











































Architecture Philosophy is the journal of  the International Society for the Philosophy 
of  Architecture (ISPA). The society was founded in 2009 by Carolyn Fahey, and 
the journal was first published in 2014 by Tom Spector, Carolyn Fahey, and Stefan 
Koller.

Architecture Philosophy proudly acknowledges the support from the Oklahoma State 
University School of  Architecture and the College of  Engineering Architecture and 
Technology that makes free distribution of  print copies in the U.S. possible. The 
journal also acknowledges the support of  the DFG (German research foundation) 
and Bamberg university that  made the conference “The Human in Architecture and 
Philosophy” possible (Bamberg, Germany, July 19th to 22nd 2016). Furthermore, 
the journal acknowledges the support from the Oklahoma State University Library 
for making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and 
its indexing in academic search engines a reality. 

Architecture Philosophy (ISSN 2372-0883) is published semiannually. Two parts form a 
volume. The subscription is free for digital copies, and print copies are available to 
society members at ISPA events. Visit isparchitecture.com for digital access to the 
journal’s content. 

The graphical layout of  the journal and the cover design are by Carolyn Fahey, 
adapted for this issue by Martin Düchs. 

Copying
This journal is copyrighted by Oklahoma State University. For permission requests 
please contact the ISPA at isparchitecture@gmail.com.

© Oklahoma State University

This issue is printed in Germany by Bamberg University.



MANAGING EDITOR
Tom Spector, Ph.D., University of  California - Berkeley

guest EDITORS
Martin Düchs, Ph.D., Ludwigs-MaximilianUniversity, Munich
Christian Illies, Ph.D., Oxford University

EDITORs
Christoph Baumberger, Ph.D., University of  Zurich
Carolyn Fahey, Ph.D., Newcastle University
Stefan Koller, Ph.D., Delft University of  Technology

EDITORIAL BOARD
Philosophy
Rebecca Bensen-Cain, Ph.D., University of  California - Santa Barbara
Rafael de Clercq, Ph.D., Catholic University Leuven 
Noël Carroll, Ph.D., University of  Illinois
Paul Guyer, Ph.D., Harvard University
Christian Illies, Ph.D., University of  Oxford
Jeff  Malpas, Ph.D., Australian National University

Architecture
Andrew Ballantyne, Ph.D., University of  Sheffield
Ufuk Ersoy, Ph.D., University of  Pennsylvania
Helen Mallinson, Ph.D., London Consortium
David Leatherbarrow, Ph.D., University of  Essex 
Graham Owen, M.Des., Harvard University
Nicholas Ray, M.A., University of  Cambridge

CONTACT
Web isparchitecture.com
Email isparchitecture@gmail.com



CONTENTS

Aleksandar Kostic 136Aporia in Architectural Design 

94Editorial

106Gerry AdlerArchitecture is Concealed unto Itself: 
Helmuth Plessner and his Influence on 
Twentieth-century Architecture

160Graham OwenThe Anthropology of  a Smoke-filled 
Room: Ethnography and the Human 
at OMA

214Roger ScrutonAesthetic Education and Design 

190Karsten HarriesUt Architectura Philosophia? Questioning 
the Relationship of  Architecture and 
Philosophy

Martin Düchs & 
Christian Illies

Original papers

Conference Paper

Philosophie engagé





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Some have said that it was fire and water which 
were initially responsible for bringing men together 
into communities, but we, considering how useful, 
even indispensable, a roof  and walls are for men, are 
convinced that it was they that drew and kept men 
together. 1

These remarks on architecture’s social function 
are taken from Giovanni Battista Alberti´s De re 
aedificatoria, in which he searches for underlying 
principles behind the architectural categories and 
concepts of  Vitruvius. This passage expresses both 
an underlying principle of  social life and awards 
architecture a unique role in relation to society: 
Because four walls and a roof  bind a group of  
people together they are a force that fashions a 
society.

Alberti, however, bases society also on a strong 
notion of  the individual human being; and thus for 
him, architecture’s second, and equally important 
focus must be the individual. This focus is, as 
he emphasizes, a necessary precondition for the 
socially important varietas (variety) of  the city. In the 
beginning of  the fourth of  his ten books, dedicated 
to the scrutiny of  “works of  a public nature”, he 
writes: 

It is obvious that buildings were made to serve man. 
[…] buildings were designed for life´s necessities, 
others offer themselves for practical requirements, 
while still others are for occasions of  pleasure, […].

Yet, when we look around at the quantity and the 
variety of  buildings, it is easy to understand that […] 
the range of  different works depends principally on 

we [...]        
must begin 

here, by 
considering 

human 
variety in 

greater 
detail

“

”

THE need for a philosophical 
anthropology of architecture

Martin Düchs & Christian Illies



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the variation within human nature. If  we wish to give an accurate account of  the 
various types of  buildings (as was our intention) and of  their constituent elements, 
our whole method of  investigation must open and begin here, by considering 
human variety in greater detail; since buildings arose on man´s account, and for 
his needs they vary; so that they may be dealt with more clearly by distinguishing 
their individual characteristics.2  

For Alberti, only if  the individuality of  human beings is taken as the starting 
point, can architecture fulfil its social role; and only then do we understand 
the task of  architecture properly.3 Good architecture and good cities care 
for both society and individual human beings; but the individual must 
come first. Alberti was inspired by the ideals of  early modernity which 
celebrated the re-birth (Re-naissance) of  individual  accomplishment. It 
was a time when man became a self-aware individual as Jacob Burckhardt 
famously stated in The Civilization of  the Renaissance in Italy in 1860—at the 
same time proposing Alberti as a true Renaissance-man (uomo universale).4

Alberti set the tone for subsequent thinkers up to the modern period. 
The 20th-century’s concern about the role of  architecture for society is 
like a distant echo of  his thoughts, but in a lopsided way. Modernity often 
focuses too much on society. Equality becomes the prime value and for 
some the collective gains absolute priority over the individual. Not much 
has changed when we reflect on the digital revolution and other major 
transformations relating to architecture in the 21st century. Debates are 
largely dominated by ideas and texts of  architectural modernity and its 
tradition that remains biased towards the collective over the individual. 
For Le Corbusier or Hannes Meyer5 and other heroes of  this tradition, the 
individual human plays a subordinate role, despite occasional contradictory 
utterances (for example in the Athens Charter).6 To be sure, this is a somewhat 
simplified picture that forces at least three reservations: First, architectural 
modernity is not a homogenous movement. One can distinguish at least 
five strands of  early architectural modernity at the beginning of  the 20th 
century: constructivism, functionalism, rationalism and biomorphic and 
sculptural architecture.7 And especially within biomorphic architecture we 
can find architects like Hugo Häring who take the biological functionings 
of  the single human being as their starting point.8 Despite this variety 
of  approaches it seems fair to talk about architectural modernity in a 
more general sense to identify its predominant form (sometimes called 
“International Style” or “Neues Bauen”), promoted by Walter Gropius, 
Hannes Meyer and Le Corbusier as dominant figures who sought to tie 
modernism to social change. Second: Since World War Two, additional 
varieties in the form of  postmodernism or deconstructivism have 



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emerged. These movements can be defined as 
reactions to modernity. However, in retrospect, 
they did little to challenge its basic precepts. Third: 
Several outstanding modernist architects did place 
the single human being in the centre of  their 
(mostly practical) efforts. Alvar Aalto, for example, 
stressed the importance of  individual human beings 
(as Nicholas Ray has pointed out9). In his address 
to his old school, the Jyvaskyla Lyceum, Aalto says 
that in order to make a “cultural contribution” one 
needs an “unwillingness to ‘move with the stream,’” 
that can ultimately be transformed into a “love with 
a critical sensibility […] It is a love that lasts, as it 
rests on a critically tested foundation. It can result 
in such a love for the little man that it functions 
as a kind of  guardian when our era’s mechanized 
lifestyle threatens to strangle the individual and the 
organically harmonious life.”10 Ralph Erskine and 
Aldo van Eyck embody other prominent examples 
who consciously aimed to balance concern for both 
society and the individual as Alberti demanded. But 
these architects are to be regarded as exceptions 
from the rule. Their works are explicitly judged as 
“humane architecture” in order to distinguish it 
from the mainstream,11 which means that the latter 
is obviously seen as somehow less humane and—
again—one reason for this is that in general social 
considerations are regarded as more important than 
“considering human variety in greater detail.”

Thus, we can grant the architecture of  
modernity is more complex than our initial remarks 
might have suggested while continuing to assert a 
dominant discourse biased in favour of  the social. 
There are at least three reasons for this bias. First 
of  all architectural modernity continues to derive 
much of  its impetus as a political project that aims 
at improving the structure of  modern societies by 
architectural means.12 Industrialization had brought 
about modern mass societies, migration to the 
cities, and diverse social problems of  all sorts; and 

  The focus            
on improving 

society and the 
collective is 

a trademark 
of the 20th 

century, 
not only in 

architecture 
but cross 
post-war 

intellectual 
life.

“

”



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there was an increasing need to respond to them–socialism, incorporated 
in architectural modernity, became the most prominent attempt to do so. 
This impetus continues today in architecture’s insistence that it be part of  
the solution to global warming and to homelessness. 

