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We build for humans—for the most part. Temples, 
zoological gardens, and multi-story car-parks seem 
to be exceptions. They are built for gods, animals, 
or cars. But then, even they are indirectly for 
humans. They are meant to be used by humans who 
worship there, gaze at giraffes, or park their cars. So 
in the end, architecture will always have to consider 
human beings as its recipient, observer, and user. 
Architects simply cannot avoid thinking about the 
human being.  After all, it makes a big difference, 
what characteristics and needs, necessary life 
circumstances and life forms, what expectations of  
privacy or ideal social life, and even what emotions, 
hopes, fears, and visions we take as central for human 
beings. Our understanding of  human beings will be 
the focus for entirely different architectural forms 
and ways of  building. But to reflect upon ourselves 
and who we are is, essentially, a philosophical 
question. According to Kant, “What is man?” is 
even the central question of  philosophy. Therefore, 
to think about the human being is an ineliminable 
concern for architecture and philosophy of  
architecture alike. But it is also a concern which 
has not been addressed very often in the last 
decades. That is why it has been the topic of  the 
3rd International Conference of  the International 
Society for the Philosophy of  Architecture. 
From July 19th to 23rd 2016 we invited some 
100 scholars from all over the world to Bamberg 
University, Germany, to think about and discuss 
“The Human in Architecture and Philosophy.”
     Architecture has raised the question about the 
concept and the place of  the human being in its 

in the end, 
architecture 
will always 

have to consider 
human beings

“
”

THE HUMAN IN ARCHITECTURE AND 
PHILOSOPHY: STEPS TOWARDS AN 
“ARCHITECTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY”
Martin Düchs & Christian Illies



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efforts in many ways. Contemporary architecture is very often based 
upon the explicit claim to have put the human being at the centre of  
designing and building. And this is by no means new as architectural 
history and theory show.  To take just a few examples: Le Corbusier and 
the CIAM wrote within their Athens Charter that, “architecture must 
once again be placed in the service of  man,”1 and even the sharpest critics 
of  CIAM-inspired modern architecture seemed to search for the human 
being in architecture. The Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, 
for example, wrote a manifesto “Give the houses back to the human 
beings.”2 Many houses or even the works of  some architects are marked as 
especially “humane.” Alvar Aalto is praised for being on his way “toward 
a human modernism.”3 The British-Swedish architect Ralph Erskine is 
widely recognized as someone who designed humane buildings and is 
even called “the humane architect.”4 But although a lot of  people would 
agree with this judgement, we can hardly tell exactly why his or Aalto’s
architecture are regarded as more humane than other members of  Team 
X--such as Peter and Alison Smithson. They too tried to make a more 
humane architecture but somehow are widely perceived as having come 
up short.5 Last but not least, one could point to the fierce discussions 
concerning the rightful interpretations of  Rudolph Wittkower’s Architectural 
Principles in the Age of  Humanism.6 The claim that architecture is made for 
human beings seems simultaneously obvious and in need of  justification.
     What is the relevance and what is the content of  architects’ claims 
about building for human beings? For whom do and did we build if  not 
for human beings? In the service of  which concept or idea of  human 
beings should architecture be placed (e.g., for sober rational beings, for 
creatures with emotional needs, for more atomistic or social beings)? 
And rather generally: What does it mean to build for humans? Is judging 
a work of  architecture to be humane expressing anything more than a 
personal preference? There are so many questions and no easy answers.
     It might seem surprising that all these questions have no obvious 
philosophical answer because it has long been central to philosophy 
to answer exactly Kant’s question “What is man?”7 Many subsequent 
philosophers have tried to take up the challenge and to give answers. In 
the mid-twentieth century, even a veritable branch of  philosophy called 
“Philosophical Anthropology” emerged in Germany that has been 
entirely dedicated to the study of  the Kantian question. Philosophers 
such as Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, and Helmut Plessner (partly also 
Ernst Cassirer and Hans Jonas) wrote their most important works about 
us humans and our characteristics. They tried to combine the results not 
only of  modern evolutionary biology, ethology, and sociology but also 



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of  history, cultural anthropology, psychology, 
and ethnology with the classical conceptions 
of  humans as free and rational beings.8

