. the latter, especially those of the viennese years before his exile, have a pithy irony that speaks to us directly today, as evinced by the recent translation of his collected writings with the foreword written by denise scott brown. in his long essay “architecture as symbol: elements of the german new building” (1931) frank writes about imagin[ing] a world in which people live in small houses in meadows, growing tulips and pursuing arts and crafts of that sort, cut off from the world, peaceful and sedate. all they need grows in their garden, and they know nothing of the rocket ship that will soon fly to the moon. any rush is unnecessary since no one works more than he must, and all find their work fulfilling. such a way of life will seem strange to most today, even if in its straightforwardness it is not absent of all propagandistic pathos and as an ideal is even preferable in some respects. but how few will even see [any] point in shaping something lacking in any 124 isparchitecture.com pathos, even the pathos of absolute primitivism; alas, very few people accept that a pleasant life is always a via media between all kinds of ideals – no person has the same disposition all the time -; and that shaping a pleasant life as a composite of all these ideals is a matter with goals just as consistent and absolute as the goals of those who strive for a single extreme. the fate of modern architecture hinges on achieving this ambition, for its essential function resides in the formation and symbolization of our lives.63 this function of architecture, to form and symbolise our lives, represents in a nutshell how it serves mankind’s ‘positioned’ existence, as expressed in plessner’s three anthropological laws. frank’s house that best exemplifies these twin architectural functions is the beer house, vienna (with oskar wlach, 1929-30; figure 4). in its ‘white’ aesthetic, its simplicity and composition of external form, and the ‘flow’ of major internal spaces, it has much in common with the similarly undoctrinaire, yet unashamedly modern, plessner house of the early 1950s designed by hillebrand. while they both share attributes of modernist aesthetics and planning, they are equally unapologetic about their historical and cultural roots: they exhibit the ‘mediated immediacy’ of plessner’s second anthropological law. frank wrote a sturdy defence of the beer house, “the house as path and place.” to choose just one extract from this admirable essay, one that has a clear relationship to the plessner house, is difficult; nonetheless, when frank writes that “[t] he focus of the house is the sitting area, its piazza,” we can see the connection with the doubled-height salon that hillebrand designed. frank continues: every living room must have a center, around which it is ordered, giving the space its character. in the old days this was more easily accomplished, as there was a fireplace or–even though much less characteristic–the oven. today [1931], at a time when this focus is, more often than not, absent, the organization of the the function of architecture, to form and symbolise our lives, represents in a nutshell how it serves mankind’s ‘positioned’ existence “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 125 ge r a ld a dl er plan has become more difficult, as this center has to be created in architectural terms. the numerous means available for this are windows, niches, columns, etc. it is also the absence of the formal center that renders the rectangular room so uninhabitable.64 figure 4: josef frank with oskar wlach, beer house, vienna (1929-30). view into the hall from the living room. the ‘path’ through the house is actually a series of connected ‘places,’ and while the conception as a whole is startling, there is an unmistakable homeliness in the familiarity and scale of the discrete spaces and their comfortable furnishings and fittings. 126 isparchitecture.com the concluding remarks of frank’s essay may be regarded as an architectural formulation of much of plessner’s positional, human-centred philosophy: all our commodities, and here we may include the house, are really a compromise between function, material, form, quality, price, and other things, all following a middle (and varying) course, yet the rules for the good house as an ideal do not change in principle and have only to be looked at afresh. how does one enter a garden? what does the route look like from the gateway? what is the shape of an anteroom? how does one pass the cloakroom from the anteroom to reach the living room? how does the seating area relate to the door and the window? there are many questions like this which need to be answered, and the house consists of these elements. this is modern architecture.65 acknowledgments i am grateful to my peer reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments and to my (guest-) editors, martin düchs and christian illies, for their support throughout, and for inviting me to speak at the ispa bamberg conference in the first place. i would like to thank peter bernhard who has been most generous in sharing with me his understanding of plessner’s thinking. notes all translations are by the author unless otherwise stated. endnotes [1] helmuth plessner, die einheit der sinne: grundlinien einer ästhesiologie des geistes (bonn: f. cohen, 1923) in helmuth plessner, anthropologie der ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 127 ge r a ld a dl er sinne: gesammelte schriften iii (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1980), 267. [2] for the biographical sketch of plessner’s life from which this is drawn see plessner’s philosophical anthropology: perspectives and prospects, ed. jos de mul (amsterdam: amsterdam university press, 2014), 12-14. [3] plessner has, though, featured prominently in two recent books of cultural history: frederic schwartz, blind spots: critical theory and the history of art in twentieth-century germany (london: yale university press, 2005) and helmut lethen, cool conduct: the culture of distance in weimar germany, trans. don reneau (berkeley and london: university of california press, 2002), especially chapter three, “the conduct code of the cool persona,” 33-100. originally published as verhaltenslehren der kälte: lebensversuche zwischen den kriegen (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1994). [4] hillebrand was, like plessner, of mixed jewish descent, and was unable to practise during the nazi interregnum. see “biografie,” fembio, accessed june 27, 2017, http://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/ lucy-hillebrand/. see also lucy hillebrand, zeit-räume der architektin lucy hillebrand, ed. dieter boeminghaus (stuttgart: krämer, 1983) and sonia ricon baldessarini, “lucy hillebrand: architektur als schrift der beweglichkeit,” in wie frauen bauen: architektinnen von julia morgan bis zaha hadid (berlin und grambin: aviva, 2001), 93-102. [5] see hillebrand, zeit-räume, 156-7. the description of plessner’s house cites albrecht bürkle, “das haus des professors,” in merian 6, 1 (1953): 41. [6] “there were hardly any doors [in plessner’s wiesbaden house].” cited in heike delitz, “ein bau für die modern philosophie und soziologie: plessner in göttingen,” in plessner in wiesbaden, eds. tilman allert and joachim fischer (wiesbaden: springer vs, 2014), 133-143, cited 136, from original in carola dietze, nachgeholtes leben. helmuth plessner 18921985 (göttingen: wallstein-verlag, 2006), 362. the lack of doors puts one in mind of the domestic architecture of ludwig mies van der rohe, of whom it was said that “he [plessner] might have been mies’s favourite philosopher, therefore the favourite philosopher of one of the three great heroes of modern architecture.” (from dietze, nachgeholtes leben, 138, citing hans-joachim dahms, “mies van der rohe und die philosophie um 1930,” in arch+ no. 161 (2002), 55. [7] delitz, “ein bau,” 133. delitz cites dietze, nachgeholtes leben, 361. for more on hillebrand’s relationship to dance, see klaus hoffmann, “über tanz-schrift zu raum-schrift” (“on dance-script to space-script”), in hillebrand, zeit-räume, 14-15. monika plessner is cited by dietze in 128 isparchitecture.com nachgeholtes leben. [8] todtnauberg in the black forest is the location of heidegger’s hut where he retreated in order to write, in his refuge from the world. see adam sharr, heidegger’s hut (cambridge: mit, 2006). [9] tom spector, in comments to this issue’s editors, and communicated to the author february 27, 2018. [10] see the beer house, vienna (with oskar wlach, 1929-30) for a prime example of josef frank’s domestic output. [11] plessner, die einheit der sinne, 266. [12] a good overview of philosophical anthropology may be found in joachim fischer, “die ‘kölner konstellation,’” in plessner in wiesbaden, eds. tilman allert and joachim fischer (wiesbaden: springer vs, 2014), 89-121. here the three ‘stars’ alluded to are, in addition to plessner, max scheler and arnold gehlen. see also bernhard beller, “anthropologie und ethik bei arnold gehlen” (munich: ludwig-maximilians-universität, 2010), unpublished doctoral dissertation, especially “eine kurze geschichte der philosophischen anthropologie,” 12-41, accessed november 13, 2017, https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15913/1/beller_bernhard.pdf. for the distinction between the specific, 1920s movement and more a generalised anthropological interest for philosophy, see joachim fischer, philosophische anthropologie. eine denkrichtung des 20. jahrhunderts (freiburg im breisgau: alber, 2009), 9. in a similar vein, the term neues bauen (‘new building’) is a specific reference to architecture in the german-speaking lands in the 1920s, an aesthetic reference that cannot be used in respect of architecture, however ‘new,’ in, say, the 1890s or the 1950s. [13] helmuth plessner, “homo absconditus,” in helmuth plessner, conditio humana (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2003), 353-66, 353. first published in merkur, 23rd year, vol. 11 (1969): 989-998. [14] one is reminded of otto neurath’s work in ‘red’ vienna and his project to develop a clear language of visual communication before the semiotics revolution of the 1960s. see eve blau, the architecture of red vienna, 19191934 (cambridge and london: mit, 1999). [15] helmuth plessner, die einheit der sinne, 7-315 and 31. [16] helmuth plessner, die stufen des organischen und der mensch: einleitung in die philosophische anthropologie (berlin: de gruyter, 1928), reprinted 1975 (berlin: de gruyter), sammlung göschen 2200. [17] the german term “exzentrisch” does indeed mean both eccentric and ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 129 ge r a ld a dl er “out of the centre.” plessner uses the term “exzentrische positionalität” in the sense of “being in a position that is out of the centre.” so i have rendered the spelling in translation in order to differentiate its meaning from the english ‘eccentric.’ see plessner, die stufen, chapter 7, “die sphäre des menschen,” 288-346, especially section 1, ‘die positionalität der exzentrischen form. das ich und der personcharakter,’ 288-93. [18] martin heidegger, sein und zeit (tübingen: max niemeyer, 1927). [19] see auguste choisy, histoire de l’architecture (paris, 1899). [20] alberto pérez-gómez and louise pelletier, architectural representation and the perspective hinge (cambridge: mit, 1997). [21] see rolf sachsse, bild und bau. zur nutzung technischer medien beim entwerfen von architektur (braunschweig and wiesbaden: vieweg, 1997). [22] see gerald adler, timothy brittain-catlin, and gordana fontanagiusti, “introduction”, in scale: imagination, perception and practice in architecture, eds. gerald adler, timothy brittain-catlin, and gordana fontana-giusti (abingdon: routledge, 2012), 1-9. the phenomenon of flatness is explored in various scales, media, and locations in barry higman, flatness (london: reaktion, 2017). [23] see, for instance, critical architecture, eds. jane rendell, jonathan hill, murray fraser, and mark dorrian (abingdon: routledge, 2007). [24] thomas nagel, the view from nowhere (new york and oxford: oxford university press, 1986), 3. nagel’s is a restatement, in modern terms and times, of a philosophical question that may be traced at least as far as back as descartes. for plessner, the only such creature on earth is the human being. [25] see de mul, plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 14-15, and plessner, die stufen, 293, ff. (aussenwelt, innenwelt, mitwelt). [26] see de mul, plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 16-17. [27] ibid., 17. [28] see helmuth plessner, die stufen, 310. the reader who is looking for a shortcut to plessner’s three main anthropological laws should refer to helmuth plessner, “der mensch als lebewesen,” in helmuth plessner, mit anderen augen: aspekte einer philosophischen anthropologie (stuttgart: reclam, 1982), 9-62. this essentially reprints the laws as stated in the levels (see plessner, die stufen, 309-46), prefaced by a short introduction. there is as yet no english translation of die stufen. 130 isparchitecture.com [29] plessner, die stufen, 310-11. [30] de mul, plessner’s philosophical anthropology, 19. [31] arnold gehlen, “philosophische anthropologie,” (1971), in arnold gehlen, philosophische anthropologie und handlungslehre (collected works, vol. 4) (frankfurt-am-main: klostermann, 1983), 236-46, here 240. actual quote: “so erscheint der mensch schon von natur aus als kulturwesen, seine sonderstellung hierin begründet.” see also arnold gehlen, der mensch: seine natur und seine stellung in der welt (berlin: junker & dünnhaupt, 1940). [32] plessner, die stufen, 310. [33] plessner, die stufen, 312. plessner embraces technology in ways that heidegger found impossible. for plessner, as for his contemporary, the philosopher friedrich dessauer, “[t]echnology is for germany what sun is for spain’s wine, for canada’s grain, for argentina’s pastures.” (friedrich dessauer, philosophie der technik: das problem der realisierung (bonn: friedrich cohen verlag, 1927), 31. [34] plessner, die stufen, 321. [35] ibid., 32. [36] hugo häring, die form, vol. 1 (october 1925): 5, cited in peter blundell jones, hugo häring (stuttgart and london: axel menges, 1999), 78. [37] see peter bernhard, “plessners konzept der offenen form im kontext der avantgarde der 1920er jahre” (“plessner’s concept of open form in the context of the avant-garde in the 1920s”), in arhe iv (july 2007). there is by now a large bibliography on the relationship between biology and architectural modernism. the english-speaking reader will be more familiar with d’arcy thompson’s book on growth and form (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1961). this is an abridged version of the original book published in 1917. thomson’s ideas about the relationship between biological and structural and architectural form were taken up with alacrity in the years following its re-edition. [38] helmuth plessner, “wiedergeburt der form im technischen zeitalter” (“rebirth of form in the technical age”), in arch+ no. 161 (june 2002): 52-57, transcript of plessner’s speech on october 14, 1932 in berlin on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the german werkbund, here 54. (“es soll schön sein! diese malerische blickhaltung wird irgendwie als überwunden empfunden. […] ein raum ist zum wohnen da. ein stuhl ist zum sitzen da.”) translations from this speech are my own, although a complete english translation exists: helmuth plessner, “rebirth of form in ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 131 ge r a ld a dl er the technical age,” trans. jonathan blower, in art in translation 3, 1 (2011): 37-51. first published in german in politik—anthropologie—philosophie: aufsätze und vorträge, ed. salvatore giammusso and hans-ulrich lessing (munich: fink, 2001), 71-86. the international style exhibition opened at moma, new york city on february 9, 1932, some eight months before the werkbund’s anniversary meeting in berlin. [39] plessner, die stufen, 341. [40] plessner, “wiedergeburt der form,” 57. [41] helmuth plessner, “das lächeln,” in helmuth plessner, mit anderen augen: aspekte einer philosophischen anthropologie (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1982), 183-97. originally published in 1950. [42] see beatriz colomina, privacy and publicity: modern architecture as mass media (cambridge and london: mit, 1994). “we are divided between what we think and what we say and do,” from colomina, private and publicity, 33. colomina is referring to the fin-de-siècle disjunctions manifested in ‘civilised’ cultures, especially visible in vienna, between rich and poor, outside and inside, technology and culture, and so on. she starts the section with an apposite quote of hugo von hofmannsthal’s (from his buch der freude): “depth must be hidden. where? on the surface.” see also janet stewart, fashioning vienna: adolf loos’s cultural criticism (london: routledge, 2000), especially chapter four, “the display and disguise of difference,” 98-130. [43] lethen, cool conduct, 55, and richard sennett, the fall of public man (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1974). lethen goes on to account for just such ‘coolness’ in western mores and habits of behaviour since the enlightenment: “[richard] sennett [in the fall of public man, 1976] looks for orientation to public dialogue in the eighteenth century, while plessner’s theory breathes the air of seventeenth-century french classicism.” since 2007, lethen has been director of the international research centre for cultural studies in vienna (university of art and design linz). internationales forschungszentrum kulturwissenschaften, accessed march 29, 2018, ifk.ac.at/pdfs/helmut_lethen_bibliographie.pdf. [44] lethen, cool conduct, 62, citing friedrich nietzsche, werke in drei bänden vol. 2 (munich: carl hanser, 1963), 604. nietzsche’s actual words are “[j[eder tiefe geist braucht eine maske,” literally, “every deep spirit needs a mask.” lethen further emphasises the point: “plessner does not tolerate the enactment of ‘naked honesty’ or ‘eruptive authenticity’ either in contemporary design, whether the new objectivity interiors of bauhaus architecture—‘with overhead lighting and tiled walls’—or in expressionist 132 isparchitecture.com stage sets. hygiene resides for him at the cold pole, ‘reckless sincerity’ at the warm. he takes aim at all forms of unmediated directness, pleading for moderate temperatures and indirect lighting, for art and literature of whatever type as long as they eschew intimate self-revelation in favor of the regulating practice of distance.” from lethen, cool conduct, 54. [45] plessner must have been aware—although his writings do not attest to it—of the dessau visionary designer siegfried ebeling, whose tract “space as membrane” was published in 1926. see siegfried ebeling, space as membrane (london: architectural association, 2010), edited and with an afterword by spyros papapetros; introduction by walter scheiffele; translated by pamela johnston based on an earlier translation by anna kathryn schoefert. originally published in german as der raum als membran (dessau: dünnhaupt, 1926). [46] see gerald adler, “energising the building edge: siegfried ebeling, bauhaus bioconstructivist,” in peripheries, eds. ruth morrow and mohamed abdelmonem (abingdon: routledge, 2012), 183-99. [47] heinrich tessenow, “die sachlichkeit oder die wahrheit in der gewerblichen arbeit” (“objectivity or truth in craftsmanship”), in heinrich tessenow, hausbau und dergleichen (weimar and rostock: edition m, 2011), heinrich tessenow gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, ed. theodor böll, 38. originally published in berlin by bruno cassirer, 1916, and subsequently in braunschweig by vieweg, 1986. [48] helmuth plessner, “mit anderen augen” (“with other eyes”), in helmuth plessner, mit anderen augen: aspekte einer philosophischen anthropologie (stuttgart: p. reclam, 1982), 171. [49] adolf loos, “ornament und verbrechen” (“ornament and crime”) (1908), in adolf loos, trotzdem (vienna: prachner, 1982), 78-88. originally published in adolf loos, trotzdem. 19001930 (innsbruck: brenner-verlag, 1931). loos’s writings can still appear shocking, especially “ornament and crime.” however, his buildings and interiors are remarkably and richly finished and furnished, in complete contrast, for instance, with the generally more polemical german modern architects. to take an extreme pairing, one need only compare, say, loos’s famous müller house in prague (1930) with hannes meyer’s starkly ascetic ‘co-op zimmer’ installation of 1926. [50] josef frank, “accidentism,” in josef frank, schriften/writings, vol. 2, trans. christopher long (vienna: metroverlag, 2012), 373. originally published (in swedish) as “accidentism,” in form 54 (1958): 160-65, and in german in baukunst und werkform, year 14, nuremberg 1961, vol. 4, 216-18. frank continued: ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 133 ge r a ld a dl er in our age of scientific thinking, all traditions are gradually being lost; there is no longer any reason to recognize rules that cannot be proven. thus, concepts such as art and beauty–which cannot even be fully defined–have come under doubt. a person without tradition is forced to invent his own rules of art, which, as a result, must be quite arbitrary. to believe these rules himself and to disseminate the belief in them, he must base them on moral, scientific, utilitarian, or mystical motives. for a pithy and concise assessment of frank’s centrality in vienna’s interwar architecture and debates concerning aesthetics, see friedrich achleitner, “josef frank und die wiener architektur der zwischenkriegszeit,” in friedrich achleitner, wiener architektur: zwischen typologischem fatalismus und semantischem schlamassel (vienna, cologne, and weimar: böhlau, 1996), 81-87. [51] plessner, die stufen, 341. [52] ibid. [53] helmuth plessner, die verspätete nation (stuttgart: kohlhammer, 1959), 97. this book, originally published in 1935 with the title das schicksal deutschen geistes im ausgang seiner bürgerlichen epoche (the fate of the german spirit at the end of its bourgeois epoch) was suppressed the following year. it was only republished in 1959 with its new title. [54] helmuth plessner, “de homine abscondito,” trans. claus mueller, in social research 36, no. 4 (winter 1969): 509. [55] ferdinand tönnies, gemeinschaft und gesellschaft (leipzig: fues’s verlag, 1887). tönnies famously distinguished notions of (traditional) ‘community’ from those of (modern) ‘society,’ paving the way for much of the sociological and political thinking of the twentieth century. [56] lethen, cool conduct, xi. [57] plessner, die verspätete nation, 166. [58] plessner, “wiedergeburt der form,” 52. [59] ibid., 53. [60] ibid., 55. [61] see peter bernhard, “plessners konzept der offenen form.” this is a version of a lecture given by bernhard at the plessner workshop held at the tu dresden in april 2005. it is essentially a commentary on the position ‘open form’ has in plessner’s “rebirth of form” speech on the occasion of the werkbund’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 1932. bernhard alludes to 134 isparchitecture.com plessner’s understanding of open form in the context of technology as well as of life itself. for technical artefacts, such as machines, their ‘open forms’ enable them to change as needs and capabilities change. [62] helmuth plessner, grenzen der gemeinschaft. eine kritik des sozialen radikalismus (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 2002), 14. originally published by friedrich cohen, bonn, 1924. it remains untranslated into english. helmut lethen has commented that “[w]ith term ‘radicalism,’ plessner attacks worldviews based on a conviction that there was any good to be had from ‘a return to the roots of existence.’ to the wish projections of ‘primary unity’ and radical therapies, plessner opposes his behavioural doctrine of distance and bases it on the anthropological principle that every human being, from the moment of birth, leads an incomplete existence. ‘that is why man is “by nature” artificial and never in balance.’” from lethen, cool conduct. embedded quotation from helmuth plessner, macht und menschliche natur (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1981), 199, quoted in helmut lethen, cool conduct: the culture of distance in weimar germany, trans. don reneau (berkeley and london: university of california press, 2002), 53. [63] josef frank, “architektur als symbol. elemente deutschen neuen bauens” (“architecture as symbol: elements of the german new building”), in josef frank, schriften/writings, vol. 2, trans. john sands (vienna: metroverlag, 2012), 9-191, here 27-28. [64] josef frank, “das haus als weg und platz” (“the house as path and place”), in josef frank, schriften/writings, vol. 2, trans. wilfried wang vienna: metroverlag, 2012), 198-209, here 207. originally published in der baumeister 29/8 (august 1931): 316-23. [65] ibid., 209. see also christopher long, the new space: movement and experience in viennese modern architecture (new haven and london: yale university press, 2016), with photographs by wolfgang thaler. here long enlarges on his earlier monograph on frank (see christopher long, josef frank: life and work (chicago and london: the university of chicago press, 2002)) and relates frank’s concept of weg (path) to similar concepts of movement and experience in the work of loos and oskar strnad. long focusses in particular on the beer house, and cites a contemporary reviewer’s description of the entry sequence that evokes the visitor’s experience of entering the plessner house: “one enters the hall [from the anteroom] through an unobtrusive door and is at once standing, surprised and moved, in the heart of the structure. the first glance instantly offers a clear understanding of the entire arrangement.” from long, the new space, 140, long’s translation, citing wolfgang born, “ein haus in wien-hietzing,” innen-dekoration 42 (september 1931): 364. isparchitecture.com aporia in architectural design aleksandar kostic introduction in this paper, i will be looking at the notion of aporia, as traditionally understood, and how it may apply in the field of architectural design. first, i will explain what aporia is and then clarify its role in inquiry, as originally conceived in plato and aristotle, emphasizing its way of searching by encountering an impasse and articulating and formulating an intractable puzzle. in book beta of his metaphysics, aristotle says: “those who search without first engaging with aporiai are like people who don’t know where they need to be going; moreover, they do not even know whether or not they have found what they are searching for. for the end [of a search] is not clear to such a person, but it is clear to the person who has first raised aporiai.”1 if we accept aristotle’s claim that aporia is indeed necessary for inquiry and if design is a form of inquiry, then it is reasonable to expect to find aporia in design. in section two i consider the domain for the emergence of aporia which will show us where to look for aporia in design. i will also indicate laws of thought that traditionally apply in the setting of this domain. not all laws of thought are universally accepted in contemporary logic, and some relevant distinctions must be noted. it is important to note that the domain includes classical and formal logic extended to modal logic, but excludes paraconsistent logical systems. setting aporia’s domain will allow me to identify both the source and necessary conditions for the emergence of aporia and, in ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 137 k os ti c turn, the necessary conditions for finding aporia in design. section three presents a clear case of aporia in architectural design. i will show that, given the initial distinctions and certain rules that apply, any problem with clearly defined design intention would present a good enough source to demonstrate this type of puzzle in architecture. the conflict inherent in cornering the classical ionic order presents such an example of aporetic reasoning in architectural design. aporia, therefore, can be shown not only to be useful and routinely used, it is also of instrumental value in the practice of architectural design. section four investigates whether aporia is also intrinsic to design theory. if it is the case that aporia has intrinsic value for design, then it should somehow be present in the more abstract subject matter of design itself. its existence might be revealed within an attempt to establish the foundations of a design theory. after making a distinction between dilemmas and aporiai, one of these attempts will be examined to determine if the question of the subject matter of design and its unclear ontological status may indeed produce an aporetic situation. if this proves to be the case, it shows that design is intrinsically aporetic. an ancient myth of prometheus tells us that the “wisdom of the arts,” such as house building indeed have something intrinsically aporetic. in protagoras’s speech given by plato in his dialogue protagoras,2 human beings receive gifts from the titan prometheus (the fore-thinker),3 namely fire, and, often forgotten, the arts (τέχνη). this was a compensation for the lack of other human abilities, since these had already been distributed to other living creatures by his twin-brother, epimetheus (the afterthinker).4 for our purposes, it is important to underline two aspects here. firstly, this story explains to us some of the fundamental tensions of the human condition; in our actions, we seem to be spread between planning and reflecting upon our plans; in our emotions, we are sometimes split between desire and fear; and in our thoughts, we are often torn between thinking ahead and an afterthought. but more importantly, this story is relevant as prometheus himself seems to be in perplexity, in the state of aporia.5 out of his aporia he reasons out and finds a solution: fire and arts are to be given to human kind. both the “wisdom of arts” and fire (which, in plato, is an image of knowledge or insight) were instilled in human kind. thanks to this, people invented house building and many other crafts. in some, perhaps remote sense, both human access to knowledge and the human condition are related to aporetic states of mind as their original source. 138 isparchitecture.com 1. what exactly is aporia? aporia is a greek word, and it literally means “no passage” or “no way out” (‎a-, “a-”=no, without) + πόρος ‎(póros=“passage”).6 plato, committed to the method of dialectic, never spells out an exact definition of aporia. he rather demonstrates aporiai through conversations between the interlocutors in his dialogues. some of the dialogues begin with aporia, some are centred on it, while others end in it. on the other hand, aristotle provides a few definitions of aporia: one in metaphysics, quoted above;7 and another one in his topics, when he defines aporia as a state of mind caused by “equality of opposite reasonings.”8 plato strictly distinguished knowledge from opinions in his republic.9 his elaboration on the poverty of the senses in the myth of the cave10 comes after the distinction between the realm of opinions from the realm of knowledge in the famous divided line analogy.11 the realm of reality which is accessible to the senses, the apparent world, is subjected to experiential opinions, while the intellectual, or, for plato, the only real world, is accessible through knowledge (figure 1).12 the only entities that really exist are universal forms or ideas. thanks to their high ontological status, these forms represent the only possible object of knowledge, as only what is perfectly real can be properly known. in the divided line analogy, a clear hierarchy of cognitive capacities (παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς) and their corresponding objects is established. images, shadows and reflections of things are less real than things themselves; images of forms are more real than things, but less real than forms themselves, and so on. in addition, each cognitive capacity has its own mode of cognition and way of searching. the lower end of cognitive capacities, concerned with sensible particulars, is reserved for imagination (εἰκασία) and belief (πίστις). these two capacities are based on observation and together form an aporia—the state of being perplexed, puzzled, lacking resources, or being at a loss “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 139 k os ti c opinion (δόξα). the higher end (intellect) is also split into two cognitive capacities—between thinking (διάνοια) and reasoning (νοῦς). the unchangeable objects, corresponding with thinking, are representable in the physical world (by use of drawings, numbers, etc.) and sometimes are referred to as mathematicals or as intermediaries. discursive thought, with the use of a hypothesis (assumed to be true), is its mode of cognition. the commonly used example to describe this way of searching is mathematics, or plato’s favourite—geometry. our highest cognitive capacity, which is reasoning (νοῦς), has forms (ideas) as its object of searching; it reaches towards the highest realm of knowing (ἐπιστήμη), and it searches through dialectic. it is precisely dialectic that puts the “mind’s eye” in a position to access and “see” the puzzles within this highest realm of reality. the capacity to recognise how exactly a particular puzzle becomes the source of aporia belongs to a “considerable dialectical ability.”13 aporiai are therefore resolved by means of dialectical investigation. it is traditionally accepted that aporia in plato has a purifying effect. supposedly, aporia purifies the inquirer from the pretence of knowledge on the subject of investigation. often, socrates’s interlocutor, faced with a socratic demand for definition, presents an account about the matter of figure 1: plato’s divided line. see plato, republic, vii, 509d-511e. 140 isparchitecture.com inquiry, typically based on personal experience or belief. after socrates has refuted him, or at any rate put his belief to the test, the interlocutor, having no other alternative, doesn’t know how to proceed and is in a state of aporia. the immediate effects of the aporetic state of mind are speechlessness and inarticulateness, but, as politis points out,14 these are only adding to the overwhelming feeling of uneasiness and distress15 or lack of resourcefulness and a strong sense of intellectual incompetence.16 generally, the way the interlocutor responds to this disclosure largely depends on his character, but it also points at his intellectual limitations. if the interlocutor exhibits anger and remains paralysed, his chances to progress in dialectics are quite limited. if, on the other hand one accepts one’s own lack of knowledge, only then it will be possible for one to progress further in the search. besides this cathartic role, more importantly, aporia has also a searching (zetetic) function.17 namely, aporia is not only a mental state of puzzlement but is indeed a puzzle about the matter of inquiry. the essential property of such a puzzle is the co-existence of two sides, seemingly opposed. the apparent contradiction is present in an aporia when two propositions both seem to be true, but are mutually exclusive. apparently, when two propositions are contradictory, at least one of them must be false. this is precisely what constitutes aporia—seeming logical impossibility. the decisive move then, in order to resolve aporia, consists in searching for the possibility to eliminate contradiction (e.g., by arguing that both sides of aporia are true). let us now look at a classic example of socratic aporia and its resolution, which incidentally is about socrates’ own wisdom: “what can the god possibly mean and why does he speak in riddles? for i am only too conscious that i have no pretence of wisdom, great or small. so what can he mean when he [apollo] says that i am the most wise? for surely ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 141 k os ti c he does not utter falsehoods; that would not be proper for him.”18 in analysis of this passage politis suggests two seemingly contradictory propositions (both apparently true, but mutually exclusive): “(1) ‘i know that i am not wise in any way’; and (2) ‘the god, who does not lie, pronounces me the most wise.’”19 he points out that socrates’s “immediate response is to ask what this apparent contradiction can possibly mean, that is how both its sides can be true.”20 politis goes even further, proposing that this way of posing the problem is also a model of at least one way of solving an aporia—by drawing a distinction.21 2. necessary conditions for emergence of aporia it is now established that the essential property of aporia is the apparent contradiction between two attractive propositions. i will next set the domain and elaborate the conditions for the emergence of aporia, bearing in mind differences between standard and non-standard logical systems. in classical logic, a proposition can have only one out of two truthvalues at any given time and in any given sense—these values are true or false: either socrates is wise, or he is not. aristotle’s law of non-contradiction (lnc) maintains that it is impossible to hold the same thing to exist and not to exist; or for the same thing to have and not to have the same property; or for the same thing to have a property and a contrary property.22 aristotle argues that this principle cannot be strictly demonstrated (for any demonstration presupposes it and makes use of it), but also that it is the firmest of all basic principles.23 however, some non-standard logical systems partially or in whole reject this principle of non-contradiction (figure 2). for example, in the logic of łukasiewicz a proposition can have three distinct truth-values—true, false, and unknown (“neither true nor false”).24 in probabilistic and fuzzy logic a proposition can have an infinite number of different truth-values.25 any paraconsistent logical system (fuzzy logic, intuitionist logic, or dialetheism) are not of interest here not only because the topic of this paper deals predominantly with the notions of aporia in plato and aristotle, which in time greatly precedes the emergence of these extended systems of logic in the twentieth-century, but also because classical and standard logic as well as modern science and contemporary thinking are still vastly depending on the truth-values in a traditional sense and have 142 isparchitecture.com figure 2: classification of logic, based on the inclusion of the principles of reasoning (id, lc, lm), use of quantificators and formal language, and, finally, domain of truth-values (standard 2-valued logic systems including modal logic; paraconsistent logic systems including 3-value logic system of łukasiewitz, gödel’s finite-many value logic, and infinite-many value logic (fuzzy logic). ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 143 k os ti c no tolerance for inconsistency within the system.26 furthermore, any form of many-valued logic systems must be excluded here, because where the tension between opposing truth-values is downplayed (fuzzy logic), or largely non-existent (dialethism), due to the presentation of another one or many other options (besides true and false), the notion of aporia, which rests on precisely this tension between the equality of reasoning on opposing sides simply would not apply or even make much sense in any such inquiry.27 in fact, if there is another way out, besides the two apparently mutually-exclusive propositions being true, the impasse, which is a key feature of aporia, will simply not arise. the aporia also cannot arise when the principle of non-contradiction is excluded from the logical system simply because it wouldn’t be possible to distinguish between a contradiction and a non-contradiction, let alone to make a distinction between the apparent and the real contradiction. to further refine the conditions under which aporiai can arise, a distinction must be made between (1) contradictory claims, which can give rise to aporia, and (2) the situations where opposing sides of reasoning are only contraries or sub-contraries, in which case they cannot give rise to aporia. let us remind ourselves of the difference between the contradictions and contraries in traditional propositional and predicate logic. two propositions are contradictory when the truth of one implies the falsity of the other, or when the falsity of one determines the truth of other. according to johnson, “contradictories have exactly opposite truth-values. if a is true, then o is false, and vice versa.”28 for example, in propositional logic, the negation of the proposition “socrates is wise” would be “it is not the case that socrates is wise.” this forms a contradictory opposition between the propositions. in standard logic, these two propositions are (1) mutually exclusive, which means that only one of them can be true, and (2) mutually exhaustive, which means that nothing else is possible. it becomes clear that if and only if it is the case that two propositions are at least apparently contradictory, then aporia can arise. if the law of excluded middle (lem)29 is invalidated (as in intuitionistic logic),30 then two propositions do not fulfil the second condition—they cannot be mutually exhaustive. there would be a middle ground between the two. hence aporia cannot exist in such systems. for example, let us look at a slightly different formulation of the two propositions: “socrates is wise” and “socrates is unwise.” it may be tempting to hold this new pair of propositions as also contradictory. however, that is not the case. they are only contrary. propositions are contrary when they cannot both be true (socrates cannot be both wise and unwise in the same sense and 144 isparchitecture.com at the same time), but there is a possibility for both of the propositions to be false (socrates being neither wise nor unwise). the latter means that the propositions are not mutually exhaustive; namely, the pressure of apparent contradiction (that is, only one of the otherwise plausible propositions can be true) does not arise as there is a possibility of both propositions to be false. hence, with merely contrary propositions, aporia cannot arise. the outcome is the same in predicate logic. predicate logic extends propositional logic by including the quantifiers (ɐ and ꓱ) which determine whether subject (x) of the categorical proposition is respectively universal or particular and includes two types of assertions—affirmative and negative. this results in four types of propositions—universal affirmative (all men are wise), universal negative (no man is wise), particular affirmative (some men are wise) and particular negative (some men are not wise). there are also four possible types of relationships between these propositions. the relationship between each type is shown on the classical square of opposites in the diagram (figure 3), which originates from aristotle, but also figures in modern times, especially in boolean algebra and in fregean logic. as in propositional logic, categorical propositions are contrary when they cannot both be true (all men are wise and no man is wise), but there is a possibility for both of them to be false (it may be the case that neither everybody is wise nor that nobody is wise), namely, there is a possibility of the middle ground (perhaps only a few men are wise). this means that aporia cannot arise in the case of the contraries, simply because there is a passage away from the mutual exclusion of propositions. the situation is similar with propositions which are sub-contrary. this is the case when it is impossible for both categorical propositions to be false (some men are wise and some men are not wise); however, ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 145 k os ti c there is a possibility for both of them to be true. if both propositions can be true, then the mutual exclusion, which was a primary condition for the emergence of aporia, is removed and together with it also the pressure of finding a way out of the impasse has disappeared. it can be concluded that in none of these cases does aporia arise. therefore, aporia has bearing only in cases of apparently contradictory propositions, both of which (or sets of which) appear attractive, but neither the tension nor the attraction have been properly investigated or understood. it has been demonstrated that aporiai apply directly within the domain of at least propositional and predicate logic. it naturally follows that aporia will also have bearing in all forms of standard and modern logic that extend the field of classical logic, but retain the laws of thinking such as the law of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle. such cases not only automatically apply to boolean mathematical logic but also, perhaps more interestingly for designers and architects, to the non-classical logical system of modal logic. the application of modal logic in design and architecture is significant because it relates to what necessarily follows and to what might or ought to follow in deductive reasoning. therefore, modal logic encompasses design propositions (with respects to certain rules or styles) and it is useful in design predictions. figure 3: traditional square of opposition. 146 isparchitecture.com now that the domain and the source of aporia have been clarified along with its nature, we can look more closely into how aporia applies to architectural design. 3. aporia in architectural design an actual design situation may reveal a particular reference of aporia in design. in architecture, the well-known corner conflict inherent in the employ of the classical ionic order provides a good example of aporetic reasoning in architectural design. the ionic order’s sensual spiralling volutes that cushion the architrave provide an enduring source of difficulty for designers needing a colonnade to turn a corner—for the traditional volutes only face forward. traditionally, in greek and roman architecture, the corner capital in the ionic order is different to other capitals as, for example, on the external corner of palladio’s basilica in vicenza and in piranesi’s study (figure 4). the corner problem with the ionic order arises due to the requirement for each capital (including the one on the corner) to appear the same in all elevations. because of the lateral position of volutes, the corner capital in the ionic order cannot be the same if the appearance of the capital is to be equal for all capitals on both front and side elevations. that constitutes a clear case of aporia in design. in the case of the corner capital conflict, aporia can be clearly represented with the following two, apparently contradictory, propositions: figure 4: sketch after opere di giovanni battista piranesi. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 147 k os ti c (1) all volutes are positioned in the same manner in all elevations, and (2) some volutes (namely corner capitals) are not positioned the same. one is invited to compare these propositions to the previously given examples in propositional and predicate logic (figure 3). it is obvious that this example forms an apparent contradiction in the first-order predicate logic and its representation as an aporia clarifies the design challenge that must be addressed. one may elect to confront the aporia in various creative ways or try to avoid the contradictory situation by eliminating the columns altogether from the side elevations, as in palladio’s villa capra (la rotunda) shown in figure 5. however, once aporia is engaged, two alternatives are possible. the first alternative is when the apparent contradiction is not resolved and hence it becomes prominent as in the temple of fortuna virilis or palladio’s villa foscari (figure 6). some cases, such as the exposed inside corner capital in palladio’s palazzo barbaran porto (figure 7), reveal the unresolved puzzle in greater detail. figure 5: villa capra (la rotunda), palladio, 1567. figure 6: villa foscari (la malcontenta), palladio, 1560. 148 isparchitecture.com the other alternative is when the apparent contradiction is resolved and contradiction removed by adjusting the architectural element or the way it is used. one of the resolutions of the ionic capital corner conflict can be found in the work by palladio’s contemporary architect vincenzo scamozzi. the evidence for this can be found in his book the idea of a universal architecture, where he proposes a new capital for the ionic order with diagonally positioned volutes.31 scamozzi’s drawings (figure 8) and writings on the ionic capital conflict testify that, not only was he fully engaged with this particular aporia, he also proposed a way of resolving it. it is important to note that the solution to this puzzle was independent of the level of craftsmanship applied. the resolution depended only on an architect’s ability to recognise the aporia and engage with it through design. i will now show the plan and elevation of another ionic capital that is partly copied from antiquity, partly based on vitruvius and for the rest is a design i have invented and used. to this day it remains different from any other [ionic] capital ever invented because of the concave profile of the abacus and the corner volutes that look the same whether they are figure 7: palazzo barbaran da porto, palladio, 1569. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 149 k os ti c viewed from the front or the side, which is not the case when capitals have volutes at the front… it is the kind i have used most frequently in my buildings.32 figure 8: sketch after scamozzi’s drawing of ionic capital, l’idea della architettura universale. 150 isparchitecture.com 4. aporia in design theory for architects and planners it is quite possible to confuse the state of perplexity which comes from aporia with the perplexity which is a result of a wicked problem. rittel and webber, in the classic essay “dilemmas in a general theory of planning,” described planning problems as wicked problems, which can always be recontextualized in terms of other problems and which therefore admit an utter lack of stopping rules or ‘solutions’ in the mathematical sense.33 for efficiency, a distinction between the two is drawn on the relevant points and summarized in a table below (figure 10). besides perplexity, the other similarities between the two are that of the possible paralyzing effect of both aporiai and wicked problems and the fact that an aporia may as well remain as unresolved as the wicked problem. it seems that the only intrinsic link between the two is that some wicked problems can indeed turn out to be aporiai, but never the other way round. ‘wicked problem’ aporia impossible to solve sometimes possible to solve cannot be formulated can be formulated solutions cannot be true or false solutions can be true or false caused by another problem caused by apparent contradiction figure 9: the distinction between rittel and weber’s wicked problems and aporia. . ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 151 k os ti c in what seems to be an outline for a framework of a coherent design theory, per galle identifies two “dilemmas of references” as he calls them. basing his case on the presupposition that design is related to predictions (of a certain artefact as its product), and on the fact that designers sometimes in their predictions refer to things, or entities, whose ontological status is at best unclear, galle proposes two questions as a starting point in search for the common ground of a coherent design theory: (1) “if the singular terms of design predictions do not refer [to an entity], how and in what sense can the predictions be true or even meaningful?” and (2) “if those terms do refer [to an entity], to what category of entities are they referring?”34 even though galle recognises this situation as a “puzzlement,” and presents this problem as a challenge to design theorists, he appears to think that this seeming contradiction in questions of fundamental importance to design is a sort of an embarrassment for designers. in a way, he seems to suggest that these “dilemmas of references” at hand are practically a problem of choice, closely associated with ready-made philosophical world views: nominalism and realism. moreover, theorists of design are invited to untangle this conundrum by selecting a world view from which to create a coherent design theory. galle claims that this sort of a problem has a more general, philosophical context and that other “philosophical disciplines” might help in resolving it.35 but, instead of philosophy generally, galle proposes to use philosophy of language to engage with this fundamental puzzle in design—that is: what exactly is the subject of design? i agree with galle that, as sciences got philosophy of science and languages got philosophy of language, perhaps design needs to get philosophy of design. however, i propose that a fundamental philosophical question about design can be addressed through philosophy directly and, likewise, that question about the merits of philosophy in design should be addressed through design itself. i propose that the problem at hand here is more fruitfully treated, not as dilemma as suggested by galle, but as an aporia. in order to demonstrate this with clarity, an important distinction must first be drawn between the notions of aporia and dilemma.36 despite the fact that both dilemmas and aporiai can produce a state of indecisiveness and perplexity, they are also profoundly different. dilemma is commonly used in everyday speech to describe a problem of choice, where none of the two given options (not necessarily propositions) are desired or preferred (but not necessarily with any truth value at all). it is sometimes used in rhetoric, as a persuasive device. however, in formal, propositional logic, dilemma 152 isparchitecture.com is a form of valid argument always leading to the same conclusion (true), regardless of the truthvalue in either of the propositions. in a dilemma we are presented with a choice, none of which may be appealing to us, while in aporia, as we have seen, we are faced with two equally plausible propositions in an apparent contradiction, effectively producing a lack of choice. the troubling case of design entity ontological status cannot be a dilemma, or a problem of choice in any way, as that would mean that there would be no problem in reasoning correctly. the only problem would be to select one of the options. however, both of the “references” seem to be true, and it is obvious that they are mutually exclusive. namely one cannot assert that both of them are true at the same time and in the same sense. that means these assertions are in apparent contradiction. let us look closer and see if these two sides are indeed in an apparent contradiction. first of all, we need to disburden ourselves of the pretence of knowledge, and at least for the moment assume without false pretence, that we truly do not know what the nature of the subject matter of design is. hence, i propose to re-formulate galle’s questions into these two propositions: (1) during the design process, artefacts that are being designed must refer to an entity that exists, for they are in the process of being designed, we can refer to them (even in space and time), and they are not purely imaginary. (i shall argue for the plausibility of this presently). (2) during the design process, artefacts that are designed must refer to an entity that does not exist, for if they did exist that would entail that they have already been designed. these two propositions are apparently equally true, but opposed and mutually exclusive, therefore ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 153 k os ti c seemingly contradictory. the propositions are also mutually exhaustive as there is no other conceivable option offered to a designer. there seems to be no middle ground left to settle, and an inquirer is under pressure, left without any easy and obvious way out. this is what constitutes an aporia by its definition. now an inquirer is ready to engage with aporia and its zetetic (searching) function by, ideally i suggest, answering the question— what is required for both of these propositions to be true at the same time? it might be objected that the first side of the aporia has no real attraction. why, it may be said, not simply suppose that the object of design is purely imaginary, just like fictional objects? unlike mere phantasies and purely imaginary objects, a key capacity of an architectural designer is to create not only meaningful, but accurate and reasonable predictions with respect to objects designed.37 the main attraction of this side of aporia is in that a designer can provide accurate predictions about those objects. consequently, we should not be satisfied with a general theory of imaginary or fictional objects as suitable for either articulating or gauging the attractiveness of this side of the aporia. this example is explicated here in order to demonstrate that aporia is necessarily a part of inquiry into the consistency of a design theory. the way one reasons out of aporiai in design is, in part, a subject of this whole project, and it would take us a lot more space to attempt its resolution here. therefore, unless curious readers engage themselves with this particular aporia on the subject matter of design, they are asked to suspend their judgements and remain puzzled. if it is indeed the case that a world view on design theory can be grown out of these “seed questions” as galle proposes, then one must be first fully engaged with them by recognising the aporia.38 i agree with galle that these questions are “not to be shrugged off ”, as he says.39 furthermore, it seems to me that they are fundamental for any design theory. in other words, if one wishes to establish a consistent design theory, it is necessary for one to engage with this particular aporia in one way or the other. for how can we otherwise give an account for the subject matter of design itself ? any design theory must either reject at least one of the propositions and embrace the other, or find a way to embrace both. an informal thinker may indeed find more compelling evidence why one proposition is more acceptable to him or her than the other. but, as we have seen, unless one rejects the principle of non-contradiction, it is difficult to find a firm ground on which one can dismiss one and embrace the other proposition as they both seem to be plausible. one way forward 154 isparchitecture.com could be to find a way in which both propositions can be true, namely, explore the possibilities that are required in cases where both of these propositions are true at the same time. that means engaging in aporia. the only alternative to that is to find a justification to abandon reasoning on the subject matter of design altogether and conceive of design as a craft-like activity and accept that design is fully exhausted through practice alone like any other techne. however, if we indeed do that we will resemble people who are not engaged with aporia and as aristotle says, don’t know where they need to be going in their inquiry. in that case it is difficult to see how design can be understood as a form of inquiry, and a form of enquiry grounded in design theory. for those willing to engage the aporias that present themselves, architectural design does indeed become a form of inquiry. this conception of architecture that is engaged with aporia opens up the possibility of removing the experiential limits sometimes imposed on design and to realign architectural design within the classical division of knowledge in such a way so that all cognitive capacities are engaged in design—from experiential to higher, intellectual capacities.40 i have not attempted to resolve this aporia— this is for another occasion. what i have done is argue that, if we want to take seriously the idea of design as a form of inquiry, and a form of inquiry grounded in design theory, then we must engage with and try to resolve this (and similar) aporiai. i want to end by drawing attention to one condition for a successful resolution of this aporia—which is, i believe, a core aporia in design theory. for, as we saw in our response to galle, there is a danger here that grand philosophical views—be it this, that, or the other philosophical position—be hauled in ready-made to do the job of resolving an aporia that, if it is at all genuine and worth taking seriously, is specific to and rooted in aporia is indeed rooted, not only in general philosophical considerations about design theory, but also in the process of design itself. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 155 k os ti c design and design theory. this, i believe, has to be resisted. for if this is what we do to engage with and try to resolve the aporia, then we are in effect admitting that the aporia is not specific to or rooted in design and design theory: since its resolution will not make use of any tools or idea that are specific to design or design theory. in that case, however, one would be forgiven for wondering why design theory should worry about this aporia and not simply leave it to the philosophers. nonetheless, we have shown that aporia is indeed rooted, not only in general philosophical considerations about design theory, but also—and, for us designers and design theorists, primarily—in the process of design itself. acknowledgments i would like to thank the (guest-)editors, martin düchs and christian illies, as well as tom spector, the managing editor of the journal architecture philosophy for their help, constructive criticism, and inspiring challenges posed in the various drafts they reviewed. i am also very grateful to the anonymous referees for their influential comments and valuable suggestions. very special thanks i owe to the people at the plato centre at trinity college dublin, especially to professor of philosophy vasilis politis for many stimulating discussions on the subject and philosopher brendan o’byrne for unreserved support. endnotes [1] aristotle, the basic works of aristotle (new york: random house incorporated, 2001), metaphysics, iii. 1, 995a34-b1. [2] see plato, protagoras, 321c. extract from protagoras’s speech: prometheus arrived to examine his [epimetheus] distribution, and saw that whereas the other creatures were fully and suitably provided, man was naked, unshod, unbedded, unarmed; and already the destined day was come, whereon man like the rest should emerge from earth to light. then prometheus, in his perplexity [ἀπορία] as to what preservation he could devise for man, stole from hephaestus and athena wisdom in the arts together with fire—since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any—and he handed it there and then as a gift to man. [3] the meaning of the word prometheus can be translated as “forethought.” 156 isparchitecture.com [4] the meaning of the word epimetheus can be translated as “afterthought.” [5] plato actually uses the word aporia to depict titan’s mental state. see plato, protagoras, 321c2. [6] ἀπορία = aporia—the state of being perplexed, puzzled, lacking resources, or being at a loss. [7] aristotle, the basic works, metaphysics, iii. 1, 995a34-b1. [8] aristotle, posterior analytics topica, ed. loeb classical library (london and new york: harvard university press, 1960), 145b17. [9] if not stated otherwise, in this paper i have generally relied on cooper’s edition of plato’s complete works. see plato, complete works, ed. john m. cooper, (indianapolis and cambridge: hackett publishing company, 1997). [10] plato, republic, 514a-519a. [11] ibid., 509d-511e. [12] see plato, republic, vii, 509d-511e. illustration by aleksandar kostić. [13] vasilis politis, “aporia and searching in the early plato,” in remembering socrates: philosophical essays, eds. lindsay judson and vassilis karasmanēs (new york: oxford university press, 2006), 101. for the place of aporia in plato’s philosophy, see especially politis, the structure of enquiry in plato’s early dialogues (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2015), part ii. [14] ibid., 88-110. [15] plato, laches, 194a-b. [16] plato, meno, 80a-c. [17] politis proposes that besides being a mental state, “aporia is [also] zetetic: [its aim is] to generate particular searches, defined and directed by the puzzle and problem at hand.” see politis, “aporia,” 108. [18] plato, apology, 21b3–7. [19] politis, “aporia,” 88–110. [20] ibid. [21] ibid., 98. [22] aristotle, the basic works, metaphysics, iv, 1005b24. [23] ibid., 1011b13–14. [24] graham priest, an introduction to non-classical logic (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001), 119. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 157 k os ti c [25] susan haack, deviant logic, fuzzy logic: beyond the formalism (chicago: university of chicago press, 1996). [26] the belief that it is possible for a single proposition to be at the same time both true and false, without inferring that this leads to any and every proposition being true is called dialetheism. however, this view fails to define a negation, as it is difficult to grasp what a concept of disagreement would be in the world where a proposition can be both true and false at the same time. another important and undesired consequence of dialetheism is the principle of explosion. namely, if we hold both propositions p and ¬p to be true, then it follows that for any statement q both p˅q and ¬p˅q to be also true, which means any and every proposition q is true. [27] a passionate read on many-valued logic can be found in graham priest’s an introduction on non-classical logic, cited above. [28] robert m. johnson, a logic book: fundamentals of reasoning (belmont: thomson wadsworth, 2007), 63. [29] the law of excluded middle (lem) is the third law of thinking in traditional logic and it simply means that besides true or false there is no other available option for truth-value. [30] intuitionistic logic invalidates the law of excluded middle. this rejection has “far-reaching consequences.” (see joan moschovakis, “intuitionistic logic,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. edward n. zalta, spring 2015 edition, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logicintuitionistic/.) one of those consequences being that the principle of elimination of double negation also becomes invalid and, perhaps more importantly, intuitionistic logic becomes “axiomatically incomplete.” for our purposes, it is important to note that rejection of the lem practically disables the condition of the principle of mutual exhaustion (i.e., there is a middle ground available, hence aporia is not possible). [31] vincenzo scamozzi, the idea of a universal architecture, volume vi (amsterdam: architectura & natura press, 2008). [32] ibid. [33] horst w. j. rittel and melvin m. webber, “dilemmas in a general theory of planning,” policy sciences 4 (1973): 155-169. [34] per galle, “candidate worldviews for design theory,” design studies 29, 3 (may 2008): 279. [35] ibid., 280. [36] some philosophers consider a notion of dilemma that is closely related 158 isparchitecture.com to aporia. for example, karamanolis uses the term “dilemmatic structure” to describe weighing various possibilities or ways out of the aporia. (see george karamanolis, “the aporetic character of plotinus’ philosophy,” in the aporetic tradition in ancient philosophy, eds. george karamanolis and vasilis politis (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017), 250.) others hold that the reasoning leading to an aporia need not take the form of dilemma. (for example, see john palmer, “contradiction and aporia in early greek philosophy,” in the aporetic tradition in ancient philosophy, eds. george karamanolis and vasilis politis (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017), 9.) gelber maintains that a particular type of aporia, in cases where we are presented with equally impossible options (i.e., ‘negative aporias’), can present itself in a form of dilemma, but also that some aporiai do not have “the appearance of dilemma at all” and so on. (see jessica gelber, “uses of aporiai in aristotle’s generation of animals,” in the aporetic tradition in ancient philosophy, eds. george karamanolis and vasilis politis (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2017), 164-165.) i am considering the notion of dilemma here in the context of galle’s proposition (seed questions) to distinguish between problems of choice and aporiai. [37] to describe the predictions architects make, galle gives an example of an architect designing an opera who points “to one of his drawings, saying ‘every seat on this balcony has an unobstructed view of the stage.’” galle rightly emphasizes that “if we could not rely on such design predictions as largely true, we should hardly be able to make artefacts at all.” see galle, “candidate worldviews for design theory,” 278. [38] galle, “candidate worldviews for design theory,” 267-303. [39] ibid. [40] for plato, architecture is indeed a form inquiry leading to true knowledge. in the statesman, when plato makes a distinction concerning the highest kinds of knowledge, he specifically uses the example of an architect to depict the highest level of knowing (γνωστικὴ ἐπιτακτικὴν), which is removed from practical experience and belongs to higher cognitive capacities. see plato, statesman, 260d. isparchitecture.com the anthropology of a smokefilled room: ethnography and the human at oma graham owen introduction this paper examines ethnographic studies of design processes within the celebrated dutch architectural practice oma, studies undertaken from an actor network theory perspective as promulgated by the anthropologist-philosopher bruno latour. considering the participantobservation work of yaneva, the article contrasts the relative absence of discussion of issues of labour and working conditions with their prominence in recent work by observers of architectural education and by activist academics such as deamer, tombesi and wilson. why might this ethnographic study have overlooked or de-emphasised these aspects of human relations at oma? with critiques of latourian and ant-based approaches in mind, the paper asks if this is an aversion characteristic of such perspectives, with their defining selfdistinction from critical theory. this paper argues for at least four reasons that these studies of oma do not tackle the issues of architectural “labour in the making,” reasons that are respectively ethnographic, methodological, epistemological, and ontological. the article draws upon the reflections of ignacio farías and alex wilkie on the evolution of “studio studies” from latour et al.’s laboratory studies. from a philosophical point of view, it proposes potential extensions of studio studies to foreground labour conditions, which can be seen as central to design processes in studios such as oma. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 161 ow en in medias res the year is 1991. the scene is a two-bedroom apartment in rotterdam. i am visiting former classmates working at rem koolhaas’s office for metropolitan architecture. five oma employees share the flat. my friends, a couple with some means, have one of the bedrooms. the rest are, in effect, camping. one, from the states, has a thin mattress on the floor. all his possessions are scattered around it, like those of a homeless person under a bridge. i have come to visit oma, but also to see significant modernist works in rotterdam. but my friends do not know where those are. all they know is the route between the apartment and the office, and the cafes where they eat breakfast and dinner when they can. when i arrive, trouble is brewing. no one, other than rem and the three associates, has been paid for two months, say the junior architectural staff. simply, no cheques have appeared. a letter of protest is being drafted: the staff, after all, do have bills of their own to pay. and the pay, when it has come, is not great: 14,000 pounds a year, or a dollar figure in the 20,000s. a typical work week consists of 70 to 100 hours. the average time to burnout and departure for a staff person at their level, they report, is two to three months, although my classmates, with more personal resources at their disposal, have lasted longer. the staff are international, but many have come to rotterdam without work permits, under the radar; they receive no employment benefits.1 over time, did success change oma? did the practice become able to offer working conditions befitting trained professionals, recognizing that they too have lives to lead outside the office, obligations to others to fulfil? anecdotal but firsthand web reports from 2015 suggest otherwise. one former employee of less than a year describes a spirit of camaraderie on all-nighters, but nonetheless acknowledges “extremely long hours–below market pay–very high turnover rate,” and remarks that “if everyone is going to be there for 15-18 hours a day, maybe include more than just a coffee machine and microwave in the kitchen”. another former staff member recognizes the attraction of an oma stint on one’s resume, and reports receiving benefits, but confirms a “[r]uthless working environment. management really doesn’t care if you don’t sleep for days in a row as long as deadlines are met. working hours are ridiculously long. you basically never stop working, specially [sic] if you are an intern or junior architect. forget about having anything resembling a life outside of the office, the office is open 24/7. office culture is bad. lots of dissatisfied employees. incredibly disorganized 162 isparchitecture.com project environment. very high rate of turnover […] most employees who [have been] here for a long time have been raised in these types of environments so they ‘don’t know any better’ and have little ‘real world’ experience.” a third former staff member observes more succinctly: “no sleep ever. tense environment. and no sleep ever. ever. ever.”2 while the review comments on oma are among the more extreme, such concerns are not unfamiliar among architectural firms that seek celebrity status within the discipline, indicating a set of labour issues endemic to culturally ambitious “starchitect” practices and certainly worthy of investigation. ant and architecture, laboratory and labour to think back today to the mattress of the 1991 oma employee, to his belongings scattered on the floor around him, is to be reminded all too easily of other more recent sleeping accommodations associated with the production of culturally ambitious architecture. those in the rotterdam apartment were admittedly less dire and more selfchosen than those of migrant workers with which we are now familiar in the emirates, as evidenced by the work of investigative journalists and activist groups,3 but as those activists have argued, the two instances are connected by a disciplinary complex of issues as regards architectural labour. these issues, however, figure 1: dubai migrant workers’ sleeping accommodations ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 163 ow en do not appear to have surfaced in the ethnographic studies of oma’s practice, despite their focus on the daily practices of design as a necessary component in the understanding of architecture. trained as a philosopher and anthropologist, bruno latour has brought influential attention to design in the more recent decades of his career.4 drawing upon his applications of actor network theory and the concept of the thing in studies of science and technology, latour seeks, as ariane lourie harrison observes, to challenge architecture to revise its conception of buildings as static objects, to understand that buildings develop agency as sociotechnical systems, through negotiations among people, institutions, and technologies. […] any entity (human or non-human, individual or organization, architecture) can be conceptualized as both an actor and a network, in actor-network theory, its constitutive actions redistributed accordingly. […] by this approach, it becomes more difficult (and less productive) to refer to an entity as a discrete or isolated object. […] all phenomena are networked assemblages of actors, each capable of reconfiguring the network, affecting each of its constituents. latour proposes the term thing to describe these socio-technical assemblages that make up the bulk of our environment and experience, and to distinguish his hybrid schema from the more rigid, modernist categorization of phenomena into subject and object. an ant approach to architecture highlights the discrepancy between the manifest thingness of a building (multiple constituencies, overlapping material, technological and discursive systems, inherent spaces of controversy) and its representation as a rendered object (static, set serenely in cartesian space). […] [a]n ant’s view would suggest that buildings be represented as dynamic ‘spaces of controversy’.5 latour and yaneva remark that, “it is paradoxical to say that a building is always a ‘thing’ that is, etymologically, a contested gathering of many conflicting demands and yet, having said that, to be utterly unable to draw those conflicting claims in the same space as what they are conflicting about.”6 latour himself asserts that, “what is needed instead are tools that capture what have always been the hidden practices of modernist innovations: objects have always been projects.”7 particularly through his students and collaborators, he has encouraged close studies of the processes of the studio. transposing their techniques from latour’s earlier studies of laboratory life, and seeking to understand “architecture in the making,” his colleagues have undertaken ethnographic enquiries into the process by which architecture comes into being, and have challenged conventional interpretations. in philosophical terms, these studies constitute a search for, if not “truth,” a more accurate understanding of the construction of knowledge and the relationship between architecture 164 isparchitecture.com and the social. in examining the respective roles of human and non-human actors, this work alters normative assumptions about the extent of human agency. albena yaneva has made notable contributions to this e n d e a v o u r . she claims that a r c h i t e c t u r e cannot be understood by conven t iona l narratives of its production and reception. in essays such as “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move,” of 2008, by latour and yaneva, they seek to reverse etienne jules marey’s ambition to build a “photographic gun” that would freeze the stages of a bird’s action in flight. instead, they seek a theoretical device to reveal “that a building is not a static object but a moving project, and that even once it is has been built, it ages, it is transformed by its users, modified by all of what happens inside and outside, and that it will pass or be renovated, adulterated and transformed beyond recognition.”8 in the process of this argument’s elaboration, theorists as notable as george baird, neil leach, ian borden, and jane rendell are set aside as representative of superseded paradigms of interpretation: everyone knows that a building is a contested territory and that it cannot be reduced to what is and what it means, as architectural theory has traditionally done. […] as long as we have not found a way to do for figure 2: bruno latour lecturing at harvard university graduate school of design. 2009. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 165 ow en buildings the reverse of what marey managed to do for the flights of birds and the gaits of horses, architectural theory will be a rather parasitical endeavor that adds historical, philosophical, stylistic, and semiotic ‘dimensions’ to a conception of buildings that has not moved an inch.9 in writing of her observations of oma, yaneva insists that, “you can still appreciate a building, like or dislike it, praise or dismiss it, without knowing anything about the design experience that made it happen; but you cannot understand a building without taking these design experiences into account.”10 thus yaneva asserts that there is a deep and wide knowledge (attainable by both outsiders and, ultimately, by those involved in its production) of a work of architecture that takes into account the extensive processes and controversies through which it has come into physical being; and, indeed, she is asserting that the work of architecture is that assemblage of processes, controversies, actors… without that recognition, yaneva is claiming, there is no adequate knowledge of architecture; rather, only a superficial appreciation or casual evaluation. but given these substantial epistemological claims, it is surprising—even though yaneva picks up clues in the texts under consideration here—that issues of employment ethics, conditions of work, and their rationalization by staff members, do not surface as foregrounded parts of the assemblage. yaneva’s work opens up in detail the day-to-day working practices in an ambitious and influential practice such as oma. her painstaking observation of the role of physical models and digital representations in their process of design undoubtedly offers valuable insights. years of fieldwork, the demanding tasks of collation of notes, transcripts and correspondence, and the continued research enterprise through the university of manchester are worthy of respect, and the writings of both yaneva and latour have become increasingly evident in architectural discourse in recent years. but as others have observed,11 latour’s aggressive promotion of paradigm shifts and his inclination to use the language of warfare in seeking to colonize and dominate intellectual fields suggest that some circumspection is warranted in assessing these claims regarding the formation and adequacy of knowledge (at least scholarly and practitioners’ knowledge) of architecture. and in this particular instance, that circumspection needs to address the downplaying of those aspects of studio life that pertain to the ethics of architectural labour. 166 isparchitecture.com the voluntary prisoners of oma in the early 2000s, yaneva undertook research as a participant observer within oma. the results of this ethnographic observation were published as made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (2009), hereafter made by oma, and the making of a building: a pragmatist approach to architecture, also of 2009. in her interviews excerpted in made by oma, in particular, she confirms that there is an “overproduction” of design ideas in blue foam model form; hears of staff being asked to “put a [design] p r o p o s a l on the table overnight;”12 and hears another say, “[s]ometimes i don’t have dinner for like two days, because i work during the evenings. [ay:] [t]hat’s how everybody works here? [abji:] yes, we even work in the weekends, but it’s ok, it’s a good atmosphere.”13 in the making of a building, yaneva observes that: at the end of the ordinary working day (around six o’clock), computer music announces the beginning of ‘the evening shift’. architects start buzzing with excitement following the departure of all the administrative staff. they find themselves alone with specific design tasks to complete surrounded by the sounds of the same music they have listened to during the day in the privacy of their earphones. now the music is given the opportunity to contribute to the office figure 3: oma “newhitney” selected study models ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 167 ow en hubbub, and to amplify the excitement. the architects share a pizza around the table of models […] [s]ometimes a new model arrives with the sunrise, more updated drawings are printed out and set up on the table just as the city of rotterdam is about to wake up.14 the young architects recover from their nocturnal labours with “one of those strong oma coffees that really wake you up even if you have only slept for a couple of hours.”15 yaneva remarks that, because designs for terminated projects are sometimes resurrected in later commissions, “the sleepless nights spent in the company of a foam-cutter, a computer and a couple of fellow architects from the same [project team] have not been in vain.”16 the blue foam “smells,” she notes, when cut on the hot-wire cutter17—and it does so because it is releasing toxic fumes—but no one, we might note, seems concerned with the health risks to the staff. indeed, the demands of oma’s working conditions seem to serve yaneva’s larger claims regarding knowledge and reality: “the fact that there is no urban life ‘out there’, far from the studio, has been demonstrated by all those who never visited the whitney [museum] site in manhattan but kept on designing for it, by all those who never learned spanish but built in cordoba, and by those who never borrowed a book from the seattle library but reinvented the library typology. designers never go ‘outside’; there is no outside. […] the studio constitutes their world. […] oma and koolhaas treat the studio as the world.”18 one may well ask whether these descriptions and assessments constitute an apologia for the conditions observed, or whether they serve instead to expose the conditions of labour without direct accusation or criticism? the tone of the description of the musical all-nighter is positive, even approbatory, conveying the student-like “excitement” of the participants without evident irony; generally speaking, irony is by no means absent from the latourian rhetorical repertoire, but conspicuous by its absence in this instance. reflexivity yet yaneva’s observations, undertaken in the early 2000s, overlap with a period of notable reflexivity within architectural practice and education, particularly within the north american context. brought to professional attention in the publication progressive architecture in the early 1990s,19 given intensity by the accidental deaths of several students after 168 isparchitecture.com multiple all-night work sessions, exposed to the wider academy and the public at large through further journalistic exposés,20 concerns with the adverse effects of the traditions of the design discipline and profession were confronted in the redesign of studio culture, of 2002.21 in these and subsequent reports, the reproductive cycle between the architectural academy’s tradition of do-ordie work practices and a similar culture in the profession, particularly among its most culturally ambitious members—with all the implications for work-life balance, health, and the perceived value of architects’ time—was indicted. but traditions die hard, bound up as they are with identity, and debates over such concerns and indictments have continued internationally to the present day.22 philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, who between them had experienced working at oma from 1996 to at least 2000, published in that latter year “oma at work,” an account of that experience. oswalt, editor of the journal arch+ from 1988 to 1994, evidently brought a critic’s eye to that endeavour. they describe and explicate in detail the processes of the office, and it is worth quoting these accounts at some length for comparison with yaneva’s observations and the more recent ex-employee reports online: an important precondition is that the majority of the employees are quite inexperienced and young. not only do they work unbelievably hard for relatively little money and thereby make it possible to pursue thousands of ideas, to try them out and reject them, which no client would ever want or be able to pay for, but more importantly, it is the naivety with which they approach the tasks they are set. ignorant of how the problem would normally be solved, they can experiment with a childlike lack of inhibitions and thus develop new ideas. […] rem’s instructions are mostly so vague, his presence over long periods only intermittent and his distance ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 169 ow en to the design team so great that some employees opine that he is not really a designer at all, it is his staff who produce the architecture. […] [but t]he distance between the team of designers and rem leads to great flexibility: at any time, the direction can be changed unexpectedly, and the more doggedly the design team sticks to a solution or a problem, the likelier it is that this will happen. the work of days or weeks can be discarded in the space of a minute without much discussion. […] [o]ther members of staff are occasionally drawn in at short notice. […] less in awe of that which has already been achieved, the staff who have been uninvolved until then foil the intentions of their colleagues, which makes it at the same time much easier to develop substantial new ideas. basically, almost any form of destabilization appears to be welcome. it is rather unlikely that the team that has begun a project takes it through to realization. it may happen that a team, having worked through the night and an interim presentation, comes into the office to find that the workplaces have been seized by colleagues and the team has to find new ones. the concept of private property does not exist in the office anyway: every drafting pen, every adhesive film, every geodesic triangle that you have with difficulty acquired for yourself can disappear again within days or hours. and it would not surprise anyone in the office if he or she were told that they had to fly that very day to hanoi for several days because of a project. one hundred per cent availability is implicitly demanded–24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with the exception of christmas. […] it can happen that just a few hours before a presentation or a deadline rem wants to change the design, the model, the drawings or collages. then arguments of time or costs are of no import, to the despair of the financial director and the curses of the staff who have to change everything at the last moment.23 as oswalt and hollwich suggest, these accounts describe, by comparison with conventional professional practices, a deliberately unstable and chaotic situation, one in which “human resources management” evidently occurs in part by placing staff and their design ideas in a quasi-darwinian struggle for recognition, with status, approval, and reliable communication and decision-making constantly undermined; the possibility of predatory internal competition apparently tacitly condoned. billable hours (those hours of work charged to the fee that the client has agreed to pay) are clearly far exceeded by actual hours expended and, from that conventional professional perspective, the financial viability of such an office is enabled only by the absence of overtime pay, an intense stigma attached to time-in-lieu (paid time off equivalent to unpaid overtime worked), and significantly below-par compensation for the majority of staff.24 drawn in, it seems, by the cachet of being known to have worked for oma, and by its apparent value—if not in monetary terms—in one’s portfolio and cv 170 isparchitecture.com (especially given koolhaas’s international renown and influence), young staff in particular appear to find themselves in an exploitative situation. mutinies, by the time that oswalt and hollwich are working there (and yaneva is about to undertake her observations), seem less likely, as some of the “voluntary prisoners”25 turn out to be the warders of their co-workers: in a passage of sharply ironic tone, oswalt and hollwich note that, “the office is characterized more by an american mentality than a european one: produce, criticize and don’t ask for reasons, don’t argue, show unlimited commitment, don’t expect any solidarity from your colleagues – don’t worry, be happy. it is not by chance that almost all the project leaders come from the usa.”26 yaneva cites oswalt and hollwich’s article in the making of a building, but takes pains to distinguish her intentions from theirs: “my aim is not to present the habits of the office and the general rules of their design philosophy […] but to make the reader hear the architects’ voices, to follow the reactions and discussions of architects, engineers, stage designers, cost evaluators, curators and artists, to see them draw, build models, negotiate the costs of a building, and design the newhitney.”27 resistance in her participant observations, yaneva adheres to latour’s exhortation to “follow the actors” (both human and non-human), and to describe rather than seek to explain, in order to observe “architecture in the making.” such an approach contrasts with recent investigations into attitudes in the discipline and profession to work and labour, regarding the fabrication of buildings but also regarding the production of design. these include the studies undertaken by peggy deamer, paolo tombesi et al.;28 by the artists’ activist group gulf labor with andrew ross on the exploitation of migrant labour produce, criticize and don’t ask for reasons, don’t argue, show unlimited commitment, don’t expect any solidarity from your colleagues – don’t worry, be happy. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 171 ow en for cultural projects in the gulf states;29 and by mabel wilson and others of the academic activist group who builds your architecture,30 who have argued that the conditions under which architecture is produced are an integral part of its ethical dimension. it might be asserted that such studies revisit marxist concerns characteristic of the 1970s, and indeed deamer’s edited collection the architect as worker opens its “foreword” with a quotation from marx distinguishing between mental and material labour. nonetheless, the contributors are at pains to identify the differences at play in our times: joan ockman, in that same “foreword,” acknowledges that: intellectual labor has become increasingly arduous and stressful today by virtue of the expansion of the workday to the 24/7 cycle, ‘flexible’ hiring and firing policies, insecurity with respect to healthcare and other social benefits, and– in the particular case of young, highly educated architects–low compensation and unpaid internships. […] these problems are compounded today in the context of a disorganized global ‘precariat’ that has to market its own skills as ‘entrepreneur of itself.’ 31 to these formulations we might add other dimensions of the neoliberal dispensation: the virtuous social roles ascribed to “creativity” as “innovation,” construed as bringing economic liberation to cities (through the creative class itself; the bilbao guggenheim, etc.) and individuals (liberated, by means of digital platforms, from the need of nannyemployer conditions such as benefits, unions, workplace rights) alike. and, indeed, in her online summary of made by oma, yaneva declares her intention to show “how innovation permeates design practice, how everyday techniques and workaday choices set new standards for buildings and urban phenomena.”32 in contrast, as manuel shvartzberg confirms, under that neoliberal dispensation, “in material terms, creativity is the measure by which workers will cannibalize themselves for the sake of the company – extreme work hours, no parallel commitments (love, friendship, community, etcetera).”33 oma’s location in this complex of concerns has in part to do with the firm’s status as an acknowledged generator of innovation in those terms (the seattle public library’s impact on library usage and the city’s economy, for example), and in part with its principals’ and former staff ’s status in the world of architectural education (koolhaas’s appointment at the harvard graduate school of design, for instance). if the university— in spite of the ongoing attempts to reconstruct it in the image of neoliberal values—is still expected by some to engage in challenges to the ideological conventions of its time, then the prominent architectural 172 isparchitecture.com practitioner-teacher might well be expected to use their affiliation with the academy not simply as a source of clients and junior staff, but rather as a venue to be openly reflexive about the conditions of their own professional practices. as dariel cobb observes: academics now need to do more: examine the labor rights of architecture workers and the labor practices of architecture offices within a larger social history. having personally experienced the unmitigated drudgery of long hours and low pay within a purportedly elite professional architecture setting, i think it’s time to move workers’ whispers and complaints from blogs and trade publications to the arena of sustained critical discourse. generations have passed during which such engagement would have been vilified, only to arrive at this ripe political moment for reexamination.34 with such initiatives in mind, could one suggest that an additional path of observation might have been undertaken in the ethnography of oma; namely, who builds your foam models? the methods of sisyphus a further objection might be raised, however, that many culturally ambitious architects have obtained from their staff, by one means or another, long hours at low pay, and that this is indicative of the low value placed by society at large upon architectural work. quality of ideas and execution takes more time (so the argument goes) and therefore costs more than most clients are willing to pay; thus, in this noble shared cause, the shortfall in income has to be passed on to staff. in other words, inadequacy of compensation is a condition forced upon the practice as a whole for those who set their ambitions high; and (by implication of this argument) the moral issue is shifted to the societal level. might this constitute a rationale for yaneva’s who builds your foam models? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 173 ow en overlooking of the labour issues at oma? it seems unlikely, given this invocation of latour in making: “society has to be composed, made up, constructed, established, maintained, and assembled. it is no longer to be taken as the hidden source of causality which could be mobilized so as to account for the existence and stability of some other action or behaviour.”35 oswalt and hollwich, though, in their laconic recounting of the particularities of oma’s design method, offer apologias for some of its more extreme demands: settling on a solution, or to put it more precisely, filtering out a solution from the pool of ideas, takes place very late; the alternatives are developed in parallel over a long period. the decision is postponed as long as possible, because it always implies the loss of other possibilities, limitation. […] when you are involved in this process, you can sometimes despair over the inefficiency and the absence of conventional professionalism. but in the end, you are obliged to concede that the non-linearity of the design process, the lack of routine or an established canon of methods or solutions are the basis for the quality of the office’s work. […] it is characteristic that rem assesses a project sceptically precisely when it has developed continuously without conflicts, crises and interruptions. […] it is the ambition of the office to structure the design process in such a way that the maximum number of influences, criteria and ideas are included. […] it is indicative that innumerable alternatives will also be investigated when an obviously brilliant idea has already been come up with: although rem had already had the basic idea at the beginning of the iit project [the mccormick tribune campus center of 1997-2003], all the same he kept the team investigating and developing completely different ideas for weeks. as none of the newly developed options was any more convincing, though, the idea that was there from the start was taken up again. this sisyphus-like way of proceeding may appear totally inefficient, but it proves to be extremely fruitful.36 rationalisation sisyphean indeed; yet as yaneva’s interviewees demonstrate, oma’s young staff nonetheless rationalise their intense and difficult working conditions. in the oma publication content (cited by yaneva as one of her guides to the office’s practice),37 staff chosen to collaborate with herzog and de meuron at their basel office comment ironically but disparagingly 174 isparchitecture.com on the more civilised and relaxed conditions they see there: “we don’t have time for long weekends, lunches, coffee breaks, and short workdays. we want to work hard, do things fast, have no free time, learn, and move on. in basel, people do not move on; they have good lives.”38 contrary to the studio culture studies’ alarm at inadequate rest and poor eating habits, the oma staff writing in content “dread the hour lunch break, during which we have to roam the boring streets of basel in search of expensive, tasteless food. thank god for globalism, mr wong and mcdonald’s.”39 angela mcrobbie, in her studies of the individualization of precarious labour in the culture industries, observes that: one of the most perplexing issues facing social scientists and policy-makers is the sheer enthusiasm on the part of young people for ‘creative’ jobs they know in advance will require long stints of working, often through the night, for relatively low pay. such enthusiasm is unabated even for those who are wellversed in the politics of precaritie, and this opens up important questions for the future of work. in particular, does this ethos confirm michel foucault’s oft-quoted insight that power works most effectively when it is tied to the promise of pleasure and selfreward, in this case through ‘creative enterprise’ or ‘passionate work’?40 in the example from content, there is an identification of the working conditions as a kind of rite of passage, indicative of the seriousness and substance of the endeavour. some might suggest that there is an internalization of abuse as a badge of courage, as a confirmation of the most serious commitment to the field; but also that this internalization constitutes an essential mechanism of social reproduction, a process by which a prized identity is handed down from one generation to another. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 175 ow en william wiles, reporting in 2011, assembles a further set of telling rationalisations by the firm’s managers themselves: oma’s breakneck internal pace comes at a cost – the company has an extremely high turnover of staff, as implied by the number of independent practices that spin out of it; high numbers of burnouts are also rumoured. incredibly, this high turnover is company policy. ‘we want to refresh and renew our organisation on a permanent basis,’ says [victor] van der chijs [managing partner]. ‘we really want every year at least 25 percent of our people to be new. and we want them to be young, bright people. the idea [is] [...] that we really need those people to feed in new ideas, make sure that oma stays relevant and really understands what is going on.’ many companies would balk at this kind of turnover. a high churn rate of staff is very costly–time is tied up training, knowledge and experience is continually leaking away, good practices can be hard to maintain. […] ‘most people know that when they join oma, that they work on average for three years here and after that, they leave,’ says van der chijs. ‘it’s already in their minds.’ […] looked at with these expectations in mind–people join oma knowing they are in for an intensive but short and valuable experience that will leave them ready to start up on their own–and the office starts to look more like an elite college than an architecture and research firm. ‘the environment that is generated from the projects here is an incredibly strong learning experience, a fast-track learning experience,’ says [project architect mark] veldman. ‘you learn much more here in a year than you would learn in a university.’ 41 in these passages, the upper echelons of oma invoke familiar neoliberal shibboleths as justifications of the office’s work practices: the casualisation of labour;42 employment as a springboard to personal entrepreneurship (every short-term employee is, regardless of their prior socio-economic status, potentially the next bjarke ingels, jeanne gang, or joshua princeramus); and the value of experience in the firm as a form of education (implicitly justifying low compensation). the nature of oma’s design method, in which many non-linear directions are explored and physicalmodel options generated—almost as if a process of emergence were being set in motion out of multiplicity—is evidently inextricably tied to high demands on low-cost labour (of which there has been a reliable supply, given the practice’s ties to academies). thus an understanding of oma’s approach to design would seem to necessitate attention to this relationship to labour. such a situation might even have been considered from the actor network theory (ant) perspective as worthy of study 176 isparchitecture.com as a controversy in itself: “design,” after all, “has a proactive power to incite public controversies over thorny issues and generate social effects.”43 but in the case of oma’s labour practices, these opportunities appear not to have been taken up. ethics and agency, critique and description why might this ethnographic study have overlooked or de-emphasised these aspects of human relations at oma? what are the constraints on this project of philosophical anthropology? is the latourian approach inherently unable to tackle such a topic, or are there affordances that could adjust its scope? variations in interpretations of that method’s assumptions suggest that it has versions that are more or less circumscribed. greater circumscription does not appear to result from an inherent limitation of pragmatist ethics per se, which after all seeks to adapt its practices on the basis of experience, unless one equates pragmatism in this instance with a cynical realism, in the sloterdijkian sense,44 on koolhaas’ part (a valid concern, given latour’s enthusiasm for sloterdijk as a philosopher of design).45 latour’s ethics, construed by gabriel hankins in the context of literature, occurs in the “nonmodern” condition, where nature, society and culture no longer exhibit the categorical distinctions presumed in the modern. “action,” observes hankins, “becomes distributed between actants [human and nonhuman] that coproduce the action rather than figured as a subject acting on its object.”46 he quotes latour: “an ‘actor’ in the hyphenated expression figure 4: wbya proposed revisions to aia code of ethics p.1 ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 177 ow en actor-network is not the source of an action but the moving target of a vast array of entities swarming towards it.”47 “a latourian account,” continues hankins, “remains uncertain as to location of agency.”48 such a situation, and the emphasis on description over explanation, has led to the charge for ant of descriptivism. whittle and spicer assert that: by producing descriptions of existing networks of actors in an apparently neutral, apolitical manner, ant actually reinforces the state of affairs that it describes. indeed, law (2003) recognizes the possibility that ant simply reproduces rather than challenges the hegemony of the networks they describe. […] ant remains indifferent about the specific means through which power is established (amsterdamska, 1990). for instance, coercion, corruption and intimidation are not distinguished on any normative basis from persuasion, negotiation and reward. […] ant brings with it a tendency to legitimize hegemonic power relations, ignore relations of oppression, and sidestep any normative assessment of existing organizational forms.49 in an essay published in 2004, latour famously asked, “why has critique run out of steam?”50 his purpose was to distinguish the methods he was propounding from those of critical theory, which he felt had fallen prey to popularization and misapplication. extending this position in a debate of 2011 with neil brenner and others over the methods of urban studies, ignacio farías emphasizes inquiry as ant’s “style of cognitive engagement,” as distinct from critique. he acknowledges brenner et al.’s charge that assemblage-based urban studies risk a “naïve positivism” and ideological affirmation of current conditions, but seeks to argue against that charge. “three methodological principles,” observes farías, “summarize [ant’s] commitment to the empirical: ‘follow the actors, forget the contexts’, ‘describe, don’t explain’ and ‘do not switch conceptual repertoires when you describe’.”51 the world is not all in, […] it is in the making. […] the most obvious consequence of this ontology is that it involves accounting for all actual entities involved in such processes of construction, whether human or nonhuman, their interactions and transformations. the most important consequence […] is that the notion of assemblage involves no outside, no exteriority. […] assemblages are self-contained processes of heterogeneous associations calling for a positive description of their becoming, not external explanations.52 here, journalist sander pleij’s interviews in his 2014 article “who is rem koolhaas” affirm the connections. koolhaas remarks: “but being critical is the basis of it all, i think that in the last 25 years the critical from outside 178 isparchitecture.com is no longer existent. just like žižek, latour and all those other ones are declaring. you can’t look at it from the outside.”53 farías, however, continues: “precisely because asymmetry is not presumed and explained structurally or contextually, the study of urban assemblages involves unveiling the actual practices, processes, sociomaterial orderings, reproducing asymmetries in the distribution of resources, of power and of agency capacities, opening up blackboxed arrangements.”54 by contrast with farías’ qualification, yaneva asserts that her “intentions were humble: i did not try to explain the oma practice or koolhaas’s approach […] [i had] the pure purpose of generating infra-reflexive descriptions of invention which would keep the freshness of design experiences […] far from the reach of the prevailing meta-reflexive theories of design. […] i simply described various design practices without sticking to references outside architecture.”55 architectural “labour in the making”: conclusions and openings in her “introduction” to the making of a building, yaneva notes that “i have deliberately chosen not to discuss koolhaas’s early works and his theoretical and philosophical thinking […] as this can bias my description of the design process at oma.”56 this is in keeping with yaneva’s interpretation of the descriptive approach, but carries certain risks. in its 1978 project for the extension of the dutch parliament in the hague, oma had proposed a generously equipped chamber for what they saw as the characteristic “orgies of speech” of dutch politics, but down the hall had also provided a “smoke-filled room”—miesian in its aesthetic— where the actual decisions would be made. the ironic tone of this contrast occurs innumerable times in oma’s work, suggestive of koolhaas’s “why has critique run out of steam?” “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 179 ow en cynical realism about transparency and democracy and, later, of his equivocal embrace of authoritarian clients (for example, china’s cctv). in the context of this paper, metaphorically the hague parliament’s debating chamber embodies the public presentation of oma’s intentions and values; the smoke-filled room, its actual internal practices. in the latter we find the “black-boxed arrangements” of farías’s analysis. in this instance, has the smoke prevented the black box of labour ethics from being opened up? “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move,” wrote latour and yaneva in 2008; for all the benefits of this idea, one would not want to think that the gun was adding to the smoke in the metaphorical room. oma, after all, in its daily practices had been able to implement, by the early 2000s, the neoliberal corporation’s wildest dreams: an unending supply of short-term contract labour, entirely flexible, eager to work up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week for minimal fixed salary, self-unorganised and self-policing, readily pitched into predatory competition, abnegating any expectations of structured career advancement, enthusiastic about unrelenting stress as the normal state of affairs, with work-life balance a non-issue, and conveniently departing when burnt out, before the right to an unlimited contract would kick in. are not the staff ’s acceptance of this situation—its relationship to their sense of disciplinary belonging and “chops”—and its fundamental role in oma’s disciplinary reputation and success also vital circulating components of the actor network in play? there may be at least four reasons that these studies of oma do not tackle the issues of architectural “labour in the making.” first, in the ethnographic project, the studies may have encountered a twin hazard for anthropologists: becoming too close to their subjects and yet, in other respects, not close enough. there is a sense of identification with the practice, and not only through the daily intimacy with their studio activities and thoughts: the design of the book made by oma (presumably the work of an actor network of which the author was a part) also pays a conspicuous homage, in its use of a sequence of quasi-cinematic images on its opening pages, to those of smlxl, the 1995 bible of oma’s practice to that date. latour was a contributor to the 2006 domus d’autore volume on “amo post-occupancy,” edited by koolhaas and amo, the research arm of oma.57 oma was a participant in the 2005 exhibition “making things public,” curated by latour (with peter weibel) at the zkm karlsruhe, and latour has been an apologist, enthusiast, and kindred intellectual spirit for koolhaas in interviews.58 farías and wilkie, in their introduction to studio studies, make a series of observations relevant to the larger implications of this first reason and 180 isparchitecture.com those that follow. the intimacy of studio life, they assert, means that ethnographers “almost inevitably cannot restrain themselves from becoming ‘native’ members of studio collectives and thus actively involved in creation processes.”59 we may observe that the countervailing need to “come home” periodically is thus made more difficult, in spite of—or perhaps also because of—the fact that the researcher’s grant, academic contract, or salary enables them to maintain a certain immunity to the coercions of studio employment. if we may propose here a possible extension of the oma study, what might be needed is a periodic process of more sustained auto-ethnographic reflection on the researcher’s own enthusiasm for the culture of the studio. second, in the methodological project, there is the resistance to “external” perspectives and values, in which labour ethics may have been implicitly and a priori defined as outside. yaneva takes pains, particularly in the making of a building, to distinguish her pragmatist approach from that of critical sociology and theory, which would be “to mobilize and evoke ideas from outside architecture to interpret design and reveal a myriad of hidden meanings and mechanisms of architectural practices.”60 here, farías and wilkie’s remarks indicate that this resistance is indeed characteristic of the larger latourian and ant projects. in their literature review, farías and wilkie touch on the issue of labour, but appear to distance their research program from it, both as a concern of “critical” scholars and as a condition (they imply) not manifested in the day-to-day practices of the studio itself: in examining the political economy of creative labour, critical scholars (hesmondhalgh and baker 2010) have pointed to the market and institutional arrangements that allow firms in the media and cultural sector to extract the surplus value of creative work, such as exploiting unpaid labour time. […] ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 181 ow en as such, the social and cultural sciences overlook the very settings where the products of the creative industries are brought into being by focusing on the … inter-institutional conditions in which creativity is achieved.61 earlier sociologists such as richard petersons, pierre bourdieu and howard becker dwelt, farías and wilkie note, on the “broader’ social, industrial and institutional contexts” of cultural production. against this approach, they invoke antoine hennion’s charge that it “only attempted the study of milieu, professions, institutions, markets, policies–that is, everything ‘around’ the object itself.”62 this categorical exclusion of “institutional contexts” from studio studies63 seems, however, at odds with farías’ own earlier confidence (cited above) that ant-derived methods do enable foregrounding of “the asymmetries of distribution […] of power and of agency capacities [and] opening up black-boxed arrangements,” which seem entirely worthy goals.64 third, in the epistemological project, there is an evident parallel exclusion of the context of the socialization of architects into generationally reproductive labour practices. yet as yaneva herself observes, “for me, the ‘apprentice’ in architecture […] [t]he rhythm of the office tamed me at the end to the extent that i became ‘trained by the field’ and began, up to a certain point, to think and act like an architect.”65 but “[t]he protagonists of my story were always quicker than me […] and always spent more time working overnight.”66 even so, “[my] routine of interview and observations followed by transcription was loading my fieldwork weeks in such an intensive way that i was literally living in the office.”67 thus in her own “apprenticeship,” yaneva herself reproduces, albeit initially by choice, the labour practices of her subjects. her overall approach is “inspired by william james’s project of radical empiricism. […] empirical would mean to be faithful to what is given to experience and the numerous connections that are revealed in it. […] such an approach to architecture consists in investigating the architectural culture and the practices of designers rather than their theories and their ideologies.”68 however, reflexive analysis of that experienced process of reproduction does not appear to figure in this empirical investigation of oma’s culture of “voluntary prisoners of architecture” and the connections potentially revealed within. could we then imagine the project being extended such that the researcher arranges to “follow the actors” further, to accompany the staff home (when they do go home); when they quit, are terminated or their contracts expire; or when they attempt to deal with the rest of life? farías and wilkie acknowledge, after all, that in the laboratory studies that they take as initial inspiration for studio ethnography, “equal attention 182 isparchitecture.com is paid to all the activities undertaken by scientists and lab technicians, whether routine informal talk, strategic career decisions, or fact-making efforts. all such practices are considered part of knowledgemaking processes.”69 fourth, in the ontological project,70 the drive to ascribe agency to non-human actors (in this case, the blue foam models) may diminish perception of the agency of human actors. the junior staff, though identified in the “acknowledgements” of the making of a building, appear by first name only in the “short stories” that form the chapters of made by oma (an exemplification of latour’s early advocacy of story-telling as an alternative to explanation); some of the female architectural staff are there described as “girls”; and design is presented as a form of play that generates its own rewards. this can have the unfortunate effect of a kind of infantilisation of those most affected by the firm’s working conditions. again, the broad ambition to describe “distributed creation processes” in the studio ensemble is shared by others coming from a similar intellectual formation: farías and wilkie assert that “the notion of studio life […] designates a vitality: a generative capacity that inheres in the human-material arrangements and circulations taking place in studios and converging in the creation of new cultural artefacts.”71 such a vitalist narrative of creativity can sometimes obscure, though, the possibility that the studio organism is self-devouring. “a kind of infantilisation of those most affected by the firm’s working conditions” “ ” acknowledgements i thank the organizers of the original conference “the human in architecture and philosophy” for the invaluable opportunity to develop this paper in the context of that event, and for their patience; and the editors, reviewers and my fellow conference participants for their constructive comments. i also thank my graduate research assistants bahareh javadi and particularly kekeli dawes and jonathan house for their enthusiastic contributions to the primary documentary research for this paper. endnotes [1] observations by the author. [2] “oma*amo architecture reviews,” glassdoor, https:// www.glassdoor.com/reviews/oma-amo-architecturereviews-e429120.htm, accessed january 31, 2016. from an informal survey of employee reviews published on glassdoor of practices such as zaha hadid architects, shop, foster + partners, bjarke ingels group, heatherwick, ds+a, mecanoo, mvrdv, asymptote, steven holl, gehry partners, morphosis, jean nouvel, etc. recurring complaints include long hours, chronic understaffing of projects, poor pay, unpaid overtime, poor work-life balance, inadequate professional development or advancement opportunities, junior staff treated as replaceable, limited technical depth among the long-term staff, predatory internal competition promoted by the firm’s culture, unskilled and bullying but inequitably rewarded management. [3] see, for example, “migrant workers’ rights on saadiyat island in the united arab emirates,” human rights watch, published 2015, accessed february 18, 2015, hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/uae0215_ foruploadr.pdf. see also “what can architects do about workers’ rights in the gulf?,” icon, published march 26, 2015, accessed may 21, 2015, iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/11715-what. [4] see, for example, bruno latour, “a cautious prometheus? a few steps toward a philosophy of design (with special attention to peter sloterdijk),” keynote lecture for the networks of design meeting of the design history society, falmouth, cornwall, september 3, 2008, http://www. bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/112-design-cornwall-gb.pdf. [5] ariane lourie harrison, “latour and yaneva: an ant’s view of architecture,” in architectural theories of the environment: posthuman territories, ed. harrison (new york: routledge, 2013), 107-8. 184 isparchitecture.com [6] bruno latour and albena yaneva, “‘give me a gun and i will make all buildings move’: an ant’s view of architecture,” in explorations in architecture: teaching, design, research, ed. reto geiser (basel: birkhäuser, 2008), 86. [7] latour, “a cautious prometheus?,” 13. [8] latour and yaneva, “‘give me a gun,’” 80. [9] ibid., 86-88. [10] albena yaneva, made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (rotterdam: 010, 2009), 104. indeed, latour comments disparagingly on architectural theory in general in rania ghosn, el hadi jazairy, and stephen ramos, “the space of controversies: an interview with bruno latour,” new geographies 0 (cambridge, ma: harvard gsd, 2008), 122–135. [11] olga amsterdamska, “surely you are joking, monsieur latour!,” science, technology, and human values 15, 4 (autumn 1990), 495-504; sal restivo, “politics of latour,” review essay, organization and environment 8, 1 (march 2005), 111-115. [12] yaneva, made by oma, 72. [13] yaneva, made by oma, 43. [14] albena yaneva, the making of a building: a pragmatist approach to architecture (bern: peter lang, 2009), 38. [15] ibid. [16] yaneva, made by oma, 89. [17] yaneva, made by oma, 58. [18] yaneva, made by oma, 84-85. [19] thomas fisher, “patterns of exploitation,” progressive architecture (may 1991), 9. [20] patrick monaghan, “the ‘insane little bubble of nonreality’ that is life for architecture students,” the chronicle of higher education (june 2001); and jody temkin, “for would-be architects, grad school like boot camp,” the chicago tribune, january 6, 2002. [21] aaron koch et al., the redesign of studio culture: a report of the aias studio culture task force (washington, dc: american institute of architecture students, 2002). [22] see, for example, “mental health reports 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16,” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 185 ow en graduate architecture landscape and design student union, university of toronto, http://www.galdsu.ca/mental-health-report-2013-2014. see also, richard waite and ella braidwood, “mental health problems exposed by aj student survey 2016,” architects’ journal 243, 16 (july 28, 2016), n.p. see also, leah sottile, “the aec industry’s deadly problem,” architecture, august 31, 2016. [23] philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, “oma at work,” trans. fiona greenwood, archis 7 (1998), n.p. also available at philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, “oma at work,” trans. fiona greenwood, volume project, http://volumeproject.org/oma-at-work/. also available at philipp oswalt and matthias hollwich, “oma at work,” trans. fiona greenwood, cloud-cuckoo-land, http://www.cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/wolke/ eng/subjects/991/oswalt/oswalt.html. [24] and perhaps, given the hindsight now available, koolhaas’s reported semi-retirement to switzerland; which would tend to confirm that the strictures of inadequate fees have not been evenly distributed across the hierarchy of the office. [25] the phrase is koolhaas’s, from his widely published architectural association student thesis project exodus. see rem koolhaas and elia zenghelis, “exodus: or the voluntary prisoners of architecture,” the white slave, 1972, https://thewhiteslave.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/ exodus-or-the-voluntary-prisoners-of-architecture/#jp-carousel-333. [26] oswalt and hollwich, “oma at work,” n.p. [27] yaneva, the making of a building, 24. [28] peggy deamer, ed., the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design (london: bloomsbury academic, 2015). [29] andrew ross, ed. [for gulf labor], the gulf: high culture/hard labor (new york: or books, 2015). [30] who builds your architecture?, http://whobuilds.org/. [31] joan ockman, “foreword”, in the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design, ed. deamer (london: bloomsbury academic, 2015), xxi-xxii. [32] albena yaneva, “abstract,” for made by the office for metropolitan architecture: an ethnography of design (rotterdam: 010, 2009), the university of manchester library, available at https://www.escholar.manchester. ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:87450. [33] manuel schvartzberg, “foucault’s ‘environmental’ power: architecture 186 isparchitecture.com and neoliberal subjectivization,” in the architect as worker: immaterial labor, the creative class and the politics of design, ed. deamer (london: bloomsbury academic, 2015), 189-90. [34] dariel cobb, “dispatches from mit: becoming political,” in asymmetric labors: the economy of architecture in theory and practice, eds. aaron cayer, peggy deamer et al. (brooklyn, ny: the architecture lobby, 2016), 147. [35] yaneva, the making of a building, 198 n. 4, from bruno latour, “when things strike back: a possible contribution of science studies to the social sciences,” british journal of sociology 51, 105-23. [36] oswalt and hollwich, “oma at work,” n.p. [37] yaneva, the making of a building, 32 n. 34. [38] fenna haakma wagenaar, “astorology: protect us from what we want,” in content, ed. rem koolhaas et al. (köln: taschen, 2004), 204. [39] ibid. [40] angela mcrobbie, “is passionate work a neoliberal delusion?,” transformation, published april 22, 2015, accessed july 19, 2016, https:// www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/angela-mcrobbie/is-passionatework-neoliberal-delusion. see also angela mcrobbie, be creative: making a living in the new culture industries (london: polity press, 2015). [41] william wiles, “inside oma,” icon, published september 30, 2011, https://www.iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/9554-inside-oma. [42] in dutch employment law, three years has been the maximum total duration of fixed-term employment contracts, beyond which further employment would automatically be for an unlimited term. see expat survival guide 2014 (haarlem: expatica, 2013), 60. [43] yaneva, the making of a building, 199. but see also albena yaneva, mapping controversies in architecture (farnham, uk: ashgate, 2012). [44] see kazys varnelis, “‘we cannot not know history’: philip johnson’s politics and cynical survival,” journal of architectural education 49:2 (november 1995), 92-104. as varnelis observes, “the modern cynic understands what false consciousness is, sloterdijk explains, but uses that knowledge to pull a fast one. acting fundamentally in their own self-interest, cynics ‘see to it that they are not taken for suckers.’” quotation from peter sloterdijk, critique of cynical reason (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1987), 5, quoted in varnelis, “‘we cannot not know history,’” 101. [45] see latour, “a cautious prometheus?” see also bruno latour, “spheres ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 187 ow en and networks: two ways to interpret globalization,” harvard design magazine 30 (spring/summer 2009), 138-44. [46] gabriel hankins, “the objects of ethics: rilke and woolf with latour,” twentieth-century literature 61:3 (september 2015), 333. [47] ibid. [48] ibid. latour, ever the agile guru in his “on recalling ant” essay of 1999, acknowledged concerns about moral issues, while not appearing to respond fully to them. see bruno latour, “on recalling ant,” in actornetwork theory and after, eds. j. law and j. hassard (oxford: blackwell, 1999), 15-25. [49] andrea whittle and andré spicer, “is actor network theory critique?,” organization studies 29:04 (2008), 622-623. [50] bruno latour, “why has critique run out of steam? from matters of fact to matters of concern,” critical inquiry 30 (winter 2004), 225-248. [51] ignacio farías, “the politics of urban assemblages,” city 15:3-4 (june-august 2011), 367. [52] farías, “the politics of urban assemblages,” 369-70. [53] sander pleij, “i hate being an architect,” medium, published june 8, 2014, accessed december 1, 2015, https://medium.com/@pleij/i-hatebeing-an-architect-7c42abbcd6d#.b7v4rvms2. [54] farías, “the politics of urban assemblages,” 369-370. [55] yaneva, made by oma, 100-101. [56] yaneva, the making of a building, 26 n. 29. [57] rem koolhaas and amo, “amo post-occupancy,” domus d’autore series, 2006. [58] maría j. prieto and elise s. youn, “interview with bruno latour: decoding the collective experiment,” agglutinations, published july 5, 2004, accessed october 30, 2016, http://agglutinations.com/archives/000040. html. [59] ignacio farías and alex wilkie, “studio studies: notes for a research program,” studio studies: operations, topologies, displacements (abingdon: routledge, 2015), 9. [60] yaneva, the making of a building, 25-26. [61] farías and wilkie, “studio studies,” 3. the internal reference is to david hesmondhalgh and sarah baker, creative labour: media work in three 188 isparchitecture.com cultural industries (abingdon, oxon.: routledge, 2010). [62] antoine hennion, “an intermediary between production and consumption: the producer of popular music,” science, technology and human values 14:4 (1989), 401, cited in farías and wilkie, “studio studies.” [63] as a further example, the ethnographic studies by sophie houdart of image production in the architectural studio of kengo kuma also appear to eschew the topic of labour conditions. see sophie houdart, “copying, cutting and pasting social spheres: computer designers’ participation in architectural projects,” science studies 21:1 (2008), 47-63. [64] sophie houdart, “multiple ways of being real: the representations in perspective in the architectural project,” land 46 (2006), 107-122. [65] yaneva, the making of a building, 34-35. [66] ibid. [67] ibid. [68] ibid., 196-197. [69] farías and wilkie, “studio studies,” 4. as a further possibility for future research, one might also propose a comparative ethnographic study of at least herzog & de meuron’s practice, whose design techniques have resembled oma’s (including blue foam models), but whose working environment is seen—at least by their oma collaborators in content—as quite different. [70] here i refer to the latourian concern, in propounding the notion of the complex and contested thing, to move beyond distinctions between objective and subjective agencies in order to acknowledge the active role of inanimate entities in actor networks. see also, for a more extended discussion of the topic, pauline lefebvre, “from autonomy to pragmatism: objects made moral,” architecturephilosophy 2:1 (2016), 23-37. [71] farías and wilkie, “studio studies,” 6. isparchitecture.com ut architectura philosophia? questioning the relationship of architecture and philosophy karsten harries 1 this conference has been organized by the international society for the philosophy of architecture. our topic is “the human in architecture and philosophy.” it raises the question: just what is the relationship between philosophy and architecture? what do they have to contribute to each other? what does architecture have to contribute to philosophy? and what does philosophy have to contribute to architecture? i shall return to both questions. that both are concerned with the human, with the ways human beings relate or should relate to each other and to the world that environs them seems obvious enough. in that sense both would seem to have an ethical significance. and both would seem to engage in work of construction, work that presupposes some sort of space, the space of everyday life in the case of architecture, a spiritual or logical space in the case of philosophy. philosophers have thus frequently invoked architectural metaphors, have liked to speak of laying foundations, of raising conceptual edifices, of the architectonics of some philosophical system. think of descartes, who likened himself to an architect, his philosophy to a chapel raised on firm foundations. but what work do such metaphors really do? are they not at bottom dispensable? yet especially in recent years it has once again become fashionable to think the philosopher in the image of the architect, if now often in a critical just what is the relationship between philosophy and architecture? “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 191 ha r r ie s key, to think of him as a would-be builder, someone who seeks to edify. the very word “edify” should make us think: once it meant simply to raise a dwelling or structure, later it came to mean “to improve morally or spiritually” — kierkegaard thus wrote edifying discourses — but today it tends to carry a negative connotation: philosophers should not attempt to be edifying. that shift in meaning invites attention. the word “edify” thus invites us to think about recent attacks on both traditional architecture and systembuilding philosophy: what, for example are we to make of invocations of georges bataille’s stance against architecture, where architecture, both material and spiritual, stands for an order that by assigning us our place threatens to imprison us and should be destroyed, even if such destruction threatens chaos? the kind of thinking that here makes the prison the paradigmatic work of architecture, a kind of lens through which to look at all architecture, is of the sort that lets dostoevsky’s man from the underground call twice-two-makes-four a piece of impudence and celebrate twice-two-makes-five as the ultimate refuge of a freedom that, resisting placement, dreams of labyrinth and chaos. was nietzsche perhaps right to claim that “if we willed and dared an architecture according to the kind of souls we possess (for that we are too cowardly!) the labyrinth would have to be our model”?1 consider, for example, the influential exhibition deconstructivist architecture, curated by mark wigley und philip johnson in 1988. the catalogue spoke of the emergence of a new sensibility, fascinated by possibilities of contaminating, disrupting, violating, subverting architecture. that sensibility led to an architecture that self-consciously calls traditional architecture into question, that is to say, an anti-architecture, which in today’s architecture world, both in theory and practice, has played a significant role in the work of frank gehry, zaha hadid, peter eisenman, daniel libeskind, rem kohlhaas, and coop himmelb(l)au, the architects celebrated by that exhibition. although perhaps claiming something like an ethical significance, such attacks on architecture as traditionally understood are also attacks on ethics in its usual sense, which does seek to edify, i.e. to raise a spiritual architecture that would help human beings find their proper place. freedom resists such placement. but should every spiritual architecture that would thus place us be challenged? what, for example, are we to make of the vogue enjoyed by the word “deconstruction” and all it stands for, the word itself an architectural metaphor of sorts, embraced not just by philosophers and literary critics, but also the name of an architectural practice that challenged what one had 192 isparchitecture.com come to expect from architecture, a practice that in extreme cases has led to attempts to blur what would seem to separate so obviously the philosopher from the architect: i am thinking especially, but not only, of derrida’s collaboration with bernard tschumi and peter eisenman, a collaboration that threatened to make of deconstructive discourse a strangely cerebral kind of architectural ornament. but does architecture, taken in its usual sense, really belong with ethics in that it, too, has by its very nature an ethical function, seeking to help orient individuals by providing more than just physical shelter, by interpreting their place in the world, especially in the community, the polis? or is just this understanding of architecture as having as a central task the representation of a community’s shared values or divinities something that we moderns, who in so many ways have left behind the ancient polis, should resist as incompatible with the world we live in, with the values that inform it, first of all with the value placed on the individual and on freedom? that was the charge mark lilla directed against my the ethical function of architecture: “it never seems to occur to harries that modern society is not re-presented in modern architecture for the simple reason that it is un-representable. that, indeed, was the point, or at least the result of the revolution in modern politics.”2 this criticism claims that the ethical function of architecture, as i presented it in that book, lies behind those who are truly of this modern age. and if such an ethical, and this means inevitably also a political function, was indeed, as hegel thought, once part of the very essence of architecture in what he took to be its highest sense, must we who are truly of today not resist all such architecture, which, when attempts are made to realize it in this modern age, invites disaster: think of the architecture of totalitarian governments, say of the architecture of ludwig troost, who had been charged by hitler to ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 193 ha r r ie s transform munich’s königsplatz into a worthy setting of a new national cult. the buildings that provided this cult with a stage were then widely celebrated as an enormous success, applauded by the party ideologue alfred rosenberg as “the first attempt to realize the ancient greek ideal” and praised by the architectural critic wilhelm lotz for showing for the first time in the modern age that “a deeper meaning can dwell in a city-square” as long as it has its origin in a spiritual principle and not in a desire for aesthetic variety in the built-environment or in a merely decorative intention. we should note the rejection of an architecture that would be no more than an aesthetic dressing up of functional buildings. the transformation of the königsplatz was supposed to have shown that it was still possible to create an architecture that emerges from inner principles of dedication and value instead of being derived from external contingencies of use.3 did architecture here not achieve that repetition of the greek in the modern of which nietzsche and also heidegger in the origin of the world of art dreamed? it is more than an historical accident that heidegger first gave this lecture on november 13, 1935, just four days before hitler was to give in munich a powerful demonstration of what such a repetition of the greek in the modern might mean in the 20th century.4 this unhappy conjunction needs to be confronted by anyone who, drawing on heidegger, wants to claim, as i do, an ethical function for architecture. has walter benjamin not taught us to associate such an aestheticized politics with fascism—and with kitsch and bad faith, with the myth of the twentieth century? countering mark lilla’s claim that modern society is not re-presented in modern architecture because it is un-representable, i want to insist that buildings cannot but re-present the ethos presiding over their construction. but that ethos all too often invites critique. despite a stream of mostly positive, but sometimes also critical responses, i have not seen a need to change my position in any fundamental way. but circumstances have changed; the world has changed, demanding a reconsideration of aspects of some of the central issues that i neglected. more especially, the way we today relate to space has changed and continues to change. two developments here seem to me to be particularly significant. one is the way an ever developing technology, and today especially the digital revolution, have opened up our everyday existence in ways that will continue to change our lives in ways we cannot quite foresee. we are open today to the world, to the universe, and to imaginary, virtual spaces as never before. this revolution has transformed the way architects do their work, but, and even more importantly, it has changed our sense of 194 isparchitecture.com distance, place, and space, and inseparable from it, our way of life, our sense of freedom, and that is to say also our way of dwelling, which should have consequences for our way of building. the other, in a sense opposite, but perhaps even more important way in which our world is changing has to do with the way the inevitably limited resources provided by this small planet have to collide with a still increasing humanity and its ever increasing demands for a higher standard of living. not just air and water, even space is becoming an ever scarcer, and all too often contested resource. much that gets built today wastes space in ways that i find irresponsible. these developments call for a reconsideration of what i had worked out in the ethical function of architecture. 2 let me return to the suggestion that the philosopher and the architect are both builders, to be sure, using very different media. just how is the bond between architecture and philosophy to be understood? hence the title of my lecture with its question mark: ut architectura philosophia? the latin obviously makes reference to the horatian ut pictura poesis, “as is painting so is poetry.” poetry here is said to be like painting in that it, too, represents reality. painting, to be sure, addresses itself to the eye, relying on visible figures, poetry to the ear, relying on words. the horatian dictum was thus famously called into question by lessing in his laocoon. lessing insisted on the gulf that separates eye and ear, percept and concept, arts of space and arts of time. and should the kind of considerations advanced by lessing not call into question even more decisively any attempt to obscure what so obviously would seem to separate buildings cannot but re-present the ethos presiding over their construction. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 195 ha r r ie s the architect who deals with matter from the philosopher who works with concepts, a distinction self-consciously blurred by some recent writing on architecture? should they not call into question, to give just one example, a work such as mark wigley’s the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt? 5 to be sure, philosophers like kant or descartes have liked to invoke architectural metaphors, have liked to speak of laying foundations, of raising conceptual edifices, of the architectonics of some philosophical system. but, to repeat the question, are such metaphors not at bottom dispensable? or is there indeed a deeper bond between the two that awaits adequate exploration? the organizers of this symposium, we are told, were inspired, by two observations and two questions: 1) many architects, contemporary and historical, claim to focus on the needs of human beings. the resulting architecture, however, often does not meet the needs and desires of the people who live there. for whom should architecture actually build? 2) architecture, traditionally, has played a negligible role in our philosophical understanding of human beings (as also for our sociological, psychological, and other anthropological analyses). although it has always been generally acknowledged that human beings need built dwelling places, more careful analysis of this need is surely necessary. what does it say about human beings that they depend upon the buildings they construct for their own habitation? the first observation points out that architecture often fails to meet the needs of those whom it supposedly serves. it is impossible to disagree with that observation. but it raises the obvious question: just what are these needs and why should architecture so often have failed to meet them? a first, albeit all too reductive answer, is implied by an observation made by adolf loos, who, many years ago standing before an alpine lakeside villa, thought that an architect who designs such a building ought to feel ashamed. confronted by today’s macmansions, i share his sentiment: everything breathes beauty and peace. what’s this then? a false note disturbs this peace. like an unnecessary screech: among the peasants’ houses, which were not made by them but by god, there is a villa. the work of a good architect, or a bad one? i don’t know. i only know that peace, rest, and beauty have fled. before god there are neither good nor bad architects. in towns, in the realms of beelzebub, there may be fine distinctions, as there are even in kinds of crime. and i therefore ask: why is it that every architect, whether he is good or bad, harms the lake-side? 6 196 isparchitecture.com hyperbolically, invoking god and the devil, the atheist loos here suggests that it is architecture itself that is the problem. his idealized peasant builder is thought as so in tune with his environment that his buildings have somewhat the same necessity as the shelters animals construct to protect themselves from an often hostile environment. this allows loos to claim that his peasant houses were made, not by his peasants, but by god. they answer to and belong to their environment. such houses do not strike us as the work of some particular builder. satisfying the needs they were meant to serve as best they could, they do not mean to be works of art. precisely that gives them their look of inevitability. with the work of the architect the city is said to invade the countryside, to destroy the harmony visible in the peasant houses, a harmony today equally visible, loos thought, in the work of the engineer, who, understanding his task, the available means, and the forces of nature, is not concerned to create an aesthetic object. loos’ remark suggests that we should draw a distinction between the kind of building that raised houses such as those built by his peasants and the work of the engineer, on the one hand, and the work of an architect, on the other. it is of course possible to use the word architecture, as i have done so far in this lecture, in so broad a sense that it names simply the craft of building, where building would cover a vast range of different structures and approaches. the title of this conference would seem to do so. but the distinction between mere building and architecture does seem to have an obvious sense. however we finally may want to draw it, we have no difficulty making sense of the distinction loos makes in the quoted passage. his peasants, like his engineers, are attuned to the order of nature and thus in harmony with something that transcends them. their buildings reflect this. with the work of the architect, be he good or ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 197 ha r r ie s bad, other concerns enter. the city is said by loos to invade nature, to violate it, where the city would seem to be understood by him here as a place of artificial, unnecessary needs. at issue is the way human beings relate to their environment. architecture, loos suggests hyperbolically, answers to unnatural needs. we are reminded of the way the book of genesis opposes the shepherd abel to the city building cain. a suspicion of architecture has indeed attended reflections about architecture from the very beginning, inevitably tied to thoughts of a mode of dwelling that had gone astray. think of the tower of babel. behind and buried in loos’s distinction between architecture and building lies the collision of a theocentric and an anthropocentric conception of proper human dwelling, which understood metaphorically, survives the death of god. related would seem to be the distinction that in that darmstädter gespräch in which heidegger delivered his lecture “building dwelling thinking” found expression in the collision of heidegger’s remarks, which bade the assembled architects learn from a black forest farmhouse of the 18th century what kind of building once allowed for an authentic dwelling, with those made by ortega y gasset. were those who built heidegger’s farmhouse really at home in their world, content with themselves and their world? was this what heidegger wanted to say? ortega, at any rate, speaking at the same symposium, did not want to hear of such contentment; and so he called our discontent “the highest thing the human being possesses, precisely because it is a discontent, because man wants to possess things that he never had.”7 and does this always wanting more, this striving for what is higher, not determine our essence? is it not bound up with our reason, which has to assign to everything real a place in the logical space of the possible and thus lets us ever again compare what happens to be our life-world with other possible worlds, whose temptations and promises seem to render the world to which we have become accustomed sadly deficient? again and again human beings have demanded more. our technology has its origin in such discontent. such discontent bids us create a new world “because, as it is, our world does not fit us, because it has made us sick. this new world of technology is like a gigantic orthopedic apparatus, that you [and here ortega was addressing his audience, the architects present] want to create, and all this technology has this wonderful, but—as is the case with everything human — dramatic movement and quality, to be a fabulous, great orthopedic device”8 is this then how architecture should be understood, as a gigantic orthopedic device? i called the distinction between building and architecture helpful and 198 isparchitecture.com obvious. but how architecture is to be understood here remains in question. just what is the need that architecture, as opposed to mere building, addresses? consider the way nikolaus pevsner begins his an outline of european architecture with this seemingly unproblematic observation: “a bicycle shed is a building; lincoln cathedral is a piece of architecture.” pevsner interprets this distinction for us when he suggests that works of architecture differ from functional buildings in that they are “designed with a view to aesthetic appeal.” most works of architecture are of course also functional buildings. accepting pevsner’s distinction we can say: work of architecture = functional building + aesthetic component. on this view it would seem to be an aesthetic concern that raises the architect above the mere builder, that makes him an artist. works of architecture, so understood, are buildings built to be not just useful, but to have an aesthetic appeal. loos suggests that it is precisely this aesthetic concern that gets in the way of good building. and since philosophers have tended to discuss architecture as one of the arts and the philosophy of art has evolved as aesthetics, philosophy would seem to have contributed to bad building. consider the way the novelist and philosopher william gass praises peter eisenman’s house vi because it presents itself to us as a convincing aesthetic object that pays no heed to practicality: “thank god, i thought. this house has no concern for me and mine, over which it has no rights, but displays in every aspect and angle and fall of light the concern for the nature and beauty of building that is the architect’s trust and obligation.”9 presupposed is that the architect’s primary task is that of creating a beautiful object, as opposed to the mere builder who is concerned with more practical matters. but this opposition of architecture to building raises a host of questions: what needs does building, loos suggests that it is precisely the aesthetic concern that gets in the way of good building. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 199 ha r r ie s so understood, address? there are some obvious answers such as the need to provide protection from an often hostile development or a suitable frame for certain activities. but do these needs exclude the beauty of a building? what need does beauty address? and just how is beauty, and more especially the beauty of a building to be understood? in opposition to the requirements of everyday dwelling? the distinction between building and architecture begins to blur. this returns us to the first question posed by the organizers of this symposium: for whom does the architect build? what need does or should he address? 3 even a brief look at some familiar accounts of the origin of building, such as those of vitruvius, hegel or corbusier, is sufficient to make us question those who would claim that the needs that our building serves are so obvious that there is as little need for philosophical reflection as there is in the case of the need for clothing. one aspect of the vitruvian account of the origin of architecture especially deserves our attention: when vitruvius likens his first builders in their need for shelter to wild beasts, he also insists on what makes them different and he mentions first their “not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendor of the starry firmament.”10 how are we to understand this remark, which links human verticality to the firmament? what does the sight of a splendor that the ancients thought essentially inaccessible, a permanent order open only to eye and spirit, beyond human reach, what does this vision of cosmic permanence have to do with the origin of building? i want to underscore vitruvius’ emphasis on the verticality of human being. to be sure, in sleep or death we return to earth-bound horizontality. but unlike the other animals, he points out, we are not obliged by our bodies “to walk with faces to the ground.” but if the human animal is thus free to look up to the firmament, such freedom is more than a gift of the upright body: “nature had not only endowed the human race with senses like the rest of the animals, but had also equipped their minds with the powers of thought and understanding, thus putting all other animals under their sway.”11 the human body’s verticality signifies spirit. and such verticality possesses a spatial and a temporal significance: their upward 200 isparchitecture.com gaze lets human beings raise themselves beyond the here and now, allows them to look up out of their horizontal temporal condition, that circumscribes the lives of the other animals, to the seemingly ageless order of the firmament. did the sublime spectacle of the starry sky, which the ancients thought to be a perfect sphere, awaken the spirit sleeping in vitruvius’s protohumans, somewhat as the snake’s promise, “you will be like god,” opened the eyes of adam and eve? did it awaken them at the same time to their own subjection to time, to their mortality, even as it allowed them to glimpse in the heaven’s unchanging order possibilities of a more perfect, more spiritual dwelling? is the task of human building to carry something of this promise into this death-shadowed world? or did vitruvius also associate “the splendor of the starry firmament” with the lightand life-granting sun, the hearth of the cosmos, being represented by the warmthgiving hearth of his primitive home? this much at any rate seems clear: by linking the origin of the first house to the awe-inspiring sight of the inaccessible unchanging order of the sky, vitruvius places human building between animal shelter and the divinely ordered cosmos. the human being looks up to and measures himself here by a timeless logos, figured by the firmament. building, too, should be informed by this logos; and so we find vitruvius insisting on symmetry and harmony, prefigured both by the divinely ordered cosmos and the similarly ordered body of the well shaped human being. hegel’s understanding of the origin of architecture points in what is essentially the same direction: it is architecture that pioneers the way for the adequate realization of the god, and in this its service bestows hard toil upon existing nature, in order to disentangle it from the jungle of finitude and the abortiveness of ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 201 ha r r ie s chance. by this means it levels a space for the god, gives form to his external surroundings, and builds him his temple as a fit place for concentration of spirit, and for its direction to the mind’s absolute objects. it raises an enclosure round the assembly of those gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of the storm, against rain, the hurricane, and wild beasts, and reveals the will to assemble, although externally, yet in conformance with the principles of art.12 hegel’ builders, too, impose a spiritual, and that means for hegel a truly human order on a recalcitrant material; human beings assert and celebrate their humanity in the face of an initially indifferent environment, when they level the ground, break the stone, raise walls and columns. they defend themselves against nature, not only or even primarily against physical threats, but against its contingency. in this struggle they rely on and exhibit the power of the universal. that is why architecture for hegel is in its very essence not the work of isolated individuals, but of the spirit, and that means of the community: the spirit breaks down the walls that separate individuals. genuine architecture establishes community. and not so very different is corbusier’s account of the origin of architecture: primitive man has brought his chariot to a stop: he decides that here shall be his native soil. he chooses a glade, he cuts down the trees which are too close; he levels the earth around; he opens up the road which will carry him to the river or to those of his tribe whom he has just left. [...] the road is as straight as he can manage with his implements, his arms and his time. the pegs of his tent describe a square, hexagon, or octagon. the palisade forms a rectangle whose four angles are equal. the door of this hut is on the axis of the enclosure—and the gate of the enclosure faces exactly the door of the hut. [...] you may see, in some archeological work, the representation of this hut, the representation of this sanctuary: it is the plan of a house, or the plan of a temple. it is the same spirit one finds again in the pompeian house. it is the spirit indeed of the temple of luxor. there is no such thing as primitive man; there are primitive resources. the idea is constant, in full sway from the beginning.13 a look at the history of architecture supports that impression. from the very beginning the requirements of human dwelling resist their reduction to the need for physical shelter or functional frames for certain activities. not only the body, the spirit, too, needs shelter, shelter especially from the terror of time. 202 isparchitecture.com 4 but let me turn to the second observation made by the organizers of this symposium and to the question it raises. architecture, it asserts, has played no very significant part in our philosophical understanding of human beings. we can grant that. and yet the prevalence of architectural metaphors in philosophical discourse invites reflection: what is the bond that ties philosophy and architecture together and allows such metaphors to make some sense? an answer is suggested by martin heidegger’s already mentioned essay “building dwelling thinking”, which calls our attention to the obvious fact that building serves dwelling, but then in characteristic fashion turns to etymology to unearth beneath the familiar everyday sense of “dwelling” a deeper meaning that is said to have been lost to us: the real meaning of the verb, namely to dwell, has been lost to us. but a covert trace of it has been preserved in the german word nachbar, neighbor. the neighbor is in old english the neahgebur, neah near, and gebur, dweller. the nachbar is the nachgeebur, the nachgebauer, the near-dweller, he who dwells nearby. the verbs, buri, büren, beuren, beuron, all signify dwelling, the abode, the place of dwelling.14 in its origin, heidegger claims, building means dwelling. to really dwell is to be at home in the world. such dwelling presupposes that we experience the world not, as science would have us do, as the totality of mute facts that just happen to be as they are, but as a meaningful order. but is the transformation of mute alien material into a home not the essence of building? and is it perhaps also the essence of thinking? to show how dwelling is to be thought in its original sense heidegger adds: where the word bauen still speaks in its original to really dwell is to be at home in the world. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 203 ha r r ie s sense, it also says how far the nature of dwelling reaches. that is, bauen, buan, bhu, beo are our word bin in the versions: ich bin, i am, du bist, you are, the imperative form bis, be. what then does ich bin mean? the word bauen, to which it belongs answers: ich bin, du bist mean: i dwell, you dwell.15 heidegger sums up his discussion with three propositions: 1. building is really dwelling. 2. dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the earth. 3. building as dwelling unfolds into the building that cultivates growing things [german ackerbau] and the building that erects building. if we accept heidegger’s claim that “dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the earth” this suggests that we can add as a fourth proposition: 4. building as dwelling unfolds also into the architectures that thought erects, more especially the thought of philosophers. this then would yield a first answer to the question: what is the bond that ties philosophy and architecture together and allows such metaphors to make some sense? both can be said unfold in their distinctive ways the essence of building. that brings to mind kant’s famous statement that our reason is by its very nature architectonic, seeking to assign to everything its proper place in some conceptual edifice.16 heidegger would seem to think this in more encompassing fashion, extending it to our being-in-theworld, which always already has assigned to all we encounter its place in a linguistic edifice. heidegger thus calls language the house of being. these remarks hint at a deep connection between architecture and language. the french prehistorian andré-leroi gourhan speaks to this connection: the earliest surviving buildings are contemporary with the appearance of the first rhythmic marks. […] [although] the foundation of moral and physical comfort in man is the altogether animal perception of the perimeter of security, the enclosed refuge, or of the socialization of rhythms: [so] that there is no point in seeking for a scission between animal and human to explain our attachment to social rhythms and inhabited space […] [yet] the little that is known [of pre-homo sapiens habitations] is enough to show that a profound change occurred about the time which corresponds to the development of the control sections of the brain in strains relating to homo sapiens. […] such archeological evidence [as there is] would seem to justify the assumption, that from the higher paleolithic period onwards there was an attempt to control the whole spatio-temporal phenomenon 204 isparchitecture.com by symbolic means, of which language was the chief. they imply a real ‘taking charge’ of space and time through the mediation of symbols: a domestication of them in a strict sense, since it involves, within the house and about the house, a controllable space and time.17 this suggests that we might want to define building in its most fundamental sense as “a taking charge of space and time through the mediation of symbols.” so understood building would include both, the raising of structures that provide both physical and psychological shelter and the use of language to control and feel at home in the world around us. that language and architecture are linked in their origin is hinted at by the story of the tower of babel. 5 let me return to heidegger’s claim that human being is essentially a dwelling. if for us humans to be is to dwell, it would seem that to build anything we must already dwell in some fashion. but does all dwelling not presuppose in turn something like a building? we seem to be moving in a circle. something analogous would seem to hold of the creation of language—think of the story of adam’s naming of the animals. paradise must have presented itself to adam already as rather like a divinely created garden in which everything had its proper place. dwelling, understood in this fundamental sense, would thus seem to imply something like an experience of the world as an order that assigns us as mortals our place on earth, beneath the sky, presided over, heidegger suggests in “building dwelling thinking,” by what there he calls the divinities, where we must wonder whether our modern world still allows us to make sense of heidegger’s divinities. ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 205 ha r r ie s consider once more the meaning of “building.” to build is to bound space. how is this space to be thought? genesis begins by having god create the heavens and the earth by bounding the formless. plato’s timaeus offers a similar account. to build is to wrest place from space. that seems uncontroversial. and to think such building is inevitably also to think space as in some sense pre-given and formless. but how are we to think that pre-given and formless space? when we attempt to do so, do we not inevitably give it some structure? think of euclidean space and its three dimensions. is all such thinking not an attempt to domesticate what resists domestication? the meaning of space remains elusive. i want to claim that every human attempt to master space leads us into an antinomy, places us between some finite structure and the infinite. that antinomy, i want to suggest, also haunts our dwelling as it haunts our building and our thinking as the tension between a desire for freedom and a desire to be firmly placed. my introduction of the term “antinomy” calls for comment. when a philosopher thinks of antinomies he is likely to think first of all of the four antinomies kant stated and discussed in his critique of pure reason. and i, too, am thinking here of kant’s antinomies, especially of the first, which concerns the difficulty we face when we attempt to represent our universe as a cosmos, as a well-constructed, bounded whole, as a building in that sense. kant shows that we are unable to understand this cosmos as finite and as having a beginning, as our astronomers and physicists would once again have us do, only to get entangled once more in some version of kant’s antinomy. but kant also showed that we cannot understand it as infinite. the infinite transcends our comprehension. and yet we are in some fashion in touch with the infinite whenever we are open to some thing in its finally incomprehensible materiality. not only infinite space, but every particular thing in its ineffable particularity, transcends whatever our reason is able to construct. as mystics such as meister eckhart or angelus silesius knew, an infinity is buried in every thing. i want to confront heidegger’s metaphor of language as the house of being with a question: is being really at home in that house? architecture raises an analogous question: are buildings without windows and doors that allow access to a reality beyond not prisons? this suggests: openings such as windows and doors provide a key to successful architecture. in using the word “antinomy” i was also thinking of kant’s third antinomy, which concerns freedom. like nature, freedom, too, familiar as it is to all of us, eludes comprehension: we are thus unable to think what we seem to be so familiar with and call “freedom” as either free 206 isparchitecture.com from or as governed by the laws of nature. in the attempt to think freedom our reason once again suffers shipwreck on the reef of the infinite. no more than space and time will freedom be mastered conceptually. once again reason is forced to recognize its limits. but are these limits not also limits that building must respect if it is not to do violence to the demands of freedom and thus of human dwelling? kant’s four antinomies were supposed to prove the necessity of understanding every thing in two very different senses: as an appearance dependent on our human understanding and the architecture it imposes and as a thing in itself, transcending that architecture. the antinomies thus tear open a depth dimension passed over in our everyday dealings with things, open windows and doors in the architecture raised by our architectonic understanding. but why is the opening of such windows and doors, if it can even be understood as such, of existential import? 6 with this let me turn to the question: what does architecture have to contribute to philosophy? at first blush the answer would seem to have to be, despite philosophy’s reliance on architectural metaphors: very little, at least given common ideas of what philosophy is. most philosophers don’t feel a need to concern themselves with architecture. i do feel such a need. so let me approach the question “what does architecture have to contribute to philosophy?” in a more personal way by speaking briefly of the way art and architecture has been important to my work in philosophy. my interest in both art and architecture is far older than my interest in philosophy. as a child i liked to draw, paint, and build. a self-conscious ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 207 ha r r ie s interest in architecture goes back to my first encounter with a rather modest rococo church: when i was seven my mother moved with us children from berlin, which the constant air raids had made rather unpleasant, to the franconian königshofen, some 25 kilometers northeast of bamberg. on the outskirts is a little known, but quite lovely pilgrimage church in the village of ipthausen, consecrated to the birth of mary (1746-54). the landscape, the town, but especially this church spoke to me of a way of life very different from what i had been used to. today i would say that mine was not so much an aesthetic response, but an ethical response, ethical in that broad sense in which heidegger attributes to the greek temple an ethical function when he claims that presenting the world, it establishes the earth, with that difference that i knew even then that the world opened up by this church was one from which i was excluded, that much as i loved it, this was not my world. but it seemed to beckon me to a better world. four years later a teacher in munich’s maxgymnasium took me to the benedictine monastery church of andechs. the visit to that church, too, had a crucial importance. i pay tribute to that teacher in the preface to my book the bavarian rococo church (1983) and placed an image of that church on its back cover. the very fact that i felt a need to write such a book, which has now also appeared in a german version,18 suggests a certain impatience with academic philosophy. i personally do not see a break between this book and my more obviously philosophical work, much of which has centered on heidegger. it touches on many, perhaps all the themes that matter to me as a philosopher, but it does so in a way that pleases me more, that seems to me much more concrete, more likely to get readers to really understand what concerns me, to touch them, than my more purely philosophical essays. let me mention just a few of these themes: 1. as opposed to those who, like the art historian michael fried, oppose authenticity to theatricality, i wanted to exhibit what i experienced as the profundity of an architecture that ever since the enlightenment has often been dismissed as theatrical and superficial, as not really authentic. the artistic culture of the rococo taught me to question the presupposed notion of authenticity and with it the enlightenment faith in reason and to appreciate the profundity of superficiality, of interest in the visible, sensible world, for which nietzsche praised the greeks: “to stop courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to believe in forms, tones, words, the whole olympus of appearance. those greeks were superficial — out of profundity.” 19 my book on the bavarian rococo church is also a reflection on 208 isparchitecture.com the threshold that joins and separates the rococo from the enlightenment, and that is to say from modernity. there is thus a sense in which this book is also a reflection on our own spiritual culture, on its legitimacy and its limits, a topic that continues to concern me. 2. a reviewer called that book a preamble after the fact of my the meaning of modern art (1968). in a sense he was right. that earlier book called for a step beyond modern art, and not just modern art, but beyond what that modern art presupposed. i spoke there of the need for a new realism. in philosophy, too, there seems to me a need for such a realism. that drew me to phenomenology. 3. with this call for a new realism i meant to challenge the hold of the aesthetic approach to art and architecture that has presided over both theory and practice. as i show in the ethical function of architecture, that approach invites an understanding of works of architecture as decorated sheds in the broadest sense, as functional buildings to which an aesthetic component has been added. but as i have suggested in this lecture: what distinguishes architecture from building is not adequately understood as the addition of an aesthetic component. that calls for further reflection on the requirements of dwelling, and more especially, figure 1: pilgrimage church mariä geburt, ipthausen ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 209 ha r r ie s on what these requirements are in today’s world, marked by the digital revolution and the threatening environmental crisis. 4. but inadequate as it is to the requirements of dwelling, the decorated shed nevertheless presents itself as a potent figure for the spiritual situation of this age, which tends to cover up the spiritual poverty that is the price of our objectification of reality, with an often borrowed aesthetic veneer. in that sense, to call ours the age of the decorated shed is to offer more than just an illuminating caricature. 5. as heidegger points out, building serves dwelling, as it is born of dwelling. to understand the essence of architecture we have to enter that circle. but we cannot enter it successfully as long as we remain on the level of abstract speculation and mere words. our words must have their ground in concrete experiences. we have to return to the things themselves, and that means here first of all to buildings. but the point should be generalized. 7 let me conclude with the question: what does philosophy have to contribute to architecture? it is not the philosopher’s task to tell architects what to do. but perhaps philosophy can help make architecture more responsible by questioning certain assumptions that stand in the way of such responsibility. wittgenstein claimed that philosophical problems have the form, “i do not know my way about.”20 of course, not all problems having this form are therefore already philosophical. to lose one’s way in a strange city is not sufficient to make one a philosopher. nor is failure to understand a new piece of equipment. say my computer misbehaves and i don’t know what to do; i don’t know my way about. such a loss of way does not present us with a philosophical problem. but why not? i would suggest that it fails to do so because in such cases our disorientation is only superficial. thus in the first case i might study a map; in the second i might ask an expert for help. the problem here poses itself against a background of established and accepted ways of doing things to which we can turn to help us decide what is to be done. genuinely philosophical problems have no such background. they are born of a more profound uncertainty. philosophical reflection flourishes thus where traditions disintegrate and as a result human beings are forced to question the place assigned them by 210 isparchitecture.com nature, society, and history, and searching for firmer ground demand that this place be more securely established. in that sense all genuine philosophy is at bottom ethical reflection. that also holds for the philosophical reflection on architecture. if this is accepted, philosophy comes to an end either when it believes to have gained firm ground and to have laid a secure foundation or when it despairs of responsibly addressing the questions that haunt it. there is thus a sense in which science and skepticism may be said to bound philosophy. today science presents philosophy with a challenge that resembles the challenge that in the 19th century photography presented to representational painting. but science itself presents itself today to us as anything but unquestionable. there is a sense in which everyone of us, i suspect, stands in an ambiguous relationship to science and its offspring, technology. on one hand we have to affirm science. technological advances have shaped our life-world in ways that we have to affirm. on the other hand, science cannot know anything of persons or values. this is why the social sciences stand inevitably uneasily between science and what we can call folk wisdom or perhaps philosophy. a compelling account of both the legitimacy and the limits of scientific understanding and that means also of technological thinking seems to me one of the main requirements facing philosophy today. architectural theory and practice, too, seem to me to be in need of such an account. but such an account must be guided by some understanding of where we should be going, where today such an account must be informed by the digital revolution which cannot but shape our understanding of space and even more importantly it must be informed by the growing environmental crisis. does philosophy offer much help here? i continue to be surprised, given all we know, that ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 211 ha r r ie s not more is being done and i am afraid reason has not proven itself very effective in bringing about needed changes. needed is a change of heart. but how do hearts change? traditionally such change has been brought about not so much by philosophers, as by prophets and poets, artists, and also by architects. in his discussion of the greek temple heidegger recognizes thus something of the mythopoeic function of architecture. plato’s republic gives expression to the claim of the philosopher to be in a privileged position to tell human beings what their place should be. the ethical function that art and religion once possessed, comes to be claimed by reason. unfortunately reason has proved unequal to the assumed task. we live today in the ruins of the inherited value system. to support this claim i could point to the history of the past two centuries. i could also show that, notwithstanding the efforts of philosophers from plato to kant and indeed right down to the present, unprejudiced pure reason has shown itself inadequate to this task. such change requires the aid of those able to touch us more immediately. the need for architecture’s ethical function remains. what kind of architecture? temple and cathedral lie behind us. not only has the kind of communal dwelling their building presupposed and reaffirmed been lost, but few of us would wish it to return, for it is incompatible with one of our own ruling myths: the myth of the value of personal freedom. that myth has freed art, too, from its former servitude to religion and state. but if art has thus gained a new freedom, the price of this privatization of art has been its peripheral placement in a world ruled increasingly by economic imperatives. art and architecture have lost much of their former ethical significance. what then is the role of philosophy? a healthy society needs places where it tests what has come to be established and taken for granted. there has to be an openness to the future. one task of philosophy is to open windows in the edifice raised by the ruling common sense. i also have a contrary sympathy. the conservatives, too, are needed in a healthy society, those who insist on the preservation of the inherited. there is inevitable tension between voices pointing in different directions, one forward — challenging, testing — the other backward — wanting to preserve. neither should be so immediately associated with political power that it can translate its views into political reality without being mediated by an ongoing conversation. in this conversation, and more especially in the architectural conversation, the philosopher’s words should be like yeast. perhaps in this way they can contribute in some way towards bringing about that change of heart that just today is so desperately needed. 212 isparchitecture.com endnotes [1] friedrich nietzsche, morgenröthe, 169; werke, kritische studienausgabe, ed. giorgio colli and mazzino montinari (munich, berlin, and new york: deutscher taschenbuch verlag and de gruyter, 1980), vol. 3, 152. [2] mark lilla, “pseuds’ skyscraper,” london review of books, 5 june 1997, 33. [3] robert jan van pelt, “apocalyptic abjection,” in robert jan van pelt and carroll willliam westfall, architectural principles in the age of historicism (new haven: yale university press, 1991), 328-329. [4] see karsten harries, “review: robert jan van pelt and carroll william westfall, architectural principles in the age of historicism,” american historical review, december 1992, 1490. [5] mark wigley, the architecture of deconstruction: derrida’s haunt (cambridge, mass. and london: mit press,1993). [6] adolf loos, “architecture,” cited in joseph rykwert, on adam’s house in paradise. the idea of the primitive hut in architectural history (new york: the museum of modern art, 1972 ), 27. [7] josé ortega y gasset, “der mythus des menschen hinter der technik” in otto bartning, ed.: mensch und raum. 2. darmstädter gespräch 1951 (darmstadt: neue darmstädter verlags-anstalt. 1952) 117. translation by k. harries. [8] ibid., 117. [9] william gass, “house vi,” progressive architecture, 58, june 1977, p. 64. [10] vitruvius, the ten books of architecture, trans. morris hickey morgan (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1926), 38. [11] ibid., 40. [12] georg wilhelm friedrich hegel, introductory lectures on aesthetics, trans. bernard bosanquet, ed. and intro. michael inwood (harmondsworth: penguin, 1993), 90-91. [13] le corbusier, towards a new architecture, trans. frederick etchells (new york: praeger, 1960), 65-66. [14] martin heidegger, “building dwelling thinking,” poetry, language, thought, trans. albert hofstadter (new york: harper and row, 1979), 146-147. see also the original version: martin heidegger, “bauen wohnen denken” in otto bartning (ed.): mensch und raum. 2. darmstädter gespräch 1951. (darmstadt: neue darmstädter verlags-anstalt 1952) 72–84. [15] ibid., 147. [16] with his antinomies, to be sure, kant showed that this striving can never be satisfied. kritik der reinen vernunft, a 474/b 502. see paula manchester, “kant’s conception of architectonic in its philosophical context,” kant studien. volume 99, issue 2, june, 2008 133–151. [17] andré leroi -gourhan, le geste et la parole (paris 1964), vol. 2., 139140, as quoted in joseph rykwert, on adams’s house in paradise (new york: the museum of modern art, 1972), 21 [18] karsten harries, die bayerische rokokokirche. das irrationale und das sakrale (dorfen: hawel verlag, 2009), [19] nietzsche, the gay science. with a prelude in german rhymes and an appendix of songs. (cambridge: cambridge univ. press 2001). [20] ludwig wittgenstein, philosophical investigations, tr. g. e. m. anscombe (new york: macmillan, 1959) par. 123. isparchitecture.com aesthetic education and design roger scruton in his celebrated letters on the aesthetic education of mankind, schiller argued that to achieve the sense of order and civic virtue our best recourse in the modern world is aesthetic education. kant had marked out a central place for aesthetic pleasure in the life of the rational being, arguing that the judgment of beauty is both disinterested and universal in its scope. in aesthetic judgment, kant wrote, we are ‘suitors for agreement’, and it is a small step from that idea to schiller’s view that the pursuit of beauty is a shared enterprise, with civic virtue as its goal. in aesthetic judgment we view our surroundings as ends in themselves, abstracting from the demands of utility and function. hence aesthetic interest looks for permanent values, rather than transitory functions. it is the one sure guide to getting things right, not just for the here and now of our current interests, but permanently, and for the community as a whole. my aim in this paper is to outline a form of architectural education in which pattern, composition, and the idea of fit are given a proper place, and in which function and utility are regarded as the consequences of beauty and not prior requirements that must be independently fulfilled. schiller believed that education and high culture would release what is best in us, and bring about civic virtue without any particular person taking charge of the process. subsequent history has dented any confidence that we might have had in such a vision. indeed, the experience of the 20th century suggests that the greatest changes come about as a result of particular people and their schiller argued that to achieve the sense of order and civic virtue our best recourse in the modern world is aesthetic education. “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 215 sc r ut on influence, and that the most influential people–the ones who have done most to create the world in which we now live–have been mad. this is certainly true in the realm of politics, which was irreversibly changed by lenin, stalin, hitler, mao ze dong, and a host of lesser lunatics. the interesting thing about those madmen is their astonishing ability to recruit a following, to march into the future like the pied piper of hamelin, with an ever-growing crocodile of mesmerised imbeciles following them to destruction. the madness exemplified by the ‘great leaders’ exhibits their shared desire for a total solution, a transition to a new state in which everything has been solved and nothing is left for discussion. but this total solution is the answer to no coherent problem. of course you can invent a problem: the jews, the bourgeoisie, the ‘enemy within’ or (in the case of isis today) the apostate or the infidel. but it is clear to the most casual outside observer that the problem is dictated by the solution, and not the other way round. it is the desire for the total reorganisation of everything, the total destruction of all obstacles and the total transfer of power to me, the leader, that requires the invention of a problem that can be solved in no other way. for this reason the most frequent tale told by modern politics is the tale of an enemy within, whose destruction will open the way to a new order of being. it was thus that the ‘bourgeoisie’ was invented, to play such a remarkable role in the theories of marx, sartre, foucault and the frankfurt school. this feature of modern politics is replicated by modern architecture. here too the most influential people have been mad, expressing their desire for total control in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying whole settlements and cities. like the pioneers of totalitarian politics, corbusier, gropius, lubetkin and their kind wanted a total solution, and they hunted the world for the problem that would justify their aim. thus le corbusier’s total solution for the problem of paris north of the seine involved wiping away the great city of stone and replacing it with an array of concrete towers rimmed by grass verges. as comprehensive a solution as could be imagined. but what was the problem? le corbusier made a few fashionable noises about health, and the conditions of the working class. however, they were improvised around the solution, rather than discovered from the facts. the council of paris put a stop to this nonsense, causing le corbusier to turn his attention to the far more vulnerable city of algiers, where his plans to wipe this excrescence from the map were stopped only by the collapse of the vichy government, which he had persuaded to adopt him as its architectural advisor. 216 isparchitecture.com unfortunately the city council of paris has no power to match that of a president, and when president pompidou, whose wife prided herself on her advanced aesthetic taste, wished to create a monument to himself, a small-scale version of le corbusier’s vandalism was carried out, resulting in the clearance of beautiful residential streets in the lovely lutetian limestone, and their replacement by a vast fun palace of scaffolding in playground colours, designed by richard rogers and renzo piano. this, the centre beaubourg, is perhaps the greatest eyesore in europe, if only because it is conceived entirely as an insult to its surroundings. it is expressly designed not to fit in, and this has been the pattern followed by richard rogers in all subsequent buildings: to create something that stands out from the urban fabric, as though dropped from another planet. but ‘fitting in’ is the primary goal of aesthetic judgment, and it is why schiller connected aesthetic education to his ideal of civic order. i will return to that point, since it seems to me that the art of fitting things together–both internally, within the work you are composing, and externally, within the fabric of a human settlement–is of the essence of aesthetic education in all its forms. and it points us in a certain direction–towards a kind of grammar, repeatability, and the relation of part to part. before exploring that suggestion, however, i want to dwell for a moment on the question of madness. we should make a distinction, i believe, between those conditions, like schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder, which stem from a dysfunction of the central nervous system, and those conditions in which perception, cognition and affective states are all normal and functional, but devoted entirely to some goal that cannot be moderated or renounced, and which is immune to rational argument–by which i mean argument that weighs with all of ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 217 sc r ut on us. it is this second condition that i have in mind, when describing the madness of stalin, mao or le corbusier: a kind of inability to give weight to any consideration that does not originate in the over-mastering idea. the mad person is the one in the grip of a vision, who cannot recognize the legitimacy of opposition or adapt his projects to the needs of others. he recognizes no boundaries, and regards reality as a plastic material to be shaped according to his aims. his thought is uni-directional, and he cries ever ‘forward!’ in the face of obstacles. aesthetic education, as i see it, is one part of the broader practice of humane education–the kind of education that transmits knowledge of the human world. its purpose is to teach students how to renounce their obsessions, and to learn the ways of sympathy and compromise. it fosters cooperation with one’s kind. its goal is to transmit a culture that embodies shared conceptions of life and discovered solutions to life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how to live at peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you dislike them. art, music and literature are all part of this culture, embodying pictures, stories and dramas that raise the human condition to a dignity that sets an example in our daily lives. to transmit such a culture involves teaching students to exercise taste, to compare and contrast, to distinguish refined from crude perceptions, and in general to understand the distinction between products that accommodate our shared humanity and products that are to be understood merely as whimsy or self-centred display. the goal is to enhance our dignity, our sympathy and our understanding for our kind. however difficult it might be to express this goal in words, it is straightforwardly manifested in the art, literature and music that we have inherited, and apparent to everyone who has learned how to enjoy those things. and it is manifest too in our everyday judgments about our surroundings and about the behaviour, manners and appearance of our fellows. in everything human we distinguish the harmonious from the dissonant, the thing that fits from the thing that jars. and even if there is a place for the dissonant and the jarring in the scheme of things, we know that they make sense for us only because of the context in which they are resolved. aesthetic education teaches us how to avoid or resolve them, as we teach children to avoid garish colours, rude language and slovenly gestures. any philosophical account of aesthetic judgment must explore its roots in the moral life, and in those aspects of the human condition that lead us to search not only for shared rules of behaviour, but for a shared 218 isparchitecture.com canon of taste. errors of taste and self-advertising defiance of aesthetic norms can be just as offensive as rudeness or public belligerence, and we strive to avoid them not simply for our own pleasure’s sake, but for the sake of the community. if this is evident in no other sphere, it is surely evident in the sphere of architecture. from ruskin’s seven lamps of architecture onwards the question of how our buildings and our cities should look has been treated as a moral question, and one on which much more depends than we are in the habit of supposing. writers have been conscious that faulty aesthetic choices lead to destroyed communities, and this is often announced in the very titles of their books–for example jane jacobs’s the death and life of great american cities (1961), and alexander mitscherlich’s die unwirtlichkeit unserer städte: anstiftung zum unfrieden (1965). both those writers saw themselves as fighting a war on behalf of common sense against madness–no longer, perhaps, the madness of a single person, like the madness of gropius and le corbusier, but a madness that had become programmed into the planning system, dictating outcomes that would leave no room for negotiation. and if you look at the situation against which jacobs and mitscherlich were both in rebellion, you will see that it is one from which humane education–the only known antidote to madness of this kind–had been abolished. a kind of depersonalised madness had possessed the schools of architecture and town planning in the wake of the second world war, with le corbusier and gropius constantly invoked as heroes, and the curriculum purified of all reference to aesthetic values other than those that emphasize originality, innovation, progress and the conquest of space. the ground plan was conceived in purely geometrical terms, as was the city plan of which it was a part. the total conception took precedence over the individual building, and each a kind of depersonalised madness had possessed the schools of architecture and town planning in the wake of the second world war “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 219 sc r ut on element was defined by its function. the city itself was disaggregated into zones, with living, shopping, studying and manufacturing each confined to its own separate area, and the resulting blocks of mono-functional buildings assembled side-by-side and without a heart. the result can be seen in new towns like milton keynes, in derelict american cities like detroit, and in the post-war reconstruction of germany. i think it is right, when witnessing these things, to speak of madness. for here were massive enterprises, producing unwanted and threatening products, but entirely unable to adapt to the desires and opinions of those destined to make use of them. consult the textbooks of architecture and town-planning then employed and you will see this immediately–for example in siegfried giedion’s space, time and architecture (1941), in pevsner’s pioneers of the modern movement (1936), and the madness has been replicated in the many recent manuals devoted to curtain wall construction. (take a look at the current textbooks: for example keith boswell’s exterior building enclosures: design process and composition for innovative facades, or alija aksamija’s sustainable facades: design methods for high performance building envelopes.) here once again are the total solutions without the problems, the comprehensive plans without the human beings who are supposed to require them. and for the most part the education advanced by the schools of architecture and planning either avoids discussion of aesthetic values, or subdues them with the all-justifying ideas of progress and innovation. the fact that the ‘sustainable facades’ and ‘exterior building enclosures’ are to be inserted into the fabric of a living city, in which the aesthetic of the street, the house and the façade has been followed for centuries, is not mentioned. for the madman the ‘total solution’ involves the destruction of all that is. in the face of such madness it seems to me that our first duty is to reaffirm the fundamental principles of the moral life. these principles, i maintain, include the following three: that the other is more important than the self, that conflicts are to be resolved by negotiation, and that opposition must be treated with humility. those principles are of universal application, since they make it possible for people to live at peace, regardless of their individual differences. their relevance to architecture and planning can be seen at once, when we compare the traditional street with the modern housing estate. the high-rise estate, largely the invention of gropius, came to dominate housing projects between the wars and subsequently, since it was a perfect expression of the comprehensive plan. it involved tearing down the streets over a large area, making way for large structures standing in open spaces, which could be designed geometrically 220 isparchitecture.com as ground-plans, and then raised up to the height desired by isometric drawings. no need to worry about fitting part to part, of finding the appropriate window surrounds and doorways, about creating an acceptable façade on a public street: all traditional aesthetic constraints had been abolished. there were to be no more streets, and windows would be distant apertures, many of them hundreds of feet in the air, which had no special relation to the observer outside the building, and with no special relation to the lines and forms of the doors below. furthermore, the high-rise estate was the expression in architecture of a new kind of politics– the politics of total control, in which large projects, initiated by the state and its favoured experts, were imposed on the rest of us without seeking our consent. of course this was the outlook that gave such scope to madmen in politics too–and the near impossibility of mounting effective resistance was the same in both cases. history favoured the new, progressive and total solutions, over the random chaos of the old. so we were taught, and so it was believed. in the end, of course, madmen lose their following, and this is beginning to be true in architecture too. the real question that we confront today is that of restoration: how to return to the genial traditions that endowed our cities with their hearts, and which made them into durable settlements where generations have been at home. sometimes this has been achieved with the help of a comprehensive plan, as at bath. but on the whole the fabric of a city, even if it adapts to a plan, has another source than planning. it is the result of cooperation over many years, between people whose goals may not be shared, but who recognize the boundary between public and private space. the most important feature of the gropius housing estate, one that is copied by all the modernist schemes from corbusier to koolhaas, ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 221 sc r ut on is the dissolution of the boundary. the street disappears, as does the façade that presses against it. walls cease to be private faces onto a public realm, and become featureless curtains between undefined areas, hung on invisible frames. buildings grow upwards indefinitely, with no boundary between the building and the sky. (for that is how we should think of the sky-line, the most precious and vulnerable of the city’s many edges.) doors and windows are no longer ceremonial thresholds, but simply functional apertures, cleaned of their liminal character. and around every building is a blank space, a no-man’s land of discarded rubbish and stunted vegetation, from which the towers rise sheer and formless as though washed up by some primordial flood. among the factors lending themselves to this result–as mitscherlich points out–are the forms of social ownership instituted by the german cities. but even where private property is supposedly sacrosanct, as in america and britain, governments have made use of eminent domain (america) or ‘compulsory purchase’ (britain) in order to embark on the large scale clearances that the housing estates require. hand in hand with this kind of presumption has been the revised image of building, the image forced on us by le corbusier in vers une architecture, and gleefully endorsed by libeskind, foster and piano today. for such practitioners the architect has no need of aesthetic education since his comprehensive plan issues from an integral artistic idea. he is inspired and led by the same ‘genius’ that guides the poet, the composer and the painter. thus is perpetuated the illusion of architecture as a ‘fine art’ rescued by the demands of genius from the obligations of daily life. if we are to understand the role of aesthetic education we must recognize, however, that most buildings are the work of ordinary people who strive to accommodate what they do both to the purpose in hand and to the desires and tastes of their neighbours. genius has no part to play in their decisions, and nothing is more disruptive than the illusion that they possess it. many of the most agreeable parts of our cities, their centres in particular, depend on an urban fabric knitted from humble and unpretentious façades that show the mark of style only here and there and often in their pre-fabricated parts, such as doors and window frames. the ordinary vernacular street may have little to recommend it to those, like libeskind and koolhaas, who prefer to violate its outline rather than to conform to it, but there is no denying that the traditional street illustrates the first principle of aesthetic education, which is the principle of fittingness. the houses in a street must fit side by side along its edge, and in doing so define the boundary between the public and the 222 isparchitecture.com private. they may be of different heights, and using different materials and different pattern-books. but if each façade is internally coherent, and shares the overall posture of other houses in the street, then each house might fit to its neighbour, and play its own particular part in creating the shared boundary which is the edge of the public realm. two observations should be made concerning the relation of fit. the builder who is fitting a house into a street is not looking for the form that fits a particular function. he is fitting a form into its context, regardless of the function. his reasoning is not ‘instrumental’ reasoning, but an assessment of how things look. ever since louis sullivan’s well known adage that ‘form follows function’ architects have felt free to allow the use of a building to dictate its appearance, to build as though there were no aesthetic constraints, and that their task was simply to find the forms best suited to the end in view. hence the emergence of the windowless warehouse as an architectural type. however, no ordinary builder, and certainly no person building or arranging something as part of his own habitat, thinks in that way. the aim is always to make things fit together as they should, with the function conceived as a result and not as a premise of the exercise. in fact there are good utilitarian reasons for not thinking in a utilitarian way. a building that is construed purely as the means to a present purpose will not survive the extinction of that purpose: it will be an un-adaptable feature of the environment, destined for demolition as soon as its function expires. from such buildings no permanent townscape can be constructed, and their ugliness is a vivid symbol of their impracticality, of the fact that there is nothing to be done with them once their present function has gone. this is the principal cause of the dereliction of city centres – namely that they are not centres, but merely the casing if we are to understand the role of aesthetic education we must recognize, however, that most buildings are the work of ordinary people “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 223 sc r ut on around activities that have ceased. detroit is an eloquent illustration of this. much of the city of london is moving in the same direction, and you see, now, a vivid contrast between the functional blocks already marked out for destruction, and the noble buildings constructed according to aesthetic principles which have survived the loss of their original use–like the royal exchange building, now a meeting place and restaurant. this utilitarian argument against utilitarian thinking goes to the heart of our topic, and tells us something about why aesthetic education matters. in a world dominated by instrumental thinking many people imagine that they have made advances in rationality, that they are no longer hampered by irrelevant goals which have no purpose but themselves, that the life of frills and ornaments has at last been left behind. but it is such people who are irrational, since they are denying the kind of reasoning that would enable them to envision the fruition of their projects. let me take a simple illustration of this: the electricity transformer station. when transformer stations were first introduced the instinct of our ancestors was to find an architectural casing for them that would fit in to the surroundings, whether urban or rural. this was not a denial of the great benefits brought to us by electricity, but a way of humanizing those benefits, of making them part of a life lived for its own sake and not just for the sake of consumption. nowadays, under the impact of the instrumentalised worldview, transformer stations are left exposed, hostile, surrounded by barbed wire, outposts of the gulag, whose only meaning is their function. at the heart of islington, london, stands one of the original transformer stations, built in 1905 and modelled on george dance’s design for newgate prison, which had just been demolished. now, after several changes of use, it is a popular arcade of shops and restaurants. here is a building designed for a use, but designed also as an end in itself, and therefore as something that can form the hub of social sentiments in the place where it stands. as a result it has survived the loss of its original use, and been incorporated into the enduring fabric of the city. i don’t say that the islington transformer station is a masterpiece: on the contrary, its not being a masterpiece is one reason why it is so much liked. this is not a building designed to stand out, but one designed to fit in. no genius took charge of creating it, or conceived it as the expression of his individual soul. it is the work of the london county council’s design department, which at the time was composed of unassuming people who had received an aesthetic education of a broadly classical kind, based in drawing, proportion and the orders–people who took delight in 224 isparchitecture.com the appearance of buildings, and in the way that buildings are composed from matching parts. and it has lasted, because it is more valuable than its original function. one very obvious feature of the islington transformer station is that it has firm boundaries – indeed, it consists of boundaries, carefully modulated and composed boundaries which define both the public space outside them and the reserved space within. the modern transformer station does not have boundaries in that sense–certainly not boundaries in which the transition from public to private is articulated or given ceremonial presence. it is surrounded by wire fences whose only message is ‘keep out’–not ‘look at me’ or ‘here i am’ or ‘come stand in my shadow’ but ‘go away!’ reflecting on boundaries, i believe, is a very good way of grasping the significance of aesthetic education generally. in every sphere we depend upon boundaries. we are protected from domination by our rights, which in a civilised society create a sphere of sovereignty around every individual member. we are protected from prurient curiosity by our clothes, which we also use in order to signal the various degrees of approachability that seem appropriate. we are walled round by manners and conventions that bring safety and certainty in the otherwise intimidating life among strangers. some of our boundaries are permeable and expressly designed to offer a welcome, when the welcome has figure 1: islington transformer station ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 225 sc r ut on been earned: so it is with manners and courtesies. other boundaries are firm rebuttals, such as those created by the law. these distinctions have their counterpart in the language of architecture. walls can be forbidding, inviting, permeable or semi-permeable. doorways may be ceremonious or perfunctory. exteriors can be accommodating or severe. and the language here is integral to the way in which a building fits to its neighbours. in this way the art of the boundary, through which we learn to accommodate our desires and places to those of our neighbours, is replicated in the sphere of architecture, and illustrates the way in which aesthetic education and moral education are rooted in the same human need–the need to live in harmony with others, and to reconcile individual ambition with a shared sense of home. creating and managing boundaries is one part of it. just as important is the art of fitting one thing to another so that it looks right. ‘looking right’ does not mean ‘looking right to me’: in this judgment, as kant made clear, we open ourselves to criticism. we are ‘suitors for agreement’, aware that what we do is of interest to others, and that we are creating something that is shared–whether or not with any specific person. grasping this point has always seemed to me to be the most crucial step in understanding the place of the aesthetic in human life. it is a point that wittgenstein, in his own idiom, makes central to his all-too-brief lectures on aesthetics, and it is a point that can be illustrated in a way of which wittgenstein would surely have approved, by studying the ‘natural expression’ of aesthetic choice in the faces and gestures of children. ask children to lay a table or to arrange a room, and at once they begin to attend to the way things look, and to the meaning of the way things look–the meaning for others. is it right to put the napkin on the plate or should it be by the side of it? the emphasis on ‘getting it right’, rather than beauty, is easily understood from examples of this kind. so too is the connection between getting it right and fitting in. the ability to match things to each other is hard to reduce to any more primitive capacity, but it seems to be fundamental to what we are, and to our ways of negotiating our way through social and visual complexities. and it has two aspects. we match one thing to another of the same broad category–for example knife to fork in a given pattern, or a certain style of porcelain to a certain kind of napkin. but we also match objects to moods, life-styles, ways of being and feeling, and in this way make the most farreaching connections between aesthetic judgment and the moral life. the ‘matching’ process can be educated. when a choice is exposed to judgment, the search for reasons begins. we can ask the child why she 226 isparchitecture.com put the spoon to the right of the bowl, and she might well have an answer: because that is what is done, because it looks right, because then you have a nice straight line and a circle. we can teach her to make comparisons–which style of spoon looks best, for example, and why. inevitably the ‘why?’ question, even if it peters out in the declaration that there is nothing further to be said, commits us to comparative judgments, to finding meaning and emotion in the objects that we choose, and to developing a repertoire of forms that go easily and unquestionably together. style is precipitated out from judgment, since it is what gives purchase to a reasoned answer to the question ‘why this, given that?’ style is not the same as syntax, and if we refer to the classical style in architecture we are not, literally, referring to a grammar,–that is, a system of rules for generating complex meanings from meaningful parts. all kinds of misleading analogies arise at this point, and the analogy with language is perhaps the most dangerous of them, since it seems to imply that the rules of style are arbitrary in the way that the grammatical rules of a language are arbitrary. although styles are many and varied, they are rooted in features of the human condition that influence how we perceive and respond to shape, colour, form and mass. no stylistic convention can make a vast featureless hulk like the new linked-in building in san francisco look anything but oppressive and at odds with its surroundings. no stylistic convention can endow one of libeskind’s knife-like assaults on a traditional building with a humane meaning when we are ineluctably led to see the result as a species of architectural murder. this does not mean that the idea of grammar, used as a metaphorical summary of something that we expect a building to exhibit, is entirely inappropriate. on the contrary. it reminds us of the fact that order and harmony, here as elsewhere no stylistic convention can endow one of libeskind’s knife-like assaults on a traditional building with a humane meaning “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 227 sc r ut on in our lives, come about through composition. it is because significant parts are matched to significant parts that we sense the emergence of order in architecture, and forms that elide all parts into a single molten flow as in so much post-modernist ‘gadget’ architecture offend against a primary need. the case is comparable to that of music, which has evolved as an art-form largely through quasi-syntactical conventions, governing key relations, voice-leading and harmonic progressions, and in which we have acquired the pronounced feeling for the ‘wrong note’ and the ‘wrong chord’. if you compose while ignoring those conventions then you risk producing music in which nothing sounds wrong, because nothing sounds right. the features of aesthetic education that i am trying to bring to mind are well illustrated by the classical orders, and especially by those aspects of the orders that have rubbed off on vernacular architecture down the centuries. we should see the orders as summaries of a long process of matching, through which the post and beam structure–the prima materia of functional building–has been embellished and humanised. the textbooks, from vitruvius through the renaissance manuals to chambers, provide rules of proportion and detail, which have all the appearance of a grammar: if you do this, you must do that, and so on. but as with treatises of tonal harmony, the imperative mood is misleading. the real speech-act is not prescriptive but descriptive: these manuals tell us what has been done, with a vague exhortation to respect it. the study of the orders was a training in the matching of parts, and in understanding what constitutes a part rather than a chunk or a section. they taught proportion, by teaching the student how to perceive it. proportion is not a purely geometrical idea. it arises from the relation between measures, and measures exist only where there are parts that begin and end, and the edges that close them. hence proportion is perceivable only where there are boundaries, divisions, and significant details. a building like the linked-in building that i referred to earlier can never be seen as proportionate or harmonious, since it has no details. nothing on the visible surface of this building, is ‘between’ one place and another. no line has closure, no surface detail stands out and nothing begins, ends or moves to a conclusion. in the tuscan doric order the column is wrapped by an astragal just below the capital: a semi-circular moulding which has the effect of tempering the upward thrust of the column, and also introducing a kind of ambiguity as to whether the section of column above the astragal is part of the capital or part of the column. this ambiguity endows the vertical 228 isparchitecture.com with a kind of elasticity, as though it were actively changing places with itself in its determination to push from below. just focusing for a while on this moulding is an education in itself: it illustrates the point that proportion needs measure and measure needs the edge; it exemplifies the idea of a meaningful part, and also shows the way in which such a part is not stuck on like the metopes in the frieze but grows from within the structure–it is an efflorescence of the stone. and it illustrates the way in which lines, edges, and boundaries in architecture are not made of hard materials, but of light and shade. a boundary is perceivable only if it casts a shadow, and there is shadow only where there is light. the study of the orders was a study of the fall of light on a work of stone, and of the ways in which the life of the stone could be coaxed into the surface. students of the beaux-arts school would be required to draw the shadows on a corinthian capital, as these were cast during the divisions of the day. this education is reflected in all successful forms of architecture, from the ordinary use of beading in window and door surrounds, to the supreme refinements of the gothic mouldings, as lovingly set out in f.a. paley’s manual of gothic figure 2: linkedin building ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 229 sc r ut on mouldings, 1841. among the many radical changes that divide modern from traditional architecture two in particular should be noted: the replacement of the vertical by the horizontal as the axis of emphasis, and the disappearance of mouldings. traditional buildings were arranged in a vertical axis, and this is exactly what the orders were used to teach–a vertical section that could be repeated again and again so as to create an upward vector uniting the whole façade. and the edges were folded over, wrapped around shadows and emphasized with parallels, so that vectors came steadily to closure rather than ceasing abruptly. those two features shape the background expectations of building not only according to the orders but in almost all traditional styles. their loss is associated with the rise of the ground plan and isometric drawing, both made possible by curtain wall structures, steel frames and the replacement of the arch and the beam by continuous girders of steel or reinforced concrete. these innovations in engineering, however, were accompanied by no comparable developments in aesthetic education, so that architects entered a realm of aesthetic ignorance, exemplified by the linked-in building discussed above. for a while, it is true, the ordinary architect attempted to pin the vertical order and moulded edges to the façade of a steel frame buildings–as in the wonderful street assemblages of downtown manhattan. even louis sullivan worked in that way. but then came mies van der rohe, the multi-storey tower block in glass and alloy, and the final abolition of light, shade and significant detail. many praised the result as the sign of a new aesthetic; but ordinary opinion has never been at ease with it, for all the reasons that are implied in my present discussion. the kind of aesthetic education that i have been associating with the orders is the property of all who seek to build for others. it is not addressed to the genius, still less to the madman. it is addressed to those humble civil servants who designed the islington transformer station, to the builders of our pattern-book towns, and to those who produced the pattern books. but here we come up against a great difficulty, which is that contained in the concept of genius. the genius is to a great extent a creation of the romantic movement, which presented us with a new idea of the aesthetic endeavour. for kant and schopenhauer genius defined the distinctive condition of the artist, who was not conceived as a diligent craftsman whose endeavour is to find a place for his art in the existing culture. he was the one with a unique capacity to transcend the rules and conventions that govern lesser mortals, and to put before them his inner life in all its shining and redemptive perfection. he was the one 230 isparchitecture.com with the beautiful soul, to use hegel’s language: the soul distinguished by its sublime and unclassifiable apartness. appealing though that idea might be, when considering the great works of poetry, painting and music, it fits ill with the so-called ‘useful’ arts of architecture, clothing and decoration. there are two reasons for this. frist, by the very fact that it is useful, architecture involves pursuing a nonaesthetic aim. even if it is true, as i have argued, that the aim will expire before the building, so that we must make a building that is adaptable to the changes in human interest, and even if it is true that prioritising aesthetic values is the only reliable way to do this, nevertheless the surrender to a purely aesthetic approach, in which nothing matters save the expressive nature of the design, is a kind of denial of architecture. but there is a second and more important reason for disallowing the romantic idea of genius, which is that works of architecture are public, observable to, and imposed upon, all who move in their vicinity. you can escape from the poetic genius by not opening his book, and from the musical genius by keeping clear of concert halls. but you cannot escape from the architectural genius. our cities are being everywhere littered with gadgets whose aggressive refusal to fit in is amplified by their un-composed character, so that they do not fit in even with themselves. yet, we are assured, they are works of genius, innovative gestures that challenge our expectations, forge new paths into the future, break free from the stultifying constraints of etc. etc. it is precisely the public nature of architecture that demands aesthetic education. and the goal of that education is not to open the way to the genius, but to civilize the manners of the ordinary builder, who is no more likely to be a genius than rem koolhaas, even if somewhat less likely to behave it is precisely the public nature of architecture that demands aesthetic education “ ” ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 231 sc r ut on as one. this is not to say that there is not such a thing as architectural genius. but it is manifest most of all in the inspiration that finds new ways of fitting things together, and producing adaptable solutions to aesthetic problems. in this connection it is surely right to commend the genius of vignola, palladio, borromini and more recently lutyens, whose war memorials showed how to make plain stone arches stand to mournful attention above the dead. and the inspiration of those modest architects can be felt even in the most modern forms, such as aldo rossi’s city hall at borgoricco, which as it were reaches back to the palladian serenity, while eschewing the classical grammar. i have outlined the way in which aesthetic education plays a part in architecture, teaching ordinary builders how to fit part to part and building to building. this process of fitting is what we mean, or ought to mean, by settlement. all durable cities bear witness to this–not just long-standing cities like siena and florence, but modern cities too. new york has the air of a durable settlement in part because the iron frame vernacular, with its street-friendly facades, and the early sky-scrapers which hovered above genial doorways on the street, created an adaptable city, one in which buildings have been preserved because their aesthetic qualities make them more valuable than their initial purposes. compare detroit, tampa or buffalo, in which aesthetic indifference, combined with gargantuan schemes executed by people without aesthetic education, have created ‘built deserts’, at vast expense, financially, aesthetically and ecologically. it is surely reasonable, in the wake of recent experience, to hope for a new kind of architectural education, which is not simply a matter of teaching how to hang panels onto frames, or to transfer computer-designed doodles onto the townscape, but which begins from inculcating an understanding of the true raw materials of architecture, which are light and shade. isparchitecture.com about the authors gerald adler is an architect and professor at the kent school of architecture, university of kent, canterbury (uk), and is a member of the university’s centre for research in european architecture (create). aleksandar kostic is an architect and lecturer at the waterford institute of technology (irl). graham owen is an architect and associate professor at the tulane school of architecture in new orleans (usa). he is the 2018-19 recipient of the jean & saul a. mintz professorship. sir roger scruton is a writer and philosopher and a fellow at the ethics and public policy center in washington. karsten harries is professor of philosophy at yale university and has been chair of the department of philosophy. image credits cover: drawing taken from jacques-francois blondel, cours d´architecture (1771). editorial figure 1: timo allin, www.kopfwerk.com. via wikimedia commons “architecture is concealed unto itself ” figure 1-3: photos by gerhard kerff. taken from zeit-räume der architektin lucy hillebrand, ed. dieter boeminghaus (stuttgart: krämer, 1983), 156/157. permission to reproduce the pictures were given by mrs. krämer. figure 4: unknown photographer, published in innen-dekoration 42 (october 1931): 362-98, here 387. “aporia in architectural design” figure 1/2/3/9: illustrations by aleksandar kostic figure 4: sketch after opere di giovanni battista piranesi figure 5: photo in public domain via wikimedia commons figure 6/7: photo in public domain by hans a. rosbach via wikimedia commons figure 8: sketch after scamozzi’s drawing of ionic capital, l’idea della architettura universale “the anthropology of a smoke-filled room” figure 1: © jonas bendiksen/magnum photos, 2012 figure 2: harvard university graduate school of design figure 3: tumblr image. photographer unknown. figure 4: illustration by wbya? 2014. “ut architectura philosophia?” figure 1: by mattana via wikimedia commons “aesthetic education and design” figure 1: © mike quinn geograph.org.uk/p/4731227 figure 2: by atomiccharles via wikimedia commons ap . vol 3 . no 2 . 2018 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is the paper written in english to general academic writing standards for the humanities? does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines? review criteria isparchitecture.com please direct all submissions and general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. there are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special issue, conference proceedings, etc.). submission types authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. full papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word 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to prof. tom spector at tom.spector@okstate.edu. the papers published by architecture philosophy are protected by copyright. the content must not have been previously published and cannot be republished without the permission of the journal’s copyright holder. the copyright holder is oklahoma state university. authors are responsible for obtaining copyright permission for the use of images in their papers. original images created by the author are acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. essentialism and spatial (re)production benjamin bross non-projects for the uninhabitable: lyotard’s architecture philosophy ashley woodward interview with graham harman simon weir book review: is there and object oriented architecture? engaging graham harman reviewed by tom spector the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture volume 5 number 2 a p v o l 5 n o 2 2 0 2 1 is s n 2 3 7 2 -0 8 8 3 a p v o l 5 n o 2 2 0 2 1 is s n 2 3 7 2 -0 8 8 3 volume 5 number 2 architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois at chicago paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk ersoy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com tom.spector@okstate.edu contents 5editorial 9benjamin brossessentialism and spatial (re) production 33ashley woodward non-projects for the uninhabitable: lyotard’s architecture philosophy 53simon weirinterview with graham harman book review: is there an object oriented architecture? engaging graham harman, edited by joseph bedford tom spector reviewed by tom spector 75 isparchitecture.com those of us who had given up on talk of essences, because they always seem to depend on some inaccessible, mystifying core, are in for a pleasant reawakening. essence(s) is(are) back. in retrospect, this turn was inevitable. continential philosophy’s militant perspectivalism, starting with nietzsche, was bound to invite a backlash. meanwhile, an influential cohort of architects has become frustrated “that architecture is increasingly justified solely by its relations and not by its own particular and autonomous qualities.”1 that is to say, to the degree that architecture is justified by its performance, it recedes into the background as a mere tool, as ‘equipment’ in heideggerian terms, and it loses its potential as a foreground element in the process. concerns for architecture’s autonomy usually emanate from economic recessions, but, interestingly, not this time. times are good in the profession, architects have plenty of work, and yet their ambitions for their work are still frustrated. this suggests that something else is afoot. that something else may be the sheer oppressive weight of performance expectations these days: climate, social betterment, profit motives, work productivity, context, and more besides that coalesce to crowd out conceptions of what architecture can be by those of what it facilitates. those pushing the performative aspects of architecture think that giving up a little autonomy for a lot more relevance is well worth the trade. but it is a question of degree. thus, architecture and philosophy have found editorial: essence and architecture tom spector ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 6 ed it or ia l new common ground. each author in this volume approaches the topic of essence uniquely in order to demystify what they see as a thoroughly useful concept. the opening essay, benjamin bross’s essentialism and spatial (re) production, argues that the essence of space and place does not have to be approached holistically but can be usefully analyzed into component parts without losing the overall in the process. so, for example, a door: it’s formal properties are an obvious source of its essence. but also, what is its final cause--what was it brought into the world to do? what is its efficient cause--who creates it and how do they do this? and what are its temporal properties both in its production and its use over time? taken together, he thinks, these properties tell us the door’s essence in a way that becomes normative. that is, they help us tell a good one from a bad one. clearly, bross is attempting an essentialism quite different from the one the pragmatist tradition sought so strenuosly to put to bed. pragmists disliked essences because they seemed to presume a metaphysics of objects beyond all human intentions that in turn required a complicated epistemology merely to explain how we come to know of these essences. bross’s project is perhaps better thought of as determining an object’s functional essence—a much more tractable problem. his ultimate purpose is to identify the “essential parts (that) can contribute to the continuation and innovation of spatial production.” in ashley woodward’s explanation of jean-françois lyotard’s thoughts about architecture, it is the keenly felt absence of what at one time, and in a more hospitable context, were the essential boundaries of domesticity and of the town that drive his thinking about architecture. in the face of an example such as southern california, woodward explains, lyotard is dismayed that “space is no longer between a ‘here’ (home) and ‘elsewhere’ – the border zone seems to have expanded indefinitely, such that ‘there is nothing left but surroundings.’” dismayed, and yet simultaneously (and so typically lyotardian) he is suspicious that nostalgia for those idealized enclosures may lead to violence against perceived others. certainly, recent refugee crises at the u. s. border with mexico and across europe testify to the reality of such suspicions. since idealizations of cities are inherently suspicious in his view, architects should eschew projects that trade in such wishful thinking in favor of “non-projects” born out of an attitude of non-domination over others. in case object oriented ontology (ooo), as promoted by graham harman and others, has passed underneath the reader’s attention, the conversation here transcribed between harman and simon weir will 7 isparchitecture.com serve as a good introduction to the thought of sciarc’s distinguished professor of philosophy (and more recently, the school’s liberal arts coordinator.) among the tenets of ooo is that objects have qualities, but they cannot be reduced to their changeable qualities, hence they have an essence. humans are also objects--a realization that should lead to collapse of the subject-object distinction and towards a de-anthropocentric outlook. harman recognizes the roots of these ideas in aristotle, but also that he departs from aristotle. “i emphasize the inaccessible elusiveness of real objects, and while aristotle has more awareness of that than many people realize, he does not emphasize the gap between the mind and the object to the same extent that ooo does (coming as we do after both kant and heidegger).” an important interest in ooo for architects should come from its promise of restoring a degree of non-instrumental dignity to buildings. although created by humans and for humans, once created, buildings have their own trajectories that are impossible to reduce to the intentions of any particular human constituency. as harman asserts, “you just can’t reduce any object, including an architectural one, to its backstory as a project.”as mark foster gage observes of the attraction of ooo: “that architecture and discrete buildings are connected to the larger world is not in dispute, but whether buildings can be legitimized as architecture by these relations should be.”2 take, for example, a building’s leed score, carbon neutrality or other measures of its environmental performance. no level of environmental sensitivity it exhibits could actually justify its existence, because the ultimate environmental sensitivity is to not exist in the first place. the reasonable conclusion to draw then, is that a work of architecture must justify itself qua architecture—assuming we understand and can defend what that means. because a work of architecture’s essence exceeds (or withdraws from)all harman recognizes the roots of these ideas in aristotle, but also that he departs from aristotle. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 8 ed it or ia l attempts to definitively encapsulate it, including attempts by its creators, it is suggested that architects do well to allude to what it might be. a further aspect of the interest in ooo for architecture, however, is not so much in the building objects themselves, but in what harman postulates happens when two objects collide or otherwise make contact. a sensual object functioning as an intermediary emerges from these collisions. architects are dreamers of both types of objects. to round out this foray into the thought of graham harman is a book review of a volume edited by joseph bedford on the relevance of ooo for an architectural audience entitled is there an object oriented architecture? engaging graham harman. taken together, the pieces in this issue begin to explore both the benefits and hazards, what is potentialy gained and what may be lost, when architecture deals in essences and when essentials are applied to architecture. while each essay chips away at the mystique that often accompanies talk of essences, and in the process allays some concerns, what is not yet settled, however, is whether those concerns can be dispelled altogether. this issue, 5.2, with fewer essays than past issues, has given architecture philosophy a chance to experiment with longer-form pieces. it’s production also crosses paths with the 5th biannual ispa conference (postponed one year by covid) held at monte veritá overlooking lake maggiore in ascona switzerland. despite travel restrictions and other uncertainties, the conference was an impressive demonstration of both ispa’s staying power and its creativity. by the time this issue is in print, work will have begun on readying the thoughts and ideas for print emanating from that successful event. endnotes 1. mark foster gage, “killing simplicity: object-oriented philosophy in architecture,” log 33. 2015, 95. 2. gage, 100. isparchitecture.com essentialism and spatial (re) production benjamin bross introduction the phenomenon of globalization continues to strengthen and spread across socio-cultural community boundaries, resulting in homogenized cultural landscapes. as henri lefebvre pointed out, spatial production1 exhibits a society’s value systems through the spaces (and places) it produces. one of the principal effects of a technology-driven flow of information on spatial production is that it has increasingly become a binary proposition: either design practice contributes to a sense of place by being rooted in place-based iterative sociohistorical spatial production processes or, it follows modernism’s rejection of history and tradition in order to disrupt consciously the socio-historic context. the former asserts the continuation of localized spatial traditions and the latter producing design that participates in a larger globalized contemporary aesthetic. yet, if spatial production is to (re)produce spatial traditions, how do we recognize what is essential to the identity of space? the purpose of this essay is to produce an analytical approach that examines site-specific spatial design that results in placemaking: a unique physical spatial experience defined by the relationship between various spatial objects and ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 10 br os s their properties. together, these objects, usually typological spaces, and their qualities produce a sense of environmental and geographic spatial identity that distinguish a place from other spaces. the spatial production of objects that acknowledge and utilize their contexts help counteract the increasing homogeneity of globalized space. the question is then, how do we determine if a spatial product (a door, a house or a city plaza) belongs to, and hence continues, a specific spatial production tradition or context? how do we answer the question: what is it? what follows describes spatial products as knowable by the nature of their properties. this article uses the philosophical concept of essentialism to develop a framework to analyze and generate designs that are rooted in context and history. the paper explores “aristotelian” essentialism, focusing on the efficient and final causes, to define the nature of a spatial object. the essay continues by explaining the role of time in identifying spatial products. finally, anchored in the previous analyses, the essay proposes three modes of spatial production: discontinuity, continuity, and innovation, that describe contemporary spatial production based on the deployment of essential properties of an object. these three modes allow designers to reflectively engage in the practice of spatial placemaking. essentialism introduction to essentialism modern essentialism, as part of part of the “scientific realism” tradition, can be applied to explain the nature (see below) of objects. first, it is important to remember that as lefebvre notes, “nature creates and does not produce.”2 this is important to note because my essentialist argument focuses on the essential qualities of produced objects and not that of created things of nature. hence, the essay is not about natural kinds, but rather, about the essential qualities of produced spatial objects. this philosophical approach seeks to document qualities including those that go beyond the “appearances in order to discover the hidden causes of things.”3 thus, objects are defined by characteristics/properties that are bound in the essence of the object. essentialism requires first an affirmation of the object’s characteristics/properties and thus distinguishes those properties that are intrinsic and necessary for being the object from those which are accidental; the latter defined as a “property of an object …. it happens to have but that it could lack.”4 necessary properties, in turn, are “primary or secondary qualities” where “primary qualities are properties of the objects themselves. the secondary qualities are manners in which we are affected by things in the process of perceiving them.”5 11 isparchitecture.com hence, all essential properties are intrinsic, but not all intrinsic properties are essential. moreover, as leibniz6 argued, and more recently baruch brody,7 intrinsic properties can only be essential if they are possessed at all times by the object. therefore, attitudes towards spatial objects are in themselves accidental, that is, susceptible to the passage of time and the concurrent evolution of value-systems. an attempt to describe an object by what it is not would ultimately be fruitless, because all objects lack an infinite number of properties. rather, it is imperative to search for properties, characteristics, or qualities that the object must possess to be categorized as a part of a specific spatial production tradition. the question then becomes, how do we identify the essential qualities of a spatial product? aristotle’s causes aristotle’s “causes”8 provide an important approach to applying essentialism to spatial production. aristotle proposed “four categories of cause” that explain physical reality and the nature of things: material, formal, efficient and final.9 the material cause, as the name suggests, explains the material content of the object; the formal cause explains the shape of the object. with efficient cause, aristotle attempted to describe qualities that are not necessarily revealed at the surface of the object itself but are imbued into the object during its production. these qualities include socially constructed value systems acting through the individual or groups producing the object: rituals of production, skillsets, aesthetics (value judgements of beauty), logistics (including location, tools and facilities) and temporality (duration and time frame). the final cause, or the purpose of the object, is the designed purpose or function of the object. because material and formal causes are somewhat self-evident, the essay focuses on the role of efficient and final cause in determining spatial essence. all essential properties are intrinsic, but not all intrinsic properties are essential “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 12 br os s efficient cause in an aristotelian context, one of the ways we can explain essential properties of the object is by understanding the object’s efficient cause or its process of production. first, efficient cause explores who produces the object, and more importantly, how. under this interpretation, efficient cause is the combination of the producer and the process (steps) of production itself.10 at its most expansive scope, a culture is defined by its traditions and rituals (what it does), and at its most granular, fabricators are defined by their knowledge; hence the carpenter is identified as the carpenter because she knows how to do carpentry. efficient cause analysis requires the development of identifiable proprietary sets -a group based on identified shared properties. who may start with a general category, for example, an ethnic, national, or other productive group, i.e. “the french”, and can finish with definitive specificity, such as a particular or individual producer -i.e., jean nouvel. as in set theory, related groups of specific examples are part of the greater general set, with each set containing kinds.11 specificity in the set is only as relevant as required by the analyst to demonstrate the validity of the general set’s essential and related properties.12 who produces the object is then an essential property of the object itself -even anonymity of production is an identifiable property of the object (i.e., when we do not know or cannot know who made the object, when anonymity is a requirement of production, or when anyone can produce an object). as walter benjamin13 noted, who or what produces an object is a fundamental property when determining authenticity (see replication below), hence it is an essential component of identity. the appearance of “black swan”14 exceptions to any specific set, do not invalidate the original set, but rather, create a new independent subset within the larger general set or alternately, widen the sorting criteria. identifying who produces the object is limited only by the venn diagram-like qualifiers that are used to form a kind set: i.e., profession, religious or hierarchical status, socio-cultural and political membership, etc. when analyzing a spatial product, such as a church, we might investigate who designed, built, blessed, and funded the product, noting that each of these producers had a specific role because of their knowledge in the process of production. we might further investigate requirements to participate in these roles, for example, to bless a religious shrine, it is a requirement to be an ordained priest of that religion. another aspect of efficient cause is the ‘how’ or the process of production. in essentialism, the object’s essential identity may embody the processes of production if deemed relevant by the individual maker 13 isparchitecture.com or society as a whole. these processes include but are not limited to rituals or traditions and their associated codes (rules) of execution. for example, it may be essential that the object be produced following specific manufacturing steps or associated rituals that may or may not be visible in the object itself; at specific periods of time, such as the first full moon of the year, or when a comet appears in the evening sky. as we shall see below, these codes of production, may significantly overlap with the final cause, i.e. the designed purpose, as often how something is produced is part of why an object is produced. hannah arendt15 has argued that the how also includes socio-political value systems, including capital production contexts, codes, and working conditions. like production rituals, these characteristics may or may not be visible in the product itself, and overlap at times with other essentialist causes. for example, a church façade may be made of the stone of a specific quarry, such that its material cause is stone, but its efficient cause is that the stone must be from a particular quarry associated with a sacred mountain. finally, efficient cause might incorporate “constructal”16 logic, where the object is the natural (that is obeying natural laws) result of a production process. once again, it is necessary for the analyst to propose and bound the relevant parameters in developing identity sets. final cause aristotle describes final cause as the object’s purpose or telos. purpose can be divided into two parts: what it should do, for example “a house should provide shelter”; and what it can do (beyond its primary purpose) because of its intrinsic properties, such as materiality, shape, dimension, volume, color etc., for example, “a house can be a museum.” the should makes explicit intent, while can acknowledges an object’s possibilities, but is like production rituals, these characteristics may or may not be visible in the product itself, and overlap at times with other essentialist causes. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 14 br os s void of designer intent. as we shall see below, this is a critical idea as it lays the foundation for a constructed system of values. furthermore, fundamental to the idea of what an object does, is an incorporated history of all previous actions, which taken as a sum, enable present and future actions of the object (hereafter, called functions). these historic, present and future functions become the “signs” by which semiotic analyses ascribe various degrees of meaning and ultimately the collective memory inherent in the social contexts of spatially produced objects. another important aspect of final cause exists in an object’s potential purpose, such that as the object fulfills its purpose, what was initially an extrinsic object quality, thereafter transforms the object’s essence, and now forms part of its intrinsic properties. it is important to note that regardless of the transformation, the object retains its initial properties even while gaining new qualities.17 in that sense, the object acquires new purposes, that are fundamental for describing the object’s nature. this is especially important when the object must then be able to perform the new intrinsic purpose as its reason for being. while considering an object’s purpose— and hence describing it—space-time contexts must be identified clearly: what the object has been, what it is, and what it could be are properties of the object. these contexts are necessary to establish categorical boundaries of being. to illustrate this point, let us examine the “western wall”18 in jerusalem. (figure 1) as a material cause, the wall is made of limestone “jerusalem stone” blocks quarried near the site.19 turning to the wall’s efficient cause, the wall’s stone blocks were placed side by side to form long courses, with each successive course rising away from its bedrock foundation. though parts of the wall have been built and rebuilt by different rulers and their corresponding subjects over the last 2000 years, historic records show that king herod ordered the initial construction20 of the wall; hence, members of judean society ranging from priests to slaves initially built the wall. at each instance, the tools and technology that were used to construct the wall correspond to the time and cultural corpus of the people working on the wall. in terms of its final cause, the wall was designed and erected as a structure capable of holding back soil in order to support a large temple surrounded by ceremonial grounds. once the wall was finished sometime between 19 bce and the end of construction of the temple mount in 64 ce, it fulfilled its telos. yet in 70 ce, 6 years after the temple mount was finally completed, the second temple was destroyed.21 after the destruction of the temple by the romans, only portions of the retaining wall and temple mount were left 15 isparchitecture.com –though eventually the latter were also removed. however, as f.m. loewenberg notes,22 the portion of the retaining wall that did survive, did not acquire an “aura”23 of symbolic and theological importance until nearly 1500 years later; that would happen four years after the 1546 earthquake, when houses and other lean-to structures collapsed and revealed the original retaining wall. sultan suleiman i, the magnificent, instructed his engineers to clear away debris and prepare a prayer site for jews. thereafter, the once extrinsic property –its spatial relationship to the holy of holiesbecame an intrinsic quality, i.e. no longer was it simply a retaining wall, but rather, as a physical remnant of the temple and its grounds, over the centuries increasingly becoming judaism’s holiest site. critiques of essentialism in his essay, “no route to material origin essentialism?”24 nic damnjanovic critiques saul kripke’s naming and necessity, pointing out arguments made against essentialism’s apparent inability to determine the “sufficiency” or minimum figure 1: western wall, jerusalem ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 16 br os s properties that an object must possess to be considered essentially that object. first, it is important to note his criticism is primarily directed at material cause, and concludes “any argument for (emo) [material origin essentialism] that relies on a sufficiency principle is bound to fail.”25 damnjanovic notes that any essentialist argument that depends on exclusive material properties of objects alone is not enough to identify an object as unique, or belonging to its own set. instead, an object’s identity essence is derived from material, the other three causes, and its resulting intrinsic compossibility.26 simply stated, an object´s essence does not rest alone on its materiality, but in the sum of the properties that are present in its production, and its ability to sustain relationships (interactions) with other objects. other critics note that essences do not seem to be observable and hence verifiable. david oderberg, citing locke as the source of the confusion, counters that the fundamental question that must be answered is “what is meant by observability.”27 he continues by discussing an object´s quiddity, pragmatically noting that objects do possess intrinsic properties that do manifest themselves extrinsically. as such, these intrinsic properties cannot be separated from the object, and hence flow forth from it, revealing its essence. he writes “…what a thing is does determine how it is –in the traditional terminology, function follows essence. essence just is the principle from which flows the characteristic behavior of the thing. and a thing´s numerical identity as particular member of a kind determines its particular behavior…”28 objects must be evaluated by what they are and do, and on that basis, analyses reveal how and why an object behaves as it does. therefore, designers can utilize modern essentialism to identify spatial production traditions not only by their form, but also equally as important, by what they do, and how they achieve designed functions. as we shall see below, this is of paramount importance when attempting to avoid “pastiche” aesthetics. the role of time in the reductionist tradition, time is a descriptive property of a spatial product (object) indicating the specific status of being (existing) in an object’s production, use and relationship with other objects. in this sense, an object possesses five distinct (but related) qualities of time: embodied, existence, contextual, production, and use. embodied time describes the passage of time incorporated since the object’s creation.29 for example, in the case of the itsukushima torii30 (figure 2) the columns are made from camphor tree trunks. these 17 isparchitecture.com camphor tree trunks are at least two hundred years old before they were cut down. the embodied time property is neither accidental nor incidental, as width, height and loadbearing requirements for the itsukushima torii necessitate trees that must be at least 200 years old to fulfill its final cause in the same way as past torii iterations. existence time is the descriptive characteristic of the object’s age from production inception going forward. this is because objects can be said to be in existence once they have been produced and function (see final cause). existence time criteria is fundamental to understand the value systems which are imbedded in the production of spatial product. for example, use may be the primary production criteria when choosing materials prioritizing their point of obsolescence, thus enabling future market-oriented consumption. the itsukushima torii’s existence time begins once the tree trunks are transformed into columns, and all other components are integrated to form the new whole object of the torii. in this way, we describe the age (measured flow of time) of the components either figure 2: itsukushima shrine torii ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 18 br os s as independent of human interaction (created), or dependent on the production process.31 contextual time is determined by the occurrence of other events that demarcate the beginning, continuation and end of specific periods. in contextual time, we note referential time points, as in the past, present, and future, but more importantly, by a proposed generally accepted historic identifier such as neolithic or roman. contextual time is indispensable to understand spatial identity as belonging to an identifiable set of criteria to which the spatial product belongs, and as such, denotes and connotes particular spatial identity; it allows us to examine the characteristics of the social, cultural and political contexts in which an object has been, is, and will be produced. contextual time is often considered the prevalent criteria for membership in an identity group, as we often refer to qualities of context when describing an object’s identity. as such, we state the object belongs to, emulates (simulates, but is not authentic), and disrupts the time qualities of objects belonging to the same identity groups. if matched with efficient and final causes, we derive a cross-reference of who, how, and why, as related to the contextual time frame in which they are produced. who in contextual time, may reference the larger set of people whose cultural spatial making is identified with the production of an object, such as the “edo” or “meiji” periods. equally importantly, is the iterative nature of contextual time, since the production of an object reinforces the notion of a specific period of production: for example, when archeologists suggest that a ruin dates from a specific time frame because its physical characteristics match those of other objects known to have been produced in that time context. production time refers directly to the time that is necessary to produce an object. for example, one salient characteristic of fordism32 is the mass production of consumable products in a specific calibrated amount of time. in this manner, we can describe the time it takes to produce a spatial object as a specific, descriptive quality. in the case of a torii, we could distinguish within the context of efficient cause, between those that are handmade (longer periods of time and labor intensive) and those that are machine-made (rapid production and serially made). as the name suggests, use time describes the measured amount of time an object performs its functions. whereas existence time is a measure of the passage time of the object, use time measures the duration of each function. recalling that function applies equally to what an object should and can do, we can similarly note that use time applies to the carrying out of activities that are intended and unintended. at first sight, the latter might suggest an 19 isparchitecture.com extraneous consideration, yet if we recall the example of the western wall, construction of spatial myth is often the result of built environments performing time-based unintended activities. such activities become fundamental in understanding the shaping of human perception derived from the essence of the spatial product. for example, a farmer’s field that temporarily becomes a brutal battlefield; though comparatively insignificant to the existence time of the field, the use time of the rummel farm33 as a battleground during the u.s. civil war transformed the farm into a spatial component of the gettysburg national military park. such a spatial transformation includes the corresponding changes to site’s spatial essence legibility. developmen of sets sets are collections of objects that share criteriabased common properties. to apply essentialism as sorting criteria requires considering objects’ intrinsic properties. sets are made through the analyses of spatial production for identification purposes based on the cause properties (discussed previously) of the objects. for example, “set doors” is composed of the physical object “doors,” such that all doors are contained in “set doors.” as a first step, the designer defines a door through its final cause essence: what does a door do that makes it a door? what must a door perform to be considered a door? a second step is to sort doors by efficient cause, answering who must produce the door, and how must they produce it to be perceived as a door, and more specifically a particular type of door? a third, but certainly not final step, would be to generate time criteria that further restricts set membership: in what context time is the door produced, and what is the use time for a particular door? one possible next step is to identify what is a door by formal properties: dimensions, materials, configurations, ornamentations, colors, components, etc. each answer generates additional use time describes the m e a s u r e d amount of time an object performs its functions. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 20 br os s sets defined by commonalities between member objects, and differences with objects of other sets, while all objects are generally still considered doors. taken to its logical end, we can visualize how on one hand increasing complexity leads to increasing differentiation and ultimately uniqueness in an object, while on the other hand, we can determine as many sets as necessary to establish what is essential in a spatial identity set. at the larger scale, the quantified and qualified identification of sets allow observers to assert that an object belongs to a specific tradition of spatial practice because of its essential properties. once a set has been determined by specific criteria, essentialism becomes normative when applied to generate design. first essentialism describes what is, and then, what it should be based on established rules of belonging to the set. the more limited the set of explanations available for each property, the easier it is to identify the uniqueness of the type to a society, and in some cases, the singularity of the object itself. these properties are often expressed as normative regulations: to be considered a part of an object’s set, a shared minimum of characteristics must be evident. the more specific the set, the clearer the revelation of the essential nature of the object to a society, and within a society’s total production. set development reveals constructed value systems not only for the set, but for the set developer as well. a central aspect of set development is the privileging of some properties over others to generate a set identity. in other words, why properties are chosen is as important as what properties are chosen. the deconstruction of property privileging reveals meaning through semiotics. for example, amos rapoport (following hall) categorized human spatial production based on their physical permanence into fixed, semifixed, and non-fixed components.34 in his methodic approach, he proposes a system that identifies the object’s essential final cause properties in terms of its existence time to derive meaning. designers can utilize his system to generate spatial production that follows the essential property rules to generate similar objects. as we shall see next, such an approach presents an opportunity for designers to continue a spatial tradition by (re)producing that which has been classified as belonging to a pre-existing contextual set; or, innovate designed components rooted in context or history yet exemplifying contemporary expressions of functions, materiality and/or form. discontinuity, continuity and innovation having described essentialism as analytical tools to examine the identity 21 isparchitecture.com of spatial products, we can now propose how these analyses are applied through design. generally, we understand spatial production through three general modalities: discontinuity, continuity, and innovation. each of these modes of production display varying degrees of commonality, from none to total, with the latter a high reliance or emulation on the proprietary qualities of contextual spatial production. specifically, we are able to categorize spatial objects because sets (see above) contain objects that relate to each other through causal qualities at the exclusion of objects that do not share properties. jouni-matti kuukkanen, citing thomas kuhn, explains that: according to kuhn’s theory, references of kind terms are determined through a network of similarity and dissimilarity relations, which specify what properties an entity can and cannot have in order to qualify as that kind. similarity-dissimilarity sets do not entail any principled distinction between essential and superficial properties. although the original formation of sets does not require any description, the descriptive content stored in the sets is subsequently needed to keep the boundaries between kind categories sharp.35 because sets are determined by selecting specific parameters, designers must engage in the selection of properties that may be produced or re-produced during object production. obviously, certain parameters are impossible to replicate, such as contextual time. yet, as we will see below, the inability to possess the same contextual time disqualifies continuity only as far as it limits an object´s authenticity for a specifically bounded time context, but not in its tradition of making or embedded value systems (i.e. building codes). having described essentialism as analytical tools to examine the identity of spatial products, we can now propose how these analyses are applied through design “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 22 br os s discontinuity with the rise of modernism in the 19th century and onward, as exemplified by adolph loos’ treatise ornament and crime, designers and artists willfully turned away from the past and its traditions. moreover, contemporary spatial production practices, even in the postmodernist period, continue to question the value of establishing a continuity or innovative relationship with historic and contextual environments. lebbeus woods had gone so far as to declare “i am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.”36 it is this rejection of spatial history and context that creates spatial discontinuity, as it privileges objects that are dissimilar to their environment. discontinuity is a modality of spatial production where contextual essential qualities are obviated in favor of the production of a consciously differentiated spatial product. discontinuous spatial production exhibits the absence of the various properties of the spatial products such as time, materiality, history, purpose, and value systems. differentiated objects exhibit contextual relationships that are limited to either their physical presence, enforced embedded value systems, or functionality. perhaps one of the best examples of discontinuous spatial production is adolf loos’ steiner house. built in 1910 in a viennese suburb, it radically differentiates itself in its façade design and plan development, a precursor to his raumplan,37 from the neighborhood’s preexisting houses. for the purposes of our discussion, spatial production requires that objects occupy physical space over time.38 because of the physical relationship between objects, there is an ontological reality of perceived existence, regardless of the design intention of the produced objects. simply stated, a new office building whose design embraces a differentiated essence and hence façade from its context, has a relationship with all the other buildings in its proximity by virtue of its physical existence, during the time that buildings in proximity exist. it is this condition of physicaltime existence that allows our built environment to be understood as a palimpsest: layer upon layer of spatial production that in summation exhibits aldo rossi’s “genius loci.”39 another baseline shared relationship is the enforced embedded value systems during the production of spatial objects. discontinuous objects share imposed values systems, such as fire codes, ada, setbacks, design review directives, or other legislation that all objects must obey. in that sense, all spatial products of a specific time and place exhibit the constructed 23 isparchitecture.com value systems of the participative groups who enact, promote and enforce codified production rules. yet, other constructed value systems are often suppressed or removed from the production process itself, diminishing or eliminating bonds between objects. finally, discontinuous objects tend to relate to other objects by their functions. hence, we can see how houses built in the 18th century through the 21st century should provide shelter but, often do so at such differentiated processes that the function provides any meaningful relationship across time and space. altogether, discontinuous spatial production generates environments of disconnected spatial objects, standing silently apart from each other, in the same space, but without a sense of place. continuity continuity is the act of producing objects that directly exhibit object-property kinds revealed by the essentialist qualities of an existing environmental context. this production can occur by either replacement, replication or resemblance. the intent is figure 3: ise jingu shrine ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 24 br os s to go beyond surface-first qualities and define design composition through essentialist frameworks in the way of making that embed value systems associated with spatial production. to replace, is “to take the place of,”40 and –ment, indicates the action itself. replacement is literally an action where an object´s spatial component are exchanged in situ by components whose qualities are materially identical to those that are being displaced. component qualities obey causes with the possible exception of contextual time. because components are bound to the historic period in which they were produced, all objects not produced at the same time as the original components can be determined to be different, unless the period is expansive enough to be considered part of one space-time continuum.41 replacement components themselves are subject to further analysis: they may have been produced at the same time as the original components, but stored for later use, maintenance and upkeep. for example, roofing tiles might be produced and stored specifically for later use, at the same time as a first set of tiles are installed; these stored tiles are then used to replace older tiles as these reach the end of their useful life. the replacement tiles, though installed years or decades later, would still belong to the same contextual and production time as the first installed tiles. alternatively, identical components may be produced millennia later, to replace failing components. the question in this case is a larger one, when we consider who installs them, and how they install them. this analysis becomes relevant to those who seek to establish parameters of authenticity. who? is not an innocent question, as it identifies groups that seek to appropriate or consolidate socio-political power through the affirmative control of historic spatial products. how must be understood too, as we analyze forces of capital and labor involved in production and replacement: we must consider the final cause of replacement itself, especially when accounting for social, cultural and political agendas. replication is a spatial production process by which an object´s physical components are produced in an identical manner to the original but, in a separate physical space and time. unlike replacement, replication production does not occur in situ. similar to replacement components and objects, replication products are bound by the specificity of their time qualities. for example, the jingu shrine in ise is replicated during the shikinen sengu ceremony occurring every 20 years (figure 3). junko edahiro notes, its underlying concept—that repeated rebuilding renders 25 isparchitecture.com sanctuaries eternal—is unique in the world. in the occidental way of thinking, creating something durable would normally involve building a structure with robust stones, bricks, and concrete. at this shrine, however, the structures are made exclusively from wood and, by being rebuilt over and over again, can last forever. also, in the process of rebuilding, the skills of shrine builders and craftsmen in various fields (carpentry, sacred treasures, apparel, etc.) are also passed on from generation to generation.42 viewed as part of the final cause, the jingu shrine object’s use time prescribes that its torii pillars be used in the sanctuary for twenty years; once dismounted from within the main shrine, they are used another twenty years as gates at the uji bridge. while any variation of this use time may not eliminate the torii essence of the object, it would however, prevent it from being considered specifically an ise grand shrine torii, because the deviating iteration would no longer be bound by the required use time characteristics. mass replication (in series or concurrently) by non-mechanical and non-automated means of production, precisely because of implied labor concentration in production time, evokes the sense of a process-centered spatial production unity. in mass replication, spatial production is accretive to the individual maker at the personal level, but also accretive to the larger scale society. specifically, production by replication connotes membership in the larger group. presently what we mostly see, however, is mass replication by mechanical and automated processes that obey the logic of capital as its main identity. this continuous spatial production approach is prevalent in projects that produce large amounts of units in a standardized and rapid manner (thus providing the largest “ ” production by replication connotes membership in the larger group ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 number of costs efficiencies). for example: mass housing projects whose constituent components, entire buildings, and even neighborhoods, are produced identically and serially (except for their physical location within the overall urban project). on one hand, as walter benjamin43 noted,mass replication has provided unprecedented access to all types of works and spatial products for the largest number of people. yet, benjamin points to the failures of mass replication, where spatial production is driven by the logic of capital, leading to vanishing authenticity. similarly, aldo van eyck has pointed to mass replication in urbanism as its main challenge in placemaking. he notes “[w]e must continue the search for the basic principles of a new aesthetic and discover the human meaning of number. we must impart rhythm to repetitive similar and dissimilar form, thereby disclosing the conditions that may lead to the equilibration of the plural, and thus overcome the menace of monotony.”44,45 there is a final mode of continuity, that neither replaces, replicates, but relates to the context: resemblance. michel foucault recalls that until the “end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in knowledge of western culture. it was resemblance that largely guided exegesis and the interpretations of texts; it was resemblance that organized the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them.”46 at first glance, reaching back to the sixteenth century and its aristotelian tradition47 might seem an anachronistic approach, but attempts to contemporize once archaic forms of understanding yields fruits in present postmodern discourse. spatial production is perceived as continuous because it resembles preexisting contextual components. though varying from object precedent/context, they do so in such a way as to present the observer a sense of unity or belonging to a greater group of objects. resemblance in objects requires the development of parameter-defined kinds criteria; individual essential properties that permit identification of the object, or what foucault calls the “signature.” moreover, resemblance joins spatial objects to each other, over distance and time, creating what foucault names sympathetic links -rendering contextual time a non-essential quality of the product. in resemblance, spatial products with similar fundamental properties form sets whose objects exhibit specimen variations to generate object individuality, while retaining membership through what wittgenstein called “familiar relationships.”48 for example, we can readily recognize a brownstone neighborhood in new york, but we can also distinguish individual dwellings frome each other. wittgenstein notes that we as observers br os s 28 27 isparchitecture.com recognize similarities between objects, writing that “we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing; sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”49 innovation the third major modality is that of innovation. unlike resemblance, where properties may vary superficially or minimally from object to object, but retain essential familiar similarities and hence belong to the same “set,” innovation represents a wider variation in material cause and an outright departure from an object’s historic efficient cause essence. often, changes in material realities are catalysts for changes in production processes. how and who exhibit contemporary labor, production technology, and social value systems while maintaining essential formal and final causes. by modifying the efficient cause properties, designers propose spatial relationships that simultaneously relate to the contextual precedent, while modifying an object enough to imbue it with a sense of contemporaneous production –i.e., the zeitgeist. thus, objects are produced with essential modifications that address new or contemporary social, cultural and political contexts. this looking back to history but being part of the present is the hallmark of innovation. in koestler´s ghost in the machine, he relates a story describing the process of production attributed to bios.50 however, where nature evolves, spatial producers innovate. following his narrative, spatial production processes innovate by incorporating simpler processes into the production of increasingly complex objects. we can directly relate the original production process and its resultant spatial product with each new iteration because of contextual time and the changing efficient cause of an object to achieve intended functions. innovation allows for, even promotes, the notion that design can reveal the i n n o v a t i o n represents a wider variation in material cause and an outright departure from an object’s h i s t o r i c efficient cause essence. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 28 br os s contextual essence of things, and still be produced in its own time context. critical regionalism, for example, as defined by kenneth frampton, approaches place making through innovation that seizes on the essential aspects of spatial production and steers away from what he calls “nostalgic historicism” and “sentimental” attachments to place. instead, frampton’s focus is on “elements derived indirectly from the peculiarities of a particular place.”51 confronted with the inability to match contextual time, selected properties are extracted, decanted from contextual objects, to reveal causes that create sympathetic commonalities from spatial object to object. essential components are not formed from the impulse of replication, but rather, from the material cause of location, the efficient cause of the producer, and the final cause of its functions. where focus is placed solely on the form as perceived, with disregard for other causes, spatial production becomes “pastiche,” and ultimately void of any content other than the act of aesthetic continuity resemblance. an example of spatial innovation is urbanu’s tulou housing (20052008) (figure 4) in guangzhou, china. hakka migration between the 12th and 20th century produced the “tulou …. a dwelling type unique to the hakka people.”52 the oldest examples are “o” shape building typology, built with compacted earthen walls that look inward in fortresslike relationship with their exterior context. this meant that living units faced inward. that orientation, along communal programming in the central courtyard, provides a rich social environment. after studying traditional hakka dwellings in the chinese provinces of jiangxi, fujian and guangdong, urbanus developed a housing project that innovated on the traditional typology. while preserving the final and formal causes (cantilevered roofs over a circular housing block with centralized programming) they also embraced contemporary construction processes and materials such as poured reinforced concrete walls and slabs and steel guardrails. conclusion the above text is an attempt to explain an essentialist design approach to spatial production in order to achieve context-based placemaking. the sum of essential qualities is the spatial identity of the essential components of a society’s secretions. as globalization continues to strengthen and spread across socio-cultural community boundaries, places are reduced to geographic accidents: increasingly, locations fail to reveal the essence of cultural spatial production, and therefore, they fail to reveal their uniqueness. 29 isparchitecture.com ultimately, all spatial production reveals embedded value systems: what is important in the production of space. for those who prioritize not only preserving but also enhancing the qualities of place, especially in the context of contemporary market-driven considerations, the practice of spatial production requires the capacity to go beyond the surface image of objects. it requires the ability to peel away each layer to reveal aristotelian causes that define design criteria sets of proprietary qualities and functions –and then apply them. these sets, each with their own object-derived properties, form the basis of the sum of the parts to create a greater sympathetic whole. each object, be it a teakettle, a house, or city park, is then the sum of its essential parts and can contribute to the continuation and innovation of spatial production. if modernism’s, and postmodernism’s rejection of the past, including its traditions, and context continues, and what is valued and therefore prioritized is the differentiated spatial object, we will eventually be confronted with a world where little or no cultural production differences exist. the long shadow of homogeneity will have spread figure 4: tulou housing ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 30 br os s over our communities, and we will only find the mythical trace of what was once place through the nostalgic science of archeology. endnotes 1. henri lefebvre, the production of space, (malden, ma, blackwell publishing) 2011, 15 2. lefebvre, 70 3. brian ellis, the philosophy of nature, a guide to the new essentialism, (montreal, quebec:mcgill-queen´s university press, 2002), 24-25. 4.https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/ 5. op. cit. ellis, 41-42. 6. gallois, andre, “identity over time”, the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2016 edition), edward n. zalta (ed.), url = <https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/identity-time/>. 7. baruch a. brody, identity and essence, (princeton, n.j: princeton university press, 1980.) 8. aristotle, the complete works of aristotle, physics, edited by jonathan barnes, (princeton, nj: princeton university press, 1995), 315-446. 9. “the four causes”, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed on july 2, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ aristotle-causality/#foucau 10.aristotle. physics, book 2:3, p.332-333 11. “natural kinds” stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed on july 5, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/ for additional explanation of kinds.\ 12. “essentialism”, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed july 2, 2018 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#ess, 1.3 essentialism. 13. walter benjamin, “the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.” illuminations: essays and reflections. (new york, ny, 1969), 217-251. 14. past experience and/or observations fail to predict the emergence of new objects or events. 15. hannah arendt, the human condition, (chicago, il: university of chicago press, 1998),141-144. 16. adrian bejan, and j. peder zane, design in nature: how the constructal law governs evolution in biology, physics, technology, and social 31 isparchitecture.com organization, (new york, ny. anchor books, 2013), 1. 17. “intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties.” stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed november 20, 2019 at https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/intrinsic-extrinsic/ 18. also known as the “wailing wall.” 19. ilana teitelbau, “a stone’s throw from the quarry,” jerusalem post, accessed on january 25, 2020. https://www.jpost.com/ local-israel/in-jerusalem/a-stones-throw-from-the-quarry 20. evidence exists that the wall itself was finished after herod’s death. see yadin roman, “who built the western wall,” accessed on january 22, 2020, http://www.zfa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/ who-built-the-western-wall.pdf. 21. ibid. 22. loewenberg, f.m. 2017. “is the western wall judaism’s holiest site?” the middle east quarterly 24 (4). http:// search.ebscohost.com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/login. aspx?direct=true&db=jph&an=ijp0000182628. 23. see walter benjamin’s definition of authentic. 24. nic damnjanovic, “no route to material origin essentialism?” erkenntnis (1975-), vol. 72, no. 1 (jan., 2010), pp. 93-110, springer. 25. ibid. p.102 26. compossible: able or possible to coexist with another. see https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compossible 27. david oderberg, real essentialism, (new york, routledge studies in contemporary philosophy, 2007), 22. 28. ibid. p. 23 29. nature creates, humans produce. 30. shinto shrine gateway in southern japan 31. theseus’ ship paradox demonstrates an object’s embodied time is paramount in identifying questions of component and object authenticity. 32. “fordism”, encyclopaedia britannica, accessed on august 27, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/fordism. 33.http://gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/battlefield-farms/ rummel-farm/ 34. amos rapoport, after hall, the meaning of the built ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 32 br os s environment: a nonverbal communication approach, (tucson, az: the university of arizona press, 1990), 87-101. 35. jouni-matti kuukkanen, “kuhn on essentialism and the causal theory of reference*”, philosophy of science, vol. 77, no. 4 pp. 544-564, the university of chicago press on behalf of the philosophy of science association, october 2010, p.546 36. lebbeus woods, war and architecture, pamphlet architecture series #15, princeton architectural press, 2002, p.1 37. cynthia jara, “adolf loos’s raumplan theory,” p.185 38. mental space is beyond the paper’s scope. 39. aldo rossi, architecture of the city, (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1999), 103. 40. https://www.etymonline.com/word/replace 41. in this way, replacement time bounding resolves the paradox of theseus’ ship. 42. junko edahiro, “rebuilding every twenty years renders sanctuaries eternal -the sengu ceremony at jingu shrine in ise city”, accessed october 1st, , 2018, https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_ id034293.html 43. benjamin, 1969. 44. aldo van eyck, “steps towards a configurative discipline”, accessed on november 1, 2018, https://hts3.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/vaneyck_steps-towards-a-configurative-discipline.pdf. p.333 45. for van eyck, “number” means “harmony in motion.” 46. foucault identifies four types of resemblance: convenientia, aemulatio, analogy, and sympathy. michel foucault, the order of things: an archeology of the human sciences (new york, ny: vintage books, 1994), 17. italics mine. 47. op. cit. aristotle, categories, edited by barnes, 3-9 48. “ludwig wittgenstein”, stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, accessed october 10, 2018. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#bib 49. ludwig wittgenstein, translated by g.e.m. anscombe, philosophical investigations (oxford, uk, basil blackwell, 1958, 1986), 33, 66. 50. op. cit. koestler, 45 51. kenneth frampton, from “towards a critical regionalism”, accessed on october 11, 2018, http://designtheory.fiu.edu/readings/frampton_ regionalism.pdf 52. “tulou collective housing 2008,” urbanus. accessed on december 10, 2019. http://www.urbanus.com.cn/projects/ tulou-collective-housing/?lang=en isparchitecture.com non-projects for the uninhabitable: lyotard's architecture philosophy ashley woodward jean-françois lyotard remains best known for his association with the postmodern, and in many circles there is little awareness of the significant difference between the way he used this term and other influential uses of it. also little known are lyotard’s writings on architecture, despite some casual recognition of his apparent relevance to this field due to the prominence of postmodernism in architectural theory.1 my aim here is to provide an introduction to lyotard’s practically unknown contributions to architecture philosophy, and to suggest two ways in which his work might be thought to make an original and interesting contribution to the field. first, lyotard critically intervenes in phenomenology, which has had an influential place in the philosophy of architecture. 2 he challenges the values that tend to be accorded to the relations of the body to space in this tradition, celebrating dislocation over location, on the grounds that architecture should be understood as an art and should challenge the body to new experiences. second, lyotard’s understanding of the modern and the postmodern cuts across the way these terms are typically deployed in architectural theory, inviting a fresh perspective through the reorganization of critical categories. ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 34 w oo dw a r d lyotard’s writings on architects and architecture are relatively scant: there is an essay on le corbusier, a couple of pieces on arakawa and gins, an interview, a dialogue with the architect piero derossi, and a short contribution to a group dossier in an architecture journal.3 however, this field is broadened if we also consider reflections on the nature of the city and the built environment in general,4 which we can find in various forms throughout lyotard’s writing career, from his early discussions of the political space of the “ideal city,” through his writings on the notion of the pagus, his reflections on california, and on ideas such as the oikos, domus, and megalopolis. i will focus here, first, on some of these main general ideas about space, the built environment, and human habitation, before moving on to a review of the main ideas which emerge from lyotard’s writings on architecture as an art. these themes will then draw together with the critical comparisons with phenomenology and postmodernism which help to situate lyotard’s reflections on architecture. as with lyotard’s treatments of other arts—most famously, “the unpresentable” of postmodern sublime art5—he signals his point of interest in architecture with privative terms, in particular the uninhabitable and the non-project, for reasons which will be elucidated. spaces: habitus, megalopolis lyotard develops a thesis on the transformation of our lived space, the space inhabited by human beings, broadly consistent with his reflections on postmodernity in its other manifestations.6 this is a transformation from a rural or agrarian way of life and the villages or cities it involves, through the development of modern metropolises, to the postmodern “megalopolis.” lyotard’s primary thesis is that this last is not simply a quantitative extension of the metropolis, but a qualitative transformation. employing a device typical of continental philosophers, lyotard elaborates these ideas using classical terms, drawing out suggested meanings in his own unique way. the value of doing this is that it gives the concepts an ontological status, and resists a simple reduction to the empirical which might be risked by using contemporary language. lyotard conceptualizes a “traditional” way of inhabiting space under the various names of oikos (greek), domus, and habitus (latin). while oikos and domus could literally be translated as “house,” lyotard uses these terms to indicate a manner of inhabiting space, a way of life or being much more general than the term “house” tends to invoke, and which can be understood to apply to spatial situations which are not literally houses. 35 isparchitecture.com we find an evocative description of the way of life indicated by the terms oikos, domus, and habitus (which lyotard tends to use interchangeably) as a kind of domestic idyll in the essay “domus and the megalopolis”: let's suppose that it's pretty hot outside. the courtyard is surrounded by walls and farm buildings. a large tree of some kind, willow, horse chestnut, lime, a clump of pines. dovecots, swallows. the child raises its eyes. say it's seven o'clock in the evening. onto the kitchen table arrive in their place the milk, the basket of eggs, the skinned rabbit. then each of the fruges goes to its destination, the dairy, the cool scullery, the cooking pot, the shelf. the men come home. glasses of fresh wine. a cross is made in the middle of the large loaf. supper.7 in this “domestic” model of space, there is a border between the inside and the outside. it is porous and non-exclusionary: strangers may be welcomed into the domestic space and offered hospitality. this extension of hospitality is in fact characteristic of the space of the oikos, domus, or habitus. on this traditional model of the space of the human environment, outside the habitus is the pagus – the surrounds of the village which acts as a permeable boundary. lyotard explains: pagus always means the country, the region, the opposite of heim, of home, that is, of village. it is moreover a very beautiful word, the word that gives us pax, companion, etc. it is precisely the place where one forms pacts with something else (it is the same root; let’s from time to time put up with parody-etymologies; this one in any case is “true”); it is a place of boundaries.8 ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 36 w oo dw a r d the pagus is described elsewhere by lyotard as the zone; it refers to the area surrounding the village or city walls, which acts as a “zone of contact” between those belonging to the habitus, and strangers who come from other regions.9 the main distinction organizing this space is that of home/elsewhere, which can also be formulated as culture/nature, or more generally as inside/outside. the idea of nature is key to this traditional, rural, pre-industrial mode of existence: the domus is “[a] mode of space, time, and body under the regime (of ) nature.”10 it is a way of habitation in which domesticating a powerful, often hostile nature, and organizing life according to its rhythms, is the predominant concern. the great mutation in this model of space that lyotard identifies is not between the rural village and the metropolis—he understands the latter as maintaining intact the inside/outside, and the border between them. the metropolis is only a “complication” of the space of the domus insofar as different suburbs become their own center, and the borders between them act to both link and separate them in relation to other suburban centers. the change, rather, comes with the transformation of the metropolis into the megalopolis. lyotard has in mind here most specifically california, which he understands as a new model of space, one that has undergone a qualitative change. it is a model spreading to span the world: through means of communication and of telecommunication, the great urban conglomerations extend like a dense network along the coast of california and will soon cover the globe, from san francisco through yokohama and singapore as far as ankara and milan, and from milan through the ruhr, london, and new york as far as los angeles.11 california is a space of “conurbation”: suburbs connected by highways, one after the other, without reference to any urban center. as the quote above suggests, technologies of communication and information also play an important role, as they liberate ties to fixed physical times and spaces, and connect things in a decentralized, “free” manner.12 the transformation lyotard sees here is the displacement of the border and the decentering of the center. human community is similarly diffracted and dispersed. space is no longer divided between a “here” (home) and “elsewhere,” an inside and an outside – the border zone seems to have expanded indefinitely, such that “there is nothing left but surroundings.”13 the “outside,” understood as nature, or as the place where the stranger or 37 isparchitecture.com the other dwells, also disappears. the implication is that there is no longer an idea of an external reference point, a nature which would provide a rhythm to regulate the ordering of the habitus. the space of the megalopolis is entirely artificial, if that term even continues to have meaning. relations between different human groups are no longer structured through a mediating border which allows hospitality: while we might say that the megalopolis is certainly a space of integration or assimilation, of peaceful multicultural coexistence, lyotard in fact emphasizes that the relations with other cultures in the megalopolis are also often “based on distrust, on conflict, on a latent state of war that explodes, at times, into violence.”14 what interests lyotard is how the minorities, outsiders, or “remainders” of human communities are positioned in these different organizations, representations, or structurings of space. this leads him to a characteristically complex position on the relation of the domus to the megalopolis, in which neither is unambiguously touted as better than the other. first, lyotard asserts that, contrary to what one might think, a space for otherness or the remainder is better preserved in the traditional domus than in the contemporary megalopolis. there, otherness not only existed outside, in the pagus or beyond, but was welcomed into the home as a guest. moreover, lyotard points to the otherness at the heart of the home, of domestic life, in the fact that it is the traditional location of the intrigues and dramas represented in tragedy.15 in this manner, in the privacy of the oikos a certain otherness or remainder is secluded and protected from the public life of the polis. in the megalopolis, by contrast, everything becomes a matter of public exchange, and there is no longer a space removed from this circulation, public scrutiny, and transparency. this accords with the capitalist economy in which everything can be translated into exchange value california is a space of “conurbation”: suburbs connected by highways, one after the other, without reference to any urban center. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 38 w oo dw a r d and sold on the market, and also to the all-pervasive sphere of human rights in which every aspect of life is expected to have a rational accounting and legitimate defense.16 the idea of the habitus, lyotard suggests, today arouses our nostalgia, and this nostalgia can act as a kind of resistance to the contemporary system and a spur to thought and creativity. 17 however, lyotard also maintains a strongly critical and vigilant attitude towards such nostalgia. first, he acknowledges that it is probably nostalgia for something which never really existed; a projection from the position of the contemporary megalopolis.18 second, he warns of the danger of believing that the world of the habitus could be restored, aligning such a belief with heidegger and the politics of national socialism. he thus sees danger not in the old organization of space and society itself, but in the nostalgic desire to restore it. (“homo re-domesticus in power kills in the street shouting ‘you are not one of ours: he takes the visitor hostage. he persecutes anything that migrates’.”)19 the task for thinking in the megalopolis is, for lyotard, to resist the homogenization of thought along with the homogenization of space. in this way he sees a parallel between philosophy and architecture. architectures: project, non-project in a conversation with the architect piero derossi, lyotard suggests that the task of both philosophers and architects has changed with the shift from the habitus to the megalopolis. modern philosophers (and here the quintessential model is descartes’s discourse on method) assumed an architectural model of thought. descartes describes how thought was like a city which has been built up through generations, with conflicting designs, and what is needed is to raze the city to the ground, to begin again and, on a secure foundation, to build a city according to a consistent rational plan. modern philosophers also thought that they could give prescriptions to architects and urban planners in terms of a general representation of an ideal city which would instantiate an ideal human community. similarly, modern architects followed the model of believing that everything human beings need for dwelling well together can be rationally planned out in advance, and given to a population which will be perfectly suited to its use. we can recognize here the great modernist architectural projects of the early to mid-twentieth century, such as those of adolf loos, le corbusier, walter gropius, ludwig mies van der rohe, and so on, in which cities are planned, all ornamentation is sacrificed to function, and a single style is imposed everywhere (the international style). in painting, lyotard notes, there is also an analog insofar as urban planning has been represented using 39 isparchitecture.com a uniform organization of space – such as in “the ideal city” by the school of piero della francesca (circa late 15th century), one of the first to apply the principles of perspective prescribed by alberti’s on painting.20 today things are quite different in philosophical thought, first of all because modern philosophy —in the sense of a project of finding a secure foundation for thought, and building a consistent and homogenous structure of knowledge upon it— has been radically cast into doubt. along with this, the possibility of political philosophy presenting an ideal for human community has also been seriously questioned. according to lyotard, the philosopher today is no longer in a position to be able to prescribe to the architect a project, understood as a model of human community which could be followed as a guide for what to build to ensure an ideal beingtogether.21 more strongly, lyotard suggests that this term “project” implies a control or domination over “the totality of phenomena in the world and over human phenomena.”22 such an attitude of mastery and control has also been subjected to extensive critique (as, for example, in adorno and horkheimer’s dialectic of enlightenment, or heidegger’s reflections on technology). lyotard suggests that the architect, now in a similar position, can no longer believe that design for a human community is something that can be entirely thought out in advance. both philosophers and architects are united in asking the question, “what can a community be today?” and in not knowing how to give an answer to this question.23 without a concrete answer, the model of the ideal city must be abandoned, and along with it the very idea of a “project” as something that the architect can plan from scratch. the architect must then find a new way of working, which lyotard suggests might be something like a “non-project”: lyotard suggests that the task of both philosophers and architects has changed with the shift from the habitus to the megalopolis. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 40 w oo dw a r d as you see we are dealing with a project that in the end is not even a project. rather it is a sort of attitude, a frame of mind, that is, to be precise, an attitude of non-domination over the thing to be built or thought. we could say, a sort of passivity, or better still passibility, that seems to me an essential part of art, of the artistic attitude, and certainly of thought as well. i do not know whether we can still give everything the name of project, project of the non-project.24 while fleeting and tentative, these suggestions put the architect in a position closer to that of the painter or the musician, insofar as they must open themselves to a “passibility,” as he says here – that is, to trying to feel and make judgements about what is to be done which are not based on any predetermined rule. no doubt there has always been much of this in architectural invention, but lyotard’s model of the megalopolis suggests that this aspect of architecture must be accentuated today. architects must become artists, because they can no longer work with an ideal model of human community. when they engage in (non-)projects, they must be attentive to the contingencies of the situation in which they build, the conditions which already pre-exist, the complexities of the communities they build for, and they must be willing to be open to the possibility that the effects their buildings will have, once actualized in the community, will be to a significant degree unpredictable. architects: le corbusier, arakawa and gins let us consider now some of the architects lyotard discusses explicitly, and treats as artists. despite his opposition to the modernist architectural project of the “total plan,” this does not prevent lyotard from seeing a tendency contrary to total planning—and thus, the artistry—in the late work of le corbusier, one of the dominant figures of modernist architecture. in an essay on le corbusier—“conventus,” from 1994—lyotard repeats but also reconfigures some of the main ideas he had previously made in his fleeting encounters with architecture. lyotard’s focus for the essay is a single work by le corbusier—the convent at la tourette in lyon, completed in 1961 (figure 1)—yet the scope of this short piece is ultimately much broader. although the term is not used, we see the great modernist le corbusier positioned here as an architect of the non-project, insofar as he opposes his “free plan” (plan libre) to "the project." the idea of “the project” is here described in terms of an “egyptian” ideal of space, where 41 isparchitecture.com all of urban planning is centralized in and unified by the fixed “block” of the pyramid: “geometric plan, blind facades, identical in all directions, tons of amassed stone weigh on the land of the living. […] all this crushing of time and space …”25 “the project” is evident here as a fixed and homogenous idea of space which is imposed on all space and lived relations in a dominating way. in contrast, lyotard presents le corbusier’s architecture as led by the ideal of a “free plan,” which he describes as a “variable” space conceived in terms of waves or vibrations: “question of frequency. this is a variable of vibration: it’s the number of times by unit of time that a mobile object animated by a wave movement passes on the axis of its propagation.”26 despite this apparently precise physical definition, the use of the terms “waves” and “vibrations” is largely metaphorical, and concerns space as conceived and lived. these terms work simply to open architecture to alternative ways of conceiving the nature of materials and the experiences of bodies in space. le corbusier decomposes the supposed unity figure 1: la tourette ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 42 w oo dw a r d of space into component volumes, and considers these as having a “free” relation to each other, a relation not determined in advance. the emphasis in this essay appears largely to fall on the habitus, the problem of the habitation of space; of how architects can design buildings in which we can feel ourselves to be at home (thus recalling oikos and domus). but with le corbusier—or at least, lyotard’s interpretation of him27—this turns out to be a matter closer to what he will call “the uninhabitable.” with the decomposition of the plan and the consideration of space in terms of vibrations, the question of habitation becomes one of the “resonance” of the body with the built environment, of the sensing body and the sensed architectural space: “in order to be my home, it need only resonate with the vibrations of my whole body. i only need it’s resonance with my rhythms in order to inhabit it.”28 to explain this idea of resonance, lyotard plays on the similarity between frequency and frequentation.29 to be at home in a space is not a matter of inhabiting it in the manner of a homogenous body’s fixed relation to a given space, but of a variable relation, in which frequencies would be “modulated” by the body’s frequentation, its comings and goings, in that space. describing the way we might get up in the night, half asleep, to get a glass of milk, and successfully navigate the space without turning on the lights, lyotard writes that “[t]here, where i can be a sleepwalker without error, is my home.”30 yet in posing the “at home” in terms of frequencies and frequenting, there is something which is never truly at home, at least as conceived on the old model of a natural fit between a given body and a given space. in this sense, being at home is a matter of “inhabiting the uninhabitable”—a degree of habituation to a space that will never settle into a fully tamed habitus, because it is always a matter of variable resonance between bodies and spaces which are never completely stable of fixed. we can note here a first contrast with phenomenology. while schooled in the phenomenological tradition and a some-time follower of merleau-ponty, lyotard criticized the latter for an overly harmonious view of the relations between the body and space, which he believed limited both the phenomenologists’ ability to explain disharmonious experiences (such as sleep and orgasm) in which the body doesn’t make sense of its surroundings, and art as the creation of the new.31 if art is understood as witnessing “the birth of perception,” as merleau-ponty contends, then this limits the scope of what kinds of art are viewed as legitimate. for lyotard, art—and this includes architecture—should destablize the body’s habitual relations to the world by giving it disharmonious, challenging experiences. 43 isparchitecture.com it should dislocate the body in space, not simply help it to feel located. in the context of architecture, this disharmony and dislocation which produces new aesthetic sensations is precisely what he calls “the uninhabitable.” the uninhabitable is more heavily accented in lyotard’s treatment of the experimental architecture of shusaku arakawa and madelaine gins. in their collaborative architectural projects – such as the site of reversible destiny (yoro, 1995), the reversible destiny lofts (mitaka, 2005), and the bioscleave house (new york, 2008)32 – arakawa and gins seek to “reverse destiny” with respect to the human body. they created spaces in which the body will decidedly not feel at home, in order to provide it with constant stimulation. this sensori-motor stimulation is thought, in turn, to stimulate the brain and the immune system, and to keep the body young and healthy by promoting brain plasticity and freedom from disease. in their avant-gardist hyperbole, arakawa and gins announce a hope for defeating mortality through an appropriate architecture: “we have decided not to die” and “making dying illegal” are two of their slogans.33 what interests lyotard in their work is not this rhetoric of immortality, but the dehabituation of the body as conducive to provoking an aesthetic experience. arakawa and gins develop the concept of the “architectural body,” which is the body considered as ontologically continuous with, and shaped by, its architectural environment.34 what interests lyotard is the way that they conceive architecture as having a direct effect on the body, and of its capacity to make art of inhabitable space. lyotard conceives of their work as a mutation of three-dimensional space, just as painting is a mutation of 2-dimensional space, or of color itself. this mutation, which is an artistic event in lived space, is precisely the uninhabitable: “for one instant, the body, the everyday body, despite his opposition to the modernist architectural project of the “total plan,” this does not prevent lyotard from seeing a tendency contrary to total planning—and thus, the artistry—in the late work of le corbusier “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 44 w oo dw a r d the body of the habitus, is exposed to the uninhabitable.”35 in order to feel the effects of this mutation, the body must undergo an “ascesis” in relation to the habitable36—its habits and habituations must be undone. arakawa and gins seek to produce this ascesis, for example, by making space difficult to navigate – introducing steep inclines, or placing barriers in unexpected places. (figure 2) the functional approach of modernist architecture is reversed. the aim is not to obliterate all function, however, but to introduce difficulties to be overcome by the body in its attempts to achieve its goals. summing up and generalizing these conclusions from arakawa and gins’ work for all architecture, lyotard writes: [a]rchitecture seeks to transfer into inhabitable space a power of habitation that is not itself inhabitable. this art cannot offer human beings any topos where they might live and be sheltered, that is to say, where they might escape from this elsewhere. architecture as an art cleaves space-time in such a way that there and then are at home here and now while still being far away.37 riffing on lyotard’s well-known theme of “presenting the unpresentable,”38 the problem or stake of architecture as an art would then be how to “inhabit the uninhabitable.” the question for the architect would be: how to construct a habitation in which the uninhabitable can be encountered? comparisons: phenomenology, postmodernism now that we have surveyed lyotard’s relevant texts, we are in a position to draw out the critical contrasts announced at the outset. we have already noted lyotard’s relation to merleau-ponty, but his challenge to phenomenology may also be extended to heidegger, whose writings on dwelling have been highly influential in architectural theory. in a rare text on lyotard’s writings on architecture, rob shields notes some similarities with heidegger.39 however, there is also an important contrast to be made between lyotard and the german phenomenologist. in short, we might see the heideggerian perspective as expressing a nostalgia for the habitus, as lyotard’s referencing of heidegger in this regard suggests.40 while we have noted that lyotard does not believe this mode of dwelling in itself, nor a nostalgia for it, signal anything worrying, we also saw that the same cannot be said for the attempt to reimpose it. and so we might well think that for lyotard, any architectural model based on the heideggerean notion 45 isparchitecture.com of dwelling will risk being out of step with the transformations of time, space, and beingtogether that the megalopolis has effected.41 at worst, such a r c h i t e c t u r a l projects might be conceived as conservative, even “fascistic,” in their attempts to make the body feel at home in a fixed place, with others who are part of an autochthonous c o m m u n i t y , while keeping strangers beyond the borders (or welcoming them only on the strictest conditions). although there are no explicit references to this in lyotard’s writings (as far as i’m aware), it is easy to see his notions of space as linked far more closely to emmanuel levinas.’ in his essay “heidegger, gagarin and us,” levinas bemoans the heideggerean notion of place, with its fixed horizon, as ethically problematic, and instead celebrates the exposure of gargarin—the first person to space-walk—to a space without fixed horizon as analogous to the nomadism of the jewish peoples.42 certainly lyotard’s comments about husserl’s notions of earth, body, and space in his short text “habitus” seem to head in this direction. according to husserl, the relativistic discoveries of physics regarding time and space do nothing to change our body’s perception that “the earth does figure 2: site of reversible destiny--arakawa and gins ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 46 w oo dw a r d not move,” the existential truth that we are grounded on an earth with a fixed horizon.43 rather than opposing the existential truth of the body to the scientific truths of reason, lyotard instead asserts: there is no need for the bodies to form a nature that would hold the secret of distances, and still less that the focal point they form should be a home. on the contrary, the failure of this metaphysics liberates another truth, one that can be reconciled with the relativism of the physicists. the focal point of the field is in the field and does not stop moving, just like everything that is in the field.44 for reasons that are both ethical and political, then, as well as artistic, lyotard challenges the dominant phenomenological views of the body and space. because of lyotard’s own deep association with the postmodern, there is the obvious need to compare his views with those of the famous postmodern architectural theorists, such as robert venturi and charles jencks. the latter is an especially interesting comparison to make, since lyotard explicitly sought to distance what he meant by the postmodern from jencks’ use of the term. for example: as for the 'trans-avantgardism' of bonito oliva and the similar currents one can observe in the usa and (including jencks's 'postmodernism' in architecture, which the reader will do me the favour of not confusing with what i have called 'the postmodern condition'), it is clear that behind the pretext of picking up the tradition of the avant-gardes, this is a pretext […] to encourage the eclecticism of consumption. mixing the same surface neoor hyper-realist and abstract, lyrical or conceptual motifs means that everything is equivalent because everything is good for consumption. […] what is called on by eclecticism are the habits of magazine readers, the needs of the consumer of standard industrial images this is the spirit of the supermarket shopper.45 as lyotard makes abundantly clear here, he sees jencks’ architectural postmodernism as nothing more than a market-driven eclecticism consistent with trans-avantgardism in painting (which was also sometimes called postmodernism). certainly, if we compare some of lyotard’s ideas on architecture which have emerged above with those of jencks and other representatives of the “popular” form of architectural postmodernism, 47 isparchitecture.com we can identify at least some significant points of similarity. most notably, with both we see a critical break with the modernist ideal of total planning for an ideal community. jencks famously proclaimed the death of modern architecture and the birth of the postmodern with the demolition of the pruittigoe housing estate in st. louis, usa, at 3:32 pm on 15 july, 1972. for him, this demolition of a characteristically modernist project after the years of social dysfunction it had housed signaled the end of the modernist dream of planned community, and ushered in a new era, in which ornamentation and locality-specificity returned.46 however, lyotard rejects this kind of clear linear periodization which seeks to delineate the modern and the postmodern, and—as we have already seen with the example of le corbusier—his concerns with the arts incorporate much that is usually delineated as “modern.” briefly glossing a complex topic, lyotard extols the virtues of experimentation in the arts, and highly values this dimension of modernism, but he critically rejects the tendency of modernism to construct a narrative of progress, with a particular style and an ideal of purification or perfection. rejecting such notions does not mean for him the end of new developments in the arts and a pastiche of past styles, but a free pluralism of experimental creation.47 lyotard’s approach to the postmodern then invites a more nuanced view of how different architectures might be understood and judged. endnotes 1. see for example william m. taylor and michael p. levine, “philosophy of architecture,” the internet encyclopedia of philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/ architec/#ssh3ci 2. as noted by both taylor and levine “philosophy (lyotard) sees jencks’ architectural postmodernism as nothing more than a market-driven eclecticism consistent with transavantgardism in painting “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 48 w oo dw a r d of architecture” and saul fisher, “philosophy of architecture in historical perspective” (supplement to “philosophy of architecture,” the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ architecture/perspective.html 3. these texts are, respectively: “conventus” in misère de la philosophie (paris: galilée, 2000); “reserves of spatial events” and “dear neverending architectonic reflective wherewithal” in what to paint?, ed. herman parret. writings on contemporary art and artists 5 (leuven: leuven university press, 2012); “dwelling and the postmodern: a conversation with jeanfrançois lyotard,” skala 22 (1990): 36-41; “what are we looking for?: a conversation between architect and philosopher,” lotus international 73 (1992): 67-75; and “habitus” – contribution to “il paradiso perduto = paradise lost,” lotus international 79 (1993): 102-131. 4. following for example le corbusier, who writes: “i consider architecture and city planning together as a single concept.” precisions: on the present state of architecture and city planning. trans. edith schreiber aujame (cambridge, mass: mit press, 1991), p. 70. 5. see for example lyotard, “answering the question: what is postmodernism?” in the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. trans. geoff bennington and brian massumi (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1984). 6. most famously in the postmodern condition. 7. jean-françois lyotard, the inhuman: reflections on time. trans. geoffrey bennington and rachel bowlby (cambridge: polity press, 1991), p. 191. 8. jean-françois lyotard with jean-loup thébaud, just gaming. trans. wlad godzich (manchester: manchester university press, 1985), p. 42. 9. see “the zone” in lyotard, postmodern fables. trans. georges van den abbeele (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1997). previously published in the dimensions of play: ways of thinking architecture and the city. any : architecture new york, 12. new york: anyone corporation, 1995. 10. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 192. 11. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 110. 12. for lyotard on these effects of communication technologies, see for example “logos and techne, or telegraphy” in the inhuman. 13. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 110. 14. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 110. 15. see the essay “oikos” in jean-françois lyotard: political writings. 49 isparchitecture.com trans. bill readings and kevin paul (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1993). and in “domus and the megalopolis” we read: “in the lowest depths of the domus, rumour of anti-nature, threat of stasis, of sedition. father, mother, child, female servant with the heart of gold, niece, old man-servant, shepherd and ploughman, gardener, cook, all the figures of wisdom, the corner of the park under the fig tree, the little passage for whispering, the attic and its chests – everything is matter for obscene crimes. something in the domus did not want the bucolic.” lyotard, the inhuman, pp. 195-6. 16. see lyotard, “the general line” in postmodern fables. 17. lyotard, “domus and the megalopolis” in the inhuman. 18. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 201. 19. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 197. 20. see lyotard’s discussion of this in “painting as a libidinal set-up,” translated by kieth crome, in the lyotard reader and guide. ed. keith crome and james williams (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 2006). 21. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 70. 22. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 69. 23. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 70. 24. derossi and lyotard, “what are we looking for?,” p. 72. 25. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 199. translations from this text are mine. 26. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 200. 27. lyotard openly acknowledges that his interpretation takes a great deal from that of jacques lucan. see the latter’s “tout a commence là” in le ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 corbusier, une encyclopedié. paris: centre georges pompidou, 1987. 28. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 201. 29. “fréquence” and “fréquentation” in french. 30. lyotard, misère de la philosophie, p. 201. 31. on lyotard’s relation to merleau-ponty’s phenomenology, see my article “lesson of darkness: phenomenology and lyotard’s late aesthetics,” journal of the british society for phenomenology vol. 50, no. 2 (2019): 104-119. 32. some of these projects were realised only after lyotard’s death, but embody earlier ideas on which he commented. 33. see arakawa and gins, pour ne pas mourir / to not to die (paris: éditions de la difference, 1987) and making dying illegal (new york: roof books, 2006). 34. see arakawa and madeline gins, architectural body (tuscaloosa: university of alabama press, 2002). 35. lyotard, what to paint?, p. 407. 36. lyotard, what to paint?, p. 391. 37. lyotard, what to paint?, p. 407. 38. see lyotard, “answering the question.” 39. rob shields, “oblique views and heterodox spaces: le corbusier’s conventus” in rereading jean-françois lyotard: essays on his later works. ed. heidi bichis and rob shields (surrey: ashgate, 2013), p. 111. 40. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 195. 41. see martin heidegger, “building dwelling thinking” in martin heidegger: basic writings. ed. david farrell krell (san francisco: harper collins, 1993). a key distinction here that could be pursued is that of the boundary, which is essential to heidegger’s account of space, locale, and dwelling, and which is the distinctive feature that disappears in lyotard’s account of the space of the postmodern megalopolis. 42. emmanuel levinas, “heidegger, gagarin and us” in difficult freedom: essays on judaism. trans. sean hand (baltimore: johns hopkins university press, 1990). 43. see edmund husserl, “foundational investigations of the phenomenological origin of the spatiality of nature: the originary ark, the earth does not move.” trans. fred kersten in edmund husserl: shorter works (notre dame, indiana: notre dame university press, 1978). 44. lyotard, “habitus,” p. 111. br os s 50 51 isparchitecture.com 45. lyotard, the inhuman, p. 127. 46. charles jencks, the language of post-modern architecture, 4th edn. (london: academy editions, 1984), p. 9. in a later interview, in fact, lyotard does seem to present jencks’ architectural postmodernism as broadly in line with his own thinking of the postmodern insofar as both reject the tabula rasa approach of modernism, and instead connect with tradition. see “dwelling and the postmodern.” this would be a point from which to take up further comparison. 47. on this topic, see my article “lyotard on postmodern music,” evental aesthetics 5.1 (2016): 118-143. ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 52 w oo dw a r d isparchitecture.com architecture and object-oriented ontology simon weir in conversation with graham harman what is, and what isn’t, an ontology ? sw: ontology is a word that, wherever it goes, changes its meaning. so, to avoid unhelpful confusions some confusions are generative what is an ontology? i tend to think of an ontology mathematically, as the set of all things with nothing outside the set. gh: whereas metaphysics is an ancient greek term famously coined by aristotle’s editors, the word “ontology” first appeared as recently as the 17th century. one aspect of my relation to language is that i like to have a number of synonyms available for every philosophical term in order to avoid repetition. i don’t like the sort of pedantic precision which demands that each term have a single meaning that the author is obliged to define exactly at the outset. as an example, many people draw a sharp distinction between “object” and “thing”; heidegger is the most prominent of these, using “object” in a pejorative sense and “thing” as a more positive term. but i prefer to use object, entity, thing, and unit interchangeably. i also use metaphysics and ontology to mean the same thing, though heidegger and derrida have turned the word “metaphysics” into a kind of insulting nickname for everything that ought to be left behind. ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 54 w ei r a n d ha r m a n sw: to frame object-oriented ontology’s position, let’s begin with realism. most people understand realism: we are in direct contact with the things we touch. once we recognise there are sounds we can’t hear, lights we can’t see, and that there are all sorts of illusions and misapprehensions, we might easily accept that our view of reality is not so direct, but mediated. we produce some kind of image of reality within us, so it might be called representational realism. what may be surprising to readers without philosophical training is that this too is rebuked by the philosophical tradition of anti-realism. gh: my position obviously isn’t a form of direct realism, since for me it is not only humans who cannot make direct contact with reality: the same holds true even for inanimate entities. object-oriented ontology (ooo) is better described as a form of what you call representational realism, with the surprising proviso that not only humans and animals do the representing. when two inanimate objects make contact, they cannot do so directly, since neither has direct access to the features of the other. the idea behind ooo’s realism is that reality is so real that it can’t be exhausted by any particular depiction of it. realism is usually defined as a “belief in a world external to the mind.” but this way of putting it betrays an anthropocentric bias: why should the mind be the only thing with an outside? realism should be treated, instead, as a general theory of objects and relations, such that objects are always withheld from these relations and need a vicarious third term to make relations possible. insofar as reality withdraws from all relation, object-oriented realism might also be called an infra-realism. sw: so object-oriented ontology is an infra-realism. since the real is withdrawn, how do we know it’s there, or how have you induced the presence of a real that cannot be touched directly? gh: this is the same question that led the german idealists to abandon kant’s thing-in-itself: “if we claim to think a thing outside thought, isn’t this already a thought? therefore, there is nothing withdrawn from thought.” in this way, the thing-in-itself implodes into something internal and negotiable, whether in the form of a mere external shock or trauma (fichte, lacan) or in terms of a provisional and immanent limit eventually 55 isparchitecture.com overcome by the labor of the negative through the course of history (hegel). the problem with this popular assault on the realism of the in-itself is that it forgets what philosophy is about: philosophia, meaning the love of wisdom rather than wisdom sensu stricto. socrates does not jest when he says that he only knows that he knows nothing, that he has never been anyone’s teacher, and so forth. readers of plato may recall “meno’s paradox,” in which meno repeats the old sophist’s argument that you can’t look for something if you already have it (because then there is no need to look) and you can’t look for it if you don’t have it (because then you could never recognize it if found). socrates responds with what is really the foundational insight of western philosophy: you never really have or fail to have something absolutely, but you have it to a certain degree and are called upon to enter further into its depths. according to object-oriented philosophy, there are a number of ways in which we can know the real without knowing it directly. this happens in cases where the real falls out of joint with its surface qualities: as in heidegger’s case of the broken hammer, or in metaphor where the object is ascribed strange properties and therefore becomes unknowable yet vaguely compelling. language is often used to hint or insinuate rather than to state directly, though the modern era hates rhetoric so much that it forgets how crucial insinuation and innuendo are to everyday speech. the arts, too, are well aware that many things must be hinted at subtly rather than stated in literal terms. lovers know this as well when sending alluring messages, and comedians know it when telling jokes. to spell heidegger and derrida have turned the word “metaphysics” into a kind of insulting nickname for everything that ought to be left behind. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 56 w ei r a n d ha r m a n things out in literal terms is just one of the tools of human cognition, and not the one most important for philosophy. causation and perception sw: some of the principles of ooo are: there are objects everywhere, all objects are inside other objects, all objects have objects inside them, objects have qualities, but objects are not only their qualities, it is not possible to encounter a quality without an object bearing that quality. gh: that’s a nice list. i would add that humans also count as objects, even if objects of an unusually interesting sort; for this reason, “objects” do not exist in opposition to “subjects.” also, objects and qualities both come in two kinds (real and sensual), and both kinds of objects can have both kinds of qualities (again, real and sensual) so that reality consists of four possible object-quality pairings. on top of this, objects have only a loose relation with their own qualities. aesthetics is first philosophy because it studies these loose relations: how they are generated and under what conditions they break apart. real objects cannot make contact unless mediated by a sensual object, and sensual objects only make contact when mediated by a real one. this still isn’t a complete list, but i can never remember everything at once. as our conversation progresses, more features of objects will undoubtedly arise. sw: are qualities objects? gh: the short answer is “no.” it goes back to one of the many valid insights still to be found in aristotle’s philosophy. he tells us that whereas sad is always sad and happy is always happy, socrates can be sad one day and happy the next. that’s one major indication that socrates is a substance. a substance remains what it is even if – within certain limits, of course – its qualities vary widely. by “primary substance” aristotle means individual things. my parallel term is “real object,” which also refers to individual things. of course, there are a number of differences between the two phrases. first of all, i emphasize the inaccessible elusiveness of real objects, and while aristotle has more awareness of that than many people realize, he does not emphasize the gap between the mind and the object to the same extent that ooo does (coming as we do after both kant and heidegger). second, aristotle is more comfortable with natural than artificial things as primary substances, whereas i don’t think the natural 57 isparchitecture.com vs. artificial divide matters very much: an airplane or a city are real objects no less than a raindrop. third, aristotle does not think there can be primary substances inside of primary substances: he holds that the parts of a substance are only potentially individuals, not actually so. for ooo, however, composition in the part/whole relationship does not negate the individuality of the parts, which remain real objects in their own right even while belonging to larger wholes. despite these differences, ooo is a philosophy of individuals in the same aristotelian line that passes through some of the islamic philosophers, some of the medieval christians, and leibniz. but the long answer to your question is that anything can become an object. that is to say, any quality can turn into a sensual object as soon as we treat it as something enduring that undergoes variation in details. for example, the red of my mazda cx-5 is initially a quality of the car that can be changed without destroying the car or giving it a new identity. but i could focus instead on the rather unique metallic red that mazda came up with for this car, and substantify it by focusing on current variations in the red across the car’s outer surface, or by variations over time when we compare the car’s red when straight from the factory as opposed to now, four years later. furthermore, there is always a point at which sensual objects can become real, often through the mechanism of social acceptance. the joker was initially a sensual object, but is now a real one: not in the sense that such a character actually lurks in the night of new york, but in the sense that movie audiences are able to judge which actor’s portrayal of the joker is the most true to the character, which ones are completely insufficient, and so forth. in this respect even qualities such as “green,” “strong,” or “macho” become real objects object-oriented ontology (ooo) is better described as a form of what you call representative realism “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 58 w ei r a n d ha r m a n that even have their own social histories. sw: causation in the ooo schema is the interaction of two or more real objects. whenever real objects causally interact, a sensual object is generated by their contact, and this sensual object acts as the intermediary between the real objects. this is known as vicarious or occasional causation. also, causation can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. symmetrical causation is all kinds of contact and causation as we normally think of it, and is well described by newtonian physics; asymmetrical causation is perception. gh: actually, causation in ooo can only have two terms. the reason is that all causation begins with the interface between one real object and one sensual object, which is then modified in such a way that there is an indirect influence of one real object on another or of both on each other. i’m aware that people like to give seemingly subtle analyses in which there are multiple causal factors for any event. these days, multiplicity has a very good press and duality a very bad one, so it’s not surprising that everyone goes running for the multiple and the many whenever philosophy is being done. but in fact, when there are multiple factors they must combine beforehand in such a way that only two objects end up confronting each other. sw: this multiplicity is understandable. when i (a real object) am watching (asymmetrical causation) a movie (a real object), the factors are combined. yet when i consider myself as comprised of subcomponent objects, my ears hear the sounds, and my eyes see the images, et cetera. it may be the case that all causal events are multiple causal events, and vice versa. the singularity or multiplicity of causal occurrences looks like a question of perspective. gh: as for symmetrical causation, yes, so-called “physical” causation provides all the easiest examples of this. in fact, i think the symmetry of causation is the important factor here, and what we call physical reality may just be a vulgar nickname for symmetrical causation. but no doubt there are other forms of symmetrical causation than the kind we associate with “matter,” which for me is an almost worthless concept. no one really has any idea what matter would be; for ooo there are only forms. likewise, the human realm provides most of the clearest examples of asymmetry: i as a human can observe long-dead stars, which thereby have an effect on me 59 isparchitecture.com even though i can’t possibly affect them in turn. but there are probably asymmetrical phenomena even in the so-called physical world. in short, i suspect that the overworked boundary between physical and mental is an accidental product of modern philosophy: not because “all is one,” but because the most important dividing lines are located elsewhere. sw: my work in ooo has been drawn from perception to the problem of memory and consciousness.1 consciousness can turn sensual objects into real ones by making memories of them, and vice versa. consciousness is a machine for making post-sensual objects into real objects. when we think about asymmetrical causation, about perception, the difference between a real object and the sensual object of its perception would vary a tremendous amount depending on the real object. looking up at the night sky, it’s obvious that our sensual object is an infinitesimally small thing, and a profoundly different thing, compared to the real object that is out there. but with much simpler objects like the number 5, for example, what would you say are the differences between the real 5 and a sensual 5? gh: let me first say that i wouldn’t agree that when looking up at the night sky the sensual object is an infinitesimally tiny thing. this is true only in the limited sense that our field of vision doesn’t cover much of the sky and can’t penetrate any further than a small portion of the milky way. the sensual object, for me, isn’t limited to what is covered by the senses. the term is “sensual,” not “sensible,” after all. edmund husserl is the one who says that the senses can only experience the shifting adumbrations of perceived objects while the intellect is able to dig all the way down to the essential properties. for ooo, by contrast, the senses and the intellect are both on the sensual side of the equation rather than the real whenever real objects causally interact, a sensual object is generated by their contact “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 60 w ei r a n d ha r m a n side. as for the number 5, i can’t say that there is a fully developed object-oriented model of mathematics at this point. i do agree with most mathematicians that mathematical objects have real existence (this is one of the few points where i am a platonist). but i would not agree that we have some sort of cartesian intellectual intuition that allows us direct contact with the real number 5; that’s quentin meillassoux, not me. the question, then, is how we would describe the supposed difference between the real and the sensual 5. one possible path is shown by imre lakatos in proofs and refutations, where he argues –among other things– that mathematical definitions have to be revised in light of mathematical experience, which suggests that mathematics is more similar to natural science than we might expect.2 if we start to view mathematics in those terms (and i will admit there are certain problems in doing so) then it is easier to see why direct access to the number 5 is less plausible than one might think, just as direct access to gravity or electromagnetism is refuted (in my view, at least) by continued revolutions in these areas. sw: in causation, sensual objects contain real and sensual qualities, so is it possible that causation involves the transfer of some real qualities? can we reliably infer the real from this? in the case of some real objects, like the number 5, are they simple enough that we can locate the real qualities within the sensual object? if i add two 5s in my mind to make a real 10, have real qualities been engaged and retained? do we have a situation where there is no meaningful difference between a real quality and a sensual quality? gh: all sensual objects have both sensual and real qualities. it was husserl who first gave technical precision to this idea. imagine that i rotate a tennis ball in my hand, at different times of day and in various fluctuating moods. these are “adumbrations,” as husserl puts it: the german abschattungen. no matter what the adumbrations of the ball may be at any given moment, i continue to recognize this ball as one and the same. since we are simply talking about experience here, not about reality, i am the one who decides whether or not it is the same ball. if it turns out later that i was wrong, that someone quickly replaced the ball with a different one while i wasn’t paying attention, then this pertains to the level of the real object, which is not what we are discussing. 61 isparchitecture.com but along with the sensual qualities or adumbrations of the tennis ball, it must also have real qualities. there are certain features that could arise that would convince me that it’s not the same tennis ball i initially thought it was: i might realize that my roommate replaced it with another, or maybe it turns out to be a fake tennis ball produced by an artist, or perhaps other such scenarios. husserl’s great error was to hold that the senses give us the adumbrations while the intellect gives us the real qualities. this is merely a symptom of husserl’s rationalist and mathematicist prejudices: he found it inconceivable that there could be any layer of reality impenetrable even to the intellect. returning to your question, there is no possible case where real and sensual qualities are one. this is only possible if we believe in intellectual intuition, which i do not. why not? because i hold that any intuition requires a translation of form. here’s what i mean. people who think that intellectual intuition is possible think that we can clearly and distinctly see, before the mind’s eye, the essential properties of a tennis ball or a dog. now, such people would never claim that they are bringing the actual ball or dog into their brains. what they are saying, most often, is that they are extracting a knowable form from an object and bringing it into the mind, leaving behind only the “matter” of the object. but there is no proof that anything like formless matter exists. in fact, the notion of matter was only invented as a crutch to prove the existence of direct intellectual access! that is to say, the difference between a tennis ball in reality and the tennis ball in the mind is said to consist in the lack of “matter” in the second case, but this is a mere alibi that allows us to think that the form remains the same when extracted and removed from an object. yet the form always undergoes translation, and this is why all sensual objects have both sensual and real qualities. it was husserl who first gave technical precision to this idea. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 62 w ei r a n d ha r m a n intellectual intuition is impossible. in the words of bruno latour: “there is no transport without transformation.”3 there is always the question of whether mathematical objects are a special case, whether they alone permit of direct intuition. i suspect not, but all i can do at the moment is suggest this, not prove it. sw: yes, certainly. it is only in the axiomatic case of simple numbers that i cannot see any difference between some of the real and sensual qualities. unlike all other objects, they seem to be stripped of all depth. continuing with perception, since we, as individuals, are real objects, we only have access to sensual objects which are created by contact with other real objects, and therefore we are truly surrounded by the unreal. even when we look at ourselves, we can only see a sensual object. it seems as if those buddhist and hindu expressions see without seeing, hear without hearing are onto something. without such effortless, causeless perception, we are truly imprisoned in a simulacra wrapping the withdrawn real. this isn’t what baudrillard meant by the term simulacra since he is a nihilist antirealist but in the context of infra-realism, the simulacrum would be the enveloping sensual world around every real object. gh: baudrillard meant a lot to me when i began graduate study. and even though i am now a hardcore realist, i’m still impressed by him. his denial of reality doesn’t bother me that much; in a sense, husserl was already a theorist of simulacra. but there is a reality in baudrillard nonetheless– the reality of the one who observes the simulacra and is seduced by them. we must always remember that baudrillard is the philosopher of seduction no less than of simulation. and what’s so important about seduction? the point is that when we become fascinated by something, we grow so attached to it that we and that thing form a new object, a compound made of ourselves and the thing. why do i call that relation a new object? because it meets all the criteria of objecthood established by object-oriented philosophy: it has emergent properties not found in either me or the thing separately, it is impenetrable to outside description or understanding, and it can have different features at different times. in short, the world of simulacra becomes a realist world as soon as the observer starts becoming personally involved with it, and that’s what aesthetics is all about. sw: if the simulacra become real by becoming a compound with the observer, is that an ontological solipsism? it sounds like psychological 63 isparchitecture.com growth, and broadening experience, makes more of the world real, which certainly seems to accord with our experience. gh: it’s not solipsism, since my experience of an object and yours are still referring indirectly to the same real object. but there is the same difficulty here as with theories of autopoiesis (maturana, varela, luhmann) since we need a clearer understanding of how the real object, despite being cut off from the sensual realm, is nonetheless able to affect and possibly be affected by the new object that is the compound between simulacrum and observer. philosophical de-anthropocentrism sw: one of the aspects of your work that has been broadly supported is its anti-anthropocentrism, the refusal to accept anti-realism’s separation of everything into two categories, human and other. gh: we have learned much about the vast size of the universe. on top of that, there are now reasonable musings about possible other universes, whether on the interiors of black holes or in other dimensions invisible to us here. all of this tends to indicate that our species and planet, even our entire galaxy, are fairly minor constituents of reality. by contrast, modern philosophy revolves around the centrality of humans. the reason, of course, is that it is thought we have direct certainty of human experience but only mediated access to everything else, which suggests a crucial status for human thought. in this way, there is a contradiction between the royal importance of humans on the one hand and our speck-of-dust cosmic tininess on the other. sw: i’ve never been sure what to make of the assumption of direct access to experience; my own experience never seemed direct to me. i used we must remember that baudrillard is the philosopher of seduction no less than of simulation. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 64 w ei r a n d ha r m a n to presume that maybe some other people, like descartes, actually had direct experience, but later after learning some sleight of hand magic, you see that there are always presumptions built into perception, and these presumptions can be activated and challenged.4 gh: the other day i saw an amusing remark on twitter. when hollywood depicts interracial couples, so the person asked, why does there always have to be a white person in the couple? analogously, i would ask of philosophy since kant: when philosophy discusses a relationship between two entities, why does a human always need to be one of them? the answer is that it doesn’t need to be. the relation between two inanimate objects isn’t different in kind from the relation between a human and an inanimate object. the latter sort is not in any way clearer or more immediately given. our access to our own experience is also mediated rather than direct. but since the days of kant, alfred north whitehead is one of the few major philosophers to have seen this point clearly. let me just add the following response to some of ooo’s critics, who make the political complaint that ooo shifts its focus away from human subjectivity at the precise moment that previously subaltern humans are finally gaining full dignity: as if ooo were pulling the rug out from under the feet of the previously oppressed in their very moment of triumph. i would say that this remark is counterintuitive in the bad sense of the term. when ooo shifts the scope of inquiry from humans to the cosmic vastness of all entities, are human differences of race, culture, and gender not shown to be rather minor, and therefore isn’t our human equality more emphasized than ever before? by contrast, if we stick with the modern focus on the human subject, it seems to me we are destined to dwell in the narcissism of small differences, to revel in all sorts of micro-hierarchies within our tiny human sphere. sw: there are a lot of assumptions packed into the political critique of ooo’s infra-realist anti-anthropocentrism that require longer discussion. politics typically engages in motivated reasoning, looking for effective language. but philosophy, like many forms of research, is often focussed differently, looking for something resembling truth, whether truth defined as logical consistency or paradigmatic coherence or something else. in the rise of realism you discussed lee braver’s 2007 book, a thing of this world with manuel delanda, and you both disagreed with the traditional 65 isparchitecture.com realist axiom that truth is correspondence with the external world.5 how would you describe truth in the context of ooo? gh: i’m interested in reality rather than truth. people who favor the word “truth” are usually the ones who think they already have it, and what they call truth becomes a cudgel to beat up those who disagree. reality interests me more because it implies that there is something with which we make peripheral contact: something that disrupts our current model of the world without it being entirely clear what is happening. there are multiple ways to do justice to any reality we encounter, whereas a focus on truth implies that there is only one way. certain portions of mathematics and logic seem to have a very strong claim to truth, but these results are often overexpanded in an effort to formalize the whole of reality in ways that aren’t very successful. sw: you have mentioned that you borrowed the term “ontography” from a fictional character, parkins, a professor of ontography. parkins practices anthropogeography, and diagrams the relationship between humans and their landscapes, an example of anthropocentric philosophy mapping human-object relations without attending to object-object relations. noting the diagramming aspect of parkins’ work, it seemed that ontography could also describe any ontology-oriented art. this is similar to what inspired ian bogost about the term. for a while you both were doing these poetic ontographs called latour litanies, these poetic strings of ostensibly unrelated words, like to make one up on the spot box jellyfish, love, gravel, jedi, street lighting, asteroids. the aim, and correct me if i am wrong, was to produce a list where the objects could not be associated with each other, so humans were not presented as central to all relations, and this was an expression of a flat, i would ask of philosophy since kant: when philosophy discusses a relationship between two entities, why does a human always need to be one of them? “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 66 w ei r a n d ha r m a n non-anthropocentric ontology. with my long immersion in surrealism, i immediately recognised the careful systematization of these lists. as freud supposedly said, in a classical painting i always see the unconscious, in a surrealist painting i only see the conscious. so before reading your later work, i associated the word ontography with these poetic practices with a very personal and slight surrealist flavour to them. you don’t seem to have used these litanies recently. has your feeling about them changed? gh: i am utterly stunned by how stirred up and annoyed some people become by these latour litanies. for instance, there are critics who say that we do nothing more than produce random lists of objects, or who assert that “a list of objects is not an argument.” of course not. the litanies are simply a useful rhetorical technique, and i mean “rhetoric” in the good old classical sense of addressing people’s background assumptions, not in the trivial modern sense of devious manipulation. latour litanies are useful for reminding the reader of how many different types of non-human entities exist, and that’s the purpose they serve whenever they appear in a ooo text. architects and philosophy sw: in twilight of the idols, nietzsche famously stated that architecture is the expression of power and that architects are enamoured with power, which appears to have a subservient tone until you see that in the unpublished will to power, everything is an expression of the “will to power,” so architecture is not special in this regard. gh: i’ve never been all that interested in the concept of power, other than in high school when i was reading nietzsche and taking him too literally like everyone else at that age. maybe that’s because the most interesting things happen to me when my mind is passive and absorbing unexpected insights from others. the intellect is not really about mastery, but about finding new drifts or currents or hidden gemstones in the world, and letting them compel you to new insights. believing that one does not yet have enough power to do anything is too often an alibi for not doing the things already within your grasp. sw: how do you see anti-realism influencing architecture? 67 isparchitecture.com gh: primarily in the sense that form and function (or program) are usually misread in an anti-realist way, in terms of the aspect they present to human beings. a realist reconception of form and function would have to de-relationize them into “zero form” and “zero function,” as i call them. sw: how do you see infra-realism offering alternatives to anti-realism for architectural theory? gh: we need an improved sense of form that is neither purely visual, nor purely conceptual, nor purely about the deliberate subversion of function (as in some of eisenman’s houses). but in fairness to architects, philosophers repeatedly make the same misstep. husserl draws a distinction between intellect and sensation, as though there were really such a big difference between the two. heidegger does the same with practical handling on one side and explicit looking or theorizing on the other, which again isn’t that big a difference. ooo demands a difference between reality itself and any form of human access. whether architects find significant things to do with this in their work is really up to architects. sw: you have in the past remarked about architects making puns of philosophical ideas. i’m not averse to the occasional pun, and have even made my own ooo pun in the form of occasionalist tectonics, taking two elements and sandwiching a wholly new formal language between them.6 sometimes visual or formal work that is purely illustrative lacks depth and subtlety, but some works of art that are truly remarkable started out as illustrations of ideas but somehow hold far more allusive and elusive qualities. was your remark pejorative, or is there something more to this? a realist reconception of form and function would have to derelationalize them into "zero form" and "zero function" “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 68 w ei r a n d ha r m a n gh: it wasn’t meant as pejorative. i was mostly relaying the complaints i’d heard from architects i know, who were bothered for instance by the literal use of folds on buildings in the period where deleuze (author of the fold) was widely read in the field. but insofar as puns can verge on literalism, that’s a problem. i like your occasionalist tectonics idea, and also like tom wiscombe’s idea of half-inscrutable “objects in a sack” hiding behind a building’s outer envelope.7 but ooo is really about the tension between objects and qualities, and there are some ways of deploying such tension that don’t involve anything being hidden in the least. sw: yes, wiscombe’s “objects in a sack” was a lightning strike when i first heard it. probably the most coherent arguments connecting ooo and architecture are found in the writings of wiscombe, david ruy, and mark foster gage, architects i find fascinating. their ideas might seem strange to people outside architecture’s current education system, but are very relevant to those inside it. they all appear to share a fondness for ooo because it provides a rationale for valuing architecture for its qualities rather than its associations. (this is rather like eisenman’s concern for architecture’s interiority, for what is exclusively architectural. eisenman’s approach was a kind of de-anthropocentrism, but it was framed as anti-humanism, which is quite different.) gage also argues that buildings should be judged as buildings, not as diagrams.8 this is apt for architecture education. i wonder if this arises from the tension between being an effective academic and the art of architecture. when you have a lot of projects to assess, one can feel the need to hurry and it helps if you can understand a project quickly, but individual works of great architecture are captivating and even mystifying, and they refuse our attempts to understand them easily, they require study and reflection, and even personal transformation. gh: there are a number of other architects who have played around with ooo: peter trummer is one here at sci-arc, and elsewhere i’ve had multiple discussions with ferda kolatan and michael young, among others.9 in object-oriented ontology: a new theory of everything i highlighted gage and wiscombe because they represent the two most pronounced and opposite tendencies.10 as mentioned, wiscombe favors hidden objects surrounded by palpable surface qualities. yet gage isn’t about hiddenness at all: he gives us a fiesta-like abundance of qualities 69 isparchitecture.com inscribed on the surface. in weird realism i argued that h.p. lovecraft’s horror fiction uses both of these techniques, even though the first is the only one people usually mention.11 sw: what do you think now of wiscombe’s point in “the object turn” about an architecture inspired by ooo having a suspicion of any form of mapping exercises that seem to conjure architecture from the context or from the map itself.12 for many years, architecture students have been fabricating abstract maps of things and using these as visual prompts for design. a weakness of this method is its meaninglessness, and the insistence to look outside architecture. yet i am ambivalent in this critique. leonardo da vinci recommended artists stare at the infinitely subtle shades and markings of rough, stained walls and allow their imaginations to inventively see figures, scenes and events. similarly there is a subtly creative act in seeing turtles, buildings and faces in the shifting forms of clouds. these work as psychological exercises to prompt creativity, and even have a little surrealist flair, but they belong to the earlier, passive and automatist side of surrealism rather than to the later, more active side where effects are actively sought. now that you’ve worked in an architectural school for a number of years, what observations do you have about architectural design processes and the results they entrain? gh: wiscombe did make that point, as did ruy when he argued against architecture becoming a subsidiary of ecology: as if buildings were nothing more than local outcroppings of the broader environment. i agree completely on this score, since no building can be completely site-specific. certain choices have to be made about which aspects of the environment to include or exclude. and of course, rem koolhaas has pointed out that a building also there are a number of other architects who have played around with ooo “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 presses back against its environment and changes it in turn. you ask what i’ve noticed after teaching at an architecture school for five years. quite a few things, actually. architects tend to be very articulate in explaining their ideas, even more so than philosophers, in my opinion. architects are under more pressure to innovate, and therefore they have their antennae out for new ideas more than philosophers do. on the pedagogical level, what strikes me most is that students have a hard time defending forms in their own terms. when pressed, they will usually give a genetic backstory for how they arrived at the form now before our eyes: they started with some everyday object, put it through four or five transformations, and this was the result. this just goes to show how hard it is to speak allusively or indirectly about something, which is precisely what architectural form demands. the best art and architecture critics need to have the souls of poets, because in this case literalism won’t do the job. sw: one of the things you’re known for are the terms overmining and undermining. gh: it is often assumed that the goal of all cognition is knowledge, and ultimately there are just two kinds of knowledge. if someone asks me what something is, i can (a) tell them what it’s made of, or (b) tell them what it does. i call the first of these techniques “undermining” and the second “overmining.” i mentioned earlier that socrates practices philosophia (love of wisdom) rather than sophia (wisdom). there is no platonic dialogue in which socrates ends up with the correct definition of anything. nothing is ever quite definable. as aristotle puts it, things are concrete but definitions are made of universals, which means there will always be an imperfect fit between reality on one side and thought or language on the other. philosophy fundamentally does something other than produce knowledge. and this is even clearer of the arts. there is no way to avoid “mining” in direct propositional speech, since this kind of speech (which i call “literal”) involves making true statements about the properties a thing possesses. but philosophy and the arts are not literalist disciplines, and have more to do with producing a gap or fissure between an object and its qualities. sw: often overmining and undermining are misunderstood as critiques. w ei r a nd h a rm a n 70 71 isparchitecture.com overmining and undermining are critiques of other ontologies, not of thinking or philosophical work as such. gh: by no means is ooo anti-knowledge. knowledge is good and necessary; it simply gives us an incomplete picture of human cognition. to know something is to explain it in terms of something else: its parts, its history, its uses, its effects, its properties, how it looks to us. all of this is great. it allows us to create medicines, build aircraft, analyze social data, and so forth. but we’ve reached the point where many people assume that if something isn’t “science,” isn’t knowledge, then it’s just rubbish. these days we enthusiastically encourage students to pursue stem subjects, while aesthetic taste is left sadly undeveloped. this means that the students who are open to it end up having to learn it on their own. granted, that’s often the best way to learn things. it’s how i learned philosophy, for instance. sw: gage has used overmining and undermining as critiques of architectural culture and architectural education, and this leads us to interesting territory. universities rightly pride themselves on bestowing knowledge, but art and architecture are not forms of knowledge, yet this fact too needs to be taught and understood. how do you think about reconciling this dilemma? gh: it’s probably not something well understood enough yet to be codified in the schools. there is still some intellectual work to be done in grasping the relation between knowledge (which i define as detecting the qualities a thing possesses) and the very different kind of cognition that includes both the aesthetic and the philosophical (defined as grasping or producing a gap between any object and overmining and undermining are critiques of other ontologies, not of thinking or philosophical work as such. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 72 w ei r a n d ha r m a n its qualities). but philosophy is more often guilty of mistaking itself for a form of knowledge than the arts and architecture are. sw: back in 2017, you wrote a reply to bruno latour and albena yaneva’s actor-network theory of architectural design.13 have your views on that changed? gh: no, they have not. it’s always stimulating to read an actor-network approach to any topic, and the latour/yaneva piece is as interesting as any.14 but you just can’t reduce any object, including an architectural one, to its backstory as a project– which is what they try to do in that article. there they are following latour’s familiar strategy of referring to any object as a black box that can be opened, revealing all of the historical complexity within. the problem is that a black box doesn’t just hide its internal components. it also renders many of them irrelevant, while also having new emergent properties that can’t be equated with what’s inside. stated in architectural terms, not all aspects of a building’s history are relevant to the final building, and a building has features that its history does not. latour and yaneva offer a fine vision for an ethnography of architecture, but i doubt there is much that actual architects can do with it. and i say this as someone who yields to no one in my admiration of latour, who in my view is the most important living philosopher, bar none. sw: finally, how do you seen the anti-anthropocentric aspect of ooo engaging with architecture? gh: we’re starting to see more architecture that isn’t aimed directly at humans, such as the “vulkan beehives” of snøhetta. but what i’m more interested in is de-anthropocentrizing the heart of architectural discourse: namely, the concepts of form and function. the irony is that while these terms seem to be meant as opposites in architectural history, they are both relational in character: the form of a building is supposed to be its visual look to the observer or user, and its function is supposed to be the purpose it provides for the client. but in a ooo context, the visual look of a thing is simply an expression of a deeper form, and the specific use is simply one possible incarnation of a deeper functional landscape. what ooo looks for can be called “zero-form, zero-function,” as discussed in my forthcoming book architecture and objects.15 73 isparchitecture.com endnotes 1. simon weir, the ontographers (edinburgh: university of edinburgh press, forthcoming 2022). 2. imre lakatos, proofs and refutations : the logic of mathematical discovery (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1976). 3. bruno latour. aramis, or the love of technology, translated by c. porter. (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1996), 119. 4. simon weir, “art and ontography,” open philosophy 3/2020, 400-412. 5. manuel delanda & graham harman, the rise of realism (cambridge, uk: polity, 2017). 6. simon weir, “object-oriented ontology and the challenge of the corinthian capital,” in make sense, (sydney: harvest, 2020), 114-116. 7. tom wiscombe, “discreteness, or towards a flat ontology of architecture,” project, 3/2014, 34-43. 8. mark foster gage, “killing simplicity: object-oriented philosophy in architecture,” log, 33/2015, 99. 9. david ruy, “returning to (strange) objects,” tarp 2012, 38-42; peter trummer, “the city as an object,” log, 27/2013, 51-57. 10. graham harman, object-oriented ontology: a new theory of everything (london: pelican, 2018). 11. graham harman, weird realism: lovecraft and philosophy (winchester, uk: zero books, 2012). 12. tom wiscombe in: todd gannon, et. al. “the object turn: a conversation,” log, 33/2015, 82. 13. graham harman, “buildings are not processes: a disagreement with latour and yaneva,” ardeth 01 2017, 113-122. 14. bruno latour and albena yeneva, “give me a gun and i will make all buildings move: an latour and yaneva offer a fine vision for an ethnography of architecture, but i doubt there is much that actual architects can do with it. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 74 w ei r a n d ha r m a n ant’s view of architecture,” architectural design theory, 1/2017, 103-11. 15. graham harman, architecture and objects (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, forthcoming 2022). isparchitecture.com book review: is there an object oriented architecture? engaging graham harman edited by joseph bedford bloomsbury academic, 2020 194 pages, hardcover $103.50 reviewed by tom spector the application of graham harman’s theory of things in the world, given the moniker object oriented ontology (or ooo), is in its nascent period in architecture. is it nascent because people don’t yet know what to do with it, or is the inability to make use of it what keeps it nascent? this is a fundamental question that editor joseph bedford seeks to shed light on with contributions by harman himself, and authors adam sharr, lorens holm, jonathan hale, peg rawes, patrick lynch and peter carl. the authors came together at the swedenborg society event devoted to discussing ooo in 2013. towards this end, much credit must go to the book’s editing and organization which allows for essays interspersed with responses by harman and further give-and-take discussion that does much to clarify what ooo entails and points to how it could be applied. this admirable organization gives the book a pleasant variety and rhythm often lacking in such compilations. harman’s premise is that objects have existences that always exceed our ability to quantify, narrate, use or otherwise apprehend them. this recognition of an existence that always “withdraws” therefore, from human understanding, is supposed to promote book review ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 76 bo ok r ev ie w a certain attitude, a certain humility, towards objects. this humility is born of, he asserts, a rejection of heidegger’s (and his inheritors’) idealism towards the primacy of the human, as opposed to harman’s “realism” which “by contrast, promises to shift the balance between humans and non-humans towards an equitable centre ground, in which philosophy addresses all things in the universe with equal weight and promises a new ethical accounting as a result.” (5) –a pretty tall order. this important realist feature of harman’s outlook also makes it at least somewhat hostile to traditional phenomenology, which may start out from an equally humble wish to take in the world as it presents itself, but tends then to privilege those elements which present themselves to us while neglecting the properties of objects, and their interactions with one another, that are proper to them. harman’s insight regarding objecthood which escapes our human schema is well-placed as a corrective to theories, such as latour’s actor-network theory, which tend to collapse things into effects and relationships. he wants us mindful that the thing has an existence which exceeds effects on other things. this is fine as a critique of philosophy and possibly social theory, but does it promise anything for architecture? while architects will tend to want to try out these ideas on the objects of their infatuation, namely, buildings, harman is quick to emphasize that the concept of an object can span a wide gamut, from buildings, to be sure, to works of fiction, to characters within those works of fiction, to interpretations of those characters within those fictional works, to criticism of those interpretations, and so on, in what clearly risks vertigo of objecthood. to go a bit deeper into harman’s critique and his assertions about ooo, harman thinks that much modern thought makes the mistake of either undermining objects by dissembling them into their most fundamental constituent parts—to the point where they cease to be recognizable, or else they tend to “overmine” them by relegating them to their effects as events, or networks, or power relations. (or sometimes both at the same time.) an object, he concludes, “is simply that which cannot be reduced downward to its pieces or upward to its effects.”(79) these rejections, then, (and a penchant for list-making) form the basis for holding that non-human objects always have a degree of existence that is immune from analysis either as a form of withdrawal from our ability to ensnare them in conceptual schemas or else as a degree of internal, inaccessible finitude. this recognition should be reason enough to strive to overcome anthropocentrism in our relations to objects. anthropocentrism has certainly been a favorite target from a 77 isparchitecture.com variety of philosophical disciplines for some time. environmental philosophers credit it with leading to an instrumentalist attitude towards nature that gives rise to such aporia as global warming. nietzsche liked to emphasize it as the end of ethical certainty. and graham harman has made its rejection a tent-pole of ooo by insisting that the human perception of things not only provides no direct correlation to understanding them but also is only one legitimate perspective among many. but living without some mild form of anthropocentrism is tough, and it’s often worth questioning whether the alternatives aren’t worse than the problem. this is true of nietzsche’s gleeful insistence that humanism provides no moral touchstones or the tendency of anti-anthropocentric environmentalism to lead into a conceptual thicket. in any event, there is a massive difference between normative anthropocentrism which insists that only humans convey value on the world and epistemic anthropocentrism which holds that adopting the point of view of non-humans is at best a guess. how we could know that objects have their own finitude without projecting some good ol’ anthroon them remains unclear. because if we assert that we know, or can observe their independent existence, then bang!-an anthropocentristgenerated concept has just been launched. a more thoroughgoing anti-anthropocentrism would seem to require us to hold that objects may or may not have such finitude, but we can never know for sure. the anthropocentric starting point for knowing things is far from foolproof, far from being able to exhaust the existence of things, and certainly subject to bias, but despite these handicaps is, as best as we can tell, more reliable and less speculative than other starting points. harman sees this as a battle between anthropocentric idealism and objectoriented realism. ooo tends to treat its realism as a hard-won achievement.1 harman believes he has charted a way out of anthropocentric idealism. he thinks that there harman is quick to emphasize that the concept of an object can span a wide gamut, from buildings, to be sure, to works of fiction, to characters within those works of fiction, to interpretations of those characters within those fictional works, to criticism of those interpretations, and so on, in what clearly risks vertigo of objecthood. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 78 bo ok r ev ie w must be more to objects than their constituent parts or their effects, a third way of conceiving them that allows them their own independent, and only partially or indirectly knowable, existence. now, here’s where harman’s theory for some jumps the shark from a reasoned critique of 19th and 20th century philosophy to a normative theory of how we should behave towards things. from the recognition that things have an independent, though largely unknowable existence, he writes, “i think we need to place the human-world relation on the same level as the world-world or object-object relation.” (emphasis his, 20) and by this he doesn’t mean epistemologically only, but also morally. this idea has been attractive to environmentalists, who struggle to overcome anthropocentric instrumentalist views towards nature and want us to value nature on its own terms. one can also see the immediate attraction to architects of such an idea, for now they can assert moral standing to their products independent of those products’ utilitarian benefits for humankind. (the moral standing of artworks, of course, has long been an interesting seam of study between ethics and aesthetics.) but more than that, as adam sharr asserts in his chapter, “the circus, the canon and the house with one wall,” ooo is attractive because its decentering of the human “offers a series of productive fables that allow us to imagine our surroundings differently. this is exactly the kind of storytelling – the production of imaginative worlds – to which architects devote their work lives.” (40) sharr recognizes, however, that “while architects, who deal in the design of things, might be comfortable with a world where objecthood is paramount, this is where harman’s cosmos seems most challenging to many academics,” (44) precisely because of the flattening of ontological and moral distinctions between the human and other objects. nevertheless, sharr applauds the ability of ooo to spark the imagination and enable a “heightened reality.” he writes, if ooo “can help us to sharpen our appreciation of those objects and their effects, then it is certainly worthy of architects’ attention.” (55) lorens holm’s chapter “architecture and its objects” brings up the topic of space as a thing. this topic is certainly well-placed and in need of further explanation in ooo because we architects can think of and employ space in so many different ways: as the absence of things, as the distance between things, as figure-ground, as an axis, as perspective space, as a picture plane within a perspective, or as a thing in itself. but conceiving it as a thing that can withdraw into itself, even under the generous terms harman grants things’ existence, is dilemmatic. did it become a thing when we thought it into existence? did the “thingness” of space exist before a human recognized it? does this way of thinking help us, as sharr would ask, to tell stories around it? perhaps, we might hope, the questioning it generates 79 isparchitecture.com is service enough. but we should resist the urge to assert that, since architecture is vitally interested in space, and harman extensively employs spatial metaphors, we therefore have correspondence and ultimately relevance. ultimately, holm finds ooo at least potentially useful “because if you could understand your allegiance to objects, the ones you are designing for and the ones you are making, and find the integrity of your work in the contemplation of the object as opposed to always having to outside the object, looking over your shoulder to the user, we would probably have a more beautiful world, and more importantly, one that works better for users.” (86)—thus constructing an indirect utilitarian argument for taking ooo seriously. jonathan hale’s “buildings as objects and buildings as ‘tool-beings’” takes a more directly critical approach. he thinks that harman misses something important to architecture in its binary lack of appreciation of the transitions between pure utility or pure sensory qualities on the one hand and the object’s mysterious core on the other. hale thinks much of architecture is appropriately concerned with cultivation of that transitional strangeness—not entirely withdrawn objects, but not entirely reduced to smooth facilitators of utility either. hale doesn’t worry much about the intrusion of usefulness into consideration of objects because, he reasonably proposes, “perhaps this is the closest we can ever get to understanding objects as they are in themselves – by using them and re-using them we continue to explore their inexhaustible depths.” (96) hale also worries that, at least in instances, ooo requires privileging non-human agency over human agency. harman thinks this a non-problem. it only requires “treating them both in the same way ontologically, not politically.” (99) and therefore substantive value judgments have been avoided. but have they? isn’t asserting ontological parity itself a value judgment? can you simply point out the point is to see that architects have always been dealing with objects more urgently than philosophers have. ” “ ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 80 bo ok r ev ie w that things have extra-human existence and then make it a mere factual observation that makes them ontologically on par? for many, deciding to place things on par with humans is itself a value proposition. it is easy to see how this would be so for architects. for many, this question is something worth arguing over. defining it out of existence will seem high-handed. the final three sections, each in their own way, make little effort to directly engage harman’s theory. peg rawes’ “non-human architectural ecologies” opts instead for a feminist outflanking of his approach as lacking the kinds of differentiations feminists bring to the discussion. she cautions that while we may be inclined to think that ooo opens up a multiplicity of voices by allowing all kinds of things their own agency, there may be both good and bad agency. the bad perpetuates universalist assumptions about objects that all too often serve to silence other voices. she thinks we need a triple-o that welcomes and unlocks those other perspectives and notes that “object-oriented practices already” exist in architecture and they are not always forces for emancipation. “as it stands, much environmental architectural discourse, especially, technological, biological and computational forms, perpetuates” the repression of difference. (113) from this essay, it’s not clear that she has actually done much reading of harman, which is a hazard of invited panels. sometimes the panel member is too keen to discuss his or her favorite topics to spend much time on the subject at hand. when rawes observes that the aims and objectives of architecture and philosophy “should not just be mapped onto each other.” (129) the reader may wonder who actually thinks this. harman tries to defuse the argument by replying that “the point is not for a philosopher of objects to force architects to think about objects against their will. the point is to see that architects have always been dealing with objects more urgently than philosophers have. on this point philosophy is the student and architecture the teacher.” gratifying to architects, but to what result? surely it’s a demonstration project with mixed results. both patrick lynch and peter carl in their sections prefer to critique harman’s interpretation of heidegger than directly engage his original thought. lynch objects to conclusions harman draws from being and time, while carl argues that harman’s unique interpretation doesn’t do justice to the thought of such heidgger inheritors as latour. since harman has a large intellectual debt to heidegger, there is some common ground for discussion even though not much opportunity for productive dialogue. in a symposium about harman’s thinking, one wonders why a contributor doesn’t at least try to link his or her prior interests to the topic at hand. it’s perplexing, but this sort of thing does happen at academic conferences. unsurprisingly, neither exchange takes us close to architecture. 81 isparchitecture.com happily, harman gets the last word, actually an “afterword,” that attempts to draw out a few lessons that ooo may hold for architects. works of architecture have depths and connections that cannot be reduced to performance measures nor to relationships because there is always something important remaining after all the relationships have been unearthed and performance measures analyzed. for these reasons, architectural works make paradigm examples of object oriented ontology. further, he thinks that architecture and ooo share an orientation to the renunciation of the distinction between pure thought and material works—there is no priority nor superiority to thought. this may all be both true and interesting. but is this sympathetic orientation enough to generate an architectural difference? i’m not hopeful on this point, but that is the question to be worked out over time. it remains to be seen whether harman successfully “makes the petition for ooo as a practical philosophy and social theory that may provide novel avenues for the ails of our times.”2 endnotes 1. harman calls his position “ardently realist” in manuel delanda and graham harman, the rise of realism. polity press, 2017, 3. 2. steven umbrello, “a theory of everything?” cultural studies review v24 n 2, 2018, 184-86. 186. isparchitecture.com about the authors benjamin bross is assistant professor of architecture, university of illinois ashley woodward is senior lecturer in philosophy, university of dundee dr. simon weir is the undergraduate director, educational integrity coordinator, and lecturer in architecture: design philosophy, sydney school of architecture, design and planning, university of sydney graham harman is distinguished professor of philosophy and liberal arts program coordinator, sci-arc tom spector is professor of architecture, oklahoma state university image credits cover: poppi castle, province of arezzo, italy. image by tom spector western wall, jerusalem image by david king, haifa. this file is licensed under the creative commons attribution 2.0 generic license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/file:western_wall_plaza_-_jerusalem_(1291829327).jpg itsukushima_shrine_torii author: balon greyjoy, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ file:20181111_itsukushima_shrine_torii-2.jpg creative commons cc0 1.0 universal public domain dedication. ise shrine source public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:ise_shrine_ naiku_1953-8-26.jpg tulou housing, courtesy of urbanus, urbanus.com.cn couvent sainte-marie de la tourette image [[file:domonkos kolostor (couvent saintemarie de la tourette). építészekle corbusier, iannis xenakis, andré wogenscky és pierre jeanneret. fortepan 58029.jpg|domonkos_kolostor_(couvent_sainte-marie_de_ la_tourette)._építészek-_le_corbusier,_iannis_xenakis,_andré_wogenscky_és_pierre_ jeanneret._fortepan_58029]] site of reversible destiny image by kikuhiko mizusaki 7/4/2008 cc 3.0 gnu free documentation licence v. 1.2 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:inside_office.jpg ap . vol 5 . no 2 . 2021 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions 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acceptable, and copyright access to the oklahoma state university image archive is available to the journal and its authors. in most cases, authors will be seeking image permissions and are asked secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines 0-front & back cover 1-frontmatter 2-editorial 3-bross 4-woodward 5-weir and harman 6-book review 7-back matter isparchitecture.com the present issue owes its contributions to an international symposium held by the international society for the philosophy of architecture, the society behind architecture philosophy. hosted over the summer of 2015 at the wittgenstein house in vienna, symposium speakers were able to literally demonstrate claims by pointing to the structure around them. the setting stimulated difficult conversations about wittgenstein, architecture, and architecture’s modernism. entitled “use-value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions,” the symposium raised a host of questions related to the notion of function in architecture’s modernist discourse and called upon wittgenstein’s notion of meaning as use to aid in its resolution: given the wealth of new ways of conceptualizing building, its practice, and its meanings, this call for papers prompts authors to reconceptualize the notion of buildings’ functions in terms of use, particularly as is described in wittgenstein’s use theory. by engaging one of philosophy’s richest and most formidable postmodern thinkers-–ludwig wittgenstein-–the discourse surrounding function can move away from architecture’s modernist paradigm that has largely defined how we think about and deal with questions relating to function. wittgenstein-–who remains largely undealt with by the architectural discourse, but whose work has nevertheless had ample development from the discourse surrounding function can move away from the modernist’s paradigm “ ” use-value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions carolyn fahey 118 ed it or ia l within the philosophical discourse-–provides genuine contributions to the understanding of use and meaning. specifically, the wittgensteinian notion of meaning as use moves the discussion away from mechanical or systematic notions grounded in scientific inquiry, and instead focuses analysis on the particular context or language-game within which a building partakes. thus, the hope is to utilize ludwig wittgenstein’s theory of meaning to achieve radically alternative analyses of building’s use, thereby allowing for productive re-engagement with one of architecture’s most fundamentally philosophical questions.1 the symposium’s call simultaneously prompted thinkers to revisit questions relating to wittgenstein’s philosophical significance within the architecture discourse. this special issue seeks to reinvigorate the discourse surrounding the wittgenstein house, not so much with the interest of canonizing the house, but rather as a means of developing a working method for understanding the relationship between philosophy and architecture. the motivating factor—not coincidentally the primary purpose of this journal and its society also—is a foundational question to understanding what architecture is, what its history is, and what it could, or rather, should be. wittgenstein himself participated in the design of a mansion, known widely as the wittgenstein house, making him one of the few famous philosophers to have directly engaged in architectural design. heidegger is also well known for having written on architecture, in his essay “building, dwelling, thinking” but is not known for having engaged the design or construction processes so foundational to understanding architecture. in wittgenstein’s case, it was not well-known that he had had any run-in with architecture until after bernhard leitner’s 1973 publication of the wittgenstein house. previously, and to this day, wittgenstein is best known as a philosopher who made substantive contributions to philosophy of language—ordinary language philosophy especially. when leitner published his text, the architecture discipline momentarily turned its divided attention to the house at a time when the architecture was inundated with post-structuralist theories. architects were intrigued by the possibility that a single person’s work could bridge between the disciplines of architecture and of philosophy and set out to understand how one’s person work could embody both. yet, the methods these thinkers used to analyze the house were in keeping with post-structuralist methods, and the results were tantalizing acrobatic arguments at odds with wittgenstein’s own philosophical 119 isparchitecture.com methods. little traction was gained by the poststructuralist attempts and since then few, with the exception of roger paden’s mysticism and architecture and nana last’s wittgenstein’s house, have attempted to re-conceive this terrain.2 starting off the issue, jochen schuff ’s paper clears the field, so to speak, of the existing literature. the matter-of-fact survey separates theoretical interpolation from what wittgenstein said. to do so otherwise, i would argue, is to proceed in a decidedly unwittgensteinian manner. his strict reading looks to david macarthur’s recently published piece in architecture theory review, as having repeated many of the past attempt’s missteps.3 as readers will see later in the issue, august sarnitz’s paper draws a similar conclusion to that of schuff albeit using original source material and recently translated empirical information on the house and the austrian cultural context. taking a staunch position, schuff seems to believe that everything written on the topic of wittgenstein’s philosophy of architecture falls into the terrain of un-wittgensteinian extrapolation, and therefore should be discounted. it seems that much of what has been produced in philosophical discourse on wittgenstein’s philosophy would then also fall into this category, but it is unclear whether schuff would agree to such a parallel criticism of philosophy. schuff does appear to shift into a moderate position with regards to what can be said of wittgenstein’s and architecture in the second half of his paper, wherein he does indulge in a few analyses of the significance of wittgenstein’s remarks when considering architecture. the shift later in the paper suggests perhaps that his initial staunch position is more moderate. for me, although wittgenstein is not himself a philosopher of architecture, that does not rule out the the matter of fact survey separates theoretical interpolation from what wittgenstein said “ ” 120 ed it or ia l possibility that there is something of philosophical significance on architecture wittgenstein has said. nevertheless, whether any kind extrapolation is permitted, how much and when such extrapolation maybe permitted, or whether wittgenstein’s remarks hold any meaningful application to architecture remains contested and will remain a heated point of debate in any discussion of wittgenstein in architecture. whatever one’s position on the matter, schuff ’s paper will be an invaluable starting point for those entering this field as he carefully surveys and delineates what wittgenstein did say and what can arguably meaningfully be said, without transgressing into the terrain of liberal interpolation. perfectly juxtaposed with schuff is august sarnitz who argues that the wittgenstein house demonstrates some of wittgenstein’s philosophical points using a standard approach to analyzing building. sarnitz is unique in existing literature for not over-attributing meaning to the house, for grounding his attributions of meaning directly in building analysis, and for analyzing the wittgenstein house in light of wittgenstein’s own thinking as opposed to that of loos or other fin de siècle thinkers in vienna at the time. sarnitz provides an analysis of the house, contextualizing it in viennese modernism and traditional austrian building practice. he provides a foundation for understanding wittgenstein’s engagement with building practice, and in doing so corrects the established understanding, and provides the basis for an alternative reading of the house. unique other accounts of the house is sarnitz’s ability to argue for both wittgenstein’s status as an architect and his originality in this position. while the standard reading of the house places it within viennese modernism, or amongst the likes of loos and wagner, the reading typically views wittgenstein as an intellectual member of the viennese modernist movement. yet, sarnitz demonstrates wittgenstein’s intellectual opposition to many of the foundational positions of viennese modernism. he shows us that the wittgenstein house demonstrates a different take on the aesthetics of utility then many of his austrian contemporaries. as such, many existing historical attributions of the wittgenstein house are at odds with sarnitz’s characterization. the next paper explores what can be said of architecture in light of wittgenstein, particularly as pertains to wittgenstein’s theory of meaning. emre demirel approaches the topic from within the 121 isparchitecture.com discipline of architecture and reaches toward a philosophical statement. demirel discusses wittgenstein’s theory of meaning as a means of questioning the notion of tradition in architecture. his theoretical position is demonstrated by examples taken from his native turkey, which serves not only to evidence the theoretical position taken, but further develop the position by working through notions of representation and building analysis. reidar due’s paper runs counter to demirel’s in the sense that his paper approaches the topic from within philosophy and reaches toward architecture. due discusses the conceptual foundations underpinning segments of architectural theory. he looks to the wittgensteinian concept of meaning as use in order to demonstrate the limitations of hegelian notions of architecture, the limitations of which are for him the basis of contemporary architecture theory. he then discusses the role of ideologies in collective thought about building, so as to show the limitations of essentialist notions of architecture as well as the limitations certain “categories”, as the author calls them, have on the way we think about building. due’s categories run parallel to adrian forty’s analysis of the role of words in conceptions of architecture, yet due argues further effectively saying that these categories or words provide the basis of conceptual formations.4 due focuses on the role of the historian in constructing architectural ideologies, leaving the reader to ask whether ideologies are always so construed. hilde heynen’s contribution takes a turn, looking to the disciplinary rift that has for decades, perhaps centuries, divided reflective thinkers. heynen reviews the discourse defining text aesthetics of architecture by roger scruton, marking its recent new edition. the sarnitz demonstrates wittgenstein’s intellectual opposition to ... viennese modernism “ ” 122 ed it or ia l review serves as a short position piece describing why philosophers, albeit not all, so consistently fail to engage architecture. their methodological errors in the approach to a subject they know little appears the cause, and the seemingly lack of engagement with building the symptom. heynen provides a reasoned analysis as to why scruton’s thinking has not resonated, in either the original or recent revised edition, with those in the architecture discipline. she argues that while scruton provides a competently argued account of architecture, the characterization is too limited to be recognizable, perhaps intelligible, to those intimately studied in architecture’s discourse and practice. endnotes 1. fahey, carolyn, march 1, 2015, “use-value in architecture: reconceptualizing buildings’ functions,” international society for the philosophy of architecture, http://isparchitecture.com/events/call-for-papers/ 2. see my ph.d. dissertation for a detailed survey of literature surrounding the house and the limitations of each contribution: carolyn fahey, the claim of architecture: a new wittgensteinian reading (newcastle upon tyne: newcastle university, 2010). 3. david macarthur, ‘working on oneself in philosophy and architecture: a perfectionist reading of the wittgenstein house’, architecture theory review 19.2 (2015). 4. adrian forty, words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture (london: thames & hudson, 2000). ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. the graphical layout of the journal and the cover design are by carolyn fahey. copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. the future of modernism: architectural intention and adaptive reuse frank mahan & van kluytenaar design-politics: how buildings mean lawrence j. vale koolhaas’ revision of foucault’s panopitcon andré patrão useless speculation: architectural obsolescence and the micro-parcels of gordon matta-clark’s fake estates (1973) rick fox designing a common world: public responsibility and the aim to objectify architecture hans teerds book review the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture volume 5 number 1 a p v o l 5 n o 1 2 0 2 0 is s n 2 3 7 2 -0 8 8 3 volume 5 number 1 a p v o l 5 n o 1 2 0 2 0 is s n 2 3 7 2 -0 8 8 3 isparchitecture.com this volume of architecture philosophy derives from the 4th biennial conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture held for two days at the united states air force academy in colorado springs, colorado in july, 2018. the conference theme “building as service: people, politics, and governance,” and the three keynote speakers, attracted a wide variety of papers including presentations on state architecture, representations of power, and symbols of politics from 30 additional presenters. the papers also ranged geographically: case studies from architecture in nazi germany to informal cities in south america were presented. one of the chief attractions for conferees was the opportunity to explore the grounds of u.s. air force academy: itself one of the 20th century’s distinguished achievements in state architecture. the academy is notable for coherence and completeness as an exemplar of international modernist style. its lead architect, walter netsch, and his firm skidmore, owings, and merrill, were at the forefront of this movement. netsch’s vision was built almost entirely as he intended and it was finished in less than 10 years: the academy was created on april 1, 1954 and the last building of the initial plan; the celebrated academy chapel, was completed in 1962. amazingly, the academy still functions largely in accordance with its original design plan, thus netsch’s vision, together with the air force’s intent for the campus, continues to inform the life of the institution today—some modernism, theyargue, poses special challenges to accepted historic preservation values “ ” editorial: building as service mark jensen & tom spector ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 6 ed it or ia l 60 years later. in addition to exploring the buildings themselves, visitors observed the ways in which cadets, faculty, and other personnel pursue their institutional objectives in concert with the supporting architecture. conferees were treated with a tour of the campus led by the air force academy’s resident architect, duane boyle, who knew netsch personally (netsch died in 2008) and who shared details of both the architect’s thinking and intent in designing the campus. the conference was convened in the newest addition to the air force academy, polaris hall which opened in 2016, also designed, like the rest of the main campus, by som. polaris hall houses both the academy’s center for character and leadership development and serves as a conference center just outside the secure boundaries of the “cadet area,” where cadets live and learn and train. its signature element is its skylight tower, which telescopes toward the pole star. the conference opened with a keynote from one of polaris hall’s lead architects, frank mahan, whose contribution, fittingly, opens this volume of architecture philosophy. in their piece, “the future of modernism,” frank mahan and collaborator van kluytenaar discuss the architectural challenge of restoration in the context of restoring modernist buildings. modernism, they argue, poses special challenges to accepted historic preservation values according primacy to a building’s “literal materiality,” first theorized by ruskin and morris, when a modern building is more driven by the “fathomless depths of its concept,” better served by the idealistic preservation values of viollet-le-duc. drawing on the resources of merleau-ponty, they argue that plans for restoration and reuse must be recognizably continuous with the narrative behind the building or else risk losing important, albeit less material, qualities that make the building what it is. they illustrate this theory with a discussion of three case studies: lever house, manufacturers hanover trust, and polaris hall itself. it will not be lost on conference participants that these exact issues are at stake in the restoration of cadet chapel. in his piece, “design-politics: how buildings mean,” the conference’s final keynote lawrence vale develops a set of distinctions first proposed by nelson goodman to examine the gap between what a building means and how it communicates its meaning to its audience. through a series of case studies, vale undercuts the possibility of a simple relationship between the meaning of a building and what it communicates. he points out that notable historic events, digital media, and temporary installations add layers to what it communicates that are not directly mappable to the meaning of the building itself. this recognition leads him to conclude that contemporary design cannot hope to slide underneath the political 7 isparchitecture.com dimensions of life: public buildings are not just neutral backdrops for political contests but actually part of the contests themselves. in the next essay in this volume, “koolhaas’ revision of foucault’s panopticon,” andré patrão explores the relationship between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy through koolhaas’ apparent, yet denied, appropriation of foucault’s philosophy in his proposal for a renovated panopticon prison. the panopticon, originally designed by jeremy bentham, is a prison in which the cells are arranged around a central guardhouse such that the prisoners are always under the impression that they are being watched, even though the guards themselves are unobserved, e.g., by means of one-way glass. foucault uses the panopticon as a metaphor for the destructive power of the feeling of constant surveillance. koolhaas, on the other hand, is faced with a real opportunity to renovate an actual panopticon prison. he proposes to eliminate the central guard tower and makes other changes that will contribute to the humanization of the prisoners inside. it would seem that foucault must have had an influence on koolhaas, but as patrão argues, the genealogy is not straightforward. foucault is never mentioned by koolhaas in connection with the proposal and yet its aims are consistent with a serious appreciation of foucault’s widely disseminated critique. patrão employs this case to examine the question: can we, should we, to what degree and for what end assert intellectual influence when ideas are “in the air”? rick fox’s “useless speculation: architectural obsolescence and the micro-parcels of gordon matta-clark’s fake estates,” uses the work of artist gordon matta-clark to draw attention to the situatedness of buildings inside a public geography that may be marked by disorganization, confusion, and incoherence. in the 1970s, mattaclark acquired 15 very small parcels of land in new york city at public auction. that these parcels even vale undercuts the possibility of a simple relationship between the meaning of a building and what it communicates “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 8 ed it or ia l existed was an indication of errors in surveying, zone, and land contracts. some of these parcels were completely surrounded by private property and hence inaccessible to the owner without the permission of an adjacent property owner. while matta-clark never constructed an art installation around his land parcels, fox reconstructs the underlying critical perspective fake estates intended to make about the waste and obsolescence endemic to contemporary architecture and city planning. in our final essay, “constructing a common world: architectural craftsmanship and public responsibility,” hans teerds reconfigures hannah arendt’s distinction between work and action for the architectural enterprise. for arendt, work is the act of building something; action is civic and political engagement. yet contemporary trends in architectural production towards the seeming objectivity provided by machines and algorythms tend to place the architect at an increasing remove from both. true engagement, he contends, must be found in subjectivity. while work is the natural home for architectural activity, teerds argues that architects must be attentive to action as well, insofar as action takes place in the context of the buildings that architects design. drawing upon the phenomenological tradition, teerds describes the interplay between the design and craftsmanship of the architect in the world of work and the contested and deliberative environment of action. architects today must design and construct in partnership with their clients and stakeholders—a community that, in the world of action, may not be coherent. in this way, the judgment and work of the architect today is inescapably political. our volume concludes with a review by mark jensen of timothy hyde’s new book, ugliness and judgment: on architecture in the public eye. hyde’s book provides both a delightful and frustrating tour through hundreds of years of british architecture, city planning, and the public and political responses to the series of poor design choices and ugly buildings that these architects and planners have produced. unfortunately for the philosophical reader, hyde does not supply an analysis of ugliness that might be of use to architects and planners alike in order to avoid despoiling the urban landscape. we hope that, in this volume of architecture philosophy, you will find the variety, nuance, novelty, and interest that we have all come to expect at the intersection of architecture, design, philosophy, and politics. the next biennial conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture will be held in monte verita switzerland. we hope to see you there! 9 isparchitecture.com air force academy cadet chapel, 2018 ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 10 ed it or ia l isparchitecture.com the future of modernism: architectural intention and adaptive reuse frank mahan, aia and van kluytenaar prelude what does it mean for architecture to engage an existing building? the pages that follow address the singular importance of intention in the practice of adapting and preserving modernist architecture in the twenty-first century. there is a matrix of forces common to nearly every architectural project that shapes the final built object. financial, programmatic, structural and environmental the preservation of an original design intent requires the extension and maturation of an original idea into a future that both maintains and reinvents the original. “ ” a man is judged by neither intention nor fact but by his success in making values become facts.when this happens, the meaning of the action does not exhaust itself in the situation which has occasioned it, or in some vague judgment of value; the action remains as an exemplary type and will survive in other situations in another form. it opens a field. sometimes it even institutes a world. in any case it outlines a future. history according to hegel is the maturation of a future in the present, not the sacrifice of the present to an unknown future; and the rule of action for him is not to be efficient at any cost, but to be first of all fecund.1 —maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 12 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r constraints along with client objectives and tastes are all meaningful considerations that must inform the conceptualization of a new building. the aged building in need of restoration, however, contains an additional constraint: the need to engage with its unique history. the tradition of storytelling must be employed to synthesize time and place, bridging past and present. the practice of adaptive reuse—the preservation, renovation and reuse of an existing structure for a new purpose—links the building’s past with the contemporary world. it requires understanding a preexisting narrative as well as the crafting of a new narrative, one that both continues and extends the original.2 existing buildings function as complex formal entities that develop over time and space, accumulate human experience and produce unique historical richness. this accumulation of experience must be accounted for in the building’s preservation and reuse. the significance of these experiences must be recognized and acknowledged. the narratives must be sorted and evaluated. should nostalgia, for example, be a protagonist in the historical narrative of a building? did historically significant events take place at the building? did the building undergo alterations over its lifetime? is the building considered significant in the eyes of the architecture or preservation community? does the building occupy a place of pride in its community? a rigorous analysis and deep understanding of these existing narratives and the complexity of experiences they point to must provide the groundwork for the building’s future. this requires research into the building’s history. the historical context, the original design intentions, the building’s programmatic and construction history, its social and cultural associations, all contribute to its existing narrative and must form a fundamental constraint relevant to all adaptive reuse projects. the narrative must be told. and by reimagining this narrative, adaptive reuse links the past with the present. it creates an urban touchstone that is both history and invention. the preservation of an original design intent requires the extension and maturation of an original idea into a future that both maintains and reinvents the original. introduction in 1952, the same year that skidmore, owings & merrill (som) built the watershed lever house skyscraper (fig. 1)—thereby heralding a new synthesis of modernist ideals in architecture—the french philosopher maurice merleau-ponty published “indirect language and the voices of silence,” one of the most important reflections on modern aesthetics 13 isparchitecture.com in twentieth-century philosophy.3 the essay describes the way in which the individual elements of an aesthetic object bestow significance on one another precisely by virtue of their juxtaposition. their rigorous, rule-based arrangement produces a matrix of meaning which corresponds to the lasting quality of the work. strikingly, important aspects of the enterprise of modernist architecture— particularly as expressed in the work of som— invite understanding in terms analogous to those found in merleau-ponty’s thought.4 moreover, this understanding has farreaching implications for what it would mean to preserve the kind of aesthetic objects that modernist architecture sought to produce. these objects—like language itself— bear meaning by means of an interrelationship of parts, the efficacy of which creates a seemingly unending world: we always have to do only with architectures of signs whose sense, being nothing other this efficacy of the object depends primarily on the density of decision— that is to say, intention— inherent in the work’s conception. “ ” figure 1: lever house (prior to renovation) ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 14 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r than the way in which the signs behave toward one another and are distinguished from one another, cannot be posited independently of them.5 and further: it is as if each step taken called for and made possible another step, or as if each successful expression prescribed another task to the spiritual automation or founded an institution whose efficacy it will have never finished experiencing.6 this efficacy of the object depends primarily on the density of decision— that is to say, intention—inherent in the work’s conception. its commanding logic, or grammar, is everywhere present. for merleau-ponty, the lateral relations between elements born from the initial intention produce a world or matrix of almost infinite meaning. in contrast to the importance of the literal material of stone and craft—the literalism that is the theoretical foundation for contemporary theories of preservation—the meaning of modern architecture is found in the rigor of arrangement and relationship of its parts. the juxtaposition and relational positioning of architectural elements give meaning to the work.7 it is thus in the idea of the elements and their interdependence—rather than the materiality of the elements themselves—that modernism finds its value. and it is precisely this kind of value, this modernist ideal, that som sought to produce in the second half of the twentieth century.8 in 1935, three years after henry russell-hitchcock and philip johnson’s “modern architecture: international exhibition” at the museum of modern art in new york city—and as le corbusier visited the united states for the first time—gordon bunshaft was in europe as a rotch travelling scholar, absorbing the ideas of early european modernism.9 less than a year later, louis skidmore and nathaniel owings began a partnership that would become skidmore, owings & merrill and, by 1950, the firm had completed several large projects including manhattan house in new york, the terrace plaza hotel in cincinnati, and the brooklyn veterans hospital. it was the corporate headquarters for lever brothers company on park avenue, however, built in 1952, that was to shape the image of skidmore, owings & merrill as a notable proponent of postwar modern architecture. following the lever house project, som would go on to design a number of the most representative buildings of modernist architecture in the united states including the manufacturers hanover trust building in new york city and the united states air force academy campus in colorado springs. these projects proposed design concepts 15 isparchitecture.com that were grounded in the modernist sensibility of the time. based on rigorous conceptual models, modern architecture no longer found its meaning in the literal materiality of stone and brick, but rather in the almost fathomless depths of its concept. this understanding of the modernist enterprise is particularly significant to the preservation of modernist buildings. the rejection of the literal and the material in favor of matrices of ideas and rules require novel approaches to the practice of historic preservation more adequate to the objects of interrogation. victorian era preservation in 1849 john ruskin published the seven lamps of architecture where, in a section called “the lamp of memory,” he develops his now-famous attack on the practice of architectural restoration: “do not let us talk then of restoration,” he writes. “the thing is a lie from beginning to end.” for ruskin, the act of restoration is primarily an act of destruction: the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or melted into a mass of clay […] but, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! granted. look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. it is a necessity for destruction. accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a lie in their place.10 what is of primary significance for ruskin in his understanding of 19th century architecture is the literal materiality of the structure, the craft of its production and the process of its aging. particularly with respect to medieval stone buildings, ruskin and other english romantics found aesthetic meaning in the material’s weathering and decay, “in based on rigorous conceptual models, modern architecture no longer found its meaning in the literal materiality of stone and brick, but rather in the almost fathomless depths of its concept. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 16 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.”11 as england was in the initial throes of industrialization, it became increasingly fascinated by its preindustrial past. 12 four years after publishing the seven lamps of architecture, ruskin published the second volume of the stones of venice, his three volume treatise on venetian art and architecture. in a section called “the nature of gothic,” ruskin emphasizes the importance of medieval and gothic craft arguing that, in previous epochs, art was the expression of man’s pleasure in labor. it was this sentiment that lead the protopreservationist william morris to reprint “the nature of gothic” in 1892; helping to create the theoretical basis for the contemporary preservation movement. morris described ruskin’s paean to medieval labor and craft as “one of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century.”13 both ruskin and morris—the theoretical grounding behind contemporary preservation theory—insisted on the virtues of high quality hand labor, and the importance of the material in considerations of architectural preservation. this romantic response to the industrialization of victorian england took more definite shape in the arts and crafts movement toward the end of the 19th century, heavily influenced by ruskin and morris, which advocated the traditional craftsmanship of medieval arts and architecture. in 1877 morris founded the society for the protection of ancient buildings, an organization that came to be called “anti-scrape” for its insistence that the materiality of historic structures be preserved without alteration. any work on the building was “a feeble and lifeless forgery” and “deaf to the claims of poetry and history.”14 the anti-scrape movement sought to resist all tampering with the fabric of a given structure and to “treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying.”15 this approach, born of an era in which the character found in the literal and the material were of primary importance, indeed remains appropriate and necessary for a premodern architecture. in this context, the preservation of the literal suppresses the precise boundaries of time and place, combining history, memory and architecture to link the discarded and the fragmentary with new beginnings. and while the intended concept remains significant for ruskin, this prioritization of the literal material of the building contrasts sharply with the idea that the significance of modernist architecture lies wholly in its concept, allowing for a preservation approach radically different from that of victorian architecture. postwar modernism, however, requires a preservation approach more adequate to its purpose. while the preservation of premodern architecture 17 isparchitecture.com finds its meaning in the literal and the material, in addition to the idea of the building, the muse of postwar modern architecture is located primarily in the conceptual. and it is this distinction that has extensive and far-reaching implications for the preservation and restoration of modernist architecture. for if, in contrast to the valuing of the literal materiality of the structure, the meaning of postwar modernism is located primarily in the rigor of the concept, its preservation requires an approach radically different from that of ruskin and the victorian romantics who would not have distinguished between the idea of a building and its material execution, understanding one as a mere extension of the other. a notable counterpoint to ruskin’s nineteenthcentury approach is that of his contemporary eugène emmanuel viollet-le-duc whose unique preservation ideas have remained anathema to preservation thinking for nearly two centuries. in contrast to ruskin’s emphasis on the significance of materiality, viollet-le-duc sought to maintain a fidelity to the original design, “to re-establish it to a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.”16 for viollet-leduc, whose work focused primarily on the gothic and romanesque, preservation finds its adequate expression in re-establishing an original idea. such an approach functions as a kind of precursor to the modernist emphasis on the importance of the conceptual. his studies of nineteenth-century iron structures contributed to his interpretation of the gothic as comprised of a rational scheme of skeletal forms designed to bear the weight of increasingly taller vaults. on this view, aesthetic value is to be found, above all, in the visual expression of structural elements—ribs, arches, and vertical supports—that compose the logical structural system. preservation warranted modification to this logical system when, in the example of the vézelay abbey, the changes preserved the appearance of the original structural for violletle-duc, [...] preservation finds its adequate expression in re-establishing an original idea. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 18 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r intention.17 although a relevant precursor to the modernist emphasis on the conceptual in its eschewal of materiality, viollet-le-duc’s attempt to recreate an original intention was often based primarily on an imagined fiction. the emphasis on the conceptual in the preservation of modernist architecture, however, benefits from advances in technology that allow for a more accurate understanding of a building’s original design intent. the greater the understanding, moreover, the more potentially radical the intervention. knowing the entirety of the original design intention allows for a preservation approach that articulates that intention in ways more adequate than viollet-le-duc and more appropriate to the contemporary world. in contrast to ruskin, viollet-le-duc and the victorian belief in the equivalence of ideal intention and material articulation, the meaning of modern architecture is expressed in its idea, thus requiring a radical rethinking of its preservation. lever house consider, for example, new york’s lever house (fig. 1)—an architectural icon heralding “the beginning of a new wave of american skyscraper construction and a new synthesis of modernist architectural ideals”—was restored in 2001 and its famous glass and stainless-steel curtain wall was completely replaced.18 built in 1952 and designated a historic landmark by new york’s landmarks preservation commission (lpc) in 1983, the building is exemplary of postwar american modernism. situated on the west side of park avenue between east 53rd street and east 54th street, lever house is a 24-story glass and stainless-steel clad office building composed of a vertical slab rising above a horizontal base. taking advantage of a unique zoning provision, the project broke the tradition of “shaped tower” skyscrapers that predominated in new york city. its glasssheathed façade and novel design concept became dominant elements of contemporary architecture. its structure consists of two counter-posed volumes, balanced in proportion but contrasting in shape. and in contrast to the traditional commercial lobby, the ground floor is a two-story open plaza with a paneled glass gallery. the project introduced a number of innovations in skyscraper design including an integrally designed windowwashing mechanism and the concept of the ground floor public courtyard. the density or intensity or weight of decision—which is to say intention—in the making of its form is everywhere evident. the work is saturated with traces of artistic intention. and this intention is articulated by the lateral relations among its parts; in the language of 19 isparchitecture.com merleau-ponty, “in the eloquence of arrangement and configuration” that “implants a meaning in that which did not have one.”19 the entirety of the structure articulates a sureness of concept that made it a pioneer in american architecture. to begin, the plan features an open, colonnaded space flowing into the width of the park avenue sidewalk. only one third of the ground floor is indoor space which is primarily enclosed by glass panels. the second floor then hovers over the entire site taking the form of a horizontal slab wrapped around the open courtyard below. the ground floor column grid is set back from the plane of the second-floor façade, giving the second floor slab the appearance of a weightless floating volume. the just 53-footwide tower, a vertical slab set perpendicular to the avenue, is entirely glazed on three facades (as well as the returns on the rear façade) giving the building a crystalline and volumetric quality. its exterior walls are a grid of stainless-steel mullions, anchored to the structural skeleton at each floor, which hold in place large and small panels of fixed glass. the large panels, functioning as windows, are green-tinted heat absorbent transparent glass and the small panels are tinted wire-glass spandrels concealing the floor slabs behind. these darker bands give the structure a horizontal emphasis that provides a delicate counterpoise to the verticality of the building’s columns and metal framing. and this juxtaposition of vertical and horizontal in the facade thematizes the vertical and horizontal volumes of the building more generally. it is the purposeful mutual inflection of elements throughout—its syntax— that gives meaning to the building. that is to say, its meaning is found in the internal consistency of its concept. and it was to the appropriateness of its concept that skidmore, owings & merrill’s 2001 curtain wall replacement sought to respond. in 1952 the building’s glass curtain wall was at the cutting edge of a new technology. almost half a century later, it required restoration. due it is the purposeful mutual inflection of elements throughout—its syntax—that gives meaning to the building. that is to say, its meaning is found in the internal consistency of its concept. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 20 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r to construction material limitations, fabrication limitations, and weather conditions, the curtain wall experienced severe deterioration. the corrosion of the curtain wall resulted in the bowing of the horizontal mullions and thebreakage of most of the smaller spandrel glass panels, as well as some of the larger window panels. the landmarks preservation committee designated the building a historical landmark in 1982— noting it as “outstanding for its spatial clarity, scale and beauty of form”— and allowed for a full replacement, in kind, of the building’s curtain wall assembly.20 this “radical facelift” has significant implications for a theory of the preservation of postwar modernist architecture.21 it suggests that, in contrast to ruskin’s emphasis on literal materiality, certain buildings are characterized less by their physical instantiation than by the concept of the design. and therefore, any attempt to preserve and restore such buildings must determine its original grammar—the rules of its design— in order to preserve the meaning of a given structure. the logic of its rules will determine the appropriate degree to which restoration and alteration can occur without altering the original meaning of the design. thus the entirety of lever house’s literal glass curtain-wall could be replaced with new, updated materials while maintaining the integrity of the initial design. the original tinted wired spandrel glass, no longer manufactured, was replaced with as close to a match to the original as possible. the original steel subframe was replaced with a concealed glazing channel, reflecting a state of the art solution in today’s curtainwall technology. throughout the restoration process, the materials were replaced—either in kind or as closely as possible—so as to reproduce the quality of the idea. manufacturers hanover trust consider also the manufacturers trust company building, the preservation of which goes even further in extending the original design intention. often seen as the very model of modernism (fig. 2), it was built in 1954, two years after lever house, at 510 fifth avenue on the southwest corner of west 43rd street and fifth avenue. it is a steel and glass cube with an unbroken glass façade featuring a seven-foot-wide circular metal bank vault visible from the street. breaking all modes for bank architecture of the time, these elements opened what had been a cloistered world more commonly housed behind masonry walls and produced a novel relationship between architecture and city. evoking the claim that the idea is paramount, architectural forum referred to the building as “the first big building truly to fulfill architects’ immaculate drafting board idea of glass 21 isparchitecture.com as an invisible material.”22 particularly notable is the sense in which the meaning of the design is precisely the appearance of the building’s materiality, rather than its materiality as such. in contrast to the formidable stone and shuddered fortresses of the premodern, the building’s guiding design concept is the impression of an extreme, unparalleled lightness. “if it is characteristic of the human gesture to signify beyond its simple existence in fact, to inaugurate a meaning,” merleau-ponty writes, “it follows that every gesture is comparable to every other. they all arise from a single syntax.”23 almost everything in the syntax, or grammar, of the manufacturers trust building contributes to its meaning, to the unparalleled appearance of lightness. supported by eight interior columns set eleven feet from the fifth avenue building line and twenty feet from the west 43rd street building line, the secondfloor concrete slab cantilevers off the columns and is set back from the clear glass curtain wall façade. accordingly, the main banking areas appear to be contained within one forty-foot-high space and the second-floor slab seems to float. both the concrete slabs and the external metal skeleton were kept extremely thin, particularly notable is the sense in which the meaning of the design is precisely the appearance of the building’s materiality, rather than its materiality as such. “ ” figure 2: manufacturers hanover trust ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 22 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r enhancing the building’s appearance of lightness. finally, cathode tube lights concealed behind thin plastic panels dematerialize the surface of the ceiling producing an impression of weightlessness. a true landmark in the delineation of space—and an arrangement of elements far beyond mere existence in fact—its design completely transformed our concept of the glass wall creating an entirely new relationship between interior and exterior.24 more than a half century after its construction, the building’s striking formal clarity and rich history remain. the evolution of the city, however, has rendered its technical efficiency and programmatic relevance obsolete. 510 fifth avenue was optimized to the standards and ideals of its day. but by 2010, its original owner had closed its bank branch, the building’s technological innovations were long outdated, and it no longer met the standards of contemporary architecture. in 2012 som adapted the building for retail, allowing old forms to meet the demand for new functions. beyond the mere replacement of the structure’s existing materiality, the adaptation required more significant changes that would work within the logic of the original concept. by means of subtle architectural alterations that tailor the space for an alternate purpose, they preserved the formal ingenuity of a unique and historic architecture while simultaneously producing new relationships between architecture and city. drawing on archival research and guided by the original design intentions, som preserved the building’s architectural meaning by preserving or restoring its primary elements including the glass curtain wall facade, the vast luminous ceilings, the bertoia-designed screen, the white marble piers, and the celebrated circular stainless-steel vault door. the renovation and restoration of its glowing ceilings and polished plate glass façade brilliantly maintain the building’s lucid grace and almost complete erasure of the threshold between architecture and city.25 to adapt the building for new uses, the architects integrated entrances into the building’s east façade, divided the first floor to allow for additional tenants, and rotated the escalators to run parallel with the new partialglass demising wall. by preserving the original architecture while adapting certain of its features for programmatic change, the renovation produces a kind of urban monument, one that is simultaneously both retrospective and prospective. on the one hand, the building’s preservation brings forth layers of accrued implication deposited by time and human experience into contemporary urban life—almost victorian in its materiality. on the other hand, the vitality of adaptive reuse lies in its essential engagement with the precise demands of the present. it allows for an architecture 23 isparchitecture.com that takes on new and disparate functions thereby producing new meanings. it directly mediates between past and present in an ever-changing world of shifting values—and, in this instance, it is precisely by virtue of this juxtaposition of past and present that the mutual inflection of elements bestow significance on one another. united states air force academy the idea of preserving architectural intent reached an apex in 2016 with polaris hall, som’s addition to the united states air force academy campus (fig. 3). with a scope far beyond that of lever house or manufacturers hanover trust, the project sought to extend the extreme rigor of the original concept into a completely new structure. it found in the depth of the initial concept the possibility for a building that would preserve the meaning of the original while begetting new meaning, born of the established relationships between already existing elements. this, in extreme contrast to the literalism figure 3: polaris hall ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 24 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r of the premodern romantics, implies a theory of preservation at its most speculative, in which we locate the maturation of a future in the fecundity of the present. its original design concept contained futures within its logic, allowing for precisely the kind of addition conceived almost a halfcentury later. begun in 1954 after the establishment of the united states air force academy by president dwight d. eisenhower, the project is located at an elevation of 6,500 feet along the foothills of the rampart range of the rocky mountains in colorado. given the scope of the project—both a university and flight training academy, nine buildings in total—the concept not only addressed individual buildings but both the natural landform and the interrelationships between buildings.26 by creating artificial terraces at the ridge crest with a series of concrete retaining walls, the plan allows the spaces between buildings to open into the larger landscape, maintaining the expansive character of the site.27 the buildings in the cadet area— sited on the highest ridge and the symbol of the academy to the public— were nestled into the mesa, allowing the structures’ monumentality to be apparent from outside the complex while maintaining a human scale and smaller perceived-size from the pedestrian level. the entire area is based on a seven-foot module that produced the relationships and proportions of the buildings throughout. it produced the sizes of the beams and structural bays in the cadet quarters, as well as the width of the rooms, windows, spandrel panels and the detailing of the facades. delineated rows of marble tile on the terrazzo produce gridlines that reflect the module, a twentyeight-foot organizing grid. the module organized the buildings and the space, but never restricted them resulting in “an extraordinarily sensitive composition of built and natural forms.”28 the corners of the grid were intentionally left open and implied, creating breaks in the horizontal plane that mirror those on the vertical plane, in the upper level loggias and height drops of the academic building and cadet quarters. the lengthwise visual momentum of the buildings—themselves floating on pilotis above open space—elevated above its surrounding terrain produced sensations of expansive soaring. set against this backdrop of horizontality and the dramatic vertical peaks of the rampart range, the cadet chapel—the focal point of the cadet area—is intentionally distinct. visually separated from the court of honor by its unique surface treatment, its wide ramp, and its dissimilar landscaping, the chapel functions as the virtuosic punctum of the composition. a half-century after its opening, the united states air force academy sought an addition to its campus. serving as an education and research 25 isparchitecture.com center and situated opposite and offset from the cadet chapel, polaris hall functions as the new home of the academy’s center for character and leadership development. built in 2016 and designed by som, the addition’s puzzle-like fit is as if the idea of the building were embedded within the concept of the original design. and in a sense, it was. it is a future that grew out of the outline and fecundity of the initial design. it is in this sense that the addition of polaris hall preserves the original, articulating the survival of its concept in another form. given the sensitivity necessary in adding to the sacred ground of the existing academy, the air force proposed a competition between the three principal offices of som: san francisco, chicago and new york. the design jury consisted of air force officials lt. general john regni and lt. general ervin rokke, architecture historian and critic joan ockman, cornell university school of architecture dean kent kleinman, and robert nauman, whose on the wings of modernism is widely considered to be the standard work on the architecture of the air force academy. som began with a site visit and the design process took shape immediately. weaving through the surrounding hills and valleys to approach the existing campus, the buildings came in and out of sight as a kind of dramatic foreshadowing of the intensity of experience induced upon arrival. seen as a kind of ancient citadel recalling a modern acropolis, the monumental scale of both site and architecture produced an almost spiritual effect. the low, long orthogonal lines and overwhelming consistency of the architecture stood in stark contrast to the raised rugged mountaintops and expansive blue sky of the surroundings. significantly, the team noted that the architecture is raised on pilotis throughout to create cinematic, framed letterbox views of thenatural landscape. these framed views, moreover, align with the grid of the campus that is everywhere present, this, in extreme contrast to the literalism of the premodern romantics, implies a theory of preservation at its most speculative, in which we locate the maturation of a future in the fecundity of the present. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 26 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r inscribed in the very ground on which the cadets march. it was this visit to the site—and the attendant recognition of its monumental, quasi-spiritual character—as well as what som saw as the inescapable necessity to engage with the logic of the existing grid, that began the process of conceptualizing polaris hall. the som design team underwent a period of sustained research into the existing architecture of the air force academy as well as the selfunderstanding of the institution it houses. it became clear that the discipline of the existing architecture—the omnipresent grid, the perfect orthogonal lines, the exactness of framing—corresponded in important ways to the discipline of the cadets. and central to the academy’s mission (as to its crest), embedded in its conceptual framework like the buildings in the terraced plinth, was the polaris star. the brightest star in its constellation, polaris is known as the north star, and functions as a symbol of the core values of the academy. som used this guiding symbol as the basis of their design, seeking to embody polaris by means of architecture. the idea to create a structure that emerged directly from the gridlines of the original thickened, rectilinear landscape with a skylight aligned toward polaris came early. the initial design of the campus addition resembled a telescope, a long shaft extending diagonally from the ground toward the sky. to complement the telescopic form, som considered a collaboration with the artist james turrell, with whom som had already collaborated on two other academic buildings. an intermediate design review with air force officials, however, caused a subtle but significant change.29 concerned that the initial design could be too easily read as a military instrument of violence, the design team added volume to the thin shaft, extending its base to encompass the entire form. this allowed for a more iconic, wing-like shape while bringing light and air into the entire space. the logic of the design follows almost naturally from its origin point of north star alignment: its sunken form allows for clear views at ground level, glass demising walls bring the skylight as far as possible into the building, and the structure aligns the existing grid with the diagonal angle of polaris. the final design, a 105-foot glass-and-steel skylight aligned toward polaris—the academy’s metaphorical guiding principle—emerges almost inevitably from the existing landscape. like the academic building and cadet quarters, its auditorium protrudes into the terrace level mimicking the stepped terraces of the original design. it follows the straight lines of the campus, preserves crucial sight lines and adheres to the original masterplan grid. it references the materials of the original campus including the colorful 27 isparchitecture.com murano glass tiles that line the entry walls and the granite for the main exterior stairs which was cut from the same quarry used for the cadet chapel in 1954. its structure, diagonal steel plates composed in a triangular grid calibrated to resist lateral forces, directly alludes to the chapel’s triangular repetition. the meeting and seminar rooms surrounding the central space below the terrace level are comprised of glass storefronts adapted to the campus’s sevenfoot grid. and yet the building provides its own additional metaphors. its protruding skylight works as a metaphorical moral compass, a reminder of the academy’s core values. the size and shape of the oculus align precisely with the north star, signifying the academy’s guiding values. it serves as a source of natural light, and creates a precise optical alignment with the respondent’s seat in the honor board room, where investigations into the cadet honor code take place. the details of the building mirror the logic of continuity and break found in the horizontal momentum of the site plan. shaped like an aircraft tailfin, the building eschews the muscularity of the cadet chapel, preserving the campus’s existing hierarchy of importance. an open, transparent nexus of interaction, the terraced levels of the building accommodate gatherings at a variety of scales and levels of formality. its glass-walled collaboration rooms surround the central space emphasizing and encouraging collaborative, forward-looking research. the entirety of the largely transparent structure is an architectural interpretation of the academy’s moral aspirations more generally, aspirations of communication, transparency, and openness. embedded within the constraints of the original campus design, polaris hall converts morality, sincerity, implicit hierarchies, and guiding principles into physical spatial conditions. revisiting, renovating and adding to architectural icons requires that the original narrative be considered. and the revisiting engenders its own narrative, related to and born polaris hall, however, actively reinterprets the original, extending and adapting the idea of its grid, its hierarchy, and its materiality into a bridge that bonds past and present. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 of—but different from—the original.30 polaris hall, for example, can be seen as a kind of secular corollary to the original cadet chapel; a temple of research and learning more adequate to the cultural mores of the twentyfirst century. in this sense, it is a project that exists in the unique, liminal space between past and present, a portal connecting one to the other. it is this unique condition that the practice of adaptive reuse engages more broadly. its ability to preserve an existing building while replacing materials (lever house), repositioning the program (manufacturer’s trust) or adding to the original (polaris hall), challenges certain widely accepted notions of historic preservation. because of modernist architecture’s unique focus on the rigor of concept, its preservation requires a shift in our understanding of what it means to preserve, which has typically focused on the preservation of the literal. in the case of lever house, for example, the very materiality of the original object was wholly replaced while retaining its landmark status, thereby shifting the framework of what it means to preserve modernist architecture. in a kind of response to theseus’s paradox—the famous thought experiment in which the ship of theseus, the mythical king and founder of athens, has been completely replaced over time thus questioning whether the restored ship is the same object as the original—the renovation of lever house expresses a determinate position. the complete replacement of its curtain wall assembly suggests a radical break in how we approach the historic preservation of modernist architecture. and just as the founder-hero of athens is associated with major cultural transition and the establishment of a new social order, the preservation approach to lever house, 510 fifth avenue and polaris hall heralds a new and radical approach to the practice of preservation more generally. viollet-le-duc’s attempt to recreate an original intention based primarily on an imagined fiction, while a radical approach for its time, foregoes any meaningful connection between past and present, as if existing on opposite sides of an unbridgeable gulf. polaris hall, however, actively reinterprets the original, extending and adapting the idea of its grid, its hierarchy, and its materiality into a bridge that bonds past and present. merleau-ponty claimed that in a successful aesthetic object, its meaning does not exhaust itself in the moment that has occasioned it, but remains as an exemplary type and survives in other situations in other forms and in other times. the united states air force academy does exactly that. the depth and originality of its original conception outlined a future in its origin. the rigor and logic of the design almost included within it the birth of polaris hall. it instituted a world unto itself pregnant with transformations to m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 28 29 isparchitecture.com come. “history,” merleau-ponty reminds us, “is the maturation of the future in the present, not the sacrifice of the present to an unknown future.”31 the air force academy was decidedly not sacrificed to an unknown future. the fecundity of its original design inaugurated an institution. its extreme rigor and depth of intention established a future within the logic of its present; a present that called for and made possible its next iteration. rather than a complete departure from the initial design, polaris hall is the maturation of the original conception of the air force academy campus into an inevitable future. endnotes 1. maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” signs, trans. richard c. mccleary (evanston, ill., 1964), pp. 39-83. the original essay in french, “le langage indirect et les voix du silence,” was first published in les temps modernes in 1952 and was included in merleauponty, signes (paris, 1960). 2. as ada louise huxtable, the dean of american architectural criticism, writes in the new york times in 1968, “what preservation is really all about is the retention and active relationship of the buildings of the past to the community’s functioning present.” ada louise huxtable, “where did we go wrong” in will they ever finish bruckner boulevard? (berkeley: university of california press, 1989), 223. 3. ibid. notably, the work of merleau-ponty is at the heart of some of the most important art criticism of the 20th century, in particular the writing of michael fried whose seminal essay “art and objecthood” was published in artforum 1967. he cites merleau-ponty throughout his writing, and “indirect language and the voices of silence” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 30 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r in particular. see michael fried, “an introduction to my art criticism,” art and objecthood: essays and reviews (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998), 28-31. 4. the paper does not claim that som architects were explicitly reading merleau-ponty’s writing. the claim, rather, is that merleau-ponty’s understanding of how meaning is produced by the interrelationship of parts can help us think productively about the early work of som and what it means to preserve that work today. 5.huxtable, “where did we go wrong,” 223. 6. ibid. 7. so merleau-ponty writes, “the primary operation which first constitute signs as signs, makes that which is expressed dwell in them through the eloquence of their arrangement and configuration alone, implants a meaning in that which did not have one, and thus—far from exhausting itself in the instant at which it occurs—inaugurates an order and founds an institution or a tradition.” ibid. p. 7. michael fried further echoes this sentiment in his description of the english sculptor anthony caro: “everything in caro’s art that is worth looking at—except the color—is in its syntax.” commenting later on these lines, and citing merleau-ponty’s essay in particular, he writes, “i associated the notion of syntax with that of abstract gesture, but what i saw was that the entire expressive weight of caro’s art was carried by the relations among the girders, iand t-beam segments, and similar elements out of which his sculptures were made, not by… the industrial, modern-world connotations of his materials.” fried, “an introduction,” 29. 8. this approach is notably different from the more standard approach to merleau-ponty within architecture which prioritizes merleau-ponty’s writing on phenomenology. for an interpretation of merleau-ponty and the role of phenomenology in the rise of postmodernism, see jorge oteropailos, architecture’s historical turn: phenomenology and the rise of the postmodern, (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2010). 9. bunshaft joined som in 1937 where he remained for more than forty years as lead design partner. he is credited with ushering in a new era of modernist skyscraper design and corporate architecture. 10. john ruskin, the seven lamps of architecture (london: george allen, 1903), 244. 11. ibid., 177. 12. see, for example, charles dellheim, the face of the past: the presentation of the medieval inheritance in victorian england (cambridge: cambridge 31 isparchitecture.com university press, 1982). 13. william morris, “preface,” the nature of gothic (kelmscott press: london 1892, p.i). 14. william morris, philip webb, et al, “manifesto of the society for the protection of ancient buildings,” first published 1877, accessible on the society’s contempoary website: “the spab manifesto” at https://www.spab.org.uk/about-us/spab-manifesto, accessed 10 oct 2019. 15. ibid. for discussion of these lines, see andrea elizabeth donovan, william morris and the society for the protection of ancient buildings (routledge: london 2008), pp. 24 ff. 16. eugene-emmanuel viollet-le-duc, “restoration,” from dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du xie au xvie siècle (1854-1868), english translation as on restoration (sampson low, marston: london, 1875). 17. see, for example, kevin d. murphy, memory and modernity: viollet-le-duc at vézelay (penn state university press, 1999). 18. landmarks preservation commission (november 9, 1982); designation list 161, lp-1277. 19. maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” 67. 20. ibid. 21. suzanne stephens, “the restoration of new york city’s lever house is not so same-old, sameold, as architects som and william t. georgis demonstrate,” architectural record, march 2003, vol. 191, issue 3, p. 122. 22. landmarks preservation commission october 21, 1997; designation list 285 lp-1968. according to nathaniel owings, the designers “were encouraged to come up with whatever popped into their heads, and the history and tradition of banking ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 32 m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r be damned. nathaniel a. owings, the spaces in between: an architect’s journey (boston: houghton mifflin, 1973), 103. 23 maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” 68. 24. architectural forum, “modern architecture breaks through the glass barrier [manufacturers trust co. branch, n.y.].” architectural forum 101 (december 1954): 104-11. 25. for additional background and context to this project (510 fifth ave), see evan bindelglass, “lpc chair, top architects review nyc’s adaptive reuse projects”, new york imby (dec 23, 2015), at https://newyorkyimby. com/2015/12/lpc-chair-top-architects-review-nycs-adaptive-reuse-projects. html/, accessed october 10, 2019. 26. robert bruegman, modernism at mid-century. the architecture of the united states air force academy (university of chicago press: chicago 1994), 47. 27. as hegel points out in his aesthetics, “works of art enchant us not because they are so natural but because they have been made so natural.” g.w.f. hegel, aesthetics: lectures on fine art, vol. 1 (new york: oxford university press, 1975), 164. the artificiality of the landscape is yet another articulation of the project as willed intention. architectural forum declared that the architects “shaped the slopes as powerfully as the babylonians, the incas, and the greeks once did.” architectural forum, “the air age acropolis”, architectural forum 110.6 (june 1959), 158-65. 28. bruegman, modernism at mid-century, 53. 29. meeting attendees included lt. general regni, dr. rokke, colonel (ret) tom berry, and colonel ackerman. 30. as nicholas adams writes in casabella, “it respects everything around it and yet it offers something completely original.” nicholas adams, “polaris hall, center for character and leadership development, air force academy, colorado springs, colorado,” casabella 871 (march 2017). 31. the logic of the present unfolds into its future. “it is as if each step taken called for and made possible another step, or as if each successful expression prescribed another task to the spiritual automation or founded an institution whose efficacy it will have never finished experiencing.” maurice merleau-ponty, “indirect language and the voices of silence,” 54. isparchitecture.com design-politics: how buildings mean lawrence j. vale 19th century prussian general carl von clausewitz famously stated that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.”1 the same might be said about the architecture of public buildings. but if public architecture is also an extension of politics by other means, what—more precisely—are those means? philosopher nelson goodman is among the few to pose this question directly. in his essay “how buildings mean,”2 goodman rightly points out that we must consider the prior question of how a particular work of architecture conveys meaning before we are able to address the issue of what the building may mean. goodman, writing in the late 1980s while based at harvard during the latter part of his career, thereby inserted himself in a debate starting to percolate in the more rarified precincts of architectural education—such as the harvard graduate school of design—about the extent that architecture constituted an autonomous practice. in his essay, goodman aims to identify the categories of meaning that the built environment may convey as well as to elucidate the mechanisms by which these meanings are transmitted. this sort of analysis is crucial for understanding the boundary between properties that are intrinsic to works of architecture and those properties ascribed to architecture that are central to its reception in a politically-driven world. ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 34 v a le in this paper, i consider both the strengths of goodman’s formulation and its limitations–as viewed three decades later in an era when digital media have dramatically reoriented the ways that architecture is both presented and represented. the enhanced attention to the role of media makes it increasingly difficult to sustain much practical sense of architecture as an autonomous or even quasi-autonomous practice. rather—in an era of programmable facades, highly-charged urban contexts, and countervailing artistic interventions and augmentations—it seems increasingly impossible to isolate goodman’s ideas about “denotation,” “exemplification,” “metaphorical expression,” and “mediated reference” from a building’s political reception. the result, i argue, is a kind of conjoined designpolitics. in what follows, i explore the power of that design-politics hyphen through a set of examples that range from the lincoln memorial3 to donald trump’s hotels. goodman’s ideas about architectural meaning: an example denotation the lincoln memorial in washington, d.c. (figure 1) provides an especially good example of goodman’s first type of meaning—denotation— because it is, literally, full of texts. in this sense, its meanings are intended to be read directly, at least for those who can read english and roman numerals. the entablature and upper setback of the building contain carved names of the forty-eight contiguous states that comprised the united states at the time construction of the memorial finished in 1922. (awkwardly, but understandably, a separate plaque in front of the structure discontiguously adds alaska and hawai’i, which were added as states only in 1959.) continuing the denotative content, the building façades feature a total of thirty-six columns—one pillar for each of the states in the union in 1865 at the close of the civil war. through the deployment of these columns, the states of the union that lincoln saved directly structure the proportions of the building—twelve on the long sides, eight on the short sides (that adds up to forty but the corner columns are seen from two sides, so that is why it totals thirty-six.) the denotation continues on the inner walls of the building, with parts of two lincoln speeches literally carved into stone. importantly, the two speeches chosen—the gettysburg address and the second inaugural address—are both centered on the role of lincoln as preserver of the union of states. by contrast, architect henry bacon (and, presumably, his clients) chose not to highlight other famous texts that may well have carried far greater political or policy significance, such as the emancipation 35 isparchitecture.com proclamation. the civil war may well have been fought over the future of a southern slave economy, but the lincoln memorial—at least in its denotative sense—was centered on reminders of union, not on freeing slaves. metaphorical expression the lincoln memorial also nicely conveys goodman’s second type of meaning—the notion of metaphorical expression. the building is not just a rectangular object with columns, but a metaphorical temple, with lincoln as a seated deity. here, a public building conveys meaning because of widely shared cultural notions (at least in western culture) about greco-roman practices of deification and worship. and just in case the metaphor might be lost on some visitors, architect bacon and his team also made use of goodman’s first type of meaning— denotation—by carving a more literal reminder just above lincoln’s head: “in this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of abraham lincoln is enshrined forever.” we are thereby shown a metaphorical shrine and temple, and also reminded about what we are seeing. exemplification the lincoln memorial is also a prime site for the building is not just a rectangular object with columns, but a metaphorical temple “ ” figure 1: lincoln memorial ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 36 v a le observing goodman’s third mechanism of meaning: exemplification. goodman observes that every work of architecture exemplifies certain of its properties in ways that draw particular attention. in the case of this memorial, it is clear that the building serves as the termination of an axis, and emphasizes bilateral symmetry, both as a building and as a work of urban design. as a composition, the building itself exemplifies a clear pattern of solid-void-solid, as a way to draw attention to the statue of lincoln at the center. and, at the same time, the form of the building emphasizes the gleaming white materiality of its marble, in contrast with the darker interior. mediated reference finally, the lincoln memorial helps us understand goodman’s fourth type of architectural meaning—what he terms a mediated reference. here, beyond the notion of metaphor, the building asks those who view it to associate it with broader conceptual references—notions that could be about such things as worship, democracy, freedom, or unification. construction of the building had been controversial—from lingering sectional disputes about the role of lincoln to the idea of constructing this temple on a former swamp— so project proponents needed to do everything possible to remind visitors about the ideals of unification and unity. they did so in 1923 by having the american institute of architects use the building to stage a pageant honoring henry bacon, keeping the focus on neoclassical design and worshipful display. a decade and a half later, however, the mediated reference of this monument began to shift. in 1939, famed african-american contralto marian anderson was denied the opportunity to perform at washington dc’s constitution hall by the daughters of the american revolution, due to her race.4 at the urging of eleanor roosevelt, secretary of the interior harold ickes arranged for anderson to sing instead from the steps of the lincoln memorial. a mixed-race audience of 75,000 people showed up. the mediated reference altered again on august 28, 1963, when the building served as the terminal focal point of the march on washington, (figure 2)one hundred years after lincoln had signed the emancipation proclamation. marian anderson began the program by leading the singing of the national anthem. memorializing the events of the day and adding to the mediated reference of the building itself, the federal government authorized placement of a carved stone added on the platform from which king gave his famous “i have a dream” speech. in this way, the mediated reference had shifted from saving the union to securing civil rights. in 37 isparchitecture.com its late-20th-century messaging, the building was less about political union than about the pursuit of racial and economic equality. the metaphor was still that of a temple and its god, but now lincoln was to be deified for other reasons. in 1968, the lincoln memorial consolidated its relationship with martin luther king, when king’s poor people’s campaign was granted a permit to construct resurrection city adjacent to the memorial. in this way, the mediated reference of the building as a representation of both civil rights and economic rights reached full fruition. it was thus no surprise that barack obama chose to celebrate part of his inauguration in 2009 at the lincoln memorial. beyond goodman’s quartet of meaning types clearly, the notion of a mediated reference starts to take the meaning of a building into a larger realm of applied ideas, more so than do notions of denotation, metaphor, or exemplification. yet goodman is still content to view mediated references as part of the way that buildings mean as works of architecture. that said, he also readily acknowledges that buildings may also have nonarchitectural meanings—things that he considers to be more arbitrary, with no intrinsic connection to design. goodman writes: a building of any design may come to stand for some of its causes or effects, or for some the building asks those who view it to associate with broader conceptual references “ ” figure 2: lincoln memorial, 1963 ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 38 v a le historical event that occurred in it or on its site, or for its designated use; any abattoir may symbolize slaughter, and any mausoleum, death; and a costly county courthouse may symbolize extravagance. to mean in such a way is not thereby to function as an architectural work.5 applied to my example of the lincoln memorial, there still seems good reason to attach the mediated reference label—whether “union” or “civil rights”—to the building itself, since the associations are clearly not arbitrary. still, it is possible to imagine other events happening on the site—a plane crash, say, or a murder—that would, indeed, bear no relation to the memorial’s meaning as a work of architecture. goodman— presumably prodded by his nearby colleagues at harvard’s graduate school of design—wanted to cling to the possibility of an autonomous realm for architecture, or at least to lay claim to what mit architectural historian stanford anderson first called “semiautonomy” and later “quasiautonomy.”6 but, increasingly, quasi-autonomy just leaves me queasy. we now seem clearly in a world of queasy autonomy, one where the public and the media insist that public buildings be seen as inhabited places and as parts of cities. this may understandably threaten the professional self-esteem of some designers, especially if they expect their work to communicate their own design intentions. yet we are long past any era where architects can hope to control the received meaning of their designs. we are in a world where public buildings are experienced not just as objects but as productive processes engaged with human labor, material supply chains, financial tradeoffs, and community impacts. it seems increasingly harder to preserve a separate realm of meanings that are intrinsic to architecture qua architecture, separate from some presumed set of overlaid meanings that are somehow non-architectural. especially if one looks at buildings at the scale of urban design, this implicates them in their surroundings and, accordingly, asks us to consider ways to account for their associated meanings. increasingly, i argue, the power of what goodman would consider “non-architectural meanings” has become so predominant that there is little practical value in declaring them to be non-architectural. in short, just as the boundaries between architectural and non-architectural meaning are harder to maintain, so too it is harder to maintain a separation between the world of design and the world of politics. instead, especially with the burgeoning of digital media in the three decades since goodman tried to set categories and boundaries for ”how buildings mean,” all public buildings have become what i have previously termed “mediated monuments.”7 such 39 isparchitecture.com public buildings are inseparable from the media campaigns conducted to construct (and constrict) their interpretation. in what follows, i will take nelson goodman on something of a world tour in search of what he may have missed. i will stick with his four terms, but probe how they may be altered by externally imposed agendas. building from goodman’s nomenclature, this means that denotative meaning can now be temporarily—or permanently—annotated with additional texts, and thereby altered. it means that the expression of metaphors may stray far from the positive associations predicted by architects. it means that buildings may exemplify certain properties, but that the aesthetics of these properties are increasingly inextricable from political economy. finally, taking goodman forward means that, with burgeoning forms of new media, mediated references proliferate and shift. we can see this even in the lincoln memorial, depending on how we view it. seen obliquely from above on a summer’s day, the monument may seem a forested object rather than a temple at the end of an axis reminding us about civil rights. or, if one looks beyond the memorial to the northwest, we see yet a different context. instead of locating memorial within the artifice of washington d.c. with its mall and its height limitations, we are confronted with broader realm of capitalist investment that has jumped the potomac to build high-rises in less restrictive northern virginia, amazon’s future new hub. the meaning of buildings clearly varies depending on the viewpoint of the observer, and the scale of environment being observed. beyond goodman, toward design-politics taken together, i am arguing for a convergence of design and politics, and propose that they be conjoined by a hyphen. seen this way, how buildings goodman [...] wanted to cling to cling to the possibility of an autonomous realm for architecture [...] but, increasingly, quasiautonomous architecture just leaves me queasy “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 40 v a le mean is inextricably linked to what, why, and where buildings mean. we can begin by taking on goodman’s notion of meaning by denotation. once denotation gets tied in with marketing, toponymic alteration (aka name-changing), and annotation, the denotation gets engulfed by its design-politics. denotation gets trumped one prominent place to start is with chicago’s trump international hotel and tower, the city’s second tallest building—even if this is a place that would initially seem to have little to offer students of goodmanian denotation. when first opened, in 2008, the building appeared as a vast composition of soaring blue glass, with minimal signage. but in 2014, 6 years after completion, the trump organization added five 20’ tall letters spelling out t-r-u-m-p 141-feet wide, lit at night with led fixtures (figure 3). the designers located this lettering 200 feet above street level for maximum urban visibility at a distance. initially proposed to cover 3,600 sq. ft., chicago’s planning and development department insisted that it be down-sized by 20 percent, still leaving it at 2,891 sq. ft. a prepresidential donald trump assured chicago tribune architecture critic blair kamin that the backlit led lighting “will be more subtle”–to which kamin responded: “as subtle as godzilla.”8 at night, the signage stands out not just as the terminus of north-south streets, but as the dominant presence of the east-west view along the chicago river. trump, apparently a scholar of architecture and of philosophy, is clearly into deal-making dialogue with nelson goodman when he commented that the sign is “part of the architecture of the building.” he also knowingly enters into the realm of semiotics when he adds that “the people in the building” (who of course are the only ones who don’t actually have to look at the signage) “love it as an identifier.”9 trump told an interviewer that he expected the sign to become an important part of the cultural landscape of chicago in the manner of the hollywood sign.10 importantly for trump, the sign covers part of the building occupied by air conditioning vents and other mechanicals, so it doesn’t restrict views or revenues from interior space. that, too, is part of the building’s design-politics. in gaining its new signage, trump’s eponymous chicago tower is, arguably, now not the same building. its new denotative layer, though, adds more than mere explanatory lettering; it also adds a new kind of exemplified property, and it shifts the mediated reference of the work, linking it to a global brand associated with ostentation. and, in both the run-up to the 2016 presidential election and its presidential aftermath, 41 isparchitecture.com the billboard-bold presence of the trump name on the city’s most storied skyline could not help but be polarizing. any effort to analyze this edifice as merely a tall structure of glass and steel, devoid of other associations, now seems fruitless—and certainly bears little relationship to how the building is received on the ground. it is also another reminder that buildings exist as urban artifacts not just as isolated structures. in urban design terms, this one does more than terminate an axial vista; it trumps it. chicago’s zoning committee belatedly realized what it had inadvertently permitted, and duly established a “chicago river corridor special sign district.”11 still, this did nothing to undo the designpolitics of denotation that had already been allowed to occur. the new ordinance just meant that trump will have no future competition for visual attention. the chief recourse has come via the work of artists. one such interpretive designer simply de-pixilated the first letter-removing the ‘t’ to alter the meaning. another artist sought a permit to float a series of gilded pig-shaped balloons, strategically aligned, as new form of editorial erasure.12 other editing (and editorializing) photoshoppers proposed a quick demise for the structure as a whole.13 following trump’s election as president, the denotative meaning of his eponymous structures underwent pointed alteration in some locales. in 2018, the majority owner of the trump ocean club in panama city had the trump part of the name removed, and then grandly performed an antifascist song in the lobby to mark the occasion.14 in figure 3: trump international hotel and tower ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 42 v a le terms of shifting the scope of goodman’s notion of “denotation,” perhaps the most sustained commentary has come from video projection artist robin bell, who has been annotating trump properties in both new york and washington, dc. on the evening of august 7, 2017—one week after reports surfaced that special counsel robert mueller had impaneled a grand jury as part of his investigation into russian interference with the election and any possible collusion with trump campaign staffers—bell projected a huge russian flag onto the street-facing front of the trump soho property. in turn, the middle blue stripe of the flag was annotated with a sequence of matter-of-fact advertisements in english and russian: “follow the money”—“laundering services available”—“happy to help, bro!,” along with an image of vladimir putin. accompanying this, a retinue of five uniformed militarized marchers in red hats and mock russian army garb strode toward the building to the strains of the russian national anthem. a projection project that lasted less than 15 minutes in real time quickly went viral on social media posted by onlookers, leading to widespread coverage on everything from the new york daily news to huffington post to business insider to artnet.com.15 the trump soho hotel would never be the same. by december, the hotel was renamed the dominick.16 bell’s most publicized work has happened in washington, dc. at the trump international hotel, a building with a long history of shifting denotation and meanings. taller than either the washington cathedral or the u.s. capitol, the old post office and clock tower along pennsylvania avenue—originally completed in 1899—clearly appealed to the trump organization. shortly before trump entered the presidential race, his company won the right to redevelop the old post office site as a luxury hotel. in 2016, they put up a massive construction sign in front of the building that echoed the coloration of the campaign bumper sticker and read “trump: coming 2016.”17 the trump international hotel opened shortly after trump was elected president in 2016, and robin bell was quickly on the scene to annotate its façade using video projections from a truck parked just across the street, generating substantial press coverage in such outlets as cnn, the bbc, the new york times, and the los angeles times.18 as legal challenges arose regarding the issue of whether profits from the hotel violated the emoluments clause of the u.s. constitution,19 bell’s annotation elided goodman’s notion of denotation with other modes of meaning, especially mediated references. the post-election backlash entered the realm of design-politics though efforts to turn the building 43 isparchitecture.com into a meme about corruption: “pay trump bribes here” and “emoluments welcome” featured an arrow pointing to the hotel’s arched entrance. at the same time, through a new form of denotation, the installation sought to remind the public about the actual text of the emoluments clause. bell also flashed façade dialogues that engaged other emergent news items, including proposed bans on certain terms at the centers for disease control and prevention such as “diversity” “entitlement,” “fetus” “transgender” and “science-based.”20 on another occasion, he annotated the headquarters of the nearby environmental protection agency with a warning: “don’t let a climate denier take over the epa.” in addition, bell annotated the department of justice building with an image of attorney general jeff sessions as a klansman, with an illuminated “#sessionsmustgo.”21 the politics of metaphors next, it is worth examining how goodman’s ideas about metaphorical expression are also inextricable from the politics embedded in such metaphors. the messages may not be as angry or partisan as the trumpian annotations, but metaphors, too, intertwine design with politics. metaphors are not neutral; classic phrases such as “a man’s home is his castle,” are famously gendered. since at least the early 17th century, this notion has been part of english common law, later transmitted to the united states, where it conveyed the right to forbid entry. this has been used as a way to assert individualism and anti-government views. another image, from a promotional booklet produced by the national association of real estate boards in 1922, (figure 4) underscores the ways that home-as-castle is a deeply gendered bell’s annotation elided goodman’s notion of denotation with other modes of meaning, especially mediated references. “ figure 4: home owning breeds real men ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 44 v a le notion, rooted in differentials in power and access to resources.22 this is not “man” as in “mankind”—rather, as explained here, “home owning breeds real men”—"it is what puts the man back in manhood”. such metaphors mean not just as works of architecture but as acts of politics. sometimes the metaphor has less serious overtones, as in the notion of hotel as palace. there are places named palace hotel across the world, often in cities long past ties to any actual royal rule. the opportunity to be temporary royalty may be little more than a frivolity of the wealthy, yet it may reveal deep-seated anxieties or jealousies or, alternatively, just an exaggerated sense of self-worth. more prosaically, in suburban boston during the 1980s the architect robert a.m. stern fancified a postmodern speculative office building into a faux-renaissance palace. it is really no more than a mini office park in an auto-dominated zone of malls, multilane highways, and vast parking lots; inside is no palace. still, stern and the developers correctly deduced that it would be possible to market the palace metaphor more than the reality. the politics of exemplification turning next to the design-politics of exemplification it is also clear that architectural properties—even basic constitutive issues such as height, color, materials, and symmetry that very much seem to be confinable to the realm of aesthetics—are nonetheless more complex socio-cultural products and, therefore, are embedded in politics. consider the longstanding aim to construct tall buildings as an index of power. it is certainly possible to isolate the aesthetics of a building as a tall shape from any other of its properties, and to see such buildings, in goodman’s terms, as exemplifying the property of height. it is also true that some buildings are made taller in order to convey that property. but height-mongering has an agenda; the ‘how’ of its meaning seems increasingly inseparable from the ‘why’ and ‘where’ of its meaning. the design-politics of height the height of buildings, throughout the history of architecture, has been inseparable from its institutional presence, whether as funerary pyramids or as church spires, mosque minarets, victory arches and columns or capitol domes. especially since the late 19th century, with enhanced global communication, the height of a building has become a comparative 45 isparchitecture.com and competitive phenomenon. even so, the competitive design-politics of tall buildings began much earlier. bruges boasted an early non-religious tall building as early as 1240, an observation tower constructed on top of the market building, which included spaces serving the city’s major cloth industry and the municipal archives. an octagonal part added was added in the 1480s, bringing the tower to 83m (272 feet), and, with its former wooden spire, it used to be even taller—354 feet (figure 5). the height was clearly about conveying the economic power of bruges. in other words, the exemplification was not just about the physical properties of its tower and spire, but about the city leadership seeking to exemplify (and thereby market) its financial prowess. at the same time, it means through metaphor, by serving as a prototypical “cathedral of commerce.” sometimes, such marketing served primarily internal domestic purposes but sometimes the visual statement was intended to be understood internationally. spiro kostof notes that drawings from gustave eiffel’s office showed height of his famous tower as, quite consciously, larger than adding together notre dame, the arc de triomphe, and the statue of liberty. it also mattered that it eclipsed the washington monument as tallest manmade structure in the world (and almost doubled it).23 until 1889, new york’s the spire of trinity church was that city’s highest structure, though it faced competition throughout the 1870s and 1880s as the empire state’s media struck back. an irrational obsession over building height along new york’s newspaper row (with towers all eclipsing the figure 5: bruges market square tower ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 46 v a le adjacent city hall) led to protracted battle among the new york times, the tribune, the sun and pulitzer’s world. by 1909, however, the metropolitan life insurance tower outdid both church and press and, at 700 feet, became the tallest occupied building in the world. with a 50-story tower on top of 11-story base it resembled the campanile of st. mark's in venice. the tower also featured a clock that was visible a mile away and was topped by a beacon: “the light that never fails.” as a company pamphlet put it, “high and lofty, like a great sentinel keeping watch over the millions of policy holders and marking the fast-fleeting minutes of life, stands the tower.” geographer mona domosh explains that the tower conveyed “a civic as well as a commercial message,” revealing the new economic power and prestige of insurance companies. life insurance, the product of 19th-century prosperity and the availability of a new immigrant market, helped calm a family’s fears that its breadwinner might die young.24 the multivalence of meanings for tall buildings continued to develop with completion of new york’s woolworth building in 1913. not just content to express the fact that it was the world’s tallest building, it needed the additional “cathedral of commerce” moniker to stake a metaphorical claim as well. church and state stood recombined in a spire that conveyed capitalist triumph. sometimes, though, the use of exemplification and metaphor in tall building has taken more traditional forms. the chicago temple, designed by holabird and roche in 1924, is a united methodist church on top of skyscraper. it was the tallest building in chicago from 1924-1930. and, at 29 stories and 568 feet, it remains the tallest church building in the world (still outdoing the côte d’ivoire’s yamoussoukro basilica, which soars a mere 489 feet).25 two u.s. states—nebraska and louisiana—have skyscrapers as their capitols, but these were exceptions to the growing subjugation of government to private corporate towers. other planned towers participated into geo-political competition. the russian communists proposed a mammoth palace of the soviets in the 1930s, intended to overshadow both the past achievements of the adjacent kremlin and to handily out-do america’s empire state building. the project remained unbuilt. elsewhere, the use of building height as an extension of international political tension reached a particularly memorable moment in the urban staging of the national pavilions of rival powers at the 1937 paris world’s fair. here, arrayed across a grand court constructed adjacent to the eiffel tower, the german pavilion was allocated a site immediately opposite the spot offered to the soviet union. in his rather self-serving famous memoir, inside the third reich, hitler’s architect albert speer 47 isparchitecture.com revealed the true d e s i g n p o l i t i c s impulse behind his design for the german side of the urbanistic c o n f r o n t a t i o n . “while looking over the site in paris,” speer writes with a degree of implausibility, “i by chance stumbled into a room containing the secret sketch of the soviet pavilion;” sculpted figures 33’ tall striding toward the german pavilion. “i therefore designed a cubic mass, also elevated on stout pillars, which seemed to be checking this onslaught, while from the cornice of my tower an eagle with the swastika in its claws looked down on the russian sculptures.”26 (figure 6) during the early years of the cold war, stalin proposed a series of large towers intended to house (and thereby highlight) a series of non-capitalist achievements, such as universities. clearly, building heights had become not just a matter of an exemplified architectural property but a tool for geopolitical competition—a way for russians to contend with the americans at their own game. in that context, the specter of a much-discussed trump tower in moscow, whether constructed from partnership or collusion, would have carried an additional layer of import. overall, though, the design-politics of skyscrapers has long since shifted away from either an intra-american or cold war enterprise, and long since become an international phenomenon. cities in china, taiwan, korea, and malaysia have put national, and often nationalist, stakes into the ground through aspirations to build tallest. then, before “peak oil” might come to pass, middle clearly, building heights had become not just a matter of an exemplified architectural property but a tool for geopolitical competition “ ” figure 6: postcard, 1937 paris exposition ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 48 v a le easterners joined the game with peaks of their own. dubai’s leadership willfully invented a high-rise corridor, culminating with the world’s tallest building in 2010, standing 828 meters (2716 feet). when under construction, it was known as burj dubai to highlight its location—even as dubai faced considerable economic difficulties. but at the opening, which was timed to coincide with the 4th anniversary of sheikh mohammed bin rashed al-maktoum’s rule in dubai, the name was announced as the burj khalifa, in honor of the emir of its neighbor and rival, abu dhabi, which had lent money to cover dubai’s debts.27 so, in goodman’s terms, the burj does indeed exemplify height, but renaming dubai’s apex for an abu dhabi emir also reveals the heights of chutzpah—though i doubt that was the word they used to describe it. by the early 2020s, the home of the world’s tallest building—intended to rise at least 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) will likely have migrated to saudi arabia, another place seeking the global recognition for its kingdom in a manner that is more visible—and visualizable—than hidden oil reserves. the design-politics of color if the architectural property of height also exemplifies politics, so too does the property of color, especially if that color can be strategically manipulated. increasingly, whether through interior lighting or through projections, architectural façades have become re-programmable. buildings are often lit to commemorate particular holidays or sports facilities, but sometimes the use of color can deliberately carry a design-politics. as one example, following the tragic shooting of coptic christian pilgrims near cairo in may 2017, the mayor of tel aviv honored the victims by lighting the tel aviv municipal building in the colors of the egyptian flag. this act of symbolic solidarity action was repeated in november, following an attack that killed more than two hundred worshippers at a crowded mosque on the sinai peninsula known to be frequented by sufis.28 the design-politics of materials similarly, even the actual materials of buildings can sometimes be an expression of design-politics. albert speer, aided by some sketches provided by hitler himself, planned and designed the gargantuan germania to replace the center of berlin with a grandiose north-south axis. speer reports that hitler insisted that the vast dome of the great hall be constructed of masonry without any steel reinforcement. accordingly, speer’s highly dubious “theory of ruin value” promised that the resultant building, 49 isparchitecture.com once rendered into ruins after a thousand years, would have no aesthetically displeasing protrusions of rebar.29 just as the city was to be an extension of the nazi politics of global conquest—the word in stone—so, too, the materiality of the unreinforced stone itself was meant to convey power and control. but this is not the most striking way that the very materiality of stone exemplifies design-politics, and not just design. martin kitchen’s trenchant biography, speer: hitler’s architect, notes that in nov. 1938 some three thousand jews were forced to leave berlin every month; they were “evicted, forced into exile, terrorized or rounded up in concentration camps.” speer wanted to do this not just to free up well located apartments for others but also to build up an ex-urban workforce that could be used for germania. as kitchen argues, in close collaboration with the ss, he ruthlessly exploited the labour of concentration camp inmates in quarries, brickyards and factories producing building materials, they worked under appalling conditions and the mortality rate was shockingly high. speer made thousands of jewish families homeless, most of whom were handed over to the gestapo to be shipped to what was delicately described as ‘the east.’ 30 the mauthausen (austria) and flossenbürg (bavaria) camps established in 1938 were explicitly sited to provide high quality stone for berlin rebuilding. sachenhausen (near berlin) supplied labor for brickworks at oranienburg, which was also built at speer’s request in 1938. specialized stone for other projects led to siting of grossrosen (in polish silesia) for bluish-grey granite, and natzweiler-struthof in alsace for reddish granite. in this way, the material needs of rebuilding berlin and other monuments caused speer and his team of planners and architects to be intimately involved in the ‘final solution.’ this chilling account this chilling account provides further evidence that architectural properties such as stone may exemplify far more than their literal materiality. “ ” ap . vol 2 . no 2 . 