Secondly, the dominant architects of  the modernist socialism 
subscribed to the idea that the individual s a product of  society and not 
vice versa. The individual’s reality is an “ensemble of  social relations,” as 
Marx famously remarks. As a consequence, architectural modernism 
understood itself  as part of  the project to create a better human being, 
via creating a better architecture for a new society without, for example, 
unjust privileges. This orientation also explains why equality became the 
dominant aesthetic guideline for this project. Equality, however, can often 
be mistaken for sameness, and an architecture exclusively guided by this 
idea tends to create over-homogenous environments. 

Finally, the focus on improving society and the collective is a trademark 
of  the 20th century, not only in architecture but also across post-war 
intellectual life. Most humanities, but philosophy in particular, have 
replaced the “paradigm of  the epistemic subject” (that dominated 18th 
and 19th century philosophy) by the new “paradigm of  inter-subjectivity,” 
as Karl-Otto Apel famously calls it.13 Language is the grand topic of  the 
early 20th century, the age of  the linguistic turn; and since language is, by 
its very nature, a social not individual reality, the turn pushes philosophical 
reflection towards society. Wittgenstein’s “form of  life”, Habermas’ 
“discursive community,” or even Heidegger’s critique of  the modern 
subject are prime examples of  the new paradigm. Inspired by Nietzsche 
and Heidegger, Foucault has even claimed that there is no such thing as 
the human being: “As the archaeology of  our thought easily shows, man 
is an invention of  recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. […] one 
can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at 
the edge of  the sea.”14

Alternative approaches that emphasize the individual human had a 
short life in the 20th century. Most notably, the so-called Philosophical 
Anthropology, a school of  thought between 1920 and 1960, did not have 
a lasting influence. Its main representatives, Max Scheler, Arnold Gehlen, 
Helmuth Plessner, Ernst Cassirer, and Hans Jonas (the two latter being 
both members of  the tradition in a wider sense), tried to conceptualize 
what it means to be an individual, yet also a group-oriented social being, in 
an age of  modern science. This movement was never given much attention 
by Anglo-Saxon philosophy and stopped rather abruptly on the continent 
when people like Jonas and Cassirer had to emigrate and then philosophers 



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and sociologists of  the Frankfurt School began to 
dominate the philosophical discourse. In a famous 
paper from 1958, Habermas tellingly argued that 
Philosophical Anthropology should be entirely 
replaced by sociology because there is no relevant 
notion of  the individual outside society–and it took 
him decades to moderate his conviction.15

And this still seems where architectural theory 
stands today. We find plenty of  debate on formal 
questions, but when it 
comes to what architecture 
is about (or what building 
is for), most discussions 
focus on society. The topics 
of  the Venice Biennale for 
Architecture over the last 
20 years provide ample 
evidence: Except for the 
“Fundamentals” exhibition 
in 2014 (Rem Koolhaas) 
and partly the exhibitions 
“Out there: Architecture Beyond Building” (Aaron 
Betsky 2008) and “Next” (Deyan Sudjic 2002), all 
of  the biennales dealt with either societal or formal 
problems: “Reporting from the Front” (Alejandro 
Aravena 2016), “Common Ground” (David 
Chipperfield 2012), “People Meet in Architecture” 
(Kazujo Sejima 2010), “Cities, Architecture and 
Society” (Richard Burdett 2006), “Metamorph” 
(Kurt W. Forster 2004), and “Less Aesthetics more 
Ethics” (Massimiliano Fuksas 2000). 

And so Alberti’s second criterion for good 
architecture and good cities, a focus on the well-
being of  the individual, is still unjustly neglected. 
A research field that would continue the tradition 
of  Philosophical Anthropology and apply it to 
architecture simply does not exist.16 

Do we need any such endeavour? We believe 
that it is as much required for any profound 
philosophy of  architecture as for architectural 

figure 1: venue of the 3rd 
international ISPA-Conference 

“The human in architecture 
and philosophy”. Bamberg: 

Villa Concordia



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theory. Alberti can still remind us why architectural sociology, or a 
philosophy of  architecture that focuses on society while neglecting 
the individual will always be insufficient. On a theoretical level, the 
relationship between the individual and society seems much more 
complex than much 20th century sociology and philosophy has assumed. 
Evolutionary and developmental psychology, amongst others, have shown 
that there are innate individual human needs, desires, and tendencies that 
have some correspondence in society, but are not simply their product. 
If  architecture wants to respond adequately to this complex interactive 
relationship between society and the individual, it will have to develop 
more individualistic and flexible theories than mainstream modernism 
has been able to supply. Environmental psychology has shown that our 
relationship with buildings is both personal and individual. That is why 
a traditional sociological theory of  architecture will not do. The problem 
is sharpened by the two conflicting tendencies that characterize our 
globalized world: one tendency towards multi-culturalism and the other 
towards an atomistic, uniform consumerism. Both tendencies dissolve 
traditional, more homogenous societies. They demand new architectural 
strategies of  community-building and of  guarding people against an 
overwhelming standardisation and enforced conformism. All of  that 
speaks for an important role of  architectural philosophy: it should pave 
the theoretical way for a more balanced view by adding a practical focus 
on the individual and the possibilities of  creating space for all her needs 
and desires, thus for the good life within a community. This new research 
field might be called Philosophical Architectural Anthropology. 

There is already a research-field called “Architectural Anthropology” in 
the Anglo-Saxon world, but as yet, it is more a sociological or ethnological 
endeavour than a philosophical. What we need is an investigation that is at 
least supplemented by philosophical considerations. This is something that 
is also argued for from within the already existing field of  Architectural 
Anthropology: 

The anthropology adjectivized as architectural should be a critical, ethical 
anthropology that keeps asking fundamental, philosophical questions about 
what being human and communicating through culture mean and what is best 
for humans in terms of  what is habitable. Therefore, anthropology should 
add to interdisciplinary roots and evolutionary interests—characteristics that 
accompanied its birth a century ago—an ethical dimension that will provide 
a new set of  questions to evaluate the huge ethnographical and archaeological 
corpus of  information on the diverse human habitats created over the years.17  

A first step towards a Philosophical Architectural Anthropology was 



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made at the 3rd International Conference of  the 
International Society for the Philosophy of  Architecture 
from July 19th to 23rd 2016 at Bamberg University, 
Germany, with the topic “The Human in 
Architecture and Philosophy.” Some papers have 
already been published in 2018 in a special issue of  
ArchitecturePhilosophy (APJ, vol. 3 No.1/2017); this 
is the second selection of  papers that come out of  
the conference. 

We open with Gerald Adler’s “Architecture is 
Concealed Unto Itself: Helmuth Plessner and his 
Influence on Twentieth-Century Architecture.” 
Adler presents the architectural implications 
of  German philosopher Helmuth Plessner’s 
Philosophical Anthropology. Plessner (1892-1985) 
saw the human being as characterised by an “ex-
centric positionality,” because humans, unlike 
animals, are able to self-distance, to be “out of  
their centre.” Having simultaneously different 
perspectives on oneself  constitutes the conditio 
humana, according to Plessner. He specified this 
ex-centric positionality in the form of  three 
anthropological laws that are also in the centre 
of  Gerald Adler’s analysis: The law of  natural 
artificiality, the law of  mediated immediacy (or immanence 
and expressivity, the law that is most interesting for 
the philosophy of  architecture,) and the law of  
nothingness and transcendence, which “drives man to 
engage in culture, it awakens needs that can only 
be satisfied through a system of  artificial objects.”18 
Buildings are obvious examples of  such objects, 
produced within each society’s architectural culture. 
Adler’s assessment of  the importance of  Plessner’s 
thought for architecture not only introduces a 
much-neglected twentieth-century philosopher to 
an English-speaking audience, but also provides 
reflections that lie at the very heart of  what we call 
a Philosophical Architectural Anthropology. 

Following Adler, we continue our focus on the 
individual, this time, however, on the individual 

  This                    
new research 

field might 
be called 

Philosophical 
Architectural 
Anthropology

“

”



creator with Aleksandar Kostić’s “Aporia in Architectural Design.” An 
aporia, the experience of  irresolvable internal contradictions, emerges 
when a designer, presented with apparently contradictory requirements, is 
unsure how to proceed further with her design, and finds that striking out 
in a new direction is necessary to overcome her perplexity. Thus, an initial 
source of  a designer’s dismay becomes both the occasion and demand for 
creative problem-solving. But, the resolution of  this kind of  puzzlement 
in architecture can only arise if  the designer understands the conundrum 
and is fully engaged with the aporia. To explain the creative potential of  
aporiai, Kostić draws on the accounts that Plato and Aristotle give us in 
their works before moving into a detailed account of  a classic aporia in 
architecture where the Ionic order must turn a corner. He then generalizes 
from this example to suggest that “aporia has intrinsic value for design 
and therefore that it should somehow be present in the more abstract 
subject matter of  design itself.”19

Graham Owen’s paper, “The Anthropology of  a Smoke-filled Room: 
Ethnography and the Human at OMA,” moves us decisively back to a 
contemporary situation by employing the conceptual tools of  Bruno 
Latour’s Actor Network Theory and the participant-observation work 
of  Albena Yaneva to dissect the labour practices and ensuing working 
conditions of  the celebrated Dutch architectural office. The article 
contrasts the relative absence of  discussion of  issues of  labour and working 
conditions in other studies of  OMA with their prominence in recent work 
by observers of  architectural education and by activist academics such 
as Peggy Deamer, Paolo Tombesi and Mabel Wilson. A clearly ethical 
concern with the well-being of  individuals underlies this discussion, not 
of  architectural objects, but of  potentially abusive processes which give 
rise to architectural objects.