     But the heyday of  philosophical anthropology 
seems to have gone. The latter half  of  the twentieth 
century was dominated by philosophical thought that 
dismissed such attempts at elucidating the essence 
of  mankind as hopeless. Such thinking denies the 
existence of  a fixed human identity that we can grasp, 
understand, or even talk about. There is no human 
essence; only history. Instead, we should look at what 
sociology, cultural anthropology, or evolutionary 
biology could tell us about the human condition.9

     This thinking takes several forms. Some anti-
mentalists suspect an outdated essentialism or 
idealism that is based upon an entirely wrong 
metaphysics. Radical naturalists agree, though with 
other arguments—for them there is no independent 
entity, like humans, and natural science has the last 
word (as Quine claimed at some point). Others take 
a dualistic stance according to which the realm of  
nature and of  our cultural (socio-political) sphere 
have nothing in common and are to be looked at 
separately. For them, the only interesting questions 
about humans are attempts to locate them in 
(and explain them from) political or sociological 
conditions. All philosophical anthropology has to 
become sociology, as Habermas famously claimed.10     
     Others, like Wittgenstein, look for linguistic 
questions or forms of  life as the basis for 
philosophical refection on humans. And some, 
following Heidegger, would even argue that it is 
dangerous to ask about “the” human being because 
he or she is essentially open and un-definable. 
Everyone is simply what he or she makes out of  
himself  or herself. Any attempt to encapsulate the 
human being (or human nature) would only serve to 
limit him or her and to miss what we really are.11 The 
radical openness of  humans as self-constructing 
beings does not allow for any characterisation 
of  human beings as such, they claim.12 These are 

  it has long 
been central to 

philosophy to 
answer exactly 

this question: 
What is man?

“

”



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just some philosophical positions of  the twentieth century—but they all 
agree that we cannot ask what we are and expect meaningful answers.
     The absence of  anthropology from most contemporary philosophy 
creates a rather tricky situation. On the one side, contemporary philosophy 
tells us that all attempts to define what is characteristically human will 
fall short. But on the other side, we deal with humans every day and 
should know what that means (and actually do have some idea of  it). 
Furthermore, architects have to create buildings for beings of  some 
description—a task which comes to seem altogether paradoxical if  
humans are, for us, a kind of  black hole or invisible phantom that no one 
can possibly catch. Building for a phantom is an otherworldly challenge.
     Philosophy, it seems, cannot get off  the hook of  the Kantian question. 
It is, after all, the paradigm human practice of  reflecting on fundamental 
questions and challenges and thus of  giving orientation to people. Who else 
should do it? Simply to run away (“Catch me if  you can!”) and to argue that 
humans are no possible object of  reflection cannot suffice. The pertinence 
of  the challenge demands better, even if  we never get a final answer to the big 
question. That is probably also why some philosophers like Noam Chomsky 
in very recent years dare to ask again: “What kind of  creatures are we?”13

    That is why the 3rd International Conference of  the International 
Society for the Philosophy of  Architecture (see the call for papers at 
http://isparchitecture.com/events/3rd-international-conference/) has 
turned to human beings in architecture. It is, as we might say, an approach 
to the big question by the side entrance. Our philosophical focus is not 
human beings as such, or human nature, but humans at home: Human 
beings as those for whom we design and build houses which they use 
and where they stay. At the conference, this side entrance has turned out 
to be a rather successful door. Even if  the conference did not answer 
the big question—unsurprisingly—the papers and discussions showed us 
a wide range of  fascinating facets of  the human being in Architecture 
and Philosophy. On the one side, it helps us to formulate more clearly 
what architecture is meant to do. On the other side, it contributes to an 
important aspect of  philosophical anthropology, namely that humans 
are beings that build houses. We need some kind of  shelter, but houses 
are almost always more than a merely functional hut. They are deep 
expressions of  our being and of  our aspirations, what we belong to and 
how we conceive individual life and the life of  a community. Although it 
has always been generally acknowledged that human beings built dwelling 
places, more careful analysis of  this need is revealing a lot about us.
     Issues 3.1. and 3.2 of  Architecture Philosophy contain a selection of  papers 
developed out of  the conference that did most to reveal its many facets. 