2017 provides further evidence that architectural properties such as stone may exemplify far more than their literal materiality. nazi architecture and nazi urbanism were not just violations of scale and distortions of neoclassicism in aesthetic terms; their material origins also inextricably linked them to violations and distortions of human rights. in short, the siting of concentration camps and the building of cities were part of the same nefarious complex of design-politics. the design-politics of symmetry so, if seemingly innocuous aspects such as height, color and materials are implicated in design-politics—and cannot be left to inhabit some wishful quasi-autonomy of architectural design—are there any exemplified architectural properties that might still remain apolitical acts of aesthetics? one possibility for this might be the notion of symmetry. surely something as quintessentially aesthetic as this can occupy a place safely removed from politics? well, perhaps not—or at least not always. architectural symmetry is not just the solid-void-solid of the lincoln memorial. it can also convey implications of equivalency, with parallel weights given to each side of some central point. in turn, however, it also matters what (or who) is being weighted and aesthetically presented as parallel and equivalent. and symmetry also draws particular attention to whatever is signaled out as the center of the composition, be it a front door or an entire highlighted realm. sometimes, as in the case of the almshouse developed in 1800 to house boston’s poor, symmetry is about more than visual balance; it also can encode a sense of separated but equal that carries a social, or even political meaning. what we see here is symmetry used to accommodate and enforce the institution’s gender separation—indigent men on one side, indigent women on the other. and, importantly, the middle part is not just some attractively articulated a-b-a aesthetic rhythm, but is instead generated by the need to provide a chapel at center, as a source of moral judgment and redemption for the benighted denizens of the almshouse. (figure 7) the design-politics of mediated references: freedom, security, democratic access, exclusion if even the most intrinsically architectural elements can be bound up with politics—goodman’s category of exemplification—it is even easier to return to the case for finding a design-politics in the other categories va le 50 51 isparchitecture.com of denotation, metaphor, and mediated reference. denotation, especially when it can be altered or augmented through the actions of others, seems easily bound with politics. and, similarly, metaphors—simply because they are already rooted in culturally freighted language—also seem particularly malleable to political manipulation. this leaves mediated references, already the part of goodman’s quartet that seems furthest from architectural purity. using two final examples, i aim to show how designers deliberately shape the intended conceptual resonances of their work, while also demonstrating just how easy it is for such mediated references to shift—just as the lincoln memorial moved from “union” to “civil rights” as its primary referent. following the destruction of the twin towers in the 2001 9/11 attacks--themselves a deliberate targeting of exemplified architectural properties (height) and metaphorical expression (capitalism and world trade)—daniel l i b e s k i n d ’ s c o m p e t i t i o n winning urban design plan for the ground zero site memorably entered the world of mediated references because he dubbed his central structure the freedom tower. moreover, libeskind gave it symbolically resonant height of 1776 feet—a number that had culturally-encoded american meaning as a mediated reference for “independence” even if it could not be a palpable measurement of height. underscoring the designer’s figure 8: freedom tower and lower manhattan figure 7: almshouse ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 52 v a le intent—just in case the conceptual resonance of the building might be lost—libeskind’s competition rendering showed the form of the seemingly abstract building to be anthromorphically mimicking the raised arm of the statue of liberty. the design-politics of the urban design scheme and the building were as much about the concept of american-style freedom as a direct counterpoint to the restrictive politics of terrorists as it was about the form of buildings. sadly, the mediated reference to “independence” and “freedom” was not to last; instead, as built, the blockier one world trade center building designed by david childs exhibits far greater attention to issues of security than freedom; its fortified base is designed to withstand the impact of a truck bomb (figure 8). turning now to canberra, australia, it is possible to explore other struggles over mediated reference in the contested terrain of this capital city designed by american walter burley griffin. griffin’s competitionwinning plan featured a “land axis” that included a triangular district of government buildings culminating in a “capital hill,” as well as a perpendicular water axis along an artificial lake. the australian government, slowly but surely, executed many aspects of griffin’s plan despite many alterations, yielding a long axis of power stretching from the australian war memorial at the base of mount ainslie southwest to parliament house. (figure 9) the result is both a dominant narrative about “garden cities” and democracy—but also a counter-narrative promulgated in the same central space by aboriginal activists who regard the very site of the capital as an illegitimate usurpation of “sacred land.” intermittently since 1972, and consistently since 1992, these activists have maintained an “aboriginal embassy”—an informal settlement placed directly athwart the country’s most iconic political space.31 (figure 10) in addition to tents and signage that conveys reminders about “stolen children,” “native title,” and “genocide,” a ceremonial flame has been kept alight since 1998. in other words, there is no shared mediated reference; one group’s strong association is the negation of the other. it took three-quarters of a century, but eventually griffin’s plan for a capital hill with a capitol building yielded an unusual hybrid—a parliament building carved into the hill, seemingly there to symbolize the people’s freedom to walk over the top of the hill and look down upon the halls of the legislative representatives. yet security concerns quickly ended the access to the summit, thereby shifting the mediated reference. meanwhile, parliamentarians drive their cars directly into underground parking and, unlike the provisional parliament house that preceded this one, there is 53 isparchitecture.com no longer any intermediary outdoor space where lawmakers can be stopped to confer with journalists.32 and for some aboriginals, the building still seems closed off. politicians celebrated the role of the aboriginal artist who designed the mosaic forecourt but the official royal institute of australian architects booklet about the building treats the entry sequence as a calculated symbolic spatial sequence that narrates the “advent of european civilization.”33 with entry through a detached trabeated portico, (figure 11) it is as if indigenous culture has been trampled over and left outside. clearly this parliament house is a building, like all good public structures, that means in multiple and complex ways. conclusion: building a design-politics as these examples from around the world have shown, there is increasing convergence between design and politics—enough, i think, to warrant a hyphen. the mechanisms of meaning— the 'how?' sorts of questions about the meaning of buildings that nelson goodman asked us to try to isolate—are inextricably linked to what, why, and where buildings mean. is the building on figure 9: canberra figure 10: aboriginal embassy figure 11: parliament house ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 54 v a le sacred land? does acquiring its materials depend on conscripted labor? do its metaphors allude to oppressive rather than emancipatory practices? will artists annotate the façades with contentious messages? agendas for public buildings are set not just by architects, or even by their clients, but by a variety of contested actions and personal, subnational, national and international priorities. the architecture of buildings matters, but it is their larger design-politics that richly renders them as central to the human experience. the author wishes to thank dr. suzanne harris-brandts for her excellent research assistance. endnotes 1. this phrase, from on war, is sometimes translated with the word “policy” replacing “politics” and with the word “by” replaced by “with.” 2. nelson goodman, “how buildings mean” in goodman and catherine elgin, eds., reconceptions in philosophy (indianapolis: hackett, 1988), 31-48. 3. earlier attempts to deploy goodman to explain the lincoln memorial appear in both editions of lawrence j. vale, architecture, power, and national identity (new haven: yale university press, 1992 and new york: routledge, 2008). 4. this exclusionary policy was dropped in 1943. at about this time, maryland artist mitchell jamieson created a 12’ by 7’ mural, called “an incident in contemporary american life,” which adorns a wall in basement of the interior department building. on feb. 1, 2018, to mark the beginning of black history month the interior department held a ceremony to mark the mural’s 75th anniversary. this resulted from the activism of a massachusetts high school student who wrote an op-ed in the washington post, as well as letters to federal officials and oprah winfrey; elise takahama, “westwood student wins recognition for forgotten civil rights mural,” boston globe, 1 february 2018; https://www.bostonglobe. com/metro/2018/02/01/westwood-student-wins-recognition-forforgotten-civilrights-mural/rlb65wwyvbolgumr6wv4nk/story. html 5. goodman, 43-44. 6. stanford anderson, “critical conventionalism in architecture,” 55 isparchitecture.com assemblage 1 (october 1986), 6-23; stanford anderson, “quasi-autonomy in architecture: the search for an ‘in-between,'” perspecta 33 (2002), 30-37. 7. “mediated monuments and national identity,” journal of architecture 4 (winter 1999), pp. 391-408. 8. blair kamin, “donald trump: giant sign on his chicago tower is like hollywood sign,” chicago tribune, 5 june 2014; blair kamin, “donald trump’s sycophantic, vitriolic treatment of architecture critics,” chicago tribune, 7 october 2016. 9. micah maidenberg and ryan ori, “trump to sign maker: you’re hired,” crain’s chicago business, 21 february 2014. 10. trump quoted in kamin, “donald trump: giant sign...” 11. city of chicago, office of the mayor, “mayor emanuel announces proposed ordinance to establish a chicago river corridor special sign district,” 17 september 2014; https:// www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/ press_releases/2014/sep/mayor-emanuelannouncesproposed-ordinance-to-establish-a-chicag.html; “city bans big signage along river, but trump’s sign stays,” curbed, 14 november 2014. 12. corey mueller, “will trump tower sign be obscured by flying pigs?” chicago tribune, 4 may 2017. 13. kelly bauer and david matthews, “throw trump tower into the river? 7,000 chicagoans to join symbolic dumping,” the block club, 13 january 2016; https://www.dnainfo.com/ chicago/20160113/downtown/want-tosstrumptower-into-river-theres-event-for-that/ 14. ana cerrud and david a. fahrenthold, “trump’s name is stripped from panama hotel,” washington post, 5 march 2018; kirk semple, steve eder and ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 56 v a le ben protess, “panama hotel owner declares victory and trump’s name is removed,” new york times, 5 march 2018. 15. https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/protesters-projectpictures-putin-trump-soho-hotel-article-1.3393395; https://news. artnet.com/art-world/trump-soho-hotel-russia-ties-1045406; https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/artist-projects-trump-soho_ us_598a19f7e4b0449ed50622b1; https://www.businessinsider.com/ trump-putin-meme-russia-trump-soho-hotel-new-york-2017-8 16. christopher brennan, “trump soho signs come down at newly christened dominick hotel, though checkered past remains,” new york daily news, 21 december 2017. 17. the “trump – coming 2016” sign received considerable press coverage during the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. d.c. city council members proposed investigating its removal, but ultimately, the federal election commission said that the sign was not a violation. aaron c. davis, “trump’s ‘coming 2016’ sign stays on federal building near white house,” washington post, 20 july 2015; perry stein, “that huge ‘trump’ sign between the white house and capitol is being removed,” washington post, 18 august 2016. 18. nicole chavez and emily smith, “’pay trump bribes here’ sign projected onto trump’s dc hotel,”cnn.com, 16 may 2017; christopher mele and daniel victor, “”’pay trump bribes here’ projected on trump hotel in washington,” new york times, 16 may 2017; carolina miranda, “meet robin bell, the artist who project protest messages onto trump’s d.c. hotel last night,” los angeles times, 16 may 2017; maria chu, “the artist projecting on to trump hotel,” bbc news, 7 june 2017; associated press, “anti-trump images become big business for dc projectionist,” 21 august 2018, https://wtop.com/dc/2018/08/ anti-trump-images-become-big-business-for-dc-projectionist/slide/1/ 19. jessica taylor and peter overby, “federal watchdog finds government ignored emoluments clause with trump hotel,” national public radio, 16 january 2019; https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/685977471/federalwatchdog-finds-government-ignored-emoluments-clause-with-trumphotel 20. curtis m. wong, “lgbtq group projects word trump reportedly tried to ban from cdc onto his hotel,” huffington post 28 december 2017; https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hrc-trump-hotel-cdcreportedlybanned-words_us_5a3aa7d2e4b0b0e5a79f16ae. the “banned words” terminology was likely overstated—followon reporting suggested 57 isparchitecture.com that, far from a ban, the list of words was merely a suggestion of terms to avoid if an organization wanted to get funding during a highly-politicized era. 21. robin bell (@bellvisuals), “projecting #bootpruitt on the epa, it’s time for @ epascottpruitt to go!,” twitter post, 28. march 2018; https://twitter.com/bellvisuals/ status/979142626548109313?lang=en; “’sessions must go’ projected on doj headquarters,” usa today, 19 may 2017. 22. m.w. folsom, the facts about home owning: an authoritative presentation (chicago: national association of real estate boards, 1922). 23. spiro kostof, the city shaped (boston: bulfinch press, 1991), 320. 24. mona domosh, “the symbolism of the skyscraper: case studies of new york’s first tall buildings,” journal of urban history 14, 3 (may 1988), 337, 339. 25. http://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/ chicago-temple-building/2609; https:// www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/15/ yamoussoukro-notre-dame-de-la-paix-ivory-coastworldslargest-basilica-history-of-cities-in-50buildings-day-37 26 albert speer, inside the third reich (new york: simon and schuster, 1970), 81. 27. andy hoffman, “dubai’s burj khalifa: built out of opulence; named for its saviour,” the globe and mail, 4 january 2010; https://www.theglobeandmail .com/reporton-business/dubais-burj-khalifabuiltou t -o f opu l enc e -named fo r i t s s a v i ou r / article1208413/ 28. “tel aviv city hall lit with egypt flag in solidarity with copt terror victims,” times of israel, 28 may 2017; https://www. timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-city-hall-lit-withap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 58 v a le egypt-flag-in-solidarity-with-cairo-terror-victims/; “egyptian flag lights up ta city hall in solidarity with mosque victims,” times of israel, 24 november 2017; https://www.timesofisrael.com/ egyptian-flag-lights-up-ta-city-hall-in-solidarity-with-mosque-victims/. 29 martin kitchen, speer: hitler’s architect (new haven: yale university press, 2015), 34. 30. kitchen, 72-73, 85. 31. national museum of australia, “aboriginal tent embassy;” https:// www.nma.gov.au/definingmoments/resources/aboriginal-tent-embassy; tom mcilroy, “the aboriginal tent embassy has been left off the act heritage list,” canberra times, 19 april 2015; monica tan, “the aboriginal tent embassy: ‘we were all young, crazy, but we believed in justice,’” the guardian, 10 may 2016. 32. james weirick, “don’t you believe it: critical response to the new parliament house,” transition (summer/autumn 1989), 65. 33. the celebratory volume sponsored by the raia is haig beck, ed., parliament house canberra: a building for the nation (sydney: collins, 1988), 20-25; joint house department (canberra), australia’s parliament house: the meeting place of our nation (canberra: australian government publishing service, 1989), 8. isparchitecture.com koolhaas’ revision of foucault’s panopticon, or how architecture and philosophy just met andré patrão 1. to ask about the interactions between philosophy and architecture architecture and philosophy have engaged with one other, directly, marginally, or just simply implicitly, in the works and discourse of academics, practitioners, and critics, most evidently in architectural modernism and postmodernism, but most intensively in the reactions to both. philosophy has been avidly sought by architects to help question, disclose reveal, systematize, express, and expand the understanding of architectural works, the world upon which they intervene, the discipline itself, and the role of its practitioners and theoreticians. architecture, in turn, has grown within philosophy from a passing example or an illustrative metaphor of some other matter, or a generally misfit artform within an aesthetic theory, into a topic in its own right—as testified by the recent development of a ‘philosophy of architecture.’ the particularly acute multiplication and radicalization of interactions between philosophy and architecture throughout the 20th century produced a number of well-known cases in which an author, work, school, movement, or approach from one discipline had a direct decisive effect the other. famously, norberg-schulz relied heavily on martin heidegger’s philosophical writings to elaborate his own distinctive architectural phenomenological ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 60 pa tr ão theories. kenneth frampton, also well-read in the german philosopher’s writings, was never shy about the effect hannah arendt exerted on him. at times philosophers and architects collaborated, such as in 1985 when bernard tschumi invited jacques derrida and peter eisenman to design a garden pavilion in parc de la villette (1982-1998), or when discussions between jean baudrillard and jean nouvel were published as the book the singular objects of architecture (2002). preceding them all is of course the philosopher who also briefly became an architect, ludwig wittgenstein in the design and construction of house wittgenstein (1928). these celebrated examples represent the epitomes of a still widespread tendency which, in diverse ways and to different degrees, shapes both philosophical and architectural works. and yet, seldom does either discipline take a step back to reflect upon the motives and methods of these interactions as a research topic in itself. how does architecture make use of philosophy? how does philosophy speak of architecture? why does one turn towards the other? what comes about in their doing so? we shall engage these questions by analyzing one particular casestudy of such interactions: the potential influence of philosopher michel foucault’s discipline and punish (1975) on architect rem koolhaas’ koepel panopticon prison renovation project (1981). this connection is far less well-known than the previously mentioned examples, as it is far more low-key. in fact, it is difficult to point out or even discern its existence. however, as shall be seen, this discreteness does not mean that there is no case-study, but rather that discreteness is one of its principal traits, and one which distinguishes it uniquely from the cannon of architecture and philosophy’s interactions. we shall begin by introducing the two protagonists of each domain and their respective contributions to the case-study: first, foucault and the popular section of discipline and punish’s chapter “panopticism;” second, koolhaas’ renovation proposal for the koepel panopticon prison and the explanatory text revision that came with it. third, we will dwell on how the former’s philosophical thinking may have exerted direct yet nearly imperceptible consequential influence upon the latter’s architectural project. fourth and finally, the distinctive characteristics of this case-study shall be brought before the broader questions of how philosophy and architecture can engage one another. 61 isparchitecture.com 2. michel foucault, and panopticism michel foucault has long been a recurring reference in architectural discourse. his writings on the socially marginalized, the power structures that set them apart from the mainstream, and the role of a certain conception of knowledge in enforcing this system have informed and influenced architectural concerns, generally— but not only—through the social sciences. his concept of heterotopia, for example, continues to sprout a rich variety of contradictory readings and reflections, while delighting the imagination for architecture researchers, practitioners, researchers, and even students, very much due to his original social critiques and the inspiring images with which he conveyed them. the force of foucault’s impact on architecture is rather surprising, though, considering that architecture is not a major foucauldian topic, nor even a minor one, nor did he ever produce any literature whatsoever exclusively or even primarily dedicated to architecture. for example, the famous lecture about heterotopias “of other spaces” (des espaces autres), delivered to the circle of architectural studies (cercle d’études architecturales) in 1967, is in fact little more than a copy of “heterotopias” (des hétérotopies), the 1966 radio broadcast on france culture about utopia and literature, and with absolutely no intent to engage architecture at all—much like the concept’s first appearance in the order of things (les mots et les choses, 1966) which also focused on literature. the closest foucault came to addressing architecture directly, thematically and extensively was in “space, knowledge, and power,” a 33-question interview conducted by american cultural anthropologist paul rabinow, and published in the architecture and design journal skyline in on march 1982. however, even there, architecture is not so much discussed directly as a topic in itself but rather as seldom does either discipline take a step back and reflect upon the motives and methods of these interactions as a research topic in itself. how does architecture make use of philosophy? how does philosophy speak of architecture? “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 62 pa tr ão a gateway into topics that underlie it (e.g. knowledge and power) which actually interested him. it so happened that they interested architects too. indeed, in foucault’s writings architecture and architectural works only tend to appear as metaphors or as case-studies to illustrate and develop some issue other than architecture itself. and perhaps the most effective deployment of both strategies is found in the second section of the chapter “panopticism” of his book discipline and punish. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (surveiller et punir – naissance de la prison), published in 1975, is a genealogical inquiry into the emergence of the modern prison system, particularly in france, and a study of its disciplinary mechanisms’ widespread presence in many other areas of society. the emphasis falls on the reformist disciplinary penal system developed since the late 18th / early 19th century which, though far more benign than the punitive system it supplanted, nevertheless constituted an intensive form of generalized social control. at the center of this kind of disciplinarity are surveillance strategies—as hinted at in the discrepancy between the book’s original title (surveiller et punir) and its english translation (discipline and punish), where the french surveiller (“to monitor”, in the sense of “surveillance”) is replaced by “discipline.” to illustrate these disciplinary mechanisms, foucault resorts to what he considers their most paradigmatic example: the panopticon, a building typology devised, curiously enough, not by an architect but by renowned the english philosopher jeremy bentham (1748-1832), inspired by his brother samuel’s organization of industrial labor compounds. in its simplest and most characteristic form, the panoptical typology consists of a cylindrical multi-story arrangement of partitions around a central observation house. the observers at the center have a constant unhindered view into every partitioned space; hence the typology’s name from the combination of the ancient greek pan (all) and optikos (pertaining to sight), meaning “allseen” or “all-under-sight.” from within the partitioned spaces, however, it is impossible to perceive what happens in the observation house.1 thus, in a panoptical system, a small number of observers can monitor a large number of people at any given time; the prominent feature, though, is that those monitored, unable to verify when they are or are not in fact being watched act as if they always are. the prisoners thus become their own guards. foucault, like bentham, regards the panopticon as an architectural formulation of certain benthanian philosophical and social principles— in a way making it too a case-study of architectural and philosophical interaction—which bentham celebrates optimistically in panopticon; or, 63 isparchitecture.com the inspection-house2 (figure 1) and foucault denounces bleakly in discipline and punish. for both, however, architecture is only employed as a means to make a point, but is not the point itself. foucault does not invoke the panopticon because it is architecture. in discipline and punish the panopticon is both a metaphor—the disciplinary power relations described throughout the book symbolized by the dramatic image of the archetypal surveillance techniques employed to enforce it—and a casestudy: not just a representation but a paradigmatic operational mechanism that enables and enforces the power structures of which foucault speaks. throughout the “panopticism” chapter, foucault’s interpretation and depiction of the panopticon ends up producing a philosophical description of an architectural typology, by expounding its historical origin, purpose, possible functions, modes of operation, formal characteristics, and societal role. inadvertently, though, in doing so his reading also becomes an interpretation of the panopticon qua architectural object, albeit one grounded on his own understanding of architecture seen later in “space, knowledge, and power,” as an mere instrument of far greater underlying forces. hence this is why, in his words: the panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form; its functioning, abstracted from any obstacle, resistance or friction, [may very well] be represented as a pure architectural and optical system: it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached architectural works only tend to appear in foucault’s writings as metaphors, to illustrate a nonarchitectural point, or as case-studies, to illustrate and develop some other nonarchitectural issue “ ” figure 1: bentham’s panopticon ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 64 pa tr ão from any specific use.3 discipline and punish thus unwittingly offers a philosophical critique of an architectural object and, with it, an accessible way from architecture into foucault’s philosophical thinking. between 1979 and 1981, koolhaas made use of both. 3. rem koolhaas, and the koepel panopticon prison the second protagonist of this story is a young rem koolhaas, renowned in the architecture world after delirious new york (1978) but still seeking to establish himself as a practitioner. in 1978, his office for metropolitan architecture produced what would become the first entry in their official list of projects: the dutch parliament extension, in the hague, netherlands. despite an ex aequo first place in the competition, alongside the dutch architect leo heijdenrijk , the proposal was ultimately rejected along with all the others. however, oma was granted what koolhaas called a “consolation prize:” in 1979, the dutch government commissioned oma to assess the possibility of prolonging the lifetime, by another 50 years, of a prison, built in arnhem between 1882 and 1886. (figure 2) the original building, designed by dutch architect and engineer johan frederik metzelaar, was known as the koepelgevangenis—a conjunction of the dutch words “jail” (gevangenis) and “cupola” (koepel), alluding to its distinctive large domed roof. along the inside of its cylindrical walls were four floors of holding cells, around a guardhouse at the center from which guards could originally see into every cell without being seen. in other words, the arnhem koepel was a panoptical prison. oma’s proposal adds a series of new functions and structures to the prison complex: outside of the original building to the east there is the entrance, lobby, reception area, porter’s room, and meeting room; from here a visitor heads south, to the visitor’s garden and visitor’s room; to the north is the pavilion for difficult prisoners, a kitchen, and a patio in between, as well as a storage area; to the west is the guard’s’ canteen, guard’s’ cloak room, instruction department, shops, and more storage space, as well as the sports area, which includes a gymnasium, judo room, multi-purpose room, running track, sports field, and a pool. inside the old koepel dome is a library, barber, meeting room, shop, and an infirmary. the original building undergoes modifications as well: two new satellite structures house living quarters, dining rooms, and bathrooms, enabling the possibility of dividing the inmates of each floor into two groups (of 65 isparchitecture.com sensibly 48 people each), or even more if the satellite is divided too; and the cells, no longer constantly translucent to the guards, offer privacy. the most significant change, though, is the replacement of the central guardhouse by two lower-level streets intercepting in a cruciform manner, containing several of the aforementioned functions and opening access to the rest of the complex. in s, m, l, xl (1995), koolhaas alludes to this s i m u l t a n e o u s l y metaphorical and practical gesture with two gruesome frames from luis buñuel and salvador dali’s film un chien andalou (1929), displaying an eye being cut: the crossing streets cut the all-seeing eye, the pan-optikos. in other words, koolhaas removes panopticism from the panopticon. both generalist and specialized literature commonly assume that oma’s redesign of the koepel panopticon prison was strongly influenced by discipline and punish, published just four four years before the commission, and by foucauldian thinking in general. one of the earliest and most prominent examples of these texts was anthony vidler’s article “the ironies of metropolis: notes on the work of oma,” published in skyline in march 1982—by no coincidence in the same skyline edition issue that included foucault’s interview “space, knowledge, and power.” according to vidler, “[in the arnhem prison project] we find echoes of a reading of michel foucault, whose studies of discipline and power have strongly influenced the politics and strategies of the generation of oma.”, and it is “in the space marked by foucault after the crossing streets cut the all-seeing eye, the pan-optikos. in other words, koolhaas removes panopticism from the panopticon. “ ” figure 2: arnhem prison ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 66 pa tr ão nietzsche, that the project has been conceived.” 4 indeed, the easily accepted assumption of foucauldian influence on the koepel renovation does not appear to raise any red flags that would lead us to question it. until we do question it, that is: exactly where is this influence? we ought to remember that the current inquiry does not merely search for a possible foucauldian interpretation of the project, one amongst many that a critic may adopt to understand koolhaas’ project once concluded, but rather the actual foucauldian influence during the design process that produced the project. thus, instead of assuming the existence of a case-study, we must first ask if there really is a case to study. the task presents difficulties though. as it turns out, koolhaas and foucault actually met in what we could well imagine to be a pivotal event: around seven years before the arnhem commission, architecture student rem koolhaas had just arrived in ithaca (new york, usa), where he would attend cornell university from 1972 to 1973. in the fall semester of 1972, foucault spent three weeks at cornell lecturing at cornell’s romance studies department. the celebrity french thinker and the promising dutch pupil became acquainted during this time. the encounter itself, though, was not especially life-changing. recalling the occasion in an interview with the cornell journal of architecture 8: re (2004), koolhaas affirms that he “cannot claim any kind of significant intellectual influence”5 from foucault. admittedly, the answer is disappointing, but not surprising, coming from someone who readily makes use of his formidably rich knowledge of his and other various fields in his works, but resolutely resists sacrificing his authorial originality to them. in 2008, in an interview for radical philosophy, the interviewers jon goodbun and david cunningham noted how other architects of the same generation—eisenman, tschumi, and libeskind—explicitly associated themselves with various philosophical trends while koolhaas did not, to which he answered, after listing multiple philosophers he was acquainted with: “i don’t think these influences or relationships necessarily need to be flagged up. but it’s not an indifference to these thinkers.”6 indeed, any claim of an ‘influence’ upon koolhaas must be cautious in its use of the word. rather than a powerful force that invades and pervades his work, an ‘influence’ for koolhaas seems more like an ingredient which he takes hold of, tinkers with, processes and mixes with others to produce something of his own. the original sources of these external contributions become almost untraceable. it is in this sense that we must understand an exceptional confession, made at an event hosted by eth zürich in 2011, regarding delirious new york, published in the same year as the arnhem 67 isparchitecture.com commission: [there is something which is generally not recognized,] that actually this book was a kind of french book, in the sense that it was profoundly influenced not only by barthes, but also to some extent by foucault, and particularly by somebody who had become my personal friend, hubert damisch.7 could the same be said specifically for the arnhem project, though? in 1981 oma handed in the arnhem renovation project to the dutch ministry of justice with an essay called revision containing an overall historical analysis of the arnhem koepel prison and its typology; the theoretical and conceptual framework in which oma operated; and an objective programmatic and formal description of the project itself. the text was later published in s, m, l, xl (1995), a book traversed through and through by a cornucopia of words simulating a dictionary, and which includes three entries quoted from foucault: ‘exclusion’, quoted from foucault’s 1970 address to the collège de france under the entitled “l’ordre du discours,” translated by alan sheridan in 1972 as “the archaeology of knowledge & the discourse on language;” and, from discipline and punish, ‘visibility’ and ‘power.’8 we may, however, argue that these dictionary entries came after the fact, as a later recognition of an influence. nevertheless, revision also contains other little (but more than coincidental) connections. for one thing, the text’s description of the panopticon uses a series of words that appear in alan sherridan’s english translation of discipline and punish, but not, for example, in bentham’s panopticon; or, the inspection house (e.g. referring to the panopticon’s floors as ‘rings’ instead of ‘circumferences’). more importantly, though, revision echoes foucault’s bleak critical interpretation of the panopticon, resorting to similar reasons and indeed, the easily accepted assumption of foucauldian influence on the koepel renovation does not appear to raise any red flags that would lead us to question it. until we do question it, that is: exactly where is this influence? “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 68 pa tr ão description, so much so that we can even pinpoint revision’s similarities to the first two paragraphs, and perhaps part of the third, of the second section of “panopticism.” once again, though, we may counter by noting that perhaps these similarities only suggest a shared intellectual context between foucault and koolhaas, with crossing issues, discussions, and approaches, like vidler had noted so well. this was already the case at cornell, for the same academic milieu that brought foucault to campus, and that even pioneered the introduction of continental philosophy in the usa through the journal diacritic, surrounded koolhaas during his studies. it is no coincidence that koolhaas had also read roland barthes, another renowned structuralist and later post-structuralist from the same parisian intellectual scene as foucault’s before producing his “french book.” indeed, skepticism over the existence of a case study at all seems reinforced by the fact that throught the entire text of revision foucault is not once quoted, mentioned, or even alluded to even though he explicitly references the evaluation by the governmental jacobs committee, the accusations launched by the 19th century dutch parliament member wintgens, and prison typologies experimented with in amsterdam and maastricht. other unnamed decisive forces may also have come into play. four years before discipline and punish, robin evans published the article “bentham’s panopticon: an incident in the social history of architecture” (1971) in the architecture association quarterly, while koolhaas, an eager reader of these issues, was still a student at the school. evans, curiously enough, quoted one of foucault’s earlier publications in the essay, suggesting that not only was he acquainted with the french philosopher’s work, but found him pertinent for the topic too. their readings differed though: for example, evans’ focuses less on the role of authority—distinguishing his reading from koolhaas’ and foucault’s— but more on the panopticon’s solitary confinement—like koolhaas’, but unlike foucault’s. this may explain certain particularities of revision’s interpretation of the panoptical typology: on the one hand its two main pillars are the all-seeing surveillance system and solitary confinement, not so emphatically highlighted by foucault; on the other hand, it often omits critical components of discipline and punish, such as the panopticon’s imposition of self-surveillance upon the surveyed, a fundamental point for both bentham and foucault. an alternative possible explanation, though, comes from the same event in which koolhaas admitted some degree of foucauldian influence: [s]omehow i have a kind of sense of reticence, or chastity, or perhaps 69 isparchitecture.com it is that i write in my own kind of mind more literature than theory that prevents me from mentioning all these sources. and also because i am deeply aware that i am the kind of result of very respectable influences but also very unrespectable influences and that everything is a kind of amalgamation of trash and high culture […].9 in other words, we should not expect to find a smoking gun of direct influence as it may be dissolved with other elements, or even not exist at all. the difficulty in confirming the assumption of a case-study is both due to the fact that because the links between the architect’s and the philosopher’s works are not explicitly demarcated, and also because these are irreducible to a single simple and uncorrupted instance, act, or event. the cause lies partially with foucault’s less than marginal interest in architecture, but mostly with koolhaas’ own attitude towards external influences. it is nearly impossible to pinpoint an irrefutable, straightforwardly foucauldian effect upon the arnhem design, or to determine exactly how much can indeed be directly attributed to foucault, or how many links were consciously forged by koolhaas. notwithstanding, a reading of revision shall come to show that, to a significant degree, the koepel design does indeed deal with a foucauldian approach to a foucauldian representation and discussion of a benthanian object, regardless of whether this was or was not deliberate. it is in this sense that we can claim the existence of a case-study. 4. the foucaldian ‘influence’ (and lack of) in koolhaas’ designrevision: koolhaas from, through, beyond, besides foucault how does foucault’s and particularly discipline and punish’s influence appear in oma’s project for the arnhem panopticon renovation? to better the koepel design does indeed deal with a foucauldian approach to a foucauldian representation and discussion of a benthanian object, regardless of whether this was or was not deliberate. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 70 pa tr ão understand the design process we return to the explanations given in revision, whose seven small chapters may be split between a critical analysis of the old koepel—from historical overviews to the broader architectural debates they provoke, and of the new proposal that follows—from its conceptual aim to its formulation as an architectural project. the first few paragraphs contain oma’s interpretation of the panopticon qua typology, and of the arnhem panopticon in particular. more than simply an introduction for the reader, this description reveals the architects’ grounding interpretations of the site’s pre-existing conditions, thus constituting the object upon which to intervene. for example, we could conceive of the arnhem prison in terms of its urban situation, or of its distinct cylindrical form, or its colossal dome, the interior lighting, materiality, running costs, or environmental sustainability. each different reading of the site’s pre-existing conditions derives from different approaches, theoretical frameworks, priorities, interests, and many other factors which reveal and emphasize different aspects of the site and call for different responses koolhaas construes the koepel according to “the panopticon principle, with its mechanistic ideal,” as an application of “a universal principle of organization for situations in which a small group of supervisors monitors a much larger group of supervised.” for koolhaas, “[t]he arnhem koepel represents the principle in its purest form: a single, all-seeing “eye” is placed dead center in a circle of the observed.” however, this principle, “[o]ne hundred years later, has become intolerable.”10 in these words we recognize a synthetic and superficial semblance to foucault’s reading of bentham’s description of the panopticon: the stress on its mechanistic character and the purity of an ideal put into an architectural form is even reminiscent of the previously quoted passage of discipline and punish concerning the panopticon’s not being a ‘dream building’. in other words, oma’s interpretation of the pre-existing object, upon which they, as architects, shall intervene upon, broadly coincides with a foucauldian critical philosophical description of the panoptical typology. turning revision’s pages and moving towards the contents of oma’s own proposal, implicit reference to the philosopher, no longer limited to discipline and punish, persists. consider, for example, koolhaas’ argument for programmatic flexibility, rather than ideal pre-determined architectural formal typologies (koolhaas’ real interest), as a manner of accounting for the inevitably incessant historically shifting ideologies and their social formulation (foucault’s real interest): if prison architecture today can no longer pretend to embody 71 isparchitecture.com an “ideal”, it could regain credibility by introducing the theme of revision as raison d’être. a “modern” prison architecture would consist of a prospective archaeology, constantly projecting new layers of “civilization” on old systems of supervision.11 a reader familiar with foucault cannot help hearing echoes of the philosopher’s own concept of “archaeology”, as conveyed for example in the birth of the clinic: an archaeology of medical perception (naissance de la clinique – une archéologie du regard médical, 1963) and archaeology of knowledge (l’archéologie du savoir, 1969). koolhaas’ prospective archaeology both presupposes and builds from foucault’s archaeological method: on the one hand, it rejects trans-historical and transcultural absolute social and (consequentially) architectural models, embracing instead the constant transformation of what societies, or “civilizations” as the architect put it, regard as the best model in each period; on the other hand, it then turns this foucauldian analytical tool deployed on the past for an understanding of the present into a generative design principle projected towards the future. hence prospective archaeology, which does not simply create a new archaeological layer with the next prison typology, but rather builds on the fact of their inevitable demise and replacement. the arnhem renovation project is founded on the thematization of prospective archaeology. “arnhem could be an experiment with a form of renovation that articulates programmatic and ideological change without destroying the building itself.”12 foucault’s implicit presence as a reference understandably disappears as the design progresses deeper into architectural and technical territory. oma’s actual design gravitates around the surrealistinspired metaphor of cutting the panopticon’s allseeing eye, executed by replacing the guardhouse ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 72 pa tr ão with the two sunken streets from which the rest of the project spreads out. while this gesture may act upon foucault’s reading of the panopticon, it certainly does not act according to him. in fairness, discipline and punish is mostly a descriptive endeavor, and thus does not offer prescriptive orientations that koolhaas could follow. but would he, who so vehemently rejects external dominance over his work, ever agree to follow them even if he could? in the end, the full weight and extent of foucault’s influence upon oma’s design process is measured not only by philosophy’s presence, but also by philosophy’s absence. while discipline and punish, foucault, and philosophy in general do introduce decisive inputs throughout the design process, particularly in the initial interpretation of the pre-existing and in preparing an approach towards it, architecture is never sidelined as the dominating force. the koepel renovation project was not meant as a mere literal architectural formulation, expression, or translation of philosophical principles, discussions, and ideas. koolhaas meant to design, first and foremost, an architectural project—a seemingly banal yet radically simple approach within the larger architecture world’s interactions with philosophy. 5. philosophy for architecture,, architecture for philosophy despite two years of discussions with the dutch authorities and, eventually, an approval for construction, oma’s proposal for the arnhem prison was never built. its indefinite suspension was not due to any particular conceptual or programmatic problems, but to an all-too-familiar reason for architects; lack of funding. the koepel would eventually be renovated by martin van dort, of archivolt architecten bv, in a process that started in 1994and only ended in 2005.13 but the declining number of prisoners in the netherlands led the classified national monument to be closed in 2016, and sold in 2018. nevertheless, oma’s arnhem panopticon renovation project remains an exceptional, unique, and—design-wise—highly successful instance of a consequential interaction between philosophy and architecture. this outcome may surprise considering the two protagonists involved, the way they work within their own disciplines, and how they interact with the other’s: foucault’s disinterest in architecture as a research topic and koolhaas’ almost indiscriminate appropriating, and critiquing of the vast 73 isparchitecture.com multiple sources he knows. the result is a case-study as much about architecture and philosophy’s interested interaction as concepts and topics become shared across disciplinary boundaries as it is about their disjunction. we do not find an authoritative philosophical imposition of ill-fitting, inadequate, and even just unrealistic principles, norms, and judgements upon architecture. instead, foucault works within his own concerns, but develops them in such a way that they offer themselves to appropriation. in an interview with the geographers of the journal herodote, in 1976, foucault, insistently confronted with the fact that he had not said much about geography in his writings, offers a reply that can just as well be applied to architecture: if i do the analyses i do, it’s not because of some polemic i want to arbitrate but because i have been involved in certain conflicts regarding medicine, psychiatry and the penal system. […] it’s up to you, who are directly involved with what goes on in geography [or architecture], faced with all the conflicts of power which traverse it, to confront them and construct the instruments which will enable you to fight on that terrain. and what you should basically be saying to me is, ‘you haven’t occupied yourself with this matter which isn’t particularly your affair anyway and which you don’t know much about’. and i would say in reply, ‘if one or two of these “gadgets” of approach or method that i’ve tried to employ with psychiatry, the penal system or natural history can be of service to you, then i shall be delighted. if you find the need to transform my tools or use others then show me what they are, because it may be of benefit to me.’14 this is where koolhaas comes in. not, however, as the architect who obsessively attempts to koolhaas did not simply copy foucault into architecture, but rather borrowed his conceptual and terminological clarity to develop and better express his own ongoing architectural discussions “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 74 pa tr ão translate philosophical concepts into architectural form as if there lay an unassailable absolute foundation for architectural designs, and much less to superficially legitimize his work with empty or misunderstood quotations of a celebrated philosopher. koolhaas, both a brilliant theoretician and practitioner, respectfully instrumentalizes philosophy and, along with many other tools, takes what he needs as and when he needs it for the sake of the production of an architectural project first and foremost. his sources, almost impossible to isolate in a single moment of contact, may also very well arise from the sheer shared discourse between disciplines, which often includes influential literature like discipline and punish and, it would seem, seminal works of architecture too. the arnhem project thus shows architects how their designs can gain from resorting to philosophy without sacrificing architecture in the process. however, there are relevant insights for philosophers as well. while foucault’s study of the panopticon created a philosophical critique of an architecture object, koolhaas’ design in turn created a philosophicallycharged architectural reaction to a foucauldian interpretation of bentham’s panopticon—the conception of the pre-existing object upon which oma intervened. the koepel renovation project contains an architectural critique of the benthanian utilitarian vision that originated the panoptical typology, and a critical conversation with foucault’s own critique of it. as such, it can be read in philosophical terms, even if the architect’s action itself is not philosophy nor primarily philosophically motivated, for it does engage in a dialogue with philosophy even if through the distinct means of architecture. the koepel panopticon prison renovation is therefore not just a case-study for architects, but for philosophers too. endnotes 1. jeremy bentham, “panopticon; or, the inspection-house.” in the works of jeremy bentham, 4:36–142. (edinburgh: william tait) 1843, pp. 40-41. 2. bentham, 1843, p. 39. 3. michel foucault, discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, 1975, p. 205. 4. anthony vidler, “the ironies of metropolis: notes on the work of oma,” skyline, march, 1982 p. 21. 5. “oma re: omu: interview with rem koolhaas on oswarl mathias ungers.” interview by jeremy alain siegel, melissa constantine, matt eshleman, and steven zambrano cascante. the cornell journal of architecture 8: re, march 6, 2004. http://cornelljournalofarchitecture. 75 isparchitecture.com cornell.edu/read.html?id=18. 6. jon goodbun and david cunningham, “propaganda architecture: interview with rem koolhaas and reinier de graaf.” radical philosophy, october 30, 2008. https://www.radicalphilosophy. com/interview/rem-koolhaas-and-reinier-de-graaf. 7. rem koolhaas and bernard tschumi. “a conversation,” interview by trüby stephan. gta events eth zürich official website, may 18, 2011. https://video.ethz.ch/events/2011/d-arch_ gta/75db5f75-5ff9-41af-a221-c48ab14f8aa5.html. 8. “revision.” [1981] in s, m, l, xl, by rem koolhaas, bruce mau, and oma, 233–53, 2nd ed. new york: monacelli press, 1995. 9. rem koolhaas and bernard tschumi. “a conversation.” 10. revision p. 237. 11. revision p. 241. 12. ibid. 13. p.i. de berg, “arnhem renovatie, restauratie en uitbreiding koepelgevangenis” (rijskmonument)” archivolt architecten bv. accessed august 31, 2018. https://archivolt-bna.nl/web/wp-content/ uploads/2015/03/pi-de-berg-a4.pdf. 14. michel foucault, “questions on geography.” in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977, translated by colin gordon, 1st american ed., 64–77. new york: pantheon books, 1980. p. 65. foucault’s works cited in the text: “des hétérotopies.” france culture, july 12, 1966. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. 2nd vintage books ed. new york: vintage books, 1975. power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. edited by colin gordon. 1st american ed. new york: pantheon books, 1980. it does engage in a dialogue with philosophy and its subjects, even if through the distinct means of architecture. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 “questions on geography.” in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977, translated by colin gordon, 1st american ed., 64–77. new york: pantheon books, 1980. “space, knowledge, power.” in the foucault reader, edited by paul rabinow, 1st ed., 239–56. new york: pantheon books, 1982. surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison. collection tel. paris: gallimard, 1975. the archaeology of knowledge & the discourse on language. translated by a.m. sheridan smith. new york, ny: pantheon books, 1982. the order of things: an archaeology of the human sciences. vintage books edition. new york, ny: vintage books, 1966. michel foucault and john k. simon. “michel foucault on attica: an interview,” 1991 1974. m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 76 isparchitecture.com useless speculation: architectural obsolescence and the micro-parcels of gordon matta-clark’s fake estates (1973) rick fox “history doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.” --mark twain introduction more often than not, architecture is created to bolster the express beliefs and ambitions of those who sponsor it. individuals, groups, and institutions in power tend to promulgate symbols of their own prestige. architecture is thus understood as a tool of the powerful and by the powerful. real estate speculators are undeniable agents of change; they possess genuine power to transform both natural and built landscapes. many aspects of the change they promulgate are public and highly visible; others much less so. processes such as title transfer, subdivision, lot merger, covenants, deed restrictions, dedications, and easements vary greatly in their degree of public visibility. while the twin pillars of real estate economics—market value and investment performance (and their shadow features of irrational exuberance and obsolescence)—do not figure prominently in most academic literature on architecture, these topics have become unavoidable for today’s practitioners. an exploration of the ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 80 f ox broader philosophical implications of an economically speculative architecture created, bought, and sold by a surprisingly small number of financial elites is highly relevant for anyone wishing to be on the side of fairness of opportunity in the context of today’s staggering wealth inequality.1 the work of soho-based american artist gordon matta-clark is particularly instructive in this regard for two reasons. first, architecture is simultaneously the subject matter and the medium of much of his creative output. second, he challenges many cherished beliefs about the production of architecture. my point of departure in this essay will be an exploration of one of his lesser known but more conceptually-oriented works, reality properties: fake estates (“fake estates”). this work has been largely overlooked by critics eager to comment on his more famous building-cuts. additionally, fake estates was a work conceived at a time in the 1970’s when new york city was teetering on the verge of municipal bankruptcy, while at the same time promoting massive urban renewal schemes that clearly favored rapacious real estate speculation. these twin circumstances proved fertile ground for matta-clark in his work generally, and fake estates in particular. in this paper, i argue that this specific work offers us valuable architectural and philosophical lessons if we view it as a reductio argument that: 1) exposes several contradictory values that underpin real estate speculation; and, 2) highlights potential pitfalls in the architect-speculator relation. genealogy of reality properties: fake estates in late 1973 and early 1974 gordon matta-clark, best known for his building-cuts splitting (1974) englewood, n.j, and conical intersect (1975) paris, purchased fifteen surplus parcels of land sight unseen for between $25 and $75 each from the new york city real estate department at two separate public auctions. fourteen of the parcels are located in queens, and one on staten island. the parcels are tiny odd-shaped fragments ranging in size from a 27 square foot triangular sliver to a 355-foot long strip. the complete inventory of parcels is diagrammed in figure 1. if all fifteen parcels were somehow aggregated their total area would be 3,264 square feet, not even enough to make a tiny residential lot in queens. subsequent to their purchase, matta-clark collected all the relevant legal documents including notarized grant deeds, legal descriptions, sales 81 isparchitecture.com contracts, and parcel maps, along with numerous black & white photos he took during various site visits. the discrete works we know today as fake estates were assembled posthumously, in 1992, by his widow jane crawford, prompted by the urging of corrine diserens, a curator from the institut valencià d’art modern (ivam) in valencia spain who was researching a matta-clark retrospective, using the original materials he collected. while crawford named the individual works, i.e. “little alley” block 2497, lot 42 (1974); “jamaica curb” block 10142, lot 15 (1974); “maspeth onions” block 2406, lot 148 (1973); and “sidewalk grass” block 1107, lot 146 (1973), it was diserens who, in her retrospective, named the full collection reality properties: fake estates. the original materials themselves have an interesting provenance that is relevant here. matta-clark gave the materials to his friend norman fisher who agreed to hold them after fisher agreed to pay the property taxes that matta-clark was repeatedly ignoring. when fisher died in 1977, his executrix tina girouard became custodian who then returned the materials to crawford sometime in 1979 or 1980. matta-clark died in 1978, but around 1980 crawford began receiving what to her were mysterious delinquency notices from the city that the parcels were being confiscated for nonpayment of taxes. apparently, at the time crawford was unaware of her husband’s purchases. the eventual foreclosures are ironic given that he had purchased these lots at tax-foreclosure auction. in the case of “staten island” block 1224, lot 12 (50.34 square feet) the unpaid quarterly tax for fiscal 1974 amounted to $1.83. as of 2003 only four of the parcels had been purchased by private entities; the other eleven remained in administrative limbo. curiously, crawford elected not to include the tax bills in the assembled collages deeming them, “no longer relevant to the works”2 perhaps because she earnestly endeavored to present matta-clark’s it only takes a small surveyor’s error to change a perfect rectangle into an off-kilter trapezoid with an unaccountedfor surplus sliver. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 82 f ox work in the best possible light—in its purest form. in hindsight, her decision is unfortunate for two reasons. first, given that fake estates is a posthumously presented work, the record is incomplete (or deceptively oversimplified) without the follow-on story of the aftermath of mattaclark’s purchases because this story tells us a great deal about his collaborative networking method as an artist and social activist. second, for our purposes of architecture philosophy the eventual disposition, ownership, and transference of the parcels is relevant as an additional object-lesson consistent with the overall import of his intended project. the fact that eleven of the fifteen parcels appear to remain in administrative limbo is of no small consequence to matta-clark’s critique of property ownership as well as to my argument as to its importance. what we know of matta-clark’s intentions with respect to the fifteen parcels comes from numerous and fragmentary sources. interviews with his contemporaries produce incomplete and contradictory recollections about his intentions. as one commenter put it, “...the story of fake estates is both mythologized and full of holes.”3 by other accounts he purchased the lots without a clear intent as to what he planned to do. according to manfred hecht, his friend and building-cut collaborator, matta-clark lost interest in the properties and it was hecht who ultimately ended up owning them. one of the clearest expressions of matta-clark’s intentions comes from new york times reporter dan carlinsky writing a humor piece about the city’s real estate auctions. when asked by carlinsky after the auction what he planned to do with the lots, an effusive 28-year old mattaclark told the reporter he planned to use them in works of art he would soon be creating. making reference to one of the parcels that had no access to it from the public right-of-way (“maspeth onions”, block 2406, lot 148) he remarks, “that’s an interesting quality; something that can be owned but never experienced. that’s an experience itself.”4 what the total record of recollections, interviews and manuscripts reveal is that at the time the complete work he envisioned consisted of three parts: 1) a written documentation of the parcel including exact dimensions and location, and “perhaps a list of weeds growing there”5; 2) a full-scale photo of the property; and 3) the land itself. he intended that parts 1 and 2 would be included in a gallery exhibition, and that purchasers would acquire title to the land as part of their art purchase. thus, part of his reasoning for buying slivers becomes more obvious in that he regarded these parcel sizes to be “manageable” objects in a gallery setting where, for example, he might hang from the wall a 1-foot x 95-foot rectangular, or a 6-foot isosceles triangle-shaped photograph. neither the full scale photos 83 isparchitecture.com figure 1: micro-parcel inventory ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 84 f ox nor the gallery exhibition ever materialized. for a young soho artist of insufficient means struggling to find affordable housing and cheap gallery space the cultural mythology of a gentry class buying an estate in the economically devastated new york city of the mid-1970’s is an irony too rich to ignore. in the early 1970’s new york city had become a bleak, violent and dilapidated city in decline. the steady loss of manufacturing jobs as industry moved out of the city combined with a general flight to the suburbs left the city with countless empty buildings. abandoned tenement buildings and dilapidated side streets were commonplace throughout the city. the bronx borough alone lost one-third of its population in the 1970’s. the brooklyn neighborhood known as ‘dumbo’ remained uninhabited throughout most of the decade. in lower manhattan the world trade center site was being constructed while deteriorating neighborhoods burned. from 1970-1975 there were 68,456 fires in the bronx alone.6 arson, as a percent of all city fires rose from 1% in the 1960’s to over 7% in the 1970’s.7 landlords would occasionally burn down their own buildings to collect insurance money when they could no longer afford to maintain them. by mid-decade new york city, the global epicenter of capitalism, was sliding inexorably towards municipal bankruptcy. the absurdity that these parcels were all undevelopable—too small, odd-shaped, poorly situated, literally inaccessible from the public rightof-way—as homesteads, estates, or other meaningful forms of human inhabitation while they maintained their apparent exchange value is crucial to the ethos of fake estates. matta-clark was fascinated by the description of these surplus lots as “inaccessible.” from a 1974 interview with liza bear for avalanche, he says: what i basically wanted to do was to designate spaces that wouldn’t be seen and certainly not occupied. buying them was my own take on the strangeness of existing property demarcation lines. property is so all-pervasive. everyone’s notion of ownership is determined by the use-factor.8 an example of what matta-clark might have meant by ‘use-factor’ is offered to us by a story told by one of his colleagues. betsy sussler who accompanied him on one of his 1975 site visits to the queens parcels, that included a 2.55-foot wide strip of land in a 355-foot alley that neighbors had to cross over to enter into their private garages (block 3398, lot 116), remarks that matta-clark: …understood quite well the psychological and political factors involved in walking onto a person’s property to inform them that his 85 isparchitecture.com [matta-clark’s] piece of forgotten land he’d bought was in fact part of their driveway.9 as far as anyone knows matta-clark never enforced his property right to exclude his would-be trespasser neighbors. collectively, these fifteen micro-parcels are important reminders of how the urban world is dissected by an underlying system of property ownership, and the laws and regulations governing their transfer. it is tempting to blame senseless bureaucrats for the existence of these land slivers, but that would be misleading. these parcelfragments are the physical and conceptual residue of the rational machinations of a socially-legitimate process. the name of the collected works given to us by diserens simultaneously highlights the vicissitudes of property ownership in an urban environment where every patch of dirt, no matter how small, is assumed to be a commodity, and it captures the juxtaposition of the real fragmented new york city with the unreal unified new york city of popular imagination. matta-clark was fascinated by the prospect that the mistakes of surveyors and architects might be the genesis of his micro-parcels. after all, it only takes a small surveyor’s error to change a perfect rectangle into an off-kilter trapezoid with an unaccounted-for surplus sliver. while it is tantalizing to consider that professional errors and incompetency might be the source of these land fragments the truth is more telling. and the “error” he points to is much larger than a drafting mistake, or simple math error. contemporary investigations into the title history reveal that these micro-parcels did not come about by accident but instead were the outcome of an intricate system of change in use and ownership—subdivisions and mergers, easements and dedications, road widenings, municipal projects, rural farmland conversions—both public we are brought face-to-face with what are squarely philosophical questions: what exactly is the bearer of value? what is the genuine object we are buying and selling. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 86 f ox and private. matta-clark was equally fascinated with the north american collective imagination about land speculation these parcels signify. the reasons other buyers offered to the new york times reporter carlinsky for buying surplus parcels included: 1) a virginia man who purchased a few small parcels as investments for his children; 2) a man who purchased 20 square foot adjacent to the tiny parcel he already owned in the hopes of selling both to his next door neighbor for a garden; 3) a new york city planner who bought three lots just because he wanted to own a piece of the city he loved; and 4) another man who purchased several parcels as christmas gifts for his friends.10 given these diverse motivations, we are brought face-to-face with what are squarely philosophical questions: what exactly is the bearer of value? what is the genuine object we are buying and selling: is it the actual land with weeds, trees and fences, or the legalistic paraphernalia of title transfer? or is it participation in a cultural process (verging on myth) that supposedly grounds our self-worth? or perhaps it is, as matta-clark seems to have intuited, only as art in the full 1:1 scale gallery photographs he conceived but never executed. by any conventional measure of use the land itself has no real value; its token value is the mere residue of a conceptual framework of ownership to which buyers and sellers are deeply committed. the three-part nature of the work matta-clark envisioned offers important guidance. the ontological distinction between a discernible piece of the earth’s surface and a commodified chunk of “real estate” is crucial. without physical markers such as a surveyor’s benchmark, a flagged property corner, a fence post, or some other naturally occurring thing, we only know that a discernible patch of the physical landscape exists as a “parcel” because of the legal-bureaucratic artifacts that record its existence and location. as frances richard so aptly puts it, “one can stand on a micro-plot and not know it is there.”11 in this scenario, we can own something but not experience it; exchange it but not inhabit it; delineate it but not occupy it; locate it but not enjoy it. with fake estates, and matta-clark’s purchase of micro-parcels useless for any meaningful development, “the absurdity of real estate is laid bare as a bad pun.”12 by engaging in purchase and ownership of these micro-parcels mattaclark sensitizes us to certain absurdities of speculation. namely, 1) the process of buying and selling in the hope of continuously escalating exchange-value is regarded as authoritative even when it produces an irrational or dubious result; and, 2) the process of parcelization is a useful fiction about democratized economic power that helps prop up 87 isparchitecture.com cultural beliefs about value, and about self-worth. the supposition that a normalized process always produces its intended results (“everybody gets a piece of the action”), combined with a slavish adherence to an algorithmic procedure founded (in part) on contradictory assumptions, is the essence of matta-clark’s reductio argument. ontic insecurity: matta-clark’s exquisite corpus as a work of conceptually oriented art fake estates has strong implications for architecture philosophy insofar as it challenges the security of our ontic commitments to what constitutes the ground of possibility whereupon works of architecture are situated. a useful perspective on the theme of ontological insecurity in matta-clark’s work is offered by pamela lee. in object to be destroyed, she argues that his work presupposes the eventuality of its own destruction. extending this idea of ontic insecurity to fake estates is an important step to expanding our understanding of the implications of his acquisition of these micro-parcels. lee’s overall line of argument that matta-clark’s work is best seen through the lens of expenditure or waste rather than destruction or violence is compelling. even though he referred to his principle activity as ‘un-building’, we are not obligated to view it as inherently violent. he did not “destroy” for the sake of destruction, or because he found the world empty of value. mattaclark was no nihilist. through his constant striving to make sense of his surroundings he resisted the notion that we live in a purposeless present. in this regard, jeffrey a. kroessler, in his essay “gordon matta-clark’s moment,” offers the useful insight that matta-clark was an artist re-imagining urban decay and finding the inspiration needed to be an agent of positive transformation.13 because he was fascinated with processes of change, and things that embraced their own fake estates has strong implications for architecture philosophy insofar as it challenges the security of our ontic commitments to what constitutes the ground of possibility whereupon works of architecture are situated. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 88 f ox outmodedness, it is tempting to read matta-clark’s creative output as a monument to entropy. in his early work he explored senescence and decay, and recorded the process and effects of disintegration. yet, he is not making a fetish of a ruinous state. he does not valorize it for its own sake. on the contrary, decay, waste, and disintegration are integral to becoming. contingent circumstance and shifting temporalities characterize his entire output—his work does not lay claim to permanence. his creative practice is not about object-making, or even object-destruction, rather it is about process-intervention. he transformed architectural refuse into reminders of the deeply contradictory impulses of urban development with its deep schism between use-value and exchange-value. seeing the long arc of matta-clark’s creative practice as an intervention into collective practices of waste positions us on a path of resistance that in turn points towards some problems of architectural obsolescence that characterize both fake estates and the building-cuts for which he is most known. fake estates further sharpens our understanding of the difference between inhabited space, the space of social praxis, and abstract space (the universalized “zoned” commodity) at the same time it performs a wonderfully wry commentary on kant’s disinterestedness thesis by taking an object of such intense desire as new york real estate, stripping it of use-value, repackaging it as useless art, and then completing the circle by seducing the gallery-goer for a second go-round with the offer to sell the art. matta-clark’s animus the social geography of an urban place finds its expression in the architecture if we look close enough. as a result of his building-cut work matta-clark had acquired considerable skill in the manual labor of dismantling buildings, working with building materials, and re-capturing architecture-based resources; skills he came to see as relevant to the underserved communities of new york city. in 1977, the year before his untimely death, he was awarded a guggenheim grant for a resource center and environmental youth program for ‘loisada’, the name given to the lower east side by its spanish speaking residents. he used the proceeds to purchase a building on the lower east side. the resource center functioned (1) as a community salvage yard where materials and equipment could be recycled or sold, and (2) as a neighborhood youth training program that taught youth how to renovate and maintain buildings for community use. after his death the center completely disbanded. while matta-clark is remembered for the ethical qualities of 89 isparchitecture.com his dynamic activist persona—his sociability, exuberance, inclusiveness, and tireless engagement—the aesthetic-political qualities of his overt architecturally-themed projects are restive, impatient, stubbornly dissatisfied, vociferous, and uneasy. some of this schism may be due to the deep and abiding animus matta-clark harbored against the architecture profession. even though he was originally trained to be an architect, attending cornell’s school of architecture (1963-1968), matta-clark’s chief aim, according to critics such as yve-alain bois, is to negate the cultural prestige of architecture.14 this view is borne out by mattaclark himself. in a 1976 interview with donald wall in arts magazine, when wall asks what reaction matta-clark got from splitting, his reply is unequivocal: i don’t think most [architects] practitioners are solving anything except how to make a living. architecture is a lackey to big business. it’s an enormously costly undertaking and therefore, like government, comes equipped with its entire panoply of propaganda. i think monolithic idealist problem solving has not only failed to solve the problems but created a dehumanized condition at both a domestic and institutional level.15 one way for us to make sense of matta-clark’s animus would be to view it as his worry that the profession as a whole, at the time anyhow, did not possess a well-formed social conscience. or at least not a conscience he considered relevant to addressing the pressing problems that surrounded him. in one of his written fragments he writes, “empty and neglected structures were a prime reminder of the ongoing fallacy of renewal through modernization.” 16 in his view then, the derelict condition of new york city’s land and buildingstock is emblematic of the state of the profession as a whole, and like so much of capitalist cultural he is not making a fetish of a ruinous state [...] on the contrary, decay, waste, and disintegration are integral to becoming. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 90 f ox production architecture is destined to become waste. so in this way, it is the means of producing architecture, rather than architecture as artifact (glorious, exalted, banal, or otherwise) that is the precise focus of mattaclark’s critique. xavier wrona offers a useful amplification. he writes that for matta-clark, “architecture is not the building but the system that produces a particular kind of building—the order imposed on buildings, not the buildings themselves.”17 fake estates explicitly raises questions about what it means to be a propertied person, to own property, to possess it, to occupy it, to abuse it, to glorify it, to transmogrify it, to transfer it, and to dispense with it as one sees fit. in spite of his personal acquisition of real estate he nonetheless harbored a deep resistance to ideologies of private wealth. he viewed private property and the human isolation he believed it engenders as increasingly unsustainable states, telling donald wall: what i am talking about is the very real, carefully sustained mass schizophrenia in which our individual perceptions are constantly being subverted by industrially controlled media, markets, and corporate interests.18 matta-clark was not enamored of american capitalism, laissezfaire real estate developers, disengaged policy makers, or uncaring slum lords who stood idle while deterioration progressed inexorably to demolition and then to the “solution” of redevelopment. nonetheless, he viewed abandoned buildings through the political lens of liberalism as symptomatic of a socio-political system: (1) that doesn’t look after its everyday citizens by caring for those who cannot care for themselves; (2) that favors the elite at the expense of the general population; and (3) where wealth accumulation is valorized as an end in itself rather than a means to something more worthwhile. instead, to the greatest extent possible, he focused his own efforts on empowering marginalized citizens to take ownership of their neighborhoods. in his words, an urban site ought to be “responsive to the expressive will of its occupants.”19 no doubt, the abstract urban grid is a tool for converting raw land into a commodity. as evidenced by fake estates in which the earth’s surface is reduced to a series of complex abstract and interconnected legalistic property descriptors, an otherwise rational process can, with successive iterations, yield an irrational or dubious outcome. yet, the occasional anomaly is not what obsesses matta-clark. rather, his two-fold reminder is that the usability of a piece of land is necessarily tied to abstract processes of demarcation, ownership, and transfer. second, the rapacious drive 91 isparchitecture.com to accumulate wealth disengages exchange value from the utility of a piece of land. and hence, the ground of architecture is rendered precarious. as lee, rightly observes, “for property is not so much considered a thing at all but a right: a relationship between object and subject structured around terms of personality and consumption.”20 in our era, property has become more than an extension of who we are—it now threatens to define us. this threat continues to deepen, and deepen unevenly across the wealth divide. architectural obsolescence: the eye of the speculator fake estates, far from being a curious leftover sideproject to matta clark’s more well-known building cut projects, is one tent-pole for expressing his overarching concerns with the related ideas of waste and obsolescence. matta-clark’s chief concern with the obsolescence paradigm is that it creates its own set of mythic beliefs by transforming complex cultural processes into ones that seem self-evidently natural, unchangeable, and universal. the false claim that “the new” naturally supersedes “the old” is a longstanding criticism of capitalism. the argument that capitalism sustains itself by promulgating emotional and psychological discontent is another familiar grievance. other commonplace grievances include: everlasting transience; endless replacement; continuous forced supersession; and, rapid and sudden fluctuations in valuation. while the narrative of relentless devaluation and expendability eventuates in waste, it is precisely this narrative of perpetual change the capitalist entrepreneur needs in order to expand consumer demand for the “new now,” and the “next now.” joseph schumpeter, the austrian economist and ardent defender of capitalism, who in 1942 defined capitalism as “creative destruction,” unapologetically embraced the idea that obsolescence is fundamental to ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 92 f ox capitalism. according to schumpeter, entrepreneurial innovation is the vital force behind the progress and instability of capitalism thus explaining boom and bust cycles. creative destruction is thus understood as one of the “iron laws” of capitalism. while capitalist enterprise and its critics have moved beyond schumpeter’s mid-century pronouncements, it seems clear to me that what links matta-clark’s fake estates and his building-cut projects is that both are caught up in this net of “iron laws.” thus, his critical perspective on capitalism remains relevant along with its impact on us. in his recent book obsolescence: an architectural history daniel abramson is succinct, “architecture and its history have lessons to teach about coming to terms with capitalism.”21 he cogently argues that in the united states the idea of architectural obsolescence was birthed by the real estate industry around 1910. since its advent in 1913 when it was created by the 16th amendment to the u.s. constitution, the u.s. tax code tax deduction for asset depreciation has served to reify the abstract concept of obsolescence into dollars and cents. in the dissociation of economic life-span from natural durability, economic obsolescence runs faster than physical decay and this is by design. the life-span tables in the tax code are politically and economically driven to benefit capital. they are not obtained from empirical building science data as to durability and structural integrity of the underlying architectural asset. so, the cycle of real estate investment, disinvestment, and reinvestment operates entirely independent of naturalized obsolescence. unlike most material objects and consumer goods, land and works of architecture while easily neglected, abandoned, or de-valued are not easily discarded. the invention of architectural obsolescence normalized capitalism’s inclinations and offers a convenient tidy rationale for the chaotic changes it tends to foster. though matta-clark is not the first artist to recognize problems with the myth of obsolescence and its implications for the production and consumption of architectural objects, he is certainly the first to attack it with crowbars and power saws. physical mortality is relatively predictable, whereas de-valuation arising from highly contingent market circumstance is not. to be sure, the impermanence of the built environment is the condition of possibility for virtually all of matta-clark’s creative output including fake estates. while he purchased these micro-parcels amidst the wholesale abandonment of erstwhile usable land and buildings it is precisely this conceptual framework—that architectural change necessarily requires wholesale or widespread expendability—that matta-clark wants to criticize in all his 93 isparchitecture.com projects. waste and obsolescence in architecture while i think it is clear that matta-clark understands (if only inchoately so) the distinction between value-extraction and value-creation, and he rightly identifies many of the problems associated with value-extraction, he under-appreciates or misapprehends the potential pitfalls associated with value-creation as a tool for architectural change. these potential pitfalls also have important implications for the architect-speculator relationship. since the early decades of the twentieth century the architectural community’s response to obsolescence runs the gamut from denial through resistance to reluctant acceptance to enthusiastic embrace. throughout most of architectural history the temporal horizon for works of architecture was characterized by gradualism—the desire for permanence but acceptance of gradual change as inevitable. the past was always present and time passed slowly. beginning with the twentieth century fixity, permanence, and gradualism began to recede. abramson puts it this way, “only in the twentieth century did a place of unending ceaseless change in the built environment come to be understood as the new normal.”22 whether, and under what circumstances, the political question of whether land parcelization is reversible gets overlooked and remains undertheorized in fake estates. though a man of strong politics, matta-clark’s work wants to get at the existential assumptions concerning ownership, value and, use underlying the political. similar to archeological data, loss of information about the past is one of the pitfalls of real estate speculation as it endeavors to create economic value. costs associated with these pitfalls are scarcely accounted for in development proformas or financial balance though matta-clark is not the first artist to recognize problems with the myth of obsolescence and its implications for the production and consumption of architectural objects, he is certainly the first to attack it with crowbars and power saws. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 94 f ox sheets. few real estate speculators factor ‘externalities’ such as the loss of historical-architectural data into their economic calculations. from an ontological perspective, obsolescence is a species of impermanence whose discourse asks us to actively disengage from pastbeing while encouraging us to privilege incipient, emergent-being. since their economic power is recorded temporally in architectural obsolescence, the speculator in essence presents us with a bogus historical narrative that is a false dichotomy: either passively acquiesce to the relics of an ossified dysfunctional past, or aggressively seek economic advantage over others for control of a would-be prosperous future. although we in the architectural community are loath to admit it, and at times quick to justify it, the profession’s incessant drive towards novelty, experimentation, and the pursuit of ever-more dramatic three-dimensional form helps fuel architectural obsolescence. our prevalent talk of the ‘relevant’ with its emergent-minded focus on ‘the germane’, ‘the immediate’, ‘the topical’, ‘the fresh’, ‘the cutting-edge’, ‘of the moment’, infuses our theory with enticing rhetoric, and inflects practice towards their seductions as mattaclark intimates. to the extent that we in the architectural community accept this false dichotomy by embracing a speculatively-driven obsolescence narrative, then yes, we are part of the problem. those of us in the architecture philosophy community working to foster awareness of social justice issues need to sharpen our attitudes about the temporal composition of the future, the present, and the past. this implies the abiding necessity for a genuine understanding of the temporal processes that constitute the milieu in which we think and act. there is of course, the perennial uncertainty about what future generations will deem relevant. we can never know with certainty just what it is that our future selves will value that our present selves do not. under the influence of disembodied market forces, architectural obsolescence would appear to transcend politics, state influence, and individual subjective interest. it is as if human worth is being judged entirely by “objective” external standards not of human construction. in short, under speculation human dignity is relegated to the sidelines. this should not be the case. it is a mistake to portray what is essentially a complex series of interconnected value judgments as if they are disembodied objective quantifiable natural laws, because this caricature wrongly masks the essential human agency of the ones doing the judging—we the living. it is of just this sort of disempowerment that matta-clark warns. fake estates is simultaneously comic and tragic. tragic because the notion of a propertied estate as the summative expression of human worth propels the 95 isparchitecture.com continued squandering of natural and architectural resources, and the splintering of the social space that grounds such worth. comic—comically absurd— because the process of speculation continues to generate more of the same. endnotes 1. les leopold offers an abundance of empirical data on the accelerating u.s. wealth gap in runaway inequality: an activist’s guide to economic justice, new york: labor institute press, 2015. 2. richard, frances. “mythology: the evolution of fakes estates, part ii,” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard, 51-61. new york: cabinet books, 2005., p. 53. 3. richard, frances. “space between places: the evolution of fake estates, part i,” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard, 38-50. new york: cabinet books, 2005. p. 40. 4. carlinsky, dan. “ ‘sliver’ buyers have a field day at city sales,” new york times. october 14, 1973. http:// www.nytimes.com/1973/10/14/archives/ sliver-buyers-have-a-fieldday. (accessed january 6, 2018). 5. ibid. 6. bessa, antonio sergio and jessamyn fiore. gordon matta-clark: anarchitect. new york: the bronx museum of the arts, 2017., p. 10. 7. see, http:// “all-that-is-interesting.com/1970snew york photos”, (accessed july 5, 2018) and https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/ nyregion/30books.html (accessed july 5, 2018) 8. richard, frances. “remove your house: gordon matta-clark’s physical poetics,” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard, 62-71. new york: cabinet books, 2005. p. 65. 9. richard, frances. “space between place,” p. 47. 10. carlinsky, “ ‘sliver’ buyers have a field day at city sales.” 11.richard, frances. “remove your house,” p. 66. 12. lee, pamela m. object to be destroyed: the work of gordon mattaclark. cambridge, ma: mit press, 2000., p. 103. 13. kroessler, jeffrey a. “gordon matta-clark’s moment.” in odd lots: revisiting gordon matta-clark’s fake estates, ed. jeffrey kastner, sina najafi, and frances richard. new york: cabinet books, 2005. p. 37. 14. bois, yve-alain and rosalind e. krauss. formless: a user’s guide. new york: zone books, 1997, p. 120. 15. diserens, corrinne. ed. gordon matta-clark. new york: phaidon press, 2003., p. 188. 16. lee, p. 94. 17. wrona, xavier. “urbanism and revolution: 2 or 3 things about gordon matta-clark and georges bataille.” in gordon matta-clark: anarchitect, ed. antonio sergio bessa and jessamyn fiore, new york: the bronx museum of the arts, 2017, p. 96. 18. diserens, gordon matta-clark. p. 182. 19. johnson, cara m. “directing energy: gordon matta-clark’s pursuit of social sculpture.” in gordon matta-clark: anarchitect, ed. antonio sergio bessa and jessamyn fiore, new york: the bronx museum of the arts, 2017, p. 52. 20. lee, p. 109. 21. abramson, daniel m. obsolescence: an architectural history. chicago: university of chicago press, 2016, p. 7. 22. abramson, p. 14. m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 96 isparchitecture.com designing a common world: public responsibility and the aim to objectify architecture hans teerds introduction many architectural offices today tend to present their works as the inevitable result of the program brief and building site. often, they showcase their designs on their websites, in architectural magazines, in lectures, or on internet blogs as the sum of a few logical steps, adjusting a simple volume (the possible envelope according to local restrictions) towards a final form (a response to programmatic and site-specific characteristics). these designnarratives often are illustrated with simple and schematic line-drawings, emphasizing the logic of the final result. it is of course a simplified version of the design process, a ‘narrative’ only possible in hindsight. the tendency beyond, i think, is an eagerness to withdraw from the ‘subjective,’ with its associations as grounded in mere personal preference in the presentation of the project, in favor of reason and logic, which operate in the open, outside the subject. the same tendency can be recognized in the effort by other offices to present their projects as the outcome of working methods grounded in a strict and seemingly scientific analysis of big data, made possible by the unprecedented power of computers to envision and manipulate data (in real time), and ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 98 te er ds to map and manipulate information flows. (figure 1) once again, some of these offices use such computational models to evoke the impression that the design work is the logical, even irresistible, outcome of an objective and extensive analysis of information. some even suggest that in the (near) future architectural designs can be generated through artificial intelligence. no architects required (or better said: only software engineers needed)! and thus, the narrative goes: the design process will be objectified in such a way that the obvious subjectivity of the designer is excluded from the process in favor of the much more subtle subjectivity of the computational model. it is the old quest of ‘architecture without architects’, this time not in favor of a vernacular architecture, local traditions and spontaneous building processes, but in favor of the promises of the black box of big data. to these two claims that aim to overcome the subjective aspects of architectural design (or as stated, of the architectural designer) we might add a third direction: the renewed interest in participation trajectories. both in scholarly research, as well as within architectural practices, there is a growing interest in the development of open design trajectories wherein stakeholders (beyond the usual: clients, investors, and planners but also future residents and users) are invited to intensely participate. this interest in participatory design, moreover, is not limited to the design phase. the product itself, the building, should be built in an ‘open’ system, where users can easily adapt the spaces to their wishes in time. many examples of the tendencies above can be given, both from the field of practices as well as from academia. however, as i do not want to pinpoint offices to a singular take, i leave it to the imagination of the reader to frame these tendencies in architectural practice to actual cases. although these three attempts are very different in character, a shared aim can be recognized: the aim to reduce the subjective aspects of architectural design by (in theory) minimizing or altering the role of the designer from creator to something more like ‘facilitator.’ such a ‘humbleness’ that emerges from the field functions as a corrective to the era of ‘starchitects’, wherein the creativity and genius of a single architect was emphasized, alongside a worldwide inclination towards the ‘new’, ‘novel’, and ‘original.’ the 2008 world-wide financial and economic crisis that followed the collapse of the lehman brothers bank in the usa made very clear how hollow such a perspective was. architecture simply had become an empty shelf: the ‘surplus’ aesthetics attached to buildings, the icing on the cake. although this can be understood in economic (and even marxist) terms as the ‘surplus’ value, which could be made profitable in terms of marketing and branding, it of course hardly can be seen as a ‘proper’ understanding of the significance of architecture for inhabitants, users, society. after 99 isparchitecture.com all, due to the crisis, it immediately became clear that such a surplus value was only profitable in the case of the few designers that had become a brand in themselves. or better said: there seemed to be no language left wherein the significance of architecture could be explained, neither to the inhabitants and users, nor to society as such, and, in line with that, also not to clients, constructors, investors, developers. architecture had turned into a ‘statue of nebuchadnezzar’: beautiful, spectacular, impressive, powerful, glamorous, but only loosely rooted in society (if rooted at all). consciously addressed in articles in the media and (new) assignments to architects, or unconsciously touched upon in discussions, it seemed that the ‘subjectivity’ of the architectural designer was to blame. and thus, we can understand (and probably also value) the above-mentioned ways to organize and present design differently: they are mostly sincere attempts to overcome the crisis in architecture and to (re)connect to the client and user, to each other, as well as to society. the subjectivity of the designer has become the ‘whipping boy’ of architectural design. these reflections implicitly divide architectural practices into two very different approaches: the artistic practice versus the engineering practice. schematically, both positions can be seen as the outer ends of a spectrum. on the one side the architect is presented as creative genius producing original and unforeseen (architectural) proposals (model: the ‘starchitect’, ayn rand’s fountainhead) which need to be characterized as ‘art’, while on the other side one would find the architects that simply understand their practices as consultancy offices, and their work as a form of engineering. these architects get the project done, straightforwardly fulfilling the wishes of the client (model: a ‘service they are mostly sincere attempts to overcome the crisis in architecture and to (re) connect to the client and user, to each other, as well as to society. “ ” figure 1: grasshopper program computational architecture ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 100 te er ds office’).2 whereas most of the architectural offices, obviously, operate in the grey zone of this spectrum (aiming to do a good job with regard to both ends of the spectrum), the above signalized tendency in practice heads towards this latter end of the spectrum. this tendency walks a dangerous path because the removal of subjectivity entails the loss of the underpinnings of architectural responsibility. in order to unravel this idea i will lean upon two perspectives offered in the writings of the philosopher hannah arendt. first i will use her distinction between the earth and the world. this distinction and her understanding of the world as a world-of-things offer a perspective wherein the practice of architecture can be understood as world-construction, a valuable external reference frame for the professional field of architecture. this perspective at first sight might seem to offer an argument to reduce subjectivity in design, but that, as we will see, is at odds with arendt’s own perspective. a certain balance between objectivity and subjectivity is needed. in order to define that balance, i secondly will use her unfinished reflections on the human faculty of ‘judgment’. this last perspective offers a key to the aspect of subjectivity in design, wherein subjectivity and responsibility are intertwined. this perspective is important, as it opposes the move to align architectural design with the repressive and dangerous tendencies endemic to technocratic engineering. before i set up this argument, three brief remarks. first: the tendencies described above are not novel at all. amongst others, the writings of the architects george baird and giancarlo de carlo and historians kenneth frampton and robert gutman have stressed the tension between the artistic and the functional throughout the 19th and 20th century, and pondered attempts to either transform architecture to a more scientifically or socially ‘just’ professional field, or reduce it to a solely artistic one. current trends, while not novel, are intensifications of these tensions.3 secondly, it is the subjectivity of the designer that i focus on even though it must be recognized that the building process is shot-through with subjectivity: subjective are the aims and wishes of the client, investor, developer, of the public official that formulates the restrictions for a particular site, and of the politician that wants to develop a lasting monument before time in office has finished. design, however, is a particular instrument within the building industries. it is a tool that architects have, a tool that bridges the different viewpoints. this is an important given. even in times wherein the subjectivity of architectural design is under attack, we need to understand the unique capacities of design. third, it of course is clear that this ‘designer’ almost never is a single 101 isparchitecture.com architect. in most cases, design is teamwork, work of an office with project architects, assistant designers, interns, drafters. so when addressing ‘the architect’, i have in mind both the single designer, as well as the collaborative. the things of the world how can we understand the context of architecture: what is its significance beyond the beautification of buildings, urban spaces, and cultural landscapes? the writings of hannah arendt offer an appropriate perspective in this regard, through which the cultural and political meaning of the profession can be understood. the canadian architect and theoretician george baird stated in his 1995 book the space of appearance that arendt has been one of the very few philosophers of the 20th century to include “the things of the world”4 in her political philosophy. in other words, within political reflections in philosophy and other academic fields, theories hardly grasp the tangible world, the things that surround us. arendt’s perspective then stresses the tangible world as politically relevant. in order to understand this relevance, let us first explicate what she meant by ‘things of the world’. in her writings, arendt distinguishes the ‘world’ from the ‘earth’, a distinction she partly based on the writings of philosopher martin heidegger, who had been her professor during her studies. the distinction roughly is between the natural and the cultural, the globe versus the human interventions, human affairs, and relationships. but where heidegger offers a negative reading of this distinction, arendt ponders the world in a clearly positive perspective.5 where heidegger takes the classical philosophical stance and understands the humble and stumble, rumour and noise of public life, as disturbing the this tendency walks a dangerous path because the removal of subjectivity entails the loss of the underpinnings of architectural responsibility. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 102 te er ds vita contemplativa, she, on the contrary, aims to celebrate the participation in public life and the engagement in the world and its wanderings, the vita activa. a perspective overlooked and neglected within philosophy, according to arendt – and not without consequences. the whole political development in europe in the first half of the twentieth century urged her—as a jew born in germany, searching for refuge in france and the united states—to become politically aware, and publicly active.6 so what does the distinction mean for her? to her the earth stands for the natural circumstances of the globe, depicted by the cycle of nature. for arendt this is not an idealistic situation, as she stresses the need to transform that globe into a habitable place. this transformation establishes the world. the world thus is the earth made fit for human habitation and the human community.7 through human intervention, through the creation of artefacts (houses, furniture, infrastructure), the earth is transformed into a human world. the distinction between the two terms thus roughly corresponds to the natural and the cultural spheres. arendt emphasizes the different qualities that belong to both entities: it is the cyclicality of nature versus the perpetuity of culture, the survival of species versus the permanence of the human artefacts. for arendt ‘things’ are not just objects, but they are part and parcel of that artificial ‘world’. human artefacts establish the world. in addition to this basic principle, arendt draws attention to two perspectives of artefacts that qualify this world, which also turns them into a prerequisite for sensible political life —the relationship baird stressed. 1. for arendt the world always is a world shared with others. or in her terms: the world always is ‘in-common.’ human artefacts, that at once establish a world, immediately also establish commonality. “to live in the world,” arendt writes in a famous quote, “means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.”8 arendt stresses that this ‘table’ not only is to be seen as a spatial commonality (to be collected around an artefact-in-common)), but also as a commonality that stretches in time (we have the object not only in common today, but we share it also with previous generations, as well as with those to come).9 both continuities (or commonalities) of the world are rendered by arendt as prerequisites for sensible political life. the intangibility and vulnerability of “action and speech,” that arendt frame as the crucial activities of political life, requires a durable and common stage.10 politics, for arendt, does not 103 isparchitecture.com primarily relate to parliament and government, to town hall and council, but to “the coexistence and association of different men,” which certainly relates to the intangible interaction between human beings (like in the political arena) but also is related to the tangible (public) artefacts and institutions that structure and organize the world and orients their inhabitants.11 the world of things, in other words, is at once the stage of politics as well as the concern of politics. 2. while the first point stresses artefacts as such, delivering a stable stage for the realm of politics, the second perspective qualifies these artefacts. they are not neutral atoms in space, but have a particular shape, history, tactility, or to be short: presence. they appear to the human being through their form—a form that is particular and recognizable, and that can revive particular memories and narratives.12 according to arendt, this particularly counts especially for such artefacts as memorials, monuments, and works of art. she thus underlines the capacity of artefacts—in particular: works of art—to reify stories and narratives, to memorize actions of the past, and to make history present today. artefacts are carriers of meaning, memory, heritage, orientation, order, and identity, they can revive (collective) memories and evoke remembrances.13 this aspect of the ‘things of the world’ is related to a crucial capacity of the human being; the possibility to tell a story. the life of the individual—a narrative in time between birth and death—is an example of such a story, but also the ‘the life of the polis’, which obviously is the story of particular histories. the crucial aspect of the narrative is not only the possibility to contemplate actions within time, but also that it can be shared with others. this, for arendt, transforms the life of the polis into a political life.14 this capacity to tell stories is foremost a capacity of the human being, ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 104 te er ds but, as arendt also stresses, such narratives are the “everlasting essence of the work of art” in the context of politics.15 needless to say that works of art indeed often consciously reify (historical) narratives, and that such works of art have been important to the realm of politics and the selfunderstanding of human communities. however, we do not have to limit our understanding at this point to figurative art, greek poems, or the plot in movies. the particular shape of artefacts (works of art as well as everyday artefacts) can be a ‘holding place’ for narratives: objects can evoke remembrances, and thus are able to make particular histories present, but they also can evoke future perspectives, which unfold and are addressed in stories too. to summarize, artefacts not only offer stability and permanence, but also memory, remembrance, structure, and orientation in the world. both layers of understanding of the ‘things of the world’ value artefacts in a very sensible and concrete way, engaging aspects of spatiality, materiality, tactility, tangibility, and the capacity of narration, as well as the inherent aspects of production and use. all these aspects in one way or the other may contribute to the commonality and durability of a political community or disturb it. architecture as world-construction this perspective upon the ‘things of the world’ offers a valuable path to construct a cultural and political—and therefore also ethical— framework to understand the work of the architect, not only for architects working on grand cathedrals, but also for those developing and designing not-so-grand bicycle sheds.16 arendt stressed that works of art are the most worldly human artefacts, particularly since they are objects not intended for commonplace utility but only to be accessed in a disinterested attitude, and therefore will not be damaged through use and spoiled by use or consumption. works of art therefore are, if kept well protected from natural influences, the most durable objects on earth, and thus will offer the most stable underpinnings for society.17 arendt nevertheless does not limit the twofold aspects of the ‘things of the world’ solely to works of art, but only placed them in hierarchy above the other works of the human being. with these concepts in mind, let us stretch arendt’s perspective to the field of architecture. we first need to recognize how important architecture is with regard to the establishment of the world (and in the 105 isparchitecture.com context of an existing world, the maintenance and continuation of it). the built environment after all literally shapes the world for its inhabitants. it constructs the everyday places of human life, as well as the monuments that structure political life, the memorials, the buildings of the parliament, the offices of public institutions. it structures the cities and neighbourhoods, where people live, work, enjoy a movie, or go to court, as well as the landscape, where the food grows, the natural reserves are, the slopes for skiing. architecture builds the museums, where the works of art are exhibited, and it delineates the public squares, where people can gather. architecture, in other words, mediates between the human being and the earth, as well as between the human being and the human community. it creates the private spaces of the home, as well as a context for meaningful collective life. it offers room for actions to unfold, for stories to be enacted, for history to take place, for experiences to be gained —and by doing so, through all the events that take place on their stairs and balconies, their wooden floors and tile pavements, against their walls and columns, (hi)stories are written. the patina of the materials, the traces of use on the stairs and floors —they are not entirely negative, as arendt seems to argue: it is particularly through these traces of decay and use that history is made present, that memories and remembrances of users, inhabitants, and communities are evoked.18 buildings and cities, landscapes and works of infrastructure—they all first accommodate the human community, but second also offer a ‘holding place’ for memories from the (recent) past. works of architecture (both grand and humble), we might conclude, simply relate users and inhabitants with the earth and with each other spatially through the placing of walls, doors, windows, roofs, pavements, and so on. this relation not only is established at this point in time, but also over time, with generations of the past as well as arendt stressed that works of art are the most worldly human artefacts “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 106 te er ds of the future. architecture plays a role both in a tangible and material sense (by the very structures), as well as in a mental sense (by being sites of heritage, memory, and so on). architecture, therefore, should be understood as ‘world-construction.’ if architecture, a term which here includes the fields of planning, constructing, urban design, and landscape architecture, is worldconstruction, then it needs to carefully engage with the world it brings into existence in order to keep it fit for human inhabitation and political interaction. architectural design then cannot be indifferent to the worldin-common, but requires an attitude of engagement towards the worlds it both touches and creates. from this perspective, we can usefully define three tasks for the professional field of architecture: 1. this perspective stresses the value of the existing (built) environment as the context of the social network of the inhabitants as well as a ‘holding place’ for stories, memories, remembrances. it thus offers an argument for a careful renovation, restoration and refurbishment of existing buildings, urban structures and cultural landscapes. the existing built environment is not a tabula rasa, nor neutral ground, wherein architecture intervenes. 2. importantly, this is no argument for stasis. in her reflections on culture, arendt stresses that two perspectives align in culture: the careful maintenance of the existing intertwines with the intervention that creates room for the new. the second task for architectural practices thus is to embed the new in the existing.19 this of course creates a new composition, a new entity—but with respect to what has been, and how that has been established.20 3. for the third task, we need to take one step further. to acknowledge that through the shape of artefacts narratives can be told, is to challenge the architect to both understand and take responsibility for the narratives inherent in their proposals. this charge, of course, counts for all interventions in the world, but from a political perspective, it particularly counts for the design of public buildings. after all, public buildings— townhalls, schools, libraries,—through their form also reify particular narratives, as for example a well-designed public school will narrate the importance of education in our society (moreover, the structure of the school does influence the possibilities of education, but also narrate what educational system we are after—think of the early school-designs of the dutch architect herman hertzberger), while a rundown public school building simply seems to show that public funding of the school is not prioritized.21 just as townhalls of the past perfectly reify the relationship between local power and the citizens and cathedrals do the 107 isparchitecture.com same for religion and the community of believers, new townhalls and churches also reify comparable narratives.22 they are carriers of the organization of the current human community and thus expose what has been assigned as important for this community. as political philosopher bonnie honig argues in her recent sydney lectures in philosophy and society: “public things are the infrastructure of democratic life, and they underwrite the signs and symbols of democratic unity, that, for the moment, still survive.” and while she relates this perspective with the previous mentioned need for a stable underpinnings of the political realm, she writes: “things … stabilize the web of meanings in which we live and into which we may act.”24 these three tasks: valuing the existing built environment for its embedded meanings, sensitively engaging that environment with new revisions, and care for the narrative quality of architecture, are crucial assignments for every architectural intervention in the world. what designers propose never is neutral. it must always deal with structures from the past, as well as their inherent narratives, while at once adding new narratives that in their turn reify the current relationship to the earth (and its environmental issues) and the world (as a world-in-common). the challenge of subjectivity according to george baird, this perspective “electrifies the architectural project,” ethically. rightly so: while individual wishes, needs and ambitions as well as commercial perspectives, profits, and business cases are the genesis of most architectural assignments, there is always spillover.25 architecture—even in the most isolated circumstances—always is tethered to the world-incommon, and thus is establishing, maintaining, and intervening in the world, which in turn has ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 108 te er ds political and cultural meaning. architecture thus is an inherently political and cultural endeavor, the import of which forms the basis for its unique ethos, for not only does it assert that architecture significantly establishes or maintains the world-in-common, but also that architecture can become an agent of destruction to the commonly shared world. it can disturb the possibilities for establishing political life and obliterate the (collective) stories that are stored in the world. this is what justifies holding that the architectural project thus reaches beyond the immediate interests of the stakeholders: through its impact on the commonly shared world. this of course not only offers an ethical perspective upon the architectural designer’s work, but also is applicable for other parties involved in the building process, from commissioner to building manager, and from constructor to politicians who decide upon the building regulations, or the ambitions with regard to urban renewal, social housing, or public buildings. arendt’s perspective offers a framework for a (self )critical approach to each building assignment—a horizon against which a project (from program brief to design, and from construction to demolition) can be evaluated, challenged, and valued, as it both challenges the ‘what/why’ as well as the ‘how’ of a project. although this perspective of ‘the world in common’ might call for sensitivity amongst designers to the larger context of their work, it does certainly not plea for objectivity in design. baird, argues that neither a radically subjective position, nor a supposedly objective approach are appropriate responses vis-à-vis the idea of a shared world.26 obviously, to develop participation processes, create open-building structures, make use of data modelling, and present architecture through a logical explanation can be valued positively as exhibiting awareness of a certain architectural ethos. these strategies are particularly welcome against an architectural era that uncritically engaged with the new and the novel, the oeuvre and the artistic. however, there is a clear downside to these attempts to wipe out subjectivity as well: if objectification of design is the endgame, it comes with a reductionist perspective and risks dissipation of designresponsibility. this assertion is based on three considerations: 1. according to arendt, the world is characterized by plurality: it is site-specific and time-specific due to the natural circumstances of the earth, the development of the world, the cultural and political development and engagement with the world, the development of tools and instruments (technology) that make minor and major interventions possible, as well as through the histories and events that unfolded within the world and thus upload the world with narratives. although the ‘facts’ of these differences 109 isparchitecture.com can be traced in comprehensive analyses, or can be collected in the numbers of ‘big data’, their cultural, social and political meanings, that is to say, what gives them ethical import, are out of reach of these instruments. without acknowledging the personal and collective narratives, the cultural and political aspects of the built environment, architecture is stuck in reductionist and purely materialist perspectives. this particularly is the case if the design-instruments (as data-mining, logical reasoning, participation) are magnified, and rather than being mere tools to achieve an ethical end become regarded as self-justifying processes. in all of the mentioned cases in the introduction to this article, there is the risk to reduce the reality of the world to objective facts: either to the ‘factual’ perspective of participants in the development process, or to the overwhelming amount of ‘facts’ that are collected through data mining, or finally to the ‘facts’ that are seemingly the inevitable result of logical investigation in program, site, and use. 2. simultaneously with such a reductionist perspective, these methods and attempts to objectify architecture also disturb the ethical understanding of architect’s practice since the process of ‘design’ is misunderstood. when the design-method is so magnified, the process should follow its predefined path. such a process is repressive; it strongly steers while diminshing the freedom to do things differently, to be surprised by one’s findings. this steering both removes opportunities for personal reflection and simultaneously taking responsibility for one’s decisions. one can hide behind the outcome of data mining, the wishes of the participants, the facts that are taken from the context and program, or behind the investors or client—any of which somehow ‘automatically’ lead to the proposed project. this of course is a bit of a simplified presentation: there still is ‘design’, but it operates on a higher level of abstraction: the design of the used methods and instruments, the selection if objectification of design is the endgame, it comes with a reductionist perspective and risks dissipation of designresponsibility. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 110 te er ds and development of the computational program, the selection of data scraped, the way data are connected, the ‘architecture’ of the algorithm. this is a way of defining the organisation, a matter of decision making, and interpretation—and their impact on the world can be devasting. however, now the design decisions do not operate in the open, but are kept at a remove from the actual projects. a new and obfuscating layer, defining the algorithm or the structure of the design method, is added between the designer and the end-object. it distances challenging and subtle matters of subjectivity, biases, ethical dilemmas from the actual design task. this remove easily hides the subjective and ethical aspects of the project from the public eye, particularly if these methods and instruments are seen as objective, even if not scientifically truthful, and thus are neither challenged nor questioned—not in the discussions within the designer’s office, nor in the (everyday) talks to clients, neighbours, and society. this, i would argue, is hiding behind the instruments, and behind the outcome of the application of these instruments, without taking responsibility for one’s own decisions (not on the level of the design of the method and instrument, nor on the use of the outcome of the implementation of these methods and instruments). in other words, if method and instrument are presented as factual and scientifically truthful, the outcomes easily can be understood as ‘objective facts’ too. what then is left to the designer except implementation? the architect will operate a design-machine, and needs to follow what is prescribed—simply turning the diagrams or directions into structures (if this is still needed, one might imagine that artificial intelligence even this step in the design process can take over). he or she probably will follow a self-prescribed path (through the definition of the algorithm)—but without taking responsibility that this path is inherently subjective and hence to be challenged continuously. 3. arendt’s perspective of the world-in-common clearly at once both challenges the subjective intervention in this world, as well as the aim to be objective. it not only provokes the idea that design simply can be the ‘just’ interpretation of big data, or that it can be the application of computational models and logical reasoning, but offers a ‘critical’ reading to all other instruments through which the professional aims to define a more or less ‘objective’ underpinnings of his designs. arendt also is critical of the immediate and unquestioned application of theories, dogmas, philosophies, particular design methods, and so on. all these ‘instruments’ can form an obstacle between the designer and the world, particularly when the tools are overvalued and the complexity of the world is reduced to singular perspectives. architectural design, understood as ‘world-construction’ 111 isparchitecture.com is a matter of immediate engagement with the world-in-common, and reflection on its existing structures, meanings, its rootedness in the past, and how it can be strengthened, enhanced, continued, while immediately offering space to new needs and wishes. architects simply are challenged to apply their work with caution, not to destroy the precarious threads that connect us with the past, neither to insert the failure-projects of tomorrow, nor to lose their rooting in society.27 this, for architects seeking to execute the ethical fullness of their charge, clearly is a balancing act between the objective and the subjective. the perspective that design deals with concrete artefacts that are in-common challenges designers to organize the ethical questions as clearly and concretely as possible within each design project (and not hidden in abstraction, or obscured in the instruments and methods), while communicating openly and accessibly about the subjective aspects of the activity of design (and how to deal with them from an ethical perspective). architectural judgment how then can we understand architectural design, if it is a balancing act between the objective and the subjective? the design process often is understood as a black box, wherein imagination and experience, taste and other subjective aspects, play a role. generally speaking, architectural design is not understood by the broader public, as is tangible in all sorts talks about architecture in the media or in personal conversations in which the architect after all never is never challenged by his audience to respond to the costs of one iconic building, the terrible leaking of another, the un-functionality of again another spectacular building? however, if we zoom in to the actual process of design, we obviously immediately understand that the design first and arendt’s perspective of the world-incommon clearly at once both challenges the subjective intervention in this world, as well as the aim to be objective. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 112 te er ds foremost is embedded in the wishes of the client. architects actively define and shape the intervention in the existing environment according to a program brief, along the lines of wishes of clients, investors, developers, and other stakeholders. this perspective at first sight seems to limit the responsibility of the architect. after all: most of the outcome of the designprocess is already given and predefined in a program brief (particularly in complex projects, these program briefs are like books containing hundreds of pages with prescriptions). however, design is not simply the answer to a particular program brief, as there are many answers to that same program brief, as architectural competitions clearly show. 28 this simple given of the multiplicity of possible outcomes already shows how crucial the position of the designer is, despite his currently often limited power in the process of development. besides the very activity of sketching and investigating, two aspects of design are crucial with regard to the world-in-common: • through the design process, often contradictory and conflicting viewpoints and insights evolve, as the needs of the client are addressed as well as the wishes of the future users and inhabitants, the concerns of the neighbours, the ambitions of local politics, the constraints of the existing situation, the regulations of local rules and laws, and so on. design investigates possibilities and opportunities, and through these investigations, new, unforeseen, and unthought-of perspectives open up— perspectives that might unite contrasting positions. • through design, moreover, the question of imagination is posed: what do we envision as the outcome of the project, what should it narrate, what does it stand for (and how does it contribute to the world-in-common)? in one way or the other, decisions have to be made upon the directions of the design process. to treat these issues as jigsaw puzzles that can be solved through mathematical logic, smart reasoning, or through complex computation is to abdicate architectural judgment: to make choices, to decide upon what is important, to value the several perspectives, and to be able to discuss these issues publicly. it will be useful to introduce at this point another term borrowed from arendt’s writings: her reflections on political judgment. these reflections, although not fully developed because of her sudden death in 1975, incorporate ideas about the public access as well as the intersubjectivity of such judgments. in particular, two aspects of judgment— the accessibility of the decision as well as its intersubjective character—are pressing questions regarding architectural design. arendt based her understanding of political judgment on immanuel kant’s proposition of aesthetic judgment. the crucial feature arendt 113 isparchitecture.com adopts from kant’s perspective is his idea of the “intersubjective validity [of judgment] in the public realm.”29 aesthetic judgment, for kant, is not limited to the application of personal taste (although the development of taste is crucial), but always is related to the larger context of society. it requires an active engagement with this community, particularly through the application of an enlarged mentality. this latter term open to an important perspective, particularly in regard to the activity of design. what is important at this point is that arendt also argues that politics, upon which she is focused, should not be understood as a realm of ‘truths’ in a scientific sense. “truth in the sciences is dependent on the experiment that can be repeated by others; it requires general validity. philosophic truth has no such general validity. what it must have … is ‘general communicability’.”30 surely, facts do play a role in the realm of politics—as clearly can be derived from the omnipresence of ‘alternative facts’ in today’s political institutions. however, even if all participants stick to the same facts, paradoxical and even contractionary perspectives can be developed. facts after all require both interpretation and validation. in politics, it is much more about the weighing of facts and understanding their relationships, particularly in relationship to the world and its wanderings, than it is about finding and defending the truth. in politics, moreover, understanding the facts and their relationships does not lead to a political program or decisions that can organize society in all its plurality. on the contrary, for arendt the political arena is not about facts and figures, but about conflicting interpretations and contradictory perspectives. this approach thus requires the capacity to make decisions not solely on the basis of facts, but also with regard to conflicting perspectives and within complicated situations. political judgment, arendt therefore argues, is bound to a certain community. one judges “as a member of this community and ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 not as a member of a supersensible world.”31 being part of a community urges us to understand the subjective aspects of our own position in the world, and urges us to take “the viewpoints of others into account.”32 arendt stresses that the capacity to acknowledge other perspectives rightly requires a specific human capacity that she calls after kant the “enlarged mentality.” “the ‘enlargement of the mind’ is accomplished by “comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgments of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man.”33 the striking perspective arendt stresses here is that she seems to take this process of judgment very literally. to take other viewpoints into account is not to think about other perspectives (or to take note of these perspectives), but literally means entering the problem at hand from the standpoint of other positions in the world. this describes a process of active engagement: to re-place oneself to another position, to re-write the story from that very perspective. judgment requires the ability to place oneself in the place of others, in order to think from their position in the world. this is a crucial perspective: judgment implicitly requires a public. the plural public is at the heart of judgment processes—if not literal, then through the human faculty of imagination. “by the force of imagination it makes the others present and thus moves in a space that is potentially public, open to all sides.”34 the crucial point for our reflection on architectural design is arendt’s next step: it is one thing to replace oneself to other positions, and to be able to think from within these positions, but the question how to judge is still open. it still requires judgment to make up one’s mind and to make decisions. judgment requires a space to reflect, think, test other points of view, as it eventually also requires expertise, experience, knowledge, and intuition. such a judgment requires engagement and reasonable training, as it does not depend upon general rules but on “thinking the particular.” since in judgment imagination and intuition are involved, it is understood as requiring faculties of the human being that are shaped through active engagement in the world and participation in public life, as well as fueled through experience and knowledge. through such an engagement in the world, one is able to recognize the particular, and to imagine the particular from different points of view. it is only through such a process, arendt argues, that judgment becomes “communicable:” it can be communicated to others, as it is based on the thinking from different perspectives and on the development of and reflection upon multiple possibilities. this communicability takes the form of a persuasive activity: it is able to appeal to the variety of perspectives within society, even if it has judged that some m a ha n & k lu y te n a a r 114 115 isparchitecture.com of the perspectives seem to be other than just.35 if we now turn back to architectural design, we easily can see the parallel. on the architect’s drawing table literally lay a variety of perspectives at hand: the client’s, the users’, the inhabitants’, the local politics’ perspective, and the neighbors’. the architect listens to their voices and challenges the project from their point of view. in the end, however, it is the design that needs to bring these (often conflicting) perspectives together, against the horizon of the world-in-common (in space and time) and not the design tool, the algorithm, the survey, or the sorted data. design is an activity that sometimes unfolds somehow in solitude (within the office, at the drawing table, in meeting rooms, and so on), but that inherently also requires a continuous, imaginative conversation with its context, with the world-in-common. it requires imagination to “make the others present,” and by doing so making the architectural office and the subsequent meeting rooms (of clients, engineers, planners, politicians) where the design is developed, a public space.36 it is through the making present of the public at the heart of the process of design, that the design also can be made public, that the design is communicable, that it is accessible to be discussed publicly.37 conclusion returning to the three examples of resistance against subjectivity i described at the outset: obviously, we can’t lump all three examples together as a singular tendency completely. especially the attempt to open up the design process for the participation of future users and inhabitants seems to stand out. new technologies appear especially promising in this regard where they help to streamline processes of interaction, discussion and debate, and how new techniques, developed in the all attempts that aim to diminish the subjective from design will fall into the trap of technocratic engineering, wherein a reductionist and materialist vision is embraced, and responsibility is endlessly displaced. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 116 te er ds gaming industries, also can be applied to architectural and urban planning processes. moreover, in several countries around the world new ways of developing buildings appear, where in cooperative ways future inhabitants strongly work together, and are completely involved in the processes of developing and designing, and even financing and constructing their future housing. however, this does not diminish the role of design in these processes. moreover, it is clear that if all these voices have to be heard, the complexity of the design process increases. how to incorporate the different and often opposing viewpoints into a single design? it is in this perspective that we can validate the parallel between architectural design and political judgment, as pondered by hannah arendt. judgment requires the training of the human faculty of ‘enlarged mentality’ and imagination. to judge means to be able to think from different perspectives, not to define the average of these perspectives, but in order to come to an informed judgment. a similar case can be made for design. design requires the ability to think from the perspective of the stakeholders, as well as from a more general context (as the world-in-common). it requires imagination to make these perspectives present. however, in the end it needs to judge, it needs to make decisions. such ‘informed’ judgments do not only mean to be informed about the different perspectives at stake, but also are informed through personal experiences, taste, knowledge, skills, and so on, that is to say, subjectively. all attempts that aim to diminish the subjective from design will fall into the trap of technocratic engineering, wherein a reductionist and materialist vision is embraced, and responsibility is endlessly displaced. it is particularly in the very moments where the subjective enters judgment that a public and political discussion on architectural proposals is possible, and that architects can be held responsible for their ideas and proposals. conversely, architectural design requires balancing between stakeholders and the public, between the earth and the world-in-common, the world as it is gained from the past, and the world as it can be in the future. this balancing act requires personal engagement in the world, which will feed the architectural knowledge that can be gained through studies and experience, which is gained through extensive practicing, studying, and reflecting upon the world. endnotes 117 isparchitecture.com 1. many examples of the tendencies above can be given, both from the field of practices as well as from academia. however, as i do not want to pinpoint offices to a singular take, i leave it to the imagination of the reader to frame these tendencies in architectural practice to actual cases. 2. cf. dana cuff, architecture: the story of practice (cambridge ma: mit press, 1991), 28-35d. 3. george baird, ‘“la dimension amoreuse” in architecture’, in: charles jencks and george baird (eds.). meaning in architecture (london: barrie and rockliff, the cresset press, 1969); george baird, the space of appearance (cambridge ma: mit press, 1995); giancarlo de carlo, ‘architecture’s public’, in: peter blundell jones, doina petrescu and jeremy till (eds.) architecture and participation (abingdon: spon press, 2007); kenneth frampton, ‘the status of man and the status of his objects: a reading of the human condition’, in kenneth frampton, labour, work, and architecture. collected essays on architecture and design (london, new york: phaidon press, 2002); robert gutman, architectural practice: a critical view (new york: princeton architectural press, 1998). 4. baird, the space of appearance, 21. 5. julia kristeva, hannah arendt (new york: columbia university press, 2001), 77. 6. elisabeth young-bruehl, why arendt matters (new haven/london: yale university press, 2006), 82-84. 7. hannah arendt, the human condition (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 2. 8. ibid., 52. 9. ibid., 167. 10. ibid., 173-174. 11. hannah arendt, ‘introduction into politics’, in: hannah arendt, the promise of politics (new york: ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 118 te er ds schocken books, 2005), 93. 12. arendt, the human condition, 73 13. ibid., 95; cf. paul holmquist, ‘towards an ethical technique: reframing architecture’s “critical call” through hannah arendt,’ in: the plan journal, 1 (1) 2016, 19. 14. kristeva, hannah arendt, 41. 15. ibid., 41. 16. i of course refer here to nicolaus pevsner’s famous distinction between architecture and building, as defined in the first paragraphs of his book on the history of european architecture: nicolaus pevsner, an outline of european architecture (harmonstworth: penguin books, 1968), 15. 17. arendt, the human condition, 167. 18. every architect today will at this point hear an echo of aldo rossi’s famous reading of the monumental buildings in a city as the carriers of (collective) memory. aldo rossi, the architecture of the city (cambridge ma: mit press, 2007 [1962]). 19. hannah arendt, ‘the crisis in culture: its social and its political significance’, in: hannah arendt, between past and future. eight exercises in political thought (new york 2006 [1961], penguin books), 208-210. 20. hannah arendt, ‘culture and politics’, in: hannah arendt, reflections on literature and culture (stanford: stanford university press, 2007), 190. 21. see herman hertzberger, the schools of herman hertzberger (rotterdam: 010 publishers, 2009). 22. this of course is perfectly understood by the trump administration and their attempt to ‘make federal buildings beautiful again’ – although one can question whether the choice of narrative is appropriate. see: https:// www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/14466-will-the-white-house-ordernew-federal-architecture-to-be-classical (accessed march 12, 2020). 23. bonnie honig, public things, democracy in disrepair (new york: fordham university press, 2017), 17. 24. ibid., 42. 25. baird, the space of appearance, 22. 26. ibid., 22. 27. ibid., 285. 28. this of course is one of the reasons that design cannot be brought back to a formula: program briefs as well as the local circumstances require interpretation, and thus judgment from the designer. there are as many 119 isparchitecture.com answers to an assignment as there are architects (and even more, as also architects themselves often come up with multiple possibilities). 29. seyla benhabib, ‘judgment and the moral foundation of politics in hannah arendt’s thought’ in: ronald beiner and jennifer nedelsky (eds), judgment, imagination, and politics (new york/ oxford: rowman & littlefield publishers, 2001), 194. 30. hannah arendt, lectures on kant’s political philosophy (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1992), 40. 31. ibid., 67. 32. ibid., 42. 33. ibid., 42-43 (arendt quotes immanuel kant’s critique of judgment, §40). 34. ibid., 43. 35. ibid., 72. 36. ibid., 43. 37. ibid., 67. ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 120 te er ds isparchitecture.com book review: ugliness and judgment: on architecture in the public eye by timothy hyde princeton architectural press, 2019 223 pages, hardcover $35.00 reviewed by mark jensen ugliness and judgment is a delightful and frustrating book. timothy hyde’s project lies at the intersection of history, architecture, aesthetics, and public policy. by focusing on britain, or more specifically on a series of ugly moments in british architectural history, hyde goes part of the way toward narrowing what would otherwise be an unwieldy project. his aim is to answer the question, “…how does architecture participate in societal judgment?” especially judgments of ugliness (2). along these lines, he explains: …architectural ugliness must be explored not along a philosophical plane, but along the horizon that composes the difficult reality of architecture, which is not necessarily the material reality of buildings…but the realities of the norms, institutions, and standards of expectation that precede architecture. (8) in other words, hyde supposes that judgments of ugliness in architecture are not made from the standpoint of the dispassionate art critic, but instead from the standpoint of the people who must live, work, and play in and around the structures in question. organizationally, the book is divided into two book review ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 122 bo ok r ev ie w parts: (i) stones and (ii) persons. the three chapters that concern stones are “improvement,” “nuisance,” and “irritation,” wherein hyde works through a set of structures—one prominent structure per chapter—in which he explores judgments of ugliness as these judgments attach to specific types of socio-political engagement with architecture. “improvement” concerns the architect john woods’s attempt to improve the aesthetics of the city of bath using neo-classical elements; “nuisance” concerns the reconstruction of parliament with building materials that were becoming tarnished by pollution before the project was complete; and “irritation” concerns the south bank arts centre—a reviled example of 20th century brutalism in central london. together, these three chapters present a picture of interplay between buildings, architects, clients, and the public, where this interplay includes judgments of ugliness as well as attempts by parties to respond to these judgments. in persons, hyde takes up the topics of “incongruity,” “the architect,” and “the profession.” here, he is focused primarily on the persons rather than the buildings, especially the interrelations between architects, city planners, and society at large. “incongruity” is concerned principally with libel: criticisms of architecture in 18th and 19th century britain were met with libel suits by the architects, which only emboldened public engagement with aesthetic judgments of the architects work. “the profession,” concerns the relationship between particular architects, e.g., ludwig mies van der rohe, organizations like the royal institute of british architects, and the public. “the monarch” focuses on prince charles’ interventions, presumptively (on his part) on behalf of the public and in rendering judgments on architectural projects that he (speaking for the people) took to be especially ugly. the delight of the book is its engagement with very specific episodes in the history of architecture and the social and political consequences of architecture in britain, especially london. it seems to me that when the literature and philosophy of architecture abstracts from context—and not just the context of buildings, but also the social, political, geographic, and historical contexts in which buildings are built—it quickly becomes dry, unengaging, and boring. hyde’s book avoids these interest-killing abstractions: the discussion is immersed in the details of buildings, episodes, architects, commissions, courts, etc., that serve not only to bring ugly buildings into hideous life, but also to establish the context in which their hideousness can be put on full display. the english themselves are half of the delight, being at once both earnest and silly: earnest in their legal actions to protect buildings, in 123 isparchitecture.com their legal defenses of the reputation of professional architects, and in the attempt of the royals to prevent the construction of ugly buildings. they are silly in the architectural and planning choices that public officials and professionals make, in the juxtaposition of diverse architectural styles that span centuries, in the variety of social, civic, and political organizations who intervene in these affairs, and even in the names that they have given to their organizations, places and buildings: “ugly face club, “consistory court,” “mansion house square, “isle of dogs,” and “no. 1 poultry.” the delights of the book give way to a bit of a worry, which is this. it might be that the episodes in question fail to serve as paradigmatic examples or key representatives of broader trends in architecture, politics, and history. it may be instead that britain is unique: it is characterized by a deep-seated conservative culture and it lacks an overall architectural style. when parts of london were destroyed in wwii, large-scale rebuilding was required, which put these two characteristics into conflict. as a result, it may be especially difficult to draw any overall lessons from the history of ugliness in british architecture. to be sure: hyde is careful to point out that he is not undertaking an analysis of ugliness or ugly buildings or even judgments of ugliness as we find them in british cases. but one has a sense that hyde is attempting to draw overarching conclusions about way ugliness shows up in public discourse. at the end of the book, he writes: the judgment of ugliness signals the participation of architecture in a social circumstance in which resolution is not achieved by aesthetic means; instead, the aesthetic dimension of architecture, precisely because of its insufficiency, is transferred into other instruments of social consequence. ugliness, therefore, is the judgment of an irresolution and an insufficiency, but the discussion is immersed in the details of buildings, episodes, architects, commissions, courts, etc., that serve not only to bring ugly buildings into hideous life, but also to establish the context in which their hideousness can be put on full display. “ ” ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 124 bo ok r ev ie w additionally is the instantiation of that insufficiency into social technologies, into concrete processes, customs, and institutions. (184) what he means to say, i think, is that the judgment that a building is ugly is a composite reflection of the aesthetic qualities of the building, the broader social and political context in which the building is built, and the background assumptions of the people making the judgment. but as noted above, it is far from clear that he has a sample of the size and type that would justify this judgment. perhaps insufficiency and irresolution are features of british culture that spillover into its architecture, rather than intrinsic features of architecture itself. another frustrating aspect of the book, evident in the quotation above, is hyde’s prose, especially when he attempts to draw broader conclusions. he tends toward a kind of theory-speak that obfuscates the points that he wants to make. this is frustrating not only because he will scare away educated but non-technical readers interested in the concept of the ‘ugly’ in architecture, but also because he is clearly on the right track—despite the idiosyncratic nature of his evidence—in thinking that the judgment that a building is ugly serves multiple aesthetic, social, and political purposes. he is also right in refusing to be caught up in the ideological or reductivist games of providing the definition of ugly architecture and then justifying this definition through cherry-picked examples. admirably, hyde instead uses his examples to demonstrate the enormous conceptual, social, and political range of the judgment of ugliness. some clarity about the concept of ugliness emerges in the discussion of specific buildings, such as his description of the ugliness of the south bank arts centre: …the ugliness of the south bank arts centre consists of an intrusive, situated dissonance. this dissonance results not merely from infelicities of function, from a building not adequately serving its programmatic demands, or from insufficiencies of symbolic or associational legibility. it manifests from a third register of ugliness, not within the shape or material of architecture, but that consists of the relation between the architecture and the person who encounters it... (80) as he goes on to explain, the third register is one of feeling: ugly architecture can evoke disgust, irritation, or antipathy. this passage is as close as hyde comes to stating succinctly that judgments of ugliness in architecture are matters of form, function, and 125 isparchitecture.com feeling. however, when properly qualified by individual, social, and political contexts, one will find that this is the view that he defends in the book. we might forgive hyde’s lack of concision in light of two broader truths. one is the old aristotelian proverb that we can only expect as much precision as the subject allows. given the range of disciplines in view, it would be a mistake to expect much here. but second, the british case, with its unique dispositions and history, invites hosts of qualifications. this is a nation-state lacking a distinctive, unique, and celebrated architectural style. its architecture is a bit like its cuisine, but quite the opposite of its music and literature and theater. in other words, it is easier to write about shakespeare and the beatles than it is to write about british architecture. isparchitecture.com about the authors frank mahan, aia, associate director of som’s new york office, m. arch, princeton university. he is the firm’s adaptive reuse practice leader. van kluytenaar architectural professional at som, m. arch, princeton university. lawrence j. vale associate dean and ford professor of urban design and planning, mit. d. phil., oxford university. andré patrão is a doctoral student at epfl. rick fox, architect, president, stratos form. professor, interior designers institute, m. phil., csu. hans teerds faculty member, eth, institute for the history and theory of architecture. ph. d, tu delft. mark jensen professor of philosophy, u. s. air force academy. ph. d, univ. of notre dame. image credits cover: usafa_ccld_som_magdabiernat_2439bw. courtesy som air force academy cadet chapel tom spector lever house, courtesy som 510 5th ave.(manufacturers hanover trust) courtesy som polaris hall, courtesy som lincoln memorial: martin falbisoner / cc by-sa (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0) march on washington: ppmsca 03129 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.03129 library of congress prints and photographs division washington, d.c. 20540 usa http://hdl. loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print, u. s. news and world report collection. warren k. leffler, photographer. trump international hotel and tower, chicago. laura choate: cc attribution-share alike 3.0 home owning breeds real men, public domain market square, bruges. wolfgang staudt [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/ wolfgangstaudt/2545785034/ cc by 2.0 paris exposition postcard, 1937, source: exposition internationale : paris 1937 20 cartes détachables série n°1 h. chipault, concessionnaire à boulogne-sur-seine (france), public domain. almshouse, public domain freedom tower and lower manhattan: tom spector canberra: lawrence j. vale aboriginal embassy: lawrence j. vale parliament house: lawrence j. vale panopticon: jeremy bentham / public domain arnhem prison: henk monster / cc by (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) fake estates chart: rick fox grasshopper programming images: thomas mejia taborda ap . vol 5 . no 1 . 2020 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and 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architecture, art noël carroll introduction this paper concerns the relation(s) between architecture and ethics. perhaps needless to say, the intersections between architecture and ethics are manifold. architects, for example, should not cheat their clients or endanger them by using substandard building materials. nor should they take risky shortcuts or evade building codes. they bear certain responsibilities for the safety of the inhabitants of their buildings. their structures should stand firm. they should not collapse under predictable pressures. if the client has paid for one kind of stone, the architect should not try to counterfeit it with a cheaper substitute. architecture intersects so often with ethical issues that it is plausible to suggest that there are more connections between architecture and morality than there are in the case of any other art form. however, while conceding this, it may also be said that a great many of these relations do not have to do with architecture-as-architecture. many, rather, concern architecture-as-business and the ethics thereof. architects are business persons and, like all business persons, they should not, all things being equal, cheat their customers. building potemkin villages, for instance, is immoral. but, if “business” sounds like too narrow a concept here, we might categorize the pertinent relations in question in terms of architecture-asservice. the architect is a provider – a provider of services – and her clients have the right to expect ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 140 ca rr ol l that their contracts and their agreements with their architects will be fulfilled, including expectations grounded in prevailing social expectations, such as: that houses not fall down. the relevant ethics here are fairly generic – deriving from the kinds of responsibilities any provider has to her clients, albeit with specific reference to the sorts of contractual relations and social expectations that bind builders to those for whom they build. nevertheless, admitting these connections between ethics and architecture-as-service leaves open the question of the nature of the relation (or relations), if any, between ethics and architecture-asarchitecture. this is the question i will address in this paper. architecture as instrument in order to engage the issues of the relation of architectureas-architecture to ethics, we need to get a handle on the notion of architecture-as-architecture. as a first approximation, let us think broadly of an architect as a designer who constructs places – a person who shapes or builds environments – by arranging material forms, enclosing spaces and opening them. conceived this way, architectural activity as such is patently related to ethics in that architects can be seen to be organizing spaces for morally assessable purposes. for example, designing airport terminals in such a manner that passengers are confused about how to find their way out of the shopping area in search of their departure gates is to be complicit in chicanery; as is designing shopping malls that effectively entrap the clientele so they keep circling the same stores, constantly tempted into buying something. likewise designing highway overpasses so that they are too low to allow buses carrying poor people to travel to the parks and beaches frequented by the better-off is another example of designing space for immoral purposes. of course, spaces can also be organized for eminently righteous goals as in the case of much contemporary green architecture. similarly, shigeru ban’s designs for emergency disaster relief habitats are creations of indisputably great humanitarian value.1 thus, there can be no question that architects as designers of built environments can use their skills for good or ill, morally speaking. nevertheless, those who are interested in the relation of ethics to architecture-as-architecture – or architecture qua architecture – will protest that these are not the sorts of examples that need to be explored. for, they 141 isparchitecture.com will argue that the relation of architecture to moral or immoral purposes is an external relation. that is, it is the purpose of the organization of the space and not the design itself that is subject to moral assessment. and, furthermore, that purpose is external to the practice of architecture qua architecture. this is not to say that the architect is not culpable if he/she is complicit in implementing an immoral scheme. but his/her guilt is not, so to speak, architectural guilt. or, maybe a related, but somewhat different way of getting at this general point is to say that the moral wrong in this case is attributable to the architect and not to the structure – i.e., not to the architecture. architectural obligations the very notion of architectural guilt brings to mind, and possibly implies, that there must be something like architectural obligations. if there were architectural obligations – commitments architects incur simply by being architects – they would secure an internal relation between ethics and architecture qua architecture inasmuch as these putative obligations would be internal to the practice of architecture as such. part of what it is to be an architect, then, would be the responsibility to abide by said obligations. any builder would have to live up to these duties and any building would have to meet the standards they imply. failure to do so would be immoral. these obligations would constitute an ethics of architecture qua architecture. the rhetoric of such an approach is resonant in such phrases as “truth to the materials” and “structural honesty.”2 some well-known candidates for alleged architectural obligations are: 1) that architects should be “true to” or beholden to their materials. 2) that architects should practice structural honesty – that they should not mask the true structure of their constructions. 3) that architects should embody or articulate the very notion of architectural guilt brings to mind, and possibly implies, that there must be something like architectural obligations. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 142 ca rr ol l the spirit of their age, or even more radically, 4) that architects should by their buildings shape the spirit of their age prospectively. let us look at each of these proposals in turn. the requirement that architects should be true to their materials appears to rest supposedly upon the moral principle of honesty. don’t try to palm off so-called crystal glass as true crystal, to cite an example of ruskin’s cited by pevsner.3 of course, if your client is paying for true crystal, there is an obvious moral infraction here in terms of the ethics of architecture-as-business. but what are the grounds for suspecting that there must be a moral infraction from the perspective of architecture qua architecture? the worry seems to be that there is deception afoot. but suppose that it is freely advertised that it is crystal glass? i suspect that those who maintain that architects are beholden to their materials will still contend that there is a breach of architectural obligation in this case. but what could it be? what are the grounds for this alleged moral transgression? maybe it will be proposed that, even if it is widely advertised, many may still take the crystal glass for true crystal. but whose fault is that and, in any event, who is harmed and how? the “true to the materials” line of thought sometimes makes it sound as though the materials have rights. yet that’s just superstitious. similar objections may be leveled against the appeal to structural honesty. this is the idea that the built environment should show forth its structure. it should not hide it underneath ornament, for instance. it should not suggest that it bears its weight anywhere other than where it actually does. but again, it is hard to identify who is harmed if the structure of a building is not evident to your average observer. is one harmed if one takes the beams on the façade of mies van der rohe’s seagram’s building to be its central weight bearing structure rather than the beams recessed behind them? one may call for foregrounding the structure of a building in the name of clarity, but it is an equivocation to equate a taste for intellectual clarity with honesty in the moral sense. moreover, it cannot be a moral transgression to fail to make manifest the structure of a building to outside observers since very often the structural supports are not visible to the naked eye – for example, the underground timbers upon which rest the richardsonian romanesque trinity church in boston. indeed, the view that there is a moral imperative 143 isparchitecture.com to reveal architectural structure appears to confuse a stylistic preference with an ethical concern. hegel began his grand survey of the history of art with what he called the symbolic stage, which was best exemplified by the great pyramids of egypt. these structures, he claimed, revealed the level of consciousness’s self-understanding of itself at a very early stage, one whose lack of inwardness was putatively reflected symbolically in the limited interiority of the pyramids. at least since hegel, it has become common for art historians to approach artworks with an eye to establishing the way in which they articulate the spirit of their age. various architectural theorists have taken this role of emblematizing the spirit of the age as the brief of architecture as such.4 it is not clear how this is a moral obligation, unless we endorse an extremely broad sense of the notion of ethics; perhaps it may be argued that when architecture performs this role, it provides a social good. however, if this is the idea, then it makes it seem as though architecture cannot but help doing good all of the time, since it is difficult to imagine the failure of any work of architecture to reflect its time. even something like horace walpole’s antiquarian fantasy strawberry hill reflected at least one strand of his cultural moment. that is, since even nostalgic architecture will reflect its times, it seems impossible to fail in this regard which would place all architecture qua architecture on the side of the angels. this not only seems too rosy an outlook, but also is too intellectually indiscriminate to be informative even on its own terms. moreover, connected to the problem that all architecture reflects its time is the underlying fact that this is so precisely because there are so many different, often conflicting, tendencies going on during the same time period. it seems doubtful that there is ever a spirit of the age in the sense of a singular, all-encompassing theme. but if that is true, then the claim that architecture should articulate its age is an impossible obligation, since the ‘true to the materials’ line of thought sometimes makes it sounds as though materials have rights. yet that’s just superstitious. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 144 ca rr ol l there is no singular spirit to embody. thus, to the extent that “ought” implies “can,” there can be no architectural obligation to emblematize the (one and only) spirit of the times. not only have some argued that architecture should reflect the spirit of the age. some have gone further, contending that architecture should abet the development of the age prospectively, bringing supposedly positive tendencies in the present into fruition in the future by means of built environments that reinforce and guide those tendencies.5 much of the rhetoric of modern architecture sounds this clarion call. in this case, structural honesty is sometimes invoked as a commitment to the kind of intellectual clarity associated with the rationality of allegedly enlightened times. truth to the materials of modern industrial society – like steel – is linked to the notion of being true to our times. modern architecture, it was believed, not only reflects the emerging rational-industrial culture, but would hasten it as life in various machines for living and working would blossom into an enlightenment utopia, specifically a blue print utopia – to take advantage of a very useful notion introduced by nathaniel coleman. (parenthetically, there is a parallel dystopian story told about how this apotheosis of so-called rationality contributes to the tyranny of instrumental reason and neoliberalism.) the notion of architecture’s obligation to being on the side of history, of course, inherits the liabilities of its component parts, including the ideas of truth to the materials, structural honesty, and the emblematization of the spirit of the times. just as there is no singular spirit of the times, for example, there is no privileged path to the future, no end of history to which the architect must be committed. as commentators like david watkin have persuasively demonstrated, architectural modernism rides on the same faith in a teleological view of history that karl popper discredited under the rubric of historicism.6 history has no preordained narrative and, even if it did, it is not clear how architects could know it. consequently, it cannot be their moral obligation to realize it. indeed, added to the epistemological limitation of not being able to discern the course of history, architects would also confront another epistemic roadblock, namely the lack of the kind of causal knowledge that would be required to influence the historical process in determinate, predictable ways. think of all of the unintended consequences modern architecture has set in motion. so, even if architects knew where history was headed, neither they nor anyone else knows how to get there. (this lack of causal knowledge also bedevils dystopians, although in a different way. juhani pallasmaa claims that the privileging of vision 145 isparchitecture.com in modern architecture leads to detachment and contemporary alienation.7 but that is an immensely complicated causal hypothesis, one so complex that it is hard to know how to even begin to isolate the variables needed to test it empirically.) of course, so far i have only challenged some of the leading versions of the idea that there are architectural obligations. that does not conclusively prove that there are no such obligations. but it does shift the burden of proof to the friends of the conviction that there are ethical obligations internal to the practice of architecture. so, in the absence of a creditable proposal from their side, it may be useful at present to pursue another tack in an effort to establish an internal relationship between ethics and architecture qua architecture. art and architecture at this juncture, i propose to parse the notion of architecture qua architecture in terms of architecture qua art. architecture is a matter of building environments but not all built environments are architecture. what makes a building architecture? i suggest that it is its claim to art status. of course, i need to say more about what is involved in a building’s possession of art status. nevertheless, it should be uncontroversial that it is by being considered art that buildings are commonly identified as architecture. that is, if a built environment is art, then it is architecture. thus, architecture-as-art is one – perhaps the most common – way of satisfying the formula, architecture-as-architecture. moreover, if this is acceptable, it suggests a straightforward way of linking architecture qua architecture internally to ethics. namely, architecture-as-architecture will be connected to ethics at least in the way or ways that art in general qua art can be connected to ethics. at this juncture, i propose to parse the notion of qua architecture in terms of architecture qua art. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 146 ca rr ol l however, this strategy immediately faces a challenge, namely the contention that art is categorically separate from ethics. call this view autonomism. obviously autonomism must be tackled head-on before we can take advantage of any putative link between art and architecture. autonomism autonomism is a viewpoint that begins to take its modern form in the eighteenth century in discussions of beauty. francis hutcheson, borrowing the notion of disinterestedness from the earl of shaftesbury, characterized beauty as an immediate feeling of disinterested pleasure. “disinterested” for hutcheson meant “independent of personal advantage.” to find a building beautiful was to take pleasure in the mere sight of it rather than, say, taking pleasure in it because it belongs to you. the disinterestedness of the lover of beauty, for hutcheson, is just like the impartiality of a judge in a court of law. in both cases, they are required to issue judgments independent from their personal interests and advantages. kant took on board much of hutcheson’s conception of beauty – or what he, kant, called free beauty – and argued that judgments of free beauty (also known as aesthetic judgments) were based upon experiences of disinterested pleasure. however, kant expanded the range of pertinent interests to be bracketed for the sake of disinterest, encompassing purposes in general, including ethical ones, and reference to concepts, possibly, at least in part, because concepts are typically connected to purposes. subsequently, interpreters, or perhaps more accurately misinterpreters of kant, erected a theory of art upon kant’s theory of free beauty. stated crudely, it presumed that the function of art is to afford aesthetic experiences, experiences divorced from purposes, such as ethical ones, and that are instead valued for their own sake. this transmogrified into the art-pour-art (art-for-art’s sake) slogan in france, popularized by benjamin constant and madame de stael and which also provided the impetus for nineteenth century aestheticism as practiced by pater and wilde, the latter of whom famously denied the relevance of morality to literature, maintaining books were only well-written or not. of course, if art, properly so called, is divorced altogether from purpose, that bodes ill for architecture’s claim to art status, since architecture is so wedded to serving ulterior purposes. this is why so often in nineteenth century hierarchies of the arts, architecture’s status is typically demoted to the lowest art form on the totem pole, if it is not disenfranchised entirely. under earlier theories of art, architecture suffered for not being imitative. things did not get better under the dispensation of aestheticism, because 147 isparchitecture.com architecture was linked to non-aesthetic purposes and thus to uses and interests. in the twentieth century, earlier art-forart’s sake tendencies were refined and worked into a theory called the aesthetic theory of art which we can regard as the contemporary form of autonomism. in rough outline, it holds that something is a work of art if and only if it is made with the primary intention to afford aesthetic experience, which nowadays is generally conceived to be an experience valued for its own sake and not for some other purpose whether cognitive, moral, religious, political, etc. this theory can allow that architecture is an art so long as and to the extent that it is made with a primary intention to afford aesthetic experience, such as contemplation of the visible form of a building. but, at the same time, this theory severs architecture-as-art from ethics. the aesthetic theory of art has been extremely influential among analytic philosophers of art. even those who would never profess allegiance to it outright show themselves to be under its sway when, for example, they consult their “intuitions” and find that art and ethics are necessarily twain. however, despite the authority of the aesthetic theory of art, it fares badly empirically when weighed against the history of art. most art historically was and arguably continues to be made with primary intentions other than affording aesthetic experiences. commissioned by churches, rulers, guilds, aristocrats and so forth most art has been made with the primary intention to serve religion, politics, cognition, morality and so on. catholic painters for centuries composed their devotional pictures with the primary intention of engendering reverence. they would have considered it blasphemous to suggest that their work be contemplated primarily for the disinterested pleasure it imparted to viewers. similarly, the maori of new zealand have a war ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 148 ca rr ol l dance called the haka in which they stamp their feet ferociously, bulge their eyes, stick out their tongues and wave their arms aggressively for the purpose of scaring off intruders. were the enemy to sit down and savor a haka for the sake of contemplative pleasure, the dance would be selfdefeating, since it was made with the primary intention of driving away invaders in terror.8 nor can the aesthetic theory of art be repaired by dropping the requirement that the intention to afford aesthetic experience be primary because that will make the theory too broad. for example, almost every commodity in the industrialized world today is made with some intention to support what are called aesthetic experiences. yet no one mistakes the cereal aisle in the grocery store for a modern day art gallery. so, the aesthetic theory of art, at least as characterized thus far, is dubious. for our purposes, that removes a major barrier blocking the strategy of extrapolating the relation of architecture qua architecture to ethics via the relation of art to ethics. art and expression to model the relationship of architecture qua architecture to ethics on that of the relation of art to ethics requires saying something about how we understand art. obviously i cannot elaborate on a full-scale theory about how to identify art in the middle of the already large project of exploring the relation of ethics to architecture. so allow me to cut some corners. let us say that pronounced expressivity is a pretty reliable symptom of art status. by this, i do not mean to be defending some version of the expression theory of art. i am not claiming that art is necessarily expressive; some art, like duchamp’s readymade canine grooming comb, is not. nevertheless, pronounced intentional expressivity is a fairly reliable symptom of art. it is because the haka projects such an intentionally pronounced and coherent aura of fearsomeness and male aggressivity that we are provisionally disposed to classify it as dance art. interestingly, from our point of view, pronounced expressivity is also frequently cited as a mark of architectural art. paul goldberger says: “architecture begins to matter when it goes beyond protecting us from the elements, when it begins to say something about the world…”9 as is well known, nelson goodman thinks that buildings are architectural art when they mean. he writes, “a building is a work of art insofar as it signifies, means, refers, symbolizes in some way.”10 149 isparchitecture.com for gordon graham, architecture as such ideally expresses its function; he observes of marble hall in holkham hall in norfolk, england, that its elegance expresses its function, i.e. to display the elegance of its owners.11 and paul guyer argues that kant holds that all art, including architecture, involves the expression of aesthetic ideas. for example, by way of illustrating kant, guyer notes “that a (protestant) church must keep its décor simple to induce the proper mood of humbleness.”12 not all of these characteristics of the art of architecture amount to exactly the same claim, but they agree broadly in taking some measure of pronounced expressivity, albeit understood in different ways, to be a sign of architectural art. for example, it is the pronounced expressivity of the curving colonnades, reaching out from st. peter’s cathedral in rome, that prompts us to regard them as architectural art. for they gather together and embrace the crowds in the plaza in their “arms” in a way that is welcoming. or consider the majestic central staircase in the museum of modern art in new york city. its majesty marks with heightened significance and drama the experience we are about to have of the museum’s magnificent collections. august and ceremonial, the stairway expresses the pride appropriate to the holdings it introduces. perhaps pronounced expressivity may even be an ingredient in a sufficient condition for architectural art status. however, be that as it may, it is enough for my purposes that there be a recurring internal relation between architectural art and pronounced expressivity. for inasmuch as certain expressive properties are ethically charged, their architectural projection will be ethically assessable. for example, the façade of the georgian doorway at 16 bedford square in london with its fanning window by thomas leverton radiates the so, the aesthetic theory of art, as least as characterized so far, is dubious “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 150 ca rr ol l most energetic hospitality, bursting with cheerful amiability, epitomizing the virtue of sociability.13 or, for architectural art on the dark side, consider the narrative relief in the palace of the assyrian king ashurbanipal which was designed with the express intention to celebrate the king’s wanton cruelty.14 thus, we see that architecture qua architecture maybe related to ethics by way of expression. the case goes like this: some art, including architectural art, is expressive. some of that expressive art, including architectural art, is ethically charged. if some architectural art is ethically charged, then that architecture is potentially ethically assessable. thus, the relation of some architectural art to ethics can be internal because it is rooted in the nature of architectural art. consequently, there is at least this one way in which architecture-as-architecture is internally related to ethics. moderate architectural autonomism undoubtedly the autonomist will be suspicious of the preceding maneuver. thus far the autonomist has been represented as claiming that art is categorically divorced from purpose and use, including ethical purposes. this is a very radical position. but the autonomist, upon hearing the previous arguments, may retreat and regroup, counterattacking with a position that we can call “moderate autonomism.” the moderate autonomist concedes that art may be made for many purposes, not only affording aesthetic experience, but also commanding reverence, advancing ideologies, bringing consolation, promoting virtue, rallying the troops, etc. call ‘affording aesthetic experience’ the aesthetic dimension of art. this dimension is allegedly distinct from the others just mentioned. though these others can be considered legitimate features of art qua art, they contrast with the aesthetic dimension. the former features of the artwork are artistic features of the artwork, but they are not aesthetic features. the aesthetic dimension is comprised of properties, like form, that afford aesthetic experiences thereof and which are valued for their own sake. furthermore, the moderate autonomist maintains that only those aesthetic affordances are relevant when considering architecture qua architecture. if there is an argument here, it probably relies upon severing aesthetics from purposes. and that will putatively segregate categorically the aesthetic properties of the artwork from the artistic ones, including the ethical ones, in the process of distinguishing mere building from pure architecture or architecture as such or architecture qua architecture. in this way, the moderate autonomist may recoup at least part of her position in 151 isparchitecture.com the face of the considerations that i raised earlier. moderate architectural moralism according to the moderate architectural autonomist there is a categorical distinction to be drawn between the aesthetic dimension of the architectural work of art and the ethical dimension. the ethical dimension may be a legitimate part of the architectural artworks qua art, but it is not ever part of the aesthetic dimension which is putatively the only dimension that counts in considering architecture qua architecture. one important corollary of this view is that an ethical defect in a work of architecture will never count as an aesthetic blemish in architecture qua architecture because the aesthetic properties are categorically distinct from the artistic ones, including the ethical ones. this is autonomism to the degree that it asserts that there is a domain of pure architecture qua architecture where moral considerations never play a role. it is moderate autonomism because it allows that things like ethics, religion, politics, etc. are legitimate concerns of art. they are just never aesthetically relevant where aesthetic relevance is what determines the domain proper of architecture qua architecture. moderate architectural moralism is the rejoinder to moderate architectural autonomism. the moderate architectural moralist contends that some works of art, including some works of architectural art, feature moral defects that are also aesthetic defects, specifically formal defects. thus the moderate moralist argues contra the moderate autonomist that the aesthetic dimension and the ethical dimension of the arts, including some architectural art works, are not absolutely cleaved, since sometimes there can be an internal relation between the ethical dimension of a given artwork and its aesthetic dimensions as evidenced by the possibility that sometimes an ethical defect in an ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 152 ca rr ol l artwork can also count as – i.e., be identical with – an aesthetic defect. the moderate moralist might proceed defensively, questioning whether the moderate autonomist’s argument for the categorical separation of the artistic properties and the aesthetic properties can be advanced without begging crucial questions. however, the moderate moralist may also propose a positive argument on behalf of his conclusion. the first step in the moderate moralist’s argument is his definition of form: the form of an artwork is its ensemble of choices which realize the point or purpose of the artwork. formal features then are choices that contribute to the point or purposes of the works. architectural theorists should be familiar with this conception of form, since it echoes the architectural slogan that form follows function. next the moderate moralist points out that the point or purpose of many artworks is to engender emotional responses. the point of a comedy, like shaw’s you never can tell, is to elicit comic amusement. characters, situations, and plot coincidences are designed to that effect. clearly architectural artworks often have the purpose of provoking emotional responses. both the interiors and the exteriors of gothic cathedrals are predicated upon instilling awe by means of their vaulting spires and naves. they are literally designed to take our breath away and to reduce us to hushed silence. often the mood or emotion we identify as expressed by a building is connected to the feeling it arouses in us. so in the case of the gothic cathedral, we say the cathedral is awesome. the emotions aroused in us by artworks do not arise by happenstance. they, like all emotions, are governed by certain conditions of appropriateness. the appropriate object of fear is perceived danger. if an object does not appear threatening to us, it is not an appropriate object of fear, and if we are sound of mind, it will not be frightening to us. one of the conditions for awe is that the object be perceived to be of great size or power. if the object does not meet this condition, the object will not be experienced as awesome. these observations about the emotions have obvious applicability to the arts, including architecture, since artworks are often in the business of eliciting emotional responses. horror fictions, for example, are in the business of provoking horror, a compound emotion of fear and disgust. thus, horror fictions must design characters to this end. were one to present as the monster a figure like casper the friendly ghost in what is intended as a genuine horror fiction that would be a failure in design because casper is too nice to be scary and too clean to be disgusting. casper would be a design choice that would be a defect because he 153 isparchitecture.com would fail to realize the purpose of horror fiction. that is, the choice of casper would be a formal failure. similarly to build out of papier maché an architectural structure such as a triumphal arch, meant to project strength, would be a formal error since it would dissolve in even a mild rainstorm. but, what has this to do with ethics? simply this: many of the emotions are related to ethics either because they involve moral conditions – as anger is concerned with justice being done to me or mine; or they are moral emotions on their own terms, like righteous indignation. eliciting these emotions requires meeting certain ethical conditions. if these are not met, the intended emotion will not take hold and the artwork will fail in its purpose. for example, with respect to an aristotelian tragedy the central character cannot be an evil, truly reprehensible character because we will not feel tragic pity for him, but joy at his being dealt his just desserts. to present the historical hitler as the protagonist of a play intended to elicit tragic pity in the aristotelian sense would be a design error – a formal defect – because it involves the choice of an element not suited for – in fact at odds with – the purpose of the work. the audience is more likely to shout “well done” when calamity befalls hitler than to shed a tear for him. moreover, notice that the formal error here is rooted in an ethical defect. tragic pity depends upon an object that is morally undeserving of the calamity that befalls him. the historical hitler does not meet that condition. he deserves whatever he gets. to attempt to mandate tragic pity will encounter imaginative resistance on the part of morally sensitive audiences. the creator of our abortive hitler tragedy has a morally defective understanding of what is required for tragic pity. thus he makes the wrong design choice in constructing the protagonist of his play. but this is simultaneously a formal error, precisely because it ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 154 ca rr ol l is a moral error. thus, sometimes a moral defect in an artwork is a formal defect just because it may block the audience’s intended emotive uptake. a similar possible scenario can be sketched with respect to architectural art. imagine a memorial constructed after a bloody civil war between the as and the bs. made of granite, it is divided into two equal halves that formally mirror each other. on the left slab are listed all of the names of the fallen as. on the right side are all of the names of the fallen bs. the structures are enormous, granting each side enormous gravity. each side looks the same. the only differences appear when you get close enough to read the names which differ from one side of the monument to the other. otherwise, neither side of the memorial diverges in appearance from the other. neither side receives special architectural accent or emphasis. architecturally the two sides are equal and the design calls upon viewers to feel sorrow equally for and to admire or honor equally the dead of both sides of the civil war. but, in point of fact, one side – let’s say the bs – were guilty of horrible atrocities, bombing civilians with poisonous chemicals, employing rape to demoralize and subdue villages that showed sympathy to the as, and worse. many of the names of the fallen bs on the memorial belong to known war criminals. for the morally sensitive viewer, the two sides of the civil war are not deserving of equal sorrow and honor. the bs don’t merit sorrow at all. thus the morally sensitive audience will resist the architectural rhetoric of the monument. for that reason, the choice of presenting the as and the bs as equal visually is a formal error because it is a design choice that fails to realize or to implement the purpose of the memorial. but it is simultaneously a formal defect because it both exhibits and mandates a morally corrupt point of view – one that equates war criminals with the honored dead who opposed them. thus, the uninflected handling of the two sides of the memorial represents a formal, aesthetic flaw, exactly because it embodies a morally defective viewpoint that undermines the purpose of the work by thwarting audience uptake. consequently, moderate architectural autonomism is false. a brief summary we began with the challenge to ascertain whether there might be an internal relation between architecture qua architecture and ethics. although there may be more, we identified at least one such relation by construing architecture qua architecture as architecture-as-art. we then modeled the relation of architecture to ethics on the relation of art to ethics, 155 isparchitecture.com specifically with reference to art as expression. this led to the conclusion that architecture can be ethically assessable as architecture when it projects properties expressive of moral import. we then considered how a moderate architectural autonomist might respond to this conclusion and disputed that response by mounting an argument on behalf of moderate architectural moralism, the position that maintains that in some cases a moral defect in a work of architectural art may be constitutive of an aesthetic defect. endnotes 1. see dana goodyear, “paper palaces,” the new yorker, volume xc, number 23, august 11 and 18, 2014: 66-75. 2. see: joan ockman, “ethics and aesthetics after modernism and postmodernism” in the hand and the soul ed. by sandra iliecu (charlottesville: university of virginia press, 2009), 45. quoted in stefan koller, “architects on value” in ethics, design and planning of the environment ed. by claudia basta and stefano moroni (dordrecht: springer, 2013), 59. 3. quoted in david watkin, morality and architecture revisited (chicago: university of chicago press, 1977, 2001), 108-9. 4. see sigfried gideon, space, time and architecture (oxford: oxford university press, 1941); nikolaus pevsner, pioneers of the modern movement (london: faber and faber, 1936); karsten harries, the ethical function of architecture (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1997). 5. pevsner, op. cit. 6. watkin, op. cit. 7. juhani pallasmaa, the eyes of the skin (oxford: wiley, 2005). 8. an alternative account of the haka was offered in some cases a moral defect in a work of architectural art may be constitutive of an aesthetic defect. “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 2 . 2015 156 ca rr ol l at the conference on architecture and ethics in delft in july of 2014. an audience member argued that the function of the haka was to present rivals with a performance that they assessed in terms of how formidable the dancers appeared. however, even if this, rather than the account offered above, is the correct account of the haka, it remains clear that the dance was not created with the intention to be valued for its own sake. moreover, the same could be said about much of the armor designed for european knights. it was made to strike terror in the hearts of the enemy and not to deliver disinterested pleasure. 9. paul goldberger, why architecture matters (new haven: yale university press, 2009), ix. 10. nelson goodman and catherine z. elgin, reconceptions in philosophy (indianapolis: hackett, 1988), 33. see also: remei capdevila-werning, goodman for architects (london: routledge, 2013), 13. 11. gordon graham, philosophy of the arts 3rd edition (london: routledge, 2005), 178-182. 12. paul guyer, “kant and the philosophy of architecture”, the journal of aesthetics and art criticism, volume 69, number 1 (winter, 2011), 15. 13. see alain de botton, the architecture of happiness (new york: vintage books, 2006), 99. 14. see noël carroll, “art and recollection” in art in three dimensions (oxford: oxford university press, 2010), 171. architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was founded in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, stefan koller. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are avilable to society members at ispa events. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content. copying this journal is protected copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley editors carolyn fahey, ph.d., newcastle university stefan koller, b.phil. (m.a.), university of oxford editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com contents paul guyer 25monism and pluralism: the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of architecture 5editorial 9david leatherbarrowsharing sense: or, how ethics might be the subject matter of architectural aesthetics 43emmanuel petitthe architecture of ethics: stanley tigerman 56stanley tigerman responds 81nathaniel colemanis beauty still relevant? is art? is architecture? 61rafael de clercqbuilding plans as natural symbols 97rick foxa new interpretive taxonomy for works of architecture 119interview: andrew ballantyne 125review isparchitecture.com architectural writing that engages philosophy has been around for decades. philosophical writing with reference to architecture has been around for centuries. but almost none of it has sustained a conversation. it is as though each outing might be the last. nothing seems to build—one thought upon another. too often, when those from the architectural side of the fence reference philosophy in their work, it appears they are doing so ornamentally—to render the work with the appearance of higher order wisdom derived from analytic or continental or environmental or eastern philosophy, yet without enduring the painstaking work of having done so. too often, when those from the philosophical side of the fence reference architecture, their stylistic or ideological prejudices are all too apparent, and their understanding of the workings of the world of architectural production are too naïve to be persuasive. and yet—the built environment is too important a force in the world for philosophers to neglect in their work of questioning, criticizing and systematizing who we are, what we know, what is important, and all the rest of the fields of inquiry under their roof. and by the same token, philosophy is too important a practice for architects to ignore their efforts to understand the world they account for. the deficiencies have themselves created a need and desire for a field of inquiry that incorporates the expertise of both architecture and philosophy. sustaining the inquiry and securing the field, is achieved with a journal. until a budding discipline has a journal to call its own, it cannot mature because it has no regular the purpose of architecture philosophy is to provide the platform to allow the field’s self-identification process to begin, establish the field’s standards, and identify the most pertinent topics “ ” why architecture philosophy? tom spector, carolyn fahey, & stefan koller ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 6 ed it or ia l home within which to find its center, explore its boundaries, quantify progress, and evaluate contributions. there is no way of knowing whether an area of inquiry has already been dealt with by others, whether it may prove fertile, and standards for inquiry are left entirely undefined. these criteria are currently lacking in writing at the junction of architecture and philosophy. the purpose of architecture philosophy, therefore, is to provide the platform to allow the field’s self-identification process to begin, establish the field’s standards, and identify the most pertinent topics. the initial issues will explore the boundaries of writing on architecture philosophy and, in the process, begin to show what the key questions, positions, and disagreements amongst architecture philosophers are. often times, this diversity is apparent in their formal disciplinary training, whether of post-structuralist architecture or analytic philosophy or otherwise. as editors, we are not interested in homogenizing the thinking represented in the nascent field, but rather in engendering genuine debate. at times the voices will be disparate, resonating as a cacophony of debate, but there are already apparent moments of commonality. the prospect of meaningful agreement creates a worthwhile pursuit. the desired tone of the essays is to aim for accessibility, but at a level that can presume familiarity with the basics of philosophy and with the main currents in recent architectural thought. the method of research sought is of highly rationalized and evidenced arguments, in which poetics are inadequate, authoritarian claims indefensible, and ungrounded abstractions immobile. most of the writing presented in this inaugural issue is drawn from essays presented at the 2012 ispa conference— ethics and aesthetics in architecture—held at newcastle university.1 the original call for papers is here: the subject of aesthetics is often taken as dealing with questions of mere beauty, where the word ‘aesthetic’ is colloquially interchangeable with beauty and liking. someone might, for instance, explain their liking the look of a particular object on the basis of its ‘aesthetics’. interestingly, even within the specialized architecture discourse, the aesthetic is largely discussed on the basis of an object’s appearance. yet, the aesthetic is not limited and should not be limited merely to the way things look. any philosophically informed aesthetician will contest this limited view, saying something along the lines of ‘the aesthetic is everything’. the aim of this conference is therefore in part to address this discursive limitation in architecture and related subjects by broadening the aesthetic discourse beyond questions relating to purely visual phenomena in order to include those derived from all facets of human experience. in taking on the aesthetic in a manner that pushes its considerations beyond the realm of mere beauty, questions of ethics 7 isparchitecture.com often arise. indeed wittgenstein famously asserted that, “ethics and aesthetics are one and the same”.2 questions as to why, for instance a building’s form takes the shape it does, not only raises the more conventional aesthetic questions but also questions about what purpose or meaning the building serves beyond purely visual stimulation. does the form for instance relate somehow to a social ideal or economic ideal? and if so, is this ideal something that its inhabitants subscribe to or are even aware of ? in an effort to draw thinkers’ attention to the ethical role architecture plays as well as the ethical function architects play, the second part of this conference call addresses this often overlooked dimension of architecture.3 the intent in raising such questions is not merely to broaden architects’ discourse to meaningfully include ethical considerations, but also equally as much to broaden the philosophical discourse which has done little to investigate the very same philosophical questions architects do. the hope with bringing the two disciplines together is to propel the broader discourse beyond the limitations of a purely visual understanding of architecture and its aesthetics. the essays in this inaugural issue move beyond those limitations by drawing on a diverse range of approaches. david leatherbarrow’s “sharing sense” employs aesthetic readings of architecture to illuminate ethical problems. paul guyer’s “pluralism and monism” traces a strand in the philosophical genealogy from kant to ruskin, establishing what the cognitivist approach to understanding architecture is and how this position is situated firmly within both ethics and aesthetics. emmanuel petit’s essay “architecture of ethics” looks at the ethical journey of the architect stanley tigerman through his architectural practice in chicago. rafeal de clercq’s essay “building plans as natural symbols” investigates how the architectural plan may be interpreted and understood in terms of symbology. nathaniel coleman’s “is beauty still relevant?” is a as editors, we are not interested in homogenizing the thinking represented in the nascent field, but rather in engendering genuine debate “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 8 ed it or ia l fine-grained analysis of an aspect of ancient greek aesthetics applied to contemporary artistic problems, which seeks to examine whether and how ethics and aesthetics can be understood in tandem. rick fox’s “a new interpretative taxonomy” is a textbook example of epistemic inquiry, which delineates common positions within popular architecture discourse: the singularist, constructivist, and contextualist. to further explore the journal’s limits we include an interview with andrew ballantyne, who has made many of first successful forays into the interdisciplinary territory of architecture and philosophy, as well as an interview with chicago-based architect stanley tigerman, and a book review. in later issues, we hope to encourage more dialogue with our readers in the form of responses to published essays, book reviews, roundtables, etc. occasional themed issues are also anticipated. the society’s international events will continue to supply the journal with papers, but we also maintain an open submission. submission details and guidelines can be found at isparchitecture.com or in the back of this issue. endnotes 1. “ethics and aesthetics conference website.” international society for the philosophy of architecture, 13 dec. 2010. web. 30 may 2014. <ispaconference. wordpress.com>. 2. wittgenstein, tractatus logico-philosophicus, §6.421. 3. fahey, carolyn. “2012 conference: call for papers.” international society for the philosophy of architecture, 13 dec. 2010. web. 30 jan. 2014. <isparchitecture.com>. isparchitecture.com sharing sense: or, how ethics might be the subject matter of architectural aesthetics david leatherbarrow posing a productive question about ethics and aesthetics in architecture is no easy matter, for these subjects raise whole clusters of problems, not simple or single questions. that observation is not new; these complexities were apparent two millennia ago when the terms were first introduced. aristotle wrote not one but three books on ethics; as for aesthetics, also three, if you count the poetics, the lost book on comedy, and the rhetoric. after centuries of successive translations and interpretations, through semantic and conceptual innovations, as well as substitutions, alterations and forgeries, we have an exceedingly wide range of issues and meanings from which we borrow and select, always partially, sometimes uncritically. in our search for non-trivial form-making in architecture we have been invited to suppose that ethical considerations will help us imagine aesthetic approaches that are not limited to purely visual concerns. in the terms of a title frequently cited in discussions of both ethics and aesthetics, this question would ask how the beautiful might be relevant.1 an implied corollary is that ethical understanding in architecture can be made tangible through aesthetic creativity. although these premises are suggestive, i believe that progress along these lines will not be straightforward. the realities of professional practice in our time present a serious challenge to any aesthetics-substantiated-by-ethics thesis. like it or not, architectural work today is largely a matter of business, in which project making is hurried and abbreviated by cost-cutting measures: mostly we ‘fast-track’ design development, reuse ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 10 le a th er ba r r ow details that worked well in previous projects, specify familiar products, have specialists take responsibility for fragments of designs rather than allow single individuals to develop projects in full, and so on. these measures are meant to save time and assure outcomes. there have been business-minded changes in the ways architects work with builders, too. building construction, a practice that traditionally involved both skill and innovation is now seen as the sort of labor that requires regulation by the various instruments of managerial science. today’s design business also constrains the sorts of collaborations that have historically enriched projects—collaborations among architects, builders, clients, critics, and members of the public. today we govern collaboration through contract administration. design as planning and construction as management not only save money but allow confident investment. these comments are not meant as a complaint, only an observation that conditions are no longer what they once were; that the sense of the discipline possessed by academics and critics is often out of step with the realities of practice. if reflection is to illuminate action, if the word is to render a service to the work—something i believe—then the divergence i have described must be taken into account.2 as in most types of business, moral issues rarely obtrude themselves into contemporary design practice; except, of course, in the sorts of arguments that lead to legal proceedings. architects tend to think that ethics is an academic subject, which indeed it is, with linkages to other scholarly pursuits: philology, hermeneutics, decision theory, and so on. the bearing of these on the architecture trade is far from obvious. the old idea that theory is unrelated to practice provides a historical context for the incompatibilities we sense. more significantly, architecture has been absorbed into a broader framework of technological thought and production, a kind of thought that emancipates design from place and functional purpose. why? because technical knowledge allows one to do again what has been done before, regardless of context. nothing in work that is essentially technical acknowledges territorial obligations.3 this is one of the reasons why technological objects enjoy world-wide distribution. ethical action is just the reverse; its deliberations and decisions are always bound to concrete circumstances and ways of living, without which they lose their sense of urgency, difficulty, and criteria of relevance. less positively, calls for ethical behavior sometimes lead to localism and insularity. in these cases the agreements that structure communities are buttressed by practices of exclusion.4 faced with this dichotomy, one might think that reciprocal support is the answer, that techniques could give concrete form to 11 isparchitecture.com ethical understanding and that judgments about what is right in given circumstances could give instrumentality a sense of what should—not only could—be done. this possibility is implied in a wonderful aphorism from georg simmel: “the richness of form is that it can adopt an infinity of contents—the richness of content is that it can enter into an infinity of forms. where both infinities meet, the finite construct emerges. . .”5 unfortunately, when today’s designers seek alternatives to technical reason they generally turn to purely formal operations—sometimes called “aesthetic” practices—and focus on geometric experimentation and innovation. we see a lot of it today. obviously, there is nothing wrong with form; one cannot imagine a design without it. but, as with technical approaches, working with shape or geometry alone runs against the grain of ethical understanding because modern aestheticizing accents not so much what is shared in society and culture, but what is unique to a designer’s personal technique and vision, an architect’s brand. critics reinforce aestheticizing by praising experimentation in architecture in the ways they would less practical forms of expression and authorship. we commonly identify architectural works with the name of their designer: a nouvel, gehry, or ando building, as if an accommodation were nothing more than a we commonly identify architectural works with the name of their designer: a nouvel, gehry, or ando building, as if an accommodation were nothing more than a representation, a paper menu the meal “ ” schreiner house: view towards garden ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 12 le a th er ba r r ow representation, a paper menu the meal. despite these tendencies, one occasionally senses that there may still be some shared background for judgments about what makes a building good, even beautiful. this background is not so much what each of us might state as our values, but a historically constituted and forceful ethos that shows itself now and again in both the settings of everyday life and works of art. obviously, the key question concerns the relationship between these two. how and when might this ethics-made-apparent-by-aesthetics come into being? i will begin my answer by citing an early modern architect, adolf loos. personalizing his avant garde polemic, he wistfully reminisced as follows: i did not grow up, thank god, in a stylish home. at that time no one knew what it was yet. ... here was the table, a totally crazy and intricate piece of furniture ...[with] a shocking bit of work as a lock. but it was our table, ours! can you understand what that means? evenings, when i was a young boy and the lamp was burning, i was never able to tear myself away from it. and there was the writing table. there was an ink stain on it, my sister hermine had knocked over the inkwell when she was a little baby. and there was the picture of my parents ...[with] a hideous frame ... a wedding gift from the workers at my father’s shop. and that old-fashioned chair, a leftover from my grandmother’s household. every piece of furniture, everything, every object had a story to tell, a family history. the house was never finished; it grew along with us and we grew within it. of course it did not have any style to it. that means there was no strangeness, no age. but there was one style that our home did have—the style of its occupants, the style of our family.6 my opening suggestion is that the style loos describes embodies an ethos. it was not a personal matter, such as the manner of henry van de velde or charles renee mackintosh, nor a set of rules or objective values. loos describes a framework that was formed out of habits and shared practices, also conflicts, accidents and bad decisions. he does not say, but it would not be wrong to suppose, that some measure of design intention was part of it too, even if non-professional. such an ethos attains concreteness in the desired and recurring situations of prosaic life, in the house of course, but elsewhere too, in all manner of situations, each with its own decorum and typical configuration. ethical knowledge comes not just from the intimate but also from the public. it is acquired through encounter, meetings that are alternately familiar and challenging, assuring and conflictual. one title from loos, trotzdem, makes the difficulty of ethical action apparent. shared sense is key, for it is what distinguishes ethical understanding from 13 isparchitecture.com the various kinds of technical knowledge possessed by individuals. because it is teachable, technical knowledge individuates: a person taught to bake bread has a different contribution to a meal than a person who knows how to grow vegetables or play music. architects know how to design, carpenters to construct. the living ethos loos described is something different, neither taught nor possessed individually, but inherited in a given culture, modified slowly, and often taken for granted. thus, there is a tension between the comparatively stable and shared ground of ethical sense and productive and relatively autonomous character of technical production. negotiating this tension is the real work of design (neither experimentation nor affirmation). i have used the english words ethics and ethos interchangeably. to explain my usage i need to take a detour into word origins. two terms interest me, ethics and ecology. i will say why shortly. of the word ecology’s two-parts i will discuss only the first. despite the fact that this compound was introduced in the nineteenth-century, the two-parts are ancient. the eco of ecology derives from the greek word oikos, meaning household or estate—something larger and more inclusive than a single building. a faint echo of this origin survives in the grade-school subject ‘home economics,’ but that term is essentially redundant. our modern sense of economics narrows the ancient meaning, which embraced all the tasks and understandings of domestic stewardship. xenophon’s famous oeconomicus described a wellrun house, farm, or extended family domain. as a treatise on estate management, it addresses topics such as the arrangement and storage of furnishings and supplies, the hiring of slaves, the cultivation of soils, and the management of one’s family. his architectural topics included the building’s placement and orientation, with respect to times, seasons, weather patterns, and natural in our search for non-trivial form-making in architecture we have been invited to suppose that ethical considerations will help us imagine aesthetic approaches that are not limited to purely visual concerns “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 14 le a th er ba r r ow resources, as well as existing buildings and settlements. further, his account presents a play of analogies between the building, body, and world, as well as practical advice on forms of cooperation, achieving health, undertaking simple and teachable forms of work, and living an honorable life. here the ethical is linked to the ecological. discussions of ethics addressed what is required for a good life, as the opening pages of aristotle’s nichomachean ethics make clear. local interests were at issue, but also involvements with outsiders. what involvement was to aristotle orientation was to xenophon. with respect to buildings, the latter’s basic premise—one i think we should restore to current thinking—is that the sources of architectural order are partly external to the work itself. for my part, i call this architecture oriented otherwise.7 one way of making the work’s involvements clear is to repeat the fact that xenophon describes an estate not a house. much later, in sixteenth-century usage—palladian theory and practice—this meant attention to the form and life of the entire villa, not only the casa. pre-modern economics, then, was the discipline that allowed a person or family to keep a well-ordered residence, given limited means, energy, and time. because oikos also pertained to an individual’s relationships with others, ethical considerations were key to ideas about the house. economics involved good housekeeping for one’s family and for others as both groups existed together in the natural world. this style of thinking joins together two terms and two sciences—economics and ethics. can we equate this early sense of ethos with our current sense of ethics? yes and no. no, especially if we assume the original term meant something like morals or a code of conduct meant to guide everyone’s behavior. conduct was signified by the ancient word, but it meant a more particular and less objectified sense of behavior than our sense of ethics typically implies. a good comparison is with health, for the knowledge one has of one’s own heath can be distinguished from the account presented in scientific description. that’s why good doctors always ask patients how they themselves feel, regardless of what the thermometer says.8 ethos was also constituted culturally and apparent in patterns of behavior that were, in turn, subtended by the belief that they were good. the best translation of ethos i can propose is habit of dwelling. this usage accords with ancient usage and can work in modern understanding. accordingly, habits are not only behaviors performed repeatedly but those that are right in specific instances. dwelling habits can be seen as ethical if they embody the ways of life individuals and others desire in particular circumstances. decisions about what makes a setting good are the ethical aspects of design. here, then, is a definition of architecture that acknowledges these 15 isparchitecture.com terms and builds on the premises they establish: built works give durable dimension and legible expression to the habits of residing that are commonly understood to be good. in ancient thought a single principle governed the design and construction of works of this kind: decorum in latin, prepon in greek.9 for vitruvius décor was the principle that allowed one to judge that the form of a building was appropriate for its cultural value, use, and location. in rhetoric the term indicated the style suitable for the subject; gravity for funerals, for example. in everyday life anything or any act could be considered with respect to its appropriateness or fit: celebration is an appropriate response to victory, repayment to debt; likewise, fabric is a fitting choice for shirts, leather for shoes, and so on. the key is this: decisions of suitability were made concretely, in view of existing circumstances, seen as variations on a norm; in architecture, a cultural norm. today, the word decorum sounds a bit stuffy or dusty. our equivalents are character and atmosphere: a spatial setting has the right atmosphere when its dimensions, forms, and materials are appropriate for and express a given event or situation. indefinite but unmistakable, the many types of spatial character or atmosphere allow a range of embodiments and encourage interpretation. i have said that decisions about suitability are partly determined by conditions external to the work, but only partly. good arrangements also depend on relationships among elements internal to the work. since antiquity the term that named the right relationships between a work’s component parts has been proportion. our english word derives from latin, which translated the greek word for symmetry. that coupling sounds puzzling when the bilateral sense of the latter term comes to mind. for the greeks symmetry resulted from commensurate relationships, as indicated etymologically: sym-metron meant ‘of like measure.’ one way to distinguish the greek and latin words is to see symmetry as normthe best translation of ethos i can propose is habit of dwelling “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 16 le a th er ba r r ow definition and proportion as norm-realization, the first quantitative, the second qualitative. unfortunately, this simple distinction was complicated by vitruvius’ introduction of a third term, analogy. symmetry arises from proportion and the greeks called this analogia.10 this last word was not explained by vitruvius but the authors on whom he relied, varro and cicero, did provide definitions. varro, in lingua latina, introduced both terms in his discussion of regularity, relation, and ratio in the inflection of terms. for relation or ratio varro read pro portione, by proportionate likeness, which was in his opinion the same thing as the greek analogia, that is, according to logos.11 the word symmetria also appeared in the famous canon of polyclitus, a treatise on sculpture. the canon’s importance is attested by many sources, most clear and instructive for us is a passage from the medical writer galen: “beauty, says polyclitus, resides not in the commensurability of the [the elements of the human body], but in the commensurability of [its members], finger to finger ... these to the forearm … [and finally] everything to everything.”12 galen’s distinction between elements and members defines the former as the “hot, cold, dry and wet” parts of the body and the latter as fingers, hands, arms, and so on. the commensurability of elements leads to health, that of members to beauty. thus for the doctor, proportionality could be discovered among the body’s warm and wet aspects; the balanced co-ordination—symmetry and proportionality—of the four elements defined good health, an ethos of suitable, known relationships. widening the horizon, but earlier, the philosopher empedocles argued that the qualities that enter into combination in the body are akin to those that make up the wider environment: the air we breathe is the air of the heavens, at the supper table our bodies incorporate the yield of the land.13 again we see a connection between ethos and oikos, ethics and what would come to be called ecology. earlier, still, in the hippocratic texts, the connections between character and place demonstrated the same set of interconnections or continuities. the symmetry of elements, in both the body and the world, structures action and life. the key point is that these actions may appear to be beautiful in a metric or formal sense. when they do, in a well-proportioned plan, for example, the work is both suitable and beautiful; which is to say ethical and aesthetic. when the balance between the body’s elements has been disturbed by disease the ancient doctor’s task was to devise a regime that would restore the correct proportion of the hot, cold, dry, and moist elements. a synonym for healthy is well-tempered, for sick, ill-tempered. the intemperate among us are characterized by asymmetry. this is what 17 isparchitecture.com aristotle’s successor, theophrastus, described in his famous book on character, which was the ancient source of later architectural theories about a building’s character (boffrand, blondel, boullee, quatremere, and loos). again, while this symmetry of qualities defines good health, it is not always apparent; cosmetic arts—lip painting, hair coloring—fabricate attractive appearances that can cover disease and sickness. yet symmetry is not only a matter of appearances. cicero wrote that while the beauty of the body is attractive to the eyes because of the fit composure, proportion and harmony of its members, the order, consistency and regularity of words and actions, the proportions of conduct can also be judged beautiful.14 there is a similitude between physicality and attitude. can the same be true of a building, or must architects make a choice between the measures that define the building’s physical body and the patterns of life the work is meant to accommodate. if not, what might illustrate their conjunction? a common event—a shared meal—may provide an answer. defined prosaically, a meal is a division and sharing of consumables. often, though not always, one person is charged with the task of dividing the whole into the portions or shares that will be distributed to the group. as if the plate of food were akin to the plan of a building, two acts are essential in the work of apportioning: division and distribution (or disposition, dispositio, l., or diathesis, gk.). each act assumes a good sense of measure, of the dish and the desires of the diners. here is how table-top proportioning works: obviously, no one is given a piece that’s too big or too small, but a fair share is not necessarily an equal one, a person’s rank or status—a house guest, for example—may entitle them to a larger or preferred portion, also a person’s hunger or size. inequality is not only fair in dining but required. when the meal unfolds as it should, when the child and adult, family member and guest are given their due, the event can be said the key point is that these actions may appear to be beautiful in a metric or formal sense. when they do, in a well-proportioned plan, for example, the work is both suitable and beautiful; which is to say ethical and aesthetic “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 18 le a th er ba r r ow to be properly portioned or well-proportioned. our current sense of a balanced diet derives from but abbreviates this idea, neglecting issues of social rank and expressions of generosity. nevertheless, table-top economy presents a fairly good portrait of a group’s social structure and internal relationships and ethics. by portrait i mean legible appearance, which sometimes can be beautiful. edward hopper’s table for ladies shows a man and a woman at a restaurant table, sharing some beverage, white wine is what i would like to think. his desire for a drink seems to have been interrupted by something she has said. they are not alone, or will not be for long, additional tables have been prepared for others; there is also a woman in black behind a countertop and register; and a waitress or cook dressed in white, grasping a basket placed among other items on display—i can’t tell if she is removing or returning it to where it belongs. with respect to the setting’s economy, emblems of excess and restraint have their place in the scene. on the one hand a principle of tacit serviceability governs many of the elements we see: the expanse of glass we are looking through, the chalkboard of prices, the plain wooden cladding, the mirrors, and black and white floor tiles all express modest and purposeful urbanity. restraint seems to be the theme of the figure in black: looking down, curled into her work, concentrated and concentric, she is fully absorbed in collecting and counting, also limited by her work station, which is itself equipped with containers of various sorts—the cash register, toothpick dispenser, and vitrine. the figure in white shows something completely different, not limitation but outward reach, suggesting a range of involvements, or spread of interests: clearly she’s more concerned about something on the street than the basket of fruit—if only for the precise moment hopper brings before us—but her apron links her back to the kitchen; her shadow in the first mirror gives her a place among the diners, and her reach ties her to the consumables on show. the line-up of fruit, meat, and greens says no one—at least the two at the table—will go hungry, or even thirsty for that matter, as the bottles below the server’s right elbow are clearly within reach. this little scene, like any other, has its own internal coherence. the objects make the room all-of-a-piece. all that’s required for public dining is there, nothing missing, nothing unnecessary. the room’s geometries argue the same point, unbroken patterns, clear horizons, and repetitions bring all of the parts into coherence. but to say that the room is well-defined, that its parts are commensurate, does not mean it is insular. topographically, the setting and events reach back to the kitchen, forward to the street, and upward. the diner’s hats and coat recall the weather and the town, the latter is also the server’s focus. more abstractly, or formally 19 isparchitecture.com the prominent diagonals (her back and its shadow line, the row of grapefruits, the window frame, and the hand rail) open the enclosure to settings beyond its ostensible limits. just as the renaissance villa coordinated the internal structures of the casa with the external opportunities of the location— according to the principle of orientation and the rule of “ecology”—this setting’s character, temperature, or ethos result from the interplay between interior and exterior orders. the proportionality hopper has constructed, the similitude of ratios that stages a possible meal, not only accommodates a way of life but also paints a portrait; in this case one of considerable beauty. to end i would like to describe something similar in the works of the great norwegian architect sverre fehn. fehn lectured often but wrote little, to say that the room is welldefined, that its parts are commensurate, does not mean it is insular “ ” schreiner house: fireplace ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 20 le a th er ba r r ow just one essay, which is really a gloss on his visits to moroccan villages.15 his account begins ecologically and ends ethically: furthest out from the village center, at the threshold of the desert, he found covered stalls that protected the livestock. closer in were small storerooms for animal fodder, which were necessary because grazing was impossible in the parched environment. still closer to the heart of the village were the dwellings, ringing its center. the center itself, however, shifted in dimension and configuration, by virtue of changes in the perimeter rings, as if by some reversal of the laws of physics ripples of land and building form converged on the center in order to shape it. about this central space fehn had little to say, his description abruptly turned at this point to the dwelling itself, seen in section. he began with a workplace, observing that the cool temperature and deep shade that result from its lower position are congenial to housework when the summer heat and light are too fierce for work of any other kind. just as the sectional position of these rooms reduces heat gain, so does the thickness of the house’s walls. above the ground level is the floor for food preparation, above that the level for sleeping and living. little furniture gives a trace of these activities, but there seems to be no uncertainty about uses to which these rooms are put, for their long history makes these practices strikingly stable, contrasting domestic topography with the shifting sands outdoors. and these uses are not only the kind we might call functional, the ethos they express is also symbolic: the instance fehn gives of the latter is the removal of shoes before a meal. enabling the meal also is a mat or carpet on which one sits, and the table around which people gather. while fehn does not elaborate the analogy, he implies that a ratio or symmetry governs the use and meaning of these architectural elements: what the mat is to the dwelling floor the table is to the village center, both serving as gathering places that give orientation to a “round dance” that ties together the settings that make up the perimeter, the very same ones that accommodate the dance’s functional patterns. as if they were capable of performing this dance, the several pieces of furniture in the house are “mobile.” this movement of people and their accommodations, fehn explains, is a remnant of nomadic culture, the steps and shoes of which still carry ancient sands into the house, challenging the distinction between inside and outside just observed. with this entire structure in mind—from livestock stalls to the central carpet— fehn’s approach can be called cultural ecology, or an aesthetics of ethical life. there are two aspects of this account i want to hold onto: the rings of distance that encircle the house, giving its settings and events their orientation and limits, and the coupling of the practical and representational aspects of architectural elements, as if ways of living and of showing, ethics and aesthetics can, indeed, be linked together. 21 isparchitecture.com schreiner house: plan schreiner house: dining space ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 22 le a th er ba r r ow in the schreiner house, finished several years ago, fehn indicates just this coupling, this double proportionality: forms to functions and house to environment. the corner of the dining space, where the window and side walls meet will be my point of focus. reportedly, fehn himself rather liked this position, especially during wintertime meals, when the brick bench on which the leather cushions sit radiated heat from the fireplace behind. i sat there just once, in summer, but could easily imagine the spot’s thermal sense. the social dimension of a meal there benefited from the spatial dimension of the situation, between the warm surround and the open prospect. tectonically, this corner joins together the building’s two basic types of enclosure, timber cladding and window walls. using the term ‘wall’ for both the glazing and the cladding is perhaps incorrect for each is really a ‘partition,’ which is to say a non-load-bearing element that structures space, modulates natural forces, and confers character. when seated at the dining table, the view into the garden is unimpeded; the glazing extends from the floor to the ceiling and from one side to the other. an adjustable blind hangs from the top frame, ready to block any glare that might arrive from the late afternoon sun. the right hand edge of the glass panel also operates in the milieu: a narrow louver that edges the glazing screens the interior against insects and admits fresh air through a full-height hinged panel. turning to the timber cladding to the right of the dining table, we find another well-proportioned ensemble: at eye height a cantilevered book case sets one level, the horizontal boarding extending the enclosure establishes another, and the clear story glazing that admits direct light to the depth of the room defines still another horizon. through these means the changing conditions outside the house—the environment’s constructive and corrosive forces—are modified to suit the interests and needs of the interiors, preserving its quiet stability and warm intimacy, which is to say its character, atmosphere, or ethos. the atmosphere fehn has made is both tangible and legible. is it also beautiful? my answer is yes because its aesthetic shows nothing less than how we might share the sense of the world it accommodates and expresses. endnotes 1. hans-georg gadamer, the relevance of the beautiful (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1987) “relevance” translates gadamer’s aktualität. 2. i borrow this phrase, “the word rendering service to the work,” from paul ricoeur; see: “work and word,” history and truth (evanston: northwestern university press, 1965), 197-222 3. the argument is developed in the concluding chapter to david leatherbarrow and mohsen mostafavi, surface architecture (cambridge, mass.,: mit, 2002), 21523 isparchitecture.com 242. 4. on this point see: helmuth plessner, limits of community: a critique of social radicalism (new york: humanity books, 1999). 5. georg simmel,”life and form,” in rembrandt [1916] (london: routledge, 2005). 6. adolf loos, “interiors in the rotunda,” [1898], in spoken into the void (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1982), 22-27. 7. david leatherbarrow, architecture oriented otherwise (new york: princeton architectural press, 2009). 8. this point is made clearly in hans-georg gadamer, “treatment and dialogue,” the enigma of health (stanford: stanford university press, 1996), 125-140. 9. although somewhat old, the best study of this term in architecture remains alste horn-oncken, über das sichliche (göttingen: vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 1967) 10. vitruvius, on architecture, 3.1.1 (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1970), 159. 11. varro, on the latin language, (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1977), 10, 36-38. 12. galen, on the doctrines of hippocrates and plato, 5.3.15 (berlin: akademie-verlag, 1981) 13. see the unpublished ph.d. dissertation by esra sahin, exchange of forces: environmental definition of materials in the works of vitruvius, alberti, le corbusier, and peter zumthor, university of pennsylvania, 2009: http://repository.upenn.edu/ edissertations/76 14. cicero, on duties, ch. 18 (cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 1913) 15. sverre fehn, “moroccan primitive architecture,” [1952] in the poetry of the straight line (helsinki: museum of finnish architecture, 1992), 38-41 isparchitecture.com monism and pluralism: the history of aesthetics and the philosophy of architecture part i paul guyer i. monism and pluralism in the early history of aesthetics one way to think about the history of aesthetics since its inception as a properly named subdiscipline of philosophy in the early eighteenth century is to think of it as a debate about the right way to understand the relations among the terms of the neo-platonist triad comprised by the true, the good, and the beautiful: do these terms designate three separate domains of human interest, the theoretical, the practical and moral, and the aesthetic, the boundaries between which must be sharply defined and maintained, or do they designate three aspects of human experience that can and should be fused in practice, indeed do they suggest that the distinctive function of art among human activities is precisely to fuse our natural love of beauty with our theoretical and moral concerns, to provide a kind of unity in human experience that we otherwise do not find?1 immanuel kant might be thought to be the foremost of separatists rather than synthesizers in the modern history of aesthetics: his definition in the “analytic of the beautiful” in the critique of the power of judgment of the “judgment of taste” as “aesthetic,” where that means that it is neither cognitive nor practical, that on the one hand “in order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition”2 and that on the other hand “the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good...designate three different relations of representations to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure,” that “one can ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 26 gu y er say that among all these three kinds of satisfaction only that of the taste for the beautiful is a disinterested and free satisfaction; for no interest, neither that of the senses nor that of reason, extorts approval,”3 seems to assert that the experience of beauty has nothing to do with knowledge of truth or with practical interest of any kind, whether merely prudential interest in the gratification of the senses or a more elevated moral interest of some kind. by contrast, an author like anthony ashley cooper, the third earl of shaftesbury, seems to assert an underlying identity or at least continuity among the true, the good, and the beautiful when he says things like “the most natural beauty in the world is honesty, and moral truth. for all beauty is truth,”4 and “since for our parts, we have already decreed that ‘beauty and good are still the same’”;5 in fact, we do not even have to add these two statements together to get a threefold equation of truth, goodness, and beauty, for although shaftesbury continues the first of these statements by saying that “true features make the beauty of a face; and true proportions, the beauty of architecture; as true measures that of harmony and musick. in poetry, which is all fable, truth still is the perfection,”6 which might suggest that shaftesbury has in mind some formalist conception of truth, perhaps as coherence in the case of faces, architecture, and music, and correspondence in the case of poetry, his opening statement had made it clear that he also considers honesty as a kind of truth, and thus does seem to think of all truth as having a moral dimension, thus of the true, the good, and the beautiful as truly coextensive or unified. kant’s position in aesthetics is actually more complicated than these opening remarks suggest: they are part of an initial analysis of the simplest experience of beauty, but by no means a complete statement of his account of art, a fortiori of architecture. but before i say anything more about kant, i want to announce the thesis of this paper, which is that the history of modern thought about architecture is marked by the same kind of tension between separatist approaches on the one hand, which locate the value of architecture or even define it by a single aesthetic possibility, and synthesizing approaches on the other, which find in architecture the possibility of satisfying in a unified way a variety of human interests. and my further claim will be that even though there seems to be a powerful human tendency to prefer simplicity to complexity, not just in academic philosophy but in thought in general, there is rarely a good argument to be made for a separatist or reductionist approach as opposed to a synthesizing one: to put it simply, why should we ever prefer an impoverished to an enriched form of experience, at least as long as the latter does not simply become chaotic and overwhelming? 27 isparchitecture.com my plan for this paper, which will appear in two parts, is as follows. in the remainder of this section, drawing on my recently published a history of modern aesthetics,7 i will show how three different conceptions of the source of aesthetic value were introduced in the eighteenth century that were only partially synthesized by kant, although they were more fully synthesized by several others, but separated again, in favor of a purely cognitivist approach to aesthetics, in the hands of german idealists such as hegel and schopenhauer (only to be fully synthesized again by a few figures at the end of the nineteenth century, such as george santayana, and then again by a number of the most interesting aestheticians of the twentieth century, such as richard wollheim, although i will not have room to discuss either of these figures here). in the second section, i will show how the separatist tendency of idealists such as hegel and schopenhauer manifested itself in their thought about the specific case of architecture. in the final section of the paper, which will appear as part two, i will consider the synthesizing rather than separatist approach to architecture of john ruskin in the seven lamps of architecture (1849), although to be sure to be of continued use to thought about architecture today ruskin’s views must be modernized in certain ways, some of which he himself at least grudgingly foresaw. my general claim about the history of modern aesthetics goes like this. although the field was only named by alexander gottlieb baumgarten in his 1735 master’s thesis philosophical meditations on some matters pertaining to poetry,8 and the new name was not received into english until the early nineteenth century,9 this was an adult baptism: in some ways at least the field is as old as philosophy itself, beginning with aristotle’s response in the poetics to plato’s attack upon the arts in the republic, or even with plato’s own, perhaps anticipatory response in the symposium to the argument of the republic. in the history of modern thought about architecture is marked by the same kind of tension between separatist approaches .... and synthesizing approaches “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 28 gu y er the republic, plato argued, in the name of socrates but no doubt going well beyond anything the historical socrates had held, that the arts should be largely (although not entirely) excluded from the education of the future rulers of the well-ordered states, because they are cognitively worthless, being at three removes from the truth, and morally deleterious, because without a sound cognitive content they do nothing but exacerbate emotional tendencies that the guardians instead need to learn to control.10 in the symposium, by contrast, whether or not hewing more faithfully to the thought of the historical socrates, plato had argued that the appreciation of beauty in earthly things is the first step toward knowledge of the form of the beautiful itself,11 and in the poetics aristotle famously defended the cognitive import of art by stating that “poetry is something more philosophic and of greater import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”12 my thought is that this cognitivist justification of the value of art, the thought that the experience of beauty is actually the experience of something of the greatest cognitive import, perhaps the experience of a kind of truth that is not given to us otherwise than through the experience of beauty or is at least not given to us in such a palpable and moving form by anything other than the experience of beauty, remained the central idea of aesthetics throughout subsequent antiquity, the middle ages, and the renaissance, and continued to be a powerful presence throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and even twentieth centuries, where it remained the foundation of the very different aesthetic theories of, for example, martin heidegger and theodor adorno. the cognitivist approach to aesthetics manifested itself in the eighteenth century in several forms. one form was the view that the essential function of art is imitation, with the underlying assumption that the function of imitation is information. that all fine art could be reduced to the single principle of imitation was of course the thesis of charles batteux, who argued in his work of 1746 whose very title promised the reduction of fine art to a single principle that “it can be shown from the inner nature of the human understanding that the imitation of nature is the common object” of all the arts “and that they are not distinguished from one another by anything except the means they apply toward the execution of this imitation,”13 and who explicitly opposed plato’s worry that imitation could have a deleterious effect on morals with the argument (appealing to the authority of horace) that from imitations the best manners and morals can also be learned.14 but before batteux, the german christian wolff had illustrated his idea that pleasure arises from the sensory perception of perfection with the case of painting, the perfection 29 isparchitecture.com or function of which consists in imitation: “if i see a painting that is similar to the object that it is to represent, and contemplate its similarity, then i take pleasure in it. the perfection of a painting consists in its similarity” to its object. “for since a painting is nothing other than a representation of a certain object on a tablet or plane surface, so is everything in it harmonious if nothing can be distinguished in it that one does not also perceive in the object itself.”15 wolff ’s follower baumgarten might also be thought to have taken an essentially cognitivist approach to aesthetics, in spite of his subtle transformation of wolff ’s formula “sensory perception of perfection” into the formula “perfection of sensory cognition as such,”16 which might seem to foreground the representation or medium of a work of art over its object or content, when he begins his great unfinished work the aesthetica, the first philosophical treatise to be so entitled, with the topic of the “beauty of cognition,” and lists as the first of the beauties of cognition the wealth of material or content in a work of art, ubertas aesthetica.17 it is this aspect of art that is reflected in baumgarten’s conception of a poem or other work of art as a cognitively dense representation, one that is “extensively clear”18 or packs a great deal of content into a pregnant image rather than separating content into its constituents as scientific analysis does. a fuller reading of the aesthetica, however, shows that baumgarten was not just even a subtle follower of wolff, but that he had integrated into his outlook a second major approach to aesthetics, one that overtly rejected plato’s suspicion of the arousal of emotions through the arts and instead saw the arousal of emotion as the essential aim of art. an early but influential advocate of this new approach was the french abbé jean-baptiste du bos, who in his widely read critical reflections on poetry, painting, and music of 1719 asserted that “the soul hath its wants no less than the body; and one ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 30 gu y er of the greatest wants of man is to have his mind incessantly occupied,”19 or to avoid ennui, and then argued the arousal of our passions by affecting works of art, such as tragedy, is so to speak the most cost-effective way to avoid boredom, because art, unlike say gambling, as a result of which we usually end up losing our money, excites only “artificial passions, sufficient to occupy us while we are actually affected by them, and incapable of giving us afterwards any real pain or affliction.” “painters and poets,” du bos says, “raise...artificial passions within us, by presenting us with the imitations of objects capable of exciting real passions,”20 and indeed the only difference between “artificial” and real passions is that the former do not have the same after-effects and costs as the latter. baumgarten then quickly took this idea up by arguing that since what really moves us to pleasure or displeasure is passions, poems or other works of art are most effective when they offer not just cognitively dense images but dense images of affecting objects: “since affects are noticeable degrees of displeasure and pleasure, so are their sentiments those that represent something as good and bad,” although in the “confused manner” of the cognitively dense rather than analytically separated. “hence it is poetic,” he continues, “to arouse affects.”21 from the age of twenty-one, then, baumgarten’s approach to art was actually to synthesize the idea that art is a vehicle for a pleasing form of cognition with the idea that art is also a vehicle for a pleasing arousal of our emotions. yet a third approach to aesthetic experience in the eighteenth century is the one that we typically associate with kant but which was actually introduced in scotland, especially by alexander gerard in his prize-winning 1759 essay on taste, the idea, namely that aesthetic experience is a pleasing form of the free play of our mental powers with our representations, even ones with cognitive and emotional significance, where however the primary source of our enjoyment is the mind’s play with those ideas and not their contents. gerard shares du bos’s idea that the mind must be occupied, but begins from the idea that it can be pleasingly occupied by its own activity and does not need either emotional arousal or cognitive payoff to enjoy its activity. thus the first of the “simple principles” of taste that he enumerates is our enjoyment “of the sense or taste of novelty,” the “pleasant sensation” we have “whenever the mind is in a lively and elevated temper,” to be had especially when it overcomes “moderate difficulty, such as exercises the mind, without fatiguing it” and thus gives “play to our faculties.”22 this was the idea that was then taken up by kant in the argument of the “analytic of the beautiful” that the state of mind that could satisfy the dual constraints inherent in the idea of a judgment of taste, that it be based on a subjective experience of pleasure on the 31 isparchitecture.com one hand yet speak with a “universal voice” on the other, that is, postulate or even demand consent from all, is not the state of actual cognition but the state of the free play of our cognitive powers of understanding and imagination, a state in which “no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition” but which is nevertheless a state of the “animation of both faculties...to an activity that is indeterminate but yet, through the stimulus of the given representation, in unison” or “harmonious” (einhellig).23 but the “analytic of the beautiful” is only kant’s analysis of the logic of the judgment of taste and the experience of beauty that makes such judgment possible, not his theory of fine art. that comes later, presented (following baumgarten) in the form of a theory of the artist, that is, the genius, and when it comes it actually represents a synthesis of the new theory of free play with the traditional cognitive approach to art: kant’s idea is that the “spirit” of a work of art, whatever its medium, comes from “the presentation of aesthetic ideas,” representations that “one the one hand... strive toward something lying beyond the bounds of experience, and thus seek to approximate a presentation of concepts of reason (of intellectual ideas),” to which, “on the other hand...because no concept can be fully adequate to them,” can only be intimated by “a representation of the imagination that...by itself stimulates so much thinking that it can never be grasped in a determinate concept, hence which aesthetically enlarges the concept itself in an unbounded way,”24 a representation, in other words, that stimulates a free play of our cognitive powers. thus kant’s theory of fine art represents a synthesis of the traditional idea of beauty as a form of cognition of the highest things with the new theory of beauty as that which occasions a free play of our mental powers. indeed, one might ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 32 gu y er suggest that because kant assumes that the ideas presented by works of art are morally fraught ideas such as “rational ideas of invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed, the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc., as well as...death, envy, and all sorts of vices, as well as love, fame, etc.,”25 ideas that are ordinarily accompanied with great emotional impact, he must be on his way toward a synthesis of all three approaches, the traditional cognitive approach to art, the new theory of free play, and the idea of the emotional impact of art, which baumgarten had synthesized only with the first but not the second of these approaches. however, since kant is throughout at such pains to argue that any genuinely aesthetic experience is disinterested and produces only a simple feeling of pleasure but not any more particular emotion, i count him as someone who was willing to countenance only a twofold synthesis of approaches to aesthetics, not a threefold synthesis: he was willing to combine the traditional theory of cognition through art with the new theory of mere play with our cognitive powers, but always strove to keep the emotional impact of art at arm’s length. perhaps a better model for a thoroughly synthetic rather than separatist approach to art in the eighteenth century is the 1762 work by another scot, henry home, lord kames, modestly entitled elements of criticism, not “the elements of criticism,” to signal that the arts offer us numerous possibilities of pleasure, which cannot be reduced to a single avenue or even exhaustively enumerated.26 kames begins with what seems like an emphasis on the free play and emotional impact aspects of aesthetic experience: his first chapter concerns “perceptions and ideas in a train,” and argues that “we are framed by nature to relish order and connection”27 even when perceived without overt regard to truth, while his second, very large chapter concerns “what power the fine arts have to raise emotions and passions,” and argues that “the principles of the fine arts, appear in this view to open a direct avenue to the heart of man.”28 but there is a cognitive dimension to both of these as well: in the first chapter kames argues that “every work of art that is conformable to the natural course of our ideas, is so far agreeable; and every work of art that reverses that course, is so far disagreeable,”29 which suggests that we enjoy not just the orderly play of our ideas but correspondence between those suggested by art and by nature, or between representation and object, which is the essence of cognition; and kames continues our quotation from the second chapter by stating that “the inquisitive mind beginning with criticism, the most agreeable of all amusements, and finding no obstruction in its progress, advances far into the sensitive part of our nature; and gains imperceptibly a thorough knowledge of the human heart, of its desires, and of every motive to action,”30 thus implying 33 isparchitecture.com that the arousal of emotions by works of art is enjoyable not just in its own right but as a source of self-knowledge. kames goes on to enumerate many more “principles” or sources of pleasure from art: beauty, grandeur and sublimity, motion and force, novelty, resemblance and similitude, uniformity and variety, congruity and propriety, dignity and grace, and more, a list that suggests that art offers us the possibility of free play with formal aspects of its objects, e.g., uniformity and variety; of emotional and moral response, for example to propriety and dignity; of cognitive discovery, e.g. of novelty, and so on. there is no suggestion that these need be separated from each other, let alone that any one is more important to the other; on the contrary, the suggestion is always that the more “elements of criticism” a work of art affords us, the fuller and more pleasurable our experience may be -though at the same time, kames never makes an argument that the pleasures in these different dimensions of art are strictly additive, that a work of art that exploits more of these dimensions is always more pleasurable than one that exploits fewer. the list of elements of criticism is not intended as a rule of addition. yet this qualification being noted, it seems safe to say that kames offers a richer model of the possibilities of aesthetic experience than kant’s merely twofold synthesis does. both kames and kant raise the question of how architecture, with its inescapable concern for the intended function of its products, is to be fitted into an account of art that stresses any combination of cognition, free play, and emotional impact, none of which are overtly connected to functionality. they both remain within the vitruvian tradition of combining utilitas and venustas (in my opinion, two ends to be supported by an underlying foundation of firmitas as a means) by seeing the intended function of a structure as providing constraints within which the other aesthetic goals identified by their theories for all arts can also be pursued: as kant famously kant was willing to combine the traditional theory of cognition through art with the new theory of mere play with our cognitive powers, but always strove to keep the emotional impact of art at arm’s length “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 34 gu y er says in his account of “adherent beauty,” “one would be able to add much to a building that would be pleasing for the intuition of it if only it were not supposed to be a church”;31 but that also implies that there is much that can be added to a building -on kant’s theory, the expression of an aesthetic idea -that is consistent with its intended function as a church. but i am not going to expand on this point here,32 for what i now want to argue is that what followed the period of kames and kant was not a continuation of their synthesizing strategies, but a return to a singleminded cognitivism in the aesthetics of german idealism that took the better part of the nineteenth century to recover from within philosophical aesthetics, and, in a very general way, with however one major exception, perhaps even longer within architectural theory and practice. ii. a monistic approach to aesthetics and architecture: german idealism one might have thought that, particularly with the example of the syncretic or even eclectic approach to aesthetics of kames before them, the response of kant’s successors to the twofold synthesis of cognitivist aesthetics and the aesthetics of free play represented by his theory of “aesthetic ideas” would have been to lift his ban on the emotional impact of art and give that its proper due. indeed, it might even be argued that the germans had a domestic model for that in the versions of kantian aesthetics developed by friedrich schiller and the lesser known karl heinrich heydenreich,33 the latter in his own system of aesthetics34 published in 1790, the same year as kant’s third critique, and schiller in his unpublished “kallias letters” of 1793 as well as the letters on aesthetic education of 1795.35 however, the german idealists instead rejected kant’s theory of the free play in order to focus exclusively on the intellectual content of art: in other words, they largely removed from kant’s concept of aesthetic ideas the element that he thought was distinctively aesthetic and returned to the cognitivism of aristotle’s response to plato, or perhaps better, given the pronouncedly metaphysical character of their conception of the content of art, to the response of plato’s symposium to his own republic. this turn also had pronounced results for their treatments of architecture. i will illustrate this development with the cases of hegel and schopenhauer who make the platonic and therefore cognitivist affinity of their thought explicit. hegel asserted that “the beautiful is...the pure appearance of the idea to sense”36 without accepting the idea that the mind of the subject of aesthetic experience can play freely with the form of the sensory appearance of the idea or with the indeterminate relation 35 isparchitecture.com between the form of appearance and its content. for this reason hegel can say that “fine art [is] truly art, and...only fulfils its supreme task when it has placed itself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringing to our minds and expressing the divine, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit.”37 this might sound like a ringing endorsement of the enduring importance of all forms of art, but in fact it is the premise that leads directly to hegel’s notorious thesis of the “end of art,” the thesis that “art, considered in its highest vocation, is and remains for us a thing of the past,”38 because hegel’s view is that art is actually competing with religion and philosophy to express the same content, but is doomed by the indeterminacy of its means of expressing this content: art is essentially cognitive but essentially inadequate as cognition. thus for a philosophical enlightened age such as hegel’s own, art is doomed to irrelevance, doomed to serving as a reminder of our more primitive past but as nothing more. and architecture is hegel’s poster-boy for this argument. hegel is actually responding to a fact that has been emphasized in some of the best recent writing on architectural theory, namely that the existence of determinate sets of forms within some architectural styles, such as the existence of the columnar orders in classical and neo-classical architecture, cannot justify the interpretation of architecture as a language, because without any determinate semantics for reference to ideas outside of itself, the use of such forms to organize the design of structures cannot really count as a linguistic syntax;39 for hegel, architecture is the paradigmatic art of the earliest phase of art, the “symbolic” phase, in which the idea that “in itself...is still abstract and indeterminate”40 seeks expression in forms that, as symbols, would in any case be too indeterminate to express even a more both kames and kant raise the question of how architecture, with its inescapable concern for the intended function of its products, is to be fitted into an account of art that stresses any combination of cognition, free play, and emotional impact, none of which are overtly connected to functionality “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 36 gu y er determinate content, the more fully developed understanding of the spiritual nature of reality that hegel means by “the idea.” hegel’s view is that it is the essence of a symbol that it “should not be wholly inadequate to its meaning” but that “still conversely, in order to remain a symbol it must not be made entirely adequate to that meaning”; in symbolic art “the content remains also indifferent to the shape which portrays it, and the abstract determinacy which it constitutes can equally well be present in infinitely many other existents and configurations,”41 and conversely “the look of a symbol as such raises at once the doubt whether a shape is to be taken as a symbol or not, even if we set aside the further ambiguity in respect of the specific meanings which a shape is supposed to signify amongst the several meanings for which it can often be used as a symbol through associations of a more remote kind.”42 hegel then illustrates this thesis with such examples as the pyramids43 and labyrinths44 of egyptian architecture, which are forms too abstract to express any very definite ideas about divinity, or the attempt of indian architecture to represent the “procreative force” of the absolute through buildings in the shape of “generative organs” with numerous “solid phallic columns.”45 and what we might have thought would count as one of the pinnacles of architectural accomplishment, the greek temple, is in fact nothing more than the form of an ordinary house46 writ large as a house for the statue of a god: it is only in the statue that it houses and not in the structure that houses it that art can make manifest “the free spirit” as “spiritual individuality equally determinate and inherently independent,” only the representation of a god in human form that “constitutes the centre and content of true beauty and art”47 —although on hegel’s account the classical representation of divinity in strictly human form will also turn out to be inadequate. thus architecture plays a strictly supporting role in housing a form of the representation of the spirit that will itself turn out to be inadequate and that needs to be superseded by a purely philosophical rather than artistic understanding of reality. that there might be other values in housing as such, independent of the function of housing a god, plays no role in hegel’s assessment of architecture. architecture therefore enjoys a very lowly place in hegel’s strictly cognitivist hierarchy of the arts, which themselves enjoy only a lowly place in the hierarchy of forms of cognition more generally. schopenhauer’s cognitivism takes a different form than hegel’s, but results in an equally lowly status for architecture. schopenhauer’s aesthetics might be thought to be a development from kant’s conception of the disinterestedness of aesthetic experience and the judgment of taste, but schopenhauer has no more room for the idea of free play than 37 isparchitecture.com does hegel,48 and looks to the experience of art only for a momentary release from the frustration of the ordinary life of the will, comprised as it is either by desires that go unsatisfied or that, even if satisfied, soon lead to more unsatisfied desires. for schopenhauer, aesthetic experience is an intuition in which the individual “has lost himself ” and become “the pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of cognition,” and this state is induced by the contemplation of an object, or the artistic representation of one, that has lost its own individuality and manifold connections to the world of will and use, and become only “the idea of its species.”49 by contemplating the essences of the species of things — in schopenhauer’s metaphysics, the characteristic forms of the different degrees of the “objectification of the will” that underlies all reality — or what he calls “platonic ideas,” notice, not “aesthetic ideas,” the human subject becomes detached from her own individuality and its woes, and enjoys if not positive pleasure then at least momentary respite from pain. “in this state, pure cognition draws towards us, as it were, to deliver us from willing and the stress of willing...but only for a moment: we are always torn back again from peaceful contemplation by willing, by the memory of our personal aims,”50 and ultimately need to turn from art to ethics to achieve a more enduring transcendence of our own painful individuality. thus in schopenhauer’s philosophy, as in hegel’s, the value of art and aesthetic experience as a whole is subordinate to that of a form of philosophy, although in this case to ethics rather than metaphysics. and even within the sphere of the arts, the value of architecture is minimal, because within schopenhauer’s cognitivist aesthetics what architecture represents is the most elementary forces of nature, but nothing about the human will, which is our only real clue to the ultimate character of reality. “the only intention we can attribute to” architecture is hegel’s posterboy for the argument that art is doomed to irrelevance, doomed to serving as a reminder of our more primitive past but as nothing more “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 38 gu y er architecture, schopenhauer argues, “is that of bringing some of the ideas at the lowest levels of the objecthood of the will more clearly into intuition, namely: gravity, cohesion, rigidity, hardness, these universal qualities of stone, those first, simplest, and dullest visibilities of the will, the sounds of the ground bass of nature; and then, alongside these, light, which is in many respects their opposite.” 51 for schopenhauer, architecture does not attempt, as a symbol, to give us knowledge of the spirit, but fail at that; rather, through its structure, its solids and voids, through light and dark, it offers us platonic ideas of natural forces, but these forces are only the “ground bass” of nature, and do not seem very important. in particular, while no contemplation of platonic ideas can release us from pain for very long, architecture is decidedly inferior to music, where, paradoxically, we get the greatest release from the painful demands of our individual wills by contemplating as directly as we can the essential forms of willing as such.52 on schopenhauer’s account, architecture does give us some genuine knowledge, but not very important knowledge; and if knowledge is the only source of value in art, then architecture is not very important —“the objective significance of what architecture reveals to us is relatively small.”53 indeed, schopenhauer does not merely ignore other sources of potential value in architecture, its value for housing a variety of human functions, as does hegel, but specifically rejects such “other, practical purposes” of architecture as “foreign to art itself.” the “great merit of the architect consists in carrying through the purely aesthetic goals” of architecture, the exhibition of platonic ideas of gravity, rigidity, and so on, “in spite of their subordination to foreign ones.”54 schopenhauer must argue this, because on his theory of human willing in general, the attempt to fulfill specific practical purposes through architecture, as in any other way, is doomed to lead to failure and frustration in either the short or long run: either the work will fail to achieve its intended purpose, and thus frustrate anyone involved with it, whether directly or even only sympathetically, or even if it does fulfill its intended purpose, that will either just lead to satiety and boredom or else to other, frustrated desires. functionality can never be an enduring source of pleasure in schopenhauer’s pessimistic view of human existence, so whatever value architecture might have has to be in spite of its functionality, not in addition to or in conjunction with its functionality. we now have some examples of how the one-sided cognitivism of german idealist aesthetics led to reductionist conceptions of architecture and in turn to negative assessments of the value of architecture. i think 39 isparchitecture.com it could readily be shown that many twentiethcentury conceptions of architecture, particularly the linguistic models of architecture so effectively attacked by richard hill and edward winters but also forms of structuralist rather than programmatic functionalism, to borrow a distinction from violletle-duc,55 are versions of this one-sided cognitivism; and even if they have not led to overtly negative evaluations of architecture of the sort we have found in hegel and schopenhauer, they have at least sometimes led not only to simplified theories but to unsatisfying architecture. but rather than pursuing that argument, i will, in part two, turn to one nineteenth-century treatment of architecture that is pluralistic rather than monistic and thus in at least some ways points to the possibility of a more satisfying aesthetics of architecture. i refer to the theory of architecture adumbrated by john ruskin in the seven lamps of architecture, which even though it must be shorn of some of the romantic assumptions long ago pointed out by geoffrey scott,56 nevertheless offers at least a model for a synthetizing rather than separatist approach to architecture. part ii of this essay will appear in vol. 1, no. 2 of architecture philosophy. endnotes 1. frederick c. beiser stresses the importance of the neo-platonic triad, what he calls the “classical trinity,” to what he considers the rationalist tradition in eighteenth-century aesthetics in diotima’s children: german aesthetic rationalism from leibniz to lessing (oxford: oxford university press, 2009), pp. 41-44. 2. immanuel kant, critique of the power of judgment, edited by paul guyer, translated by paul guyer and eric matthews (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2000), §1, 5:203 (p. 89). 3. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §5, 5:209-10 (p. 95). within schopenhauer’s cognitivist aesthetics what architecture represents is the most elementary forces of nature, but nothing about the human will, which is our only real clue to the ultimate character of reality “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 40 gu y er 4. anthony ashley cooper, third earl of shaftesbury, sensus communis, an essay on the freedom of wit and humour, part iv, section iii, in characteristicks of men, manners, opinions, times, edited by philip ayres (oxford: clarendon press, 1999), vol. i, p. 77. 5. shaftesbury, the moralists, a philosophical rhapsody, part iii, section ii, in characteristicks, vol. ii, p. 112. 6. shaftesbury, sensus communis, part iv, section iii, in charackeristicks, vol. i, p. 77. 7.paul guyer, a history of modern aesthetics, 3 vols. (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2014). 8. alexander gottlieb baumgarten, meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus/philosophische betrachtungen über einige bedingungen des gedichtes, edited and translated by heinz paetzold (hamburg: felix meiner verlag, 1983); reflections on poetry: alexander gottlieb baumgarten’s meditationes philosphicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, translated, with the original text, by karl aschenbrenner and william b. holther (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1954). the discipline of aesthetics is defined in §cxvi of this work as episteme aisthetikē, the logic of aisthetá or the objects of the senses. 9. the earliest occurrence of the word “aesthetics” recorded in the oxford english dictionary is in an 1830 entry in the penny cyclopedia (i.156), where it was defined as “the designation given by german writers to a branch of philosophical inquiry, the object of which is a philosophical theory of the beautiful.” 10. the argument for the cognitive worthlessness of art is made above all in book x of the republic, where it provides a foundation for the exclusion of most poetry from the education of the guardians previously developed in books ii and iii (376d-403c). alexander nehamas has discussed the connection between plato’s argument in book x, which is overtly concerned with painting, with the case of poetry in “plato on imitation and poetry in republic x,” in his virtues of authenticity (princeton: princeton university press, 1998), pp. 251-78, and stephen halliwell has demonstrated that plato’s argument in books ii and iii is really directed against allowing the young guardians to perform roles that exemplify the kind of emotional abandon that they will have to learn to control; see the aesthetics of mimesis: ancient texts and modern problems (princeton: princeton university press, 2002). 11. see socrates’s recounting of what he was told by diotima at symposium 201d-212c. 12. aristotle, poetics, chapter 9, 1451b5-7; translation by ingram bywater in the complete works of aristotle, edited by jonathan barnes (princeton: princeton university press, 1984), vol. ii, p. 2323. 13. my translation from charles batteux, einschränkung der schönen künste auf einen einzigen grundsatz, translated by johann adolf schlegel (leipzig: weidmanns erben und reich, 1770), p. 8. 14. batteux, einschränkung, pp. 34-5. 41 isparchitecture.com 15. christian wolff, vernüftige gedancken von gott, der welt, und der seele des menschen (1719), fourth edition (halle: renger, 1751), §404. 16. my translation from alexander gottlieb baumgarten, ästhetik (1750-58), translated into german with facing latin text by dagmar mirbach, 2 vols. (hamburg: felix meiner verlag, 2007), §14, vol. i, pp. 20-1. 17. baumgarten, ästhetik, §115, vol. i, pp. 92-3. 18. baumgarten, meditationes, §xvii. 19. jean-baptiste du bos, critical reflections on poetry, painting, and music, translated by thomas nugent, 3 vols. (london: john nourse, 1984), part i, chapter i, vol. i, p. 5. 20. du bos, critical reflections, part i, chapter iii, p. 22. 21. baumgarten, meditationes, §xxv, pp. 24-5. 22. alexander gerard, an essay on taste (london: a. millar, and edinburgh: a. kincaid and j. bell, 1759), part i, section i, pp. 3, 7. 23. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §9, 5:217, 219, pp. 102, 104. 24. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §49, 5:314-15, pp. 192-3. 25. kant, loc. cit. 26. henry home, lord kames, elements of criticism, sixth edition (1785), edited by peter jones, 2 vols. (indianapolis: liberty fund, 2005), original introduction, vol. i, p. 19. 27. kames, elements of criticism, chapter i, vol. i, p. 26. 28. kames, elements of criticism, chapter ii, vol. i, p. 32. 29. kames, elements of criticism, chapter i, vol. i, p. 27. 30. kames, elements of criticism, chapter ii, vol. i, p. 32. 31. kant, critique of the power of judgment, §16, 5:230; p. 115. 32. i have discussed this issue in “kant and the philosophy of architecture,” journal of aesthetics and art criticism 69 (2011): 7-19. for a more general discussion of kant’s concept of “adherent beauty,” see “free and adherent beauty: a modest proposal,” british journal of aesthetics 42 (october, 2002) 357-66, reprinted in my values of beauty: historical essays in aesthetics (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005), pp. 129-40. for another recent discussion of the implication for kant’s aesthetics to the theory of architecture, see edward winters, aesthetics and architecture (london: continuum, 2007), especially chapter 2, “modernism,” pp. 25-37. 33. on schiller, see my kant and the experience of freedom (cambridge: cambridge university press, 1993), chapter 3, pp. 116-30, and “the ideal of beauty and the necessity of grace: kant and schiller on ethics and aesthetics,” in walter hinderer, editor, schiller und die weg in die moderne (würzburg: königshausen & neuman, 2006), pp. 187-204. on heydenreich, see “the perfections of art: mendelssohn, moritz, and kant,” in kant and the experience of freedom, pp. 13160, at pp. 144-7, and “heydenreich, karl heinrich,” in michael kelly, editor, the encyclopedia of aesthetics, 4 vols. (new york: oxford university press, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 400-1. ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 42 gu y er 34. karl heinrich heydenreich, system der ästhetik (leipzig: göschen, 1790), facsimile edition with an afterward by volker deubel (hildesheim: gerstenberg verlag, 1978). 35. see friedrich schiller, “kallias or concerning beauty: letters to gottfried körner,” in j.m. bernstein, editor, classic and romantic german aesthetics (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2003), pp. 145-83, and on the aesthetic education of man in a series of letters, edited and translated by elizabeth m. wilkinson and l.a. willoughby (oxford: clarendon press, 1967). 36. georg wilhelm friedrich hegel, aesthetics: lectures on fine art, translated by t.m. knox, 2 vols. (oxford: clarendon press, 1975) (based on the posthumous edition of 1835 by h. hotho), vol. i, p. 111. 37. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 7. 38. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 11. 39. see richard hill, designs and their consequences (new haven and london: yale university press, 1999), chapter 5, “meaning,” especially pp. 109-116, and winters, aesthetics and architecture, chapters 5-7, especially chapter 7, “architecture and semantics,” pp. 84-91. 40. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 300. 41. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 305. 42. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 306. 43. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, pp. 354-6. 44. hegel, aesthetics, vol. ii, p. 647. 45. hegel, aesthetics, vol. ii, p. 641. 46. see hegel, aesthetics, vol. ii, pp. 662-3. 47. hegel, aesthetics, vol. i, p. 432. 48. for documentation of this, see my “back to truth: knowledge and pleasure in the aesthetics of schopenhauer,” in alex neill and christopher janaway, editors, better consciousness: schopenhauer’s philosophy of value (chichester: wiley-blackwell, 2009), pp. 11-25. 49. arthur schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, volume i, translated and edited by judith norman, alistair welchman, and christopher janaway (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2010), third book, §34, pp. 201-2. 50. schopenhauer, world as will and representation, third book, §51, p. 277. 51. schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §43, p. 239. 52. see schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §52, pp. 282-95. 53. schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §43, p. 241, 54. schopenhauer, the world as will and representation, third book, §43, p. 242. 55. see winters, aesthetics and architecture, pp. 40-1. 56. geoffrey scott, the architecture of humanism, first edition 1914, second edition 1924 (new york: scribner’s, n.d.), especially chapter v, “the ethical fallacy.” the architecture of ethics: stanley tigerman emmanuel petit chicago-born jewish architect stanley tigerman wouldn’t mind to be portrayed as a sort of freethinker and even libertine of the architectural discipline while, paradoxically, constructing himself as the defender of ethics in architecture. he is somebody who insists that what architects do with physical architecture is important but that ultimately the architecture of the ‘here and now’ is a mere scaffold to support ideas that exceed the sphere of art and that lie beyond the expressive possibilities of architecture. philosophy has institutionalized a series of major figures—the positive philosophers—who constitute the foundation of the field as we have come to define it: plato, kant, hegel, and the like; but it also draws its vitality from their dialectic counter-parts: the anti-philosophers—socrates, kierkegaard, bataille—i.e. those thinkers, who don’t play by the rules, and who (some would claim) have no business being counted as a part of the discipline of philosophy. these anti-philosophers, however, are indispensable to making philosophy move. if given the choice, tigerman would certainly side with the anti-philosophers ... constructing himself as a sort of anti-architect, who cannot leave the discipline because it is what fuels his resistance— the resistance to all these fantasies of perfection, synthesis and performance—of “do-good-ism” in the world. he insists that he wanted to become an architect when he read ayn rand’s fountainhead. it made him furious! if your hope is to save the world, build the largest shelter for homeless people, like stanley did with his pacific garden mission in he wanted to become an architect when he read ayn rand’s fountainhead. it made him furious! “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 44 pe ti t chicago, or found a school for socially responsible and environmentally conscious design (like he did with eva maddox when they founded archeworks in chicago in 1994). but do not expect an invitation into the architectural hall of fame for it. for that, you need other techniques: you need a theory of anti-architecture. tigerman provides something of that sort. he has all the credentials to master the subject of architecture; but in spite of that, his real “subject” never ceased to be the human being, while architecture was, for him, a sort of stage or dramatic space within which to choreograph the dialogues and encounters between humans. his long-lasting friendship with the late dean of the cooper union school of architecture, john hejduk, was largely based on this common interest: didn’t hejduk also fathom architecture as an arena for the poetic and ineffable meeting between humans, as well as for the empathy between human subjects and the subject of architecture? while hejduk designed cities “populated” with architectural characters on their journeys from venice to berlin and to prague, and from riga to vladivostok, tigerman liked to draw his own autobiographical dream cities set against the backdrop of non-realist environments in the spirit of joan miró’s “carnival of harlequin” (1924-25) and the “garden of earthly delights” by dutch painter hieronymus bosch, which was filled with literal renditions of certain proverbs of the day. the so-called architoons were always colonized with the fragments and anecdotes of tigerman’s personal, eclectic architectural memory—from greek caryatids, to mies van der rohe’s buildings, to tectonic details of the chicago balloon frame, concentration camp barracks and their steaming chimneys, the temple of solomon, the chicago street grid, and tigerman’s own buildings and paper projects. this imaginary cosmos was animated by little frogmen or cherubim in the tradition of françois rabelais’s grotesque carnival characters in gargantua and pantagruel—which the literary theorist mikhail bakhtin had rediscovered as the epitome of an “open” or “polyglossic” text in his rabelais and his world: carnival and grotesque from the mid1960s.1 tigerman’s cartoon figures seemed to protect his personal and plural oikos of memories as much as they guarded the disciplinary book of architecture—which was at risk of turning abstract, inert, and static in the hands of the second and third generation modernists under whom tigerman was trained (i.e. the generation of paul rudolph). one of the architoons portrays one such cherub (a.k.a. an architect), who is torn in a janus-faced reality between the “archaeological” gravity of the discipline and his spirited need to escape into another world of personal, idiosyncratic creativity: he is stepping on top of an architectural column which breaks underneath his feet while at the same time he stretches and reaches up to 45 isparchitecture.com hold on to the umbilical cord of one of his creative offsprings, the phallus-shaped daisy house (porter beach, indiana, 1975-78), which took flight on top of a cloud. his interest in the exchange between “subjects” is the reason tigerman kept being drawn to ethical philosophy and the theories of dialogism, from aristotle to emmanuel lévinas—lévinas, the philosopher and talmud-scholar who was also formative for jacques derrida’s attentiveness to the alterity of writing, and who was close friends with the anecdotalist of the unknowable, maurice blanchot; and then to martin buber, who published his book ich und du (i and thou) in 1923, in which he cogitated about the nature of the true encounter with the other. buber maintained that the genuine meeting between i and thou could not be premeditated (or “composed”), but that it was utterly serendipitous and, hence, revelatory. in a sense, the sublime spontaneity and transience of the principle of “dialogue” as described by buber has been at odds with the tradition of architectural production where thorough planning, notation, and representation preceded the actualization of the project. in buber’s terminology, such a “structured” confrontation with the world treats that world as a the daisy house ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 46 pe ti t collection of objects. when the subject “plans” the world in this way, however, he can no longer encounter subjects, but all his relationships are reflections of his own ideas: ich-du turns into ich-es (i-it). as one of the ills of modernity, dialogue is turned into a monologue, and alterity is suppressed. in tigerman’s view, by the 1960s, architectural modernism had turned into a monologue only accessible to the narrow circle of architectural cognoscenti. he hoped, nevertheless, that his career as an architect could be a journey to discover otherness in architecture, and, as the title of his 1982 book versus: an american architect’s alternatives suggested, to track down “other” stylistic and ideological attitudes in architecture. to this end, he made a point of remaining a sort of outsider to the orthodox teachings of the discipline.2 like buber, lévinas, and derrida, tigerman’s jewishness has played a determining role for this desire for alterity. he was introduced to the study of the torah by his grandfather, a self-taught talmudic reader, and has subsequently always affirmed his jewishness. with it, he has cultivated a compassion for the oppressed and the persecuted. in architecture, this empathy translated into a skepticism towards establishment doctrine, from which he liked to distance himself. his book architecture of exile from 1988 thematized the “exilic” relationship the hebraic culture entertained with the hegemonic, greek or “hellenic” tradition of architecture as manifested in the candid structure of the parthenon. the book also made a case for the liaison and convoluted dialogue between the (visible) realm of architectural aesthetic with the more ethereal spheres of ethics and the sacred—between presence and absence. as a jew, tigerman continues to relish the existential “drift” between the contrasting sentiments of alienation and belonging to the city of chicago—a predicament saul bellow had so captivatingly described in his adventures of augie march; the bildungsroman begins with the famous sentence “i am an american, chicago born—chicago, that somber city—and go at things as i have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. but a man’s character is his fate, says heraclitus... .”3 at the time tigerman tried to launch his architectural career in chicago, he felt that a certain strand of modernism had besieged architectural discourse while the experimentalism of younger architects was pushed aside. in order for the discipline to stay energetic and lively, however, the “minimal palette” of the modernist canon had to open up and accept certain “contaminants” into its stern aesthetic, stringent utopianism, and ideological catechism. tigerman challenged all claims 47 isparchitecture.com that architectural study was “ontological” in nature, i.e. that the discipline had to devote itself to some stable conceptual “synthesis” or inner “being,” which theory was called to uncover. instead, he alleged that architecture had an “inability to define itself inherently”4 and that, therefore, it needed to transgress its cherished myths of purity and perpetuity (e.g. the clarity of tectonic and functional principles, the permanence of proportional systems, the synthetic nature of typological partis, a.s.o.). instead of propagating the modern myths of stability, tigerman fathomed architecture as the rift or space, which inserts itself in-between incongruous temporalities: “the gestalt of art lies in that intersection of one’s own epoch and eternity.”5 one of his missions became to disclose the heterogeneity of chicago’s architectural heritage and reveal alternative directions to the legacy of the “heroes” of modernist chicago—of louis sullivan, daniel burnham, frank lloyd wright, and, most of all, ludwig mies van der rohe. mies had come to chicago following the close of the bauhaus by the nazis, as part of what tigerman called the “german invasion”6 of chicago modernism. appearing as a sort of european aesthetic arbiter and ideologue, mies was able to give something to the united states that none of the other modernist forefathers could: unlike le corbusier, who was perceived as too intellectual to fill this role, tigerman argued, or walter gropius, whose theories lacked paradigmatic clarity, mies’s architecture, “was not unnecessarily demanding on the functional or intellectual levels,”7 and was thus able to convey a sense of ureuropean taste, permanence and democracy. while tigerman praised mies’s early role in america, he rejected the subsequent pervasive dissemination and banalization of his architecture by his many followers, particularly c.f. murphy and skidmore, owings and merrill, who adjusted mies’s ideas to the corporate context and made of his architecture like buber, lévinas, and derrida, tigerman’s jewishness has played a determining role for this desire for alterity “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 48 pe ti t the official canon. tigerman’s relationship with mies and miesianism has been complex to say the least; he invokes mies in most of his texts, where he makes of him a kind of straw figure or vodoo doll of modernism. while the acolytes had turned mies into their “object” of contemplation, study, and imitation, tigerman fathomed a more subjective (buber’s ich-du) encounter with mies — mies as an imaginary father figure and mentor. nine years after mies’s death, in 1978, tigerman addressed an open letter to him in which he reported that, “here in chicago everything appears to have remained much the same as it was ten years ago”8; he then wrote a postscript to that letter in 1986, in which he deplores “that americans, by and large, still consider you [mies] as a commercial paradigm rather than as a philosophic role model.”9 tigerman did see in mies’s abstractionism a philosophical stance: because the german emigré had inaugurated a radically “other” vision in architecture, he could figure as the epitome of the liberal freethinker. in tigerman’s mind, to imitate mies did not imply that one had to repeat his abstract aesthetic, it meant to make oneself different from anyone else so far ... including mies. in architecture, mies could function as the model for the individualist.10 much of tigerman’s own architecture can be read as a dialogue with mies’s “matrix,” which nevertheless is traversed and warped by another, more “supple” geometrical logic: the composition of tigerman’s oakbrook residence from 1976-77, for example, seemed to emulate the paradoxical meeting of the miesian grid with a more fluid, flexible, and lyrical geometry. similarly, some of tigerman’s early oil paintings, which directly borrowed from another german-born artist, josef albers, also evidenced an interest in the close alliance between rational line geometries and the quasi-figural presence a slight disturbance of geometry can engender. tigerman’s part real, part imaginary exchange with the german expatriate was intentionally concocted as a psychoanalytically charged relationship, which culminated with tigerman’s creation of an ambivalent collage in 1979, entitled “the titanic”; the work showed mies’s crown hall at the illinois institute of technology precariously floating (or possibly sinking) in the ocean against the backdrop of a clouded sky. “the titanic” illustrated the nachleben of the ambivalent encounter between tigerman and mies—immersed in an oneiric and unstable milieu of the clouds and the deep water. with it, tigerman demanded that the baton be passed to a (then) young generation of architects in chicago, who felt a bloomian anxiety of influence from their modern antecedents.11 in 1976, tigerman turned his personal discontent with the architecture 49 isparchitecture.com scene into a more collective disagreement when he co-founded a group of self-declared “individualists” and “freethinkers”: the chicago seven included tom beeby, larry booth, stuart cohen, james ingo freed, james nagle, ben weese; in 1977, the group expanded to eight to include helmut jahn, the “baron von high-tech.”12 the first formal event of the seven was an exhibition the group organized for the cooper union in new york, and later took to illinois. the participants of the exhibition conceived of “chicago architects” as a sort of salon des refusés, which was scheduled to be on display at the richard gray gallery simultaneously with the “official” and “canonical” retrospective of chicago architecture at chicago’s museum of contemporary art, entitled “a hundred years of chicago architecture: continuity of form and structure.”13 the new york opening of the show was to give it legitimacy before it would go back “home” to chicago. in order to communicate their insurrectionist intent, facing up to the official tenet of chicago modernism, this group of architects was named after its political homologue in chicago, also called the chicago seven around social right activists abbie hoffman, jerry rubin, david dellinger, tom hayden, rennie davis, john froines, lee weiner and bobby seale, all of whom had been arrested and put to trial for conspiracy and for instigating to riot at massive protests against the vietnam war at the 1968 democratic national convention.14 seale had to appear again at hearings in 1970 as one of the new haven nine during the new haven black panther trials. during these trials, the architecture school of tigerman’s alma mater, rudolph’s art and architecture building at yale, fell prey to a mysterious fire, although no arson was revealed. both the chicago seven and the new haven nine were all finally found not guilty of conspiracy, yet tigerman was well aware of the cultural stir these conspirators had provoked—not least because tigerman knew weiner. beyond the ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 50 pe ti t name of the political precedent, some of its street-fighter terminology was also adopted by the architectural seven; one of its members explained that “what mies did is that he thought of it as a war for saving our souls or the battle for the saving of architecture. late in his life he once said, “i’ve showed them how to do it. i am winning the war for architecture.”15 the seven rose up against becoming the foot soldiers of a war they did not endorse. the seven also positioned themselves in rivalry with two groups of architects on the east coast, one of which had declared a shared interest in the autonomy of the discipline of architecture in the context of the case study groups in the late sixties.16 as an outcome of one of these meetings held at the museum of modern art in 1969, five of its members published a series of house projects in a book entitled five architects in 1972; the projects were intellectually strung together by a critical essay by historian colin rowe.17 because of his aptitude to provide a connective theory for their ideas, rowe emerged as the eminence grise of the “new york five,” or “whites,” which included peter eisenman, michael graves, charles gwathmey, john hejduk and richard meier. it did not take long until the whites’ interest in le corbusier and the autonomous, abstract syntax of form was challenged by the so-called “grays,” who were mostly associated with yale and pennsylvania universities, and included vincent scully, robert venturi, robert a.m. stern, and romaldo giurgola, among others. the grays promoted the semantic dimension of architectural form, and its ability to “communicate” by connecting to the history and the architectural motives of the western humanist traditions.18 the staged rivalry between the chicago and the new york groups was based on a significant conceptual difference, in that the seven abstained from defining a shared set of aesthetic and theoretical principles, so that every one of its members would preserve his individuality and singularity. tigerman described the seven’s liberal agenda as follows: the new york five thought they had something in common, and they presented themselves as whites: exclusivist, autonomous beings ...they had a certain collective belief in “autonomy.” the grays, which was [romaldo] giurgola, [robert a. m.] stern, and all those people, saw themselves as inclusivists. the guys in l. a., the silvers, saw themselves as studies in extrusion, because of the speed of the automobile. the chicago seven have nothing to do with each other—formally, and now, personally. i don’t even see them. ...it was the only way we could get seven desperate people who had nothing in common, including respect for the other; but one thing we had in common: we needed to penetrate a city that was monolithic, that was miesian.19 51 isparchitecture.com the seven stayed away from delineating a shared aesthetic-formalist code; instead, they were mostly defined negatively, by stating that they did not participate in the established architectural culture of chicago. this strategy of affirming identity through negation and distance was entirely consistent with tigerman’s ironic weltanschauung, which hinged on the possible co-existence of contradictions and unresolved dualities. the seven made this ironic self-understanding into an ideological model for urban cohabitation when, in 1978, they organized the “chicago townhouse” competition at the graham foundation. this event came in defense of a pluralist discipline, and became one of the forerunners of the strada novissima installation at the showcase event for postmodern architecture two years later at the venice biennale, called “the presence of the past.” tigerman’s advocacy of the creative and independent freethinker has to be seen against the background of a determining and officially sanctioned conflict the united states engaged in at the time he developed his project in architecture: the vietnam war. the senseless loss of human life in the worsening war after 1965, and well into the 1970s, presented the american society with an existential puzzle, which destroyed the former confidence in the ability to master and control every aspect of life; moreover, it stirred up suspicions about the ethical value underlying the positivism of the modern and secular lifestyle. when the united states’s official campaign against communism turned into a national disaster, tigerman started to question the relative gain of abstract and universalizing heroism in the face of the individual suffering of the people of both war nations. he was well aware that the emerging existential angst around vietnam did not only affect the collective conscience, as the media in the socially oriented sixties kept suggesting, but it resulted in fears on a very personal level: the national calamity made him ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 52 pe ti t aware of his own finitude and mortality. together with this realization of finitude, tigerman’s simultaneous midlife crisis, only added to his individual disquietude at the time.20 he wrote in 1982 that towards the second half of the 1970s, “i felt the need to reassess the way i wished to live the rest of my life. i became fascinated with the idea that the notions of humor and irony could be regarded as perverse responses to the acknowledgment of death.”21 here, he announced his primordial reason as well as the rhetorical modes of expression of his form of architectural liberalism; the introduction of humor and irony into architecture was to open a space within the discipline’s dense matrix of foundational assumptions, and reconquer within it a territory for individual freedom of expression. in spirit, the double, tragic/comic rhetoric of his architectural writing and design is very close to roberto benigni’s in his 1997 comedy la vita è bella—a daring aesthetic-ethical tour de force about the life in the concentration camps in auschwitz. in view of the western world’s apparent lack of self-doubt and selfcriticism manifested in the u.s. government’s bad judgment around the vietnam war and the war protests, tigerman challenged the “modern” notion of an overarching and synthetic ideology (i.e. the zeitgeist) which was considered to epitomize all aspirations of a people at a particular moment in time. he criticized the collective delusion of endless progress which, more than engrained in the very project of modernity, was also endemic to the post-emersonian, american pioneer ethics and found itself boosted by the economic upswing and the consumer euphoria in the postwar decades. ultimately, he considered the united states’ one-sided confidence in an uninterrupted cultural, social and economic renewal in the 1950s and early 60s immature: “there is something perverse about the reenactment of the desire to remain collectively ‘young.’ it is as if an entire culture rejects its own coming of age because it may ruin that culture’s optimism.”22 the heroic and positivist devotion to this shared belief seemed like a naive conceit of a nation, which failed to understand the true meaning of individual “existence.” vietnam shuttered the illusion that a nation like the united states would or could speak with one voice, and that any attitude of dissent and disagreement should dissolve in the positive spirit of an allegedly unified ideological will of the american society. in the context of these questions raised in the socio-cultural sphere, tigerman was drawn magnetically to the intellectual tradition of existentialism, from socrates to søren kierkegaard and nietzsche, from dostoevsky to kafka, and finally, to mark c. taylor’s (a-)theological 53 isparchitecture.com speculations—themselves based on kierkegaard.23 tigerman liked to think of his own position in architecture as analogous to the place kierkegaard occupied in philosophy: what kierkegaard was to hegel, tigerman thought he could represent in relation to mies. in a sense, hegel and mies both attempted to “systematize” existence through their respective sterile metaphysics, which was in the service of a universal weltor zeitgeist. kierkegaard and tigerman, by contrast, insisted on the importance of the subjective perspective as well as the freedom associated with it. they maintained that singular, contingent acts and reflections were not dictated by any universal will, but instead, belonged to the free initiative of every discrete human being–the sphere of “that individual.”24 along with his disapproval of abstract systemdenken, kierkegaard had expressed his criticism against a fixed, dehumanized, and “spatialized” view of time, and suggested to replace it with the more individualized and transient notion of “life-time.”25 tigerman similarly insisted that space and time were contingent on the mortal existence of a person’s lifecycle; many of his sketches make thematic the idea of the irrecuperable passage of individualized time, as does, for example, the drawing entitled “hinge.” about his phallus-shaped daisy house, tigerman wrote: “the necessity to communicate the finite condition of man in all its ironic nobility was an obvious requirement of [this building].”26 the house’s patron truly epitomized the janusfaced relationship between the very human sentiments of tragedy and comedy: the client was the owner of burlesque show venues in chicago, and was diagnosed with terminal cancer when he approached tigerman to design the house. after turning down the client several times, tigerman finally accepted to design a house for him under the condition that the project would make his patron laugh: “i drew an erect phallus with semen coming out at the end, directed at him, and he laughed. he what kierkegaard was to hegel, tigerman thought he could represent in relation to mies “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 54 pe ti t liked it, and we built it, and he died three months later; that’s the truth.”27 this thoroughly humanized, tragic/comic liaison with other subjects through the medium of architecture has been at the core of tigerman’s critique of modernism, and was, at the same time, fundamental to his own version of “postmodernism.” endnotes 1. mikhail bakhtin, rabelais and his world, trans. by helene iswolsky (cambridge: mit press, 1968). 2. refer to tigerman’s autobiography building bridges to burn, forew. by emmanuel petit (oro, 2011). 3. saul bellow, the adventures of augie march: a novel (new york: viking press, 1953). 4. tigerman, “the ten contaminants” (1991), schlepping through ambivalence: writings on an ambivalent architectural condition, ed. emmanuel petit (new haven: yale university press, 2011), 54. 5. tigerman, “juxtaposition vs. judgment, 1965,” versus: an american architect’s alternatives (new york: rizzoli, 1982), 56. 6. tigerman used the expression “german invasion” to designate mies van der rohe’s arrival in chicago in an interview with barbaralee diamonstein. diamonstein-spielvogel, “american architecture now: stanley tigerman,” diamonstein-spielvogel video archive, duke university libraries, 1984. 7. stanley tigerman, “mies van der rohe: a moral model”; “paradigms in architecture,” perspecta 22, the journal of the yale school of architecture, rizzoli, new york (1986), 118. 8. ludwig mies van der rohe, quoted in tigerman, versus, 30. 9. refer to tigerman’s “p.p.s. to mies,” schlepping through ambivalence, 153. 10. i borrow the idea of the meaning of imitating an individualist from alexander nehamas’s view of socrates, in art of living, where nehamas claims: “to imitate socrates is therefore to create oneself, as socrates did; but it is also to make oneself different from anyone else so far, and since that includes socrates himself, it is to make oneself different from socrates as well. that is why he can function as the model for the individualist” art of living: socratic reflections from plato to foucault (berkeley, los angeles, london: university of california press, sather classical lectures, 1998), 11. 11. in 1973, harold bloom published anxiety of influence: a theory of poetry, in which he argued that because a poet must look for an original poetic vision in order to guarantee his survival into posterity, the overwhelming influence of his precedents provokes a sense of anxiety in living poets. 12. tigerman designates jahn as the “baron von high-tech” in versus, 30. 13. oswald w. grube, peter c. pran and franz schulze, 100 years of architecture in 55 isparchitecture.com chicago: continuity of structure and form (chicago: j. philip o’hara, 1976). 14. the chicago seven were originally eight, but one of their member’s trial (bobby seale’s) was separated from the trial of the other seven because of his blatant disrespect of the court proceedings and the judge. on the chicago seven protests and trials, refer to: j. anthony lukas, “judge hoffman is taunted at trial of the chicago 7 after silencing defense counsel”, new york times, february 6, 1970; david dellinger, from yale to jail: the life story of a moral dissenter (new york: pantheon books, 1993); abbie hoffman & al., conspiracy, introduction by noam chomsky, edited by peter and deborah babcox and bob abel (new york: dell publishing company, 1969). 15. james ingo freed, chicago architects oral history project (chicago, illinois: the art institute of chicago, 2000). 16. on the case study group meetings (conference of architects for the study of the environment), refer to harry francis mallgrave, modern architectural theory: a historical survey, 1673-1968 (cambridge: cambridge university press, 2005). 17. five architects: eisenman, graves, gwathmey, hejduk, meier (new york: wittenborn, 1972). 18. for a discussion of the “white/gray” debates, refer to joan ockman, “resurrecting the avant-garde: the history and program of oppositions,” in beatriz colomina (ed), architecture production (new york: princeton architectural press, 1988). 19. conversation stanley tigerman with emmanuel petit, princeton, nj, december 2001; in emmanuel petit, “irony in metaphysics’s gravity: imagination and iconoclasm in architecture 1960s-80s,” ph.d. dissertation, princeton university, january 2006, annex b. 20. ibid., 115. 21. ibid. 22. tigerman, the architecture of exile (new york: rizzoli, 1988), 155. 23. tigerman extracts most of his references to existentialist thinkers from william hubben, dostoevsky, kierkegaard, nietzsche, and kafka: four prophets of our destiny (london and new york: collier macmillan publishers, 1952 & 1962). later, tigerman refers a lot to mark c. taylor’s erring: a postmodern a/theology (chicago: university of chicago press, 1984). 24. the epitaph on kierkegaard’s grave referred to the philosopher as “that individual.” 25. paul bové, “the penitentiary of reflection: søren kierkegaard and critical activity,” boundary 2, vol. 9, no. 1, a supplement on irony (autumn, 1980), 233-58, p. 237. 26. tigerman, versus, 116. 27. conversation tigerman with petit; “irony in metaphysics’s gravity... .” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 56 pe ti t stanley tigerman responds question: the essay by emmanuel petit is talking about your ethics. and in the essay one of the things he says is that your temperament or approach would have more in common with the anti-philosophers like socrates and kierkegaard and bataille rather than the system builders like kant and hegel. is that something that you would agree with or be in sympathy with? answer: i don’t have any feeling about it at all. emmanuel writes what he sees and thinks is correct, and i am, with respect to him, simply an other. so i don’t have any feelings that he’s right or wrong or whatever. q: then he does get in to the struggles that went on in the 1970s and 1980s with postmodernism and your central role there, and at the time, a lot of times it was relegated to being about style, and he brings out the idea that there was a strong ethical incentive or underpinning to your work and your positions at that time, and i was hoping that you might have something to say about that. a: yeah actually i do. architecture is an elitist one. we are the hired guns for the wealthy. or those in power, or kings or princes, or princes of industry, or princes of the art world. we were never about ethical considerations. but its provable in the last fifty years at least, when you could actually explore the phrase “follow the money and you will find architects” so when kings had to build in apartheid south africa, we did. when the kings had to build for the shah of iran we did. when it came time to build for opec money we did. and so today you find major corporate firms stampeding to the ticket counter of overseas airlines to work on projects in countries whose human rights history doesn’t exist. so it still is the same. but in the 1970s on the heels of venturi’s book complexity and contradiction in 57 isparchitecture.com architecture, architects took a second look at their origins. and so there was an attempt, feeble there’s no question of it, stylistic, yes, to get in touch with their predecessors. to find roots as it were—of a rootless people. i wrote a book twenty-five to thirty years ago entitled the architecture of exile, which stipulates that americans are in exile. this is not our land. it belonged to the american indians etc. it was promised by the bible. ashes to ashes, dust to dust but this is not our soil and we are exploitive even as i speak to you, so yes i for a very long time, not that i hold it as a badge of honor, i have been a person who has been involved with ethics, who writes about it, who tries to build about it, etc. yes that’s true. q: what specifically in postmodernism as it was playing out at the time seemed to you to have an ethical imperative? a: well, among other things, you have to remember that you are talking to someone who may be native to chicago, but ultimately it is not my home. i was born here but it is not my home. this is a baptist fundamentalist city. and also was a city that took great care to patronize mies van der rohe. and so it was very difficult in the sixties to come back from graduate school and to find a place in this place which was no place for me. and so we formed something called the chicago seven, with a group who was were antagonistic to an establishment condition, and we tried to make a place for us at the table. around that time, a little bit later, i did that infamous piece about the titanic, about crown hall sinking into lake michigan and it struck a note at the time and it drew great discussion in the then emerging architectural culture in chicago which was really nothing more than two sides battling it out between the traditional, canonical structural constructivist tradition and another group that had nothing in common—the chicago seven—but who felt that a more open, multi-valent condition might be better for all concerned in chicago, and so ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 58 t ig er m a n we battled our way to the table, and there were any number of events— mosh pits or whatever—where we invited others to argue it out with us and they came and we did. that condition no longer exists today. basically, there is no chicago architectural culture. q: what you had in common was an attitude towards multivalence? a: what we had in common was we wanted a place at the table. make no mistake about it. we were all different, one from the other and to find that place took a long time but it did transpire at some point. so yes, you could call it multivalent, you could call it philosophically inclined, but it was really very selforiented and selfish. we wanted respect without the credential of having studied with mies. and it ultimately transpired. in the process, chicago opened itself up to every stripe of ambulance chaser who came to chicago to build. q: i do have one other question i would like to run by you. one of the things emmanuel brings out in the article is about spontaneity. he thinks that cultivating spontaneity with another person through design rather than sort of presenting them with a design—he thinks that spontaneity is something that characterized what you do. do you agree with that? a: again, i don’t know about that. i do know that we in the west fear, as emmanuel levinas put it, the other–the other that stalks the street. we are terrified of looking this person in the eye. we’re terrified of terrorists, forgetting that the tradition of terrorism is rampant in all the countries of the west. think of the french revolution, think about the american revolution—it was filled with terrorists. the british didn’t know if they were going to have a bomb in their pocket. suicide bombers are just an advanced version of the terrorists we were—american, that is. so i think—i’m reading a book right now that is very interesting, called on the muslim question which years ago could have been called “on the jewish question” the jews in america and everywhere else, were never respected, they had to fight for the place and ultimately they had no place even in america. only if you fell into the melting pot and declared yourself an american first—so we don’t take kindly to veiled muslim women or trance-talking muslim males. we could—this country is supposed to be made up of diversified people that are not the same to each other. it’s the only country on earth that has that distinction. we could embrace an other, a foreign person, a person that doesn’t speak like us and who has values other than ours—meaning values established by the koran—as opposed to the judeo-christian bible. but we could, so i’m of the type who believes in that, who doesn’t scare. you know, you go through life with only two ways, with fear or with love. and those who go in fear die 59 isparchitecture.com in fear, and those who go in love die in love. and that’s really all i have to say about it. i mean, i am an architect. i trade, i also read and i write and i draw. i do other things other than making buildings. and i like to think and hope that the buildings i make, make sense. we [tigerman mccurry] don’t market, we don’t brand, we don’t have a marketing director. i’m not interested in branding, i’m not interested in any way in the diminishment of the discipline. but it is being diminished all the time—right now, as we speak. in other words, i’m glad i’m eighty-three and i’m not going to live to see the disaster that’s about to come to architecture. stanley tigerman building plans as natural symbols rafael de clercq at present, there are no hotly debated topics in the philosophy of architecture. one could take this as evidence of the dreariness of the discipline, but one could equally see it as a sign that the discipline has not been caught up in its own internal dialectic and thereby lost touch with issues that matter outside of philosophy. after all, when a (philosophical) discipline lacks a compelling internal dialectic, there is every reason for researchers in the field to look beyond its boundaries, to other, neighboring fields. in the case of the philosophy of architecture, these neighbors include architectural history, architectural theory, architectural criticism, and, last but not least, the practice of architecture itself. it should come as no surprise, then, that the topic of my paper is an entirely self-selected one from the field of architectural history and theory. more specifically, i will focus on a claim about building plans that can be found in the work of architectural historian carroll william westfall. the claim has received little attention, perhaps because it is considered implausible, or because it is made by someone whose taste in philosophy (aristotle) and architecture (jefferson) seems all too classical. whatever the case may be, in what follows i will try to argue that the claim is not implausible. i will, however, give my own interpretation to it, one that may not match entirely what westfall had in mind.1 still, the claim is supposed to remain sufficiently strong under the proposed interpretation to make it far from trivially true. there are buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds (e.g., ‘temple’, ‘dwelling’, ‘shop’) whose plans are natural symbols of the activities accommodated by those buildings “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 62 de c le r cq i. westfall advanced his thesis about building plans in architectural principles in the age of historicism, a book co-authored with robert jan van pelt in 1991.2 here are some relevant quotations from westfall’s chapter on building types:3 here it is argued that a building imitates a type which is timeless. the type provides a symbol of the purpose which the building embodies… the particular building is a conventional sign within which is embedded the natural symbolism of the type (van pelt & westfall 1991, p. 156). in this sense, [the type] is a natural symbol of the political purpose it accommodates. in both the most simple and most complex way, then, the type’s character is embodied in its plan diagram, and that plan diagram is about a purpose… (ibid., p. 160) each purpose has a corresponding building type with a characteristic plan diagram. the type embodies the continuity between the present and the past. it is that which endures because it is true. because it is true, it exists outside the time marked by history, and it has symbolic value—it symbolizes some particular political purpose (ibid., p. 166). the claim i wish to extract from the above quotations can be stated as follows: there are buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds (e.g., ‘temple’, ‘dwelling’, ‘shop’) whose plans are natural symbols of the activities accommodated by those buildings. it may not be immediately clear why this claim is extracted from the quotations. first of all, in the quoted passages, westfall is not saying that activities are symbolized; he says that purposes are symbolized. however, activities and purposes are not clearly distinguished in van pelt & westfall 1991 (e.g., on pp. 156, 1612). moreover, as we will see in section iii, the explanation of the symbolic relation may be roughly the same regardless of whether purposes or activities are symbolized. in other words, the plausibility of the central claim does not depend on which of the two interpretations is preferred.4 another interpretative issue arises from the fact that westfall does not say that building plans are symbols; he tends to say that building types are symbols. however, since, according to the second quotation, “the type’s character is embodied in its plan diagram” it does not seem too extravagant to take him as claiming that building plans are symbols or, if one prefers, that buildings symbolize by virtue of their plan. indeed, more recently, westfall writes that (particular) buildings “based on” building types are 63 isparchitecture.com natural symbols (unpublished, p. 14). in any case, my interpretation of the claim will henceforth focus on two expressions: ‘plan’ and ‘natural symbol’. my discussion of the claim’s significance—in particular, how it differs from similar claims—will have to wait until the conclusion, when a clear interpretation has been provided. ii. the plans that are supposed to serve as natural symbols are not diagrammatic representations of horizontal sections (these are “conventional signs”), but the horizontal sections themselves. moreover, they are the horizontal sections of particular buildings, for example, a horizontal section of the ground floor of the houses of parliament in london. however, if we follow westfall, these plans or sections are able to serve as natural symbols only because they exemplify a certain abstract shape; in other words, because they are tokens of a certain type. westfall identifies six basic types: the tholos, the temple, the theatre, the regia, the dwelling, and the shop. (for our purposes, we can regard a basic type as one whose symbolic significance does not derive entirely from its being an instance of another, more general type.) the activities symbolized by the tokens of these types are, respectively, venerating, celebrating, imagining (or “aspiring”), governing (or “exercising authority”), dwelling, and sustaining (or “trading”). the diagrams in figure 1 represent the abstract shapes the tokens have in common in virtue of being tokens of the same type. when introduced in this way, the list may strike one as somewhat arbitrary, and indeed westfall does not explain in detail how he arrived at it. he says little more than the list is based on, “[e]xperience with historical building and reflection about the historic within that experience as well as the knowledge available to us through our life in the present” (p. what distinguishes natural from non-natural symbols is the way the connection is established between the symbol and what it stands for “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 64 de c le r cq 156). nonetheless, it seems to me that the list cannot be rejected out of hand as based on someone’s parochial (say, western) experience. this may be evident in the case of the dwelling and the shop, but even the peculiarlooking tholos is exemplified by religious structures around the world such as mosques and chinese altars and pagodas. the apparent universality of the types is of course due to the fact that they are very general and leave many features undetermined, for example, dimensions of rooms, the placing of windows and doors, etcetera.6 however, such indeterminacy does not empty westfall’s list of significance as long as the shapes, and the corresponding activities, are recognizable and recognizably different from one another.7 that is enough for westfall’s list to be refutable. moreover, westfall leaves open the possibility that a different (and presumably, equally correct) list can be produced on the basis of a “different understanding of the way political life is given conventional form in constitutions and a different interpretation of the activities that constitute political life” (p. 157). however, in what follows, i do not want to defend even the thesis that westfall’s list is a correct enumeration of basic types. all i want to argue is that some such list (perhaps a much longer one) may be correct. that is enough for the claim under investigation to be plausible or at least worthy of further investigation. the claim extracted from westfall’s chapter makes reference only to horizontal sections. in principle, one could also take vertical sections into account. the word ‘plans’ in my formulation of the main thesis would then have to be replaced by something like ‘horizontal and/or vertical sections’. this should not affect (what i take to be) the substance of the claim, although it may make it more plausible. in what follows, however, i will largely ignore vertical sections; in part to remain as close as possible to westfall’s text, in part to keep things as simple as possible.8 for the same reasons, i will ignore complexities arising from the fact that part of a building may exemplify a type without the building itself exemplifying that type. iii. the expression that is bound to cause most puzzlement is ‘natural symbol’. in the sense that is relevant here, a symbol is an object (or an action or an event) that stands for something valued within a community such as a deity or the nation.9 two additional clarifications may make this definition a bit more helpful. firstly, an object stands for something valued only if it (i) has the capacity to call it to mind and (ii) in virtue of that capacity, is the object of attitudes normally directed towards the 65 isparchitecture.com valued thing (for example, reverence and respect). secondly, what a symbol stands for usually is not itself an object or at least not an object of sensory experience: it can be a past event, a supernatural being, a non-perceptual property, a disposition, and so on. in the present case, it is (the purpose served by) an activity of a very general kind such as venerating, celebrating and dwelling. what distinguishes natural from non-natural symbols is the way the connection is established between the symbol and what it stands for. in the case of a non-natural symbol, the connection is established by a convention such as the convention that x is a monument for y or that x is the flag of y. in such cases, the connection is arbitrary in the sense that a different convention would have resulted in a different connection. in the case of a natural symbol such as an icon or a relic, the connection is not the result of a convention, but of something figure 1: westfall’s alphabet of building (p. 160): (1) regia (2) tholos (3) temple (4) dwelling (5) theatre (6) shop. hatched areas represent solid forms. 5 ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 66 de c le r cq outside our will such as striking resemblance and/or spatiotemporal contiguity (contact). note that the difference lies in how the connection is established – by convention or not – not in how it is maintained. even if the connection between a symbol and what it symbolizes was established by convention, a change of convention may not result in a change of connection. for example, a country may adopt a new flag without the old flag thereby losing its symbolic significance. evidently, this raises the question how the ‘natural’ connection is established between building plans of a given type on the one hand and kinds of activities on the other hand. westfall does not explicitly address this question, but, as we will see, there is an answer that is compatible with what he says and which seems defensible. one may think that spatiotemporal contiguity can explain the symbolic connection between building plans and activities. after all, the symbolized activities (for example, dwelling) may take place in close proximity to the horizontal sections of buildings. however, on the face of it, this cannot be the whole explanation. the reason is that spatial contiguity can establish a connection only between items that have a location in space and time, for example, between a particular – locatable – building and a particular – dateable – activity that has taken place within it. but the connection that westfall needs is one between building plans of a given type and certain kinds of activities. because types and kinds are abstract objects, which do not have a location in space, they cannot stand in a relation of spatiotemporal contiguity to one another. one might think that it is enough to have spatiotemporal contiguity between tokens and instances in order to have a connection between the corresponding types and kinds. in other words, if activities of a certain kind always take place in buildings of a certain type, or vice versa, if buildings of a certain type always accommodate activities of a certain kind, then will this not be enough to establish a symbolic connection between the two? to be sure, this seems closer to the truth. it certainly is true that the actual use of a plan may enhance its symbolic value. by having a certain history of use, a plan may be better able to call to mind what is symbolized, for example, through recollection. however, it does not follow that such constant association can create symbolic value or that it creates it in every case. at least in our present case, it seems that other factors may be involved. in fact, in order to find out whether there are other factors, it may be worth investigating why certain types of plan have come to be associated with certain kinds of activity. for example, it may be worth asking why veneration often takes place in tholos-like forms. 