The last two papers derive from keynotes from the 3rd international 
ISPA-conference by two great figures in the philosophy of  architecture 
who, not at all coincidentally, happen to be two champions of  the human 
individual in architecture. They have consciously kept their oral style.

In his reflections on “Ut Architectura Philosophia? Questioning the 
Relationship of  Architecture and Philosophy”, Karsten Harries considers 
the mutual inspiration of  philosophy and architecture, their relationship 
and their mutual contributions to one another. To look at philosophy’s 
contribution to architecture more closely, Harries begins by asking what 
it means that architecture should build for humans. By reference to 
observations by Vitruvius, Hegel, and Le Corbusier, Harries argues that 
“the requirements of  human dwelling resist their reduction to the need 



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for physical shelter or functional frames for certain 
activities.  Not only the body, the spirit, too, needs 
shelter, shelter especially from the terror of  time.” 
He then considers how architecture might influence 
philosophy. Harries looks at Heidegger, his important 
source of  inspiration, and focusses on the need of  
humans to dwell and find a place—physically but 
also self-reflectively, thus philosophically. In his The 
Ethical Function of  Architecture (1997), a classic of  the 
Heidegger-based phenomenological tradition of  
the philosophy of  architecture, Harries had argued 
for the power of  buildings to interpret the most 
fundamental truths of  human existence, and to 
give humans a place and thus ethical orientation. 
Does that assertion still hold or is our modern 
society un-representable by architecture? Harries 
renews his earlier position powerfully by focussing 
on the challenges of  modernity that seem to refuse 
a dwelling-place. Consequently, our world is most 
adequately represented by the decorated shed (a 
term popularized by Robert Venturi), a functional 
building with a superficial aesthetic addition. 
This shed becomes a “potent figure for the 
spiritual situation of  this age, which tends covers 
up the spiritual poverty that is the price of  our 
objectification of  reality, with an often borrowed 
aesthetic veneer.” But we are in need of  more, 
he argues. Humans still have to find a meaningful 
place. To what extent architecture, or even reason-
based philosophy, might still be able to provide the 
much needed orientation, must remain somewhat 
open.

While Karsten Harries is a founding father 
of  contemporary phenomenological philosophy 
of  architecture, Roger Scruton’s The Aesthetics of  
Architecture (1979) plays the same role for the entire 
analytic tradition of  philosophy of  architecture. The 
title of  his keynote from the Bamberg-conference, 
“Aesthetic Education and Design,” indicates his 
central contribution to a philosophical architectural 



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anthropology: We need a fundamental architectural education, Scruton 
argues, “in which pattern, composition, and the idea of  fit are given a proper 
place, and in which function and utility are regarded as the consequences 
of  beauty and not prior requirements that must be independently 
fulfilled.” Only such an education can work as an “antidote” to the kind of  
“depersonalised madness that had possessed the schools of  architecture 
and town planning in the wake of  the Second World War.” Its desire has 
been and still is, he critiques, a “total solution” and thus a “total control 
in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying whole settlements and 
cities.” Since this madness is inhuman, to fight it via education (and in 
keynotes) becomes a moral obligation. The new education must “transmit 
a culture that embodies shared conceptions of  life and discovered 
solutions to life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how 
to live at peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you 
dislike them.” 

Given Scruton’s well-known public engagement for re-establishing 
beauty in the public space, it comes to no surprise that his keynote turned 
into philosophie engagé, a passionate Philippica for a new education and for 
beauty as a primary goal in architectural design. And since few escape 
the vigour of  his pen and voice, his keynote obviously provoked critical 
responses at the Bamberg-conference. This provides an excellent basis 
for a debate about his theses. In a future issue of  Architecture Philosophy 
we would like to present several responses to Scruton’s plea for changes 
to architectural education and his attack on the apparent failure of  most 
architectural modernism. We hope in this way to further a stated goal of  
the journal to provide a forum for ongoing discussions and continue these 
exchanges in subsequent issues. 

Next to contemplation, engaged argumentation, debates and 
disagreement are the elixir of  philosophical life. According to Thomas 
Kuhn, strong debates and heavy disagreements can also mark the crisis of  
an existing paradigm and the search for a new one. It seems fair to argue 
that architecture is currently in a crisis and struggling about what sort 
of  answer it can provide in the modern world shaken by environmental, 
societal and political crisis, in which the over-challenged, homeless 
individual still has to find his or her place to dwell.  And this place must be 
built. We hope that a flourishing Philosophical Architectural Anthropology will 
contribute to it being a good one.

Martin Düchs and Christian Illies



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Endnotes

[1] Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of  Building. In 
Ten Books, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach 
and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass, London: 
MIT Press, 1988 [1452]) Prologue, 3.

[2] Ibid., book IV, Chap. 1, p.92.

[3] Hanno-Walter Kruft, A History of  Architectural 
Theory. From Vitruvius to the Present. (New York: 
Princeton Architectural Press., 1994), 49.

[4] See: Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of  the 
Renaissance in Italy (New York: Modern Library, 
2002 [1860]). 

[5] The writings of  the former Bauhaus director 
(1928-1930) Hannes Meyer are probably the most 
striking example for the ideas mentioned. In his 
essay “Die neue Welt” from 1926 he states for 
example as follows: „Die Gemeinschaft beherrscht 
das Einzelwesen. […] Das sicherste Kennzeichen 
wahrer Gemeinschaft ist die Befriedigung 
gleicher Bedürfnisse mit gleichen Mitteln. Das 
Ergebnis solcher Kollektivforderung ist das 
Standardprodukt.” Hannes Meyer, „Die Neue Welt“ 
in: Das Werk 13 (7, 1926), 205. Online: http://www.
cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/Autoren/Meyer/
Meyer1926.htm.

[6] See especially the §87 of  the Athens Charter of  
the CIAM. Le Corbusier, The Athens Charter (New 
York: Grossman Publishers 1973), 101. 

[7] See: Jürgen Pahl, Architekturtheorie des 20. 
Jahrhunderts (München, London, New York: Prestel, 
1999), 54.

[8] See Peter Blundell-Jones, Hugo Häring. The organic 
versus the geometric (Stuttgart: Ed. Axel Menges, 1999).

[9] Nicholas Ray, Aalto (New Haven: Yale University 
Press, 2005).

[10] Quoted in Göran Schildt, ed.: Alvar Aalto in his 
Own Words (New York: Rizzoli International, 1998). 



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[11] See: Mats Egelius ed., Ralph Erskine: the Humane Architect. AD - 
Architectural Design Vol 47 (11-12, AD Profile 9. London, Architectural 
Design, 1977). See also: Winfried Nerdinger, ed.: Alvar Aalto. Toward a 
Human Modernism (Munich, London, New York: Prestel, 1999)

[12] Le Corbusier concludes his seminal book Toward an Architecture from 
1923 with considerations about architecture as the key to solve societal 
problems: “C’est une question de bâtiment qui est à la clé de l’équilibre 
rompu aujourd’hui : architecture ou révolution.” Le Corbusier, Vers une 
Architecture (Collection de “L’Esprit Nouveau”. Paris: Éditions Crès, 1923)

[13] See: Otto Apel, „Die Kommunikationsgemeinschaft als transzendentale 
Voraussetzung der Sozialwissenschaften,“ in Transformation der Philosophie, 
(vol. 2, 1972), 220–263.

[14] Michel Foucault, The Order of  Things. An Archaeology of  the Human 
Sciences. (London Routledge, 2006), 442. 

[15] Jürgen Habermas, “philosophische Anthropologie“ in Alwin Diemer 
und Ivo Frenzel, ed., Fischer Lexikon Philosophie (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 
1958), 18–35.

[16] There is social or cultural anthropology of  architecture, but these 
sciences dwell upon different issues and mostly place, again, society in the 
centre.

[17] Mari-Jose Amerlinck, “The Meaning and Scope of  Architectural 
Anthropology,” in Mari-Jose Amerlinck, ed., Architectural Anthropology 
(Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 2001), 1–26.

[18] Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: 
Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1928), 
reprinted 1975 (Berlin: de Gruyter), Sammlung Göschen 2200.

[19] The quote is taken from Aleksandar Kostić’s paper in this volume.



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ARCHITECTURE IS CONCEALED UNTO ITSELF: 
HELMUTH PLESSNER AND HIS INFLUENCE ON 

TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE 

Gerald Adler

INTRODUCTION

Nestling in, moving along, feeling one’s way, occupying 
space, the thousand ways of  living within our postures 
and giving the silent image of  spaces and planes 
through such postures an immediate connection to 
me, these are the ways to understand architecture. We 
always have to feel such an image and its ideal system 
of  expression on our own body in order to taste the 
sense of  a building. The purely ornamental, the effect 
of  light, the qualities of  materials form a meaningful 
structure, if  not consciously, then in a more or less 
immediate reaction to the artificially formed world of  
space.1

By any measure, this is an inspiring, evocative, 
and illuminating text that feels absolutely of  the 
moment. That it was written almost one hundred 
years ago by an aspirant former student of  zoology 
on his way to obtaining a chair in philosophy at the 
University of  Göttingen, gives pause for thought. 
The writer was Helmuth Plessner, and the field 
of  study he made his own was Philosophical 
Anthropology. The purpose of  this paper is to 
elucidate Plessner’s thinking and the relationship 
Philosophical Anthropology had with architecture.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Helmuth Plessner was born into an affluent 
family of  Jewish descent in Wiesbaden, in 1892. 