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We have selected them 
on the basis of  their 
originality and quality, 
but we have also aimed 
at illustrating the variety 
of  methodological 
a p p r o a c h e s . 
“ A r c h i t e c t u r a l 
anthropology,” as 
we might call it, is a 
field very much in the 
making and it seems 
too inappropriate to 
determine one kind of  
approach as the only 
possible one. That is 
also the reason why we 
are grateful to be able to 
include a dialogue at the 
outset between Karsten 
Harries and Sir Roger 
Scruton about this 
fundamental question; 
namely on how to conceive of  a philosophy of  
architecture and architectural anthropology. The 
two founding fathers, or at least great inspirers of  
two different schools of  architectural philosophy (a 
more analytical orientation from Scruton and a more 
phenomenological tradition from Harries) rightly 
deserve to have the first word in this debate. True to 
form, we find that Scruton approaches architecture 
as a demand  on its justification, while Harries  begins 
with questions of  home and of  place. Yet, should 
we be surprised to find that, starting from oblique 
angles to one another they find much convergence? 
     This dialogue leads naturally to a paper that 
takes its starting point from another encounter of  
two great philosophers. Pau Pedragosa scrutinizes 
the discussion between Ernst Cassirer and Martin 
Heidegger about philosophy and the human being 
that took place in Davos (Switzerland) in 1929. 

figure 1: Bamberg University



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His paper’s title, “Presence or Meaning in Architecture,” encapsulates 
the fundamental oppositions in that debate that can be drawn from 
Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s ideas about the human being. Drawing on the 
two philosophical giants’ different philosophical anthropologies, Pedragosa 
argues for cultivating two different ways of  understanding culture and, 
hence, architecture. Cassirer‘s and Heidegger’s antithetical conceptions 
of  the human being can be described as the human activity for world-
construction against the human receptivity for world-interpretation. 

Finding merit in both conceptions, Pedragosa follows Cassirer to 
propose an understanding of  architecture as a symbolic form that 
constructs new meanings; that buildings are the bearers of  meaning. 
But he also finds much to recommend in Heidegger’s approach; that 
architecture is less concerned with construction and more with the 
origin and the questioning of  building; that the building is an irreducible 
presence of  itself  that opens up the environment. Pedragosa argues that, 
while at the time of  the debate it was widely perceived that Heidegger 
had won, in  the hard-won wisdom of  the ensuing century,  a more 
balanced appraisal is warranted. The exchange between two established 
philosophers and Pedragosa’s  paper examining established philosophic 
controversy surrounding the human in architecture are followed by 
selections that seek to expand the possible approaches to our topic. 
     How important to our sense of  home is the simple expectation that our 
architecture outlive us? Mari Hvattum’s paper “On Durability” looks at how 
time is inscribed in human artefacts. Starting with the sensible observation 
that architecture, in most cases, lasts longer than the people building it 
she makes a case for considering that in an age when the extremes of  
the ephemeral and the eternal are cultivated in equal measure, there may 
be reason to look again at the particular kind of  durability pertaining to 
the human-made. This involves studying, not so much works, as work: 
how human making, as both Gottfried Semper and Hannah Arendt have 
reminded us, transforms ephemeral acts into (relatively) durable worlds, 
and how the past, whether we know it or not, inhabits the present.
She does this by drawing on the specific example of  the destruction 
and reconstruction of  the famous bridge of  Mostar, Bosnia; 
employing it as something of  a case study for discussing how 
architecture provides essential touchstones for temporal beings.
     Even though humans may not have a static nature, our relation to 
nature itself—that is to say, the world that goes on without us—is too 
important a topic to go unaddressed. Henry Dicks, in his paper “From 
Anthropomimetic to Biomimetic Cities: The Place of  Humans in 



