









































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 pre-
delineated 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  wider-
ranging 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 Lacoue-
Labarthe, 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 much-
needed 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 mid-
1980s, 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 politico-
legal (law and the State) and ideology (the different 

ideologies, religious, ethical, legal, political, etc.). […] 

semi-autonomy 
[…] offered 

the possibility 
of an 

architecture 
resistant 
to instru-

mentalization

“

”



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 avant-
garde 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 “problem-
solving.” 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, semi- or 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 forward-
looking 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 
intellect-

ualizations 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 ‘post-
critical’ 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 post-
critical 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 so-
called ‘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 Actor-
Network 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/sarah-
whiting-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 1993-
2009 (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 self-
appropriation 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 ready-
to-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) self-
display 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 Gesamt-
sausgabe (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 non-
apparent 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-to-
hand’ 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 25-
29) 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, self-
determination, 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 ‘self-
determination’ 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 pre- and 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 self-
determination 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-en-
Provence (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 Jean-
Nicolas-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 avant-
garde 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 self-
absorption 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 Semi-
Autonomy,” 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, 212-
231. 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): 357-
366. 
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), 60-
70.
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 Sedl-
mayr, 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 over-
riding 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 well-
being, 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, well-
balanced 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), 18-
27.
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, Eco-
Republic: 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 post-
modernism. 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 well-
being 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 Universi-
ty 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 Doc-
toral 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  Liver-
pool.

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, Claude-
Nicolas 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, double-
spaced, 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




	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