Nestling in, 
moving along, 

feeling one’s 
way, occupying 

space, the 
thousand ways 

of living within 
our postures [...] 

“

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A bright schoolboy, he went on to study medicine, and then zoology 
and philosophy in Heidelberg. On the eve of  the First World War he 
moved to Göttingen to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. 
He was appointed professor of  philosophy in Cologne in 1926, having 
already published his first major work, The Unity of  the Senses (Die Einheit 
der Sinne, 1923). Within two years at Cologne he had published what is 
generally regarded as his magnum opus, The Levels of  the Organic and Man 
(Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, 1928). Seven years later he was 
dismissed from his post, and, after a short stay in Istanbul, was offered 
refuge in Holland with a chair in sociology in Groningen. As the war 
progressed, he went underground in Holland but returned to Germany 
in 1951. Numerous writings followed, leading to his collected works 
being published by Suhrkamp by 1985, the year of  his death.2 Plessner, 
who wrote his key texts in the years of  the Weimar Republic, has been 
largely absent within architectural discourse, especially in comparison 
with the attention afforded his contemporary, Martin Heidegger, with 
whom Plessner shares some common interests, particularly as regards 
the architectural implications of  his thinking. His work on the concept 
of  what he termed ‘ex-centricity’ is the cornerstone of  Philosophical 
Anthropology; indeed, similar to Heidegger, Plessner’s language—his 
images and metaphors—make explicit references to human spatial 
relationships, and indeed to the culture of  architecture. Plessner deserves 
to be seen in the light of  the great upsurge in philosophical enquiry and 
critical thinking emanating from Weimar Germany in the 1920s, alongside 
the likes of  Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Arnold 
Gehlen, Martin Heidegger, Siegfried Kracauer, and Max Scheler.3

PLESSNER’S HOUSE

Before dealing with Plessner the philosopher let us consider the house 
he commissioned for himself  and his wife in Göttingen (Figure 1). On his 
return to postwar Germany in 1951, Plessner took up the newly-founded 
chair in sociology at the University of  Göttingen, married Monika 
Tintelnot, and commissioned the architect Lucy Hillebrand (1906-97) to 
build their house in the eastern suburbs of  the town. Hillebrand was an 
inspired choice, being both local as well as a convinced and thoughtful 
Modernist.4 From the north entrance side the house appears single storey; 
this belies the fact that it is built into a sloping site. It is rendered white, 
with a low-pitched hipped roof: sachlich, simple and straightforward, a 
1950s rendering of  a 1920s Neues Bauen house. The layout of  the (upper) 
ground level is surprising, the orthogonal lines of  the exterior softening 



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into an organic essay of  a curved staircase leading 
down to the guest bedrooms beneath. The private 

quarters of  Plessner, hard by the entrance, give onto 
a free-planned workroom. Beyond, visible through 
glass doors and panels, is a narrow gallery lined with 
bookcases, enveloping the top section of  a double-
height void overlooking the guest and reception 
areas beneath (Figure 2). These give directly onto 
the garden. The house is one of  a family of  villas 
designed by Hillebrand in post-war West Germany, 
all of  which continue the theme of  external restraint 
combined with internal freedom of  layout.5 Evident 
from the plan, the house abounds in fluid spatial 
transitions from one area to the next;6 its organic 
composition resembles that of  the houses of  Hans 
Scharoun and Hugo Häring, and as the sociologist 
Heike Delitz has recounted, “Hillebrand designed 
by virtually dancing through her spaces. Bodily 
movement in space was her guiding principle; […] 
Plessner explained ‘designed’ more precisely, in that 
she drew for him, and they ‘spurred each other on’ 

FIGURE 1: Lucy 
Hillebrand, Plessner House, 
Göttingen (1951-52). View of 

house from garden.



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in this creative work, as Monika Plessner has recounted […] A Bauhaus, 
then, instead of  Heidegger’s hut.”7

 

Delitz’s point with this final, acid aphorism is that Plessner’s 
engagement with Modernism and the development of  architecture was 
a positive and creative one, immersive in the practice, theory and politics 
of  contemporary design, as opposed to the Freiberg professor’s haughty 
withdrawal from it in his Todtnauberg retreat.8 In the words of  Tom 
Spector, “while Plessner was engaging the modern condition, Heidegger 
was retreating from it. While Heidegger bemoans modern alienation, 
Plessner tells us that such alienation is actually the human condition. 
Whereas Heidegger wants to get at the headwaters of  conventions, 
Plessner prefers to take us as we present ourselves. Where Heidegger 
retreats, Plessner is convivial.”9 Plessner’s Göttingen house, in its ‘natural 
artificiality,’ its ‘mediated immediacy,’ and its ‘utopian transcendence,’ 
resembles in all its complexities the houses of  Josef  Frank, with their 
inner spatial gymnastics contrasted with their external simplicity of  
form, plane, and line (Figure 3).10 We shall deal with these three concepts, 
the lynchpins of  Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology, in the main 
section of  this paper, and then explain the relevance of  the Viennese-
born architect Frank (1885-1967). Plessner was straightforward and 
uncomplicated in his understanding that “[a]rchitecture, on account of  
rationally understandable functional concepts, presents the object with its 
meaning, a house, a staircase, a garden.”11 For Plessner, these ‘functional’ 
elements are also clear conveyors of  ‘cultural’ meaning: we see a staircase, 
and know that it will take us up to the floor above.

It is wonderful to imagine Plessner and Hillebrand ‘dancing’ the 
Göttingen house into being. And yet Plessner had already described such 
an embodied approach to space, anticipating Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s 
later writings, as the extraordinary passage from his 1923 book The Unity 

FIGURE 2: Lucy 
Hillebrand, Plessner House, 

Göttingen (1951-52). View 
from Plessner’s workroom 

to the library gallery 
and the garden beyond.



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of  the Senses quoted 
at the start of  this 
paper makes clear.

Plessner built an 
edifice through 
his work in Philo-
sophical Anthro-
pology based on
human positionality. 
It is complex and 
nuanced, and has 
ramifications for 
architecture that are 
similarly complex 
and nuanced and 
that are, moreover, 
suspicious of  
radicalism for its 
own sake. Having 
given a sense of  
Plessner’s archi-
tectural interests 
and preferences, it 
is now time to delve 
into his concepts 
of  Philosophical 
Anthropology and 
the all-important 
term ‘positionality.’

PLESSNER’S PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Philosophical Anthropology deals with 
questions like ‘what is man?’ and ‘what is man’s place 
in the nature of  things?’ as opposed to the more 
philosophically fundamental ‘what is being?’ The 
German sociologist Joachim Fischer (president of  
the Helmuth Plessner Society from 2011 until 2017) 
has distinguished Philosophical Anthropology 
(the capital letters denote its distinctiveness), the 

FIGURE 3: Lucy 
Hillebrand, Plessner House, 

Göttingen (1951-52). Upper 
floor (main entrance 

level) plan. 



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special movement within German philosophy of  the 1920s, from a more 
generalised philosophical interest in anthropology.12 Following Fischer’s 
distinction, this paper will capitalise ‘Philosophical Anthropology’ to 
demarcate philosophical anthropology (no capital letters) from Plessner’s 
particular take on it.

Plessner’s claim for Philosophical Anthropology is that it provides “a 
clarification of  the position of  man in the world.”13 Plessner formulated 
his thinking about Philosophical Anthropology at the same time as Martin 
Heidegger conceived his fundamental ontology, although it derives from 
very different premises. In brief, where Heidegger’s ontological starting 
point is man’s temporal sense of  being (‘Dasein’, roughly, ‘being’, or 
‘being-there’, to use a word of  Heidegger’s) in the world, Plessner begins 
with man’s spatial relationships, with other humans, creatures, and the 
wider environment. With this in mind, it is all the more surprising that 
he has been so neglected by architectural culture, especially in light of  
the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities of  recent years. Plessner came from a 
background in the natural sciences, a field of  knowledge requiring plain 
and straightforward language, a language that, moreover, has to act as 
an adjunct to non-verbal forms of  communication, such as drawings, 
diagrams, and photographs, akin to architectural communication.14 
Immersed in transcendental philosophy in parallel with and subsequent 
to studies to those in medicine and zoology, Plessner sought to answer 
Goethe’s wish that Kant’s Critique of  Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) 
be completed by a Critique of  the Senses (Kritik der Sinne).15 In a nutshell, this 
was to be Plessner’s contribution to knowledge, initiated with his The Unity 
of  the Senses and substantiated with his main text The Levels of  Organic Being 
and Man five years later.16 In this book we find Plessner’s one substantive 
contribution to philosophical vocabulary: the word ‘ex-centric’ in the 
sense of  “out of  the centre.”17 The Levels failed to sustain the same degree 
of  interest as the key contemporaneous work of  phenomenological 
philosophy, Heidegger’s Being and Time, either in the field of  philosophy or, 
as this paper focuses on, that of  architecture.18 The reason, perhaps, is due 
to its interdisciplinary nature: Plessner was a trained biologist, and indeed 
of  the seven chapters of  The Levels, it is only the final one, ‘The Sphere of  
Man,’ that fully fleshes out his Philosophical Anthropology.

MAN’S EX-CENTRIC ‘POSITIONALITY’

Plessner posits that, at the (human) observable scale of  biological life, 
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is a decisive factor in our understanding its 
motivations and Dasein. Viewed in terms of  an 
ascending hierarchy in the natural world, plants 
have fixed positions in the world, whereas animals 
move freely. They have, according to Plessner, 
different kinds of  ‘positionality.’ Human beings 
have the additional characteristic of  being aware of  
their positionality and of  being able to reflect upon 
it. They have ‘ex-centric positionality.’ 