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Cities like Forests,” observes that even though in recent years biomimicry 
has emerged as a powerful response to the problem of  sustainability and 
today exerts an important influence on both architecture and urbanism, 
its implications for the humanities have been largely overlooked. Taking a 
historical approach, the first key argument of  this article is that throughout 
Western history the dominant model for the polis, qua both city and state, 
has been the human being and that it was also this basic model that underlay 
traditional understandings of  the place of  humans in cities and states. With 
the transition to biomimetic cities and states, the key model of  which is the 
forest ecosystem, the question of  the place of  humans arises once again. 
In response to this question, Dicks proposes a speculative philosophical 
anthropology based on a combination of  Heidegger’s thinking of  the 
clearing and recent insights from the study of  human evolution and pre-
history with a view to grounding a new model of  the polis not simply on 
the forest, but rather on the forest and the clearing. His invocation of  the 
Heideggerian forest and clearing in this regard is likely to spark future  debate.
     We then conclude the first volume with Marion Roussel’s “Towards a 
Post-Human Era? Digital Architects and the Future of  Mankind,” which 
looks at possible futures. Roussel believes that in this age of  unprecedented 
technological progress, we can no longer ask “what is man?” without 
examining what we think man will become. In the field of  architecture 
such an examination necessitates considering both what and for whom 
we will be building in the decades to come. Looking at the future world 
visions from the commentary of  digital architects from the 1990s to the 
present day, this paper aims to show how these architects have already 
been imagining the future of  mankind. It attempts to shed light upon our 
present state of  evolution and the expected outcome of  that evolution.
     Taken together, we believe these papers illustrate that addressing 
the question of  what we mean now by the human in architecture  can 
and must run the full gamut  of   humans’ time on the planet; from the 
prehistory of  the clearing in the forest  to the strange possible futures 
made possible by modern technology.   It is a question as relevant ever.

ENDNOTES

[1] Le Corbusier, The Athens Charter (1943), §87. Based on studies undertaken 
at the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in Athens, 
1933. Accessed on Moderist Architecture, https://modernistarchitecture.
wordpress.com/2010/11/03/ciam%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cthe-
athens-charter%E2%80%9D-1933/.



[2] Our translation. For the original, see Friedensreich Hundertwasser, Gebt 
den Menschen die Häuser zurück (München: Pattloch, 2003).
[3] Alvar Aalto, Toward a Human Modernism, ed. Winfried Nerdinger (New 
York: Prestel, 1999).
[4] Mats Egelius, “Ralph Erskine: the humane architect,” Architectural Design 
Profile vol. 9 (London: Architectural Design, 1977).
[5] Team 10 Meetings: 1953-1984, ed. Alison Margaret Smithson (New York: 
Rizzoli, 1991) and Alison Margaret Smithson and Peter Smithson, The Charged 
Void: Architecture (New York: Monacelli Press, 2001).
[6] Rudolf  Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of  Humanism (New 
York: Norton, 1971); Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of  Humanism. A Study in 
the History of  Taste (London: Architectural Press, 1980); and Alina Alexandra 
Payne, “Rudolf  Wittkower and Architectural Principles in the Age of  
Modernism,” Journal of  the Society of  Architectural Historians 53, no. 3 (1994): 
322–342, doi: 10.2307/990940.
[7] Immanuel Kant, “Logik,” Akademieausgabe Band IX (Berlin: 1900ff.), AA 
IX S.25.
[8] For an extensive view on the tradition of  Philosophische Anthropologie 
see Joachim Fischer, Philosophische Anthropologie: Eine Denkrichtung des 20. 
Jahrhunderts (Freiburg im Breisgau: Alber, 2009). Some of  the most important 
books include Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (Bonn: Bouvier, 
1991); Arnold Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt 
(Bonn: Athenäum, 1962); Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der 
Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965); 
and Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of  Human 
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
[9] Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of  Human Thinking (Cambridge: 
Harvard University Press, 2014).
[10] Cf. Jürgen Habermas, “Anthropologie, philosophische,” in Das Fischer 
Lexikon: Philosophie, ed. Alwin Diemer and Ivo Frenzel (Frankfurt am Main: 
Fischer, 1958), 18–35.
[11] Martin Heidegger, Über den Humanismus (Frankfurt am Main: 
Klostermann, 2000).
[12] Ibid.
[13] Noam Chomsky, What Kind of  Creatures Are We? (New York: Columbia 
University Press, 2015).


	0-Front Matter
	1-Editorial
	2-Harries and Scruton
	3-Pedragosa
	4-Hvattum
	5-Dicks
	6- Roussel 
	7-Back Matter