67 isparchitecture.com an obvious answer is that this type is experienced as suitable or appropriate. this then suggests the following answer to our initial question: a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of a kind of activity y because x is (especially) appropriate for the accommodation of y. or, if one prefers the interpretation under which purposes rather than activities are symbolized: a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of purpose y because x is especially appropriate for the accommodation of an activity that serves y. one may ask what is more important, whether a building plan is experienced as appropriate or whether it really is appropriate? i think the latter relation is more fundamental, and in any case, in greater need of clarification (to be provided soon). nonetheless, it is obvious that appropriateness alone does not suffice to confer symbolic significance on a building plan. the appropriateness has to be recognized if it is to make the building plan stand for a particular purpose or a particular kind of activity. in other words, only manifest appropriateness explains symbolic significance. similarly, a piece of clothing cannot function as a relic unless it is believed to have belonged to a particular person. the idea that certain types of plan are appropriate for certain kinds of activity is one that occasionally shows up in the literature, for example, when it is said that variations on a plan and/or section occur in the history of building types until the ‘appropriate’ form has been found. to quote just two examples: in a healthy building culture, tradition and innovation are not contradictory but complementary concepts. in both cases, [a] building type is allowed to take on the most appropriate form (davis 2006, p. 153; italics omitted). a type represents the organizational structure of a building in plan and section. a type evolves until it ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 68 de c le r cq achieves its basic (i.e. its rational and logical) form… [t]he fact that airport terminals are everywhere in a state of permanent reconstruction demonstrates the fact that shelter and function have not yet found a suitable type. (krier 2007, p. 42) although ‘suitable’ and ‘appropriate’ seem to be used here in their everyday meaning (of ‘right’), it may be useful to spell out the idea a little bit more. echoing nelson goodman’s theory of rightness (see, for example, goodman & elgin 1988, p. 158), one might say that a type of plan is appropriate for an activity if and only if using it for the accommodation of that activity works; in other words, if using the type for that purpose helps to create a successful building, where ‘helps to create’ can be understood as designating a causal relation. nothing much hinges here on a particular view of what a successful building is, but it seems reasonable to demand – in addition to the vitruvian criteria of firmness, commodity, and delight – that a building be adaptable and in harmony with the existing environment.10 if using a type for the accommodation of a particular activity works, then at least part of the explanation must be that the use of the type fits into a larger building culture which itself works.11 as goodman and elgin say, “working tests fitting” (ibid., p. 159). for example, architects and building users unfamiliar with a type of plan may have no clue as to how a building based on it can accommodate the activity it is supposed to accommodate, and they may find it difficult to fit it into an existing context. in the building culture to which they belong, using the type may not work.12 when confronted with such a case, one should not jump to the conclusion that there is something wrong with either the type or the culture. one may just be confronted with a lack of fit between the two. nonetheless, the possibility of a deficient building culture should be borne in mind, especially when criticisms of the culture are widespread and persistent. this seems to be the case with our present building culture, whose shortcomings have been foregrounded by an ever-growing number of critics, including architects (e.g., bruce allsop, léon krier, paul rudolph), engineers (e.g., malcolm millais), architectural critics (e.g., peter blake), architectural theorists (e.g., brent c. brolin, howard davis), architectural historians (e.g., david watkin), philosophers (e.g., roger scruton), sociologists (e.g., nathan glazer), writers (e.g., jane jacobs, tom wolfe), and the prince of wales (charles).13 according to these critics, our present building culture is not very good at producing successful buildings in the sense that has just been made half-precise; in other words, it does not work very well. 69 isparchitecture.com the notion of a successful building, then, turns out to be essential to spelling out the relation of appropriateness between building plan and activity (which relation is essential to explaining the symbolic significance of certain types of building plan). of course, this makes the relation partly normative. from a hermeneutic point of view, this is a desirable consequence, since westfall often calls his types ‘normative’. however, westfall’s types are normative in a stronger sense: they are not just appropriate forms, they “provide the basic character of what the plan of the finished building must be if it is to serve its purpose” (p. 161; my italics). moreover, it seems that, in westfall’s view, the only condition that can get one exempted from the requirement of using the form for a particular activity is one in which it is (practically) impossible to use the form for that activity: “while the building types suggest how certain purposes ought to be accommodated by a building, circumstances do not always allow it to be so” (p. 161; italics in original). this may be overly strict. nonetheless, it is worth noting that, according to westfall, the requirement to use a certain building plan applies only to certain kinds of building. for example, he claims that it does not apply to farms and libraries, and for reasons to be given soon, one may suppose that it does not apply to factories either. moreover, the issue of whether the types are normative in a strong or in a weak sense (i.e., whether they are mandatory or merely appropriate) has little bearing on the main issue, that is, how building plans can function as natural symbols of certain purposes or activities. after all, if a building plan is required in a given context – if one “must” use it – then, a fortiori, it is appropriate to use it in that context. the normativity imparted by the notion of a successful building may seem to be incompatible with the claim that building plans are ‘natural’ symbols. however, the distinction between natural and non-natural symbols is not supposed to be an ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 70 de c le r cq instance of the metaphysically puzzling distinction between the descriptive and evaluative, causes and reasons, and so on. rather, the distinction was supposed to be a metaphysically innocent one between items whose symbolic significance is based on a convention and items whose symbolic significance has a different basis. (by ‘symbolic significance’ i mean an item’s standing for something valued.) in sum, ‘natural’ has to be understood as ‘non-conventional’. even if an item’s symbolic significance is not the result of a convention, there is still a potential for cultural variability. to see this, consider that, according to the explanation given above, appropriateness is a matter of working, and that working is a matter of fitting within a culture of building. as a result, instances of the same type of building plan may not stand for the same thing, or even anything, in every culture. it does not follow (from the fact that working is a matter of “fitting within a culture of building”) that there is no fact of the matter as to what is a working building plan or even a working building culture. compare: from the fact that different types of medicine work for different kinds of people, it does not follow that there are no absolute standards for therapeutic effectiveness. moreover, although i have again departed from what westfall suggests – like jungian archetypes, his basic building types seem to have universal symbolic significance – our disagreement (again) has no implications for the main thesis. as said, there is room for variability across cultures with respect to what a building plan stands for. however, within a culture, a building plan cannot stand for a completely heterogeneous collection of activities, even if those activities happen to be all instances of the same kind of action. in other words, there have to be constancies in the form the activities take (p. 158). otherwise there cannot be a type of plan that suits them all, and which can therefore serve as a symbol of the kind. if this line of reasoning is correct, it may explain why the activities of production and transportation do not seem to have associated types of building plan: there is just too much variation in the form that such activities can take. in other words, even if there is a type suitable to railway stations (cf. krier 2007, p. 51), there is no type suitable to all of the following: railway stations, bus stations, ferry piers, airports, rocket launchers, and so on. of course, this raises the question of when certain activities are too heterogeneous to be appropriately accommodated and hence symbolized by a particular building type.14 it seems to me that this question is best answered a posteriori, by examining the building types that have actually been developed. to be sure, certain expectations are reasonable on a 71 isparchitecture.com priori grounds. for example, it seems reasonable to expect that activities which are defined in highly general terms and which, at the same time, are highly reliant on technology (for example, transportation, production, and research) will not find appropriate accommodation in a single type or even in a plurality of types. in such cases, the appropriate form of accommodation is likely to depend on the nature of the technology and the stage of its development. however, it seems that such a priori reflection on the relationship between building types and activities can easily lead one into paradoxes. consider, for example, the apparently contradictory statements which the prominent art historian james s. ackerman issued about the villa (on what seem to be a priori grounds). one the one hand, ackerman writes: this makes the villa unique: other architectural types—the palace, the place of worship, the factory— have changed in form and purpose as the role of the ruler, the character of the liturgy, the nature of manufacture have changed, frequently and often radically. but the villa has remained substantially the same because it fills a need that never alters, a need which, because it is not material but psychological and ideological, is not subject to the influences of evolving societies and technologies. the villa accommodates a fantasy which is impervious to reality (ackerman 1990, p. 9). on the other hand, he writes: there is hardly a moment in the history of architecture when villas were less innovative than other architectural types… the villa is less fixed in form than most other architectural types because the requirements of leisure lack clear definition (ibid., p. 18). on the face of it, this seems inconsistent. how can the villa, and the activity or “need” it is supposed to serve, simultaneously be more stable and less fixed compared to other building types?15 one may try to resolve this apparent contradiction by saying that in the case of a natural symbol such as an icon or a relic, the connection is not the result of a convention, but of something outside our will such as striking resemblance and/or spatiotemporal contiguity “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 72 de c le r cq certain elements of the villa remain unchanged while others are subject to change. but how could the villa be “unique” in this respect? unless reference is made to particular elements, the statement that some of the villa’s elements change, while others do not, borders on triviality. of course, the only way one could reasonably make reference to particular elements is by investigating the matter empirically (that is, a posteriori). eventually, this is what ackerman does by distinguishing two types of villa that have survived from ancient times: the ‘compact-cubic’ type, which is regular (cubical) in shape, and the ‘open-extended’ type, which is irregularly shaped and more integrated with the natural environment (ibid., pp. 18-26). iv. the hypothesis put forward in the previous section is that a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of a kind of activity y because x is (especially) appropriate for the accommodation of y. alternatively, a building plan of type x can be a natural symbol of purpose y because x is (especially) appropriate for the accommodation of an activity serving y. in brief, appropriateness explains symbolic significance. however, it seems that the two factors can be regarded as mutually reinforcing, since the reverse—symbolic significance explains appropriateness—is also true. when a building plan comes to stand for a certain activity, it becomes all the more appropriate to use it for the accommodation of that activity. this is of course most clear in the case of buildings accommodating ‘serious’ activities such as monuments, government buildings and churches. in such cases, it may be found awkward and even desecrating if the building plan calls to mind another, less serious activity; similarly, an ordinary dwelling or shop may be found pompous or pretentious if its plan calls to mind a more serious activity. furthermore, a configuration of buildings wearing their purposes ‘on their sleeves’ is more likely to constitute a meaningful whole. after all, we do not experience a configuration of buildings as an abstract configuration of shapes and colors any more than we experience an individual building in such a way. our knowledge of the actual purpose of a building inevitably informs our perception of it. if that purpose does not correspond to its apparent purpose, then this can be easily picked up as an oddity in an individual case, which may even enhance the significance of the whole. however, if such incongruence occurs on a larger scale, then our attention will tend to drift away from the whole to the individual buildings making up the whole. what we are left with, then, is no longer an environment properly speaking, but a sequence of buildings whose true 73 isparchitecture.com significance is to be deciphered. finally, if a building plan’s symbolic significance is somehow local—a possibility mentioned in previous section—then that may make it again more appropriate because it may create the ‘sense of place’ that is so much desired nowadays.16 v. this paper took its starting point in a claim attributed to carroll william westfall, namely: there are buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds whose plans are natural symbols of the (purposes served by the) activities accommodated by those buildings. my aim was to give an interpretation to this claim that makes it plausible and yet not trivial. moreover, the interpretation was supposed to remain close enough to westfall’s text to be able to count as an interpretation. in order to demonstrate the plausibility of the claim under the proposed interpretation, i explored the idea that certain types of building plan are appropriate for certain kinds of activities. my claim was that such appropriateness can explain the natural (i.e. non-conventional) symbolism of building plans, and can also be reinforced by it. now that an interpretation of westfall’s claim has been provided, it is possible to say something about its significance. to be sure, westfall is not the first to ascribe symbolic value to building plans. for example, rudolf wittkower (1998[1949]) already argued that the circular plan of certain renaissance churches symbolized divine attributes and even god himself. in eastern traditions of architecture, such symbolism seems more entrenched. for example, indian temple and palace plans were often based on cosmological diagrams called ‘mandalas’. similarly, in the temple of heaven complex in beijing, circular and square plans were used to allow for the worship of (a round) heaven and (a square) earth respectively (steinhardt 2002). to some extent, westfall’s is a generalization of such claims, since it on the face of it, this seems inconsistent. how can the villa, and the activity or “need” it is supposed to serve, simultaneously be more stable and less fixed compared to other building types? “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 74 de c le r cq ascribes symbolic value to the plans of buildings belonging to disparate functional kinds: religious structures, but also, for example, houses and shops. moreover, under the interpretation given in this paper, the significance of westfall’s claim extends beyond the art-historical. after all, on this interpretation, the symbolic significance of building plans does not depend on anything contentious. in particular, it can be reasonably doubted that the circle resembles god or heaven, but it seems much harder to doubt that certain forms are appropriate for certain activities, let alone that such activities exist. in other words, the circular plan symbolized something for renaissance architects (if wittkower’s interpretation is correct) and for 15th century chinese people, but the plans westfall has in mind can symbolize something for everyone capable of recognizing their appropriateness, which basically means… everyone. in short, westfall’s claim is not so much an interpretation of a particular (historical or regional) architectural practice, as an interpretation of architectural practice tout court. whether it is a correct interpretation of that practice has not been decided in this paper, but, hopefully, it now looks a little bit more credible. the previous paragraph may, however, invite an objection. in particular, westfall’s claim may seem to be not just a generalization of earlier claims about the symbolic significance of floor plans; it may seem to be an overgeneralization. to understand why, it may be worth recalling two necessary conditions for being a symbol: (i) having the capacity to call to mind something valued (ii) in virtue of that capacity, being the object of attitudes (e.g., reverence, respect) normally directed towards the valued thing. now it may be obvious how these two conditions can be met when what is symbolized is god or one of his attributes. if we are believers, such ‘things’ automatically command our respect. but what if the thing symbolized is, as in (one interpretation of) westfall’s theory, something banal like trading or dwelling? my inclination is to say that these, too, command our respect, although it may be less obvious precisely because they are so commonplace. nonetheless, there are times when the importance we attach to them becomes manifest. mircea eliade, for example, reminds us of the rites that accompany “the passing of the domestic threshold” (eliade 1959, p. 25) and the settling in a new house (ibid., p. 57). in a similar vein, john ruskin points to the “sanctity in a good man’s house which cannot be renewed in every tenement that rises on its ruin” (ruskin 1990[1880], p. 179). such remarks are difficult to understand if dwelling is considered trivial and devoid of intrinsic value. acknowledgments 75 isparchitecture.com thanks to paisley livingston, yu-ping luk, and especially caroll william westfall for helpful comments and suggestions. references ackerman, j. s. (1990) the villa: form and ideology of country houses. london: thames & hudson. allsopp, b. (1974) towards a humane architecture. london: frederick muller. blake, p. (1977) form follows fiasco: why modern architecture hasn’t worked. boston: little, brown. brolin, b. c. (1976) the failure of modern architecture. new york: van nostrand reinhold company. charles, prince of wales (1989) a vision of britain: a personal view of architecture. new york: doubleday. davis, h. (2006) the culture of building. oxford: oxford university press. de clercq, r. (2011) ‘modern architecture and the concept of harmony’, british journal of aesthetics 51, pp. 69-79. eliade, m. (1959) the sacred and the profane: the nature of religion. translated by w. l. trask. new york: harcourt, brace & world. glazer, n. (2007) from a cause to a style: modernist architecture’s encounter with the american city. princeton: princeton university press. goodman, n. & c. z. elgin (1988) reconceptions in philosophy and other arts and sciences. indianapolis, indiana: hackett publishing company. hamlin, t., ed. (1952) forms and functions of twentiethcentury architecture. volumes iii & iv. new york: columbia university press. jacobs, j. (1992) the death and life of great american cities. new york: vintage books. krier, l. (2007) architecture: choice or fate? london: papadakis publishers. the plans westfall has in mind can symbolize something for everyone capable of recognizing their appropriateness, which basically means… everyone “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 76 de c le r cq millais, m. (2009) exploding the myths of modern architecture. london: frances lincoln. pevsner, n. (1976) a history of building types. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. rudolph, p. (2008) writings on architecture. new haven, ct: yale university press. quincy, quatremère de (1999) the true, the fictive, and the real: the historical dictionary of architecture of quatremere de quincy. translated by samir younès. london: papadakis. rossi, a. (1982) the architecture of the city. cambridge, mass.: mit press. ruskin, j. (1990[1880]) the seven lamps of architecture. new york: dover publications. scruton, r. (1994) the classical vernacular: architectural principles in an age of nihilism. new york: st martin’s press. steinhardt, n., ed. (2002) chinese architecture. new haven: yale university press. thadani, d. a. (2010) the language of towns and cities: a visual dictionary. new york: rizzoli. van pelt, r. j. & c. w. westfall (1991) architectural principles in the age of historicism. new haven: yale university press. watkin, d. (2001) morality and architecture revisited. london: john murray. westfall, c. w. (unpublished) ‘the formal leg’, chapter 20 of the architecture of american liberty. wolfe, t. (2009[1981]) from bauhaus to our house. new york: picador. wittkower, r. (1998[1949]) architectural principles in the age of humanism. london: academy editions. endnotes 1. at least occasionally, i will allow myself to deviate from westfall’s terminology and metaphysics. for example, i will not always heed his fine distinction between ‘functions’ and ‘purposes’, and i will remain neutral on the ontological status of types. 2. henceforth, all references will be to this book (van pelt & westfall 1991) unless indicated otherwise. 3. the term ‘building type’ is used ambiguously in the literature, as quatremère de quincy’s historical dictionary (de quincy 1999) already makes clear. although de quincy did not make the different senses 77 isparchitecture.com much clearer (pace rossi 1982, p. 40, who claims that de quincy “gave a masterly definition of type”), it seems possible to distinguish at least the following two senses in the current literature. on the one hand (see, for example, hamlin 1952 and pevsner 1976), ‘building type’ is used to denote the functional kind to which a building belongs: factory, monument, train station, church, hotel, town hall, concert hall, school, prison, museum, shop, and so on. on the other hand (see, for example, davis 2006 and krier 2007), ‘building type’ is used to denote the structural kind to which a building belongs, as determined by its plan and/or section: centralized versus linear, greek-cross versus latin-cross, single-story versus multistory, row versus detached, with or without courtyard or loggia, and so on. westfall seems to use the term in the second sense, and so will i. of course, it is possible two combine the two senses, for example, when one speaks of the dumbbell tenement or the danish row house as a type. 4. more recently, westfall writes that “[t]he presence of the building idea type within the diagram and then the plan allows the building to signify, or better, to express, the activity it serves and therefore to connect it to the purpose that the institution or arrangements serves within the civil, religious, or cultural order” (unpublished, p. 12; my italics). this suggests that building types symbolize certain purposes by symbolizing (“expressing”) activities serving those purposes. 5. in personal communication, westfall pointed to a minor inaccuracy in the diagrams included in van pelt & westfall 1991 (p. 160). the diagrams in this paper should better match his intentions. 6. according to westfall (personal communication), these specifications “enter with the conventional configuration that the [plan] diagrams have taken within a time and a place and with attention to the actual functions that serve the purposes”. 7. by ‘recognizable’ is meant ‘recognizable in their instances’. in other words, it must be possible to sort particular buildings according to the types. for example, bramante’s tempietto in rome can be classified as an instance of the tholos type, which means that the type is recognizable. 8. westfall does not ignore the vertical dimension. however, in his view, differences along that dimension (e.g., elevation) do not help to differentiate types of building, but merely regional versions of types (see, for example, pp. 162-7). westfall does not ascribe natural symbolism to such versions, in part because he seems to equate ‘natural’ and ‘universal’. as will become clear, this is one respect in my reconstruction may differ from the original view. 9. “signs point to particular meanings such as functions and the relative ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 78 de c le r cq importance of similar things, while symbols embody the larger purposes that enliven the aspiration to live the good life of justice and nobility” (p. 156). 10. for an analysis of architectural harmony, see de clercq 2011. however, harmony can be understood here in a wider sense, including environmental friendliness. 11. building cultures are usefully analyzed in davis 2006, where the term ‘building culture’ refers to “the coordinated system of knowledge, rules, procedures, and habits that surrounds the building process in a given place and time” (davis 2006, p. 5). members of the culture include contractors, clients, architects, building users, bankers, and so on. 12. brolin 1976 provides several examples illustrating how the acceptability of a floor plan may depend on social customs and cultural values (e.g., pp. 42-3, 66-7, 99). 13. references are in the bibliography. 14. here ‘building type’ is used in the structural or structural-cumfunctional sense. see footnote 3. 15. ackerman acknowledges the tension by concluding that the villa “poses a cultural paradox” (p. 34). 16. the connection between architectural types and local character is stressed in davis 2006 (several places) and in thadani 2010 (p. 694). rafael de clercq responds question: if we must admit to some cultural variation for the view of natural kinds to hold plausibility, does then that recognition require us to accept that culture itself is a natural kind to preserve the argument? in other words, if, as many think, culture is significantly dependent on conventions to function at a high level, then haven’t conventions crept in through the back door? answer: the argument in the article does not imply that building types are natural kinds; only that they are non-conventional symbols. so let me rephrase the question as follows: if building plans symbolize by virtue of their appropriateness, and if their appropriateness depends at least in part on culturally variable elements such as customs, then how can it be claimed that building plans are non-conventional symbols? my short answer is that, although the appropriateness of building plans depends on the presence of conventions, it is not itself a conventional property. rather, it is a causal property (cf. “one might say that a type of plan is appropriate for an activity if and only if … using the type for that purpose helps to create a successful building, where ‘helps to create’ can be understood as designating a causal relation”). perhaps the following example can help to understand how a property can depend on conventions without being itself conventional. in western societies, handshaking is among the conventions for greeting. as a result, refusing to shake hands may cause someone to feel offended. when this happens, the relation between the refusal and the feeling is causal, but it is also dependent on the existence of a particular convention for greeting. q: what does an analysis of architecture as captured by symbolism or type do or speak to, within the philosophical or architecture discourse? for example, the westfall concept you argue for could be seen as a potential support for the traditionalists— leon krier, prince charles, and their fellows—in their struggles with modernists. do you agree and is this how these ideas apply? a: i am inclined to think that the main argument in the text—plans symbolize activities by virtue of being appropriate for these activities—is neutral between modernism and traditionalism. nonetheless, it is a fact that traditionalists tend to be more concerned with building types, as can be gleaned from my references. moreover, there is another argument in the text that may provide some support for traditionalism, namely, where it is said that “[w]hen a building plan comes to stand for a certain activity, it becomes all the more appropriate to use it for the accommodation of that activity”. for various reasons, local building traditions tend to contain types with considerable symbolic significance, and this is a reason for drawing on them if the quoted sentence is true. q: kant’s distinction between free and dependent beauty bears a relationship to what you discuss here. for kant, the beauty of architecture was decisively dependent on its functioning as intended. yet ultimately he opted for the idea that it wasn’t function per se, but instead a concept of functioning that determined the harmonious play of mental faculties that created an aesthetic experience of architecture. this idea has led ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 80 de c le r cq richard hill, for example, in his designs and their consequences, to argue that “we do not need actually to use a building in order to respond aesthetically to it: it will be enough that we see those aesthetic ideas that are incorporated into its design.” could you respond to this more indirect, or perhaps once-removed sense of utility as an alternative? a: i certainly agree that we do not need to use a building in order to experience it aesthetically. but the question probably is how, or to what extent, a building’s aesthetic or architectural value is determined by its symbolizing a certain activity or purpose. it is difficult to answer this question in a general way. for example, in some cases, symbolizing a certain activity may be a function of the building, in other cases, it may not be. similarly, in some cases, the symbolized activity may be one that the building was designed to accommodate; in other cases, it may be one that the building ended up accommodating; and there are still other possibilities. the notion of function enters here in different ways, and accordingly, there will be different answers to give for the different cases. in another paper (‘reflections on a sofa bed: functional beauty and looking fit’, journal of aesthetic education 47:2 (2013)), i argue that not all functions are equally important from an aesthetic point of view; for example, i argue that acquired functions are less important than original functions. if this claim is correct, then it is has implications for how the above question is to be answered. but in any case, i think there is no doubt that symbolization of activities is aesthetically relevant. this much is already implied by the sentence quoted in response to the second question, namely, “[w]hen a building plan comes to stand for a certain activity, it becomes all the more appropriate to use it for the accommodation of that activity”. is beauty still relevant? is art? is architecture? nathaniel coleman the good and the beautiful although notions of the good and the beautiful might seem impossible to discuss in our non-foundational age, the continuing relevance of beauty can sit comfortably alongside postfoundationalist, post-metaphysical, and more generally post-modernist thought, no matter how much a tendency for slipping back into a structuralist mind-set may be evidenced. the relevance of beauty and the good are in fact paradoxically intensified when thought beyond metaphysics, not least when the practical or pragmatic value of both categories is considered. the work the beautiful and the good can accomplish in our attempts to reimagine professions and their products remains vital. for example, all efforts to wrench architects and architecture out of their moribund state might well depend on an understanding of both categories for any chance at success.1 the problematic of what the ‘good architect’ is, or might be, in the present epoch arises out of disciplinary doubt and reflection on poor results. any discussion of the figure of the architect must inevitably also include a consideration of what ‘good architecture’ is, or might be. nevertheless, current discourses on both tend to be strangely dissociative, as if architecture could be autonomous, or that novelty or a formalist view of architectural aesthetics is enough to preclude discussion of architecture’s social dimension or the social obligations of architects—beyond the limiting perspectives of the marketplace.2 ideas of the ‘good’ in terms of architectural practice and its ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 82 co le m a n results bedevil our capacity to judge as we waiver between ideas of radical subjectivity and absolute ideals. however, when the ethical dimension of both the good and the beautiful are recollected, it becomes possible to imagine them as bound to the fortunes of propriety, to appropriateness. doing so is even possible today, albeit as situational, rather than absolute. the problem of the good and the beautiful in architecture today reveals something of its intractability and thus also suggests a pathway to its solution. in an effort to rescue aesthetics from a street level conception, my interest here is the problem of beauty, more so than the problematic of thinking of aesthetics in terms of questions of beauty as ‘mere beauty.’ such propositions position beauty as if it were simply a matter of ‘the look of a particular object,’ or were interchangeable with impulsive ‘liking’; as though ideas of beauty could have no reach beyond formalist aesthetics, sensualist proclivities, or radical subjectivity. yet, despite its compartmentalization in recent times, the ethical dimension of beauty has persisted at least from the greek philosopher socrates (died 399 bc), via plato (died 347 bc), to the renaissance architect and theorist leon battista alberti (1404-1472), and onward from there to nineteenth century social critics john ruskin (1819-1900) and william morris (1834-1896), and arguably beyond them to architects le corbusier (1887-1965) and aldo van eyck (1918-1999) as well. each was as preoccupied with the aesthetical (as a matter of beauty) as much as the ethical (as also a matter of beauty). but this only works if we think of beauty as a sense of wholeness or at least the striving toward it, as socrates did, summarized by alberti as ‘that to which nothing may be added nor taken away but for the worse’ . perhaps surprisingly, this definition of beauty turns on an ideal of comprehensiveness that can also accommodate the parts out of which it is made. it could continue to help us to judge works of architecture, whether radical or conservative, postmodern or deconstructive, etc. indeed, even in an epoch in which no syntonic universal ideal of beauty prevails (in which all master narratives are subject to question), the superlative aim of completeness persists as a guide to practice and as a way to judge its results alike. only in this way could wittgenstein’s claim that ‘ethics and aesthetics are one and the same’ be credible.3 in order to work through the problem of beauty, to rescue it from claims of its apparent meagreness, cases for tradition and hermeneutics are made. on the one hand, the thinking of ananda kentish coomaraswamy4 is a proponent of tradition and inheritor of the lineage from plato to morris. on the other, gianni vattimo,5 is as much intrigued 83 isparchitecture.com by a hermeneutics of tradition as by generalized communication and a weakening of the strong thought of western metaphysics, with its attendant inescapable propensity for violence. vattimo and coomaraswamy share a revaluation, or rethinking, of art that rescues beauty from being ‘merely,’ and as such, suggests how architects might begin to reclaim the richness of their task, albeit in a dispersed way, to act on behalf of the beautiful and ethics simultaneously, and in so doing, rescue the pervasive claims of architects to be acting on behalf of the people from being little more than empty words forming banal slogans primarily conjured up to justify simply doing business. one kind of art and shock: daniel libeskind, toronto crystal ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 84 co le m a n art and shock: vattimo in a passage that begins to confound the conventional divide between the ethical and aesthetical, vattimo charts a pathway to enhanced encounters with art (including architecture) that do not simply move beyond the aesthetic but which are suggestive of much fuller experiences, precisely because the ‘theoretical, moral, and emotional,’ —the ethical—is acknowledged: true, on the one hand, enjoying the work always implies or in some sense even comes to a head with an act of aesthetic contemplation, in which the work imposes itself by virtue of its formal perfection, without further referring to anything that might disturb the satisfaction or stillness connected with such a state. up to this point, vattimo outlines a fairly conventional depiction of the nature of aesthetic experience. however, as the paragraph progresses he turns from an exclusively aesthetic understanding toward an ethical one as well: on the other hand, it is equally true that the encounter with a great art work always represents not only an ‘aesthetic’ but also a theoretical, moral, and emotional experience, which engages the person at all levels and leads us to speak of art’s truth, of its cosmic nature, and of its ontological meaning. the value of the recognition outlined above lies in liberating art from a ‘formalist view of beauty,’ that limits understandings of it to an ideal of beauty entrapped within the ‘aesthetic sphere’ and thus as removed from the real, or the potential of having any significant impact on it: hence, in concrete experience the work resists being confined within the limits of the formalist view of beauty, it moves out of the ‘aesthetic sphere’ in which it is enclosed and holds its truth appeal, in the broadest and fullest meaning of the word.6 art’s ‘truth appeal’ resides in its opening up of vistas onto new worlds. or as vattimo puts it, “the work [of art] opens a new “epoch” of being as an absolutely originary event, which cannot be reduced to what it already was, and it grounds a new order of relationships within beings, a true and actually new world.”7 the newness of this world, that art founds, captivates experiencing subjects of it by shocking them. accordingly, for vattimo the term that defines ‘the encounter between the reader and the work ... is “stoss,” shock or quake: the artwork suspends in the reader all natural relationships, making strange everything that until that moment 85 isparchitecture.com had appeared obvious and familiar.’8 it is worth noting that the ‘shock’ that occurs in encounters with the previously unknown that art opens up, does not necessarily have anything to do with so-called ‘shock art,’ which shocks in its way by referring to ‘natural relationships,’ rather than suspending them, and by intensifying the ‘obvious and familiar,’ rather than making either strange. however, it is vattimo’s description of intense encounters with art as a ‘shock’ that is of the greatest interest. art and shock: coomaraswamy in his own attempts to challenge an aesthetic view of art coomaraswamy also found it necessary to refer to ‘shock’ to describe an alternative. according to him, ‘for the most part, our ‘aesthetic’ approach stands between us and the content of the work of art, of which only the surface concerns us.’9 for coomaraswamy, the surface, apparent beauty, invites attention, but the real experiential payoff (as much emotional as intellectual) resides in getting close to the ideas that motivate the object and which it makes visible to the senses, which in turn moves, or shocks, us during our encounters with works of art. as coomaraswamy argues, ‘it is not only in connection with natural objects (such another kind of art and shock: calatrava’s quadracci pavilion the work [of art] opens a new “epoch” of being as an absolutely originary event, which cannot be reduced to what it already was, and it grounds a new order of relationships within beings, a true and actually new world.—vattimo “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 86 co le m a n as the dew-drop) or events (such as death) but also in connection with works of art, and in fact whenever or wherever perception [. . .] leads to a serious experience, that we are really shaken.’10 coomaraswamy uses the pali word saṁvega ‘to denote the shock or wonder that may be felt when the perception of a work of art becomes a serious experience,’ which, of course, is quite similar to vattimo’s description of such encounters.11 it is perhaps quite difficult for us to experience works of art in the way either vattimo or coomaraswamy describe encounters with it. as kuspit suggests, the commodification of art, and the overabundant stimuli available to us through electronic and mechanical production and reproduction of art works, has made it all but impossible for us to gain access to the truth of art, or the shocking nature of this.12 even so, most of us have had encounters with works of art that have left us moved, even shaken, and these tend to be the most memorable, because the profoundest. if even one of these experiences can be recollected, coomaraswamy’s conviction that “saṁvega [shock, wonder], then, refers to the experience that may be felt in the presence of a work of art, when we are struck by it, ‘as a horse might be struck by a whip’ will have resonance for us.”13 more so, such recollection might begin to suggest what the aim of art, its vocation ought to be (and for architecture as well): to make the world strange so that we might see it anew, in all its depth and seriousness, such that we might believe with coomaraswamy that, “in the deepest experience that can be induced by a work of art (or other reminder) our very being is shaken (saṁvijta) to its roots.”14 what about architecture? the conceit of philosophers is that architecture is, of course, an art, more so one of the fine arts, even though in practice today it would be hard to describe much of what is built in the name of architecture as having convincingly been conceived or constructed under the sign of the fine arts – to say nothing of being serious in the ways described by vattimo and coomaraswamy above. rather than tangle with this issue here, i would like to consider a conception of architecture advanced by vattimo that could suggests how it might escape from its entrapment within the logic of capitalism (with its habit for destroying communities): [w]hat is left to legitimize our projects? precisely those conditions of belonging ... which are disclosed as we walk around the neighbourhood and notice that there, there used to be an old store, that here, there are traces, ruins, histories.15 [a]ll that is left is to understand legitimation as a form of the creation of 87 isparchitecture.com horizons of validity through dialogue, a dialogue both with the tradition to which we belong and others.16 [e]dification has two principal meanings – to build and to be morally uplifiting. both are quite closely tied in today’s rather vertiginous coming and going between architecture and philosophy... . that is, edification must be ethical, entailing communication of valuechoice. in the present situation of thought on the one hand and architectonic experience on the other ... the only possibility of edifying in the sense of building is to edify in the sense of ‘rendering ethical,’ that is, to encourage an ethical life: to work with the recollection of the past, with the expectations of meaning for the future, since there can no longer be absolute rational deductions. there follows then edification as a fostering of emotions, of ethical presentability, which can probably serve as the basis for an architecture determined not by the whole but by the parts.17 saṁvijta at kahn’s kimbell museum ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 88 co le m a n the idea of architecture developed by vattimo above is both more humble and more radical than anything coming from within the discipline of architecture, across the whole spectrum, from the most commercial practices, to those that are ostensibly avant-garde, to the apparently socially engaged as well. it is vattimo’s conception of tradition—as a common ground of belonging, dialogue, and invention—that returns thinking about architecture to ethics, which holds out the promise of a renewed relevance for architecture and beauty alike. one, however, is left wondering why architecture in these days seems all but incapable of thinking such thoughts on its own, suggesting also that at its best, philosophy could help it to do so. the disembodiment of beauty the relevance of beauty for architecture is far from spent. as ‘a vision that has been a source of inspiration to all western philosophy’, perhaps plato’s definition of beauty, as developed in the symposium, remains at the essence of understanding art and life.18 but if in the present aesthetic preoccupations can seem to limit the basic appeal of art (or architecture) to the eye (as it does music to the ear), it is here that plato, and his commentator, neo-platonist philosopher marsilio ficino (1433-1499) following him, cease to provide a way for recuperating the relevance of beauty in the present. obviously, sight and hearing are less physically engaged than taste, smell, or touch, making the first two the obvious preference of idealists. by privileging the senses of sight and hearing to those of taste, smell, and touch plato and ficino severely limit the possibilities of full-bodied experience. in this regard, art critic adrian stokes (1902-1972) reminds us that all the senses are integral to an appreciation of both life and art. the persisting problem of plato for art and architecture is the persistence of the idea that the highest ideal of beauty is an appreciation of it divorced from the sensuous—the body —and taken up by ideas and the mind alone. as one commentator summarizes: from plato comes the view of the realm of ideas set off from the world of the phenomenal which is but an imperfect copy of the archetype. this distinction corresponds to that between the material and the immaterial. in the platonic tradition the note is persistent that the body is a clog.19 arguably, plato’s reification of ideas transforms them into beauties lacking in objects. if the aim of creativity is beauty, understood – following plato – as associated with the good, it is difficult to imagine how any notion of beauty can dispense with the body as its origin. if beauty 89 isparchitecture.com originates with notions of the body, how could a philosophy of beauty that exiles the body actually be about beauty (or perhaps even about knowledge)? if self understanding and understanding of the world begin with the body, evolving into mental contents that are transformable into symbols that make art possible, then arguably, theories of beauty that abolish the body (and with it the world of objects), are of little use to the invention and elaboration of art. articulating just this dilemma in a critique of greek philosophy, philosopher ortega y. gasset (1883-1955) elaborates on the relation between ideas and things, the mind and the body, and thoughts and actions: when the greeks discovered that man thought, that there existed in the universe that strange reality known as thought (until then man had not thought, or, like the bourgeois gentilhomme, had done so without knowing it), they felt such an enthusiasm for ideas that they conferred upon intelligence, upon the logos, the supreme rank in the universe. compared with it, everything else seemed to them ancillary and contemptible. and as we tend to project into god whatever appears to us to be the best, the greeks with aristotle, reached the point of maintaining that god had no other occupation but to think. and not even the experience of the “lesser” senses: tactile experience at ando’s ft. worth modern by privileging the senses of sight and hearing to those of taste, smell, and touch plato and ficino severely limit the possibilities of full-bodied experience “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 90 co le m a n to think about thingsthat seemed to them, as it were, a debasement of the intellectual process ... . this doctrine has been given the name ‘intellectualism’; it is idolatry of the intelligence which isolates thought from its setting, from its function in the general economy of human life. as if man thinks because he thinks, and not because, whether he will or not, he has to think in order to maintain himself among things ... . we do not live in order to think ... we think in order to succeed in subsisting ... [and] surviving.20 ficino’s famous commentary on plato helps to situate gasset’s criticism of ‘intellectualism’.21 for ficino, the real is unreal, which encouraged his attempt to prove that the appreciation of beauty is ‘highest’ when incorporeal, even if language, as reality, makes the disrealization of objects all but impossible: things remain as bodies, material, and existent. the indefeasible physicality of thought and beauty renders ficino’s preference for dis-realization peculiar: the eyes see nothing but the light of the sun, for the shapes and colors of bodies are never seen unless illuminated with light, nor do they come to the eyes with their own matter itself ... in this light, since it is separate from matter, the order is completely independent of body.22 above all else, the preceding negates bodily experience. it is a peculiar intellectual exercise to imagine that since light is reflected off objects, we do not actually perceive them, as they apparently do not actually exist, except as the light the eye perceives. the problem here is that even in darkness, a body, an object, even beauty, can be perceived. as a platonist, ficino is obligated to disregard the senses of taste, smell, and touch. in this regard, philosopher leon ebreo (ca. 1465ca. 1521) described taste, smell, and touch as “the three material senses”; on the other hand, he called sight and hearing “the spiritual senses”.23 echoing plato and ebreo, ficino writes; love is the desire for enjoying beauty, love is always limited to the [the pleasures of] the mind, the eyes, and, the ears. what need is there of the senses of smell, taste, and touch? odors, flavor, heat, cold, softness, hardness, and the like qualities are the objects of these senses. none of these is human beauty, since these qualities are simple, and human beauty of the body requires a harmony of various parts. love regards as its end the enjoyment of beauty; beauty pertains only to the mind, sight, and hearing. love, therefore, is limited to these three, but desire which rises from the other senses is called, not love, but madness.24 91 isparchitecture.com the return to embodiment ficino’s idealism (as introduced in the preceding section) turns on an impoverishment of experience that if operative would deprive us of our appreciation of flowers, food, and lovemaking – to say nothing of buildings and dancing – as expressions of beauty and as pathways toward different and deeper understandings of the world, ourselves, and others. further, as much as beauty may derive from a divine sense of goodness, it also comes from an appreciation of the natural world, of landscape, and the body. a deep appreciation of the beauty of each of these things requires the senses of ‘odors, flavor’s, heat, cold, softness, and like qualities’, not to mention ‘sight and hearing.’ any conception of the experience of beauty, or of anything else that rejects the fullness of the senses inevitably permits only a partial experience of the world. in contradistinction, stokes takes up an argument for the body in his work on michelangelo (as elsewhere in his writing): it is likely that images of the body belong to the aesthetic relationship with every object; emotive conceptions of physique are ancient in us; awareness of our own identity has always been upon the flesh; the outer world of objects was conceived in the first place as an extension of our bodies. this early view, the experience of the body: peter zumthor’s vals baths ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 92 co le m a n of course, bears no resemblance to an adult impression. but art tends to return some of the way back to the sources of feeling and perception.25 stokes consistently argues for the corporeality of art and for an art of intensity embodying total outward expression. well-versed in most aspects of his subject, stokes also turned his attention to what he believed were some of the questionable aspects of platonism, renaissance theory, and neo-platonism: stress upon mathematics, both in the case of alberti; and piero, by itself explains nothing of their art. similarly platonism, neo-platonism, was but a necessary garment, the cover of nameless joy in things; paradoxically, since the philosophy of plato is far from the senses, allowing no more value to the sensible world than to the individual, that other god of renaissance man.26 despite stokes’ observations, it might be reasonable to conclude that neither philosophies of beauty nor objects of beauty any longer occupy the center of considerations of art or culture. this modern condition arguably begins with the advent of science as we know it and with the secularization of society. in the west, this new condition parallels the loosening of the church’s temporal powers and the rise of industrialization, and began to take definitive shape during the late seventeenth century. the separation of mind and body that persists throughout philosophies of beauty, originates the crisis of meaning in art and architecture that continues to persist. plato’s model is of man ascending from earthly conceptions to heavenly ones. at a certain moment of elevation the process requires transcendence in the form of disengagement of the mind from the body, of ideas from reality, with ideas ultimately taking precedence over objects and the experience of them. gasset considers the modern manifestation of this tension between ideas and objects as follows: under the name reason, then of enlightenment, and finally of culture, the most indiscreet deification of the intelligence were effected. among the majority of the thinkers of the period ... culture [and] thought ... came to fill the vacant office of a god who had been put to flight.27 the desire to liberate the mind from the body, in order to free ideas, was acceptable, if filled with foreboding, so long as all-knowing continued to be tied a-priori to the body. these ties were both effected and supported by a sense of god, that concept above man, and deriving from us, which once promised to keep the human world from descending into chaos. without 93 isparchitecture.com such a conception we are on our own. the more the emergence of the modern world is explored, the more the loss of god has left moderns flailing about for something to hold on to, and for something to bind us to the earth. god, once perceived as the center of all and the origin of love, and therefore of beauty, creativity and human beings, was reason enough for virtuousness. without the comforting anchors of god and religion—which gave purpose to art and architecture over and above what the state could provide—enlightened moderns are left wondering how we could have ever lived with god, and simultaneously how it could be possible to live without him (her), despite the many horrors justified in the name of religion. with the advent of reason and the victory of ideas, humans have become ever more estranged from those parts of thought that were once bound to love, beauty, goodness, and personal conceptions of god; ties that were, often enough, the source and justification for humane character. reification of ideas, and the deification of them that followed, greatly concerned gasset, who intuited the extreme danger of such operations, in particular leading to the dehumanization of art: “the idea instead of functioning as the means to think an object with, is the desire to liberate the mind from the body, in order to free ideas, was acceptable, if filled with foreboding, so long as all-knowing continued to be tied a-priori to the body “ ” the body surrogate: sensual form at norman foster’s sage gateshead ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 94 co le m a n itself made the object and the aim of thinking.”28 conclusion philosophers of beauty have often seen beauty as a means to an end – the conduit from earthly to divine love. for most, moving from the corporeal to the incorporeal must follow one route: from the feet to the head. so long as ideas about ideal beauty proceeded along this route, lesser sensual forms deriving from the body had a place. the heady—at times earthy—sensuality of the body, and its manifold references could still find a place in thoughts about art and beauty, without apparently contradicting ancient philosophy. however, the dominance of absolute reason, with its corollaries of quantification and abstraction has loosened connections between real and idealized beauty. paradoxically, as thinking and making drift skyward to the realm of pure forms (pure ideas) desire has become dissociated from attainable objects (including from the body): a disconnection intensified by the increasing dominance of screen time in everyday life, which inevitably atrophies the senses other than seeing and hearing. mind dissociated from body, ideas from reality, and the spirit from the everyday, encourages scientistic thought processes disconnected from the sensuous reality of persons, and things. ultimately, recuperating the relevance of beauty for inventing art and architecture, no matter how irrelevant they may appear, turns on rekindled awareness, “that memory helped reality to retain the things received by the five senses.”29 although ‘the five senses and memory’ have largely been outsourced to virtuality and digital data, voltaire’s pronouncement in memory’s adventure is even more relevant today than when first published in 1775. mnemosyne’s admonishment in the story is especially apropos: “imbeciles i forgive you; but this time remember that without the senses there is no memory, and without memory there is no mind.”30 the dominion of thought processes masquerading as scientific, as if objective, measurable, and uncontaminated by emotion calls out for a rejoinder; recollecting beauty and its mirror in the body would be a good place to start. endnotes 1. a condition adeptly theorized by manfredo tafuri (1935-1994), amongst others. 2. autonomy is a fallacy i will leave aside for the moment. 3. wittgenstein, l. [1921] tractatus logico-philosophicus, abdingdon: routledge, 2001. §6.421, p. 86. 4. coomaraswamy was born 1877, columbo, ceylon – died 1946, needham, massachusetts 5. vattimo was born 1936, palermo, italy 6. gianni vattimo, art’s claim to truth (new york: columbia, 2008), p. 158. 7. ibid., p. 152. 8. ibid. 9. a. k. commaraswamy, ‘saṁvega, “aesthetic shock,”’ harvard journal of aesthetic studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1943), n. 2, p. 174. 10. ibid., p. 176. 11. ibid., p. 174. 12. donald kuspit, ‘secrets of success: paradoxes and problems of the reproduction and commodification of art in the age of the capitalist spectacle,’ available online at: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/art-and-capitalistspectacle2-8-11.asp (accessed 09 may 2012). 13. a. k. commaraswamy, ‘saṁvega, “aesthetic shock,”’ harvard journal of aesthetic studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (1943), p. 178. 14. ibid. 15. gianni vattimo, ‘project and legitimization i,’ lotus international 48/49 (1986), p. 121-122. 16. ibid., p. 124. 17. ibid., p. 125. 18. albert hofstadter and richard kuhns, philosophies of art and beauty (chicago: university of chicago press, 1976), p. 68. 19. roland h. bainton, early christianity (new york, toronto and london: van nostrand, 1960), pp. 12-13. 20. ortega y gasset, ‘the self and the other’ [1952], in the dehumanization of art and other essays on art, culture, and literature (princeton university press, 1968), pp. 194, 195, 196. 21. marsilio ficino, commentary on plato’s symposium (de amore), 1475, in philosophies of art and beauty, eds. a. hofstadter and r. kuhns (chicago: university of chicago press, 1976), pp. 204-238. 22. marsilio ficino, de amore, in philosophies of art and beauty, p. 222. 23. joseph rykwert, the first moderns: architects of the eighteenth century (cambridge, ma: mit press, [1983] 1991), p. 13. 24. ficino, de amore, in philosophies of art and beauty, pp. 207-208. 25. adrian stokes, michelangelo [1958], in the critical writings of adrian stokes, vol. iii (great britain: thames and hudson, 1978), p. 33. 26. adrian stokes, art and science [1949], in the critical writings of adrian stokes, vol. ii (great britain: thames and hudson, 1978), p. 194. 27. gasset, ‘the self and the other’, p. 197. 28. gasset, ‘the dehumanization of art’ [1925], in the dehumanization of art and other essays on art, culture, and literature (princeton university press, 1968), p. 18. 29. voltaire, memory’s adventure [1775], in candide, zadig, and selected stories, trans. donald a. frame (new york and toronto: signet classic: new american library, 1961), pp.325-326. 30. ibid., p. 328. a new interpretative taxonomy for works of architecture rick fox i. recent interpretive practice a core aim of architectural interpretation is to elucidate, explain, make sense of, and help others understand the existing built-environment, proposed works of architecture, architectural theories, and other elements of architectural discourse. indeed, there are numerous aspects of architectural works, theories and discourse about which we may render interpretations. the field of architectural interpretation broadly construed includes, inter alia, the literature of philosophical aesthetics, the writings of design professionals, architectural thinkers and educators, the views of architectural critics, and the voices of the general public. in this essay, i aim to introduce readers to a new philosophically grounded approach i have developed for organizing interpretive positions within architectural discourse. the interpretive taxonomy i advocate relies on some philosophical insights from the american philosopher michael krausz. i will concentrate my efforts on presenting an overview of the taxonomy, and focus on its importance to the philosophy of architecture. to illustrate various elements of the framework, i mention particular works, and discuss specific views, but the focus here is not on a detailed examination of specific works, nor do i offer a robust rejection or endorsement of any particular view. before i get into the framework’s specifics, let me try to establish the breadth of the problem, by offering three examples where interpretive practice would benefit from a more rigorous understanding ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 98 fo x of the space of interpretation. whether a new work of architecture ought to “fit in” with extant works is an enduring problem in architectural theory and practice. frequently, architectural works are criticized on the grounds that they do not belong. many famous, and now respected, works have been criticized for this supposed failure. the contextualist argument relies on the claim that the existing context deserves our respect, and we ought to show deference to current norms and practices in our decision-making about how to, or even whether to, alter it. the argument, however, also makes a deeper supposition, namely, that the context is comprised of self-evident facts and meanings. yet, understanding what is “already there” is often more than simply a straight-forward documentation of a few observable facts; it is a matter of active engagement and interpretative practice. so, the background views of the interpreter as to whether the context is “fixed” play a relevant role. the way we construe the boundaries of a given context, and determine which aspects of it are salient for our understanding is also a matter of interpretative practice. when we encounter a familiar work of architecture we do not feel compelled to interpret it; we simply take it for granted. an alien or anomalous work that does not comport with our current understanding challenges us, and we are inclined to try and make sense of it. indeed, the views of the interpreter may be affected in the process. the anomalous thing may prompt some of us to recontextualize a few of our existing beliefs as we attempt to make sense of the world and the anomaly. others prefer instead to reject the anomaly and adhere to their cherished certainties. commonplace interpretive practices regarding context fail to account for its malleability, and the dialectic nature of interpretive practice. the rebuilding efforts on new york’s world trade center site following the events of 9/11 illustrate a second type of interpretive problem. significant disagreement exists in answer to the question, what does 9/11 represent? answers that have been offered include, but are not limited to: 1) the unprovoked attack marks the turning point from the cold war to the “war on terror;” 2) it is a pointless act perpetrated by psychopaths who simply want to kill vast numbers of innocent people as a demonstration of their cruelty; 3) islamic fundamentalists seek to end western imperialism by any means possible—no matter how violent; and, 4) the attack is a misguided hatred of global democracy and global freedom. for our purposes, the precise answer does not matter all that much, since it is not the real focus here. no matter what specific answers 99 isparchitecture.com are offered, the question itself calls our attention to a broader philosophical concern, namely, is there a single right interpretation of these events or not? furthermore, it is clear that the meaning of the underlying events, no matter how we construe them, significantly affect our interpretation of the architectural work that is supposed to denote, memorialize, exemplify, or express them. in these sorts of cases, our background knowledge, beliefs, and values play a significant role in the interpretive process. these background views often include beliefs about what role architecture ought to play, if any, in responding to important social, political, and historical events. to further complicate attempts to interpret the meaning of and best response to 9/11, the view of new york’s world trade center ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 100 fo x byzantine array of stakeholders has been the source of a number of complicated political, economic, aesthetic, and interpretive disagreements over whose interests the work ought to advance, and whose stake ought to take precedence. when the results of the international design competition sponsored by the lower manhattan development corporation were unveiled in fall 2002, the popular response was unprecedented. unlike most of the other entries, daniel libeskind’s proposal resonated loudly with prominent architectural critics and the public. ada louise huxtable emerged as an early advocate of libeskind’s proposal and remained an unwavering supporter of the priorities expressed in his design. conversely, herbert muschamp, architecture critic for the new york times, dismissed the rich symbolism employed in the design as jingoistic. john silber, professor emeritus of philosophy and law, and former president of boston university, scathingly criticized the proposal calling it “an exotic and enticing jumble of novelties” that expresses “hubris and a penchant for absurdity.” 1 still other observers felt strongly that the only correct response to the tragedy was to rebuild exactly as before. how could such divergent interpretations all be, in some sense, correct or at least admissible? we take it for granted that all of these critics are interpreting the same work of architecture. this commonplace assumption, however, overlooks deeper philosophical questions about the nature of the thing they are interpreting. for instance, it is a commonplace argument nowadays that complex things (such as a work of architecture) license a plethora of interpretations, and our contemporary society is prepared to regard so many things as indeterminate anyhow. additionally, it is commonly accepted that in a pluralist society diverse and divergent interpretations ought to be encouraged, and tolerance ought to be embraced. many argue that non-judgmental acceptance of a plurality of viewpoints is the ideal we should strive for in a democratic society. but, as the controversies surrounding the various interpretations of the freedom tower design and the 9/11 memorial illustrate, it seems counter-intuitive to think we are genuinely obligated to countenance every interpretation offered. is there a non-arbitrary basis for admitting some interpretations while excluding others? if so, how would this impact interpretive practice? the question of how to properly construe the relationship between the three-dimensional form of an architectural work and its meaning, a staple of debate within architectural discourse, illustrates a third type of interpretive problem. a celebrated debate in 1989 between leon krier and peter eisenman on the theme of “reconstruction versus deconstruction”2 101 isparchitecture.com forms a case in point. at the time, the stylistic skirmishes over historicism and the “next wave,” of which this debate was a part, garnered a great deal of attention, and pre-occupied many of us in the architectural community. it came as no surprise at the time that, stylistically, krier and eisenman were far apart with eisenman claiming that history had few relevant precedents for contemporary conditions while krier argued that all the necessary precedents already existed prior to modern times. the enduring gulf between them is rooted in their divergent views about what a work of architecture is, how we understand it aesthetically, the role architectural discourse is supposed to play within culture, and how best to interpret what a work of architecture means. the underlying philosophical differences between eisenman, the paradigmatic spokesperson for autonomy and krier, the traditionalist, could hardly have been greater. while the urgency of this particular debate seems to have waned, the deep, unresolved disagreement about what properly constitutes a work of architecture, and how we are to interpret or explain it remains worthy of our philosophical attention. in my view, both historicism and deconstructivism are examples of interpretive practices that rest on a few philosophical mistakes. historicism is built on the premise that an object’s determinacy secures only one right interpretation of it while deconstructivism, an example of critical pluralism, holds an object’s indeterminacy licenses an open-ended plurality of interpretations. (the critical pluralist argues that: 1) there can be more than one good way to construe the initial object; 2) divergent interpretations are always admissible; 3) differing interpretive aims provide differing criteria as to what constitutes a valid interpretation; and, 4) disagreements among qualified interpreters can be reasonable yet they may not be reconcilable. what makes critical pluralism attractive, according to its advocates is the intuition that taken together several ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 102 fo x judgments may be inconsistent, yet each judgment could be individually true. since the identity of the thing being interpreted is not stable, it is not susceptible to fixed interpretation. thus, critical pluralism gives us a polite way to have our strenuous disagreements, and robust truth at the same time.) these sorts of claims: that what a work of architecture is necessarily entail how many interpretations of it we ought to hold admissible, while widely accepted, are mistaken; the entailment is not necessary. as i think these examples illustrate, what we have in each situation, ultimately, is a stand-off. we need a better way to talk about interpretive practices within our discipline to transcend their intractability. architectural practitioners, theorists, critics, educators, and philosophers of architecture need new interpretive tools. ii. a krauszian-style taxonomy in this enterprise of developing new tools we need a philosophically grounded approach to architectural interpretation that: 1) promotes interpretive tolerance, whereby architecture may be interpreted in a number of ways, without fostering unrestricted license; 2) serves as a superior framework to others prevalent in contemporary architectural interpretation, notably critical pluralism; and, 3) is not based on the false assumption that an object’s ontology necessarily entails the number of interpretations we find admissible. one candidate for introducing a new basis for architectural interpretation can be found in the two-tiered framework advocated by michael krausz. this framework differentiates the interpretation from the thing being interpreted, called the object of interpretation. i prefer the term interpretandum, because this makes clear that what is being interpreted could be a real object, an abstract object, a sense perceptible phenomenon, a theory, or a social practice, but is not necessarily a material thing. one of krausz’s major contributions to the philosophy of interpretation is his insight about the logical non-entailment between our ontological theory of the interpretandum and the number of interpretations we hold as admissible of it. this thesis is called the detachability thesis. i offer the following formulation: d: our ideal interpretive stance with respect to the number of admissible interpretations of a given common object is logically detachable from specific ontological theories. it is this mechanism that de-couples ontological theories from interpretive ideals. each enterprise is logically independent of the other; 103 isparchitecture.com neither logically entails the other. thus, it is this thesis about the logical non-entailment between specific ontological theories of interpretanda and the number of interpretations we hold about them that sets up the overall framework of possible interpretive positions that i advocate. next, i offer overviews of two ontologies useful for architectural interpretation, followed by a discussion of the two interpretive ideals that comprise this taxonomy. ii.i: realism/constructivism one difficulty with the literature of architectural theory and professional practice is that typically design professionals, architectural educators, and theorists do not have philosophically articulated ontological views. this makes it difficult to discern the full extent of their interpretive position. although i discuss various ontological views about what an architectural object is, for the purpose of articulating various interpretive positions, i do not endeavor to resolve in this essay whether there is a correct ontology for works of architecture, and if so, what it ought to be. the gulf between realists and constructivists derives, at least in part, from the distinction between object-as-such and object-as-represented. the realist may not be able to say precisely how things are, but insists that there is a way that they in fact are. the realist holds that realism can be defended even if access to the way the world is cannot be (fully) obtained. constructivists hold that this is a distinction without a difference, and that the object-as-such collapses into object-as-represented. since the object-as-such does no interpretive work, then according to the constructivist, it ought to be dropped. for the constructivist, objects are never simply “given,” and no fact of the matter exists that grounds either the interpretation or the thing being interpreted. so, it is in this way that all attempts to segregate objects-as-such from objectsone of krausz’s major contributions to the philosophy of interpretation is his insight about the logical non-entailment between our ontological theory of the interpretandum and the number of interpretations we hold as admissible of it. this thesis is called the detachability thesis “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 104 fo x as-represented fail according to the constructivist. any interpretive framework that presupposes that interpretanda are constituted as matters of fact is already predisposed to realist ontology; frameworks denying this are predisposed to constructivism. such presumptions would be detrimental to the larger project of showing how an object of interpretation is constituted within interpretive practices, and that the ontology of an interpretandum does not necessitate the number of interpretations we ought to find admissible. for the aesthetic realist, aesthetic properties are reified; there are real properties in the work and these ought to ground our judgments about it. aesthetic realism does not demand that for any given artwork only a single aesthetic description is admissible; more than one description may be admitted. the realist view of what constitutes a work of architecture is that a work is necessarily a “brick and mortar” building possessing aesthetic properties, and standing before us. the claim that the difference between a building and an architectural work ought to be grounded in the possession of aesthetic properties is well entrenched. when the british architectural historian sir nikolaus pevsner famously remarked, “a bicycle shed is a building; lincoln cathedral is a piece of architecture,”3 he likely meant that aesthetic properties make the difference. the ontic locus of aesthetic quality is in the work. by implication, then, aesthetic judgments are seen as stating truths that occur in virtue of some mindindependent state of affairs. realists hold that a substantial notion of truth is a valuable resource in ridding ourselves of interpretations we find inadmissible. preference is a measure of how an interpretation comports with descriptive truth. thus, under architectural realism elucidation aims at explicating actual or emergent properties in the work itself – it is an object-centered ontological enterprise. the constructivist would find these claims unsupportable. according to the constructivist, a work of art is primarily a mental object; its physical presence is primarily a device for transmitting meaning from one mind to another. advocates hold that aesthetic perception is theory laden and thus we ought to drop any talk in aesthetics of an un-interpreted world. the architectural constructivist holds that the design is the work of architecture, and a building is just a “brick and mortar” instantiation of that work. under the constructivist’s approach a work of architecture can be construed to exist in multiple media; a floor plan drawing, a perspective rendering, and a 3-d computer model could simultaneously constitute the same design, and hence the same work of architecture. in a recent interview, the writer and architect iman ansari poses a question to eisenman that 105 isparchitecture.com probes the difference between the [architectural] object and the idea of the [architectural] object. eisenman responds, “‘real architecture’ only exists in drawings. the ‘real building’ exists outside the drawing. the difference here is that ‘architecture’ and ‘building’ are not the same.”4 it is important to note that this distinction between ‘architecture’ and ‘building’ is possible even where no actual brick and mortar construction exists that can be pointed to as the finished work. thus, under architectural constructivism elucidation characteristically aims at clarity of consciousness— at epistemic rather than ontological clarity. it is an interpretation-centered epistemic enterprise. in section 3, i will expand on these ontologies as a way of further illustrating the structure of this taxonomy. the next major component of the framework is comprised of the interpretive ideals of singularism and multiplism, to which we now turn. ii.ii: singularism & multiplism krausz distinguishes and explicates two interpretive ideals. one he calls singularism; the other he calls multiplism. andreea deciu ritivoi, offers a helpful summary, “an ideal is a critical stance that identifies the range of admissible interpretations of a given object prior to the conduct of interpretive inquiry.”5 as krausz uses the term in his interpretive philosophy “idealization” is best construed as something like the “desiderata of interpretive practice.” thus, an “ideal” refers to a value or belief about interpretive practice that is worthy of being optimized and promoted – it is a norm of practice. (in private conversation krausz has stated that he does not intend “ideally” to be read in any platonic way.) singularism is the view that there is a one-toone relation between the thing being interpreted and an interpretation, and several admissible singularism is the view that there is a one-to-one relation between the thing being interpreted and an interpretation “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 106 fo x interpretations are conjoinable into a single “unified” interpretation.6 i offer the following formulation of the singularist thesis: s: any given object of interpretation necessarily answers to one and only one ideally admissible interpretation. the singularist holds that incompatible interpretations cannot be jointly defended, and incomplete knowledge about competing interpretations ought not act as a barrier to embracing the ideal of a single comprehensive interpretation. for the singularist, under ideal conditions there just is one and only one right interpretation.7 although the singularist advocates the pursuit of a single right interpretation it should be noted, however, that the singularist need not advocate infallibilism. the possibility exists, even for the singularist, that any given interpretation could be replaced with a better one. in this formulation the singularist understands the admissibility of a given interpretation in bivalent truth-functional terms. for any given object, when distinct interpretations are present, the singularist would argue that the true ones are conjoinable into a single coherent interpretation. logically, a conjunction is true just in case each of its conjuncts is true. so given a number of interpretations, the adherent of singularism first determines which are true and which false, and then proceeds to work out how the true ones are conjoinable. contemporary architectural interpreters, particularly those committed to critical pluralism, are unlikely to hold a strict view of s. yet, i hold that a thickened description approach, where a “unified” singular view of the work emerges, qualifies as singularism. later, i will argue in more detail why i think zaha hadid holds this view. multiplism is the view that a one-many relation holds between the thing being interpreted and interpretations of it. i offer the following formulation of the multiplist thesis: m: some objects of interpretation may answer to more than one ideally admissible interpretation. this thesis claims that multiple non-convergent interpretations are ideally admissible and ought not be conjoined into a single “unified” interpretation. the multiplist is committed to the view that sometimes there just is no such singularity, and holds that more than one interpretation could legitimately be held at the same time. though multiplism recognizes that while several interpretations may be possible, not all of them should be considered equally admissible; further it is not the case that all admissible interpretations are equally preferable. this allows the multiplist to embrace certain singularist cases, but not vice versa. the multiplist could acknowledge that there are cases where a one-to-one relation 107 isparchitecture.com between an interpretandum and an interpretation could occur without committing to the truth of s. in this formulation the multiplist understands admissibility in multivalent terms, in krausz’s words as, “reasonableness, appropriateness, aptness or the like.”8 for the multiplist, affirming one interpretation as admissible does not necessarily exclude others as inadmissible. even though multiplism does not adopt a bivalent mode of determining admissibility, principled distinctions among competing interpretations remain possible. thus not every would-be interpretation is admissible. so, the architectural multiplist is keen to point out that rational inquiry about works of architecture does not mandate a bivalent “truefalse” assessment of an interpretation. iii. interpretive positions with this understanding of ontological theories and interpretive ideals we are better equipped to understand the import of the four main interpretive positions that a krauszian-style taxonomy affords. two of these positions are orthodox; two are heterodox. the orthodox view is that constructivists promote a multiplicity of interpretations while realists promote a single right interpretation. in my view, it is precisely their individual entrenched commitments to their respective orthodox views that deeply mired eisenman and krier during their rancorous 1989 debate. i offer leon krier, the american philosopher michael mitias, and the british philosopher roger scruton as characterizing the real-singularist position, and those of nelson goodman and peter eisenman as characterizing the constructive-multiplist view. i would argue that in addition to being divided by their ontological commitments, these advocates embrace differing interpretive ideals that further divide them. the detachability thesis, d, suggests that the heterodox interpretive positions of constructivemultiplism is the view that a one-many relation holds between the thing being interpreted and interpretations of it “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 108 fo x singularism and realist-multiplism might be fruitful ones to hold. i offer two british architects, zaha hadid and richard rogers, both modernists, as examples of constructive-singularism and realist-multiplism, respectively. while both of them embrace the stylistic virtues of architectural modernism, and on the surface this would seem to unite them, their ontological commitments and their differing stance about how many interpretations are ideally admissible creates an interpretive gulf between them. hadid’s commitment to modernism amounts to singularism, insofar as she holds that the proper role of architecture is singularly fulfilled to the extent every project strives to be culture-altering and an opportunity to invade “new territories.”9 rogers’ considerably more conciliatory view that architecture ought to be capable of adapting to emerging social and technological circumstances, and be aesthetically resilient enough to endure alteration amounts to multiplism. while the views of hadid and rogers characterize the heterodox interpretive positions, their views may not be exhaustive of their respective positions. as with the orthodox positions, the views of these interpreters ought to be seen as instances of the positions they occupy within the taxonomy, and not fully constitutive of the entire position. under mitias’ realist-singular account, a work of architecture emerges, that is it comes into being, in the aesthetic experience of a building. our experience of the building as the physical structure of an architectural work is the proper starting point for aesthetic inquiry. he rejects the claim that external factors such as background knowledge of cultural practices and knowledge of symbol systems are inherent to the work’s features qua object. according to mitias, in his essay, “expression in architecture,” buildings possess and express their properties: a building possesses its aesthetic properties. those properties are not…added, or introduced, to the work from the outside, regardless of the nature of this external source. they originate from the building.10 yet these aesthetic properties are not ready made realities, rather they exist as potentialities in the work. aesthetic perception is needed to discover properties in the work “not given to ordinary perception.”11 in this way aesthetic properties are emergent in the aesthetic experience of a work. he writes: this means that a building becomes art, i.e. acquires its aesthetic identity as a work of art, only during an event of aesthetic perception, and outside this perception its status is similar to the status of ordinary objects.12 in a subsequent essay, “the aesthetic experience of the architectural work,” he clarifies his view that aesthetic qualities are not feelings 109 isparchitecture.com evoked in the observer when aesthetic attention is brought to bear on the object, rather the quality is inherent in the object itself.13 his commitment to a realist ontology forces the conclusion that what distinguishes a building from a work of architecture is the existence of potential aesthetic properties in the latter but not in the former. similar to pevsner’s view, aesthetic properties are the ontic differencemakers between ‘architecture’ and ‘building.’ mitias embraces the view that there is only one set of non-contradictory properties that can be said to emerge from a given artwork. the claim that aesthetic qualities inhere but not as ready-made realties, that is, as actual properties given to sense perception, but as potentialities in the work implies a certain singularism insofar as mitias does not think that it is possible for several non-convergent aesthetic potentialities to emerge from the same building. the singularist is keen to point out that it cannot be the case that p & ~p are inherent in the same work. mitias certainly does not want to countenance the idea that contradictory qualities could emerge from the same work for two different interpreters. if two people hold contradictory views, then someone must be wrong. taken together mitias’ claims of aesthetic realism are supposed to compel his conclusion that a single right interpretation of a work is the goal of inquiry. in his essay, “how buildings mean,” nelson goodman claims that architecture is a building that symbolically functions, that is, a work of architecture performs a referential function that a mere building does not. although modernist works of architecture typically do not denote anything outside themselves, at least not in the manner of classical architecture, neither are they devoid of meaning, contrary to the claims of realists such as krier. under goodman’s account the work qua object has features that allow it to point both outside itself and to itself. a given work of architecture has meaning in virtue of its hadid’s commitment to modernism amounts to singularism “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 110 fo x capacity to simultaneously embody, and make explicit reference to, the properties it possesses. thus, a building’s meaning is rooted in what it exemplifies. one example he cites is gerrit reitveld’s schroeder house (1924), utrecht, where the work references its own structural features of columns, beams and walls. one advantage of goodman’s constructivist account is that the difference between a building and a work of architecture does not require any distinction between ordinary and aesthetic perception. furthermore, his view that referential functioning, at least in part, ought to ground the divide that separates a building from a work of architecture has an additional advantage for the constructivist, because this approach does not require an ontological resolution of aesthetic properties. it only requires human understanding of symbol systems. in goodman’s view of meaning, exemplification plays an important cognitive role with respect to works of art, because it affords epistemic access to features we might not otherwise attend to. as this line of reasoning demonstrates, it is not incoherent to talk of an internal locus for meaning, particularly for non-representational works, but focusing on the notion of a locus tends to reify meaning and distract us from goodman’s central point that the value of a work of art is its role in furthering our understanding, and that meaning is a correlate of that understanding. as catherine elgin has remarked of goodman’s views, “understanding works of art is not a matter of passive absorption, but of active intellectual engagement with symbols whose syntactic and semantic features are often elusive.”14 his endorsement of a multiplist ideal is explicit and unmistakable, “a work of art typically means in varied and contrasting and shifting ways and is open to many equally good and enlightening interpretations.”15 the multiplicity of interpretations goodman is prepared to accept appears to be rooted in his commitment to constructivism. goodman makes an important point about his view of the nature of architecture and interpretation. he writes “more than any other art, architecture makes us aware that interpretation cannot be so easily distinguished from the work.”16 his path to multiplism is evident insofar as what we think the work is due to our interpretations of it – our interpretations thus construct the work. can a constructivist object to mitias’ ontology yet concur with s? i hold that this is a reasonable result and i offer the iraqi-born british architect zaha hadid as an example of a constructive-singularist. she is a constructivist due to her thorough-going reliance on the centrality 111 isparchitecture.com of “constructed” symbol systems in her work. no determinate meaning exists to be discovered, so she claims. she is a staunch advocate of aesthetic modernism and, in her view, this is the singular lens through which works of architecture ought to be interpreted.17 her unyielding commitment to a purified aesthetic modernism and her advocacy of the aesthetic implications of modernity is clear: we can no longer fulfill our obligations as architects if we carry on as cake decorators. our role is far greater than that. we, the authors of architecture, have to take on the task of reinvestigating modernity ... there is only one way and that is to go forward along the path paved by the experiments of the early modernists.18 in claiming that hadid’s commitment to aesthetic modernism grounds her singularism, i am not making the larger claim that all adherents of modernism are necessarily advocates of singularism. nor am i making the claim that modernism is somehow the aesthetic equivalent of singularism. in hadid’s case her singularism is rooted in her commitment to modernism, yet this commitment in itself does not entail that only singular interpretations emerge from modernity. i classify her as a singularist, largely because i think that a thickened description of her work renders a single interpretation of it the best approach. the thickened description argument for s relies on the distinction between “thin” concepts and “thick” concepts. thick concepts are those where less variation is tolerated among instances. so, in the process of building up numerous descriptions of the thing under inquiry we narrow the range of admissible variations of it, and thus come to see it as “unified.” stylistically, hadid stands in stark contrast to the british philosopher roger scruton. in his book the classical vernacular scruton argues that generations of architects educated in a modernist outlook that rebuked traditional ornament, traditional ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 112 fo x materials, and the orders of classical greek and roman architecture have created aesthetically disappointing and nihilistic works that disregard the civic nature of architecture.19 in short, he argues that classicism is more aesthetically correct than modernism. he is forthright in his disdain for modernism, “its language is uncouth, unredeemed by detail, utterly indifferent to its surroundings, or to the person who is obliged to pass by the building.”20 we need to see that his aesthetic commitment to classicism need not be tied to his interpretive commitment to singularism. a multiplist, for example, could hold the views expressed by scruton that modernism is not aesthetically satisfying, but reject his claims about the sole “true” function of architecture. clearly hadid and scruton disagree about the aesthetics of modernism. even though both are singularists they are divided by their ontology. in contrast to these two singularists, the british architect richard rogers stands as an example of a realist-multiplist. he is a realist insofar as he is committed to the view that the thing being interpreted, the “brick and mortar” building, is constituted independent of what interpreters think. rogers holds that technology, scientific research, and an emphasis on function should serve as the basis for contemporary architecture. however, he also holds that architecture ought to be capable of adapting to changing social and technological needs. he is a multiplist due to his deep reliance on an “open ended” architectural object that is in principle flexible enough to admit numerous interpretations. he writes: though a building must be complete at any one stage, it is our belief that in order to allow for growth and change it should be functionally and therefore visually open-ended. this indeterminate form must offer legible architectural clues for the interpretation of future users. the dichotomy between the complete and the open nature of the building is a determinant of the aesthetic language.21 yet we need to be careful not to argue that an underlying indeterminacy of the work is what necessitates his being a multiplist. contrary to the deconstructivist position, this line of reasoning would undermine m1, rather than bolster it. instead, it is important to show that in principle a common object is countable yet it admits of more than one interpretation. that rogers holds this outcome to be both possible and desirable is evident in the following passage: the building form, plan, section and elevation should be capable of responding to changing needs. this free and changing performance will then become part of the expression of the architecture of the building, the street and the city. program, ideology and form will then play an integrated and legible role within a changing but ordered framework. the fewer the building constraints for the 113 isparchitecture.com users, the greater the success; the greater the success the more the need for revision and then programmatic indeterminance will become an expression of the architecture.22 rogers points to an important set of difficult cases, namely, those objects of interpretation that change over time. these sorts of cases present difficulty not because they threaten our interpretive ideals; both singularism and multiplism remain unaffected. the singularist, for example, would argue that the one-to-one relation still holds over time, because at any given time the single right interpretation is grounded in the state of the object at that particular time. the multiplist would agree that an object’s changed status could, though not necessarily would, ground different interpretations than those rendered earlier, but not because multiplism is false. these cases are difficult, precisely because where something is physically altered, the question emerges, do we have a new interpretanda or not? what would constitute a priori limits to alteration, such that the interpretanda remains “fixed,” is difficult to say but is the crux of the interpretive problem facing contextualists discussed at the outset. under a krauszian-style interpretive account, the community of informed interpreters would be relied upon to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether or not alterations to a given work of architecture create a new object of interpretation.23 furthermore, this same approach to resolving interpretive disputes about individual works would apply to the larger context within which a new work is to occur. some works of architecture change the context within which they occur, and some do not. this realization that a dialectical relation exists between our views about context, and our views about the identity of interpretanda could help move the contextualist debate forward. as the world trade center site example hadid and scruton disagree about the aesthetics of modernism even though both are both singularists “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 114 fo x illustrates, the ways in which architecture ought to memorialize human events continues to be a significant source of interpretive disagreement. this framework makes it clear that interpretive debates often occur on many levels simultaneously. and this may be a significant source of their seeming intractability. when differences in belief about the underlying events (what it is that is being memorialized) are conflated with how admissible interpretations elucidate architectural responses to it, disagreement is bound to occur. additionally, the framework makes it evident that one could be a either a singularist or a multiplist with respect to an underlying event, and proposed responses to it. whether a critic could be a singularist about an underlying event, and a multiplist in regards to proposes responses (or vice-versa) is a question this approach explicitly raises. this taxonomy also brings conceptual clarity to the krier-eisenman debate by providing an account of how their respective positions are both grounded in specific, yet differing, ontological commitments and differing interpretive ideals. in spite of their many differences, both eisenman and krier, in effect, endorse the view (though they would not have phrased it this way), that claims about what a work of architecture is necessarily entail the number of interpretations of it we ought to hold. as this taxonomy makes clear, both eisenman and krier have overlooked a crucial philosophical point about the relationship between their own ontological views and their interpretive ideals. iv. responding to objections several objections may be raised against this taxonomy. here, i address a few. objection 1: many contemporary works of architecture are indeterminate, and this undermines s. this is the critical pluralist’s objection. i concur, that one feature many contemporary works have in common is their indeterminacy. the existence of indeterminate works, however we construe them, is a separate issue from whether indeterminacy compels the adoption of a specific interpretive ideal. importantly, the success of both s and m depends necessarily on the notion of commonality—the proper construal of a common object. for differing interpretations of entities to meaningfully compete they must be about a common object of interpretation; they must be about the same thing. as i have already argued here, the determinacy of the object of interpretation does not necessitate singularism, nor does indeterminacy necessitate multiplism.24 thus, indeterminacy does not threaten s1—it remains a defensible ideal. 115 isparchitecture.com objection 2: the taxonomy is incomplete; there are more than two ontologies for works of architecture. this objection is almost certainly true. there is at least a third major ontological theory – constructiverealism – in this taxonomy that i discuss elsewhere, but given its philosophical complexities i chose to forego discussion of it for two reasons: 1) the difference between internal and external constructive-realism makes it difficult to determine the relevance of constructive-realism as an architectural ontology; and, 2) no one within the field of architectural interpretation, as far as i know, has advanced anything to discuss. objection 3: there are lots of interpretations about architecture; not just four. true, insofar as we are talking about the number of actual interpretations; they are inestimable. but an interpretation is not an interpretive position. the focus of the taxonomy is to articulate a philosophically-grounded framework that fosters enhanced dialogue and comprehension of interpretive positions and strategies. as i have argued, the number of interpretive positions is not unlimited. my aim here is not to articulate and then adjudicate specific interpretations, but rather to enrich dialogue among disputants, build a few bridges, and get beyond the interpretive gridlock that has characterized architectural interpretation in recent decades. objection 4: the detachability thesis, d, fails. for the sake of brevity, i offer two reasons why d succeeds. first, each of the four positions is coherently adoptable. there are no internal contradictions within any of them. second, the methodological issue of which interpretive ideal we should adopt, s or m, can occur prior to interpreting any particular object, and it simply does not hinge on how we characterize the ontology of the object we are interpreting; one issue is located at the level of practice, the other at the level of ontology. in conclusion, the interpretive framework ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 116 fo x i propose has numerous advantages. first, the interpretive conduct it sanctions with respect to the number of admissible interpretations does not entail an a priori commitment to a specific ontological theory, something architects do not possess as a matter of professional training, and something that few architectural theorists articulate in any careful or systematic fashion. second, where an interpreter is committed to a particular ontology with respect to works of architecture, such commitment does not obligate them in advance to accept a specific number of admissible interpretations. being a realist, for example, does not compel an interpreter to embrace the view that a single right interpretation exists. last, it is useful for assisting interpreters that may be unable or unwilling to overcome differences in their interpretive positions and reach agreement about the cultural value and meaning of specific works. for all these reasons, i consider this interpretive framework to be a substantial improvement over what we have now. endnotes 1. john silber, architecture of the absurd: how “genius” disfigured a practical art. (new york: quantuck lane press, 2007), 59. 2. peter eisenman and leon krier, “peter eisenman versus leon krier: my ideology is better than yours,” architectural design 59, 7-18. 3. nikolaus pevsner, an outline of european architecture (layton, ut: gibbs smith, 2009), 10. 4. see “q & a: peter eisenman”, in the architect’s newspaper, vol7, issue 5, may 29, 2013. p. 22. 5. andreaa deciu ritivoi, introduction to interpretation and its objects, ed., andreea deciu ritivoi (amsterdam: rodopi, 2003), 8. 6. michael krausz, introduction to is there a single right interpretation?, ed., michael krausz (university park: pennsylvania state university press, 2002), 1. 7. for proponents of the singularist view see david novitz, “against critical pluralism,” in is there a single right interpretation? ed. michael krausz (university park: pennsylvania state university press, 2002), 101-121; and, brandon cooke, “critical pluralism unmasked,” british journal of aesthetics 42, 296-309. 8. krausz, introduction, is there a single right interpretation? 2. 9. zaha hadid, “the eighty-nine degrees,” in theories and manifestoes of contemporary architecture, 2nd ed., ed., charles jencks and karl kropf (hoboken: wiley academy, 2006), 280. 10. michael h. mitias, “expression in architecture,” in philosophy and architecture, ed., michael h. mitias (amsterdam: rodopi, 1994), 99. 11. mitias, “expression,” 99. 117 isparchitecture.com 12. mitias, “expression,” 100. 13. michael h. mitias, “the aesthetic experience of the architectural work,” journal of aesthetic education 33, 64. 14. catherine z. elgin, “relocating aesthetics,” in the philosophy of nelson goodman: nelson goodman’s philosophy of art, vol 3, ed., catherine z. elgin (new york: garland publishing, inc., 1997), 171. 15. nelson goodman, “how buildings mean,” in reconceptions in philosophy and other arts & sciences, ed., nelson goodman and catherine z. elgin (indianapolis: hackett publishing, 1988), 44. 16. goodman, “how buildings mean,” 45. 17. hadid, “eighty-nine degrees,” 280. 18. hadid, “eighty-nine degrees,” 280. 19. roger scruton, introduction to the classical vernacular: architectural principles in an age of nihilism (new york: st. martin’s press, 1994), xiii. 20. scruton, classical vernacular, 16. 21. richard rogers, “observations on architecture,” in theories and manifestoes of contemporary architecture, 2nd ed., ed., charles jencks and karl kropf (hoboken: wiley academy, 2006), 252. 22. rogers, “observations,” 253. 23.what constitutes the community of informed interpreters, and who qualifies for admission into it, is an important aspect of the framework. for a more in-depth treatment see chapter 3, richard n. fox, interpreting architecture: a krauszian approach. (long beach, ca: california state university long beach, 2009). 24. i first argued this point in richard n. fox, “ambiguous works of architecture: a krauszian-style interpretive approach to the gehry residence,” (paper presented at the pacific division meeting of the society for the philosophic study of contemporary visual art, san diego, california, april 2011). in the paper i offered a critical extension of the notion of a common object of interpretation and examined what we ought to look for in construing what the common object amounts to when we examine a specific work of architecture. i argued that: (1) concerns about determinacy ought not compel us to adopt a particular interpretive ideal; and, (2) a work’s ambiguity does not hinder interpreter’s ability to agree on what constitutes the common object of their interpretive disagreement. andrew ballantyne’s books include key buildings from prehistory to the present: plans, sections and elevations, 2012 architecture in the space of flows, 2012 (co-edited by c. smith) deleuze and guattari for architects, 2007 architecture theory: a reader in philosophy and culture, 2005 architecture and experience: radical change in spatial practice, 2004 architectures: modernism and after, 2004 architecture: a very short introduction, 2002 what is architecture?, 2002 architecture, landscape and liberty: richard payne knight and the picturesque, 1997 andrew ballantyne and stefan koller trying to think in a connected sort of way andrew ballantyne in conversation with stefan koller question: you’ve written deleuze and guattari for architects, you’ve written on architecture philosophy, but originally you’ve written things that were maybe not so clearly yet situated within the philosophy of architecture. how did you eventually came to that material and why? answer: it is difficult to summarize, but my doctorate and my first book were about richard payne knight and the theory of the picturesque. i was interested in the topic from the point of view of architecture theory, but it turned out to be the theory of everything else as well. especially the theory of landscape design, people’s relationship with their environments, people’s relationship with ideas, and the ideas that they use to think about things, think about places, think about nature and how they engage with nature. so i found myself going on a very wide-ranging study of knight’s ideas. i first encountered him as a theorist of architecture through peter collins’ book, the changing ideals in modern architecture where he’s positioned as someone who thought all rules were wrong. that seemed to me to be so evidently sensible. i didn’t understand why anyone would every have moved on from that position. so i wanted to find out about him, and through a very rich, very rewarding character who turned out to have lots of interest. now of course i do understand why people moved on from that position. because if you have rules, it simplifies things, it cuts down the range of choices. often what you want as a designer is a reason to limit what you’re interested in so that the often what you want as a designer is a reason to limit what you’re interested in so that the question isn’t as multifarious as it could be “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 120 ba ll a nt y ne question isn’t as multifarious as it could be, but it’s focused on the issue of the day, or of the issue that we decide to make the issue of the day, and that simplifies things. it resolves the question into what we’re dealing with now. q: these are all inherently, genuinely, legitimately philosophical questions. at what point does moving on and engaging with people like deleuze and guattari become a move towards philosophical questions? or is it more of the same that just happens to be concerned with authors who are recognized by others as having philosophically dealt with the built environment? a: i’m not sure, but what i want to pick up on in that question is the idea of the variety and multifariousness of the world as we know it, of things, and the way we need to simplify it in order to deal with it. what i’d hope that i try to do is engage with lots of things and the big complexity of what we are immersed in and then fasten on different things to focus on in each text. so, we hone in on something and try and address some sort of questions, but i do want the background richness and the background, complexity or chaos – whatever it is – i want that to be part of my life, part of my intellectual outlook, and so there’s a tradition of dealing with those things. deleuze and guattari very nicely formulate it as nomadic thought where you move about, you change the set of ideas that you’re using to deal with the world from one occasion to another, and you use the ideas that are the most effective at the given time, given what you are trying to do, what you’re trying to think about, what you’re trying to engage with and then move on from them and use a different set on another occasion. q: deleuze’s book on nietzsche talks about taking other peoples’ insights like arrows that have landed on the ground and that we can just pick them up and shoot them off again. so it seems you instrumentalize the arrows and you make them do the things that you want them to do for you. in the sense there is a tradition that engages these broader questions more narrowly or in a more design-oriented context, is that one way to draw on and instrumentalize the philosophical tradition? in order to pose, articulate, and sometimes answer questions within the tradition of architecture that may be harder otherwise to unearth? a: my first reaction is to think, ‘i don’t know, i’ll have to go away and think about that’. but, what i do know is that i don’t read philosophical texts as a philosopher. i read them, however i do read them. there are some things that jump out and seem interesting, seem compelling and i somehow latch on to and they seem like something that i’ve got to do something with. if what i’m doing with that concept is just explaining it in exactly the same terms that the philosopher has presented it, then 121 isparchitecture.com i have no role, there’s no point in my doing that. other people can do that. the philosopher has done it already. why would it be interesting just to repeat back what the philosopher has said? what i’m interested in doing is taking it up, picking up that arrow, firing it to a new place, and seeing where it lands. it’s an instrument for exploration of something. you find that it will do something, and i’m not always clear what it’s going to do, but i have this feeling that something is going to happen with it. we find out as we progress with the text, with the thinking, with exploring that idea, seeing what it leads ups with, and seeing where it lands. q: in deleuze and guattari for architects you quote from a novel by bernard malamud where he reads spinoza. malamud reads spinoza with great speed and says, ‘sometimes i wouldn’t understand a sentence and i would go through it and afterwards i felt i wasn’t the same man anymore’. so there’s a transformative potential of philosophy here which doesn’t require malamud’s character to read spinoza’s text the way academically trained philosophers might feel compelled to do (line by line). so it’s a way to open up something about architecture without knowing where it will lead you, but also without feeling compelled that for philosophy to do this, you have to follow an academic philosophical attitude of engaging the text. is that fair to say? a: yes, it is fair to say, but also i would say that one of the things that i like about listening to philosophers is that methodical presentation of an argument and leading me through step-by-step. i hope that’s something that i can learn from and can follow that sort of procedure. i’m not sure that it always works out that way, but i would hope (to have) that clarity of thinking and the precision of thinking that philosophers are so good at demonstrating. that’s something i’d aspire to do and that i’d hope that i could learn from. the way that i come across philosophers being used by architects, far too often, is of imperfectly understood ideas being collaged together. i know the way that i come across philosophers being used by architects, far too often, is of imperfectly understood ideas being collaged together “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 122 ba ll a nt y ne that if i hear the names of more than three philosophers in a sentence i panic. i just know that i’m not being presented with something that’s being thought through. i’m perfectly comfortable with the idea that i don’t know everything, and i’m perfectly contented with the fact that there may be philosophers who’ve thought the way i’ve thought before, and i’m not referencing them; that doesn’t invalidate the argument. what i’m really keen on doing is trying to think in a connected sort of way like philosophers do. it’s that i want to learn from them more than anything. q: what i find so interesting is the way you characterize your work, the way you characterized what you sometimes find in the field, and what i think many of us have encountered. of course, that is nothing at all peculiar to architects. philosophy belongs to the public and to a readership well beyond the academic establishment, which means that people engage with it without scholarly scruple. perhaps in the same sense that they read novels without having to feel the need to attend a seminar on say french literary theory first. sven olov-wallenstein’s book on bio-politics contains a history of all of enlightenment philosophy. that’s not a presentation, or representation, of someone like kant or locke in these pages that is recognizable to a trained philosopher, but at the same time it would be extremely effective, and has been extremely effective in opening up some questions to ask of architecture, or to confront architecture with. that’s exactly the same mixture of not being too scrupulous with the source material to be able to arrive at something original. that is something that olovwallenstein does, in a very short space, and i understand that you give yourself and your own philosophical explorations much more space and fewer authors to work with. but compared to your work, is the olov-wallenstein example a difference in degree, or difference in kind? a: well, i don’t know my way around that text, but i would guess that the substance of it, if it’s doing something valuable, probably isn’t in those introductory remarks. that’s setting the scene and if it is doing something valuable then it would have to be thinking through things in a more careful way than that. it may be giving a few broad-brush strokes to set things up. there may be something inaccurate or wayward in that, but maybe that’s not important, that’s just background. the key to it would be the central argument where the ideas are properly engaged. i don’t know, but that’s my suspicion from your description there. there’s always something that’s in the background that you don’t know about but you might need to make reference to it, just as something maybe out of focus in the background which nevertheless is helpful in establishing some sort of context. part ii of this interview will appear in vol. 1, no. 2 of architecture philosophy. review the driving force behind the corporeal turn in recent philosophy is to overcome what many see as a stultifying reliance on the eye in the western canon of aesthetics for both knowing and appreciating the world. developments in neuroscience would bear-out this effort. knowing is closely tied to the emotions and the emotions are closely tied to the more immersive senses of touch, taste, hearing and smell. by paying closer attention to non-visual ways of perceiving, designers stand to make their work more responsive to desires for a more fully experienced world. contributing to this endeavor, ritu bhatt has convened some of the most wellknown names in the philosophy of embodied aesthetics and in the role of the body in design to bring together the under-theorized disciplines of architecture and aesthetics, and to explore how dissolving certain disciplinary boundaries could help reconsideration of the body in design. while the results of this cross-disciplinary work give encouraging signs of the vitality of this line of inquiry, any such work inevitably leads to questions of the state of the sub-discipline and the identity of the audience. the mostly engaging and well-written essays fall short of providing clear answers to these questions. the book is divided into two sections; the “role rethinking aesthetics: the role of body in design, edited by ritu bhatt new york: routledge press, 2013. isbn 978-0-415-53474 (hbk)/978-0-415-53475-8 (pbk) price $170.00 (hbk)/$49.95 (pbk) reviewed by tom spector ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 r ev ie w 124 of aesthetic response in everyday life,” and “modes of aesthetic response: tacit perception and somatic consciousness.” it begins with well-established pragmatist philosopher richard shusterman’s “everyday aesthetics of embodiment.” since his book pragmatist aesthetics, in which he lays out the concept of “somaesthetics,” shusterman has been a prominent exponent of the embodied nature of aesthetic response. so it makes sense that he would lead-off the essays. but the piece is also a wonderfully clear-headed account of his efforts to sensitize himself to an embodied consciousness—especially of the associated increased sensory participation (perhaps we should call it a renewed aesthetic living) possible to achieve, in his case, by immersion in a zen buddhist school in japan. this essay is followed by mark johnson’s “dewey’s big idea for aesthetics” in which johnson gives a concise explanation of deweyan aesthetics: art reveals, through immediate presentation of qualitative unities, the meaning and significance of some aspect of our world, either as it was, is, or might be…. dewey’s central question here is how art realizes meaning. his answer is that art achieves meaning by enacting in us a heightened awareness of the “pervasive unifying quality” of a given situation.” johnson then argues for a set of implications that follow from a deweyan interpretation of art and aesthetics. most importantly, “pervasive qualitative unity” is what makes an experience aesthetic. furthermore, this unity is the main point of works of art. these two ideas imply the third point that “any aesthetic theory or critical analysis that attends only to selected features of an artwork will necessarily fail to capture what is most important (pg. 42). johnson’s reappraisal of dewey’s relevance provides both a sensitive and well-reasoned set of implications for embodied aesthetics. three more essays round-out part one. sonit bafna provides a worthwhile close reading of an iconic building in downtown atlanta, marcel breuer’s atlanta public library, completed in 1980. while it is delightful to revisit a building that asserted high modernism on a mostly unappreciative town, it is curious that the essay is primarily concerned with the visual in a book emphasizing embodiment. following bafna, remei capdevila-werning’s essay on symbolism in buildings rides a mini-wave of a resurgence of interest in nelson goodman. the author reminds us of the nelsonian ways in which buildings convey meaning through the “main modes” of “denotation and exemplification” and the lesser modes of expression and indirection (pg. 89). but the meanings of these terms get stretched a bit. does the villa rotunda “symbolize harmonic proportions” as the author asserts (pg. 88), or does it enact them and realize them? the further assertion that “there are no true or false interpretations, isparchitecture.com 125 but rather, right or wrong, adequate or inadequate to the work’s symbolic functioning” is perplexing (pg. 94). how could an interpretation be right or wrong if it is completely uncoupled from its being true or false? capdevila-werning would have it that fitness or aptness would suffice, but how could these concepts be stable without some correspondence theory of truth under them? chris abel’s nearly forty-page essay “the extended self ” tells the story of twentieth century architects’ naïve attempts to capture embodiment, the more sophisticated explanations provided by polanyi, and confirmation by more recent developments in neuroscience. the purpose is to provide a convincing argument for the existence in all humans of extensive body maps. these welldeveloped maps, the author hopes, could be used to provide a more psychologically sound basis for teaching design than do current methods that more resemble indoctrination. though they do not directly engage architecture theory, these ideas could surely be the basis for substantial further work. part two opens with galen cranz’s “somatics and aesthetics” which both condenses and builds on her exploration of the near environment provided by her well-regarded book the chair. the essay provides a concise look into somatics – the conceptual fusing of sensation, emotion and knowledge – with examples of its implications for design thinking based especially in the author’s knowledge of the alexander technique. following cranz, yuriko saito’s “the moral dimension of japanese aesthetics” is one of the standout essays in the volume. her main point, similar to the one kant attempted to establish in the critique of the power of judgment, is that aesthetic sensitivity enhances one’s ability to act ethically. her examples drawn from japanese arts provide vivid examples of the relationship between aesthetic and saito’s main point is that aesthetic sensitivity enhances one’s ability to act ethically “ ” ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 r ev ie w 126 moral concepts. these examples also seem capable of extension into other cultures. editor ritu bhatt’s own contribution discusses the relevance of both feng shui and christopher alexander’s a pattern language as illustrative of “unconscious relationships with space, day-to-day cognition, and normative frameworks of knowledge” (pg. 183). bhatt wishes, not to promote either concept, but rather to use their persistence as traditional agent-empowering practices to help overcome the seemingly intractable opposition between high modernist presumptions to get at architecture’s essence on the one hand, and post-critical assertions that such theoretical projects are best left alone on the other. while bringing some rapprochement to these conflicting outlooks would be welcome, it is a lot to ask of these two examples. while both feng shui and a pattern language are intimately connected with embodiment in space, it is hard to say what is new that either brings to the discussion. the last two essays, david seamon’s short “environmental embodiment, merlau-ponty, and hillier’s theory of space syntax” and juhani pallasmaa’s “mental and existential ecology” should be seen more as survey pieces suggestive of future areas of inquiry than as presenting a sustained argument. seamon’s straightforward aim is to introduce merlauponty to sociologies of space, place and body. pallasmaa introduces a basketful of concepts: “loss of silence,” mediation between “world and self,” the neurobiological insights of artists, “existential space,” the primacy of touch, the loss of hapticity and how architecture structures not only experiences but our inner world. the essay’s speculative nature makes the reader wonder if it would have been better placed as an introductory piece. perhaps its inclusion at the end of the volume was meant to leave readers with a sense of large vistas yet to come, but those of us who want to know if this new cross-disciplinary effort has direction will not come away with any strong compass points. isparchitecture.com about the authors david leatherbarrow is professor of architecture at the university of pennsylvania. paul guyer is jonathan nelson professor of philosophy and humanities at brown university. emmanuel petit is associate professor of architecture at yale university. nathaniel coleman is reader in history and theory of architecture at newcastle university. rafael de clercq is associate professor, department of visual studies, lingnan university. rick fox is a principle architect in the firm stratos form. image credits schreiner house: david leatherbarrow daisy house and stanley tigerman courtesy of tigerman mccurry architects westfall’s diagram: rafael declerq all photos in is beauty still relevant?: nathaniel coleman 9/11 memorial: tom spector andrew ballantyne and stefan koller: carolyn fahey ap . vol 1 . no 1 . 2014 architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture respectively? philosophical analysis is philosophy engaged directly? is there an argument? is there analysis of the claims made? is the logic of the argument presented explicitly? are the paper’s arguments valid and sound? architectural analysis is architecture engaged directly? is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged? is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately? originality is this paper a contribution to knowledge? does the paper present new ways of solving philosophical problems in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate philosophical problems? does the paper present new ways of engaging architecture and the built environment? presentation is 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secure image permissions on their own before submitting their paper for review. submission guidelines a r c h it e c t u r e p h il o s o p h y v o l 6 n o 1 / 2 2 0 2 3 volume 6, number 1/2, 2023 architecture philosophy is the journal of the international society for the philosophy of architecture (ispa). the society was founded in 2009 by carolyn fahey, and the journal was first published in 2014 by tom spector, carolyn fahey, and stefan koller. architecture philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the oklahoma state university school of architecture and the college of engineering architecture and technology that makes free distribution of print copies possible. the journal also acknowledges the support from the oklahoma state university library for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its indexing in academic search engines a reality. architecture philosophy (issn 2372-0883) is published semiannually. two parts form a volume. the subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to society members. visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the journal’s content graphic design: carolyn fahey lay-out: hans teerds copying this journal is copyrighted by oklahoma state university. for permission requests please contact the ispa at isparchitecture@gmail.com. © oklahoma state university printed in the united states by oklahoma state university. managing editor tom spector, ph.d., university of california berkeley editors of this issue andré patrão, ph.d., yale university hans teerds, ph.d., eth zurich christoph baumberger, ph.d., eth zurich editorial board philosophy rebecca bensen-cain, ph.d., university of california santa barbara rafael de clercq, ph.d., catholic university leuven noël carroll, ph.d., university of illinois at chicago paul guyer, ph.d., harvard university christian illies, ph.d., university of oxford jeff malpas, ph.d., australian national university architecture andrew ballantyne, ph.d., university of sheffield ufuk ersoy, ph.d., university of pennsylvania helen mallinson, ph.d., london consortium david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge david leatherbarrow, ph.d., university of essex graham owen, m.des., harvard university nicholas ray, m.a., university of cambridge contact web isparchitecture.com email isparchitecture@gmail.com tom.spector@okstate.edu contents public space. the real and the ideal. editorial public space. conflicts and antinomies on the political, public space and the possibility of a critical architecture the space of appearance within the megalopolis. architectural culturepolitics of são paulo 1957-2017 a site of struggle. an interview with margaret crawford architectural responsibilities and the right to a city property, necessity and housing. reconsidering the situated right to a place to be anonymity in jianghu. hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis parametric design in the historic urban domain. the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects what architecture does. an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment on foot. embodied atmospheres andré patrão, hans teerds, christoph baumberger & tom spector sven-olov wallenstein chantal mouffe kenneth frampton hans teerds saul fisher erika brandl esther lorenz stella evangelidou margit van schaik andreea mihalache 5 13 27 39 51 63 83 101 117 139 165 amsterdam (2018) while the importance of public space seems mostly undisputed, much disagreement continues to emerge concerning its purposes, its boundaries, its characteristics, its use, and most importantly the extent of the threats it faces. different visions of public space have taken form in the works of such diverse architectural and urban practitioners, historians and critics, as camillo sitte, kenneth frampton, rem koolhaas, michael sorkin, margaret crawford, and jan gehl, but also of urban sociologists like setha low and lyn lofland, activists such as jane jacobs and mike davis, as well as such influential philosophers and political theorists as henri lefebvre, hannah arendt, jürgen habermas, and chantal mouffe. many of them have read public space from a humanistic, pluralistic, democratic perspective, offering various descriptions of what it might mean in the broader context of a democratic society’s organization. and while their ideals of social interaction and political debate do not necessarily constrain the definition of a public space to a physical location, historically these values frequently find tangible expression in the greek agora, the coffee shop, the city square, the town hall, the parliament, and especially the street. the built environment therefore offers more than just functional areas or aesthetic experiences. it is a force that shapes a world-in-common, grounded on encounter and appearance, discussion and mediation, with all the tension and conflict that implies. today, this ideal of public space must address new challenges and renewed versions of the old, from recent developments in cities and societies public space. the real and the ideal. editorial andré patrão, hans teerds, christoph baumberger, and tom spector ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 6 ed it or ia l such as smart-cities, big data, and gentrification, to such well-established problems as segregation, commodification, and surveillance. the recent history of public spaces finds them increasingly privatized, controlled, monitored, and scripted. they are designed to accommodate leisure and tourism, shopping and sporting, transportation and traveling, often with little regard for the social and political ideal of encounter and exchange, thereby neglecting to make room for the struggles and disputes inherent to it. but, it has turned out, that even in highly controlled spaces social and political life can occur, as shown for example in the 2022 protests in iran, where despite the risk of arrest and even death, people take to the streets to protest against the restrictions to women’s participation in public life. this state of affairs presses the questions: how important is architecture and urban design for public life after all? does design still draw concrete outlines for public life and its socio-political dimensions, or can these be catered for elsewhere? and how does philosophy help elucidate and tackle these problems? these and many other topics concerning public space were discussed at the 5th biennial conference of the international society for the philosophy of architecture, organized by eth zürich and the epfl. after a oneyear postponement due to the outbreak of a pandemic and the public health restrictions that ensued – and added another topic of concern to the agenda – the conference met in 2021 at monte verità, a former utopianlike hub of alternative cooperative life in the swiss canton of ticino, standing in the beautiful landscape between the alps and lago maggiore. what followed were four days of lively, varied, intense exchanges between more than eighty speakers, including philosophers, architectural theorists, architects, urban planners, urban designers, landscape architects, and scholars of many other fields. ten contributions, including all four keynote lectures, have been published in this special double issue of architecture philosophy. to prepare the ground for such a sprawling topic, the first article briefly surveys pivotal moments in the history of public space and the ways it has been read, touching upon several of its key themes and recurring philosophical figures. sven-olov wallenstein’s ‘public space: conflicts and antinomies’ moves from the fabricated idea of an ideal greek polis to kant’s constitution of one in the spirit of the enlightenment, a foundational moment for the modern notion of a public political space. the accounts that followed, until this day, have often stressed the rise and looming fall of public space, perceived as perpetually and increasingly under threat. however, public space has also been described as inherently conflictual, not anomalously (divergences to be reconciled) but constitutively (the 7 isparchitecture.com clashes of those divergences are what characterizes public space). these versions do not converge, nor does one exclude the other. as wallenstein states, they “[…] can neither be fused into a common story, nor can we simply choose between them; perhaps they can be said to constitute something like the antinomy of public space.”1 a leading proponent of the conflictual view is chantal mouffe, who made her case in the lecture published here under the title ‘on the political: public space and the possibility of a critical architecture.” liberal philosophical discourses, mouffe claims, react to the antagonist dimension of the political as a problem to be resolved, either through a rational compromise between different interests or a consensus grounded on free discussion. however, “[…] despite what many liberals want us to believe, the specificity of democratic politics is not to overcome this ‘we/them’ opposition, but how to construct this opposition, compatible with the recognition of pluralism.”2 mouffe proposes agonism as an alternative, one which embraces the existence of conflicting interests not by regarding the other as an enemy, as in an antagonistic relation, but as a legitimate adversary. public spaces, therefore, function at their best not as places of accord but of dispute. the construction or challenge to hegemonic political identities also unfolds outside of political institutions, importantly through artistic practices – in which mouffe includes architecture. how do these philosophical ideas play out in the built environment? in ‘the space of appearance within the megalopolis: architectural culturepolitics of são paulo 1957-2017’, kenneth frampton calls attention to the contemporary challenges that arise for public spaces – in their political and constructive senses – with the recent transformation of the polis into the megalopolis. in são paulo, the most populated city in brasil and one of the biggest in the world, he discovers numerous works that open a space of appearance in the arendtian the built environment offers more than just functional areas or aesthetic experiences. it is a force that shapes a worldin-common. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 8 ed it or ia l sense, such as the sesc pompeia by lina bo bardi and marcelo ferraz, the faculty of architecture and urbanism of the university of são paulo by joão vilanova artigas, and the sesc 2017 by paulo mendes da rocha. in these examples, frampton says, one can admire a distinctive paulistaschool “[...] accommodation of socio-cultural and politically progressive programs within the fabric of tectonically articulated, monumental form.”3 many different agents participate in the design and use of public urban spaces besides – though by no means excluding – architects and urbanists. hans teerds’ interview with margaret crawford, ‘a site of struggle,’ explores more contemporary case-studies in the united states, particularly in california. the shopping mall, once the target of crawford’s ineludible critiques on the privatization of public space, reappears in a more favorable light. as she points out, “[…] many people now go to malls more for public interaction rather than to actually buy something. physical shopping can be understood as a positive force shaping public space, as compared to online shopping from home.”4 crawford also commented on recent examples where the use of public spaces turned contentious – antagonistic, even – involving, for example, migrant workers waiting for a ride in front of private stores, street-vendors in los angeles, barbecuers at a public park in oakland, and the black lives matter movement, which crawford labels as “[…] the most important public space development in the last 10 years.”5 each of these particular instances illustrates and reasserts the recurring idea throughout all the keynote speakers of public space as a place of struggle. an influential claim from within this struggle issued decades ago by henri lefebvre – another well-known author in the discussion of public space – was a focal point of saul fisher’s ‘architectural responsibilities and the right to a city.’ he revisits lefebvre’s notion of “the right to the city” so as to renderer it “feasible, generic, and so broadly amenable to many of its adherents,” while illustrating the effects of its denial through several hypothetical scenarios of contemporary life.6 fisher’s crucial question goes even further though: if we are to accept such a right, then what responsibilities does it entail for architects? the question may also be asked of the right to refuge from public space. erika brandl speaks of adequate housing as a basic need in ‘property, necessity, and housing: reconsidering the situated right to a place to be.’ she stresses that the question “‘why must something be done inside and not outside the house?’ is another way of asking ‘why are dwellings so necessary to us?’”7 through the works of jeremy waldron, richard epstein, and alejandra mancilla, brandl demonstrates how political philosophy not only sheds light on architectural problems of domesticity, but also on what architectural practice can do to address them. 9 isparchitecture.com beyond the framework of a dichotomy between the private and the public lays the chinese notion of jianghu, as explained by esther lorenz in ‘anonymity in jianghu: hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis.’ jianghu has come to define a realm deliberately apart from societal and political order. lorenz uses this word, which literally translates into “rivers and lakes,” to better understand a description of the 2019 hong kong protests, a movement inspired by the bruce lee quote “be like water.” through uncontrollable anonymous digital means, protesters coalesced like flash-floods to turn unexpected places like roads and roofs into ephemeral political public spaces. according to lorenz, “[w]hat we witnessed in 2019 in hong kong was the emergence of a contemporary form of jianghu, as a hybridization of digital space, material space, and spatial practices.”8 conversely, even the most stereotypical typology of public space does not guarantee a site for social and political aggregation. stella evangelidou analyzes the design strategy behind an intervention on southern nicosia’s main square, in ‘parametric design in the historic urban domain: the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects.’ parametricism, she argues, operated not simply as a design tool but as an architectural ideology; polemical from the project’s conception and selection to its use after construction. as evangelidou sees it, “[t]he hyper-aestheticized and non-functional forms have displaced political actions from the site. eleftheria square has lost its quality as a topos politikos.”9 the powerful potential of architecture, whether positive or negative, intended or not, upon the social and political dimensions of public space is at the center of margit van schaik’s study of its most symbolic sites. ‘what architecture does – an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment’ considers how the architectural properties of the dutch parliament building affect the manner in which politics is conducted in the the black lives matter movement is the most important public space development in the last 10 years. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 10 ed it or ia l country, but keeps some distance from deterministic claims. as she says, “[…] a window does not determine you look through it, but it does influence what you will see if you do.”10 van schaik grounds her outlook on input from philosophy of mind, psychology and neuroscience, brought together in the theories of embodiment advanced by francisco varela and evan thomson. a different approach to one’s embodied experience of place adopts bernard rudolsky’s sandals as a medium. ‘on foot: embodied atmospheres,’ by andreea mihalache, suggests that “[m]ore than footwear, the sandals are a design manifesto expressing the connection between feet and floors, always in touch through the intimacy of the sole […].”11 against the long-standing dominant formal and sight-centered attitudes in both philosophy and architecture, mihalache urges for the embrace of subjective experience of atmospheres as a design criteria, which has precedent in the two disciplines’ history nonetheless. roaming around houses, strolling down streets, the tactile experience of walking partakes in the finding of one’s ground – literally and figuratively. all ten contributions offer deeply informative, intellectually stimulating, thought-provoking insights. they tackle plenty of topics, engaged from diverse research frameworks, and look at distinct case-studies from multiple times and places, to reach a variety of significant claims which may overlap or conflict, but all contribute to an understanding of the real and ideal characteristics of public space. these results emerge from a historically productive dialogue between two disciplines while thinking together. that long and fruitful tradition continues in this special issue of architecture philosophy. endnotes 1. sven-olov wallenstein, ‘public space. conflicts and antinomies’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 13. 2. chantal mouffe, ‘on the political, public space and the possibility of a critical architecture’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 29. 3. kenneth frampton, ‘the space of appearance within the megalopolis. architectural culture-politics of são paulo 1957-2017’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 45. 4. hans teerds, ‘a site of struggle. an interview with margaret crawford,’ in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 51-52. 5. ibid., 58. 6. saul fisher, ‘architectural responsibilities and the right to a city’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 63. 11 isparchitecture.com 7. erika brandl, ‘property, necessity and housing. reconsidering the situated right to a place to be’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 85. 8. esther lorenz, ‘anonymity in jianghu. hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis’. in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 113. 9. stella evangelidou, ‘parametric design in the historic urban domain. the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 135. 10. margit van schaik, ‘what architecture does. an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 149. 11. andreea mihalache, ‘on foot. embodied atmospheres’, in: architecture philosophy, vol 6, no.1/2 (2023), 165. zurich (2022) the idea of public space is crucial for our political imagination, precisely because it is perceived as being not only threatened, but even as on the way toward extinction. throughout its history, the concept seems to imply both a promise of a more transparent social world, and a threat to which we are exposed: it is a space of free exchange, but also one to which we are subjected, and where conflict seems unending. in this sense, two competing versions could be given: the first one would tell a story of the rise and fall of public space, and it is probably the most common one; the second, which is less frequent, presents public space as always and structurally constituted by a conflict that will make it into a space of struggle, where the dreams of undistorted communication not only cover over the reality of power, but in fact are instrumental for its deployment. these two can neither be fused into a common story, nor can we simply choose between them; perhaps they can be said to constitute something like the antinomy of public space. kant and the enlightenment the classical origin of most stories of public space is the agora in the greek polis, which has taken on a symbolic value for all subsequent theorizing, notwithstanding the fact that it must be seen as a retroactive fantasy, similarly to many other such greek “origins” that have been assumed since the late eighteenth century onwards. that the selection of citizens that were allowed to take part in greek democracy was indeed small has been brushed aside, which has made it possible to transform it public space. conflicts and antinomies sven-olov wallenstein ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 14 w a ll en st ei n into a model for various promises of a restored gemeinschaft in modernity, a community that would rest on a direct “representation,” as if the exclusionary mechanisms at once had been repressed and sublimated into a kind of ideal space. this trope appears in winckelmann, rousseau, the early romantics, the young hegel (who would later discard it), and many other thinkers on the eighteenth century that were trying to articulate a new foundation for political theory after the downfall of the absolutisttheological model. (in fact, even though this is rarely made into an explicit theme, the various versions of contract theory seem to require something like a common space, a medium of assembly, in which the first act of signing occurs, since it takes place at one singular point in time, not as a series of individual events separated in space and time.) the second step in this story is the construction of an ideal public space, which as we noted often looks back to its alleged greek origin, and yet constitutes something basically new. this is the idea of a world of rational reflection, communication, and judgment that would rely on readers dispersed in space and time, only related through the sense that they share a common rational project. we find this outlined in kant,1 in his conception of the enlightenment and its öffentlichkeit as a spatial and temporal ideal form where all dogmas, theoretical as well as moral and political, can be subjected to debate. to participate in this debate, kant proposes, one must however act as a “public” person and not as a bearer of official authority, as in the case of the judge, the magistrate, the priest, etc., which in kant’s vocabulary are “private” uses of reason (for us today, this terminology would be inverted). the divide between these two roles comes across in a statement that has spawned many vitriolic remarks, and it seems to make kant into a late-come proponent of the traditional doctrine of reason of state, or even a kind of prussian state philosopher: “reason as much as you wish but obey!” what kant in fact means, however, is something different that still today remains a basic tenet of legal theory. whoever acts as a figure of public authority must uphold what kant in other contexts calls the “mechanism of society,” since processes based on authority must be transparent and predictable once the initial variables are clearly staked out. we may indeed reason as much as we want, and question the soundness of laws. but this reasoning belongs to a space of individual, intellectual license, which as such is not the basis of procedures of authority. when passing a judgment, the court must follow the law, even though each of its members may very well perceive the law as unjust. while the private use of reason is based on authority and obedience, kant stresses the processual character of the public debate, which means that it should remain open-ended. we are living in an age of enlightenment, 15 isparchitecture.com he writes, not an enlightened age, since the latter would assume that reason had been perfected. if the process were to be stopped, i.e., if we would attain a perfect “match” between thinking and world, such a state could in a sense not be separated from a metaphysical dogmatism where truth could be decreed, and reasoning comes to an end. enlightenment is reflexive, in the sense that it must always be prepared to question its own results. as kant notes, this is due to a “maturing capacity for judgment” characteristic of that period which allows for the step out of our “selfincurred tutelage” (unmündigkeit), as he writes in the enlightenment essay which also makes it all the more essential for everyone of us to attempt to “think in the place of everyone else,” as he later will say in the critique of judgment (§ 40).2 what kant in fact discovers, as he moves from the first to the third critique and the various essays on politics, is that judgment is not simply “determining,” as in theoretical cognition, but also “reflexive,” engaging a dimension of intersubjectivity that requires us to change perspective, and to project a possible future where we all would be spontaneously reconciled, while still acknowledging that no empirical state of affairs could ever be said to be precisely such a fulfilled state. in the third critique, the discussion of judgment is carried out in terms of taste, beauty, and the sublime, and the link to the political writings does not at first hand seem obvious, although a closer reading of the texts reveals many subterranean links. they are however always tentative, as if experiments in thought that transfer propositional forms by way of analogy, metaphor, metonymy, and a host of other figures. rather than an aestheticizing of politics, or a politicizing of aesthetics, the twofold temptation that haunts post-kantian modernity, it is an exercise in what kant in the third critique calls an “enlarged mode of thought” (erweitere denkungsart), a reflection that does not aim for ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 16 w a ll en st ei n grounding in theory of practice, but moves freely between them, drawing on all types of sources and texts, unfolding in the interstices of imagination and judgment. for instance, when kant refers to the french revolution, he introduces the idea of a “sign of history” that would account for the way in which empirical events impact not only the affective part of the spectator, but also introduces ideas of reason, and even constitutes a kind of historical teleology, although surrounded by several caveats. the sign introduces a certain temporal dimension, and, as we will see, it at least communicates indirectly with the idea of a public space that would be materialized and embodied in a kind of monumentality. the relevant passages can be found in the second part of kant’s the conflict of faculties,3 where the question is whether progress in history can be ascertained or not. no direct empirical facts will suffice, kant claims, instead we should attempt to find “signs” that indicate—indirectly, precisely as signs—the existence of a transformed moral disposition. the french revolution, he suggests, is such a case, not because it has brought about shifts and changes in government (these may be reversed, and even lead to a factually worse state than before), but because it affects the spectators in a particular fashion. it is not the violence, the sound and fury of the res gestae that signify moral improvement; in fact, at the end of the day, the effects of the revolution may be such that it actually increases the amount of suffering in the world. the crucial aspect is what kant calls enthusiasm,4 a particular passion among those who experience it from a certain distance, in this case from across the rhine: it is the germans who are filled with enthusiasm, and a whole generation of idealist philosophers and poets in the wake of kant will corroborate his analysis. the germans, kant argues, are precisely by virtue of their distance from the stage of history exempt from the violence of pathological passions, since they have nothing to gain by entertaining them; on the contrary, their passions will be redirected from immediate aims towards moral principles, and in this they indicate a particular receptivity for ideas that is lost in the immediate imbroglio of the french milieu. first, we must note the theatrical dimension. the drama is organized by the divide between stage and audience, perhaps to some extent drawing on an implicit reading of aristotle’s poetics, where enthusiasm replaces katharsis as the desired outcome. but the revolution is as such obviously not a fiction, rather a real event whose moral effect can only be discerned if it passes through a certain distancing and aesthetic derealization. the impact of the political is registered in a quasi-aesthetic space, and even though the real (events and actions) cannot be reduced to an aesthetic phenomenon, the relation to moral principles can only be created by way 17 isparchitecture.com of a certain circulation within an aesthetic realm. the entangled nature of these relations no doubt signals a hesitance on kant’s part, but, arguably, just as much the contradictory and entangled nature of the real itself. to this we must add the temporal nature of the historical sign: it is a signum rememorativum, demonstrativum et prognosticon, i.e. a sign of memory that tells us that there has always been a certain amount of progress, a sign that demonstrates that there is a case in the present, and a sign that offers the prognosis that there will be progress in the future, that hope is not lost regardless of the vicissitudes of the revolution at present. in this sense, it institutes a historical possibility: even though empirical events may lead us astray and even turn out disastrously, this possibility cannot sink into complete oblivion. the same holds for the enlightenment, which for kant, as we saw, is not simply an empirical phase in history, but a reflexive move within reason itself, in which it calls upon itself to know itself, from within, without any support from transcendent authorities. the sign can in this sense be understood within a logic of the monument: it preserves a moment in time, embodies an idea, and projects it into the future. orienting the affective response of the beholder towards the domain of moral principles and supersensible ideas, it points to a possibility to be realized in the future. but it also points to the transcendence of such a future in relation to all empirical presents; the aesthetic affect must remain in an imaginary realm, if it is to retain its force in the realm of political, whereas any collapse of the two into each other would be precisely a “transcendental illusion” in the sense kant had already outlined in the first critique. the sign of history is only one of the many intermediary figures that kant proposes to create a bridge between the sensible and the supersensible, nature and freedom, and it is no easy task to sort them in a clear order, or to see if they are connected, if the “critique of political reason” remained in a state of fragmentation and suspension, it was because the political for kant couldn’t be subsumed under a priori principles. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 18 w a ll en st ei n hierarchically or otherwise. as lyotard points out (and in this he often comes close to arendt),5 if the “critique of political reason” remained in a state of fragmentation and suspension, it was because the political for kant couldn’t be subsumed under a priori principles, but always mobilized concepts drawn from cognition, ethics, and aesthetics, even religion, in a way that blurs the line between proper and improper uses. the rise and fall of public space in the tradition from kant, this lack of a priori principles has often been taken as a positive characteristic: it is the absence of univocal rules that constitutes the idea of society as a kind of ongoing mediation and reflection, an open-ended process of legitimization and production of consensus that neither acknowledges the decrees issued by a sovereign power, nor those of any alleged science of politics. thus, many have claimed that the creation of a modern political space would have kantian criticism and the french revolution as two founding moments. as claude lefort puts it, the end of the eighteenth century would have been the moment of the “democratic invention” or the “invention of democracy,”6 which as such was marked by a constitutive ambivalence: the subject that speaks (the “people”) is at the same time to be brought forth in this very same address, via a kind of political performativity. but rather than simply a contradiction that in advance would undermine this new political logic, the performative is what dismantles the theological and/or ontological foundation of politics, to the effect that we can say that there is politics, in the modern sense of the term, precisely to the extent that the very idea of a foundation has eroded. there is an absence at the heart of society, a void that many are indeed eager and even desperate to fill, which is why a certain totalitarian temptation always follows modern democracy like a shadow (for instance, as we noted earlier, by letting the aesthetic fill out this gap, not just as a “bridge,” as kant writes, but as a common positive ground). a somewhat different narrative is provided by jürgen habermas, from his early analysis of the public sphere to the later theories of communicative action.7 for him, the idea of a constitutive void or indeterminacy is not enough to safeguard a modern idea of the political; instead, he suggests that the theory of communication must be given a “transcendental” status if the respective roles of discourse are to be safeguarded. despite these differences, lefort’s and habermas’s theories both delineate powerful and highly influential narratives of the emergence of political freedom as connected to the space of public life, and for both the kantian moment occupies a central place. 19 isparchitecture.com it is however also crucial that in both accounts (more emphatically in habermas), the public sphere is perceived as under threat. when habermas in his classic 1962 study on the transformations of the public sphere begins by locating the promise of a public sphere, he points to the time of kant and the emergence of what could be called modern media as a site of free reflection (they create a “world of readers,” eine leserwelt, as kant says). but at the same time, this account seems already from the outset destined to end with the corruption of this very same system, at a point where it is absorbed by commercial interests and becomes part of a culture of the spectacle. one can ask to what extent the public sphere that habermas’s whole discourse mourns for ever existed; if it was there as a promise at the end of the enlightenment, as an idea (but nothing more) in kant, then as soon as its real and material infrastructure was set in place, it began to deteriorate. it seems clear that the idea of a single public space governed by the rules of rational communication was never, or will ever be, instantiated empirically, and in this sense it can only be taken as a “regulative” idea in the kantian sense: it is there in order to make sense of, or more precisely to judge and evaluate, a given empirical manifold, but it is never instantiated as such, which is probably why habermas in his later writings comes to understand the ideal communicative situation as a transcendental requirement (or in terms of a “transcendental pragmatics,” as proposed by karlotto apel).8 the problem with this however is whether such a regulative idea is at all capable of accounting for a factual development: it achieves its authority by adopting a normative transcendence with respect to the vicissitudes of history, while it remains unclear to what extent any of these factual developments were ever directed by this ideal. similarly, one could ask if the ideal of a transparent communication could ever account for what goes it seems clear that the idea of a single public space governed by the rules of rational communication was never, or will ever be, instantiated empirically. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 20 w a ll en st ei n on in communication; simply reiterating the traditional divide between is and ought may seem like evading the question, or at least to remain deaf to what goes on in language. the later claims by habermas that the problems could be settled through a “procedural rationality” (a minimum set of rules that safeguard rationality without making any substantial claims about the content of debates) seems to go in the same direction, and appears to assume that the basic questions have already been solved, or at least could be bracketed because of their technical, specialized nature.9 drawing on habermasian ideas, but in a way that stays closer to concrete problems of public space, the urban theorist michael sorkin has suggested an analogous account of the privatization of public space, which ends on an even more apocalyptic note and predicts the “end of public space”.10 many other similar cases could be cited; a conclusion would be that it seems almost unavoidable to inscribe the idea of a public “site” (whose spatial characteristics may vary) for rational political discourse in a story that tells of rise and decline. if such a site once existed—be it the greek agora, the renaissance city, the ideal space of the enlightenment—it is now a memory, an object of nostalgia. at the same time, this narrative cannot simply ascribe the demise of its object to some external cause: the rise of an affluent class that only looks to its own interests, the commercial press, the proliferation of information, technological changes; all of these are both what made this site, space, or sphere possible, and that which lies behind its inevitable deterioration in the present. genealogies of public space other narratives than those of rise and fall are obviously possible, not just in the sense that they would cite other empirical cases, but also, and more profoundly, in that they would question its underlying assumptions. in some cases, they could amount to what looks like an inversion of the first story. so in the case of richard sennett, whose the fall of public man attempts to show how the nineteenth century, with its emphasis on personal authenticity and psychological truthfulness, displaced an enlightenment culture of conversation and of the salon.11 in the eighteenth century “public man” was at liberty to stage a self, in a kind of enactment of the self in terms of rhetoric rather than psychology, whereas the nineteenth century would instead demand that one should appear as one truly is and condemn the split between inside and outside as a sign of moral inaptitude.12 other stories take us beyond the figure of reversal, and instead opt for a different and more conflict-ridden understanding of the historical process, tending to something that, following nietzsche and foucault, could be 21 isparchitecture.com called a “genealogical” model.13 in these stories, it makes no sense to ask if public space in the “true” sense existed at one point of another, if it was once a promise that was later betrayed for some reason, or if there has been a fall from one state to another. public space has always been both an object of dispute, and a disputed space of the dispute itself, to the effect that it has no true or ideal sense beyond all the ways in which it has been appropriated, rejected, contested, and redefined. if such a space has a constant feature—this time not in the sense of a regulative idea but rather that of a pervasive empirical fact—it is that it has always been based on various exclusions and hidden or explicit privileges, as any analysis of the actual composition of the alleged origins in the greek political assemblies and the agora will unambiguously show. as rosalyn deutsche suggests, the kind of analysis that we have previously discussed, which mourns the downfall of an ideal public domain, might even, somewhat provocatively, be called “agoraphobia.”14 what it profoundly fears, she argues, is to acknowledge that all public discourse is marked by asymmetries and power relations, not just incidentally and contingently, but structurally and constitutively. non-violent discourse might in this sense fulfill a very traditional definition of ideology: an imaginary solution to real contradictions, transposed to the realm of regulative ideas that always ought to be realized, but in fact never are (similarly to way in which the idea that all humans are equal in principle can serve to obscure that fact that they are never equal in reality). such an ideal will always appear as distant in time or space, always lost or to come, and this temporal projection is what holds fear at bay by rationalizing it. in a similar vein, chantal mouffe claims that “the political,” which for her must be distinguished from “politics” in the empirical sense of processes of policy-making and decision-making, has to do with the way in which a society is symbolically instituted it seems almost unavoidable to inscribe the idea of a public “site” for rational political discourse in a story that tells of rise and decline. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 22 w a ll en st ei n in terms of a fundamental antagonism.15 this she distinguishes from liberal conceptions, which are based on an “aggregative” model that understands the political in terms of the economy and the market, and from a deliberative model that understands the political as the application of morality. for mouffe, the political has to do with passions, and to take a political stance will always involve a separation between an “us” and a “them,” which creates an asymmetry in the space in which the two parties are to meet. the problem for mouffe becomes to what extent this antagonism can be transformed into an “agonism” that would allow passionate encounters while still mitigating or sublimating the violence of antagonism. how can we acknowledge the legitimacy of the opponent, without reference to a set of rules or a rational consensus to be achieved as the outcome? does the shift to agonism not presuppose some standard according to which it can be construed as successful—or, inversely, as has been argued by slavoj žižek, must the idea, or ideal, of agonism, not have recourse to a more basic liberal-capitalist order that itself cannot be challenged? just as for deutsche, this has important consequences for the notion of public space. mouffe places her theory in clear opposition to the one proposed by habermas, but also, although less clearly, to hannah arendt, whose conception of an “enlarged thought” and a political intersubjectivity draws on kant’s aesthetics.16 for mouffe, public space cannot be seen as one entity that could subsequently be occupied or compromised by external forces, rather it is a constitutive plurality in a sense that goes beyond the peaceful “space of appearance” as delineated by arendt: it is a multiply contested and non-symmetric space, a battleground traversed by struggles for hegemony. if public space is the space where politics is realized, this can only occur through acts of confrontation and unmasking. what mouffe proposes is that the public domain must be seen as an ongoing experimental construction, rather than as a regulative idea against which all empirical domains should be measured and against which they all will appear as deficient. the antinomy of public space how should we judge the conflict between those two stories? to some extent it is reminiscent of what paul ricoeur once called a “conflict of interpretations,”17 i.e. between a restorative hermeneutics that wants to return to an original sense buried under sediments of history, and a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in the wake of marx, nietzsche, and freud, for which the given—consciousness, texts, or, as in this case, this strange entity called public space—always harbors inner contradictions that must be unearthed, and that eventually will destroy the unity of the object in question. 23 isparchitecture.com but perhaps the choice of the word “hermeneutics” as an overarching term is misleading, since it glosses over the highly different conceptions of thought itself that we find in these two conceptions. at stake are not just methodologies of interpretation, but a kind of antinomy that lies deep in the heart of thought itself. but what, then, is this antinomy? the term seems as such to already settle the conflict, since it belongs to the kantian vocabulary. for kant, an antinomy results from two conflicting interests, and his chief example is the notion of freedom: for the understanding, as the faculty that legislates over the science of nature, the interest lies in maximizing the scope of causality, and freedom is an impossible concept, since it would disrupt the causal chain. for the faculty of reason (as opposed to the faculty of understanding, and directed towards ideas), the interest is to safeguard a sphere of the supersensible that preserves the autonomy of rational agents. in natural science, causal chains must be seamless, and that free actions do not exist is not an empirical discovery, but an a priori requirement. for ethics, freedom is inversely what is required for the moral law to be at all applicable, and its status cannot be revoked by any reference to physics. what holds together these two claims is the architectonic of reason, which allows the sensible (nature) and the supersensible to co-exist.18 now, in the case of public space, just as in kant’s analysis of freedom, both parties can argue their respective cases forcefully: the idealist account lays claim to an ethical necessity (no empirical facts can settle the question of what public space should be), whereas the genealogical seems to refer to a kind of sensible manifold (ethical ideals are not what matters, but rather significance lies in what people in fact do). what is striking, and rather different than in kantian philosophy, is that the first version, which stresses universals and communicative action, tends to be pessimistic about the present and even more so about the future, whereas the if public space is the space where politics is realized, this can only occur through acts of confrontation and unmasking. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 24 w a ll en st ei n second version, which stresses contingency and forces, tends to see the future as open an undecided. what seems to be at stake here is thus not the difference between theoretical and practical reason, or between nature and freedom, as kant would have it, but rather between two versions of freedom, which is why we cannot solve the issue by an appeal to some putative architecture of reason. the antinomy of public space in this sense testifies to division between two ideas or even ideals of philosophy, rather than to a split inside a particular philosophy. endnotes 1. the classic text is immanuel kant’s 1784 essay, ‘an answer to the question: what is enlightenment?’ in immanuel kant, political writings, trans. h. b. nisbet, ed. hans reiss (cambridge: cambridge univ. press, 1990). 2. immanuel kant, ‘what is enlightenment?’ mary c. smith, tr. http:// www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/ccread/etscc/kant.html. 3. translated in political writings (as in note 1). 4. i draw here on the commentary by jean-françois lyotard, l’enthousiasme: la critique kantienne de l’histoire (paris: galilée, 1986). 5. which is not to say that their readings coincide: in many respects they differ sharply, in a way not unrelated to the antinomy between the two stories of public space that will be sketched in the following section. 6. see claude lefort l’invention démocratique: les limites de la domination totalitaire (paris: fayard, 1981). 7. jürgen habermas, strukturwandel der öffentlichkeit: untersuchungen zu einer kategorie der bürgerlichen gesellschaft (luchterhand: neuwied, 1962), and jürgen habermas, theorie des kommunikativem handelns (frankfurt am main: suhrkamp, 1981). 8. see for instance karl-otto apel, understanding and explanation: a transcendental pragmatic perspective, trans. georgia warnke (cambridge, mass: mit, 1984). 9. in another terminology, the idea of a procedural rationality endowed with an intentionally “thin” definition seems to deny the possibility of ”deep conflicts”, i.e., conflicts where the very nature of rules is at stake. interestingly, such conflicts are abundant at the level that many (though not all) philosophers would see as the basic one, the foundations of mathematics and logic. 10. see for instance the contributions in michael sorkin (ed.), variations on a theme park: the new american city and the end of public space (new york: hill and wang, 1992). for a critical discussion of sorkin’s account, as well as of similar proposals by mike davis, see 25 isparchitecture.com rosalyn deutsche, ‘men in space,’ in rosalyn deutsche, evictions: art and spatial politics (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1996). this is obviously not to deny the empirical pertinence of the analyses of late capitalist space and of the commodification of the urban landscape proposed by sorkin and davis; it does however mean to question their underlying narrative structure, which tends to project a past and more ideal situation or possibility that at one point were betrayed. 11. richard sennett, the fall of public man (new york: random house, 1977). 12. while doubtless effective as an antidote to the traditional story, the image of a fall occurring at the beginning of the nineteenth century, should not lead us into believing that free public sphere once existed, and then vanished, but we should rather see one contradictory and tensionladen structure displacing another, as sennett shows. that the ideal of public man was highly disputed can be seen in the writings of rousseau and diderot. if diderot in his paradoxe sur le comédien shows how the actor’s distance from himself is a precondition for theater, then rousseau can be said to invert this theory by making theater itself into a paradigm for false social relations, as in his lettre à d’alembert sur les spectacles. 13. for foucault’s account of nietzsche, see ‘nietzsche, genealogy, history,’ in: michel foucault, language, counter-memory, practice, ed. donald f. bouchard, trans. donald f. bouchard and simon sherry (ithaca: cornell university press, 1977). foucault says little about public space, but it would no doubt be fruitful to enter this complex via his analysis of greek democracy and his discussion of parrhesia, “fearless speech,” which always introduces a difference that breaks with the merely formal symmetry of equals. see the ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 26 w a ll en st ei n two last courses at the collège de france, le gouvernement de soi et des autres: cours au collège de france (1982-1983), ed. frédéric gros (paris: seuil ; 2008), and le courage de la vérité: le gouvernement de soi et des autres ii: cours au collège de france (1983-1984), ed. frédéric gros (paris: seuil: 2009). 14. see rosalyn deutsche, ‘agoraphobia,’ in: roslyn deutsche, evictions: art and spatial politics (cambridge, mass.: mit press, 1996). 15. for mouffe’s views, see chantal mouffe, on the political (london: routledge, 2005), and chantal moufe, ‘agonistic public spaces, democratic politics, and the dynamics of passion,’ in: joseph backstein, daniel birnbaum, and sven-olov wallenstein (eds:), thinking worlds: the moscow conference on philosophy, politics, and art (new york and berlin: sternberg press, 2008). for the relation to carl schmitt and the conception of the political as oriented along the axis friend-foe, see her anthology chantal mouffe, the challenge of carl schmitt (london: verso, 1999). 16. see hannah arendt, lectures on kant’s political philosophy, ed. ronald beiner (chicago: university of chicago press, 1992). 17. see paul ricoeur, the conflict of interpretations: essays in hermeneutics (evanston, ill.: northwestern university press, new ed. 2007). 18. i disregard some of the more objectionable moves that permit kant to close the gap between theoretical and practical reason, above all the reference to the thing itself, of which he says that it is at least not contradictory to assume would be the locus of a free, supersensible causality. kant is perhaps too eager to close the gap, because of the demand for an architectonic unity of reason, even though his “dissolution” (auflösung) of the antinomy is dependent on it, as i think is evinced by respective developments of the theme in arendt and lyotard. in ordinary language, it is not very common to speak about ‘the political.’1 however, to distinguish between the political and politics opens up an important alley for reflection. i am not the first nor the only one to make this distinction. a variety of political theorists do the same, but with different remit. some theorists envisage the political as a space of freedom and public deliberation. this we call the associative view of the political. others understand it as a space of power and conflict, which we call the dissociative view. my understanding belongs to this second perspective. with the term ‘the political,’ i refer to the dimension of antagonism, which, i argue, is constitutive of human societies. politics is the set of practices and institutions through which a certain order is created. this order organizes human coexistence in a context of conflict. according to the dissociative perspective, political questions always require decision making to choose between conflicting alternatives. and, contrary to the dominant view under neoliberalism today, those political decisions cannot be reduced to technical issues which can be solved by experts. in neoliberal societies, there is an incapacity to think politically. in this article, i will reflect upon the issue of public space and the potential of artistic practices in the context of conflict and antagonism. 1. the political to a great extent the contemporary incapacity to think politically is not only caused by the uncontested hegemony of neoliberalism, but also by liberalism in general. with “liberalism,” i do not mean “economic liberalism,” which is the basis on the political, public space and the possibility of a critical architecture chantal mouffe ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 28 m ou ff e of capitalism, nor “political liberalism,” as a set of political institutions, i refer here to the philosophical discourse, which has got many variances, some more progressive than others. though there is no common essence, there is a multiplicity of what we could call, using an expression of ludwig wittgenstein, family resemblance. save a few exceptions, the dominant tendency in liberal thought is characterised by a rationalist and individualist approach, which, in my view, is not able to adequately grasp the pluralistic nature of the social world with the conflicts that pluralism entails—conflicts for which there is no rational solution. the typical liberal understanding of pluralism is that we live in a world in which there are many perspectives, many values, and different beliefs. however, through serious deliberations and rational negotiations, these different perspectives can constitute harmonious and non-conflictual perspectives. this type of liberalism negates the political in its antagonistic dimension. one of its main tenets is a belief in the possibility of universal consensus, which can be established through strict rational reasoning. but to acknowledge the antagonism of the political underscores the inescapable moment of decision. i use ‘decision’ here in the derridean sense. as derrida insisted, to decide is always to decide in an undecidable terrain. a decision made after calculation, is not a decision at all. decision-making in an undecidable terrain means choosing between alternatives that cannot be resolved through rational reasoning. the antagonism of the political reveals the limits of any rational consensus, and therefore is antithetical to the liberal vision. when examining the different perspectives existing within contemporary liberal political thought, we can distinguish two main paradigms. the first is called the aggregative paradigm. there is a confluence with the associative view of the political, but it is not exactly the same. the aggregative view envisages politics as the establishment of a compromise between competing forces in society. individual participants are portrayed as rational beings, driven by the maximization of their own interest. this is an instrumental understanding of acting; (it is) market ideology applied to the domain of politics. the instrumental view easily apprehends politics through economics and is often dominant in political science departments, for instance in the broadly accepted rational choice theory. the second paradigm is dominant within philosophical discourses, and is often called the deliberative paradigm. two of their representatives are john rawls in the united states and jürgen habermas in germany. they somehow developed their views in reaction to the instrumentalist model. their argument is that there is more to politics than just the search for personal interests. instead of an instrumental rationality, they 29 isparchitecture.com propose a communicative rationality, believing that it is possible to create a rational moral consensus by means of free discussion. in this case, politics is not apprehended through economics, but through ethics or morality. what these views leave aside through their rationalist approach is precisely what, to me, is the specificity of politics: the fact that in politics we are always dealing with a “we” as opposed to a “them.” this does not mean that antagonism is always present, but it is an ever-present possibility. another drawback of the rationalism of liberalism is that it is not able to acknowledge the crucial role played by what i call passions in politics. i refer here to the affective dimension, which is central to the constitution of any collective form of identification. political identification is always collective, and this implies an affective dimension. liberalism, with its methodological individualism, is not able to grasp the specificity of the political, the collective and the affective. in my work, i argue that only when we acknowledge the political in its antagonistic dimension, can we pose the central question for democratic politics. this is not to question how to negotiate a compromise, or what kind of procedure is needed to reach a rational, fully inclusive consensus. it is impossible to establish a consensus without exclusion. therefore, despite what many liberals want us to believe, the specificity of democratic politics is not to overcome this “we/them” opposition, but how to construct this opposition to be compatible with the recognition of pluralism. in order to answer this question, i use the notion of the “constitutive outside,” a term proposed by the american philosopher henry staten in his book wittgenstein and derrida.2 he uses this term to refer to a number of terms that are developed by jacques derrida, like derrida’s notions of supplement, trace, and différance. the aim of those notions is to highlight the fact that the creation of an identity always implies the establishment of difference. this the antagonism of the political reveals the limits of any rational consensus, and therefore is antithetical to the liberal vision. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 30 m ou ff e difference is moreover often constructed on the basis of a hierarchy, for instance man/woman, black/white. this view is based on ferdinand de saussure’s claim that every identity is relational, and acknowledges that the affirmation of a difference is the precondition for the existence of any identity. in other words, the perception of something other that constitutes its exterior is the precondition of existence of an identity. if we accept this, and apply it to the field of politics, we can understand that the constitution of the “we” is what politics is about and that politics cannot exist without the determination of a “them.” the identity of a “we” needs to have a constitutive outside, a “them.” but this does not mean that such a relation is necessarily antagonistic. in politics we thus deal with collective identities on the basis of “we/ them.” those differences can simply be a pure difference. to give an example: “we,” the french, need to have a “them,” the german. or “we,” the catholic, and “them,” the protestant or the muslim. this is not necessarily a relation of antagonism. but under certain conditions, this “we/them,” can become an antagonism, and can be constructed on the basis of friend and enemy. this happens, for instance, when the “them” is perceived as questioning the identity of the “we,” thus threatening its existence. from that moment on, any form of “we/them” relation, being from religious, ethnic, economic, or other origin, becomes antagonistic. an example that i often give to my students is the disintegration of yugoslavia. the slovenian, the bosnian, the croat and the serb were not enemies, but in certain circumstances, such as those in the death of tito and the coming to power of milošević, who tried to establish serbian supremacy, they began to see each other as enemies. their relationship became antagonistic. this is important to realize, the ever-present possibility that “we/them” relations become antagonistic. upon that remark, i would like to stress that identities are always a result of processes of identification. identities, as freud claims, can never be completely fixed, therefore, we are never confronted with “we/them” opposition that expresses essentialist pre-existing identities. this is an important point to stress, since the “them” represent the condition of possibility of the “we,” as i argued above. this means that the constitution of a specific “we” always depends on the type of “them” from which it is differentiated. the crucial point is that this allows us to envisage the possibility of a different type of “we/them” relation according to the way the “them” is constructed. since all forms of political identities entail a “we/them” distinction, this means that the possibility of emergence of antagonism can never be eliminated. i thus assert that the political belongs to our ontological 31 isparchitecture.com condition. in hegemony and socialist strategy, ernesto laclau and i argue that next to the concept of antagonism, there is another concept which is crucial to address the political: the concept of hegemony.3 to acknowledge the dimension of the political, the ever-present possibility of antagonism, requires coming to terms with the lack of a final ground and the undecidability that pervades every order. it requires recognizing what we call the hegemonic nature of every kind of social order. every society is the product of a series of practices which attempt to establish an order in a specific context. but this context is always contingent. it is important to realise that according to such a conception, society cannot be seen as the unfolding of a logic that will be exterior to itself, whatever the source of this logic will be — the forces of production for marx, nor the development of the spirit for hegel. every order is the temporary and precarious articulation of contingent practices. this means that things could always have been otherwise and that every order is predicated on the exclusion of other possibilities. to acknowledge this can also be called political: it is always the expression of a particular structure of power relations. there are always other possibilities that have been repressed, but that can also be reactivated. every hegemonic order is susceptible to being challenged by counterhegemonic practices, practices that will attempt to disarticulate the existing order, to install another form of hegemony. this is what the agonistic struggle is about: the struggle between hegemonies. the political is linked to those acts of hegemonic institution, and in this sense can be differentiated from the social. this distinction between the social and political is important. these two domains are two different ways of looking at the same thing. the social is the basis of ‘sedimented practices’, referring to practices that conceal the act of the contingent political institution. these practices appear as if they were self-grounded. or to put it differently, this does not mean that antagonism is always present, but it is an ever-present possibility. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 32 m ou ff e we take these practices for granted. there is a need for such sedimented practices, as you cannot have everything in perpetual flux. the social and the political have the status of what martin heidegger called ‘existentials,’ which are the necessary forms of societal life. 2. on public spaces once the ever-present possibility of antagonism is acknowledged, one can understand why one of the main tasks of democratic politics consists in defusing the potential antagonism that exists in social relations. a society cannot exist in constant flux or civil war. there is a need for some form of stability. if we accept that this stability cannot be achieved by transcending the “we/them” relation, but only by constructing it in a different way, then the following question arises: what could constitute a tame relation, a sublimated form of antagonism? what form of “we/them” will this imply? or to put it differently, how could conflict be accepted as legitimate and take a form that does not destroy the political association? this requires that some kind of common bond exists between the parties in conflict so that they will not treat their opponents as enemies to be eradicated. that would be a form of civil war, because they will see their demands as illegitimate. this is precisely what happens in an antagonistic enemy relation. however, the opponents cannot be seen simply as competitors whose interests can be dealt with either through negotiation, the aggregative conception, or reconciled by deliberation (the deliberative view). in that case, the antagonistic element will simply have been eliminated. the two solutions offered by liberalism are not adequate, precisely because they do not recognise the inevitable dimension of antagonism and the fact of the hegemonic conception of society. if we thus want to acknowledge on one side the inevitability of the antagonistic dimension, while on the other allowing for the possibility of its sublimation, of its taming, we need to envisage a third type of relation. and this is the type of relation that i have proposed to call agonism. antagonism is a “we/them” relation in which the two sides are enemies, wherein these two sides do not share any common ground. there is no symbolic space among them. agonism is also a “we/them” relation with conflicting parties. however, with agonism, although acknowledging that there is no rational solution to their conflict, the two sides recognise the legitimacy of their opponents. they are adversaries, not enemies. this means that when in conflict, they see themself as belonging to the same political association. they are sharing a common symbolic space and it is within this space that the conflict takes place. what exists among them is a conflictual consensus. they have different interpretations of the shared political values. 33 isparchitecture.com what is at stake in agonistic struggle is in fact the very configuration of power relations around which a given society is structured. it is a struggle between opposing hegemonic projects, which cannot be reconciled rationally. the antagonistic dimension is always present, it is a real confrontation, but one which is played out under regulated conditions by democratic procedures. the agonistic conception of democracy acknowledges the contingent character of the hegemonic political-economic articulation, which informs a specific configuration of a society at a given moment. this is a precarious and pragmatic construction, which can be disarticulated and transformed as a result of the agonistic struggle among the adversaries. contrary to the values of the liberal model, the agonistic approach recognises that society is always politically instituted. it never forgets that the terrain in which the hegemonic intervention takes place is necessarily the outcome of previous hegemonic practices. this is why the agonistic model denies the possibility of a nonadversarial democratic politics and criticises those who, by ignoring this dimension of the political, reduce politics to a set of supposedly technical moves and neutral procedures. unfortunately, the latter is the dominant view in the neoliberal hegemonic, as i stated previously. the most important consequence of the agonistic model of democracy for the issue of public space is that this conception challenges the widespread notions that inform most liberal visions, wherein public space is regarded as the terrain where consensus could possibly be reached. for the agonistic model, public spaces are the battlefields where different hegemonic projects are confronted without any possibility of a final reconciliation. in this view, we are not dealing with one single public space. according to the hegemonic approach, public spaces are always plural. the agonistic confrontation takes place in a multiplicity of discursive surfaces. the second important point i want to make is that for the agonistic model, public spaces are the battlefields where different hegemonic projects are confronted without any possibility of a final reconciliation. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 34 m ou ff e while there is no underlying principle of unity, no predetermined centre to this diversity of spaces, there always exist diverse forms of articulation amongst them. we are not faced with the dispersion envisaged by some modernist thinkers. this is, for instance, the big difference between our approach and the one of michel foucault. many parts of our previously mentioned book hegemony and socialist strategy are influenced by foucault, such as the conception of power. but we part company with foucault when he asserts the pure multiplicity of public spaces. we argue, on the contrary, that public spaces are always hegemonically structured. given the fact that hegemony results from the specific articulation of a diversity of spaces, this means that the hegemonic struggle always consists in the attempt to create a different form of articulation. this not only differentiates our view from foucault’s, it is also differentiated from jürgen habermas’s view, who reflected a lot about the political public space. when he envisages a public sphere, habermas presents it as a place where deliberation aiming at the rational consensus takes place. to be sure, habermas accepts that it is improbable that such a consensus could effectively be reached, given the limitation of social life. he therefore presents this consensus, this ideal situation of communication, as a regulative idea. i would argue that this is, though slightly different, fundamentally the same conception. according to the perspective that i am advocating, the impediments to habermas’s ideal speech situation are not empirical. for habermas, we would never be able to reach it, because we will never be able to completely coincide with our rational self, to leave aside all our particularities. the impediments are therefore empirical. to me, however, those impediments are not empirical, they are ontological. and the rational consensus that habermas presents as a regulative idea is, in my view, a conceptual impossibility. my idea of agonistic public space also differs from hannah arendt’s. in my view, the main problem with arendt’s understanding of agonism is, to put it in a nutshell, that it is an agonism without antagonism. arendt puts a great emphasis on plurality and insists that politics deals with the community and reciprocity of human beings which are different from one another. this is essential to her view. but she never acknowledges that this plurality is at the origin of antagonistic conflicts. according to arendt, to think politically is to develop the ability to see things from a multiplicity of perspectives. in a reference to immanuel kant, in her book lectures on kant’s political philosophy, she refers to his idea of enlarged thought.4 for arendt, this idea is a model of political practices, which testifies that her conception of pluralism is in fact inscribed in the horizon of an intersubjective agreement. what arendt looks for in kant’s doctrine 35 isparchitecture.com of aesthetic judgment is in fact a procedure for ascertaining intersubjective agreement in the public space. this is why i will argue that while significant differences in their respective approaches exist, arendt and habermas both end up envisaging the public space as one free from antagonism. both belong to the associative conception of politics, which is distinct from the dissociative conception of politics that i advocate. 3. on artistic practices and the possibility of a critical architecture so far, i have argued that by bringing to the fore the discursive character of the social and the multiplicity of discursive practices through which our world is constructed, the hegemonic approach is particularly fruitful when it comes to apprehending the relation between art and politics. this relation should not be envisaged in terms of two separate constituted fields, art on one side, politics on the other, between which a relation will need to be established. according to this approach there is an aesthetic dimension in the political and a political dimension in art. indeed, from the point of view of the theory of hegemony, artistic and cultural practices play a role in the constitution and the maintenance of a given symbolic order, as well as in challenging this hegemonic order. and this is why artistic and cultural practices necessarily have a political dimension. this is why i have suggested that it is not useful to make a distinction between political and non-political art. i therefore prefer to speak about critical art. identifying the critical to the political implies that all artistic practices that are not critical are not political either. but, as said, there is a political dimension in all forms of art. the importance of the hegemonic approach for critical art is that it highlights the fact that the construction of a hegemony is not limited to the traditional political institutions, but that it also takes place in a multiplicity of spaces, which are usually called it is not useful to make a distinction between political and non-political art. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 36 m ou ff e civil society. this is where, as antonio gramsci has shown, a particular conception of the world is established and a specific understanding of reality is defined—what he calls the common sense. this common sense provides the terrain in which specific forms of subjectivity are constructed. gramsci insists that the domain of culture plays a crucial role there, as it is one of the terrains where common sense is built and subjectivities are created. this hegemonic approach reveals that artistic practices constitute an important terrain for the construction of political identities. it allows us to grasp the decisive role that those practices could also play in the counter-hegemonic struggle, because they contribute to the emergence of new forms of subjectivity. an important dimension of the counterhegemonic struggle is indeed the transformation of the common sense as the space where specific forms of subjectivity are constructed. from this perspective, critical art is constituted by a manifold of artistic practices that are going to contribute to question the dominant hegemony. the objective is a transformation of political identities through the creation of new practices, new language games, that will mobilize affects in a way that allows for the disarticulation of the framework in which current forms of identification are taking place. as such, artistic practices allow other forms of identification to emerge. it is worth indicating that there are different answers to the question of what critical art is. in fact, it is important to acknowledge that not all conceptions of radical politics envisage the criticality of artistic practices in the same way. we can, i would like to argue, roughly distinguish two main strategies to visualize radical politics, one that i have in my book agonistics called ‘engagement with’ and the other ‘desertion from.’5 the second one, which is promoted by thinkers like michael hardt and antonio negri and their followers, reject any engagement with the state and all existing institutions. in their recent work, hardt and negri have moved a bit from that view, but most of their followers have not. the strategy that they advocate is one of exodus, that calls for the desertion of the places of power, which is justified by the claim that under the current condition of cognitive capitalism, exodus is the only form of resistance to the domination of bio-power. desertion should include the institutions of the art world, which they see as totally instrumentalized by the creative industries. the art world has become complicit with capitalism, and thus can no longer provide a site of resistance. against this view of radical politics in terms of exodus, the strategy that the hegemonic approach advocates, is one that, again borrowing a term from gramsci, we call a “war of positions.” it does not consist 37 isparchitecture.com in withdrawing from existing institutions, but by engaging with them in order to bring about a profound transformation in the way they function. this war of positions targets the nodal points around which neoliberal hegemony is established, disarticulating the key discourses and practices through which neoliberal hegemony is sustained and reproduced. it thus consists of the diversity of counter-hegemonic practices and interventions, which operates in a multiplicity of domains: economic, legal, political, and cultural. the domain of culture plays a crucial role in this war of positions, because this is the space where the common sense is established and subjectivities are constructed. critical artistic and cultural practices can contribute to the fostering of an agonistic confrontation by making visible what the dominant consensus tends to obscure and obliterate. this permits challenges to the existing hegemony. i want to insist that this can be done in a diversity of ways, in a multiplicity of interventions and in active engagement with a wide range of institutions in a variety of spaces. there are many terrains in which artistic and cultural practices can unsettle the established common sense and contribute to the emergence of new forms of subjectivity. but what about architecture? can it be critical as well? recognizing the role of cultural artistic practices in the construction of a hegemony contributes to vizualising the role that architectural practices could play in the construction, reproduction, and transformation of a hegemony. the possibility of a critical architecture starts with the acknowledgment that the social is always discursively constructed and that architecture also has a political dimension. however, it is one thing to recognize its political dimension, another to determine whether this political dimension is critical. as i have stated previously, the political does not equate with the critical. once we can recognize the political dimension of architecture, the possibility of a critical architecture starts with the acknowledgment that the social is always discursively constructed and that architecture also has a political dimension. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 38 m ou ff e we can follow different strategies to guide this political dimension. what strategy will then orient us in a critical direction? the strategy that laclau and i advocated in hegemony and socialist strategy, the strategy that i still advocate in my book, for a left populism, is a strategy of critical engagement with institutions in order to transform them.6 this is a matter of both the disarticulation of a given hegemony, as well as the importance of creating something new. a critical approach always consists of a double movement, of disarticulation and rearticulation. it seems to me that this strategy of “engagement with” is particularly suited to critical architectural practices. moreover, i cannot really think of architectural practices that correspond to a strategy of exodus. in architecture, one is always, it seems to me, dealing with presentation, construction, and mediation, and those are precisely the things that the exodus strategy rejects. endnotes 1. this article is a lightly edited transcript of chantal mouffe’s keynote lecture at the 5th biennial conference of the international society of the philosophy of architecture (ispa), held via zoom at monte verita, ascona, switzerland, on july 4th, 2021. 2. henri staten, wittgenstein and derrida (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1986). 3. ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe, hegemony and socialist strategy: towards radical democratic politics (london/new york: verso, 2001). 4. hannah arendt, lectures on kant’s political philosophy, ed. ronald beiner (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1992). 5. chantal mouffe, agonistics. thinking the world politically (london/ new york: verso, 2013). 6. chantal mouffe, for a left populism (london: verso, 2018). there is perhaps no more compelling example of hannah arendt’s “space of appearance” than lina bo bardi’s museum of art in são paulo, masp, designed in 1957 for the assis chateaubriand art collection previously housed in an old downtown building. although the work of the italian émigré architect lina bo bardi was always independent of the so-called paulista school, the audaciously monumental structure of her museum, suspended clear of the ground from two deep, long span reinforced concrete beams resting on four equally gigantic reinforced concrete piers, served to create a partially covered terrace, opening off the avenida paulista and overlooking the verdant landscape of trianon park. ever since its completion in 1968 which happened to coincide with the worldwide student revolt, this space has served as the ultimate paulista symbolic site for spontaneous political demonstrations. as an arendtian cultural nexus with a similar political potential bo bardi’s museum will be matched at virtually the same time by a toplit, equally monumental core incorporated into the faculty of architecture and urbanism built on the campus of são paulo university to designs of the architect joão vilanova artigas, between 1959 and 1961. the result, in both instances was the creation of a res publica that corresponded, however inadvertently, to arendt’s concept of “the space of appearance,” as first defined by her under the rubric work in her magnum opus the human condition of 1958: the manmade world of things, the human artifice erected by homo faber, becomes a home the space of appearance within the megalopolis. architectural culturepolitics of são paulo 1957-2017 kenneth frampton ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 40 fr a m pt on for immortal men, stability of which will endure and outlast the everchanging movement of their lives and actions, only insomuch as it transcends the sheer functionalism of things produced for consumption and the sheer utility of objects produced for use. life in its nonbiological sense, the span of time each man has between birth and death, manifests itself in action and speech…if the animal laborans needs the help of the homo faber to ease his labor and remove his pain, and if mortals need his help to erect a home on earth, acting and speaking men need the help of homo faber in his highest capacity, that is the help of artists, of poets and historiographers, of monument-builders or writers, because without them the only product of their activity, the story they enact and tell, would not survive at all. in order to be what the world is always meant to be, home for men during their life on earth, the human artifice must be a place fit for action and speech, for activities not only entirely useless for the necessities of life but of an entirely different nature from the manifold activities of fabrication by which the world itself and all things in it are produced.1 although arendt never alludes to the megalopolis per se, which in any case in the late 50’s had yet to be acknowledged this is the “placeless” landscape she foresees in the human condition when, in the fifth chapter, she defines the “space of appearance” in the following terms: the space of appearance comes into being whenever men are gathered together in a manner of speech and action and therefore precedes all formal constitution of the public realm…only where potentialities of action are always present can power remain with them and the foundation of cities which, as city states have remained paradigmatic for all western political organization is therefore the most important prerequisite for power…power preserves the public realm and the space of appearance and as such it is the life blood of the human artifice… without being talked about by men and without housing them, the world would not be a human artifice but a heap of unrelated things to which each isolated individual was free to add one more object… without the enduring permanence of the human artifice there cannot be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after…2 and it is also much the same megapolitan landscape she has in mind when in her later critique of consumerism, she writes: 41 isparchitecture.com in our need for more and more rapid replacement of worldly things around us we can no longer afford to use them, to respect and preserve their inherent durability, we must consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the good things of nature which spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man’s metabolism with nature. it is as though we had forced open the distinguishing boundaries which protected the world, the human artifice, from nature, the biological processes which goes on in its very midst as well as the natural cyclical processes which surround it delivering and abandoning to them the always threatened stability of the human world.3 in the last chapter of the human condition, entitled the ‘vita activa and the modern age,’ arendt touches on the socio-economic consequences of the mass ownership of the car without which the demise of the city and the emergence of the megalopolis would not have been possible. if, in concluding, we return once more to the archimedian point and apply it, as kafka warned us not to do, to man himself and to what he is doing to this earth, it at once becomes manifest that all of his activities, watched from a sufficiently removed vantage point in the universe, would appear not as activities of any kind but as processes, so that as a scientist recently put it, modern motorization would appear like a process of biological mutation which human bodies gradually begin to be covered by shells of steel. for the watcher from the universe, this mutation would be no more or less mysterious than the mutation which now goes on before our eyes in those small living organisms which we fought with antibiotics and which mysteriously have developed new strains to resist us…we live although arendt never alludes to the megalopolis, this is surely the placeless landscape she foresees in the human condition. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 42 fr a m pt on in this society as though we were as far removed from our own human existence as we are from the infinitely small and the infinitely large which, even if they could be perceived by the finest instruments, are too far away from us to be experienced.4 the arendtian ideal of the city-state was not only predicated on the remote model of the ancient greek polis but also on the or worker’s councils that emerged spontaneously in the aftermath of the russian revolution of 1917, only to be instantly suppressed by the triumphant bolsheviks party. arendt’s other example of council formation were the groups formed during the hungarian revolt of 1956, which she equally admired and which were also summarily suppressed. perhaps no one has understood arendt’s concept of direct democracy better than shmuel lederman in his study hannah arendt and participatory democracy of 2019 wherein he wrote: ultimately, the different way arendt conceptualized the meaning and the potential of the councils emanated not so much from historical idiosyncrasies as from the different ontological and epistemological foundations of her political thought namely from the way she “politicized” german existentialism and used heidegger’s phenomenological method to offer a strikingly original analysis of the experience of action and speech in the public sphere.5 later, lederman cites two recent examples of participatory democracy: first, the indian state of kerala, which, had, in the past, been under a democratically elected communist government and second, the city of porto alegre in the south of brazil. of this last lederman writes: … in the spirit of the council tradition, participatory budgeting in puerta alegre continually challenged the very structure of hegemonic representative democracy…participatory institutions now play a role channeling demands emerging from organized communities;…the blurring between state and society occurs as government officials and community leaders now occupy a space within state institutions…(in recent years 100,000 residents have taken part) in a process prioritizing public works, such as street paving, the laying of water and sewerage lines, the building of new schools and hospitals and so on.6 as the title of this essay intimates, “spaces of appearance,” in a cultural if not an overtly political sense, have intermittently appeared over the 43 isparchitecture.com years within the exceptionally vast and placeless megalopolis of são paulo. such spaces have been an intrinsic part of the urban culture of são paulo since the foundation of the sesc organization (the serviço social do comércio; en: social service of commerce) in 1945, which was conceived from the outset as providing a certain sector of workers with beneficial social, recreational and cultural facilities. the socio-cultural agenda of this welfare provision was first given an architectural formulation in the so-called sesc pompeia designed by lina bo bardi in 1977, in collaboration with marcelo ferraz. this work entailed the conversion of a disused, single story factory in the center of the city into a complex combining multiple facilities, including an 800-seat restaurant, a reading room, a library, a 750-seat theatre and a dental clinic. bo bardi would add to this same complex a new multi-story sports center, housing among other facilities a gymnasium and indoor swimming pool. this new addition was built out of exposed, in situ reinforced concrete in manner of le corbusier’s bêton brut. its multistory, silo-like form, linked by ramps to a concrete access tower, was given an industrial character so as to appear as if it had always existed in relation to the original single-story, monitor-lit factory. the interstitial space between the two was landscaped in such a way as to provide a nominal, artificial “beach” in which users could sun bathe. this achievement was echoed in 2017 by the realization of another sesc complex within the são paulo megalopolis; the so-called sesc 24 de maio built to the designs of the late paulista architect paulo mendes da rocha, who collaborated with one of his former pupils, maria moreira, a founding partner in the practice, mmbb. here again we have the of sesc commissioning the re-use of an existing structure, this time a disused department store which since it was largely ruined had to be extensively rebuilt. apart from providing the usual mix of sesc amenities, the entire work was predicated on the “spaces of appearance,” in a cultural if not an overtly political sense, have been an intrinsic part of the urban culture of são paulo since the foundation of the sesc organization in 1945. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 44 fr a m pt on heroic idea of building a large swimming pool on top of an existing 13-story structure. this daring engineering concept was predicated on supporting the pool and the rest of the building on four gigantic reinforced concrete columns, each measuring 1.2 meters in diameter. these four columns were centered on the four corners of a square, set within the virtual square of the original building with a continuous pedestrian access ramp rising up to one side of the column grid. the pool on the roof was surely a manifest improvement on the narrow “urban beach” which had been a key feature in the sesc pompeia. the raison d’etre behind this seemingly counter-intuitive decision to place the heavy weight of the pool at the top of the building would be accounted for by the architect in the following: the pool choses its place not the architect. a sunny, open pool, despite the winter, is completely different from a closed, heated pool. my image is copacabana, leblon, ipanema!7 in a conversation with the chilean architect enrique walker in 2018, mendes da rocha will make the ideological stratagem of the paulista school of architecture explicit, in his response to walker’s question as to the political implications of the sesc 24 de maio, when he remarked: every project is a political statement. the project idea is one of projection of the future. so, the intention is to imagine what we should be, what we can be. the design is not simply a matter of architecture…generally speaking, society throughout the world is exclusive, in principle. it always protects itself from free public action: these are the famous gated communities, the buildings with security. we made this building open to public use as much as possible. and sesc comes into that as well, which tells us something about sesc policies. so, everything we do has a political value; there is a political essence in the idea of decision. and the new occupation of an existing building is part of a very interesting policy linked to the economy. you are better off reusing buildings rather than discarding them … every construction, every action of ours has value, a political essence, which must be read between the lines of what is there…in architecture in particular, the first thing it entails is to seduce others so that they can see the dimensions of what, despite the circumstances we must do.8 among the architects practicing in são paulo over the last half of the 20th century there has perhaps been no figure who has been more aware of the profound challenges posed by the são paulo megalopolis, now covering a 45 isparchitecture.com million square kilometers with a population of 30 million people, than paulo mendes da rocha. as he put it at an earlier moment when the population stood at 20 million: “it would have better to have built ten cities of 2 million each.” for mendes da rocha the megalopolis has been a challenge that can only be significantly addressed by creating public spaces, within which to resist the overwhelmingly disjunctive “non-place” of the megalopolis, not only in terms of culture-politics but also psychologically. hence his penchant for creating microcosmic public realms such as his poupa tempo, the so-called “time-saving” building realized in the center of the city in 2008. the swiss architect annette spiro’s appraisal of this work encapsulates the ennobling quality of this mutual interface between the general public and the municipality; a building that in effect serves as a range of offices for the granting of licenses and the payment of rates, taxes and fees, etc. in her view: “what could have easily been a labyrinth of bureaucracy is exactly the opposite; a singular 300-meter-long space, a bridge, an airy hall, an elongated public square…by virtue of one grand gesture, urbanistic, functional and spatial intentions are cogently satisfied.”9 in this one work one is able to appreciate fully the underlying ideology of the são paulo school of architecture as this was initially envisaged by the architect, joão vilanova artigas and the historian-theorist, flavio motta; that is to say the accommodation of socio-cultural and politically progressive programs within the fabric of tectonically articulated, monumental form. it is this that surely accounts for mendes da rocha’s assertion that engineering and architecture should be one and the same, although he would be the first to concede that this tectonic ethos is not, in and of itself, able to serve as an adequate point of departure before the dystopic fragmentation of the megalopolis for, as he would put it: “a city’s memory is not a continuous accumulation of eternities. it can only be preserved every project is a political statement. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 46 fr a m pt on in its historical discontinuity. we have to have the courage to face this inevitable discontinuity and turn it into stimulus.”10 in this regard mendes da rocha’s capacity to imagine and create spaces of public appearance would be particularly challenged in 2000 when he received from both rio de janeiro and paris separate commissions to design sports facilities as part of their rival bids to host the olympic games of 2008. what is significant about these two quite different proposals, with the one much more extensive and ambitious than the other, is that they were both designed for the worldwide megalopoli, i.e. for universal placelessness just as prevalent in the urbanistic chaos surrounding the hausmannian core of paris, as it is throughout the vast extent of the são paulo megalopolis and where the one would consist of a number of different interventions on multiple sites, the other consisted of a single large stadium related to a pre-existing canal and podium of smaller stadia accommodating various specialized sports, i.e. the so-called “sports boulevard.” what mendes da rocha had to say about his various proposals for the urbanized region of são paulo emphasizes the potential opportunity provided by the games as an incentive for the reconstruction of city form. as he would write of his piecemeal project of repairing the degradation of megalopolitan fabric around são paulo: … it proposes to intervene in places that today, despite their effective urban structuring are nonetheless degraded, as happens in all the world’s dynamic cities, with railway stations, unwanted polluted waterways and unexpected empty lots. thus, the proposal envisages the urbanization of abandoned areas, weaving houses, with new leisure, health and education facilities right into the existing urban fabric.11 there are perhaps no two works from the middle of the last century having more disparate implications than hannah arendt’s the human condition of 1958 and jean gottman’s megalopolis of 1962 for while arendt’s concept of “the space of appearance” may be seen in retrospect as being of importance for the practice of architecture, gottman’s relevance resided in the fact that he was the first to recognize that the urbanized region was already an emergent and universal condition. this, is ever more the case today as we veer towards the urbanization of 75% of world’s population by 2050, according to the three-volume study the endless city, published by the london school of economics in 2007. in this regard, it may well be that brazil in general and são paulo in particular proffer a range of socio-cultural interventions that are of particular pertinence today given the inevitable wholesale urbanization of the planet. i have in mind in the first instance 47 isparchitecture.com the extraordinary capacity of paulista municipality to build a large number of school-cum-community centers for the poorest sectors of society. there is surely no school building program of comparable stature and speed of realization anywhere else in the world today. this exceptional achievement suggests that even under globalized capitalism there is much to be said for the potential of the city state or the urbanized region to overcome the political ‘nonplace’ of the megalopolis in its most alienated form. this much seems to be implied by chantal mouffe’s recent thesis of agonistics, first published in 2013 as a political stratagem to overcome the current impasse of representational democracy. in this she cites with approval the political philosophy of the italian intellectual, massimo cacciari, who having served twice as the mayor of venice, recommends a future policy in which he advocates “federation from the bottom” as opposed to the current union of european nation states which although they derive from representational democracies, are nonetheless subject to the top-down regulatory power of the european union. in her appraisal of cacciari’s thesis, mouffe writes: what cacciari advocates can be conceived as a type of federal union in which the component units would not be limited to nation states and in which the regions would also play an important role. from the point of view of an agnostic model for europe, i find particularly interesting his claim that such a union would manifest a form of autonomy exercised in systems which are integrated in a conflictive mode, and that it would combine solidarity and competition. incorporating cacciari’s proposals, we could imagine a european union that would not only be a demio-cracy composed of nation states, but one where there would be a multiplicity of different kinds of demio, where democracy could be exercised at different levels and in a it is of the utmost importance that the architect should have conceived of his intervention in terms of giving rise to auditoria and their attendant “spaces of appearance” without which architecture, has no socio-political cultural significance. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 48 fr a m pt on multiplicity of ways. such a view recognizes and articulates different forms of collective identities and their new modes of co-operation.12 of equal consequence as “spaces of appearance” has been the exemplary policy pursued by the city during the first decade of the 21st century wherein it would realize an extensive program of school building throughout the farflung periphery of the city, situating these schools in the midst of center-less favelas, that is in the heart of spontaneous, self-built housing settlements, dating back from the 60’s, as they are to be found throughout the fringes of the city. twenty-one such schools were built by the city under the mayoralty of marta suplicy who was affiliated with lula da silva worker’s party during his first presidency, 2003-2010. since then another twentyfive schools-cum-community centers have been built under the rubric of centros educacionais unificados (en: unified educational centers) or ceus. these large complexes incorporate a wide range of supplementary social services including theatres, cinemas, sports facilities, nursery schools, kindergartens, vocational high schools, dance halls, swimming pools, clinics, etc. ceus were also conceived as accommodating university extension courses which would be coordinated by the federal government. largely designed by the architect’s department of municipality under the leadership of alexandre delijacov, andré takia and wanderley ariza, these educational complexes now distributed throughout the periphery of the city constitute potential “spaces of appearance” in a political sense. all of this incorporates, in so many respects, the essence of paulista architectural culture-politics made manifest throughout the conurbation, notwithstanding the traumatic political changes to which brazil has been subjected over the past seven decades. in this regard it is significant when it comes to the megalopolitan proliferation of free-standing objects it is significant that mendes da rocha invariably worked at two different scales; on the one hand, at the scale of microcosmic intervention, such as his poupa tempo building or his arc of the patriarch of 2007 and, on the other, at the continental scale of the territory at large. a measure of this was evoked by mendes da rocha in his 1980 proposal for the regularization of the bay of montevideo in uruguay of which he wrote: the straightened lengths of the bay front are focused on the water, and provide new recreation areas in the form of gardens, plazas, theatres, cinemas, cafes, restaurants. transformed into a city square on water, 3 km across between cerrito hill and the harbor and lying between different city districts and centers, the bay bustles with light passenger traffic and makes a lively and sophisticated impression. at a remote 49 isparchitecture.com and delightfully situated point in the bay a tiny island was transformed into a theatre, after the manner of the venetians. perhaps one night an inexpressibly haunting melody from its shores will linger over the city. who knows it would be even like villa-lobos’s, floresta do amazonas.13 however improbable and costly such a modification would have been, it would have afforded a new territorial datum capable of unifying the placeless megalopolis surrounding the bay of montevideo throughout its perimeter. it is of the utmost importance that the architect should have conceived of his intervention in terms of giving rise to auditoria and their attendant “spaces of appearance” without which architecture, as the most material of the arts, has no socio-political cultural significance. endnotes 1. hannah arendt, the human condition (second edition), (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 173-174. 2. ibid., 199-200. 3. ibid., 125,126. 4. ibid., 322, 323. 5. shmuel lederman, hannah arendt and participatory democracy. a peoples utopia (cham, palgrave macmillan, 2019), 185. 6. ibid., 200. 7. andres lepak and daniel talesnik, access for all. são paulo’s architectural infrastructures (zurich: park books, 2019), 189. 8. lepak and talesnik, access for all, 193. 9. annette spiro, paulo mendes da rocha. works and projects (zurich: niggli, 2002), 27. 10. rosa artigas, paulo mendez da rocha, 50 years, (new york: rizzoli, 2007) 24. 11. ibid., 85. 12. chantal mouffe, agnostics (london: verso, 2013), 53. 13. spiro, paulo mendes da rocha, 162. disneyland paris (2021) the world of the shopping mall has become a template for the whole world, margaret crawford, a professor of architecture and urban design and director of the department of urban design at berkeley, concluded in her 1992 contribution to variations on a theme park.1 the book, edited by the architect michael sorkin, offers a collection of alarming articles, investigating how commercial interests, economic principles, and consumerist perspectives shape contemporary cities. sorkin presents it apocalyptically: ‘the end of public space.’ as he announces in his introduction: this is an alarming perspective, as public space is directly related to the issue of democracy, the interaction, the possibility of protests, the proximity of otherness, the existence of fringes.2 crawford’s opening article examines the development and features of malls and mall life. her concluding argument is made up out of the observation that also existing cities and their downtowns, even such classical and medieval cities as florence and rouen, as well as public or cultural venues, like museums, transform according to mall logics. the conclusion fits well in the book, as it underlines the narrative of loss. what if the whole world transforms along the lines of mall principles? crawford is amongst the rare thinkers that are able to publicly rethink and criticize the own conclusions. a few years after her contribution to variations on a theme park, she published an article in the journal of architectural education wherein she clearly distances herself from the narrative of loss which had influenced her work previously. in “contesting the public realm: struggles over public space in los angeles” she writes that this idea of a site of struggle. an interview with margaret crawford hans teerds ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 52 te er ds loss is “derived from extremely narrow and normative definitions of both public and space,” while, “the meaning of concepts such as public, space, democracy, and citizenship are continually being redefined in practice through lived experience.”3 in the article she not only propels to approach consumerist spaces less pessimistically, but also writes about other practices of consumption less defined by the principles of capitalism, and closer to an everyday occupation of public life, such as street vending. this perspective she makes even more clear in the important book everyday urbanism, which she edited together with john chase and john kaliski.4 her own contribution to this book, the article “blurring the boundaries,” underlines how everyday spaces are still spaces of struggle, occupation, adaptation, and appropriation.5 as such these spaces still raise important political questions about both citizenship and economic participation. this perspective thus is much more optimistic about the vitality of public space as stage of the political dimension of the world. from “contesting the public realm” onwards, the work of crawford is clearly based on new insight, a new perception of the world which is more hopeful and less pessimistic. in this the following interview, i questioned crawford on this moment of change in her thinking: how does she look back on her contribution to variations on a theme park, why did she change her mind, and how does she read the situation of public space today? mc: the tone of my original article was hugely influenced by michael sorkin. when i was asked to contribute, the working title of the book was variations on a theme park: scenes from the new american city. this was a very non-judgmental title, a survey of what was happening in the american urban landscape. later, the subtitle was changed to the end of public space, a title that did not sit well with me. however, michael encouraged every contributor to have a pessimistic and even a slightly apocalyptic take on what we were investigating. there were two important philosophers who were influencing the debate at the time: jean baudrillard, with his concept of hyperreality, and jürgen habermas, with his idea of the loss of the public sphere. in the article i contributed to the volume, public space does not play an important part. the real contribution of that article to contemporary discourse is the discussion of the financing and organization of mall development. while preparing the article, i went to many shopping malls, pretty much nonstop, for several months. it was at the high point of shopping mall development in the united states and canada, the early nineties were a prosperous decade of consumption in the us. visiting all these 53 isparchitecture.com malls definitely shaped my perception, as well as my conclusion that the mall had conquered the entire world. once you get engaged in this narrative of loss, you don’t see signs that something else is happening. lots of changes were lurking slightly under the surface, and i didn’t see them. but what i recognized in that narrative is that the mall concept, in which scripting and theming played an important role, was also expanding beyond the mall, to other domains of commercial and cultural life. scripting and theming, for instance, became part of the design of museums and airports too. the concern about these mechanisms applied to public space and cultural venues is a concern about authenticity and authentic experiences. but once you start thinking about what is real and what is fantasy, the entire concept of authenticity vanishes. it is actually a moral response, an upper-middle-class concern that they used to differentiate themselves as informed and aware people who don’t go to malls and spurn disneyland, from the rest of the populace, who enjoy them. it is an apparently leftist critique that actually serves to maintain class distinctions. i now read my contribution to variations on a theme park as a response to a particular moment in time, influenced by a particular kind of leftist alarm, a moral panic about what was going on in the built environment. it was written in an ambience linked to inexorable narratives of consumerism, exploding marketing and a constantly expanding capitalism. in this situation, it is assumed that there is nothing you can do, except write critical articles. but soon after my article, the circumstances changed. slowly but slightly, still continuing until today, many malls have become obsolete and have been demolished. new malls are rarely being built. over the past decade, this change has certainly been propelled with the increase of online shopping. however, this trend also has led to a paradoxical new appreciation of the mall, because many people now go to malls more for public interaction rather the actual meaning of the relationship between consumption and public life seems to be changing dramatically. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 54 te er ds than to actually buy something. physical shopping can be understood as a positive force shaping public space, as compared to online shopping from home. so, the actual meaning of the relationship between consumption and public life seems to be changing dramatically. but this does not mean that i am less concerned about the privatization of public space. there are still urban spaces being developed and built where commerce dominates public space. take for instance the hudson yards in new york, or in los angeles, the americana at brand, which are, i would argue, a new typology of shopping mall: open air shopping spaces with housing above the shops. it differs from historic downtown districts or the medieval centers of cities in europe, where people also lived (and still live) above shops in shopping streets. but where these streets are part and parcel of a continuous urban public space, the urban fabric, these new spaces are detached from the surrounding urban spaces. as such, these spaces still follow the mall typology. the residents of the apartments thus are really living within the confines of the shopping mall. their public space is totally commercialized. how do they experience these spaces, i wonder? do they accept it as their own town square? this new typology does show that privatization has not stopped at all. in fact, hudson yards is an extreme example of privatization. ht: this example of the new mall typology shows that the concern about the totalizing impact of commercialization on public space is still valid and urgent. nevertheless, you also maintain that the mall can actually provide a public space, which is meaningful for particular groups in society. how did you change your view upon malls? and how did that also urge you to examine public life and commercial activities in actual streets, outside malls? mc: there were several reasons. one was a critique of my mall article by philosopher marshall berman. he simply said: ‘she’s never been shopping.’ that was not true at all! as i visited malls for professional reasons, i also enjoyed them as a shopper. every time i went to a mall, i came out with a bag in my hand. berman’s critique showed me that my allegedly objective analysis actually discounted my own experience in malls. this led me to think more about different mall experiences. i also read feminist political philosophers, such as nancy fraser. her critique of habermas’s idea of the public sphere emphasizes the existence of multiple publics and the impossibility of a single all-embracing ‘public.’6 this leads to the idea that there is no universal public space, but many publics and many spaces. i realized that malls are different for different groups. some offer a safe space for mothers with children and others are great hangouts for teenagers. 55 isparchitecture.com security and safety are issues of great concern to these groups. the universal, male-oriented concept of public space that is the dominant perspective in variations on a theme park, overlooks and dismisses this important dimension of malls. it also became clear to me that that mall-life cannot be reduced to just consuming. malls offer many different types of publicness. i understood that part of the problem with my previous reading of mall life was the very modernist dichotomy or binary between public and private. but there are many gradations of publicness and privateness. if you accept this spectrum, you start to see how the mall provides a quasi-public space. it has dimensions of publicness, as well as of privateness. the moment you accept the mall as quasi-public space, you can also start to recognize similar quasi-public spaces in the city, outside the mall. right across the street from my house in hollywood at the time, there were people putting rugs on chain link fences and selling them to drivers passing by. this was a very different kind of commerce. it demonstrated very clearly that public space had not ended at all. the problem was too narrow definitions of both public and space. in the meantime, i also started to read french philosophers and theorists, like henri lefebvre, with his formulation of ‘the right to the city’. he believed that ‘everyday life’ was a crucial lens for understanding society. my reading of his work was extremely selective, emphasizing only the positive part and ignoring the rest. but what i saw out there in the city of los angeles was an amazing array of everyday practices. immigrants would take over an empty parking lot after people went home at night, set out tables with checkered tablecloths to serve food like it was their home. i saw how these practices were also political struggles. for example, the day laborers, who stand on the street outside home depot and brico stores. these laborers, mostly mexican and central american immigrants, wait there are many gradations of publicness and privateness. if you accept this spectrum, you start to see how the mall provides a quasipublic space. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 56 te er ds there to be picked up for work. home depot tried to get rid of them, but due to an enormous organizing effort, the jornaleros acquired the right to be there. they carried signs stating ‘the right to work is a human right.’ the stores even had to provide bathrooms and other services for them. for me, this was extremely positive: it showed me that human agency is still possible, and that there are many different politics of public space. at the same time, although there were street vendors everywhere, street vending was still illegal. for the vendors, this meant a constant threat that the police could easily shut them down and take their goods. only two years ago, due to an enormous political effort and organization, which took 30 years, they finally acquired the right to street vending in los angeles! ht: how do you understand this political struggle over the right to street vending with regard to the issue of public space? mc: this, for me, is a clear example of what you can call ‘the right to public space’. this right must include, for me, the right to use public space as an economic space. this goes from the panhandler, who is conducting an economic transaction, to the day laborers standing on the street and selling their labor to vendors. i therefore would describe public space not as a static entity. it is a continuous struggle between different publics and groups, different practices and occupations. this is not something to erase, but rather something to embrace. lately, i have been doing research in china on public space as well. in this totally different context, i recognize the same struggles as in the u.s. i focused on the unique condition of villages in the pearl river delta. these villages are very interesting because they are a bounded urban black lives matter plaza, washington dc (2020) 57 isparchitecture.com type regulated by the government. this condition originates from land rights that mao gave rural villages. as a result, the inhabitants of these villages are the only people in china who can elect their own village leaders and who can build their own houses. they are the only people who can create and control their physical space, although within certain limits. these residents thus have a surprising amount of agency. as you can imagine, this situation results in a contested condition. in these villages, you see a continuous struggle between the government and the people. the government is trying to control the villages and their residents, and impose very stringent regulations on public space. but the people are endlessly inventive in trying to get around those regulations. the kind of interaction between control and evasion of control is fascinating. ht: what are the important struggles over public space today in the united states? mc: most important is the struggle to be different in public. a concentrated group of african americans or latinos in public space is perceived as a threat, while a gathering of white people is celebrated. take for instance the case of a park in oakland around lake merritt. it has become very controversial because numbers of african americans assembled there to barbecue. in a notorious case, a white woman called in to complain that black people were barbecuing. it became a very heated environment, as more and more african americans purposefully came there to claim the space. the situation went on for several months until the city shut it down. such struggles are going on everywhere, all the time. but this particular struggle has changed in an even more dramatic way in the past decade. some groups in our society are denied the right to be in public space, as the killing of trayvon martin, george floyd and many other black people demonstrates. to be in the street as an african american means the right to public space must include the right to use public space as an economic space. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 58 te er ds risking your life. that is the largest challenge to public space in the united states. it is literally a life-or-death issue. african american men, but also women, have not achieved the right to public space, even though the state guarantees it legally. therefore, i consider the black lives matter movement, to be the most important public space developments in the last 10 years. ht: how does these struggles over public space and societal injustices relate to other pressing urban developments, the change of cities through suburbanization, gentrification and segregation? mc: many of these struggles and killings take place in suburban environments or on the highway. trayvon martin was killed in stanford, florida, in a suburban gated community. michael brown was killed in fergusson, missouri, also a suburb. many central cities have been emptied out of african americans and latinos, from places that we might call ghettos, to better housing conditions in suburban locations. simultaneously, central cities have become largely places for wealthier white people. the central city is no longer the central site of struggle over public space. it has become a more exclusive, controlled, and surveilled space. instead, struggles over public space can happen anywhere, in any part of the city or outside it. ht: architecture is often understood as an instrument to mediate between different, conflicting and opposing interests. but if public space is, essentially, a space characterized by struggle, mediating seems not to be lafayette square park, oakland ca, walter hood, landscape architect (1999) 59 isparchitecture.com the proper intervention. how do you understand the agency of architecture with respect to public space? mc: that is an interesting question. one of the goals of everyday urbanism was to point out the physical qualities of public space, and ways of understanding time and space that could actually be useful for designers. my two co-editors, john cage and john kaliski, were both professional urban designers, and they really wanted to link our findings to practice. we formulated what was later borrowed by “tactical urbanism”—the idea that time is as important as space. things can happen in one place at a certain time. but this does not mean that it recurs. my own contribution to the book focused on the physical and experiential qualities of domesticity found in many everyday spaces in los angeles. the qualities of ordinary materials, their softness, ornamentation, and human scale can all contribute to a sense of domesticity in public. this often happens as vendors offer food in homelike settings. in such moments the quality of materials and creative practices support one another, all ideas that designers can use to design public spaces. this is obviously a completely different approach than the designs and theories of someone like jan gehl, who, to me, represents what i would call ‘feel good white person urbanism.’ ht: what do you mean by ‘white person urbanism’? mc: gehl designs the same copenhagen public spaces all over the world, with the same bicycle paths, sidewalk cafes, and pedestrianized streets. he never takes on the issues that are really at stake, such as rights, exclusion or street livelihoods. instead, his designs deal with highly conventional notions of public space as simply pleasurable, satisfying a universal public. along with organizations such as the project for public space, who are also allegedly devoted to public space, he neglects the most serious issues of public space. they approach public african american men, but also women, have not achieved the right to public space, even though the state guarantees it legally. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 60 te er ds space from a highly generic professional perspective. another professional approach might be architects working for a municipality. these designers face other difficulties, with competing demands from different groups of citizens. however, since the municipal architects are very familiar with the places and the publics where they work, they can potentially create new and distinctive public spaces in diverse circumstances. this depends on the designer avoiding already codified ideas and principles, and understanding the users and their concerns. my colleague at berkeley, walter hood, who is a landscape architect, only starts designing parks after carefully observing the neighborhood, aiming to understand what is going on. for an assignment redesigning a park in oakland, he observed that the existing park was used by older men, who stayed during the day and drank together. he decided not to edit that out in his park design. architects, i would argue, necessarily need a similar attentiveness to existing use, to the publics that are already there. but at the same time, you also have to understand that these uses and publics change over time. time is a very important dimension of space. designers also need to be pay attention to circumstances. their designs need to be conditional and circumstantial, and to leave room for occupation and improvisation. most parks in the united states usually have an incredible list of the things you can’t do there, and drinking is usually at the top of it. such lists question the very publicness of these spaces. is this space really public? no! but ultimate publicness does not exist. there are always different kinds of exclusions and restrictions. paradoxically, some private lafayette square park, oakland ca, walter hood, landscape architect (1999) 61 isparchitecture.com spaces are more public than are formal public (in the sense of being owned by the state) spaces. but is this what we mean when we discuss public space? should it be ‘state-owned’? or does ‘public’ mean: accommodating groups of publics? i would argue that to pin the idea of public space down to particular circumstances is a slippery idea. a fixed definition would deny the various struggles over public space, the changing publics, and the assertion of different kinds of rights over the space. all these instances are related to the specificity of the location of a park or square, and what publics make use of it. who owns the space, who can appropriate it, and who has a say? these are the questions to be understood and addressed. however, coming back to your question on what architecture can do, it is hard for designers to mediate between the claims of different publics. i would argue that they should not aim to please everybody. for me, that means acknowledging the issue of struggle. public space is an incredibly complicated issue, since it is constantly changing and contested. my goal in teaching has been to sensitize architects to these challenges, to observe, to understand who is using these spaces, and what they are doing. public spaces are meant for particular publics. nevertheless, we cannot choreograph how and if this public adopts the space. that is up to the public itself. but one of the problems we have in the united states is that architecture is largely a very un-diverse profession. walter hood and many other designers are starting to rethink what public space design can be. their projects, in the era of black lives matter, are reshaping the design profession’s approach to designed public space. so public space has not ended at all! it is always renewing itself, and will continue to do so in the future. endnotes 1. margaret crawford, ‘the world in a shopping mall’, in: michael sorkin (ed.), variations on a ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 62 te er ds theme park. the new american city and the end of public space (new york: hill and wang, 1992). 2. michael sorkin, ‘introduction’, in: michael sorkin (ed.), variations on a theme park. the new american city and the end of public space (new york: hill and wang, 1992), xv. 3. margaret crawford, ‘contesting the public realm: struggles over public space in los angeles’, in: journal of architectural education, vol. 49, no. 1 (sep., 1995), 4. 4. john chase, margeret crawford, john kaliski (eds.), everyday urbanism (new york: the monacelli press, 1999). 5. a clear instance of the political dimension was shown in the rodney king riots in los angeles, which happened shortly after the publication of variations of a theme park in 1992. margaret crawford, ‘blurring the boundaries. public space and private life’, in: john chase, margeret crawford, john kaliski (eds.), everyday urbanism (new york: the monacelli press, 1999), 28. 6. see for instance nancy fraser, ‘rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy’, in: craig calhoun (ed.), habermas and the public sphere. (cambridge mass.: mit press, 1992). introduction. why a right to the city? before there were cities, it is hardly likely that anyone ever expressed the thought that they have a right to one; and in the roughly six-thousand-year history of urban environments, no such idea of a right to the city was formulated until the french marxist sociologist henri lefebvre proposed just this, in 1968. and when lefebvre did so, this was in energetic but rather vague fashion, as much a rallying cry for the disaffected and marginalized as the expression of a clear-cut moral or legal concept on which to base detailed social design or change. vague or not, lefebvre’s proposal found great favor among urban planners, international civil servants, public advocates, and others—somewhat independent of political or economic bent. what is the attraction—why do some believe that there is a right to the city? in what follows, i sketch a version of the right to the city (rttc) that i take to be (a) feasible, (b) generic, and so (c) broadly amenable to many of its adherents; further, i suggest how it is that this entails special sorts of responsibilities or obligations for architects and others tending to our built environment and the spaces—especially public space—so structured and defined. along the way, i provide a brief account of some historical motivations for embracing the right to the city, as well as reasons for endorsing my generic account. for the moment, i offer the quick suggestion that typical reasons for supporting a right to the city are grounded in traditional rights considerations: for one, benefits of urban life point to a positive architectural responsibilities and the right to a city saul fisher ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 64 fi sh er right, along the lines of an entitlement; and for another, dangers and impediments to life—and quality of life—in the city point to a negative right, along the lines of freedoms from harm and liberties to voluntary engagements. how all this has a particularly urban focus and character, and how such a right or rights translate into specifically architectural responsibilities, depends at least in part on the sorts of things cities are and how they are constituted, or so i will argue. i begin, though, with a set of ground rules for any putative right to the city, basic principles as such one should uphold and not violate. 1. right to the city: initial parameters, historical background, and a proposal a. assumptions. i start with a small set of parametric assumptions about what a right to the city should look like, which thereby provide ground rules for crafting such a right. i take these assumptions as more or less self-evident or, at least, as relatively obvious candidate parameters. the good or the best city. first, the right to the city is a right to a particular range of possible cities with desirable or requisite characteristics. a right to a city which guaranteed no more than an urban hellscape would be useless, cynical ‘right.’ note that this suggests that rttc is, broadly speaking, an entitlement or claims right, where the positive good is a city that, for those with the rights to it—presumably its citizens—is in the balance a place more good than bad to live and work in. a further variation in this direction is to posit a rttc that guarantees the best possible version of whatever city to which the right pertains.1 communal. second, rttc is a community-focused, publicly oriented right, which individuals hold but as pertains to their current or prospective group membership qua urban citizens.2 it’s unclear that hermits, survivalists, rural dwellers, and exurbanites have rttc; and the case of suburbanites is marginal, an intriguing case given their symbiotic relationship with the city.3 in short, rttc is a right attaching to people who live in cities, hence live together in densely-populated communities. given a communal orientation, rttc should likely reflect historical, heritage, cultural and emotional motivations and stakes of the groups in question, with corresponding entitlements. as i argue, however, positing group claims rights does not entail all and only group obligations; further, the optimal way to meet such claims may not be in the aggregate, that is, not by the city as a whole entity but through the actions and choices of its parts and constituent members.4 65 isparchitecture.com future-facing. third, rttc is forwardlooking. any rights such as we claim are not necessarily—and not limited to—the city as it exists now, but as it will exist in the future. this is partly a function of the imperfections of cities and a rttc claim on the best possible city. but it’s also a reflection of the city’s dynamic character— its shifting and growing over time, and becoming more and less accessible, more and less capable of housing or otherwise serving its citizens, more and less well arranged to promote the good life. taken together, these parameters tell us that a rttc should provide those with greatest investment in the city—the citizens—with guarantees to ongoing improvements and enhancements of goods and engagements, as well as amelioration or elimination of harms, such that quality of life progresses rather than stagnates or declines, so that an urban life is a worthy and rewarding one. b. the lefebvre construal and alternate takes looking at actual, historical articulations of a rttc—from lefebvre onward—we see some degree of conformity with these parameters, at least in spirit, and if only in one or another fractional form. lefebvre, for his part, while initially giving us rttc, may not be its best proponent. first, as loren king and others have noted, his marxism makes for poor rights advocacy.5 the classic marxist sees rights as a frivolity of bourgeois democratic politics, detached from realities of material goods distributed and controlled by the capital class. second, and more compellingly for the non-marxist, he does not say that in which a rttc consists nor, as attoh notes, how it would work out in practice.6 it’s not surprising that, on a marxist reading, we aren’t told about particular entitlements or liberties. at all events, we are left with the question of what, quite, this is a right to. nor are we told who has these rights, though it is fair to assume that, for lefebvre, lefebvre, for his part, while initially giving us the right to the city, may not be its best proponent. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 66 fi sh er this is primarily interesting as a right insofar as it represents an unfulfilled commitment to the dispossessed and the working class. one thing lefebvre does tell us, on the other hand, is that those who have rttc have it because they are participants in construction of the city as an urban project of living and working together.7 this is a crucial observation for just about any version of an rttc as it highlights the reasons that cities came into being and continue to grow as the dominant form of human settlement: cities exist for the advancement of material and cultural wellbeing. his point is that intentionally and intensely concentrating populations in the same places—namely, cities—introduces claims on how people should live and prosper in those contexts. of course, not all is well in the city. another thing lefebvre tells us— following his marxist-style analysis—is that while citizens build the city and gain the benefits of living in the urban environment, they are also exploited by the capital class in so doing and are alienated from the city though it is their own project.8 accordingly, rttc for lefebvre consists in a right for urban citizens to direct life in the city as engaged with, and unalienated from, their urban environment.9 with these few and imprecise notions, there is much room for interpretation and variation. for example, we might direct or shape life in a city so as to not be alienating through direct behavioral interventions like rules, laws, intentional cultural shifts, and the like—but alternatively we might think it more effective to deploy environmental interventions as crafted in architectural and planning design. two broad traditions have taken up the lefebvrian rttc, also focusing on the city as the increasingly principal context of human settlement and the greatest source of wealth, creativity, power, as well as other human emile aillaud, la grande borne, grigny (1971) 67 isparchitecture.com phenomena, productions, and endeavors.10 for one, marxists have tended to extrapolate from or build on lefebvre’s view within their set of conventions, for example, by explaining the role of surplus value in urban productivity and positing the rttc as a right to that value and its management.11 for another, a range of urban planners, geographers, political activists, and others have articulated more specific rights as they take to realize a vision of eliminating, punishing and disenfranchising injustices, such as lefebvre associated with alienation and exploitation in the city or by its capital class. examples of such specific rights include rights to housing, transportation, communications, participatory decision-making, participatory urban design, and protection from harms (e.g., excessive state force). while stimulated by lefebvre’s critique, however, these latter views generally assume neither diagnoses nor solutions along marxist lines. as with the lefebvrian proposal, the latter, non-marxist views stay within the lines of the parametric assumptions laid out here, motivated by a goal-state, sensitive to the dynamism of the city, and communally oriented. yet they also move beyond lefebvre, in concretely specifying goods, services, liberties, or freedoms to which citizens have a right qua citizens. c. a generic proposal. a third approach is to craft a generic rttc that, while also inspired by lefebvre, is not wedded to his framework, to marxist tenets, or to any of the specific entitlement or liberty-oriented rights in particular as may also be inspired by that framework. to this end, consider a traditional view of rights (following, e.g., hohfeld)12 as comprises the positive and the negative, emphasizing claims on entitlements on one hand and ensuring maintenance of liberty and protection from harm on the other. a more recent addition to this array in the rights literature has it that, in addition to attending to concerns of or for individuals, a complete range of rights reflects the right to the city for lefebvre consists in a right for urban citizens to direct life in the city as engaged with, and unalienated from, their urban environment. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 68 fi sh er concerns of or for communities as aggregate parties. along these lines, and in pursuit of a maximalist right to the city, we would likely want that right to comprise constituent sub-rights as advance claims, meet communitarian concerns, and guarantee liberties.13 i propose that this basic taxonomy points to an umbrella conception of a right to the city that includes at least these basic sub-rights: urban access, as entitlement claim; urban inclusion, as community right; and urban flourishing, as a liberties-assuring and freedom-from-harms right. a fullblown defense of these sub-rights is beyond the present scope; here i note a few definitional points and take note of one common denominator relative to urban public space. first, access is particularly suitable as a fundamental entitlement or claims right in the urban context because the city’s density and intensity is not only a positive economically and culturally but a negative as well, building and accelerating scarcity of resources—be they necessary or merely desirable. insofar as scarcity is managed by reference to moral or justice considerations, we want a right to access the city’s resources as a guarantee of moral or just distribution, for example, to protect those least likely to secure access otherwise. second, inclusion is suitable as a community right in the urban context because the purpose of cities, at root, is to bring people together for commerce and culture— such that marginalizing and excluding people is antithetical to the core urban goals. hence we want a right that serves to guarantee that, even if living in distinctive communities for solidarity purposes,14 all citizens are included in the broader urban community to the extent that they choose or as is otherwise socially optimal. much more may be said about what inclusion entails here. suffice it to mention, in this context, various police raid in grigny, quartier de la grande borne (2016). 69 isparchitecture.com forms of openness, availability, and welcoming as comprise but are not limited to: involvement in decision-making of import to the urban whole or significant parts thereof; participation in and consumption of the urban host culture and other constituent cultures; access to economic and social opportunities of the city; and engagement with infrastructure and networks of the city. and as a third sub-right, flourishing is suitable as a libertiesassuring and freedom-from-harms right in the urban context because the city only flourishes— e.g., economically, socially, culturally—when its citizens can flourish. this in turn requires a negative right or rights of individuals and communities to enjoy protection from harms and liberties to act in ways that promote thriving and success, as well as a positive right to such entitlements as are accorded to city dwellers and promote citizen success and thriving.15 it merits noting that, as a common denominator, all these sub-rights point to, and may be exploited to sustain, the broad claim of the urban dweller on public space. for example, city dwellers have a right to access public space, as a scarce commodity more typically contracted than expanded by urban development; city dwellers may only realize a right to urban inclusion if there is sufficient and fitting public space in which to freely commune; and the city and its dwellers can only truly flourish— optimize their thriving and success—where citizens may pursue work, study, and leisure beyond their own private spaces—free from the limits of solitude and constraints on personal room to move and share, e.g., ideas, innovation, or culture. this picture is consonant with at least one prominent rttc view that takes city-wise rights to primarily consist in rights to public space.16 to be sure, this is a very general account of only three possible sub-rights of a rttc. others might be articulated; these have the merit of accounting for a broad range of urban life. to see this, as well as how ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 70 fi sh er these rights may be engaged, it’s helpful to consider cases where they are not, that is, where the rights are not recognized or else are recognized but infringed. thus, we have: developer. rita, a major developer in a major city, is planning a giant housing and commercial development of a large area of the city heretofore left in a state of disrepair and disuse. elected officials have given carte blanche to rita to develop the site however they see fit. the public has been left out of any semblance of a decision-making process. operative rttc sub-rights here concern inclusion and community. street gang. a new, violent street gang menaces a previously prosperous area, and the residents are afraid to leave their houses. police and social workers are ineffective and, while the gang grows in popularity and financial success, the neighborhood loses its vibrant street life and spirals downward as a desirable place to live. the operative rttc subright here, as highlighted by their violation or neglect, pertains to flourishing. note, however, that in street gang, the scenario need not have been located in a city; the setting could have been suburban or even rural. we can fix this in the following scenario: public housing gang. as in street gang, public security in the area deteriorates. unlike the generic location in street gang, though, this scenario is specifically set in urban public housing, where the density of population heightens the probability of criminality, and the deteriorating security environment induces social, economic, and psychological depression. operative rttc sub-rights here are related to flourishing, specifically in urban contexts. métro. jean-marie waits at a métro station for a train that never arrives. unbeknownst to him, the city has discontinued that train line and is preparing to demolish the station shortly. henceforth jean-marie will need to walk to work, 7 km away. the operative rttc sub-right here concerns entitlement, specifically to affordable and convenient mass transit service in a modern city. these cases give a small taste of the diversity of scenarios where quality of life, integration and inclusion, and just benefits of city life—all as particular to urban contexts—are degraded for some parties x because of the actions or inactions of other parties y. (in addition to these negative scenarios, other sorts of scenarios will highlight a positive picture, wherein rttc-type rights are realized or sustained; see appendix a.) two points merit our attention in all these cases. for one, such cases arise in specifically urban contexts, and because of the nature of people living and working 71 isparchitecture.com together—which, as we have noted, is largely due to density and intensity of populations and their interactions. for another, the dereliction of y as the cause of the failure to realize or sustain x’s rights points to y’s responsibilities or obligations to x and all other citizens relative to the corresponding rttc sub-rights as having not been realized or sustained in such cases. in brief, as the dereliction of y prevents the relevant sub-rights of x from being satisfied, we sense that y is to blame, that is, to be held responsible. before moving on, let’s revisit the proposed parameters for a viable rttc, namely, that such a right should promote the best possible city, should be communal in orientation, and should be futurefacing given the organic and not-so-organic change in the life of a city. all three sub-rights proposed here—to access, inclusion, and flourishing— are contributing and perhaps necessary factors for optimizing the city and city life. further, access and inclusion are manifestly community and communally-oriented. it may be harder to specify that or how these particular sub-rights are constitutive of a future-facing rttc, though it is also hard to imagine articulating or satisfying any future-facing rttc that fails to build upon, or at least recognize, prior commitments to access, inclusion, and flourishing of urban dwellers. 2. identifying and assigning responsibilities or obligations so far, we have the picture of a broad rttc as an umbrella right, comprising at least three sub-rights, including a right to entitlements, community, and flourishing. what attaches these rights to the city context in particular is a function of urban conditions, most prominently a population density that entails or generates problems, needs, and desiderata, that is, the stuff of special rights. and— as is traditionally held relative to rights generally— satisfaction or advancement of such rttc sub-rights relies on parties having relevant responsibilities architects and those with similar occupations are highly visible in this regard, as they plan and shape the physical and broadly experiential characteristics of the city. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 72 fi sh er or obligations. in this domain, failure to meet those responsibilities or obligations results in citizens failing to flourish, to attain or maintain community membership, or to receive such goods or services as are expectable in a justly ordered urban life. two principal tasks arise relative to talk about rights-wise responsibilities or obligations: first, the what—identifying those responsibilities or obligations corresponding to particular rights; and second, the who— identifying the parties with significant responsibilities or obligations in this regard. both tasks represent complex questions with dizzying arrays of possible answers—as many as there are variables factoring into urban planning and design and city management, financing, servicing, and so on. one specific challenge in identifying and assigning rttcwise responsibilities or obligations is the great diversity of urban actors (agents) pursuing different tasks relevant to the wide variety of sub-rights, in providing goods and services, promoting inclusion, or facilitating flourishing. thus, politicians, bureaucrats, social services, corporate and small business owners, educators, health providers, public safety personnel, and many others populate a long list of people with such responsibilities. among these professions and roles, architects and those with similar occupations (urban planners, urban designers, etc.)—whom i’ll refer to as ‘architectural agents’—are highly visible in this regard, as they plan and shape the physical and broadly experiential characteristics of the city.indeed, there is a special moral claim on architectural agents relative to rttc-wise responsibilities and obligations: they draw the contours of possible ways cricket in the streets of mumbai 73 isparchitecture.com that citizens can organize and conduct their lives and work in the city, and in this way they support or prevent the possible pursuit of activities by all other agents as may contribute to the satisfaction of rttc-wise responsibilities and obligations. this sort of meta-responsibility is additional to their ground-level rttc-wise responsibilities in the urban context. in this set of meta-responsibilities, however, architectural agents are not alone. one other family of actors with similar meta-responsibilities is the financial services industry, without whom nothing is possible in city life, including realization of architectural plans. so architects’ responsibilities may be outweighed by those of others with greater power to determine the fate of cities and popular rights to them. even if not outpaced in such fashion, architects are clearly not the sole actors responsible for realization of rttc-wise sub-rights, whether at the ground-level or the meta-level. a further difficulty in assigning rttc-wise responsibilities to architectural agents concerns the temporal. the city and its population shift over time, and with demographic, social, economic, and other shifts come changes in the identity and nature of those holding the right to the city, and the array of sub-rights to which they may justly lay claim. thus it is unclear to whom architects of a given moment might have responsibilities—particularly in accounting for future population shifts—or how the duration of such responsibilities should be gauged. a third challenge in this regard concerns the appropriate degrees of rttc-wise responsibility to be shouldered by architectural agents. for example, it cannot be fair to assign such responsibilities to individual architectural agents, however influential, relative to the entirety of a city, even if—as with oscar niemeyer and brasilia—they have designed the city’s basic plans and major structures. nor is it fair, conversely, to assign such responsibilities ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 74 fi sh er to the architectural professions in collective fashion, for we then excuse each architect from standard individual obligations. neither individual architects nor architects in the aggregate considered as the profession overall can assume or be assigned the full range of such rttc-wise responsibilities as we would apportion to architectural agents. 3. a compositionalist approach to city-wise rights and responsibilities. how, then, to apportion rttc-wise responsibilities or obligations to architectural agents—by what means and to what degree? my proposal reflects a key aspect of the aforementioned scenarios (developer, public housing gang, and métro): while some such instances where rights are upheld or denied have a system-wide or city-wide origin or developmental path or set of consequences, many—perhaps most—such instances arise out of highly localized circumstances. in short, rttc-related scenarios arise as much relative to a bus stop or a single office tower as they do relative to the urban water system or the city’s entire zoning code. it is those highly localized scenarios where architects and others with architectural agency have the most frequent and robust obligations relative to rttc and its family of sub-rights. to make this suggestion work, such that architects and other architectural agents can assume—at the micro-scale—the sorts of obligations we take to follow from rttc, we need to build on two more fundamental claims. first, we need to show that architectural agents have a kind of efficacy to begin with that allows them to meaningfully contribute to realization or sustaining of rttc sub-rights. second, we need to show that what architectural agents do as individuals or in small groups at the micro-scale rolls up to the realization or sustaining of rttc sub-rights. the first fundamental claim is, at root, an empirical point. in the early interactions between architects and environmental psychologists (1970s), there were worries about the feasibility of ‘architectural determinism,’ the view that architectural forms and the spaces they shape can have regular and predictable effects on behaviors of those experiencing the forms and spaces. while there is cause for caution as elsewhere in the behavioral sciences, a wealth of scientific and commercial data supports the general notion that our range of choices and actions may be influenced environmentally—and that even subtle design interventions in the built environment may shift behaviors.17 insofar as realization or sustaining of rttc sub-rights entails enabling, encouraging, or preventing citizens from undertaking particular behaviors, the empirical accounts of ‘architectural determinism’ tell us how architectural agents take on such responsibility. the second fundamental claim involves more of a conceptual move, 75 isparchitecture.com drawing on (1) a picture of rttc in which our judgment that either the umbrella right or subrights are satisfied is divisible by spatial and temporal regions, together with (2) a compositional notion of architectural objects. first, we know that we can divide judgment about rights satisfaction by regions (spatial or temporal) given that rights are mostly, if not always, realized only partially and to varying degrees depending on location and timeframe. while this is typically seen as a real-world imperfection for any rights regime, this feature also allows us to think about satisfaction of rights in such limited domains—of a given place or a given time—as successes within those domains. and since, in the case of realizing or satisfying rttc-wise sub-rights, we cannot expect architectural agents (whether as individuals or in the aggregate) to satisfy such rights—either across the whole of a city or for the entire duration of its existence—spatially and temporally modest targets are called for. second, in a compositional account of architectural objects, we have a ready instrument for taking apart the city along spatial or temporal lines—such that we can reasonably apportion rttc-wise responsibilities to architectural agents at a level (spatially) and over a duration for which expectations and accountability are realistic goals. a compositional account of architectural objects, as relative to cities in particular, says that urban built environments are composed of built structures as unitary individuals or collections thereof, such that, as aggregates of those unitary or collective individuals, cities are shaped by those individuals. the idea is that cities, as wholes, are shaped by the parts they comprise.18 this is a three-dimensional, spatial picture, but it is trivial to expand this compositionalism to a fourth, temporal dimension: the character of cities is shaped over time by earlier instantiations of the urban built environment, both where the earlier elements of that environment survive, as well as where they cease to exist and putting these two elements together, we can reasonably apportion responsibility to architectural agents for rttcwise sub-rights. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 76 fi sh er make way for new elements. compositionalism contributes to our ability to judge the satisfaction of rttc-wise sub-rights by giving us a means of gauging whether built structures (or collections thereof ) may help to raise or lower satisfaction of city-wise rights within bounds—that is, on a partial or fractional basis. the idea is to then ‘roll up’ (sum across) that degree of rights-satisfaction, by taking those structures as parts contributing to the city or its regions one piece at a time, creating conditions for, e.g., strengthening inclusion, providing just benefits attached to city life, and promoting flourishing. putting these two elements together, we can reasonably apportion responsibility to architectural agents for rttc-wise sub-rights. the first element is recognizing that architectural agents can shape behaviors in ways that contribute to or detract from realization of rights special to the urban context, e.g., to housing or mass transit or access to cultural resources. the second element associates satisfaction of such given sub-rights with particular buildings or collections of buildings, or sets of buildings at a particular time. in this way, we can tie realization of rights, and corresponding responsibilities to that end, to particular architectural agents where they are actually in a position to assume such levels of responsibility. further, compositionalism allows us to assemble an aggregated reading of architectural agents’ successes, on a city-wide basis, in furthering the rttc of a given city’s citizens —as spread across different sub-rights as well as the component parts of the city. 4. problems here are at least three prospective problems with this view. first, architects generally accept a range of responsibilities, of course, though not in an absolute sense that some advocates associate with at least some rights in the moral and political philosophical tradition.19 consider, in this vein, city-wide and system-wide scenarios as invoke rttc subrights and recognizably feature city-wide and system-wide agents with corresponding obligations we might take to be absolute per their rightswise stipulation. for example, a rttc sub-right to access to healthcare in the urban context (relative to, say, asthma prevention and mitigation in distressed neighborhoods) may well be recognizable as an absolute right—one not defeated by other considerations. on the other hand, for scenarios that invoke rttc sub-rights on the local or building level, the responsible architectural agents are unlikely to have corresponding obligations in any traditionally absolute sense. given that utility is a core professional and heritage-wise goal for architects, obligations are pro tanto in their worldview—they go only as far as they go, and can be defeated 77 isparchitecture.com for the greater good. so, there is at least a cultural gap here, if we think that architectural agents have indefeasible obligations relative to rttc sub-rights. second, i have suggested here that compositionalism gives us a means of summing across judgments of architectural agents as satisfying (or not) rttc sub-rights in given spatial or temporal regions, rather than tying satisfaction of rights to the city-wide scale alone and then unrealistically pinning responsibilities for such on architectural agents (singly or all together). but we might not think that we can speak meaningfully of rightssatisfaction as the sort of thing one can sum across, even if we can differentially gauge levels of rights satisfaction across distinctive spaces and times. how we see this summation problem will turn, i suspect, on whether we think of rights regimes as meaningfully satisfied at all if they are fractionally satisfied only in this or that neighborhood, only by this or that built structure. we can only sum across rights satisfaction for the city as a whole in this way if we rule out the notion that rights only satisfied for some populations are not satisfied universally hence not satisfied at all. finally, it may be that i have insufficiently demarcated responsibilities attaching to architects in particular—as against those attaching to other ‘architectural agents’ such as urban designers or planners. these are, after all, different roles. one way to carve up the attendant responsibilities, for example, might reflect the scale of the corresponding design tasks.20 that said, the borders of architectural and urban design and planning disciplines are famously porous, especially in the domain of localized urban projects such as london’s barbican centre, new york’s lincoln center, or paris’s la villette. so, practice may point to a need for vagueness here. a more pertinent response is principled: the compositionalist framework i have drawn upon should do the work of apportioning responsibilities for satisfying rttc to different sorts ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 78 fi sh er of architectural agents in accordance with (a) the urban design element as distinguished possibly by scale but equally possibly by function, systemic role, liability, or still other factors; and (b) the attendant rttc sub-rights as come into play with each such design element. even similar ‘puzzle pieces’ as compose a city will likely prompt different responsibility assignments to different roles across, for example, urban cultures and contexts.21 5. conclusion i close with a brief revisit of the street gang and public housing gang scenarios, which taken together, i propose, highlight the character of architectural agent’s rttc-wise responsibilities in the specifically urban context. recall that the difference between those two scenarios is that the first could take place in all manner of locations, whereas the second is at least in part the product of a city setting, which from an environmental psychology perspective has gone very much awry. at issue is (a) the degree to which a built environment that resembles an urban rat trap for human beings may accelerate, worsen, and perpetuate criminal activity or other socially deviant behaviors by some of the local citizenry, and (b) the degree to which architects and planners of said environment have responsibilities for designing in ways so as to lessen the probabilities of such behaviors and their consequences. if citizens of all backgrounds and housing settings have rights to flourishing in the city, as entails a further right to public safety, then we have identified some level of responsibility for realizing such rights as may be apportioned to architectural agents. this is, to be sure, only a piece of the puzzle: others will have relevant responsibilities and these are just some few rttc-wise sub-rights among many others. but if we start at this level of analysis, we will be en route to identifying the many puzzle pieces of responsibility attached to the actions and choices of architects relative to the fullest range of rttc-wise sub-rights. that will give us a picture of ways that, at the micro-scale, architects and those in related professions contribute to realizing or thwarting realization of rights to the city. appendix a. scenarios of rights secured and sustained. cultural festival. a marginalized immigrant community sustains its cultural traditions in private homes and makeshift community spaces. the city invites community members to participate in the summer cultural festival in the park. regular cultural programming by the immigrant community, open to all, ensues and the community’s cultural threads are further woven into the greater urban fabric. the operative rttc sub-right here concerns inclusion. 79 isparchitecture.com small-scale retail. the city’s produce and dry goods street market is thriving thanks to a zoning law that keeps rents low on the market stalls and protects the market’s contributions to affordable and animated city life that is at once dense and human-scale. the operative rttc subright here concerns flourishing. garbage. the city’s sanitation department fails to collect the garbage for two years due to inadequate landfill capacity. quality of life declines rapidly as the garbage mounts, hindering transportation and circulation of goods and services. after mass demonstrations and public pressures, a new landfill location is identified for safe disposal, and garbage collection and processing are resumed. the operative rttc subright here concerns entitlement. endnotes 1. while the best possible city could be at least more good than bad, the optimized good city and the best possible city are not necessarily equivalent. beyond the present scope: which is more desirable may be a contextual matter, or decidable by logical or material considerations. 2. david harvey argues, from one marxist perspective, that rttc is a collective right and not an individual right; cf. david harvey, ‘the right to the city, new left review 53 (2008), 23-40. 3. mark purcell sees citizens’ claim on rttc as grounded in their contribution to urban experience and urban space; if so, the suburban claim is strengthened; cf. mark purcell, ‘excavating lefebvre: the right to the city and its urban politics of the inhabitant,’ geojournal 58 (2002): 99-108. 4. margaret cuonzo sees rttc in holistic, ecological terms—inclusive of the city and all its citizens at once; cf. margaret cuonzo, ‘the right to the city and the rights of the city.’ in deborah mutnick, margaret cuonzo, carole griffiths, ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 80 fi sh er timothy leslie, jay m. shuttleworth (eds.), the city is an ecosystem: sustainable education, policy, and practice, (london: routledge, 2022), 105-115. 5. loren king, ‘henri lefebvre and the right to the city.’ in sharon m. meagher, samantha noll, and joseph s. biehl (eds.), the routledge handbook of philosophy of the city, (london: routledge, 2019), 76-86. 6. kafui a. attoh, ‘what kind of right is the right to the city?,’ progress in human geography 35 (2011) 5: 669–685; cf. 674. 7. while in marxist orthodoxy, the city is a material artifact assembled by its inhabitants, lefebvre takes the city as more of an artwork than a mundane instrument or tool. cf. henri lefebvre, le droit à la ville (paris: anthropos, 1968), 54-55. 8. lefebvre, le droit à la ville, 108, 120-121. 9. ibid., 120-121; attoh, ‘what kind of right’, 674. 10. some rttc advocates focus on a right to cities in particular as opposed to rights to generic places (as also include rural, suburban, unsettled places, etc.). i propose that cities’ density and intensity effects—e.g., on social, economic, cultural, and communal conditions, information and communication facility, and so on—demand our rights-wise attention. density and intensity are core characteristics of cities that (a) brought them into being—ostensibly, a net positive, as well as (b) produced many pressing problems of urban life. 11. the locus classicus for subsequent marxist defenses of a lefebvrian rttc, particularly in a geography tradition, is david harvey, ‘the right to the city’; cf. also david harvey, rebel cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution (london: verso, 2012). don mitchell focuses on public space, emphasizing rttc as a means of contesting privatization (cf. don mitchell, the right to the city: social justice and the fight for public space (london: guilford press, 2003), esp. 13-41). other authors view the lefebvrian right in the context of european marxism of his day. chris butler stresses the french autogestion tradition (chris buttler, henri lefebvre: spatial politics, everyday life and the right to the city (abingdon, uk: routledge-cavendish, 2012), esp. 133-159); daniel mullis sees a continuity with the italian operaismo refrain: daniel mullis, ‘prendersi la città’ (‘recht auf die stadt. facetten und möglichkeiten einer parole,’ emanzipation, 3 (2013) 2, 57-70). jeanpierre garnier offers a marxist dissent, rejecting a lefebvrian addressing ills of capitalist urbanization as prone to serving as “…alibi, wishful thinking, or fiction”; cf. jean-pierre garnier, ‘le droit à la ville de henri lefebvre à david harvey. entre théorisations et realization,’ l’homme & la société, 1 (2014) 191: 59-70. 81 isparchitecture.com 12. wesley hohfeld, fundamental legal conceptions as applied in judicial reasoning, walter wheeler cook, ed. (new haven: yale university press, 1919); for an overview, cf. leif wenar, ‘rights,’ stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (2005); http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights. attoh (‘what kind of right’) suggests how the rights literature may ground rttc. 13. a distinctive model has it that a single right with different aspects accommodates the varied traditional goals of rights. 14. defined by, e.g., ethnicity, sub-culture, age, etc. 15. thanks to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting the positive right entailed here. 16. see mitchell, the right to the city (2003). for further notions of public space and rights thereto, see evelyn s. ruppert, ‘rights to public space: regulatory reconfigurations of liberty’, urban geography, 27 (2006) 3: 271-292; and elsewhere in this issue. 17. even as some worry about a strict determinism, empirical evidence mounts for enhanced propensities to specific behavioral, cognitive, or emotional responses to architectural design; cf. sarah williams goldhagen, welcome to your world: how the built environment shapes our lives (new york: harpercollins publishers, 2017); and debra flanders cushing and evonne miller, creating great places: evidencebased urban design for health and wellbeing (abingdon: routledge, 2012). 18. saul fisher, ‘architecture and philosophy of the city.’ in meagher, noll, and biehl, the routledge handbook of philosophy of the city, 131-142. 19. see, e.g., russ shafer-landau, ‘specifying absolute rights,’ arizona law review 37 (1995): 209-24; for a rejection of absolute rights; see, e.g., judith jarvis thomson, the realm of rights (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1990). 20. thanks to an anonymous reviewer for noting ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 82 fi sh er this issue and suggesting a scale-based articulation of responsibilities. 21. assigning such responsibilities to architects prompts yet other concerns. architects are almost never solely responsible for satisfying moral claims as attach to even fractional rttc. their responsibilities may be outweighed by those with greater power to determine the fate of cities—or broad, popular rights to them. further, the temporally and demographically diffuse nature of rights holders—the shifting city populace over time—make unclear to whom architects might have responsibilities, or how the duration of such responsibilities should be gauged. vittorio de sicca’s il tetto (1956), an artful cinematographic exercise in neo-realist style, centers on one couple’s quest to find a home in post-war rome. the second half of the film sees penniless luisa and natale plan the completion of a house of sorts. the city regulations allow people to secure their right to a parcel of land and a small building if they manage to construct the latter without being stopped by the authorities. the completion of the house is to be secretive and realized overnight— the title of the movie refers to one of the features required for the building to be legally considered as completed, and thus occupiable: four walls, a door, and a tetto¸ a roof. at dawn, policemen find the newly erected shack, luisa and natale anxiously hiding within. the agents inspect it, walking around its perimeter. they palpate its block walls in a methodic way. they knock vigorously on the door, which they then try to open, without success—it is sturdily hinged and fastened. i won’t spoil the film’s ending, suffice it to highlight a simple intuition here at play: in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the audience, these four walls, door, and roof are the necessary features of a house. we recognize the space of the house bounded within these closed, basic elements. we recognize it as the space of the private, where inhabitants’ bodies are “sheltered” and safe. this characterization is time and again set in opposition (or patent complementarity) with the space of the public. built public spaces evoke imaginaries of collectivity and seamlessness; of civicism and openness. built private spaces evoke imaginaries of control and identifiable boundaries, of refuge, individuality and sustenance.1 property, necessity and housing. reconsidering the situated right to a place to be erika brandl ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 84 br a n dl i have detailed il tetto’s dwelling as fastened, closed and in many ways, impenetrable. one ought not to penetrate this little portion of city space, as it is now walled off and occupied. regardless of nearby activities, events, gatherings, infrastructures—that which lies behind these walls is not to be touched. this filmic set-up hints at an established legal and sociocultural principle. there exists an architectural inside and outside. both inside and outside spaces operate according to a given set of rules. luisa and natale’s shack represents the paradigmatic inside space of the home. as such, we attribute to it the sacredness of private property. “that which lies behind these walls is not to be touched”—in most cultures, the claim is gospel.2 the walls’ outside can be declined in many degrees of publicness, and thus operate according to varying rules and laws. yet, as i will demonstrate in this article, the architecture of private property, with a marked focus on the architecture of dwellings, arises as existentially significant because of the functions which it enables and protects. commonplace definitions of what constitutes a good “dwelling” or “house” allude to human necessity, but ultimately fall short of providing us with true housing adequacy. this, i posit, is because they limit their scope to physical features (walls, windows, floors, doors, roofs) and their delimitation of a private inside, opposed to a public outside. they do so, however, without clarifying those very essential human functions. to be sure, housing architectures are constituted of basic, physical elements; they allow for a form of domestic life which can vittorio de sica, il tetto (1956) 85 isparchitecture.com hardly take place in streets, parks and urban squares. why is this the case? why must something be done inside and not outside the house? in this article, i return to the seminal works of jeremy waldron and richard epstein in order to clarify what is at stake with the principles of adequacy and property which oversee one’s life in dwelling. i comment on the functions of publicly and privately built infrastructures, considering notions of individual freedom and flourishing. “why must something be done inside and not outside the house?” is another way of asking “why are dwellings so necessary to us?”—returning to this straightforward interrogation, and examining it in light of a rightsbased tradition of political philosophy, allows for an improved understanding of contemporary architectural challenges. in the concluding part of my examination, i make use of different scenarios to highlight the tension following from stringent boundaries in societies where individuals’ right to adequate dwelling is not fulfilled. in particular, i recuperate alejandra mancilla’s cosmopolitanist reasoning on the old right of necessity and apply it explicitly to urban situations, where public and private boundaries order the sustenance of human life. this leads to new considerations on the policing of urban spaces, and on the duties of states in ensuring the fulfillment of the right to adequate dwelling (or right to housing). before i start this investigation, i need to clarify the important difference between the “right to housing” and “housing rights.” the former term refers to a moral right. it is a justificatory argument, a condition which relates to licit individual interests, and which is informed by sociocultural norms or standards. the latter term refers to a legal right, to conditions granted by statutes. housing rights are concerned with statutory features, or law entitlements, such as those on which luisa and natale depended. in other words, housing rights will describe what provisions might be (content ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 86 br a n dl definition, legality), but not why they ought to be (content justification, morality). this article focusses on the normative framework, examining implications and features of a right to adequate dwelling infrastructures, and exploring the question on what grounds such a right performs. or simply put, why it exists, and what should be its content in terms of legal protections and provisions. the same conceptual logic applies to the canon “right to the city”, which links back to moral and justificatory arguments. finally, while the term “housing” evokes a formal specificity that the term “dwelling” fittingly avoids, i use both words interchangeably. political and activist cultures which mobilize around this issue have, for the most part, adopted the expression “right to housing.” so, i maintain a connection with these cultures by recuperating it literally in my text. on individuals’ situated freedom to be i first turn to legal philosopher jeremy waldron. his ‘homelessness and the issue of freedom’ (1991) remains to this day one of the most rigorous and spirited philosophical studies of the issue of housing. this account has led prominent scholars to revise their libertarian position on the existence of a human right to an adequate dwelling.3 as the text deals with the nature of vagrancy and public and private ownership, it reveals the complexity of the occupation of space in cities, as well as the impact of housing inadequacy on human dignity, welfare and liberty. jeremy waldron begins by reminding the reader of the importance to revise the liberal discourse surrounding an (ever more limited) individual right to be in a place. in a manner which echoes that of famed philosophers of welfare rights, he expresses his frustrations at the lofty-sounding but ultimately inconsistent commitments of liberal theorists, which are here accused of glossing over the questions raised by the absence or the gross inadequacy of housing, and in particular by homelessness. these questions relate to the “most basic principles of liberty”, and so ought to preoccupy us every bit as much as more familiar worries about torture, the suppression of dissent, and other violations of human rights.4 waldron proceeds to detail people’s situated nature, which brings him to call for a complete requalification of what is understood as dignified—adequate—occupations of spaces, be they private or public. what, then, is implied by people’s situated nature? in brief, all actions must be situated. this follows from the simple fact that “everything that is done has to be done somewhere.”5 as embodied beings, we are always located. we are not free to perform an act unless there is some place we are free to perform it in. such statements are banal, but to waldron they hint at the possibility of speaking of housing as one of the most significant goods, if not “the most significant.”6 or, to rephrase 87 isparchitecture.com this in the evocative language of capability, they hint at the possibility of speaking of housing as one of the most significant enablers of essential human functions. rights are interrelated and interdependent. the right to a safe, situated place corresponds to the freedom of exercise of all other rights. the idea at play for waldron is that an individual who has no site of dwelling is completely and at all times at the mercy of others. crucially, and i will return to this idea, there is no place governed by private property rules or increasingly stringent public property rules where she is allowed to be and do at will. she cannot make use of her most basic functionings as she basically has no right to be anywhere. if our conceptions of human freedom, welfare or autonomy are to relate to a person’s most vital interests and functions, we can see how the situated nature of individuals points at the special importance of domestic architecture in relation to the exercise of most basic capabilities. now, there may not seem anything “particularly autonomous or self-assertive or civically republican or ethically ennobling about sleeping or cooking or urinating.”7 these are actions and activities that we rarely find referenced in philosophical treaties or doctrines on space. still, it very much matters when people are not free to perform such actions. maybe we think that sleeping and excreting aren’t dignified actions, but we can nevertheless agree that there is something profoundly, inherently undignified about preventing someone from performing these actions. if a person needs to urinate, what she needs above all as a dignified person is the “freedom to do so in privacy and relative independence of the arbitrary will of anyone else.”8 waldron wants his readers to realize that the access to an adequate dwelling literally corresponds to the freedom to be in some delimitated, physical place—at least one place—to undertake basic human functions. remember that if we are not at liberty to undertake these basic who has no site of dwelling is completely and at all times at the mercy of others. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 88 br a n dl activities, we are not, properly stated, able to live at all. consequently, impairment of normal functioning through housing inadequacy constitutes a fundamental injustice: a harmful restriction on one’s capabilities, on her individual freedom and on individual opportunity related to our “normal, species-typical” opportunity range.9 or, to put it plainly, impairment of normal functioning through housing inadequacy constitutes a severe right violation. let me shortly return to il tetto. when i spoke of luisa and natale’s little shack, i associated it with commonplace imaginaries of control and identifiable boundaries, with notions of refuge and individuality. this ought to be emphasized, the existential importance of one’s dwelling goes beyond the provision of life-sustaining material equipment. it must also provide for security of possession and tranquility. walls of houses shall not be trespassed, windows shall not be shattered, nor shall doors be forced open. what is found inside one’s house, bodies, objects or resources, must be shielded for this house to be deemed adequate. the haven that our young italian couple hurriedly erected overnight provides them with tools of subsistence, but also with the abovementioned security of possession and tranquility. these provisions are equally important and interconnected. they jointly participate in enabling individuals’ basic functions. interestingly, one key aspect of the institution of private property is shown here. as an institution, property is a salutary social arrangement which ensures a more functional, safe and peaceful life with others.10 private property has been broadly celebrated as that which can vittorio de sica, il tetto (1956) 89 isparchitecture.com guarantee independence by providing the material basis for self-reliance, as well as that which can secure a space free from the arbitrary power of other individuals (a critical form of self-defense against outer domination or abuse). and it is no coincidence that the latter feature recalls waldron’s portrayal of persons without dwelling as “completely and at all times at the mercy of others,” and needing the “freedom, privacy and relative independence of the arbitrary will of anyone else.” to be housed holds an existential significance. as they work to guarantee a certain level of security and the satisfaction of our basic needs, we accept and respect property arrangements.11 these arrangements are formalized as the built infrastructure of villages, towns and cities. in ‘property and necessity’ (1990), richard a. epstein confirms these advantages, when he discusses the “powerful,” “wonderful idea” of private property as a legal and sociocultural model.12 while he warns his readership that such a model cannot define a complete state of affairs between individuals, and that it must allow for holdouts, epstein demonstrates the beneficial effects of these property rights in terms of personal freedom, welfare, and skill development. as new dwellers, luisa and natale can now enjoy the institutionalized protection of their physical person and possessions. they can rest assured, and so, hope to flourish. life-sustaining appropriateness of public and private architectures, with remarks on houses in light of these security-related features of property, natural interrogations arise. is it an unreasonable assumption to equate the infrastructure which allows for basic human activities with the architecture of housing? what are the different relations of property which might bring safety and tranquility about? can individuals not achieve subsistence and security of possession in other built environments? are public spaces really not fit for sustaining such bodily life and ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 90 br a n dl development? after all, waldron’s ‘homelessness and the issue of freedom’ presents a conceptual defense of one’s right to a place, not a house. it first looks like that those essential actions and activities which we carry on in our home could simply be carried on elsewhere. this greatly diminishes the significance of dwelling adequacy in a rights perspective, as individuals who are not properly housed are at liberty to undertake these important actions elsewhere. such a refutation has been prompted against homeless individuals and anti-homelessness activists when they invoke the human right to a house. the reply goes along the line that being housed is not the only condition or space to undertake situated acts like cooking, sleeping, showering, and so on. under this view, a defense of housing-related bodily considerations simply proves the importance of our individual right to some kind of place—this doesn’t mean that this place should be a house. it might be, indeed, a public space, like a municipal restroom, a street bench or a subway platform. it could be an underpass, a free urban camping, a gazebo in the town hall’s gardens. to homeless individuals, these sites are accessible on account of their outer, open-air situation. this simple insight reminds us of where we began. there exists an architectural inside and outside; both inside and outside spaces operate according to a given set of rules—a bundle of property laws. a stringent set of rules protects architectural “insides” (houses, but also schools, banks, shops) and their occupants in ways that allow them to safely undertake various life-enabling doings. if public spaces are to be understood as the negative of buildings, or architectural “outsides,” a different set of rules is enforced.13 what’s more, these very rules often tend to work against the realization and protection of individual, essential functions. admittedly, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the current, severe forms of policing one’s actions in public places. this phenomenon is observable in cities across the global north and south.14 a large number of laws prohibit behaviors that we have identified as necessary to the accomplishment of basic human activities. think of barbecuing in a city park (one must eat), sleeping overnight in a bus shelter (one must sleep), bathing in a retention basin (one must wash) or urinating in the street (one must excrete). we are forbidden to carry out these acts in many public sites. the rules regulating what one is free to do in such sites frequently turn out to be as stringent and exclusive as those exerted by private property owners. this puts individuals back in a position where they have to ask for permission (from public authorities) to undertake the basic functions that make life possible, thereby violating their personal freedom to do so. so, the right to undertake these basic functions seems to demand more than the right to be in a public space, or any space. it implies the possibility 91 isparchitecture.com of occupying an architectural “inside.” now, there exists instances of outer, open-air sites where propertyless individuals are allowed to undertake basic, bodily actions and activities. think for a start of the wide outdoors of norway or sweden, where a long-established allemannsretten (right to roam) ensures everyone’s access to the resources and space of the wilderness. though i focus here on villages, towns and cities; defining public spaces as the negative of built infrastructure does suppose a minimum concentration of buildings. architectural traditions of public restrooms (singapore leads by example) are still present in several urban centers. so are municipal washbasins (portuguese lavatórios públicos, among others) and drinking fountains (see the cochabamba public water facilities, established after the activist pressure of the bolivian coordinadora para la defensa del agua y de la vida). in north africa, communal bread ovens, an institution of their own, guarantee one’s possibility to bake. long iftar (fast-breaking) tables are deployed in the streets of many near and middle eastern cities. such formal typologies still stand, but in diminished numbers. since the modernization and privatization of household equipment, many of them were effectively dismantled and abandoned, and refashioned inside the domestic space.15 stricter policing of streets, squares or urban parks ensued: law infringements and displays of socalled inappropriate behavior in common urban environments are known to be disciplined with hefty fines. it appears that, for a critical number of extant (homeless) individuals, their right to carry out basic bodily functions does necessitate more than the right to be in a public space, thus pointing to the occupation of an architectural “inside.” but should these “insides” be de facto houses? i argue that they should. the aforesaid principles of security of possession and tranquility are hardly ensured in drop-in shelters, charity dormitories, and other public refuges, where permanent defining public spaces as the negative of built infrastructure does suppose a minimum concentration of buildings. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 92 br a n dl occupancy and object storage are, to a large extent, proscribed. without sturdy dividing walls, safe storage, padlocks or the likes, one lacks the privacy and the autonomy of dignified life, and is left in a position of vulnerability.16 we already know that lacking a permanent house already means to expose one’s body to numerous threats and deprivations, which incapacitate homeless individuals in ways that prevent them to lead a decent or minimally-good existence (even less a flourishing one). the straightforward value of our reflection on commonplace imaginaries of control and identifiable boundaries lies in showing us that even in cases where their bodies are sheltered within walls and under roofs, people remain critically incapacitated. as private architectural “insides”, houses participate in good mental health as much as in good physical one. without these dimensions of security, tranquility, intimacy, and so on, public shelters can’t be places where one develops and makes good use of her basic functions. if a situated place to be doesn’t provide us with the freedom, privacy and relative independence from the arbitrary will of anyone else, it remains deeply inadequate. recalling living out in the streets or in temporary shelters, many individuals spoke of a feeling that they didn’t (have the capability to) have a life worth living, as if their individual resilience had derived from solid walls which were no longer.17 vittorio de sicca’s dramatic script plays on this idea that, as new “homeowners,” luisa and natale can truly begin to live. in a few words, we need here to consider the different modes of ownership—or, to formulate it in an epsteinian manner, the different relations of property, which enable the vittorio de sica, il tetto (1956) 93 isparchitecture.com good exercise of people’s most basic activities. i follow un-habitat, the united nations human settlements program for human settlements and sustainable urban development, in identifying “secure tenure” as the important feature in one’s relation of property to housing.18 secure tenure refers to legal recognition of one’s control over her living space, through ownership or usufruct. this is really key. individuals can assuredly achieve adequacy in dwelling through rental situations; despite the widespread association of the advantages of private property with home ownership, usufruct forms of tenure can allow for security of possession and tranquility.19 in all cases, it is my opinion that they only do so when non-owners (tenants on the private rental market and in public social housing) have a reasonable level of control over the place that they occupy, and when permanent place attachment is made possible through strong rent contract protections. the details fall outside the scope of my brief exploration here, but it is important to stress that adequate usufruct can enable basic, housingcontingent functions. the right of necessity revisited we have established the importance of dwelling architecture: while it may vary in size or shape, the inner place that we call home enables essential actions and activities. to be deprived of housing is a direct threat to one’s existence. this interrelation is reflected by the human right to housing and its associated claims and duties. walls, doors, windows, ceilings and floors are more than ordinary material arrangements. they protect our bodies and minds, they allow for our most vital interests and functions to be realized, and to develop. and, given this special, situated importance, they are themselves protected by potent property laws. in the last part of this article, i utilize the political philosophy of alejandra mancilla to clarify the moral underpinnings of property rights. in particular, i examine the weighty ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 94 br a n dl ways in which this “bundle of rights” relates to dire housing deprivation and needs.20 mancilla’s thought-provoking writings on moral cosmopolitanism and global poverty shed new light on the permissibility of actions in the face of such housing deprivation, by advocating the right of necessity, a right of the needy to take the material resources they need for subsistence, from those who are not similarly needy.21 it is a privilege (absence of duty not to take others’ possessions to ensure one’s own subsistence) as well as a claim (you have a duty not to stop the needy from taking your possessions). while it first seems at odds with the institution of private property, the right of necessity is actually consistent with accepting its very legitimacy. richard epstein reminds us that the recognition of the right of necessity is, in effect, one of the internal limitations which ought to be included in any such legitimate institution, an escape valve of sorts. a system of exceptions based upon strong, if variegated, perceptions of necessity, is necessary to people’s endorsement of private property as a prime social arrangement.22 the moral intuition at play is that no system of property entitlements that could “reasonably command the acceptance of all who are subject to it” could include a requirement that an individual starve or freeze to death as the cost of respecting the proprietorial rights of others over what one needs to survive.23 in emergency scenarios of necessity, and as a means of last resort, the law must allow for entries upon land and interference with personal property that would otherwise have been trespass. alejandra mancilla builds from this operation of justification, arguing that it is unreasonable to restrict the right of necessity to emergency cases, when the global economic order is structured in a way that maintains millions in a precarious state. or, to realign this line of thought to the present paper: it is unreasonable to do so when housing markets worldwide are structured in ways that maintain many in a precarious state with regard to dwelling adequacy. consider the four following scenarios. 1) while on a hiking trip on some high mountain plateau, you get lost without proper clothing and equipment. you are alone, exposed, and frozen. but you finally spot a hut in the distance. when you go there, you find its door locked. you then proceed to break one window, crawl inside and find shelter until aid comes. 2) on a sail trip with your family, a violent storm breaks out. you manage to approach some private pier and moor your boat to it, guaranteeing you and your family’s safety, and protecting the boat from material damages. 3) you are a homeless individual in the cold winter night. the town’s dropin refuge is situated at too long a walking distance, and you are fighting sleep. you are alone, exposed, and frozen. spotting a tenement building with an empty ground floor, you go there and find its door locked. you 95 isparchitecture.com then proceed to break one window, crawl inside and find shelter until the day comes. 4) you are a homeless individual in the extreme heatwave of the summer. you feel weak, debilitated by heat exhaustion. no one offers you water or help. you climb over the fence of a private courtyard and jump in the fresh pool, cooling your body down. these four scenarios describe emergency situation where one’s subsistence is at stake, but 1) and 2) are often more readily accepted as invocations of the right of necessity.24 as mancilla puts it well, in our current world, acceptance of the right of necessity remains confined to cases of one-off, mostly naturally caused emergencies. … this means that if an individual takes someone else’s property and claims that he did so because his right to subsistence was unmet, he will probably end up punished by society and by the law: common morality tends to sanction property infringements almost with no exceptions, and legal systems reject exculpation based on extreme poverty or indigence.25 we should ask ourselves: should we uphold a narrow conception of the right of necessity when current urban and economic arrangements, and their related application of property rights, have not been designed in a manner that guarantees access to minimum material provisions for all? entry upon land and interference with personal property do appear reasonable and acceptable in urban milieus which lack the infrastructure to provide the needy with housing. this is a provocative statement, especially when contrasted with our past examination of the importance of security of possession and tranquility: the claim which follows from the invocation of one’s right of necessity (welloff individuals mustn’t prevent a destitute person from taking their possessions) proves to be extremely demanding. i have pleaded that a house is not a standing reserve, or an investment opportunity, but the armature for self-integrity and bodily security: entry upon land and interference with personal property do appear reasonable and acceptable in urban milieus which lack the infrastructure to provide the needy with housing. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 96 br a n dl it ought not to be violated. human freedom, autonomy, health, dignity, agency— these notions are to be safeguarded by enforcing property rights, because such rights suppose a basic guarantee of security. controlling one’s own home is an immediate expression of one’s will. freedom is not something which just occurs in thought. it requires some physical domain outside the person’s own mind where she can actualize her will, without external interference. yet again, if subsistence cannot be ensured in public spaces, or through welfare programs and social architecture, necessity can justify the infringement of one’s home. but this is an untenable prospect for any functional, organized society. i believe that these tensions (and our overall normative findings on property, necessity and the architecture of housing) reveal the special responsibility of states in ensuring their citizens’ vital human activities and interests, through the realization of housing adequacy for all. in other words, it is morally incumbent on states to rearrange property provisions in a way that does not leave the houseless in a position where they may legitimately invoke their right of necessity.26 housing shortages and deprivations are attributable to the way in which current human institutions are framed. cultures such as ours, where ordinary circumstances consist in severe housing inadequacy co-existing with extreme wealth and luxurious dwelling (according to numbers collated in recent years, “more than 11 million homes lied empty in europe alone, enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice over”),27 must undergo change. through redistributive policies, projects and statutes, governments are best suited for implementing such a change. the ramifying details of housing-related duties borne by states deserve a separate investigation. suffice it to conclude by asserting that in a hypothetical society where the universal fulfillment of the human right to housing is guaranteed under normal circumstances, the exercise of the right of necessity would be confined to exceptional situations like scenarios 1) and 2). and until such hypothetical societies become reality, and while they work on the implementation of new housing schemes (construction of social units, rent caps, expropriations of speculative architecture), state authorities should refrain from strictly policing certain open spaces in the city. il tetto’s luisa and natale could attempt at building and keeping their shack because the regulations of 1950s rome allowed for people to secure their right to a parcel of land and house if they manage to construct the latter without being stopped by the authorities. this suggests something like the beginning of a humanist attitude of tolerance and flexibility (or even a sense of justice) in the face of immediate, bodily necessity. similarly, we can think of the chilean callamperos (urban propertyless), a group of working-class people who, between the 1950s and 1970s, became 97 isparchitecture.com known for occupying some empty patches of santiago overnight. remarkably, these callamperos were rarely evicted. if municipal actors tried to pursue this path of eviction, the callamperos resisted pacifically until the latter gave up. this amounted to a tacit approval of their occupying actions by the authorities, as well as the surrounding city dwellers.28 these two historical cases teach us a worthy lesson. the infrastructure of housing is expansive and expensive: given the impossibility of immediate remediation of what were severe shortages of dwelling, the municipal governments of rome and santiago showed leniency towards what was allowed in the open air, public spaces of their cities. we should follow their example, as of today and in coming times of housing crises. endnotes 1. richard a. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, harvard journal of law and public policy, vol.3, 1990, 4. 2. property and its declinations in private, common or communal subgroups refers to the rules that govern people’s access to and control of things: it is a feature of human cultures across the world. yet, it must be stressed that a lot of african, indian, asian, or north american indigenous architecture are articulated around deeply different notions of privacy and publicness, privileging togetherness in ways that make little importance of walls and hard boundaries (think of the jewish kibbutz, one example among other). this topic is deserving of a stand-alone study, and so falls outside the scope of the present paper. 3. peter king, ‘housing as a freedom right’, housing studies, vol.18, no.5, 2011, 661. 4. jeremy waldron, ‘homelessness and the issue of freedom’, ucla law review 295, 1992, 296 5. ibid., 296. 6. ibid., 296. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 98 br a n dl 7. ibid., 296. 8. ibid., 321-322. 9. norman daniels, ‘health-care needs and distributive justice’, philosophy of public affairs, vol.4, no.2, 219. 10. alejandra mancilla, the right of necessity: moral cosmopolitanism and global poverty (london: rowman & littlefield, 2016), 15. 11. mancilla, the right of necessity, 15. 12. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, 3-4. 13. again, there exists many examples of non-western cultures where (for reasons linked to social traditions, climate, and so on) the difference between inside and outside is much more diffused—it is softer than the hard limits of walls and fences that we associate with the division of space in western cultures. 14. un-habitat, the right to adequate housing, 2009; https://www.ohchr. org/documents/publications/fs21_rev_1_housing_en.pdf. 15. human rights council, report of the special rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, 2011; https://www2.ohchr. org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/18session/a-hrc-18-33-add4_ en.pdf. 16. carol mcnaughton nicholls, transitions through homelessness: lives on the edge (basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 2008), 17. 17. mcnaughton nicholls, transitions through homelessness, 17. 18. un-habitat, the right to adequate housing. 19. stuart hodkinson, ‘the return of the housing question’, ephemera | theory & politics in organization, vol.12, no.4, 2012, 426. 20. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, 2-3. 21. alejandra mancilla quoted in garrett cullity, ‘mancilla, alejandra. the right of necessity’, ethics, no.128, 2017, 260. 22. epstein, ‘property and necessity’, 7-8. 23. cullity, ‘mancilla, alejandra. the right of necessity’, 261. 24. we tend to assume that it is no fault of the hiker or the sailor that they find themselves using someone else’s property—they were unlucky, trapped in a hostile landscape; the hut or the pier was the only possible option available to ensure their physical security. on the other hand, we tend to assume—and quite uncharitably so—personal failure and fault when it comes to homeless individuals’ struggles for necessity; plus, cities are dense environments, with a (presupposed) network of available resources. according to this logic, violating someone’s property cannot be a means of last resort for 3) or 4). 25. mancilla, the right of necessity, 71. 26. ibid., 71. 99 isparchitecture.com 27. rupert neate, ‘scandal of europe’s 11m empty homes’, 2014; https://www.theguardian. com/society/2014/feb/23/europe-11m-emptyproperties-enough-house-homeless-continenttwice (accessed 2020-03-17). 28. mancilla, the right of necessity, 87-88. protests in hong kong (2019) the storming of the legislative council in hong kong by a group of local activists on july 1, 2019 marked a turn of events in what was until then the largest ever series of political demonstrations in the semi-autonomous chinese territory. in the months that followed, hong kong was shaken by violence and unrest unseen since the riots in the 1960s against the british colonial rule. the emergence of these scenes of total chaos in a city where safety and efficiency of shared urban space and infrastructure are enormously valued and sustained at highest levels effectively generated a fundamental sense of destabilization. this article introduces an ancient chinese cultural notion, jianghu, with the aim of contributing to an enriched and differentiated cultural understanding of these events and the transformation of urban space they effected. the first part introduces jianghu in contrast to the dichotomy of the public and the private so deeply rooted in western civilization. the comparison is not so much about suggesting jianghu as a substitute concept to replace existing interpretations entirely, but an attempt and an invitation to open new perspectives of understanding of a place that is the hybrid result of a complexity of cultural influences and unique historical and political circumstances. the section that follows outlines an image of hong kong as a city during times of peace, as well as a very brief account of its political history, to provide the background for the subsequent description and interpretation of a hong kong shaken by protests as a contemporary form of jianghu. the last portion of the essay describes the actions within and the transformation of urban spaces during the violent anonymity in jianghu: hong kong’s urban space in times of crisis esther lorenz ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 102 lo r en z protests in hong kong between july and november 2019 to illustrate the congruence between characteristics of jianghu as known from chinese film and literature and the events that deeply unsettled the hong kong territory. the private and the public the question of public space from a western perspective is grounded in the dichotomy of public and private inherent in an understanding of the city that is deeply rooted in the greek polis. while the existence of and stability of the family is a precondition for a productive engagement in public life in the ancient city-state, the duality between the two realms is distinct. aristotle speaks about two lives that exist in parallel.1 as hannah arendt points out, greek society maintains a sharp distinction between the home and the family on the one hand—dedicated to a life grounded in biological association and characterized by command—and political organization on the other—negotiated through the process of persuasion.2 in chinese culture, grown from its own ancient roots, this sharp distinction between public and private has never taken place. the family, like in the greek polis, is at the beginning of society, and in chinese culture it is also at its core. rather than forming a parallel realm, socio-political structures grow in expansion from the notion of the family and the home, and are deeply rooted in confucianist thought. they establish a societal and spatial framework distinctly different from that in the west that li shiqiao identifies as “degrees of care.”3 this resonates with the conception of tianxia, a term that dates back to philosophical writings from the zhou period and that maintained a steady influence throughout china’s history. it literally translates as “all under heaven” and denotes a normative “world” that can be understood as the largest existing form of the family, deeply imbued with confucian values of morality and hierarchy. zhao tingyang discusses the “isomorphism between family and tianxia” during the zhou dynasty that ties together a political order of tianxia providing protection for each family with an ethical order that extends “family relationality into the tianxia institutional order.”4 tianxia establishes a hierarchy grounded in morality and power and acted out by paying tributes, which correspond to giving respect to parents and ancestors within a family. zhao points out the all-inclusiveness of tianxia as its fundamental characteristic that leads to a conception of an interiorization of the entire world with “no outside.”5 yet, there are gaps that emerge between the extended circles of familial care, and there are limits to their capacity to be all-encompassing. there are positions of rejection and projections of alternative worlds. there are individuals who deliberately withdraw themselves from the hierarchical, 103 isparchitecture.com established order, acting upon a variety of motives. in fiction and in reality this realm outside the normative order is known as jianghu. jianghu – an external realm of non-structured action jianghu is a chinese cultural concept that literally translates as “rivers and lakes.” the term can be traced back to the daoist philosopher zhuangzi. in his writings the term denotes a life freed from officialdom, career aspirations and family ties. he uses “rivers and lakes” synonymously with the way, the tao, the natural realm for man and his thinking that is characterized by purposelessness and detachment.6 zhuang zi’s writings in a political sense promote non-hierarchical, dynamic organization of human life.7 over time the term has developed a rich spectrum of meaning both through fiction as well as through history. the aspect that remains constant between the evolving uses and interpretations of this concept is that jianghu establishes a position outside regulated systems, from which these can be reflected on, opposed, and overturned. this logic appears as a frequent feature in the narratives of chinese martial arts tales and movies, commonly described as wuxia. the most influential tale to date to describe the realm of jianghu in relation to wuxia is the novel outlaws of the marsh or water margin (水滸傳, by shi nai’an, 14th century), situated in the period of the song dynasty (960-1279). the book tells the story of 108 rebels who, frustrated by the political environment and the living conditions at that time, “became leaders of an outlaw army of thousands and fought brave and resourceful battles against pompous, heartless tyrants.”8 the protagonists withdraw from their everyday lives and hide in the marshes of liangshan in shandong province to prepare for and to conduct the fight for justice against the corrupt ruling order. while regular society is hierarchical and highly structured, jianghu does not have structure, it relies on alliances in chinese culture, a sharp distinction between public and private has never taken place. the family is at the beginning of society, and is also at its core. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 104 lo r en z and honor codes that are fluid and subject to change. as the conceptual dwelling place for itinerant performers, healers, swordsmen, beggars, and outlaws both in real life as well as in fiction, jianghu forms the antithesis to home and the family. in martial arts tales, jianghu is frequently treated as a realm that one can enter, but also again leave, to return to home and family. it is distinct from shanlin, “mountains and forests,” the retreat for daoist monks and hermits. while shanlin is a place for non-action and spiritual contemplation, jianghu is characterized by action that is committed to effecting change in society.9 in contemporary contexts, jianghu appears in academic discussions on the arts and the digital as a potential new realm that enables evasion of government control and censorship. but jianghu is different from habermas’ public sphere, where society can openly debate issues of common concern. it is in fact a space external to societal structures and conventions, from which counter concepts can be envisioned, and battles against oppressive, corrupt, or unjust authorities can be fought. jianghu may denote the retreat from a regulated life, opposition to government in the fight for justice, lawlessness, or personal freedom; it signifies both a mental state and a space. while consistently implying some form of rejection of a status quo, it has remained vague and malleable in its interpretation, and in relation to specific socio-political conditions of any given era. governmental care as the normative hong kong hong kong is a city with an extremely high population and building density. the spatial compression produces a three-dimensional urban fabric of short distances. in conjunction with a highly efficient public transportation infrastructure, the city is primarily navigated on foot, only 7.6% of the population own a private vehicle.10 due to this prevalence of pedestrianism, hong kong’s population density is directly reflected in the mass of moving bodies that traverse the city through this three-dimensional pedestrian network. these spaces are not made for pause, contemplation or flânerie, they are spaces of flow designed to provide the most convenient, smooth, and rapid connections between places of living, work, education, and leisure. this priority is also reflected in the organization of the spaces themselves—surface markings on the floor and overhead signals, reminiscent of highway guidance systems, control the use of lanes and direction of flows, turnstiles and rail guards manage access and zoning, elevated walkways and metal barriers provide clear separation between pedestrian and vehicle space. life in hong kong is characterized by an enormous dedication to maintaining the constancy, safety, and efficiency of this flow through a high 105 isparchitecture.com degree of management exerted by the government. while these spatial parameters and approach to governing are symptomatic of the needs of a city of a material and human density as extreme as in hong kong, conversely, the unique morphology and tight organization of the city must be recognized as the result of an underlying sociocultural framework that enables its formation and sustains its vitality. if seen through a chinese cultural perspective, according to li shiqiao, the approach of the hong kong government may need to be understood as one of all-encompassing care,11 including the provision of open spaces and leisure facilities that are accessible to all, but that do not inherently constitute public space in a political sense. the level of care by the government in maintaining order is matched by a high level of compliance from its citizens. the cultural basis for this general tolerance of guidance, rules, and restrictions in hong kong’s population is often explained through notions of confucianism, which resonates with the understanding of the city as nested scales of familial care that also implies loyalty and respect toward government. hong kong ranks among the safest cities in the world.12 for the average citizen violence is an extrinsic phenomenon. during normal, peaceful times, space, management and conformity are tight, and seem not to leave gaps outside the realm of governmental care, with few exceptions. in hong kong, highways, roads, and scarce instances of vacant or abandoned land, dangerous and unfit for bodily occupation, can be understood as spatial manifestations of jianghu, while triad operations embody the social manifestation of “rivers and lakes,” as the world of “bandits” that runs in parallel and exists hidden from and outside the realm of the established order. for most hong kong citizens jianghu does not touch upon their everyday lives but exists in a world of literary and cinematic fiction. in contrast to this perception of stability and largely friction-free everyday collective life in the city ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 106 lo r en z of hong kong there lies an inner struggle, which is rooted in the precarious political situation that is fundamental to hong kong’s existence—first as a british colony following the opium wars, and since the handover of the territory to china in 1997, as a “special administrative region” of the people’s republic of china, operating under the motto of “one country, two systems.” the identity of hong kong people, who are largely comprised of immigrants from mainland china and their descendants—92% of hong kong’s population are ethnically chinese—has developed its own characteristics overtime, with a self-conception distinctly different from the mainland, and at the same time deeply rooted in chinese culture given their ancestral heritage. for many of these immigrants, their transition to hong kong can be interpreted as constituting various forms of “entering jianghu” in relation to mainland china, either as a realm “outside” allowing for alternative lifestyles and opportunities or as a place to evade the control of the central government. while hong kong had been open to western ideas and influences since the incremental ceding of the territory to the british, starting in 1842, throughout its time as a colony it had been ruled by a governor who was directly appointed by the british monarch. the governing efforts of the british colonial rule prioritized the maintenance of stability conducive to the flourishing of trade and commerce. absent of substantial provisions of democratic institutions and processes, a public sphere in the sense of jürgen habermas had not been established by the time of the handover in 1997.13 the ambiguity of the basic law with regard to instituting universal suffrage, in combination with the stipulation that the chief executive is to be appointed by the central government based on a selection “through election or through consultations,” present provisions perhaps less committed than what contemporary supporters of democracy sometimes refer to as “promises.”14 moreover, the impending end of the 50-year period of hong kong’s semi-autonomy in 2047 constitutes a looming threat that is virtually inescapable. this is exacerbated by instances of attempted introductions of new laws that seem to threaten both hong kong’s identity and stipulated level of independence. to hong kong’s citizens these appear as premature steps of the realization of hong kong’s full absorption into china—whatever this final scenario may look like in the future—which are feared to violate the provision in the basic law that the “the socialist system and policies shall not be practiced in the hong kong special administrative region, and the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years.”15 in the past these incidents triggered otherwise rare political demonstrations in hong kong, 107 isparchitecture.com such as the protests in 2003 against a new national security law, and the demonstrations against the introduction of a curriculum of “moral and national education” in hong kong’s education system in 2012.16 the proposition of a new extradition law in 2019 that would allow criminal suspects to be surrendered to china for trial not only triggered vehement rejection by the hong kong people, but it also sparked more violent and sustained forms of activism, unseen in the territory for over half a century, and unprecedented in some of their characteristics and ways of utilizing and transforming the spaces of the city. given hong kong’s political and cultural hybridity, we need differentiated perspectives to think with and through the events that took place in this unique territory. hong kong’s space of crisis as jianghu the protests against the extradition law in 2019 are to date considered the largest political demonstrations that have ever taken place in hong kong, culminating in up to two million citizens— more than a quarter of the territory’s population— gathering in the streets on june 16, 2019.17 they came out in opposition to the proposed bill, and in protest against the chief executive carrie lam’s decision two days earlier to only suspend rather than drop the bill.18 the week before, on june 12, a smaller demonstration in front of the government offices turned violent when protesters threw bricks and metal rods at the police, who in return responded with the use of batons, pepper spray and tear gas.19 in a response on the same day, lam expressed her disapproval of the incident and reiterated her rejection of the demonstrators’ demands through familial metaphors: “if i let him have his way every time my son acts this way, i believe we will have a good relationship in the short term. but if ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 108 lo r en z i indulge his wayward behaviour, he might regret it after he grows up.”20 this statement is revealing of the government’s self-conceived parental role towards its citizens. in any case it did not resonate well with hong kong’s youth. the accumulative effect of the reactions by the government in the early summer of 2019 such as this one may in fact have unleashed deepseated disappointment and desperation in hong kong’s young generation, who felt increasingly not taken care of at all. these sentiments would certainly be grounded in the fear of their cultural identity, values, and way of life being jeopardized by the impending end of the “one country two systems” stipulation well during their lifetime. these emotions may have additionally been exacerbated by the progressive vanishing of perspectives in a hong kong characterized by an ever-expanding wealth gap in its population, driven by an extreme combination of land policy and capitalist real estate practices that go all the way back to british colonial rule. on july 1, 2019, the anniversary of hong kong’s handover to china, a group of activists broke into the legislative council building, smashed the façade and vandalized the interior, sprayed over the flag of hong kong in the council chamber, and—strangely enough—raised the british colonial flag in its stead. this sudden shift to violence marked “an irreversible step toward escalation”21 and a clear crystallization of two very distinct groups of protesters: the first group represented the large majority of those demonstrating peacefully and within the boundaries authorized for the rallies. while they did express their support for democratic values, they raised their voices specifically against the extradition law. after the announcement of its suspension, despite lingering disappointment with this incomplete concession, these large demonstrations came to an end. the anger and dissatisfaction of the second group—comprised of several disparate fractions of predominantly young people—did not dissipate. in contrary, they grew even stronger. these protesters turned to active aggression to provoke a strong response from the government. they expanded their demands—which functioned less as an agenda for political negotiation than as a declaration of the government’s failings—to a total of five with remarkably varying political weight, ranging from universal suffrage to elect the legislative council and the chief executive to amnesty for themselves irrespective of the nature of their actions. the distinction between these two types of demonstrators is relevant for the discussion at hand. the first group, while expressing disagreement and staging dramatic scenes of the city’s tight spaces packed with people, acted in full compliance with the rules and within behavioral conventions. in contrast, the moment of storming the legislative council building and the sudden shift to violence of the second group, i argue, can be understood 109 isparchitecture.com as an act of self-withdrawal by the activists from the familial care of the hong kong government and from the order of its societal structure, triggered by the sense of abandonment described above. it marks their entry into the realm of jianghu. this explanation is supported by the radical change in the behavior of these activists: the occupation of spaces not designed for sojourn, general conduct opposing governmental and societal norms, the remaining in a tenacious position of opposition throughout the government’s various attempts to open a dialogue, the active use of violence, the wilful embracing of danger, and the blurring of identities. on the surface these manifestations may not appear any different from political activism and unrest in other places, however, in hong kong more than anywhere else, these stand in stark contradiction to the territory’s normative way of life, and importantly, to the young activists’ own disciplined conforming to these prior to the crisis: “they were becoming something different from what they were, a metamorphosis that would have been difficult to imagine in orderly hong kong, a city where you line up neatly for an elevator door and crowds don’t step into an empty street until the signal changes.”22 in what follows, i will lay out the corresponding implications in terms of the use and adaptation, movement within, and re-conceptualization of the urban spaces involved, all of which, i argue, constitute contemporary manifestations of jianghu. inhabiting and transforming the infrastructures of flows at first, victoria park formed the primary gathering and starting point for the formally organized demonstrations against the extradition bill. as the largest park in hong kong, it serves as a frequent location for regular public events, including the annual tiananmen vigil (suspended since 2019). after a while, the movement shifted from victoria park to transitory spaces in the city these manifestations may not appear any different from political activism and unrest in other places, however, in hong kong more than anywhere else, these stand in stark contradiction to the territory’s normative way of life. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 110 lo r en z such as shopping mall atria, underpasses, elevated walkways, tram stops, roads, highways, traffic islands, and the footings of freeway columns; precisely those spaces that are dedicated to ensuring efficient traffic flow— pedestrian or motorized—that are either not designed or even prohibited for sojourn. the choice of locations and the actions taken within them not only ensured greater visibility and impact of the movement, but they also led to a material and conceptual transformation of these spaces. they were rendered dysfunctional through the protesters’ actions that caused traffic to slow down or to come to a complete stand-still. this constituted a direct confrontation with both the government and the order of everyday life in the city. hong kong’s urban density further potentiated the effectiveness of these blockages due to its large population relying on only few highperforming infrastructural arteries for their daily commutes. on the one hand, the transformation of these transitional spaces was established through the bodily movement and occupation of the protesters, which broke with common societal norms in hong kong. on the other hand, the spatial mutation was achieved by the physical alteration of the spaces themselves: the walls of underground tunnels and pedestrian bridges leading to major transport hubs—usually characterized by mute and sanitary tile or glass surfaces—were covered with post-its and flyers. in aggregation these formed a thick pixelated tapestry of chinese poetry, messages offering emotional support, calls for political change, and practical announcements. guardrails along pedestrian sidewalks were dismantled only to be rearranged into various forms of barricades, physically and metaphorically breaking with rules and regulations that shape hong kong’s everyday life. roads and highways were sprinkled with arrangements of paving bricks that transformed them into so-called “brick battlegrounds.”23 these were more than simple barricades. the strategic composition and distribution of clusters of bricks presented tactics explicitly aimed at preventing police response. in the process they hindered general road traffic as well. these intentional arrangements produced their own aesthetics through the spatial and material transformation of the road into a new kind of urban landscape that was now inaccessible to cars: a jianghu sphere that called for a mode of movement and inhabitation by the human body different from the normative ways of navigating the city; perhaps a new form of qinggong—the ability to move lightly and swiftly to “cross difficult terrain and scale walls quickly.”24 roads and highways constitute a most direct analogy between jianghu and hong kong’s physical urban spaces. resonating with the metaphor of “rivers and lakes” these are spaces for flows of traffic; they are separated, dynamic, and they are dangerous to the unprotected body. 111 isparchitecture.com the occupation and transformation of these urban territories establishes jianghu both as an alternative space as well as an alternative mode of conduct, radically breaking with normative behavior, while at the same time exerting enormous pressure on the government by blocking the flows of the city that are synonymous with its livelihood and efficiency. becoming water the umbrella movement in 2014 had adopted a sedentary approach, which involved the occupation of public sites in three locations in the form of temporary settlements, comprised of tents and managed collectively. in contrast, the 2019 protests developed an entirely different strategy—one of fluidity and anonymity. the protesters took inspiration from bruce lee’s quote “be like water,” which—albeit originating in popular culture—is a direct reference to the martial arts tradition and the teachings of taoism.25 they rephrased it to describe their own tactics: be strong like ice. be fluid like water. gather like dew. scatter like mist. the protests were organized in a dispersed, temporary, and dynamically shifting manner, popping up in various locations, making it difficult to predict when and where they would occur, and for police to respond. the nonhierarchical organization without any identifiable leadership inhibited the police from pinpointing anyone responsible. the gear worn by the activists provided physical protection from teargas and basic equipment for defense and attack, and at the same time, it veiled the wearers’ identity, ensuring anonymity despite the omnipresence of security cameras, mobile phone cameras, and press cameras. the quasi-uniform outfit also led to the dissolution of the individual body into the group of acting bodies, foregrounding their alliance and cause, and the impression of both single parts and masses of dynamically changing matter moving in urban space. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 112 lo r en z with a heightened awareness of urban surveillance technology, activists took an array of measures to incapacitate or bypass it. these ranged from the spraying of surveillance cameras to more sophisticated spatial tactics, such as the occupation of and movement across roofs of buildings and elevated walkways—modes of traversing the city previously only known from hong kong’s gangster movies—to evade the field of vision of surveillance cameras in the city’s pedestrian walkway system, effectively hiding in plain sight. they became invisible to the authorities’ cameras and face recognition software yet remained highly visible to hong kong citizens looking up from the streetscape, over from adjoining walkways or down from office and residential towers. hong kong’s unique morphology and density significantly contributed to the formation as well as the increase in intensity of this confrontation and juxtaposition of the ordered and the unruly, the hidden and the visible. the explicit use of water metaphors led to the protests being named the “water revolution” in news coverage.26 the variety of such metaphors used to develop, communicate, and perform protest tactics suggest an overall strategy of becoming water to find anonymity and a segregated space of action in the “rivers and lakes” that are jianghu. digital jianghu social media and the internet played a key role in the mobilization and organization of the movement, as well as in developing forms of counter surveillance directed at the authorities through the strategic documentation and subsequent broadcasting of actions conducted by the police. digital tactics employed by the activists included a combination of online art, forums, and live streaming. fearful that the hong kong government might increasingly adopt measures of internet surveillance and censorship known to be employed in mainland china, the protesters’ set of social media applications and technologies of data sharing was carefully curated as to not leave any digital traces of their identities. the use of non-mainstream messenger apps—the telegram application and the local lihkg forum — in combination with the use of airdropping via their smartphones to exchange information, enabled them to carve out spaces of anonymity and to set up encoded channels of communication in the digital realm to match their strategies in physical space.27 the working principles and the effectiveness of the social media platforms enabled self-organization without de-fined leadership through real-time aggregation and communication of individual initiative. this corresponds to jianghu as an anarchic, dynamic space, in which individuals act alone or in alliances yet without any hierarchical order of command. it 113 isparchitecture.com constitutes a parallel realm that stands in opposition to an established societal order and at the same time evades the grip of its control. the emergence of contemporary jianghu in hong kong in times of normality, jianghu exists in films and novels in chinese culture. in times of crisis and political change, this concept can transform actual spaces into versions of jianghu and to create a mental space for retreat from, reflection on, reprojection of, and potentially the overturning of the status quo. what we witnessed in 2019 in hong kong was the emergence of a contemporary form of jianghu, as a hybridization of digital space, material space, and spatial practices. in absence of any certainty or promising outlook in the face of the expiry date of hong kong’s status as special administration in 2047 and following a severe loss of trust in their government to uphold and defend the rights of hong kong citizens stipulated in the basic law, the radical branch of hong kong protesters took a momentous step to withdraw themselves from the established order and governmental care to fight for their own vision of political justice. in line with literary accounts of jianghu, they produced a new space of action through their own codes and tactics, a parallel world of alternative rules and negotiation of power.28 they radically transformed the space of the city to form the backdrop for their actions and to match their change in conduct. in the ever-increasing escalation of the confrontation between protesters and police the city had turned into a smoking chaos. by late fall 2019 the government had fully withdrawn the extradition bill, though this delayed move failed to generate a substantial sense of resolve. by that time, jianghu had fully unfolded in the territory and in the temper of its young adult generation. clemens von haselberg describes jianghu as a parallel world, as a counterpart to the “public” world of officialdom, hong kong’s unique morphology and density significantly contributed to the formation as well as the increase in intensity of this confrontation and juxtaposition of the ordered and the unruly, the hidden and the visible. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 114 lo r en z but also as its mirror.29 the protests aggressively confronted the hong kong government, expressing deep dissatisfaction and distrust. at the same time, the sudden cutting of ties with conformist behavior by its youth and their metamorphosis into radical subjects throwing themselves into a fight against an intricate conglomerate of forces plainly exposed the impracticality of the very foundations that the “special administration” is built upon—the political agreements that grant it a controlled autonomy with an expiry date. the full ramifications of the emergence of jianghu in contemporary hong kong remain to be seen. the hong kong government’s hardened response to the unrest and the imposing of a new national security law by beijing would have only amplified the lingering dissent. meanwhile the movement has been brought to a halt by the global pandemic, and for now the streets of hong kong are muted by restrictive measures in the name of public health. whatever the consequences of these events will be, the emergence of jianghu in hong kong’s urban space demonstrates that a meaningful connection exists between cultural conceptions and spatial practices. this interrelation alters both the formation as well as our perception of collective life in cities and modifies the notion of what is normatively described as “public space.” our discussion of the form and functions of shared urban spaces can be much enriched if we are able to introduce place-specific cultural conceptions and spatial practices in our understanding of different cities around the world. endnotes 1. hannah arendt, the human condition, (chicago: university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 24. 2. ibid., 28ff. 3. li shiqiao, understanding the chinese city (los angeles: sage publications, 2014), 98ff. 4. zhao tinyang, all under heaven: the tianxia system for a possible world order (oakland: university of california press, 2016), 67. 5. ibid., 62. 6. zhuangzi, and burton watson, the complete works of chuang tzu (new york: columbia university press, 1968), 80. 7. murray n. rothbard, ‘concepts of the role of intellectuals in social change towards laissez faire’, the journal of libertarian studies, vol. ix, no.2 (fall 1990). 8. shi nai’an, the water margin. outlaws of the marsh. the classic chinese novel (north clarendon, vt: tuttle publishing, 2010). 115 isparchitecture.com 9. clemens von haselberg, erzählen von china: genrespezifische identitätskonstruktionen im wuxia film (wiesbaden: springer, 2019), 69. 10. ‘number of private cars per one thousand population in hong kong from 2009 to 2019,’ statista, https://www.statista.com/ statistics/960015/hong-kong-private-cars-per1000-population/ (accessed june 28, 2021). 11. li, understanding the chinese city, 113-114. 12. global ranking 11 in 2020, according to the 2021 stc safety index. https://globalresidenceindex. com/hnwi-index/safety-index/ (accessed june 28, 2021). 13. peter j. hutchings, ‘freedom of speech in hong kong & the problem of “china”.’ cardozo studies in law and literature vol.8, no.2 (1996), 267–75. 14. article 5, the basic law of the hong kong special administrative region of the people’s republic of china, effective as of 1 july 1997, https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclaw/ chapter1.html (accessed august 25, 2022). 15. article 45, the basic law of the hong kong special administrative region of the people’s republic of china, effective as of 1 july 1997, https://www.basiclaw.gov.hk/en/basiclaw/ chapter4.html (accessed june 24, 2021). 16. amy gunia, ‘a brief history of protest in posthandover hong kong,’ time magazine, 20 june 2019, https://time.com/5606212/hong-konghistory-mass-demonstrations-protest/ (accessed june 28, 2021). 17. 2019 population in hong kong: 7.52 million, data retrieved from: ‘population estimates – table 1a: population by sex and age group’, census and statistics department, https:// www.censtatd.gov.hk/en/web_table.html?id=1a, (accessed june 30, 2021). 18. emma graham-harrison and verna yu, ‘hong kong leader suspends extradition bill amid protest pressure,’ the guardian, 15 june 2019, ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 116 lo r en z https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/15/hong-kong-leadercarrie-lam-extradition-bill-delay-protests-china (accessed june 30, 2021). 19. associated press, ‘hong kong extradition law: a timeline of events that led to the current mass protests.’ young post, south china morning post, 12 june 2019, https://www.scmp.com/yp/discover/news/hongkong/article/3055149/hong-kong-extradition-law-timeline-events-ledcurrent (accessed august 31, 2022). 20. martin purbrick, ‘a report of the 2019 hong kong protests’, asian affairs, vol.50, no.4 (2019), 465-487. 21. heike holbig, ‘be water, my friend: hong kong’s 2019 antiextradition protests.’ international journal of sociology, vol.50, no.4 (2020), 325–37. 22. tom lassetter, ‘revolution 101: the hardened teens of the hong kong protests,’ reuters, 13 december 2019, https://www.reuters.com/ investigates/special-report/hongkong-protests-radical/ (accessed august 30, 2022). 23. guardian reporter, ‘mini stonehenges: hong kong protesters take on police, one brick at a time.’ the guardian, 15 november 2019, sec. world news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/ministonehenges-hong-kong-protesters-take-on-police-one-brick-at-a-time (accessed july 3, 2021) 24. robert chard, ‘review of review of fox volant of the snowy mountain, by jin yong and olivia mok.’ bulletin of the school of oriental and african studies, university of london vol.59, no.3 (1996), 606–607. 25. “empty your mind. be formless, shapeless, like water. now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. now water can flow, or creep, or drip, or crash. be water, my friend.” quoted from: don mcdougall, ‘the way of the intercepting fist.’ longstreet, season 1, episode 1, paramount television, edling productions, corsican productions, 1971. 26. jamil anderlini, ‘hong kong’s ‘water revolution’ spins out of control.’ financial times, september 2, 2019. https://www.ft.com/ content/d1f60a3a-cd58-11e9-b018-ca4456540ea6 (accessed august 30, 2022). 27. yong ming kow, bonnie nardi, and wai kuen cheng. ‘be water: technologies in the leaderless anti-elab movement in hong kong.’ proceedings of the 2020 chi conference on human factors in computing systems. honolulu hi usa: ac (2020), 1–12. 28. haselberg, erzählen von china, 70. 29. ibid., 70. introduction contemporary architectural practice increasingly makes use of technology for the design and creation of buildings and environments. while many architects see computer aided design as a drawing tool, others embrace parametric design ideologically, and propose it as a theory and method which can offer architectural solutions even in complex urban landscapes. following a competition, the refurbishment of eleftheria square in nicosia was awarded to the office of zaha hadid architects (zha), one of the major offices that takes parametric design ideologically. the choice of hadid’s proposal proved a major controversy among the local population from the announcement of the competition results in 2005 to the square’s completion in 2020. the discussion focuses mainly on the aesthetic appropriateness of the proposal imposed on the historical context, (especially its proximity to the venetian fortifications and the old town) despite the fact that such an urban intervention encompasses many more issues: memory and historicity, society, politics, culture, and aesthetics, as well as design methodology. in this article, i attempt a hermeneutical approach for examining the zha proposal for the square, in order to see it from various perspectives and understand its significance in relation to its cultural context. i will start with examining the history of the site, offering an interpretation of the meaning it had for the local population, as a topos in the public realm. after investigating the main requirements of the competition, i will assess the reception of the project and the dominant arguments used in parametric design in the historic urban domain. the case of eleftheria square by zaha hadid architects stella evangelidou ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 118 ev an ge lid ou fig.1: map of nicosia by giovanni francesco camocio, (ca. 1570 ad) fig.2: giulio savorgnano, nicosia fortifications (1567). colonial openings fig.3: map of nicosia. elefhteria square, competition brief (2005) fig.4: a celebration at eleftheria square (1952) 119 isparchitecture.com the local discussions. in an attempt to understand the architects’ methodological approach, i will explain their design approach, as evident in their theoretical engagement with parametric design. to contextualize their approach, i also will investigate the opposing views of others on such practices. through a hermeneutical approach, and by using a theoretical discourse ranging from philosophers hannah arendt and michel foucault to architectural theorist alberto pérez-gómez, i will relate the project to broader concerns on topics such as place and meaning, the contemporary public realm, the issue of attunement, parametric design, and the socio-political implications of a particular morphology in historical settings. i also will explore how the project, as it has been built, is used by residents of and tourists visiting nicosia. it raises questions about architecture’s ethical role and impact on society in the era of globalization. through this examination, the eleftheria square project in nicosia can be seen as a case study in the promise and pitfalls of employing parametric design in the historic urban domain. historical background—the site as topos even though nicosia, the capital of cyprus, has never been designed as an ideal city, [fig.1] its fortifications were a model of renaissance engineering meant to be improved upon and replicated in ideal cities elsewhere within the republic of venice. designed by the military engineer giulio savorgnano in 1567, the walls were still incomplete three years later when the town was besieged by the ottomans. yet they still remain largely intact to this day. when the old town started expanding beyond its limits in the late-nineteenth century, the british colonial government created openings [fig.2] through the venetian walls in the form of bridges or roads, in order to connect it with the new suburbs. two of these openings were wider than the others. even though they were bridges over ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 120 ev an ge lid ou a moat, they functioned as collective spaces. one acquired the function of a bus terminal, whereas the other functioned as a gathering space in the form of a square. this certainly occurred due to its location: it is an extension of the historical commercial main street, connected to a long avenue that leads out of the city. the square moreover is adjacent to the bastion where until recently the city hall was located. as a result of political hostilities between turks and greeks on the island, a buffer zone has been erected, first in 1963 and then in 1974, that divides nicosia into northern and southern parts. thus, while the historical city center, with its gothic cathedral and piazza, remained within the limits of the turkish occupied territory in the north, the square was appropriated by the greek citizens as the city’s main square in the south. [fig.3] as such, it developed strong socio-political qualities, and became a place where spontaneous demonstrations and celebrations would take place. the bastion, being at a higher level, acted many times as a stage enabling direct contact between the organizers or politicians above and the people in the square below. [fig.4] occasionally, the municipality would organize festivals, during which this urban setting would function as an open-air concert hall. associated with such communal events, the square was then renamed “eleftheria”, which is the greek word for freedom.1 it has been, therefore, a topos in both a phenomenological as well as in a political sense. it was a topos in the phenomenological sense of the genius loci, as defined by christian norberg-schulz: a place which can be determined by its physical characteristics, and yet is more than that. a topos is defined as an existential space that carries intangible qualities which can only be experienced, rather than be determined by geometry and matter. in the case of manmade places, the qualities of a topos encompass the way a group of people draws on both its own virtues and the virtues of the space in which it is settled, thus acting and developing a degree of collective consciousness. places where people have such a relationship with their built environment conjure up a sense of belonging. consequently, such a place holds both the life of the people and the aura of the several historical layers, which reflect its special character and its own distinct spirit, its genius loci.2 since their construction, the nicosia city walls have endured venetian domination, ottoman and british rule, the country’s independence, and the turkish invasion, but also the spirit of the people in social struggle and rejoicing. in addition to its metaphysical qualities, the socio-political activities that took place on the square gave it qualities that defined it as a topos politikos. according to hannah arendt, the life of the polis is possible through such activities of common action (praxis) in the public realm, 121 isparchitecture.com which is the common world that gathers us together. arendt relates public space to the space of appearances, that is, face-to-face human interactions. appearance is a revelation of oneself, of one’s position and essence, to others. however, as seyla benhabib explains, the public realm is a place where self-interest is transformed into a common public goal that transcends the boundaries of faceto-face society.3 it is the presence of others, that see and hear from different positions), and demanding something in common with others to be more permanent than our earthly lives, which assures us of the reality of both the world and ourselves. our perception of reality, arendt argues, depends upon the phenomenality which takes place in the public realm. consequently, our sense of our own existence depends on it. the public realm is thus a political place where the life of praxis (vita activa) becomes a political life (vios politikos). arendt considers praxis as the highest and most important level of active life. as a political action, praxis is the true realization of human freedom. topos politikos transcends the lifespan of one generation, and thus transforms itself into a place of potential earthly immortality.4 eleftheria square has been the public realm of the polis where its citizens, for generations, would gather in order to participate in a democratic expression of their collective concerns. it was, in this way, an intersubjective space which bonded, but also differentiated, the members of the society in the democratic manifestation in the polis. it was through actions marked by their essence of democracy and plurality that the topos gained, in turn, its existential quality. the competition for a new city square and the reception of the winning scheme in 2005, the nicosia municipality announced a competition for a new “bridge-square.” the main challenges of the requirements, as given in the the public realm is a place where self-interest is transformed into a common public goal that transcends the boundaries of face-to-face society “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 122 ev an ge lid ou competition brief, were: i) to respect the monument of the venetian walls, by following the international conventions and the local legislation on antiquities; ii) to design a permanent, two-lane bridge for vehicular traffic; iii) to provide a public space that would allow social interaction during all seasonal climatic conditions; iv) to pay attention to the materials and details, to propose street furniture as well as new programmatic uses; v) the proposed construction and materials had to allow reversibility, since only the bridge for vehicles would be permanent, whereas part of the square was to be demolished in the future after the construction of a new public square, in a new refurbished area outside the walls. [fig.3] as stated before, the competition was won by zaha hadid architects, with a proposal which caused intense controversy between the citizens during and after the realization of the project. [fig.5.] according to the description of the office’s website, the design of eleftheria square represents a “historically significant architectural intervention” which aspires to reconnect the old fig.5: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square and moat park, nicosia (2010-21) fig.6: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square and moat park, nicosia (2010-21). the “dish.” view from the moat 123 isparchitecture.com fortified town with the modern city, by means of a “bold vision of coherence and continuity.” the level of the square, which the architects call “the dish,” has a slight upward inclination toward the moat, so as to act as an amphitheater addressing the bastion [fig.6], and in order to create a dialogue between the old and the new, as the office’s representative explained in an interview.5 according to the same representative, the main structural novelty that was to be introduced was the unorthodox shape of the columns resting on the moat, with a thin tip and opening to a wide diameter at the top. this design was a solution to the problem of excavating into the moat and disturbing the historical layers beneath. he added that the innovative design and construction technique at such a scale was possible only due to parametric design, the method first applied in the phaeno science centre, which zha had just completed in germany. apart from the information shared above, there is no other information recorded regarding the architects’ concept and intentions for the form chosen for the specific project and its integration with the existing urban fabric. the eleftheria square project was nominated by a local jury for the mies van der rohe awards which, as an institution, demands architecture to respond to vernacular, traditional, cultural, and natural elements. the views of the supporters of the project, engaged in the local debate, is well summarized in the jury’s accompanying supportive essay from the local committee, which interprets the upward lifting of “the dish” as a symbolic gesture toward the future, and its circular geometry, which embraces the bastion, as a reference to the past. the essay regards the lower level of the moat as “a secret garden” with its own microclimate and distinct spatial qualities. the jury further praised the aesthetic quality of the details and the secret garden, which give to the overall project an artistic value which is accompanied with spatial experiences and promenades. in such a way, ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 124 ev an ge lid ou it concludes, the project not only “re-establishes the area as a gateway to the old city, but also as a unique destination in itself.”6 on the other side, the opponents of the project criticize the hadid scheme firstly for the way it visually clashes with the monument of the venetian walls “through its scale and materials.” they claim that the venetian walls function at the level of the intimate and the familiar, despite their monumentality, because of the earthy quality of the sandstone, which is also used extensively in the buildings of the old city with the narrow streets. [fig.7-8] the color and texture of the sandstone is in contrast to the coldness of the marble and the gray and white concrete of the new square. [fig.9] they perceive the new square as massive and monolithic, whereas the venetian walls and the old town consist of small units and intimate spaces that relate to the human scale.7 the materials used for hadid’s square, in conjunction with the hyper-aestheticized forms and sophisticated details, have been considered as alien to the locals’ sense of aesthetics and habits. the lack of consideration for the local climatic conditions is another issue. cyprus is sunny most of the year, whereas nicosia, being at the center of the island, is exposed to high temperatures that, in the summer, can sometimes exceed 40oc. indifference to the microclimate of nicosia prohibits people from gathering in the square for at least half the year. the unsuitability of the public square to the weather conditions limits public encounters due to the reflective materials and lack of shade. in addition, this criticism focuses on the fact that the proposed scheme failed to respond to the basic programmatic requirements of the competition, since the construction materials didn’t seem to be reversible, there was no fig.7: materiality and scale in the old town: nicosia within the venetian walls.. fig.8: materiality and scale in the old town: nicosia within the venetian walls.. 125 isparchitecture.com vehicular bridge, and no furnishings were proposed, while compliance with the antiquities law was disputed. it is also important to note that the design at the moat level was not part of the competition, but a later commission added to the project. although the square garnered praise for its formal qualities, the negative criticism weighs more on its human utility. the anthropocentric concern examines the metaphysical quality of the character and sense of the place, as well as the relation between its social and urban aspects, on the phenomenological dimension. from this short analysis of the scheme, one can conclude that issues such as materiality, historical layering, climate, local habits, and ways of socializing and using public space were given little consideration during the design of the new eleftheria square by the winning office. the debate, which took place in the local press and across social media, was often accompanied with both caustic and ironic remarks directed toward the architect and the mayor, who were seen as indifferent elites, distant from the operation of the “real world.” such criticism was related to the extensive time required for the project to be completed, due to the many delays caused by conflicts between the architect, the municipality, and the contractors, which, in turn, caused an increase in cost and the disruption of the city center. related theoretical discourses in the absence of more information from zha regarding the concept behind eleftheria square, examination of the theoretical discourse which constitutes the background of their work is our only option for understanding the designers’ thought process. concurrently, an examination of other theoretical discourses concerning new architecture in historic and sensitive environments can inform a critical perspective on the subject. the reference to, and influence of, the russian avant-garde on zaha hadid’s work since her ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 126 ev an ge lid ou student years has been discussed and analyzed by many theorists and critics. reflecting on her early paintings, hadid confirmed her interest in the concept of fragmentation, abstraction, and explosion, as well as in deconstructing ideas of repetitiveness and mass production, which constitute the characteristics of modern architecture. according to zha’s website, “for hadid, painting was a design tool, and abstraction was an investigative structure for imagining architecture and its relationships to the world we live in.” “her paintings,” it continues, “were conceived as a manifesto of a utopian world,” and “prefigure the potential of digital processes,” which explains why “technology and innovation have always been central to the work of the office”.8 her collaboration with patrik schumacher in 1988, whose work in parametric design complemented hadid’s approach, enabled the realization of their stylistic projects, and achieved both technological and structural breakthroughs. schumacher’s perspective, as explained in his massive theoretical books parametricism as style—parametricism manifesto 20089 and the autopoiesis of architecture,10 offer insight into the zha approach to architecture. in both works, schumacher claims that today’s architecture has difficulty addressing the complexity of contemporary cities and societies, and therefore needs to reassert its methods. he sees an “inability in modernism and deconstructivism to form a new sustainable view.” therefore, he highlights the need to discover a new comprehensive theoretical system which can describe architecture from within its own internal constitution.11 since architecture, according to schumacher, cannot exist without theory, all buildings before leon battista alberti (1404-1472), the first architect offering a theory of architecture, fall into the category of tradition. schumacher asserts that each previous style in history constitutes a new research paradigm defeating its predecessor. therefore, the “history of fig.9: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square, the level of the square. 127 isparchitecture.com architecture can be thought of in terms of cycles of innovation and shifts between revolutionary periods.”12 parametricism is thus, according to him, the style of our times, because it is considered the architectural avant-garde of the technological era and, in addition, it can explain architecture itself as a distinct, autonomous network of communications. the “autopoiesis” of architecture is architecture’s ability for self-production. this is based on a theory that focuses on architectural communication that observes and analyzes how individual communications depend upon, and reproduce structures such as concepts, values, styles and methods. communications are the drawings, texts, and built works, whereas built works are the set of reference points within the network of architectural communications. conceived as a scientific theory about architecture from “within architecture,” it is promoted as the “end of architectural theories.” reflecting architecture’s evolving patterns of communication in relation to the societal domain, the autopoiesis of architecture and parametricism do not communicate with straight lines and platonic solids as they did in the past, nor with typologies, zones, or territories. instead, the theory involves working with primitives such as “splines, blobs, nurds, and particles” organized by scripts, as well as by “gradient fields of activity and variable social scenarios calibrated with various event parameters.” since architectural elements have become so malleable through parametricism, one can ask for further softening, further differentiation, correlation, script, and so on.13 in this method, there is a cross-connectedness which, unlike phenomenology, always depends on computer data. schumacher suggests that “parametricism” could introduce new ideas to the architectural scene. to him, it “can be summarized in the slogan” of importing an “architectural and urban repertoire that is geared up to create complex, polycentric schumacher claims that today’s architecture has difficulty addressing the complexity of contemporary cities and societies, and therefore needs to reassert its methods. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 128 ev an ge lid ou urban and architectural fields which are densely layered and continuously differentiated.” style, buildings, and cities are described in terms of liquidity, flow, void, openness, and complexity, and their compliance to the tools of parametric design.14 the images in the parametricism manifesto are related to hadid’s utopian painting, london 2066 and many others.15 the “active shake” of the city occurs by using similar parameters to large scale projects where open spaces, streets, railway lines, and water networks are redefined in new relationships and new possibilities in urban experiments. the theoretical ground expressed in hadid’s paintings and schumacher’s manifesto share similar and intense formalistic elements and fluidity with zha’s architectural projects built all over the world. despite the location or country in which they are built, these projects look alike, having similar forms and even photorealistic renderings from the conceptual to the final construction stage. at the same time, the language and notions schumacher uses to describe this methodology are hardly intelligible for people unfamiliar with the technological aspect of digital design. nevertheless, these notions are expected to be understood, at least by the younger generations, since this method is well established in the educational program of architecture schools. nonetheless, this language is far removed from any previous form of architectural production and representation, which remains haptic; it might instead sound more like a technical description of the inside functioning of a machine, rather than one regarding the “insides of architecture,” as schumacher claims. at the opposite end of the argument about the place of science and technology in human life, many twentieth-century theorists have spoken of its negative course, beginning with the shift in consciousness that occurred after descartes and galileo. amongst them, the architectural theorist alberto pérez-gómez further explains the shift that occurred in the architectural field. in his latest work, attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science, he argues that topos, as a qualitative experiential site, was substituted by geometric space, since galileo and descartes saw the universe as a homogeneous geometric void in which all bodies were described by the same mathematical laws. it was under the influence of such epistemological thinking that claude perrault (1613-1688) came to understand architectural representation as a systematized set of sections, along with cartesian planes.16 a century later, according to pérez-gómez, jean-nicholas-louis durand (1760–1834) believed that architectural meaning was dependent only on the efficient, mechanical understanding of structure and cost-effective use of materials. for him, architecture was essentially a social need for a functional shelter. durand implemented sophisticated tools of representation for producing 129 isparchitecture.com innovative work that was unresponsive to its cultural context. he preferred strictly instrumental design mechanisms, with the belief that architecture is the objective space of cartesian geometry. thus, a “building” meant its use, and any emotion was beyond its scope. by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was a common assumption among architects that architectural space could be easily represented through descriptive geometry and axonometric projection based on visual attributes. this, pérez-gómez argues, neglected the emotional aspects and qualities experienced in a real, physical, and transcendental space.17 this translates, today, to the production of digital space and fashionable innovations through architectural software. pérez-gómez, therefore, is surprised by neither schumacher’s ideas presented in autopoiesis nor the popular desire for “intelligent” buildings with “computerized minds” for adjusting to our comfort. he claims that as long as the use of technology enhances telecommunication devices and production techniques, our own sensory and perceptual abilities will be diminished. and since our urban environments emerge from this method of production, which reduces space to a set of coordinates, they remain devoid of qualities which involve all our senses. for pérez-gómez, the crisis of modern science and architecture consists of the fact that parametric strategies and tools generate forms and novel buildings that fail to propose meaningful, attuned environments for human culture. in this way they “exacerbate our sense of despair in view of the meaninglessness of existence.”18 further, such novel structures are in line with strategies for the commodification of architecture within the contemporary neoliberal political spectrum. the art critic hal foster offers an explanation of the process, which is aided by hightech materials and electronic manipulations in order to become signs and symbols. he claims that the structure and the program are distorted in a way for pérezgómez, the crisis of modern science and architecture “exacerbate our sense of despair in view of the meaninglessness of existence.” “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 130 ev an ge lid ou to achieve a sculptural monumental effect which, at times, has a scale that dominates the landscape. formal expression is stressed, above all, in order to impress, while behind the rhetorical façades there are, many times, conventional interiors. thus, the form of the building serves as “a sign that overwhelms the context.” according to foster, this is a winning populist formula with the signature of a star-architect, which serves the marketing policies of “museums, companies, cities, and other corporate entities that want to be perceived, through instant icons, as global players.”19 eleftheria square fulfills foster’s description. moreover, since the mayors and municipality officials have used the name of the architect and the design as a branding tool to promote the square as a tourist attraction, in order to raise the city’s economy and status. the language of the project coincides with that of city branding policies which turn a location into a destination, while at the same time rejecting its own historicity and the meaning of the place. topos, in this case, becomes spectacle. in such a way, architecture turns into an image that serves more the market economy than society. architecture as a language and art form is symbolic, and whether it has a meaningful presence for its users or not, it has its own meaning within the urban context. from the point of view of philosopher hans georg gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics, new architecture in a historic setting can generate multiple interpretations, which are constantly regulated by what a setting has been in the past, and what it wants to be, by means of the architecture of the new intervention. these interpretations might fall into the realm of prejudices. prejudices for gadamer are the pre-conditions of understanding. in the case of new architecture in old settings, we distinguish blind prejudices from productive prejudices only through a dialogical encounter with the past as a whole. life, says gadamer, is the dialogue between past and present. it is through this dialogue that we can define our living values and give meaning to our lives and surroundings.20 to understand the past is a necessary metaphysical basis for life. the context for the new architecture relates to people’s understanding of their setting. yet the relation to the architecture of the past goes beyond the historical period of which people have knowledge.21 gadamer talks about the harmony of all details, with the whole as a criterion for this understanding. failure to achieve harmony means that the understanding has failed. how do we, then, understand the past? for gadamer, it is a process of holistic experiences. understanding tradition is an essential element to understanding existence. this understanding also takes place on visual and tangible grounds, such as materials, construction techniques, texture, colors, spatial disposition, and volumetric articulation.22 in such 131 isparchitecture.com a way, gadamer offers an analysis of the tangible qualities of the genius loci. from a similar perspective, pérez-gómez discusses how, for centuries, the european city functioned as a theater of complex and diverse atmospheres. he explains “atmospheres” as the character, mood, and ambience of a place apprehended by all the senses. atmospheres result from both natural and manmade spaces. besides their materials and details, they include smells, sounds, and habits. these constitute an aesthetic experience which is multisensory and emotional, and cannot be reduced to distant “pictorial” forms. if architecture, he claims, does not aim to deal with local cultures, the lives of people, their habits, places, stories, and history, it will remain detached and contextually alien.23 with the term attunement, pérez-gómez calls for an architecture that is attuned to its location and its inhabitants, and can thus enhance our human values and capacities. architecture remains in crisis, he states, as long as its social relevance is lost to formal innovation and algorithmic parameters that determine the physical environment, while ignoring the meaning of places. the meaning of places rests in the poetics of materials and cultural values. he argues that the understanding of its meaning is possible when architecture is engaged in a dialogical process between present and past, when it operates as a communicative setting for societies. by understanding its meaning, which is a constituent part of our consciousness, we are engaged with the spiritual dimension of life and a process of self-understanding. pérez-gómez delves into an existential reflection on the meaning of life, which is inextricably linked to the meaning of architecture. he thus poses a question for the ethical dimension of architecture and its service to society. to be fully self-aware, he claims, participation in an external environment replete with meanings and emotions is necessary. such transformative atmospheres bring to understand the past is a necessary metaphysical basis for life “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 132 ev an ge lid ou productive change. attuned architecture permits people to be attuned to their worldly actions and habits.24 the “actual world” the current use of the square if we consider gadamer’s and pérez-gómez’s hermeneutical approach valid, it is obvious that the parametric methodology used for eleftheria square did not make sufficient consideration for either history, meaning or attunement. however, an integrated view of the eleftheria square project fig.10: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square. occasional concerts under the square fig.11: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square. late afternoon (2022) fig.12: zaha hadid architects, eleftheria square. moat level, weekends in late afternoon (2022) 133 isparchitecture.com is not possible without considering the way it is now being used, including its complementary part on the adjacent moat level. a few months after its completion, the first event organized on the square celebrated a political anniversary. this was the first and last collective event of any character to take place on the square, according to the municipality’s records. after that, the municipality moved all events below the square, on the moat level. since then, on the lower level underneath the square there have been many events of various, other than political, character. [fig.10] some uses that were overlooked by zha in its design, but deemed by the city council appropriate for the moat park, were designed by the municipality, such as a small amphitheater and a playground, which appropriated some edges of the park. the level of the square functions, mainly, as a pedestrian passage-way between the new and the old walled city. during the day, it is usually deserted, especially due to the intense sunshine, [fig.9] but also because it provides no other uses. on weekend nights and afternoons, however, the square attracts many people from the migrant (asian and african) community working in nicosia. [fig.11] the same occurs during weekends, at the level of the moat, which is overrun by migrants taking selfies. [fig.12] these are, perhaps, the most vibrant moments of the square and the moat park, since the locals, who don’t hang out on the square, usually leave immediately after visiting for an event at the moat-park. besides the locals who visited the site when it opened, and despite the attractive drone photos advertising the site taken by the municipality, [fig.5] it seems that it is not a destination for them. likewise at the moat level, although there is an attractive park with fountains, lawns and tree clumps, located on floral-pattern concrete paving—all shapes ordered by parametric design. these observations lead to the question of why the site cannot become a pluralistic collective ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 134 ev an ge lid ou space of exchange and meaning for all. would it be valid to suggest that this might be due to its strong character of a pleasure garden that caters only to visual pleasure, in conjunction with the diminishing importance of the venetian walls as a mute backdrop to the irrelevant scenery in front of it? the deserted appearance of the square during the day turns it into a dystopia, whereas the project’s site as a whole can be defined as a heterotopia. michel foucault, in his work of other spaces, defines a utopia to be an ideal place of a perfect yet unreal society in bliss and describes heterotopias as the real places that have strayed from what is considered “normal” and are approaching the “other.”25 both the square and the moat below fit foucault’s description of heterotopias of the transitory, as well as of the two extreme types of heterotopia, of illusion and compensation, respectively. a heterotopia of the transitory is a place absolutely temporal, disoriented from the eternal, and where time is fleeting, like in a festival. in a heterotopia of illusion we encounter informal, outside of “the normal” social activities in an illusory space which exposes the rationality of the adjacent space. a heterotopia of compensation, according to foucault’s terminology, fits his example of the “colonies:” a perfectly organized space that leaves its mark in the culture, which aims to be an ideal model of organization to which we all must adapt.26 conclusion eleftheria square, as an integral part of the venetian walls, connecting the old city with the new, the city’s history and its memory, carried a profound meaning for the inhabitants of nicosia that can be understood and defined by the notion of topos. the discussion and controversy regarding the refurbished eleftheria square will, perhaps, continue for many years, given its importance to the city. this is so because of its central location as well as its historicity, its continuous cost of maintenance and surveillance, and its function as a public domain in flux in an emerging multicultural city. besides its specificity, the project can be seen as a case study for new projects in historic urban environments designed via a similar parametric approach. reviewing the examination of the project, one could say that several considerations arise regarding the role of architecture in society. on the one hand, there are issues regarding the more technical aspect of the production of architecture and its management. on the other, there are issues related to its humanitarian and spiritual roles. in both cases, the core issue is ethical, and concerns those to whom architecture bears responsibility. issues related to the responsibility of the competition jury to meet the programmatic requirements, the responsibility of municipal 135 isparchitecture.com authorities when the initial budget is exceeded, the management of the schedule, the management of taxpayers’ money, the extension of the project’s scale without a new tender, and the failure to comply with conventions on antiquities, are related to the technocratic aspect, but are not insignificant in the world of architectural practice. on the contrary, they are related to the ethical code of the discipline. even though these issues are not usually heard beyond local societies, in our time of globalized architecture it is worth studying projects of stararchitecture and how and/or why their execution might affect the wellbeing of a society. although the technical aspect is short-term and can, eventually, be handled, the actual built projects and their consequences are long-term. the result of a theoretical and methodological attempt based on “parametricism” for a utopian landscape that would be “self-produced” and can reproduce communication structures, such as concepts and values, seems to become, in the eleftheria square project, a place that segregates society. the public realm, according to arendt’s definition, does not emerge automatically because people gather. instead, it occurs when their opinions are openly expressed, and their collective goal is manifested through actions that are possible due to human diversity and agency.27 the hyper-aestheticized and non-functional forms have displaced political actions from the site. eleftheria square has lost its quality as a topos politikos. despite the promise of the inclusion of human functions into parametric design, it seems that algorithms on a computer screen cannot, at least yet, engage peoples’ histories, their sites with multiple meanings, their memories, or social habits. instead, while aligned with the demands of a marketplace that commodifies architecture, “parametricism” results in an aesthetic homogenization on its top side, while it is only underneath and around its margins that the creation of heterotopias such as those at eleftheria square; the public realm does not emerge automatically because people gather. instead, it occurs when their opinions are openly expressed and their collective goal is manifested through actions that are possible due to human diversity and agency. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 136 ev an ge lid ou heterotopias of the transitory, of illusion, and of compensation. if we consider that human consciousness needs external environments as vessels for meaning and emotion for its self-awareness, as well as dialogue and exchange in a pluralistic environment, these spaces of aesthetic homogenization cannot offer the space for a conscious life on the spiritual, social, and political level. since the political is closely associated with aesthetic experience, and since at the core of the aesthetic experience is life itself, our harmony with our surroundings is an important factor in our psychosomatic health. as pérez-gómez says, an ethical architecture cannot but promote such attunement with our physical places, which are of utmost importance for our well-being. cities with alienating environments cause alienation with culture and result in a sense of purposelessness. they are sources of malaise, contributing to despair. for when architecture functions as a “high-tech drug,” says pérez-gómez, it simply provides comfort in order to avoid boredom and the reality of death.28 if architecture will continue to eliminate spaces that promote human exchange and awareness by replacing them with “intelligent” and “spectacular” places that promote lethargy, narcissism, and illusion, we will probably need to reconsider its role in, and responsibility for, the survival of culture. endnotes 1. after the second world war, and prior to the name “eleftheria” (freedom), the square was named after ioannis metaxas. he was the greek prime minister who rejected an ultimatum to surrender imposed by italy, committing greece to the allies and bringing the country into the war against the nazis and mussolini. thus, the square was for many decades associated with the “no” of the greek resistance and passion for freedom. 2. christian norberg-schulz, genius loci: towards a phenomenology of architecture (new york: rizzoli, 1979), 6–22. 3. seyla benhabib, the reluctant modernism of hannah arendt. (thousand oaks/london/new delhi: sage publications, 1996), 200–201. 4. hannah arendt, the human condition, (second edition) (chicago: the university of chicago press, 1998 [1958]), 7, 15, 50–72. 5. σταματίου, ελίνα. ‘ο χρίστος πασσάς των zaha hadid architects αποκαλύπτει τη νέα πλατεία ελευθερίας.’ sell & build – scientific construction magazine, february,27 2011; http://www.sellandbuild. com/interview/5355 (accessed december 18, 2019). 6. cyprus architects association. β’ φάση κυπριακής συμμετοχής – eu mies awards 2022; https://architecture.org.cy/v-fasi-kypriakis-symmetochis%e2%88%99-eu-mies-award-2022/ (accessed june 5, 2021). 137 isparchitecture.com 7. στέλλα ευαγγελίδου, ‘αρχιτεκτονικός διαγωνισμός για την ανάπλαση της πλατείας ελευθερίας και του περιβάλλοντα χώρου.’ o πολιτης (nicosia, june 4, 2005). 8. zaha hadid architects. zaha hadid: early paintings and drawings at the serpentine sackler gallery. https://www.zaha-hadid.com/2016/12/07/zahahadid-earlypaintings-and-drawings/ (accessed december 18, 2019). 9. patrik schumacher, parametricism as style— parametricist manifesto. london. presented and discussed at the dark side club, 11th architecture biennale, venice, 2008. https://www.patrikschumacher.com/texts/ parametricism%20as%20style.htm (accessed december 18, 2019). 10. patrik schumacher, parametricism and the autopoiesis of architecture. sci-arc, los angeles, september 2010. https://www.patrikschumacher. com/texts/parametricism%20and%20the%20 autopoiesis%20of%20architecture.html (accessed august 10, 2022). 11. ibid. 12. ibid. 13.patrik schumacher, caa annual lecture 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuw7_f_8qsk&feature=youtu.befbclid=iw-ar193znjfe jsawbzwlvebs32gdedk5f2svfqpz8c0ft1bf uc wdda1hygwwq (accessed december 18, 2019). 14. ibid. 15. zaha hadid architects. london 2066, https://www.zaha-hadid.com/masterplans/ london-2066/ (accessed december 15, 2019) 16. alberto pérez-gómez, attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science. (cambridge, massachusetts: mit press, 2016), 13, 23,119–20. 17. ibid., 108, 127. 18. ibid., 119–30, 225. 19. hal foster, ‘image building,’ in: anthony ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 138 ev an ge lid ou vidler (ed.), architecture between spectacle and use. (williamstown, ma: sterling and francine clark institute, 2008), 167, 175. 20. hans-georg gadamer, truth and method (new york: crossroad, 1986, c1975), 245–53. 21. hans-georg gadamer, philosophical hermeneutics (editred by david e. linge). (berkeley: university of california press, 1977), 95–96 22. gadamer, truth and method, 259–78. 23. alberto pérez-gómez, attunement, architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science, (university of massachusetts, amherst. department of architecture lecture series. fall 2020) https://www.umass.edu/ architecture/umass-department-architecture-lecture-series-fall-2020alberto-p%c3%a9rez-g%c3%b3mez. 24. pérez-gómez, attunement, 216–30. 25. michel foucault and jay miskowiec, ‘of other spaces,’ in: diacritics, vol.16, no.1, (johns hopkins university press, spring, 1986), 22–27 26. ibid., 27. 27. ibid., 198–199. 28. ibid., 8. the user’s space is lived—not represented (or conceived). [henri lefebvre]1 introduction a recurring theme in the history of architectural and urban theory is the shaping role the built environment plays in the everyday lives of its users. perhaps most famously illustrated by winston churchill’s statement “we shape our buildings, and afterwards they shape us,” both theorists as well as designers have frequently considered the designed environment as playing an active part in society and examined the relation between plans on the drawing table and their impact on people’s lives in reality.2 although divergent in their outcomes, the ambitions of modernists like le corbusier, structuralists like herman hertzberger, and current architects who advocate the participation of endusers in their design processes converge in the belief that design can contribute to the production of a certain ideal society. these same ambitions, however, have also led to projects in which people behaved differently or even completely opposite to the intentions of the designers. the efficiency and functionality that were at the basis of early twentieth century modernism were later part of the criticism on the living-conditions in buildings like pruitt-igoe in saint-louis or the bijlmer-neighbourhood in amsterdam.3 alison smithson expressed her disillusionment about the way residents behaved in robin hood gardens after she and her husband had designed it completely around their vision on an ideal collective society.4 in less extreme cases as well, what architecture does. an embodied approach towards the impact of the built environment margit van schaik ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 140 va n sc ha ik it seems the impact of the built environment is limited. hope for creating an ideal social situation, such as strong communities shaped by collective spaces or gardens, often seems vain in retrospect and serve primarily as a good story to “sell” the design rather than a proper solution in reality. luckily, the same principle applies vice-versa: even in poorly designed buildings, people seem to be quite flexible in making their environments work for whatever it is they want to do. this observation has led some to observe, that the built environment is not as influential as designers themselves might like to think. according to architect and behavioural researcher richard buday for example, “environmental determinism’s failure showed leading architecture … does not shape behaviour any better than secondary architecture,” and therefore one might even wonder if the architect’s profession is at all that relevant.5 the belief in this power of the built environment can even be dangerous according to buday, as it neglects to acknowledge the impact of people’s own choices. regardless of how much or how little impact design has on people, we can nevertheless agree that one environment can be experienced as more pleasant, lively, beautiful or practical than another, even when such judgements might not be universal. underestimating such impact might be just as dangerous as overestimating its power. instead of trying to measure the share that can be ascribed to environmental design, this article therefore proposes an alternative route: instead of asking the quantitative question of how much impact the environment has on its users, it asks the generative question of how such impact arises. the first part of the article explores possible answers to this question. the second discusses issues that complicate the implementation of this knowledge into the design practice. the theories of such philosophers as edmund husserl, martin heidegger and maurice merleau-ponty, in the wake of recent developments in the fields of philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and more specifically the research program of embodied embedded cognition, provide insights into the strong and dependent relations between the mind, the body and the environment.6 supported by extensive scientific research over the last few decades, these insights dismiss a cartesian view in which an immaterial and independent mind can think rationally about the physical world.7 as many architectural theorists, such as harry mallgrave, have shown, these insights offer strong potential for understanding architectural experience as well.8 instead of considering subjects as relatively independent from the built environment they perceive, we can now understand how architectural experience is a physical consequence of the impact a building has on its users. to make this assertion clear, we will have a look at what is 141 isparchitecture.com called the enactive approach to perception, a theory that is part of the broader embodied embedded cognition movement. as andrea jelić, et al. have argued, this enactive view provides a particularly useful guide to studying architectural experience.9 of particular interest is a paper by evan thompson and francisco varela, in which the connections between mind, body and world are explained as three “dimensions of embodiment,” or three different cycles of operation that integrate these three components: 1. cycles of organismic regulation of the entire body. 2. cycles of sensorimotor coupling between organism and environment. 3. cycles of intersubjective interaction, involving the recognition of the intentional meaning of actions and linguistic communication.10 although it falls beyond the scope of this article to describe these kinds of cycles in all their biological detail, they do provide an interesting framework with which we can explore the ways in which architecture influences its users. they describe the three levels at which body, brain and world are integrated with each other and therefore how connections between them are made, which provides an overview of how architecture has “access” to a human being. in the latter part of the article, i will therefore consider each dimension separately and explore how it relates to the built environment to arrive at a tool with which the impact in specific cases can be analyzed. besides this theoretical exploration, a specific case-study will be used in order to illustrate the theory and relate it to building practice. the chosen case-study is the plenary meeting hall of the dutch parliament, a design that holds a special relation to themes of publicity and power. seating the 150 elected members of parliament, it forms the physical realization of dutch democracy and despite being an indoor space, the hall is arguably ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 142 va n sc ha ik one of the most public spaces in the country. in the first instance, both literally and physically public access to meetings in the hall is ensured at all times, overcoming complex issues such as security and wheelchair access. but access is ensured virtually as well, as the debates taking place in the room are shared through various media on a daily basis. programmatically similar to the british house of commons chamber churchill referred to in his famous statement, the impact of the hall’s design is particularly relevant, since it may possibly influence policies that concern the entire country. it results in interesting relationships between the roles that are accommodated and how they have become physical in the design of the space, the furniture and other facilities. drawings of this design will provide an illustration of the impact that can be discovered in each cycle. organismic regulation under organismic regulation we understand those unconscious processes that regulate the state of the organism. as thompson and varela explain, the “main basis is the autonomic nervous system, in which sensors and effectors to and from the body link neural processes to basic homeodynamic processes of the internal organs and viscera.”11 the purpose of these cycles is to translate information about the environment to reactions within the body in order to keep the organism safe and healthy. often, they remain unnoticed, as they occur unconsciously and more instinctively than intentional perception and action. fig.1: pi de bruijn/ architectencie, assembly hall of the dutch parliament, the hague 1992, an overview of the roles in the plenary hall and their position 143 isparchitecture.com emotional states are the outcome of an interaction between, for instance, the central nervous system and visceromotor systems that regulate the organs. these emotional states can be understood as a first “gut feeling” about what is experienced. as thompson and varela explain “organismic regulation, because of its links with basic emotional operating systems … has a pervasive affective dimension that manifests in the range of affective behaviours and feelings.”12 in other words, when we experience architecture, organismic regulation controls our first reaction to a building.13 the autonomic nervous system, which is divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, responds to these emotional states.14 the sympathetic nervous system has an activating role, as it accelerates the heart rate in response to certain circumstances. therewith it regulates our “fightor-flight” response, as it can prepare the body for intense physical activity. the parasympathetic nervous system, however, calms the body. when circumstances suggest that the organism is safe, this system brings it to a state in which it can rest. here, we can draw a parallel to what edmund burke has called the sublime and beautiful as categories of aesthetic enjoyment.15 the former is based on a tensioning of the body, when for example we stand on the edge of a cliff, the latter is based on a relaxation when we observe something serene and controlled. from this we can understand organismic regulation as the process that on the one hand makes us say “wow” when for example observing imposing or monumental architecture, and on the other makes us feel comfortable when a space is small and shielded.16 this observation becomes more concrete when we consider the design of the dutch plenary meeting hall. the hall is part of a building designed by pi de bruijn and realized in 1992, located at the binnenhof in the hague. it holds the plenary meetings of the parliament or the “tweede kamer” these emotional states can be understood as a first “gut feeling” about what is experienced. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 144 va n sc ha ik fig.2: possible emotional states evoked by the general layout of the plenary meeting hall fig.3: possible emotional states evoked in the center of the hall 145 isparchitecture.com (second chamber), which has a comparable role to the house of representatives in the u.s. or the house of commons in great britain. the 150 members of parliament are seated in six segments, facing their chair(wo)man and clerks on one side and the government (cabinet) on the other. [fig. 1] when entering, walking through and resting in the arena-scaled hall, different emotional states will probably arise, related to different parts of the space. [fig. 2-6] in the centre of the hall for example, one is in the middle of a large space, with a high ceiling in which all other users of the room are facing you due to the orientation of their seats. these elements seem intended to evoke a reaction of alertness. in contrast, in the small hallway below the public stands, users are mostly shielded from the large room, because the lower ceiling provides a space that feels much more soothing. it is no coincidence that most actual compromises are made here, where politicians that might be enemies in the “arena,” can feel at ease and come together.17 when you are in the centre of the hall users face a collection of large natural stone walls that rise from behind the chair(wo)man to which comments are addressed. these solid walls might very well evoke a sense of awe and are clearly meant to impress via their monumentality. at the same time the furnishings of the meeting hall are designed in such a way that people are often shielded from each other. “vak k,” the part in which the cabinet is seated, is completely surrounded by a low wooden wall, which makes them in a way protected from the rest of the people. the interruption barrier (for members who respond to or question members of the cabinet) is comparable, with the exception that in this case the wall starts at about 20 cm above the ground, so that the member’s feet remain visible. sensorimotor coupling the second category of ways in which body and the world are interwoven concerns more ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 146 va n sc ha ik fig.4: possible emotional states evoked by the lectern for speaking members of parliament fig.6: possible emotional states evoked by the lectern for members of the cabinet fig.5: possible emotional states evoked by the desks and seats of members of parliament 147 isparchitecture.com elaborate actions and movements through the environment. these movements are made possible by our so-called motor system, which is much more connected to perception than has previously been presupposed. as susan hurley explains in consciousness in action, following up on for example the work by ulric neisser, the generally assumed divide between the body and the mind has resulted in an input-output picture of perception.18 in that picture, perception forms the input from the world to the mind and action forms the output. the mind mediates between these two states: through thought it links the right input to the right output. however, discarding the cartesian divide leads to the conclusion that perception and action are much more interwoven with each other than traditional views have acknowledged. building on, amongst other theories, what has been called the reafference principle, thompson and varela explain, “situated activity takes the form of cycles of sensorimotor coupling with the environment. what the organism senses is a function of how it moves, and how it moves is a function of what it senses.”19 this point was already developed in the 1970s by james gibson in his theory of affordances.20 he argued that humans (and other animals) perceive the world through the actions that are possible within it. we encounter the affordances present in the environment, rather than perceiving the world through something like a photograph, in which all details are grasped at once. what the environment affords is what it offers, provides or furnishes an animal to do in it. a flat surface, for example, is seen as walk-on-able, a surface about 40 cm above the ground is sit-on-able, and round objects that can be grasped in the hand are throw-able and catchable. such affordances are different for each animal or person, related to their individual capabilities. the theory of affordances means that the designed environment of architecture is perceived in the same way, through the actions that it affords. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 148 va n sc ha ik fig.7: actions of speaking afforded in the center of the hall fig.8: actions of speaking afforded by the lectern for speaking members of parliament 149 isparchitecture.com in the description of a relatively simple process of getting milk from a store nearby, architectural theorist sarah william goldhagen shows how these processes continually take place, mostly unconsciously, leaving room for thoughts about plans for the weekend.21 it shows how the built environment is continuously used as a means to something else, rather than being observed as a neutral object. stairs are perceived as providing the possibility to ascend, arcades are perceived for the possibility of walking through, and windows invite you to look outside. they do not determine the user to undertake any of these actions, but through the processes by which we perceive the environment and instrumentalize it for our actions, they do provide us with countless invitations which we do or do not act upon. the impact of an affordance therefore does not lie in the determination of a person’s actions (so i agree with buday, the idea of “environmental determinism,” is problematic), but in the invitation it offers.22 furthermore, although the environment cannot determine what actions a user will undertake, it does often constrain the way in which actions can be performed.23 stairs do not determine you to ascend, but they dictate where you will enter the next floor if you do. arcades do not determine you to walk through them, but they do influence which rooms are the most accessible. and a window does not determine you to look through it, but it does influence what you will see if you do. in case of the plenary meeting hall, the affordances offered by the design are effectively endless, continuously inviting the users in the room to undertake certain actions. on a most basic level the room therefore both expresses and invites the activities it is designed for: a composition of seats, desks and microphones shows the purpose of using the room for plenary meetings by the parliament. [fig. 7-11] some of these affordances stairs do not determine the user to undertake any actions, but ... they do provide us with countless invitations which we do or do not act upon. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 150 va n sc ha ik fig.9: actions of observing afforded by the seats of members of parliament fig.10: actions of walking afforded by the center of the hall 151 isparchitecture.com have clear consequences for how the debates usually take place. consider for example the position of lecterns relative to each other: they determine how the different users are facing one another when they speak. members of cabinet always face the members of parliament that respond to them using the interruption microphone, but they are standing parallel to the ones that are presenting a longer story. furthermore, the lecterns often presuppose their users to be standing up, otherwise the microphone cannot be reached. this same microphone makes sure its users are facing the centre of the meeting hall, as they are positioned in a certain way. the chair(wo)man can control who is allowed to speak, as he or she can turn microphones on and off. the arrangement of seats in the room forms the basis for how members of parliament are sitting in relation to the cabinet and the chair(wo)man during the plenary meetings. the seats provide room for 150 members of parliament, who are divided into six segments of 25 members. some of these members are therefore closer to the debate than others, and might be quicker to use the interruption microphones than the so-called “backbenchers” behind them.24 the different parties are spread among the segments, so that members of a party are not necessarily sitting together in one group, and often mix with other parties. walking paths between the segments make it possible to walk to the centre of the room or the hallway under the public stands, but they also provide space for members to discuss matters with each other between different debates. these are just a few examples of the long list of affordances offered by the meeting hall, that show what kind of impact they might have on the way in which daily activities take place. intersubjective interaction the third category of “cycles of operation” concerns things that are active in social cognition and help humans understand each other. these ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 152 va n sc ha ik cycles make it possible to interpret others, and reason about their intentions, their desires and their emotions. intersubjective interaction involves both structures that are also important to emotion as well as sensorimotor coupling and more specifically the use of mirror-neuron systems. in the 1990s a team of scientists discovered so-called mirror neurons that fire not only when we perform particular activities, but also when we see someone else performing that activity.25 this discovery has led scientists to believe that these neurons play a role in the understanding of emotions, actions and intentions of others (when these are already part of our own repertoire).26 for example, when we see someone else feeling sad, we virtually mirror this expression (although we do not carry out the actual movement) and by “observing” our own feelings arising from this expression, we understand the other is sad. so, we use ourselves as a kind of fig.11: actions of walking afforded between seats of members of parliament 153 isparchitecture.com simulator, mirroring others, in order to make sense of the world. this process is generally known as empathy. according to vittorio gallese, one of the discoverers of mirror neurons, we use this process constantly.27 mirror neurons are active not only when we perceive other human beings, but also in the observation of inanimate objects. recent fmri studies have shown that neurons activated when we are being touched, fire when we perceive someone else being touched, but also when we perceive objects touching one another, such as when we see raindrops falling on the leaves of a plant.28 we not only use ourselves to simulate the actions and emotions of other people, but also to simulate our environment. this has led gallese to replace the word “empathy” with “embodied simulation,” and argue that “the sense we attribute to our lived experience of the world is grounded in the affect-laden relational quality of our body’s action potentialities, enabled by the way they are mapped in our brains.”29 remarkably enough, when the first theories of empathy originated at the end of the nineteenth century, they were part of a philosophical theory on aesthetics, not of how we socially engage with other people. the german theorist robert vischer published on the optical sense of form, in which he distinguished between sehen as a relatively passive form of visual perception, and schauen as a more active one.30 aesthetic experience, with which reality is “grasped,” is based on the latter kind. during this aesthetic experience, we go through a process of einfühlung, by which we “feel ourselves into” or simulate what we encounter. the environment is “reflected in certain vibrations and—who knows what—neural modifications” that make the experience possible.31 vischer’s theories were followed by theodor lipps, whose ästhetik, published at the start of the nineteenth century, explored the analysis of empathy in aesthetic experience further.32 he argued that everything we remarkably enough, when the first theories of empathy originated at the end of the nineteenth century, they were part of a philosophical theory on aesthetics, not of how we socially engage with other people. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 154 va n sc ha ik experience is permeated by our own life. the experienced object is the result of both what has been given by the environment and the activity of the observer. for lipps, aesthetic experience arose from the feeling or movement that an object evokes in us. for example, a great hall evokes a movement of expansion, and from that we understand its greatness. in the case of the dutch parliament, which is itself a great hall, the aesthetic experience could include this same greatness both in the height of the ceiling as well as in the large tapestries on the wall. it can also include the appreciation of the clean shapes of pearwood in the furniture or the craftsmanship that must have been involved making it, although this interpretation of einfühlung involves much more elaborate systems than simply mirror-neurons.33 furthermore, it has been suggested that mirror systems play an important role in language as well. neuroscientist michael arbib hypothesizes that the ability to recognize manual actions in others provided a bridge via pantomime and imitation for the human capacity for both sign and spoken language.34 following this, intersubjective interaction enables us to interpret and make sense of our environment. so, it is through this system and its integration with other systems that we can talk about concepts or messages that are communicated by architecture, based on their physical composition and the actions, both practical and emotional, that they make possible. following giacomo rizzolatti and michael arbib in linking our mirror system to the highly evolved neural and social systems that enable us to use language and other forms of symbolic abstraction, it is through this last cycle that we understand the symbolic meaning provided by architecture. in the case of the dutch parliament, one can interpret the coat of arms printed on the seats of members of parliament as referring to the dutch nation. furthermore, we might interpret the hierarchy of different roles played in the debates through the differences in how luxuriously each seat is designed, through subtle height differences and through accents in the composition of desks such as the higher one or the chair(wo)man. it is also through this cycle that we might interpret the green carpet, the grey ceiling and the tulip-shaped seats as representations of the dutch landscape, as explained in a brochure on the “meaning” of de bruijn’s design.35 users however need quite some information to understand this connection. while people who have foreknowledge might indeed associate these symbols with what they represent, others not armed with such cultural apparati will be unlikely to understand it that way. as stated above, thompson and varela mention the involvement of processes of the first and second cycles in the third.36 processes important 155 isparchitecture.com to emotions are also part of recognizing emotions in others, and mirror neurons are themselves part of sensorimotor systems. and the intertwining goes still further: evoked emotional states are probably also dependent on the affordances and messages one recognizes, and the perceived affordances are related to a person’s mood or their interpretation of the function of the room. the purpose of the framework is therefore not so much to separate each kind of impact but rather to show the elaborate range of impacts that are possible within one design. the implication of the theories as laid out above is that, without impact to the form of some physical change in the body there is no experience. architectural experience therefore only exists through this impact. still, such impact does not determine the behaviour of a building’s users. the two following remarks offer partial explanation in this regard. a network of actors firstly, this impact is spread throughout an endless network of little impacts that each play their own small yet significant role. the three kinds of cycles of operation reveal an elaborate and complicated range of endless modes of exchange between the world and the body, as the case-study has shown as well. relations originate at different levels and in different ways at the same time and are therefore hardly ever observable as a one-toone relationship between a design decision and a (behavioural) change. how this works has previously been laid out by the so-called ‘actor-network-theory’, conceived by sociologists and philosophers, of which bruno latour, john law and michel callon are the bestknown examples.37 one of their basic claims is that in social processes, objects can play a role similar to that of human beings. both animate and inanimate objects participate in our social lives significantly, together forming a large network of countless “actors” that each play a role. one design decision ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 156 va n sc ha ik fig.12: possible messages conveyed through the arrangement of seats in segments fig.13: possible messages conveyed through the furniture of the chair(wo)man 157 isparchitecture.com can be seen as a drop in an ocean of actors, only some of them related to the designed physical environment. pedestrians’ experience of a street, for example, can be seen as the sum of decisions like the general proportions, the plasticity of facades or the position of windows, etc., forming only a piece in a larger network of other determining factors, like recent events in the pedestrian’s life or her his general mood that day. some attempts have been made to show determinant relations between design decisions and their effect on users. take, for instance, research on the layout of hospital rooms in relation to the healing process, or educational environments in relation to learning processes.38 or, closer to our case-study, consider how research in 2018 showed a relation between the voting behaviour of parliament members and their position relative to each other in the room.39 however useful such studies may be, they should always be interpreted with regard to the specificity of the case-studies on which they were based. in another situation the conditions might very well be different, so that the same design decisions could lead to different results. determinism and free will secondly, it is worth considering the compatibilist view of philosopher daniel dennett, who argues that a deterministic universe does not rule out free will.40 he distinguishes between things in what he calls the scientific image on the one hand and the manifest image on the other. the first group consists of things like neurons, atoms and dna, things that we know mostly from scientific research. the second group consists of things that we encounter in our everyday lives: colours, euros and promises, etc. these things have no location or substance and scientifically speaking they are not what people generally consider them to be. free will is part of this latter group, so according to dennett, free will is just as real as the colours, euros and promises that ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 158 va n sc ha ik play a significant role in everyday life. scientifically speaking, one fact necessarily leads to another, however the endless number of causes and effects are impossible to sort-out in the lived-world of manifest images. we can apply this way of thinking to what we have encountered in this article: at a scientific level, the impact of the built environment on the user is a prerequisite for any environmental experience and this impact is part of a large network of different actors. in the practical world of manifest images, however, this network cannot possibly be understood in its entirety and therefore the effect of design decisions remains unpredictable to a certain extent. this means that in the lived-world of any subject experiencing the environment, the shaping role of design can only be more or less present and recognizable. furthermore, the design process itself largely takes place at this practical level too, which makes it unlikely for a designer to foresee all the consequences of the countless design decisions he/she must make, either consciously or unconsciously. empathy from the first part of this article we could conclude that claiming design decisions have no impact is problematic. from the second part we can add that claiming causality between design decision x and result y is equally problematic, as the full breadth of the network in which this impact is integrated cannot be understood from the practical level of our lived world and the design process. to conclude, i would like to draw attention to the skill of empathy being employed by the architect during the design process, which is of special relevance in this regard. during this process, in which the designer imagines himself or herself to be part of the environment he or she is designing, it is possible to assess many aspects at once, instead of focussing on the “drop in the ocean” of a single design decision. it offers the possibility to be receptive to what the environment has to offer instead of considering it solely in light of the conceptual ideas it was built on. furthermore, we can see empathy as a skill that can be enriched: the aforementioned studies on healing environments, for instance, may be too specific to be implemented directly into other designs, but they provide insights that can be integrated into empathic processes, as do the theories on cognitive science of architectural experience. moreover, these processes can be further enhanced in light of the plurality of identities of the future users. knowledge of the identity of different end-users, or participatory processes in which contact between the designer and the end-user is established, improve the possibility of the designers’ capacity to understand the experience of other identities. 159 isparchitecture.com in this way, the skill of empathy can enrich the designers’ understanding of the effects their designs are likely to have and then to help align their decisions with their renovated understanding of users’ experiences. empathy can contribute to an environment that finds a balance between its facilitating role in our lived-world daily processes while being receptive both to the plurality and the freedom of its users. acknowledgements with special thanks to the reviewers and michael arbib for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. illustrations the drawings and analyses are based on the following literature: tweede kamer der staten-generaal. the house of representatives at work. august 2015. https:// www.houseofrepresentatives.nl/how-parliamentworks/house-representatives-work. prodemos. politics in the netherlands (the hague: prodemos, 2013) herman tjeenk willink, ‘verval van de democratische rechtsstaat en de rol van de pers.’ het expertisecentrum journalistiek. 21 september 2015. http://www.expertisecentrumjournalistiek. nl/slot-toespraak-herman-tjeenk-willink-vervalvan-de-democratische-rechtsstaat-en-de-rol-vande-pers/. joris luyendijk, je hebt het niet van mij, maar...: een maand aan het binnenhof (amsterdam: podium, 2010) the drawings are also based on the following two interviews: we can see empathy as a skill that can be enriched. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 160 va n sc ha ik alexander pechtold, interviewed by the author. an interview on the role of the interior design of the second chamber in the debating culture (7 september 2016) herman tjeenk willink, interviewed by the author. an interview on possible strategies for the dutch political system (28 october 2016) complemented with research conducted in the architectural archive of the new institute, rotterdam and the personal archive of pi de bruijn. endnotes 1. henri lefebvre, the production of space (hoboken: wiley, 1992), 362 2. simon richards, architect knows best: environmental determinism in architecture culture from 1956 to the present (milton park, oxfordshire: routledge, 2012). 3. see for example the introduction in charles jencks, the language of post-modern architecture (london: academy editions, 1991), 23; marlies buurman, ‘stadsgezichten: kleiburg en de bijlmer.’ het parool, (21 january 2011). 4. alison smithson, ‘the violent consumer, or waiting for the goodies’ architectural design, no.5 (1974). 5. richard buday, ‘we shape buildings, but do buildings really shape us?’ common edge (april 13, 2017) https://commonedge.org/weshape-buildings-but-do-buildings-really-shape-us/ (accessed october 18, 2021); note also the counterreaction to this article by robert lamb hart: robert lamb hart, ‘how buildings shape us.’ common edge (september 21, 2020) https://commonedge.org/how-buildings-shapeus/ (accessed august 23, 2022). 6. robert a.wilson, and lucia foglia. ‘embodied cognition.’ the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (winter 2016), http://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2016/entries/embodied-cognition. 7. for a discussion on this, see note 6. on the other hand, some important research has tended to stress both the anti-dualist elements in descartes himself, and the uptake of those elements in some twentieth-century phenomenology, especially by maurice merleau-ponty. see for example sara heinämaa, ‘merleau-ponty’s dialogue with descartes: the living body and its position in metaphysics.’ in: dan zahavi, sara heinämaa and hans ruin (eds.) metaphysics, facticity, interpretation: phenomenology in the nordic countries, by (dordrecht: kluwer, 2003), 23-48. 8. harry francis mallgrave, architecture and embodiment, the implications 161 isparchitecture.com of the new sciences and humanities for design (abingdon: routledge, 2013), 111. 9. andrea jelić, gaetano tieri, federico de matteis, fabio babiloni and giovanni vecchiato. ‘the enactive approach to architectural experience: a neurophysiological perspective on embodiment, motivation, and affordances.’ frontiers in psychology, no.7 (2016), 481. 10. evan thompson and francisco j. varela. ‘radical embodiment: neural dynamics and conciousness.’ trends in cognitive sciences, vol.5, no.10 (2001), 418-425. 11. ibid. 12. ibid., 425. 13. mallgrave, architecture and embodiment, 111 14. laurie kelly mccorry, ‘physiology of the autonomic nervous system,’ american journal of pharmaceutical education, vol.71, no.4 (2007), 78. 15. edmund burke, a philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful. (1757). an interesting study in this regard can be found in the dissertation of dmitri kormanov, which shows evidence that the sympathetic nervous system is indeed activated when experiencing sublime landscapes. dmitri kormanov, feeling the landscape: six psychological studies into landscape experience (wageningen: wageningen university, 2009). 16. mallgrave, architecture and embodiment, 112113. 17. joris luyendijk, je hebt het niet van mij, maar...: een maand aan het binnenhof (amsterdam: podium, 2010). 18. susan l. hurley, consciousness in action (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1998); ulric neisser, cognition and reality: principles and implications of cognitive psychology (san francisco: w.h. freeman, 1976). 19. thompson and varela, 418-425; the reafference principle has been coined by erich von holst ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 162 va n sc ha ik and horst mittelstaedt, ‘das reafferenzprinzip.’ naturwissenschaften, no.37 (1951), 464-476. 20. james jerome gibson, the ecological approach to visual perception. (boston: houghton mifflin, 1979). the key idea of affordances was already present in jakob uexküll, umwelten: “a stroll through the worlds of animals and men: a picture book of invisible worlds.” in: clair h. schiller, instinctive behavior: the development of a modern concept (new york: international universities press, 1957), also in semiotica, no.89, 319-391. originally appeared as jakob von uexküll streifzüge durch die umwelten von tieren und menschen (berlin: springer, 1934). 21. sarah williams goldhagen, welcome to your world. how the built environment shapes our lives (new york: harpercollins publishers, 2017), 52-54. 22. buday ‘we shape buildings, but do buildings really shape us?’ (accessed october 18, 2021). 23. as gibson notes in a later essay, “affordances do not cause behaviour but constrain or control it”. james gibson, reasons for realism (edited by edward reed and rebecca jones) (hillsdale: lawrence erlbaum publishers, 1982), 411. 24. luyendijk, je hebt het niet van mij, 53. 25. g. di pellegrino, l. fadiga, l. fogassi, v. gallese, and g. rizzolatti, ‘understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study,’ exp brain res, vol.91, no.1 (1992), 176-180; see also giacomo rizzolatti, leonardo fogassi, and vittorio gallese, ‘mirrors in the mind.’ scientific american, vol.295, no.5(2006), 54-61. 26. for a discussion of this, see michael arbib, when brains meet buildings: a conversation between neuroscience and architecture (new york: oxford university press, 2021), 306-311. 27. vittorio gallese,‘embodied simulation: from neurons to phenomenal experience.’ phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, vol.4 (2005), 23-48. 28. s.j. ebisch, m.g. perrucci, a. ferretti, c. del gratta, g.l. romani, and v. gallase, ‘the sense of touch: embodied simulation in a visuotactile mirroring mechanism for observed animate or inanimate touch.” journal of cognitive neuroscience, vol.20, no.9 (2008). 29. vittorio gallese, alessandro gattara, ‘embodied simulation, aesthetics, and architecture: an experimental aesthetic approach.’ in: sarah robinson, juhani pallasmaa (eds.), mind in architecture: neuroscience, embodiment, and the future of design, (cambridge, massachussetts: the mit press, 2015), 161-179; for a further discussion on this, see arbib, when brains meet buildings, 330-335. 163 isparchitecture.com 30. robert vischer et.al, empathy, form and space: problems in german aesthetics, 1873-1893, harry f. mallgrave and eleftherios ikonomou (introduction and translation), (santa monica/ chicago: the getty center for the history of art and the humanities, 1994), 89-123. 31. ibid., 90. 32. theodor lipps, ästhetik; psychologie des schönen und der kunst (hamburg: voss verlag, 1903). 33. for a discussion of the process of empathy in appreciating craftsmanship see gallese and gattara, embodied simulation, aesthetics, and architecture: an experimental aesthetic approach,’ 161-179. for a further discussion on the primacy of mirror neurons in aesthetic experience, see arbib, when brains meet buildings, 336-349. 34. michael arbib, how the brain got language: the mirror system hypothesis (new york: oxford university press, 2012). 35. tweede kamer der staten-generaal, ‘tweede kamer in beeld,’ tweede kamer (november 2013), https://www.tweedekamer.nl/sites/default/-files/ field_uploads/tweede%20kamer%20in%20 beeld_tcm181-210466_0.pdf. 36. thompson and varela, ‘radical embodiment’ 418-425. 37. see for example: bruno latour, ‘where are the missing masses? the sociology of a few mundane artifacts,’ in: wiebe e. bijker and john law (eds.), shaping technology / building society: studies in sociotechnical change (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 1992), 225258; bruno latour, reassembling the social: an introduction to actor-network-theory (oxford: oxford university press, 2005); john law,. ‘notes on the theory of the actor-network: ordering, strategy and heterogeneity.’ systems practice, no.5 (1992), 379-393; michel callon, ‘techno-economic networks and irreversibility,’ in: john law (ed.), a sociology of monsters: essays ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 164 va n sc ha ik on power, technology and domination, london: routledge, 1991), 132165. 38. goldhagen, welcome to your world. 39. alessandro saia, ‘random interactions in the chamber: legislators’ behavior and political distance.’ journal of public economics, (2018), 225-240. 40. daniel dennett, ‘free will is as real as colors, promises and euros.’ lecture at the radboud university nijmegen, the netherlands, march 12, 2016. first step: walking in bernardo(’s) sandals challenging what he criticized as the straitjacket of fashion, in 1946 the architect, designer, and author bernard rudofsky launched the line of footwear bernardo sandals. making present the bodily awareness of the horizontal plane, they were designed to adapt to, rather than constrain, the anatomy of the foot, aspiring to remain timeless pieces, comfortable and wearable outside fads and short-lived trends. decades later, they are still defying the passage of time. more than mere footwear, the sandals are a design manifesto expressing the connection between feet and floors, always in touch through the intimacy of the sole, a relationship rudofsky celebrates in architectural and design projects. building upon the multiple meanings of the italian word pianta,1 he notes the attraction between the sole of the foot (la pianta del piede) that caresses the sole of the house, and also its plan (la pianta della casa).2 departing from modernist notions about the functionality and efficiency of plan organization, he establishes an affinity between the plan of the house and the materiality of its pavement: “the pavement will control the plan. only on a good plan one can make a good pavement.”3 not only does the floor become the place of interaction between the architectural body and the human body, but—this essay argues —it generates the mood and atmosphere of a place. this text begins from an intellectual nudge. critical of scientific ecology in the research on the environment, philosopher gernot böhme introduces the “aesthetics of atmospheres” as an operative concept that factors in the subjectivity of on foot: embodied atmospheres andreea mihalache ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 166 mi ha la ch e human experience in architectural and urban design. looking at different scales of perception from architectural objects to urban landscapes, he contends that “atmosphere is the subject matter of architecture,”4 to which architectural critic david leatherbarrow replies: “is it?”5 building upon the aesthetics of atmospheres (böhme) and their association with habits (leatherbarrow), this essay will walk the reader through bernard rudofsky’s constructions of embodied atmospheres, arguing that, unexpectedly, for rudofsky the locus where atmospheres manifest themselves is the horizontal plane of the floor. as one moves through space, be it indoors or outdoors, the most immediate (yet unnoticed) encounter is the one with the pavement. soft or hard, warm or cold, smooth or rough, ground planes have latent possibilities to provide the first opportunities for the body to know and feel its world. engaging with the floors, one becomes attuned to the rhythms, pace, temperatures, textures, and sounds of the world. like other midcentury architects, rudofsky recognizes that modern architecture, and, in a larger sense, the consumer culture, have alienated people from their places. if to lose one’s place in the world is—quite literally—to lose ground, then becoming aware of the surfaces we step on might reconnect us to a deeper sense of the self. beyond aesthetics, his attention to floors and pavements ultimately reflects an ethical concern with defining one’s place in the world. second step: passing through atmospheric habits the emergence and frequency of the terms and concepts we employ both in research and informal language indicate tacit concerns underlying our everyday lives, as well as broader societal and cultural anxieties. etymologically, the term atmosphere (from greek atmos = vapor and sphaira = globe) originally designated the ring of vapor supposed to be “exhaled from the body of a planet,”6 but from the eighteenth century onward, it has also conveyed a “certain mood hanging in the air.”7 moods, affects, atmospheres—appropriated into the architectural vocabulary from psychology and physics, these concepts have become recurrent themes in the work of many contemporary architects and theorists. if one notices an increased frequency of these terms in the architectural discourse, it is not because architecture has not been concerned with them in the past, but, rather, because a certain discontent with the current experience of the environment is prompting the search for answers outside the tangible and the measurable. a sign of a certain disenchantment with the quotidian, it speaks about the dissatisfaction with the banality of everyday experiences constantly mediated through screens and simulated realities. as philosopher richard kearney observes, “the more virtually connected 167 isparchitecture.com we are, the more solitary we become. we ‘see’ brave new worlds, but ‘feel’ less and less in touch with them.”8 the interest in atmospheres traverses fields and disciplines. in architecture, peter zumthor, juhani pallasmaa, and steven holl are among the most notable contemporary designers and theorists invested in the topic of atmospheres, but ideas about constructing the atmosphere of a place are not new. alberto perez-gomez observes an implicit interest in atmospheres as early as vitruvius’ ten books on architecture, where a tempered and balanced environment was at the core of a healthy life.9 building upon current scientific evidence demonstrating the role of feelings, emotions, and moods that architecture engenders in our psychosomatic health, he demonstrates the importance of studying these hidden and unmeasurable dimensions of architecture.10 juhani pallasmaa observes that it was only from the mid1990s onward that the experience of architecture has begun to replace a long-established formal approach to design.11 indeed, it seems that theorizing unquantifiable and elusive concepts such as atmosphere, mood or ambiance has emerged as a relatively new phenomenon in the early 2000s.12 this “atmospheric turn” has various explanations that range from deterministic views to social and political arguments, from subjectivity to scientific evidence.13 peter zumthor defines atmosphere as an almost-mystical quality of a space, intrinsic to those architectures that move you.14 he finds it in “the magic of things, the magic of the real world,”15 and believes that it offers a possible response to the quest for “architectural quality.”16 from the atmosphere of medieval cathedrals (built on the transfiguration of light passing through stained glass), to the renaissance villas in the italian veneto (intimately connected with existing natural caves and breathing the air that circulated naturally through a sophisticated system of vents and ducts), one becomes attuned to the rhythms, pace, temperatures, textures, and sounds of the world “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 168 mi ha la ch e to eileen gray’s marvelous e.1027 house (centered on experiencing the space through sensuous materials and textures defining the mood of each room), or le corbusier’s espace indicible (suggesting a phenomenal experience of the space), architects have long tackled—both explicitly and implicitly—the atmosphere of a place. in philosophy, the influential work of hermann schmitz, regarded as a founding father of research on atmospheres, left its mark on the writings of contemporary continental philosophers such as gernot böhme and tonino griffero.17 the former explicitly calls into question the primacy of vision in people’s interaction with the environment and advocates for integrated approaches to architecture and city planning, in both design and scholarship, that should carefully consider and actively engage all our senses. böhme observes that atmospheres have an in-between quality: they relate factual traits of the environment with one’s bodily feeling in that environment, so are both spatial and emotional.18 in other words, they are situated between the subject and the object: they touch one’s bodily space, which is “neither the place a person’s body takes up, nor the volume that it constitutes,” but the sphere of one’s material presence.19 therefore, atmospheres are about presence, and never about representation. böhme proposes that examining architecture and cities through the lens of the aesthetics of atmosphere produces two major shifts: first, the turn from “what” something represents to “how” something is present.20 (thus, “aesthetics” recovers its original meaning, that of a theory of perception, rather than the visual concern with beauty and artistic taste prevalent from the eighteenth century onward.) second, it enables the shift from the form or shape of things to the way they engage with the space of our bodily presence.21 for böhme, atmosphere is the subject matter of architecture.22 pondering over the meaning and implications of this argument, david leatherbarrow nuances böhme’s theory and outlines—not unlike le corbusier’s tenets for a new architecture—five points on architectural atmospheres.23 first, they manifest themselves immediately or, like böhme also remarked, they are about presence. second, they are specific to historical and cultural contexts, which suggests that they cannot be transferred or replicated outside of where they are formed. third, they are a matter of both emotions and intellect. fourth, they construct backgrounds, in the double sense of layers of history and present appearances. lastly, atmospheres are correlated with habits.24 the latter is perhaps the most relevant for the argument of this essay: the idea that the mood of a space emerges from concrete, material conditions, from practices and rituals that are enacted and performed in unique historical and cultural contexts. leatherbarrow observes that 169 isparchitecture.com practical experience and everyday use are key in creating atmospheres, which play a two-part role, “initial and global, then marginal and tacit.”25 simply put, one first perceives them as distinct phenomena in the foreground of their experience (the way a traveler visiting a medieval city for the first time might register and treasure every uncanny detail), but eventually, by force of habit and repetition, they recede into the background (the way an inhabitant of the same historic city is no longer aware of what has become familiar and wellknown). leatherbarrow proposes that atmospheres are neither an attribute of the settings from which they proceed, nor a matter of individual sentiments – he draws attention, instead, to the continuity, rather than the split, between object and subject. his approach implicitly challenges böhme’s argument that stage set design (where moods are fabricated from objective and carefully manipulated elements such as sound, illumination or spatial geometries) is the paradigm for a theory of atmosphere.26 one of böhme’s tacit goals is to remove the impreciseness associated with atmospheres and demonstrate that, despite their vagueness, they can be produced from concrete factors. however, his use of stage set design as the paradigm for this theory privileges conventions and artificiality as modus operandi, suggesting scripted and therefore predictable scenarios, and thus removing the sense of spontaneity or happenstance. on the other hand, if habits are intrinsic to the formation of atmospheres, as leatherbarrow suggests, then the design process alone does not have the power to fully prescribe specific ambiances, therefore one needs to understand the environment through a moreencompassing lens, not only beyond its immediate physical manifestations but also from within the factors that have constituted it throughout time this is to say that atmposphere are not about spontaneous surfacing or controlled design, but rather that critical to grasping their nature is understanding ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 170 mi ha la ch e practices of inhabitation developed and sedimented over time. it is this balancing act between control and release, between design practices and living practices, between space and time, between the measurable and the immeasurable that bernard rudofsky tackles in many of his writings and projects spanning the middle and late decades of the twentieth century, where he centers his attention on the overlooked role of floors and pavements. third step: touching the floor known primarily for his 1964 exhibition (and subsequent catalog) architecture without architects, rudofsky was a tireless traveler, an ingenious footwear designer, a prolific writer, and a gifted architect. at a time when most architects looked up above the ground to see as a prevailing mode to perceive the environment, he looked down to feel the touch of the floor. despite his consistent return to the theme of floors and pavements, scholarship has only marginally examined what is at stake in his obsessive return to these horizontal surfaces.27 rudofsky offers an architectural and existential way of anchoring us into the world through floors and pavements as the often-overlooked canvas against which life itself unfolds. they construct the mood of a place by being active agents of our various practices of inhabitation. “stone mosaic, marble slabs, stucco reliefs, mural decorations from the simplest geometric ornamentation to elaborate paintings, were employed [in roman outdoor rooms] to establish a mood particularly conducive to spiritual composure,” writes rudofsky in 1952.28 that pavements define the character of a room and have the potential to generate spiritual dispositions was well-known in ancient civilizations: “do you know the faun house in pompei? here we understand why the pompeians who inherited the greek culture could easily give up the frescoes: they had paintings of profound beauty on the floor.”29 the ground plane is what ties together the individual, the house, and the city: house floor or city pavement, the horizontal surface, intimately related to the human body through the sense of touch, is the first element that creates the mood of a space. the floors have the potential to delay movement, slow down the pace, and, implicitly, expand time. as the only surfaces that constantly engage the sense of touch, they are neither purely functional, nor merely aesthetic. rarely seen, they are always felt. it is through floors and pavements that the sense of touch remains active, and yet paradoxically, designs often overlook them. floors and pavements carry an inherent contradiction: on the one hand, they need not to be noticed in order to function properly; on the other, as they become 171 isparchitecture.com unnoticed, they take away one’s awareness of the ground. through floors and pavements, individuals experience the unmediated presence of the earth while at the same time gain a sense of belonging to a larger community. they ground human beings into the earth and situate them within the horizon of a specific culture. although western philosophy has primarily been sight-centered, in the twentieth century existential phenomenology recovered aristotle’s claim in de anima that touch is the most universal, pervasive, and intelligent of the senses.30 against the platonic idea that sight is superior to touch because it is distant and mediated (hence the elevated status of theoria, i.e. to look at, to speculate), aristotle argues that touch, in fact, does have a medium and its medium is the flesh.31 through touch one reads and interprets the world and at the same time is touched by it. it is in this reciprocity between the self and the world that rudofsky situates his interest in the continuity between the sole of the foot, the pavement of the building, and the skin of the earth. for rudofsky, the act of building starts from floors and walls, the most vital elements of the architectural vocabulary that also give human beings the ontological status of their upright posture. “a wall is the bread of architecture. (…) building his first wall, he [the man] became, mentally, a biped.”32 elsewhere, he writes: “the floor is, literally and figuratively, the touchstone of a civilization. a good floor is much more than a delight to the eye; it appeals to that most sensuous of our senses, touch.”33 in the february 1938 issue of the italian architecture journal domus, rudofsky publishes what appears to be an illustration of an architectural foundational moment: builders have laid out in plan the foundations of the outer walls of a house and are now settling the stones to stabilize the structure. rudofsky’s caption stresses the primordial role of the floor and floorplan as the organizing forces of the building: “architecture begins with a pavement: if habits are intrinsic to the formation of atmospheres, as leatherbarrow suggests, then the design process alone does not have the power to fully prescribe specific ambiances “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 172 mi ha la ch e the architect inscribes order in the freedom of nature. but this order has to be in harmony with nature.”34 the drawing recalls ancient practices of inscribing the plan of a building at full-scale onto the site itself. as paul emmons observes, the construction of the plan on site anticipates the future building, establishing an intimate connection between drawing, site, and architecture.35 while in pre-modern times, the floor was the actual floor plan of the new construction, this intimate relationship has been gradually lost with the changing practices of architectural drawing.36 no longer viewed as an embodied footprint, but primarily as a horizontal section, today the floor plan bears little, if any affinity at all with the architectural floor.37 challenging these modern forms of representation, rudofsky explores drawings and buildings as embodied phenomena. the surface of the page, the surface of the building floor, and the surface of the site itself become one and thus the pavement acquires its ontological role. because “every culture has its perfect pavement,”38 floors teach more about a certain civilization than any writings or indirect accounts.39 throughout his career, rudofsky remains a relentless critic of the commodification of architecture both in the domestic realm and in the public sphere. in 1955, he publishes behind the picture window, a collection of essays on the nature of the modern house, written as satires, rather than academic papers. the chapters lay out his frustrations with the “american way of life”40 and propose what he calls elsewhere “a new way of living”41 based on lessons learned from past civilizations. one fig 1: bernard rudofsky, plan of the procida house project published in domus, issue 123 (march 1938) 173 isparchitecture.com such example (which he describes in a later book) are the neolithic houses in lindenthal, germany discovered in the early decades of the twentieth century, and which reveal to rudofsky a methodical architectural strategy that is neither accidental nor clumsy.42 central to their design is the sculpted floor that celebrates the intimate encounter of the body with the earth and, as the authors infers, situates the individual in a specific horizon of inhabitation: what lifts the lindenthal houses above the commonplace is their sculpted floor. (…) pausing for a moment in the amble of our flat-footed way of life (…) it seems that somewhere in the course of human advancement we lost our capacity for enjoying well-turned-out space. what probably happened is that our fingerspitzengefühl— our “fingertip feeling”—progressively deserted us while numbness crept up on our toes and buttocks, body parts traditionally hidden. yet it is exactly these parts that are instrumental in probing the ground on which we walk, stand, or sit, for they, like no others, keep us in close touch with our surroundings.43 the metaphor of the “fingertip feeling” evokes both the sense of touch and a design intuition, that – neither exact, nor imprecise – is built upon practice and habits, and relies upon all senses. poetry seizes the synesthetic experience born at the encounter of sight and touch: “i see with my fingertips / what my eyes touch.”44 if one can see with their fingers, then one can also know with the toes of their feet that – not unlike one’s hands—feel, sense, and make sense of the environment through touch. fourth step: entering the house in 1938, rudofsky publishes in domus the drawings for a house on the island of procida, off the coast of naples. titled “non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere” (translated in english as “what we need is not new technologies, but a new way of living”), the article that pavements define the character of a room and have the potential to generate spiritual dispositions was well-known in ancient civilizations “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 174 mi ha la ch e constitutes, as rudofsky himself will acknowledge later, the kernel of “half a dozen books on architecture, apparel and related matters.”45 designed for a piece of land that he and his wife berta bought on the island in 1935, the project, although never built, is rudofsky’s design manifesto for the ideal house. (fig.1) a harmonious encounter between architecture and the practices of everyday life, the ideal home eliminates the unnecessary prostheses of consumerism, seeking an unmediated relationship between inhabitants, their customs, nature, and design. having lived and worked in italy for several years, rudofsky praised and learned from the integration of landscape, design, and lifestyle that he noted (and idealized) in the peninsula. building bridges across time and space, his account of the procida house recalls pliny the younger’s descriptions of his tuscan villa, rendered in minute details in his letters.46 pliny’s peripatetic narration moves from the larger scale of landscape and climate to renditions of individual rooms, all of which have an intentional relationship with the outdoors. views, sounds, textures create an atmosphere attuned to the seasons, as well as the inhabitant’s lifestyle: “a little fountain, playing through several small pipes into a vase it encloses, produces a most pleasing murmur;” a bedroom with two different orientations looks upon a cascade “which entertains at once both the eye and the ear.” rooms are carefully designed with the appropriate orientation that offers shade in the summer and sun exposure in the winter, as well as balanced views towards the apennine valleys, vineyards, bodies of water, ivy-covered trees, cypresses, and roses. in rudofsky’s procida project, carefully observed habits, rather than programmatic specifications, generate the atmosphere of each space, shown in hybrid forms of architectural representation that combine two-dimensional and perspectival views. the beginning of the article announces that people have long lost the contact with the ground.47 from the horseback rider who needs special tools to remove her boots, to the woman wearing heels unsuited for walking, to the athlete or the ballerina, everyone has lost touch with the earth through the multiple layers interposed between the foot and the earth itself.48 more than a rhetorical trope or a nostalgic longing for an idyllic pre-modern time, this statement indicates a deeper loss: the erosion of our grounding and the dissolution of tectonics. as rudofsky writes elsewhere, modern houses, with their transparent walls, appear so light that they could fly away at any moment like a magic carpet.49 the gradual disappearance of tectonics translates into human uprootedness, and this sense of displacement finds its physical expression in the cookie-cutter houses of suburban developments, which simultaneously respond to and create the need for artificial environments 175 isparchitecture.com that remain unchanged, irrespective of location, living customs or individual habits. designed in a modern vocabulary, the procida house challenges modern assumptions about function and program. although the rooms are designated through conventional nomenclature (living room, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, etc.), the project describes and responds to the activities taking place in these spaces, which are shown in unconventional forms of architectural representation. people’s movements between inside and outside are choreographed through the materials and textures of floors. in a subtle play of scales and textures, the house transforms furniture into architecture and architecture into furniture. considering them superfluous, rudofsky eliminates the dining table, the desk, the night table, the kitchen table, and the bathtub.50 having its entire floor made of mattresses, the bedroom becomes an oversized bed (not unlike japanese rooms covered in tatami),51 where one can only walk barefoot. in his theory of inhabitation, rudofsky operates an essential distinction between washing (as the modern utilitarian act of removing dirt and grime) and bathing (as an ancient form of ritual or cultivated leisure).52 he expresses it by placing the toilet and the sink, and, respectively, the bathtub, in different spaces. the bathroom becomes, in fact, a bathtub: dipping into the ground, the floor carves it out from the ground plane itself, thus creating an intimate relationship between the body of the bather and the earth itself. the patio with its natural pavement of grass, daisies, violets, and orchids, is the true living room of the house, which itself “grows” from the floor plane. a tent in the summer and a fireplace (shared with the music room) in colder weather, allow for the year-round inhabitation of this outdoor room. firmly anchored into the ground, the body of the house and the bodies of its inhabitants find their place in the world. ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 176 mi ha la ch e fifth step: wandering down the street shifting his attention from the domestic realm to the public sphere, in 1969 rudofsky publishes streets for people: a primer for americans, a book “about the great outdoors, the pedestrian street, and the people one meets there.”53 written at a time when america enthusiastically embraces suburban living while ignoring its urban centers and public spaces, the book has a twofold goal: to unpack the malfunctions of american cities in contrast with their european counterparts and to provide design resources for a future when even americans will recognize the need for “a more dignified city life.”54 lavishly illustrated with rudofsky’s own photographs and filled with erudite literary and musical references, each chapter addresses a particular theme: cleanliness and hygiene, covered urban structures (such as canopies, porticoes, and gallerias), urban practices (from walking and strolling to processions, rituals, and performances), soundscapes and street music, street names, stairs, bridges, elevated streets, water and street food. an entire chapter, “diamant streets and crystal pavements” (a reference to the frozen water canals of venice), is dedicated to urban floors and their intimate connection with the body of the pedestrian. textures and colors bring to life this canvas that unfolds under people’s feet often as an extension of the house floors. evocative descriptions conjure up the marble and lava-paved streets of antiquity, the splendor of babylonian streets, the square hard stones of florence, the pink marble mosaic of a street gutter in evora, or brick-paved ramps with stone footholds for horses. the atmosphere of the city results from the orchestration of all these different elements articulated on the ground plane, which, almost like a living creature, moves, undulates, and meanders. a firm presence in space, as böhme describes the atmosphere, yet often tacit and marginal, as leatherbarrow puts it, the city pavement establishes connections between different scales – the personal scale of the body, the convivial scale of the community, the larger one of the environment – and remains a ubiquitous, yet unremarkable, actor in the urban choreography of the city. rudofsky’s nostalgia for a pre-industrial society and for the cities of the old world is more than anything a nostalgia for time as embodied duration, rather than instantaneity. while he often idealizes a far-fromperfect world, he presents architectural ideas whose goal is to slow down time. the floor is the architectural element with the immediate potential to make people tarry and linger as they move through space. the most inconspicuous, yet the most direct in its engagement with the body, the floor constructs the physical measure of our pace. by slowing down its pace, the body readjusts to its environment. 177 isparchitecture.com the floors rudofsky imagines are often impractical, inaccessible to everyone, unsuited for comfortable walking, whimsical, and, sometimes, quite useless. however, what is at stake in his emphasis on the horizontal plane is the awareness of time as embodied experience (particularly relevant at a moment when architecture is mainly concerned with space) and the ethical dimension of finding one’s place on earth. the in-between quality that böhme attributes to atmospheres, along with leatherbarrow’s emphasis on habits and behaviors, are manifested in rudofsky’s celebration of floors as “the touchstone of a civilization.” last step: strolling away on the otherwise smooth and inconspicuous floor of the arsenale building at the 2021 venice architectural biennale, one stumbles upon a mosaic of stones, some of them carved out in threedimensional configurations, with their interiors gilded. among the thought-provoking proposals displayed in the exhibition that float, fly, and defy gravity, this elegant gesture simply reminds us of where we stand in the world. marking the earth, these golden hieroglyphs choreograph the dance between “i” and “us,” between a body and a multitude of bodies, between low and high, below and above. making us aware of the depth of our ground plane, (polished) stone and (shimmering) gold define a volume of space and its atmosphere. one of the most notable—and most subtle— projects at the biennale, this installation designed by the portuguese office aires mateus recognizes the forgotten role of pavements. “architecture answers to its time. some things, however, never change: we live together under the same sky; we live together on the same ground. the sky above our head, the ground under our feet: a natural metaphor of community.”55 if atmospheres are about presence, as böhme contends, and they cannot exist in the absence of habits, as leatherbarrow observes, the atmosphere of the city results from the orchestration of elements articulated on the ground plane, which, almost like a living creature, moves, undulates, and meanders. “ ” ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 178 mi ha la ch e then the ground, as rudofsky and aires mateus show, could become the starting point of further interrogations about the nature of atmospheric inhabitations. ultimately, to sense the mood of a place and to find our pace and place in the world we might have to close our eyes and honor our “fingertip feeling.” we might have to touch instead of look and tiptoe our way through space so that not only do we see with the tips of our fingers, but also understand with the tips of our toes. endnotes 1. pianta means sole, a level in the house, but also a plant 2. bernard rudofsky, ‘variazioni,’ domus, issue 124 (april 1938), 14 3. rudofsky, ‘variazioni,’ 15 (translation by the author) 4. gernot böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres (london/new york: routledge, 2017), 135-140; these ideas are first published in english in an earlier essay from 2002 5. david leatherbarrow, ‘atmospheric conditions,’ in: henriette steiner and maximilian sternberg (eds.), phenomenologies of the city: studies in the history and philosophy of architecture (london: ashgate, 2015) 6. oxford english dictionary, online edition, entry “atmosphere.” 7. böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres, 2 8. richard kearney, touch: recovering our most vital sense (new york: columbia university press, 2021), 4-5 9. alberto perez-gomez, attunement: architectural meaning after the crisis of modern science (cambridge, ma/london: the mit press, 2016), 2 10. ibid., 1-13. fig 2: aires mateus, ground, venice biennale in 2021 179 isparchitecture.com 11. juhani pallasmaa, ‘space, place, and atmosphere: peripheral perception in existential experience,’ in: christian borch (ed.), architectural atmospheres: on the experience and politics of architecture. (basel: birkhauser, 2014), 19 12. among the most recent publications in the field, one will find: journal of architectural education, “atmospheres,” vl. 73 issue 1 march 2019; perez-gomez, alberto. attunement; borch (ed.), architectural atmospheres; klaske havik, hans teerds, and gus tielens, with juhani pallasmaa and peter zumthor, building atmosphere. oase#91 (rotterdam: nai publishers, 2013); peter zumthor, atmospheres: architectural environments, surrounding objects (basel: birkhauser, 2006). quite tellingly, adrian forty’s words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture from 2000, a book that eruditely traces the philosophical and intellectual history of architectural terminology, does not include an entry on architectural moods or atmospheres. 13. christian borch justifies the rationale of a volume he edited in 2014 as a follow-up to current fads and fashions that examined the atmospheric qualities of architecture and urban spaces. (borch, “introduction: why atmospheres?” in borch (ed.), architectural atmospheres) 14. zumthor, atmospheres, 11 15. ibid., 19 16. ibid., 11 17. in 1969, hermann schmitz publishes the sphere of the emotions where he discusses emotions as atmospheres. his work, which is still to be translated into english, exercised a decisive influence on gernot böhme (whose first publication on atmospheres, atmosphäre: essays zur neuen äesthetik, dates from 1995) and tonino griffero (atmosferologia: estetica degli spazi emozionali, first published in 2010 and translated into english in 2014) 18. böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres, 3 ap . vol 6 . no 1/2 . 2023 180 mi ha la ch e 19. ibid., 180 20. ibid., 26 21. ibid., 5 22. ibid., 135-140 23. leatherbarrow, ‘atmospheric conditions,’ 85-100 24. ibid., 96 25. ibid., 87 26. böhme, the aesthetics of atmospheres, 3 27. the topic appears in full book chapters or specific reflections in various articles. he dedicates an entire book to the theme of streets and street life (bernard rudofsky, streets for people: a primer for americans (new york: doubleday & company, inc., 1969), designs and commercializes a line of footwear that exists to this day (the bernardo sandals), and introduces original, if impractical, floors in the exhibitions he curates. 28. bernard rudofsky, ‘giardino, stanza all’aperto: a proposito della casa giardino a long island, ny,’ domus, issue 272 (july-august 1952), 5 29. rudofsky, ‘variazioni,’ 15 30. see kearney, touch, ch.2 ‘philosophies of touch: from aristotle to phenomenology,’ 33-60 31. ibid., 35 32. bernard rudofsky, ‘the bread of architecture.’ arts & architecture, vol.69, no.10 (oct. 1952), 28 33. bernard rudofsky, ‘before the architects.’ design quarterly, no.118/119 (1982) 61; the same idea reappears bernard rudofsky, behind the picture window (new york: oxford university press, 1955), 186 34. rudofsky, ‘l’architettura comincia con un pavimento,’ in: domus no. 122 (february 1938), 1 35. paul emmons, drawing imagining building: embodiment in architectural design practices. (london/new york: routledge, 2019), ch.1. ‘footprint plans,’ 21-47 36. emmons observes: “the close relationship between plan and earth is shown through practices of inscribing the plan at full-scale onto a site.” ibid., 29 37. ibid., ch.1. ‘footprint plans,’ 21-47 38. rudofsky, “variazioni,” 15 39. rudofsky, “before the architects,” 61 40. rudofsky, behind the picture window, 5 41. rudofsky, ‘non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere,’ in: domus, issue 123 (march 1938), 5 42. bernard rudofsky, the prodigious builders. notes towards a natural 181 isparchitecture.com history of architecture. (new york and london: harcourt brace jovanovich, 1977), 102-107 44. octavio paz, ‘this side.’ the poem can be found online: https://www.poetryverse.com/ octavio-paz-poems/this-side 45. front matter to bernard rudofsky, now i lay me down to eat: notes and footnotes on the lost art of living (new york: anchor books, 1980) 46. pliny the younger, “lii letter to domitius apollinaris,” https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ ancient/pliny-letters.asp#genpart%20vii 47. rudofsky, “non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere,” in: domus, issue 272 (july-august 1952), 6 48. ibid., 6. 49. rudofsky, ‘giardino, stanza all’aperto,’ domus issue 123 (march 1938), 71 50. rudofsky, ‘non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo modo di vivere, domus, issue 272, (july-august 1952), 8 51. ugo rossi makes this observation in his analysis of the procida house in ugo rossi, bernard rudofsky architetto (napoli: clean edizioni, 2016), 76 52. rudofsky, behind the picture window, chapter ‘our indecorous bathroom’ 53. rudofsky, streets for people, 15 54. ibid., 21 55. hashim sarkis, biennale architettura 2021: how will we live together? (venice: la biennale di venezia, 2021) cover, pp. 4, 12, 50: hans teerds p. 56: ted eytan, cc by-sa 2.0 pp. 60, 62: © hood design studio, oakland p. 66: jean-françois noël, 1973 p. 68: arnaud journois/le parisien, 2016 p. 84, 88, 92: screenshots from il tetto, vittorio de sicca, 1956 p. 118 (fig.1): ©leventis municipal museum, nicosia (donation: lellos demetriades. b/1989/204,6) pp. 118 (fig.2), 122 (fig 6.), 124 (fig 7, 8), 126 (fig.9), 132 (fig 11, 12): stella evangelidou. pp. 118 (fig.3), 122 (fig.5), 132 (fig.10): © nicosia municipality p. 118 (fig.4): © press and information office (pio). pp. 142, 144, 146, 148, 150, 152, 156: margit van schaik p. 172: domus, issue123 (march 1938) p. 178: andreea mihalache image credits erika brandl is architect and a phd candidate at the department of philosphy of the university of bergen, norway margaret crawford is professor history and theory of architecture at the university of california, berkeley. ca, usa stella evangelidou is architect and adjunct faculty member at frederick university, limasol, cyprus saul fisher is associate professor of philosophy and associate provost at mercy university, dobbs ferry, ny, usa kenneth frampton is em.professor of architectural history at columbia university, new york, usa andreea mihalache is assistant professor at clemson school of architecture, clemson, sc, usa chantal mouffe is em.professor of political theory at the university of westminster, london, uk esther lorenz is architect and associate professor of architecture at the school of architecture, university of virginia, charlottesville, va, usa hans teerds is architect and urban designer and works as senior lecturer at the institute for the history and theory of architecture at eth zurich, switzerland margit van schaik is architect at baltussen van schaik, rotterdam, the netherlands sven-olov wallenstein is professor of philosophy at södertörn university, stockholm, sweden about the authors architecture philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of all papers submitted. each paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. reviewers are members of the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according to the following criteria: appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both architecture and philosophy? 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