Seen in the context of  architecture, the concept 
of  man´s ex-centric positionality has interesting 
implications, both for the way we perceive 
our position in the world, in reference to our 
surroundings, and in the way designers conceive, 
propose, and make such environments. First of  
all, architecture provides a way of  understanding 
ex-centricity through the developing means of  
representing buildings in the early decades of  the 
twentieth century where, in avant-garde circles, 
the axonometric projection began to be favoured 
by architects in preference to the perspective, as a 
means of  conceiving and representing the objective 
realities of  a building’s formal composition.19 
The axonometric, famously, is a more analytical 
representation of  a building from which we are able to 
scale off  accurate dimensions, and does not depend 
upon the single human observer and viewpoint 
demanded by the perspective. It is emblematic of  
a disinterested abstraction, ‘ex-centric,’ as opposed 
to the perspective’s centredness on the human (and 
one particular human’s) eye. The human viewpoint 
of  the perspective, as opposed to other apparently 
more dispassionate and objective architectural 
projections, is the main topic of  Robin Evans’s 
groundbreaking study, The Projective Cast, and 
Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier’s book 
Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge.20 
These were published in the late 1990s, in the wake 
of  a renewed and sustained interest in architectural 
drawing for its own sake, on the part of  avant-garde 

            Human 
Beings have 
‘ex-centric 

positionality.’ 

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architects and students, and on the brink of  the computer revolution in 
architectural practice that would fundamentally change the way buildings 
are imagined and produced.21 In recent years, the ubiquity of  digital 
means of  representation and architectural production has multiplied the 
questions regarding man’s position with respect to architecture, in an era 
where images are commonly projected onto flat screens and scaled up or 
down at will into virtual space.22

We cannot claim that buildings and places have any views of  their 
own positions in the world, be they objective or subjective. What may 
be argued, though, is that people who imagine or make buildings and 
places, ‘architects,’ have, in modern times and places, steadily developed an 
ex-centric view of  their work that has tended to locate them outside, and 
separate from, the work itself, and, moreover, with heightened abilities 
to reflect on their work dispassionately. To be ‘outside the work itself ’ 
means having the mental ability to regard the world dispassionately, where 
‘outside’ is seen as being increasingly separate from the sentient self, while 
‘heightened abilities’ may be understood as belonging to the increasingly 
independent and ‘professional’ architect, no longer (quite so) subservient 
to the whims and interests of  a powerful and socially superior patron. 
Such an ‘ex-centric’ position is a particularly twentieth-century, ‘modern,’ 
disposition of  architects as practitioners, theorists, and historians who 
stand broadly against the ‘autonomy’ of  architecture, seeking instead 
to couple it with other disciplines, most notably sociology in the 1960s, 
linguistics in the 1970s, critical theory in the 1980s, and so on. The 
‘criticality’ at large in the humanities and social sciences has noticeably 
extended into architectural design and has gained increased traction in the 
last decades. Examples from the last decades would be Post-Modernism 
in architecture, where criticality issuing originally from linguistics has been 
a powerful influence upon architectural theory and practice (for instance, 
in the work of  Charles Jencks, Denise Scott Brown, and Robert Venturi). 
‘Critical Architecture’ has had a significant impact on post-1980s design 
theory and practice, where psychoanalysis, feminism, and most notably 
Derridean Deconstruction has had a profound influence upon architects 
as diverse as Jennifer Bloomer, Daniel Libeskind, and Peter Eisenman.23 
The architect, as artist and agent, is emblematic of  a renewed philosophic 
interest in the question of  “how to combine the perspective of  a particular 
person inside the world with an objective view of  that same world, the 
person and his viewpoint included. It is a problem that faces every creature 
with the impulse and the capacity to transcend its particular point of  view 
and to conceive of  the world as a whole.”24



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Plessner’s emphasis on space and position as 
opposed to time and occasion is probably his most 
important contribution to architectural culture, and 
is the subject of  the next section of  this paper.

THE FINITUDE OF HUMAN BEINGS

Published in the same year as the now more 
famous Being and Time, Plessner’s The Levels similarly 
explores the philosophical implications of  man’s 
finitude. The substantive difference is that whereas 
Heidegger sees finitude in its temporal sense (‘we 
will all die’), Plessner regards our spatial limitations 
and relationships as more compelling (‘we are all 
located in different places, and in a constantly 
changing relationship to those places’).25 He goes 
on to maintain that ‘human beings live in three 
worlds: an outer world (Aussenwelt), an inner 
world (Innenwelt), and the shared world of  culture 
(Mitwelt).26 This more nuanced and holistic sense of  
the world, derived from a biological understanding 
of  plant, animal, and human life-forms, challenges 
Cartesian dualism and is furthermore at odds with 
Descartes in an additional elaboration. Plessner 
maintains there is a ‘double aspectivity’ to life, at least 
as it appears to us humans. We experience the world 
‘from an inner and outer perspective’ and have a 
double vocabulary when describing ourselves in the 
world.27 There are contrasting outer-world concepts 
such as ‘body’ (‘Körper’) or ‘living body’ (‘Leib’) and 
inner-world ones such as ‘soul’ (‘Seele’) and ‘lived 
experience’ (‘Erlebnis’); and, as far as the Mitwelt (a 
word translated by Jos De Mul as ‘[shared] world of  
culture’) goes, ‘I’ (‘ich’) and ‘we’ (‘wir’). This is indeed 
an elaboration, or perhaps a circumvention, of  the 
mind-body problem bequeathed by Descartes.

PLESSNER’S THREE ANTHROPOLOGICAL LAWS

In the final chapter of  The Levels, ‘The Human 
Sphere’, Plessner outlines his three anthropological 



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laws that follow from his understanding of  man’s ex-centric positionality 
and his finitude. These are (i) the law of  natural artificiality, (ii) the law of  
mediated immediacy, and (iii) the law of  the utopian standpoint.

1. NATURAL ARTIFICIALITY 

The law of  natural artificiality, in a clear nod to Heidegger’s thinking, 
states that man uses artificial means (technology) to overcome his 
‘constitutive homelessness’.28

As an excentric being standing in disequilibrium, out of  place and time, 
constitutively homeless, [man] has to “become something” and form his own 
equilibrium. […] Man wishes to escape the unbearable excentricity of  his being, 
he wishes to compensate for the dichotomy [Hälftenhaftigkeit] of  his own life-
form and he can only manage to do this with things that are sufficiently heavy to 
weigh on the scales of  his existence.29

Plessner goes on to specify what it is that supplies this corrective to 
man’s ex-centricity: culture. To put it simply, as Jos De Mul does in his 
introduction to his edited book on Plessner, “[t]he world of  culture and 
technology is the expression of  the desire of  human beings to bridge 
the distance that separates them from the world, their fellow man and 
themselves.”30 What better combination of  culture and technology is there 
than architecture? Plessner understands architecture as ‘artificial,’ certainly, 
but its artificiality is natural to man as he is currently constituted. Here 
Plessner makes common ground with his contemporary, the philosopher 
Arnold Gehlen, for whom man, the deficient being (‘Mängelwesen’), has 
to build his own world, before he can ‘be’: “Man is naturally a cultural 
being.”31 Plessner’s law of  natural artificiality is an ontological response, 
one that answers man’s existential need for a secure place in the world. 
Plessner recognises that

since man is compelled, through his type of  existence, to lead the life that he 
actually lives, that is, to make what he is – since he only is when he accomplishes 
things–he needs a complement of  an unnatural nature to which he is 
unaccustomed. Because of  this he is by his very nature, by dint of  his form of  
existence, artificial. As an ex-centric being that is not in equilibrium, standing in 
the void, placeless, timeless, constitutively homeless, he has to “become something” 
and to create his own equilibrium. And he creates this only with the assistance of  
unnatural things that emerge from his creation when the results of  this creative 
making are granted their own heft.32

Plessner makes it absolutely clear that culture, the very essence of  natural 



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artificiality, requires both mind and hand; it is, as he 
puts it, “sucked out of  the fingers: intelligence and 
manual dexterity lie at the root of  the origin of  the 
use of  tools and of  culture.”33

2. MEDIATED IMMEDIACY: IMMANENCE AND EXPRESSIVITY

Plessner’s second anthropological law, 
mediated immediacy (subtitled ‘immanence and 
expressivity’), speaks of  the centrality of  culture 
and technology in enabling man to express himself  
and his ex-centric position in the world. “Man can 
only invent insofar as he discovers,” in other words, 
man can only mediate things and conditions that are 
immediately available to him.34 “[Man’s] productivity 
is only a pretext by which discovery becomes 
occurrence and gains substance,” a sentiment that 
finds an immediate echo in the writings of  his 
contemporary, the architect Hugo Häring (1882-
1958).35 Häring asks us to “call on things and let 
them unfold their own forms. It goes against our 
nature to impose forms on them, to determine them 
from without, to force upon them laws of  any kind, 
to dictate to them.”36 Form finding has become 
the mantra of  organic architecture ever since and 
shares its vitalism with that of  Plessner and others 
from the first decades of  the twentieth-century.37 
However, we would be mistaken in thinking that 
the architectural implications of  Plessner’s second 
law are limited to the organic: let us not forget 
the adjective ‘mediated’ that Plessner couples with 
‘immediacy.’ Cultural activities may well begin with 
the world as experienced, but they soon develop 
trajectories of  their own, ‘aesthetics’ if  you will, in 
order to express and make intelligible any particular 
ethos. Certainly, reading the speech that he gave at 
the German Werkbund’s twenty-fifth anniversary 
conference in Berlin, in 1932, it is evident that 
Plessner alludes to the architecture of  the Bauhaus, 
and to the benefits of  the flat roof, while criticising 
the overtly aesthetic tendencies of  the International 

PLESSNER’S       
THREE 

ANTHROPOLOGICAL 
LAWS 

1. Natural 
Artificiality

2. Mediated 
Immediacy 

3. Utopian 
standpoint

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Style and its followers. For instance, in answer to the question of  a how 
a designed object should appear, and what it should look like, Plessner 
(ironically) replies, “It should be beautiful!” He then goes on to explain 
that “This painterly view is somehow to be seen as superseded. […] A 
room is there for living in. A chair is there for sitting in.”38

 By the end of  the section on this second law, Plessner has expanded 
his thesis. He can now claim that, as a “law, […] in the end people do not 
know what they do, but only experience it through history.”39 This second 
law is one that poses problems for those seeking a single architectural 
direction from Plessner, for surely the demands of  extreme functionalism, 
exemplified by the organic architecture of  Häring, compete directly with 
those of  formalism and historicism. However, for Plessner, culture is always 
at least one step removed from the body’s physiology; his phenomenology 
never leads to an over-simplistic manifestation of  function, which for him 
is always historically embedded. The architectural import of  his second 
law leans more towards the claims of  history and the memorability of  
received forms of  buildings, and chimes with Plessner’s own maturing 
views by 1932 elaborated in the following section, with an inclusiveness 
and largeness of  character that leads to an ‘open’ architecture, and one, 
moreover, that is able to accommodate historical precedent. Plessner is 
reticent as to what ‘open form’ might actually mean for architecture. In 
his Werkbund speech in which he alluded to such epicentres of  avant-
garde design as Dessau, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam, Plessner praised 
asymmetrical layouts and (especially) the flat roof, both emblematic 
of  Bauhaus architecture, as examples of  ‘openness.’ The flat roof, in 
particular, lacks a conventional termination, and so is open to possibilities 
of  buildings being stacked one on top of  another.40

This second law is, therefore, ambiguous regarding its implications 
for architecture. On the one hand, and of  great relevance to one strand 
of  the Neues Bauen, it has an obvious relationship with the organic 
functionalism of  Häring; on the other, with the demands of  history and 
the importance of  a continuing tradition, it represents the antithesis of  
Functionalism. Josef  Frank’s interwar work—about which more later—
comprising well-wrought buildings and pithy writings, represents perhaps 
the ideal balance between the demands of  invention and of  tradition. 
One aspect of  tradition that links Viennese aesthetics with Plessner’s 
demand for expressivity is the mask. Here one thinks of  Plessner’s 
playful and insightful essay “The Smile,” concerning the subtleties of  the 
facial expression that is for him the most human of  all our (dis)guises.41 
The mask was certainly something that Adolf  Loos railed against in his 



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writings even if  his executed buildings, with their 
spatially rich interiors of  Raumplan, their mixed 
palette of  materials, and with their owners’ eclectic 
furnishings, are all ‘hidden’ by the white-painted 
render of  their exteriors.42 His buildings, especially 
the houses, invariably have clear boundaries, even 
if  these boundaries belie complexities within. 
Loos believed that the exterior of  a building 
should have a neutral public presence. This would 
be apostrophised by the professor of  literature 
Helmut Lethen as ‘public coolness,’ which Plessner 
“[sought] to turn […] into a medium that accepts 
vitalizing boundaries.”43 The mask for Plessner 
acts as an essential distancing mechanism, a human 
mediation of  the immediacy of  the external world 
(Aussenwelt) that allows human beings to be in the 
world. For Lethen,

Plessner’s sociological discovery of  roles as a protective 
medium is informed by Nietzsche’s claim that every 
profound spirit needs a mask; his anthropology centres 
on this paradox: ‘Only masked is man entirely real’. 
Oscar Wilde’s motto – ‘Man is least of  all himself  
when he speaks in his own name. Give him a mask, 
and he will tell the truth’ – echoes through Plessner’s 
code of  distance.44

Human beings’ ex-centric positionality is due to 
the ‘membrane’ that separates them from their 
environment.45 The German architect Heinrich 
Tessenow’s executed buildings, drawings and 
writings—an oeuvre that reached its maturity 
exactly contemporaneous with Plessner’s halcyon 
years of  the 1920s—have uncanny echoes of  much 
of  the philosopher’s work.46 In an earlier essay, 
“Objectivity or Truth in Craftsmanship,” Tessenow 
(1876-1950) wrote: “It would be more beautiful, we 
would form closer human bonds, if  we were able to 
openly show our sorrows and joys or the pipes of  
our houses and streets etc, everything that concerns 
us as humans; but we lack the ability to do so, lest 
such frankness embarrass or hurt us, and so we 



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have much to hide.”47 Tessenow acknowledges the mask-like function of  
architecture that conceals the dreary if  not dire facts of  human life, and so 
makes it possible for us to live. His thinking concedes that suppression is 
necessary in order to allow meaningful expression to emerge, and concurs 
with Plessner’s view that there must be “in every artistic reading […] a 
distortion of  the work, a partisanship, a choice, an emphasis, in a word a 
distancing alienation, in order to see the object.”48

It is in the city of  Vienna, the birthplace of  psychoanalysis, that 
‘mediated immediacy’ found its most obvious outlet, though without the 
directness and polemical purity that are the hallmarks of  Weimar Germany’s 
protagonists of  the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), cognate with interwar 
modern architecture (Neues Bauen). Within Viennese critical writings, too, 
there is frequently a mismatch between texts and buildings. Texts are by 
their very nature one step removed from the objects they describe or 
analyse, and so tend to be more polemical and uncompromising than the 
buildings designed by the same author. One only has to compare Loos’s 
shrill and hectoring writings, for instance, “Ornament and Crime,” with 
the architect’s nuanced buildings and interiors, embedded in Viennese 
traditions of  Biedermeier (the comfortable bourgeois aesthetic of  Central 
Europe, between Neoclassicism and Romanticism) as they undoubtedly 
are.49 On the other hand, in the era of  ‘Red Vienna,’ exactly contemporary 
with Weimar Germany in the 1920s, we have the suave cynicism of  Frank, 
who later wrote (in his Swedish exile), in his famous essay “Accidentism”: 
“The formal rules of  art have been preserved through tradition, even 
though their validity cannot be proven; for that reason, there can be no 
art without recourse to tradition. Since these rules have been consistently 
observed from the earliest times up to the present day, one can regard 
them as axioms.”50 Frank’s pragmatic and non-partisan views clearly relate 
to Plessner’s more nuanced thinking at the dawn of  Nazi rule in Germany, 
a point that will be elaborated in the final part of  this paper. The tenor 
of  Frank’s writing is on a par with the wry wit evident in his buildings 
and other design work: his architectural thinking is always mediated 
via understandable and stylistically knowing writings and buildings. 
This accords well with Plessner’s ‘mediated immediacy’ of  his second 
anthropological law, and his recognition that culture and technology are 
key human faculties that comprise our ontology.

3. UTOPIAN STANDPOINT: NOTHINGNESS AND TRANSCENDENCE 

The third and final law of  man’s utopian standpoint is the one that 
connects Plessner most profoundly with questions of  philosophical 



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ontology. It builds on the mediating role of  the 
second law with the implication for architecture that 
it is to be located firmly within a historical tradition. 
Its subtitle, ‘nothingness and transcendence,’ seems 
more distant from the scientific underpinnings of  
the previous laws, and yet man’s ex-centric being 
can only result in a belief  in transcendence, as a 
bulwark against nothingness (i.e., the belief  in God), 
or its profane equivalent, a hope in and striving 
for a brilliant (and atheist) future. “The ex-centric 
form [of] human existence drives man to engage in 
culture, it awakens needs that can only be satisfied 
through a system of  artificial objects.”51 Buildings 
are obvious examples of  such objects, produced 
within each society’s architectural culture.

Architecture is central to Plessner’s 
Philosophical Anthropology as it simultaneously 
acts in the inner, outer, and ‘with-worlds,’ with the 
architect as ex-centric agent: “[human existence’s] 
ex-centric form compels man to engage in culture, 
it awakens needs that can only be satisfied through 
a system of  artificial objects […] Its constitutive 
rootlessness bears witness to the reality of  world 
history.”52 History, together with its twin, memory, 
is a central human faculty that affords us utopian 
transcendence, and with this third law, Plessner’s 
philosophical anthropology broadens out to 
encompass man’s historical nature. It is the law he 
expresses most succinctly (at some five pages right 
at the end of  The Levels, it is significantly shorter 
than the preceding two laws), but the one to 
which he returns in his postwar writings in a more 
expansive mode. He considers the implications 
that man’s ex-centric position has for history, and 
for historiography, in his book The Belated Nation 
where he states that “only one thing remains of  life: 
memory.”53 And in a late essay he writes:

Thus man never returns. We have to renounce the 
romanticism of  alienation and homecoming inherent 
in Marxism and admit to ourselves its illusionary 

human 
existence’s 

ex-centric form 
compels man to 

engage in culture, 
it awakens 

needs that can 
only be satisfied 

through a system 
of artificial     

objects 

“

”



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character. In its optimistic linkage of  progress and homecoming Marxism is 
based on an outmoded anthropology, which, still under Hegel’s spell, ignores the 
consequences of  insight into the impenetrability of  man and the essence of  his 
historicity.54

This is (late) Plessner, at his most hard-boiled and without any illusions. 
It is in complete contrast to the romanticism of  Heidegger that suggests 
that appropriate architecture could provide such a refuge from modernity. 
Such a homecoming, expressed in the late 1960s but harking back to 
the antagonistic polarities of  late Weimar Germany, would be satisfied 
neither by the nostalgia offered by Ferdinand Tönnies’s ‘community’ 
nor by the rigidities of  Marxist society.55 Instead, according to Lethen, 
“Plessner contrasts the identikit picture of  community as a symbiotic 
companionship with an idea of  society that lacks idyllic features. It is an 
open system of  unencumbered strangers.”56 An open political and social 
system, moreover, that finds its architectural equivalence in the open form 
typified by Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus ensemble (1925-26) at Dessau. This 
characterises Plessner’s pragmatic turn away from the abstract idealism 
inherent in Marxism to a transcendence which is just out of  our reach, 
lying in the future of  some utopian dream, or as Plessner concluded in The 
Belated Nation, “[e]ven in the apparent finality of  fundamental dogmatism 
[the philosophy of  life] remains linked to historical change and in truth 
ready to awaken those unknown forces that herald what is coming.”57

What might this mean for architecture? In his Werkbund speech, 
Plessner claimed that “we have to underline one more point that is 
important for the success of  this train of  thought: the dissolution of  the 
private ties through the technical world, the limitation of  the private space 
of  human existence, the eradication of  private relationships and in place 
of  these eradicated private relationships the gradual coming into being 
of  a public realm.”58 He went on to discuss the bankruptcy of  aesthetics, 
since

the aesthetic attitude is no longer valid, it has become in a quite definite sense a 
private matter. It is the preserve of  people of  taste, of  those who possess time, 
money and education, who take pleasure in fine things and know what to do 
with them: however, it is no longer the preserve of  the public sphere, no longer 
the preserve of  that unassuming subjectivity of  the masses, in which we all 
participate, like it or not.59

So far, so sachlich. However, in what at first sight appears to be a volte-
face on the part of  Plessner, towards the end of  his speech he appears to 
subvert, or soften, his argument:



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But the things with which we are concerned here […] 
are greater than the things of  politics and of  political 
ideology. Not only do we have the firm belief, but we 
already know that the new form-making and the 
search for new form does not rely upon the socialist 
train of  thought. The hope that this new form-
world can only be completely brought about by dint 
of  a proletarian revolution […] we can no longer 
entertain.60

Plessner’s decoupling of  the Neues Bauen from 
Marxist ideology is quite startling in the light of  his 
foregoing polemic. The views of  the Werkbundists 
present at the speech are not known, but they—
and Plessner—must have seen the writing on 
the wall: Hitler had become Chancellor by the 
end of  January 1933, and the Werkbund was 
subsequently disbanded.61 Yet had the Werkbund 
audience been familiar with Plessner’s writings, 
and with his carefully plotted development of  
his anthropological laws stemming from his 
understanding of  man’s ex-centricity, then they 
would have taken his words—prophetic, from our 
post-Communist perspective—in their stride. Nine 
years earlier, one year after the publication of  his 
The Unity of  the Senses, in 1924, he had published 
Limits of  Community: A Critique of  Social Radicalism. 
It is worth quoting some of  its opening remarks, in 
order to gain the full impact of  Plessner’s withering 
assault on dualistic thought, and on the dire 
consequences such thought would have on political 
and social life, and, by implication, on architecture:

By radicalism we mean generally the conviction that 
the truly great and good only come about by conscious 
recourse to the roots of  existence; the belief  in the 
healing power of  extremes whose method is to make a 
stand against all traditional values and compromises. 
[…] Social radicalism […] is the native world-view 
of  the impatient, sociologically: of  the lower classes, 
biologically: of  youth. […] Radicalism means 
dualism. [It is] contemptuous of  the conditional, of  the 



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limited, of  small things and steps, of  restraint, or reticence, of  unconsciousness, 
joyful, but only of  great things, devout, but only to the mighty, purist, therefore 
Pharisaic, principled, therefore inhibited, fanatic, therefore destructive. The 
enemy of  radicalism is nature.62

Plessner is here announcing a new social construct for man, one that 
recognises its artificiality while acknowledging its anthropological roots in 
the biological and the natural.

CONCLUSION

The burden of  this paper has been to introduce a relatively 
unknown philosopher, and to outline the implications his thinking had 
for architecture. Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology had little effect 
on his architect-contemporaries, although aspects of  his three ‘laws’ had 
clear resonance with the buildings of  the Neues Bauen in Germanophone 
Europe of  the interwar years. We began the paper with a passage from 
Plessner’s The Unity of  the Senses of  1923, one that seemed to presage much 
of  the ‘phenomenological’ architecture we are currently experiencing, 
followed by the postwar house designed for him and his wife Monika by 
the architect Lucy Hillebrand. We end with some examples of  the work—
writings and buildings—of  the Viennese architect Josef  Frank, already 
alluded to several times.

Frank’s ‘compromised’ architecture is less well known than the 
designs and writings of  his Viennese peers, most notably Adolf  Loos. The 
‘compromise’ (regarded by Frank as a virtue) is with stylistic purity in the 
buildings and dogmatic correctness in the writings. The latter, especially 
those of  the Viennese years before his exile, have a pithy irony that speaks 
to us directly today, as evinced by the recent translation of  his collected 
writings with the foreword written by Denise Scott Brown. In his long 
essay “Architecture as Symbol: Elements of  the German New Building” 
(1931) Frank writes about

imagin[ing] a world in which people live in small houses in meadows, growing 
tulips and pursuing arts and crafts of  that sort, cut off  from the world, peaceful 
and sedate. All they need grows in their garden, and they know nothing of  the 
rocket ship that will soon fly to the moon. Any rush is unnecessary since no one 
works more than he must, and all find their work fulfilling. Such a way of  life 
will seem strange to most today, even if  in its straightforwardness it is not absent 
of  all propagandistic pathos and as an ideal is even preferable in some respects. 
But how few will even see [any] point in shaping something lacking in any 



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pathos, even the pathos of  absolute primitivism; alas, 
very few people accept that a pleasant life is always a 
via media between all kinds of  ideals – no person has 
the same disposition all the time -; and that shaping 
a pleasant life as a composite of  all these ideals is 
a matter with goals just as consistent and absolute 
as the goals of  those who strive for a single extreme. 
The fate of  modern architecture hinges on achieving 
this ambition, for its essential function resides in the 
formation and symbolization of  our lives.63

This function of  architecture, to form and symbolise 
our lives, represents in a nutshell how it serves 
mankind’s ‘positioned’ existence, as expressed 
in Plessner’s three anthropological laws. Frank’s 
house that best exemplifies these twin architectural 
functions is the Beer House, Vienna (with Oskar 
Wlach, 1929-30; Figure 4). In its ‘white’ aesthetic, 
its simplicity and composition of  external form, 
and the ‘flow’ of  major internal spaces, it has much 
in common with the similarly undoctrinaire, yet 
unashamedly modern, Plessner house of  the early 
1950s designed by Hillebrand. While they both share 
attributes of  Modernist aesthetics and planning, 
they are equally unapologetic about their historical 
and cultural roots: they exhibit the ‘mediated 
immediacy’ of  Plessner’s second Anthropological 
Law. Frank wrote a sturdy defence of  the Beer 
House, “The House as Path and Place.” To choose 
just one extract from this admirable essay, one that 
has a clear relationship to the Plessner house, is 
difficult; nonetheless, when Frank writes that “[t]
he focus of  the house is the sitting area, its piazza,” 
we can see the connection with the doubled-height 
salon that Hillebrand designed. Frank continues:

Every living room must have a center, around which 
it is ordered, giving the space its character. In the old 
days this was more easily accomplished, as there was a 
fireplace or–even though much less characteristic–the 
oven. Today [1931], at a time when this focus is, 
more often than not, absent, the organization of  the 

The function          
of architecture, 

to form and 
symbolise our 

lives, represents 
in a nutshell 

how it serves 
mankind’s 

‘positioned’ 
existence

“

”



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plan has become more difficult, as this center has to be created in architectural 
terms. The numerous means available for this are windows, niches, columns, etc. 
It is also the absence of  the formal center that renders the rectangular room so 
uninhabitable.64

FIGURE 4: Josef Frank with Oskar Wlach, Beer House, Vienna (1929-30). View into the 
hall from the living room. The ‘path’ through the house is actually a series of 
connected ‘places,’ and while the conception as a whole is startling, there is an 
unmistakable homeliness in the familiarity and scale of the discrete spaces and 
their comfortable furnishings and fittings.  



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The concluding remarks of  Frank’s essay 
may be regarded as an architectural formulation 
of  much of  Plessner’s positional, human-centred 
philosophy:

All our commodities, and here we may include the 
house, are really a compromise between function, 
material, form, quality, price, and other things, all 
following a middle (and varying) course, yet the rules 
for the good house as an ideal do not change in principle 
and have only to be looked at afresh. How does one 
enter a garden? What does the route look like from 
the gateway? What is the shape of  an anteroom? 
How does one pass the cloakroom from the anteroom 
to reach the living room? How does the seating area 
relate to the door and the window? There are many 
questions like this which need to be answered, and 
the house consists of  these elements. This is modern 
architecture.65

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to my peer reviewers for their 
insightful and helpful comments and to my (guest-)
editors, Martin Düchs and Christian Illies, for their 
support throughout, and for inviting me to speak at 
the ISPA Bamberg Conference in the first place. I 
would like to thank Peter Bernhard who has been 
most generous in sharing with me his understanding 
of  Plessner’s thinking.

NOTES

All translations are by the author unless 
otherwise stated.

ENDNOTES

[1] Helmuth Plessner, Die Einheit der Sinne: 
Grundlinien einer Ästhesiologie des Geistes (Bonn: F. 
Cohen, 1923) in Helmuth Plessner, Anthropologie der 



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Sinne: Gesammelte Schriften III (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 267.

[2] For the biographical sketch of  Plessner’s life from which this is drawn 
see Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology: Perspectives and Prospects, ed. Jos De 
Mul (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), 12-14.

[3] Plessner has, though, featured prominently in two recent books of  
cultural history: Frederic Schwartz, Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History 
of  Art in Twentieth-century Germany (London: Yale University Press, 2005) 
and Helmut Lethen, Cool Conduct: the Culture of  Distance in Weimar Germany, 
trans. Don Reneau (Berkeley and London: University of  California Press, 
2002), especially chapter three, “The Conduct Code of  the Cool Persona,” 
33-100. Originally published as Verhaltenslehren der Kälte: Lebensversuche 
zwischen den Kriegen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994).

[4] Hillebrand was, like Plessner, of  mixed Jewish descent, and was unable 
to practise during the Nazi interregnum. See “Biografie,” FemBio, accessed 
June 27, 2017, http://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/
lucy-hillebrand/. See also Lucy Hillebrand, Zeit-Räume der Architektin 
Lucy Hillebrand, ed. Dieter Boeminghaus (Stuttgart: Krämer, 1983) and  
Sonia Ricon Baldessarini, “Lucy Hillebrand: Architektur als Schrift der 
Beweglichkeit,” in Wie Frauen bauen: Architektinnen von Julia Morgan bis Zaha 
Hadid (Berlin und Grambin: AvivA, 2001), 93-102.

[5] See Hillebrand, Zeit-Räume, 156-7. The description of  Plessner’s house 
cites Albrecht Bürkle, “Das Haus des Professors,” in Merian 6, 1 (1953): 
41.

[6] “There were hardly any doors [in Plessner’s Wiesbaden house].” Cited 
in Heike Delitz, “Ein Bau für die modern Philosophie und Soziologie: 
Plessner in Göttingen,” in Plessner in Wiesbaden, eds. Tilman Allert and 
Joachim Fischer (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014), 133-143, cited 136, 
from original in Carola Dietze, Nachgeholtes Leben. Helmuth Plessner 1892-
1985 (Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2006), 362. The lack of  doors puts one 
in mind of  the domestic architecture of  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, of  
whom it was said that “he [Plessner] might have been Mies’s favourite 
philosopher, therefore the favourite philosopher of  one of  the three great 
heroes of  modern architecture.” (From Dietze, Nachgeholtes Leben, 138, 
citing Hans-Joachim Dahms, “Mies van der Rohe und die Philosophie um 
1930,” in Arch+ no. 161 (2002), 55.

[7] Delitz, “Ein Bau,” 133. Delitz cites Dietze, Nachgeholtes Leben, 361. For 
more on Hillebrand’s relationship to dance, see Klaus Hoffmann, “Über 
Tanz-Schrift zu Raum-Schrift” (“On Dance-Script to Space-Script”), 
in Hillebrand, Zeit-Räume, 14-15. Monika Plessner is cited by Dietze in 



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Nachgeholtes Leben.

[8] Todtnauberg in the Black Forest is the location of  Heidegger’s hut where 
he retreated in order to write, in his refuge from the world. See Adam Sharr, 
Heidegger’s Hut (Cambridge: MIT, 2006).

[9] Tom Spector, in comments to this issue’s editors, and communicated to 
the author February 27, 2018.

[10] See the Beer House, Vienna (with Oskar Wlach, 1929-30) for a prime 
example of  Josef  Frank’s domestic output.

[11] Plessner, Die Einheit der Sinne, 266.

[12] A good overview of  philosophical anthropology may be found in 
Joachim Fischer, “Die ‘Kölner Konstellation,’” in Plessner in Wiesbaden, eds. 
Tilman Allert and Joachim Fischer (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014), 89-121. 
Here the three ‘stars’ alluded to are, in addition to Plessner, Max Scheler 
and Arnold Gehlen. See also Bernhard Beller, “Anthropologie und Ethik 
bei Arnold Gehlen” (Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 2010), 
unpublished doctoral dissertation, especially “Eine kurze Geschichte der 
philosophischen Anthropologie,” 12-41, accessed November 13, 2017, 
https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15913/1/Beller_Bernhard.pdf. For the 
distinction between the specific, 1920s movement and more a generalised 
anthropological interest for philosophy, see Joachim Fischer, Philosophische 
Anthropologie. Eine Denkrichtung des 20. Jahrhunderts (Freiburg im Breisgau: 
Alber, 2009), 9. In a similar vein, the term Neues Bauen (‘New Building’) is a 
specific reference to architecture in the German-speaking lands in the 1920s, 
an aesthetic reference that cannot be used in respect of  architecture, however 
‘new,’ in, say, the 1890s or the 1950s.

[13] Helmuth Plessner, “Homo absconditus,” in Helmuth Plessner, Conditio 
humana (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 353-66, 353. First published 
in Merkur, 23rd year, vol. 11 (1969): 989-998.

[14] One is reminded of  Otto Neurath’s work in ‘Red’ Vienna and his project 
to develop a clear language of  visual communication before the semiotics 
revolution of  the 1960s. See Eve Blau, The Architecture of  Red Vienna, 1919-
1934 (Cambridge and London: MIT, 1999). 

[15] Helmuth Plessner, Die Einheit der Sinne, 7-315 and 31.

[16] Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: Einleitung in die 
philosophische Anthropologie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1928), reprinted 1975 (Berlin: 
de Gruyter), Sammlung Göschen 2200.

[17] The German term “exzentrisch” does indeed mean both eccentric and 



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“out of  the centre.” Plessner uses the term “exzentrische Positionalität” 
in the sense of  “being in a position that is out of  the centre.” So I have 
rendered the spelling in translation in order to differentiate its meaning 
from the English ‘eccentric.’ See Plessner, Die Stufen, chapter 7, “Die 
Sphäre des Menschen,” 288-346, especially section 1, ‘Die Positionalität 
der exzentrischen Form. Das Ich und der Personcharakter,’ 288-93.

[18] Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1927).

[19] See Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l’Architecture (Paris, 1899).

[20] Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representation 
and the Perspective Hinge (Cambridge: MIT, 1997).

[21] See Rolf  Sachsse, Bild und Bau. Zur Nutzung technischer Medien beim 
Entwerfen von Architektur (Braunschweig and Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1997).

[22] See Gerald Adler, Timothy Brittain-Catlin, and Gordana Fontana-
Giusti, “Introduction”, in Scale: Imagination, Perception and Practice in 
Architecture, eds. Gerald Adler, Timothy Brittain-Catlin, and Gordana 
Fontana-Giusti (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 1-9. The phenomenon 
of  flatness is explored in various scales, media, and locations in Barry 
Higman, Flatness (London: Reaktion, 2017).

[23] See, for instance, Critical Architecture, eds. Jane Rendell, Jonathan Hill, 
Murray Fraser, and Mark Dorrian (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).

[24] Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York and Oxford: Oxford 
University Press, 1986), 3. Nagel’s is a restatement, in modern terms and 
times, of  a philosophical question that may be traced at least as far as back 
as Descartes. For Plessner, the only such creature on earth is the human 
being. 

[25] See De Mul, Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology, 14-15, and Plessner, 
Die Stufen, 293, ff. (Aussenwelt, Innenwelt, Mitwelt).

[26] See De Mul, Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology, 16-17.

[27] Ibid., 17.

[28] See Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen, 310. The reader who is looking for 
a shortcut to Plessner’s three main anthropological laws should refer to 
Helmuth Plessner, “Der Mensch als Lebewesen,” in Helmuth Plessner, Mit 
anderen Augen: Aspekte einer philosophischen Anthropologie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 
1982), 9-62. This essentially reprints the laws as stated in The Levels (See 
Plessner, Die Stufen, 309-46), prefaced by a short introduction. There is as 
yet no English translation of  Die Stufen.



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[29] Plessner, Die Stufen, 310-11.

[30] De Mul, Plessner’s Philosophical Anthropology, 19.

[31] Arnold Gehlen, “Philosophische Anthropologie,” (1971), in Arnold 
Gehlen, Philosophische Anthropologie und Handlungslehre (Collected Works, 
Vol. 4) (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1983), 236-46, here 240. Actual 
quote: “So erscheint der Mensch schon von Natur aus als Kulturwesen, seine 
Sonderstellung hierin begründet.” See also Arnold Gehlen, Der Mensch: seine 
Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt (Berlin: Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1940).

[32] Plessner, Die Stufen, 310. 

[33] Plessner, Die Stufen, 312. Plessner embraces technology in ways that 
Heidegger found impossible. For Plessner, as for his contemporary, the 
philosopher Friedrich Dessauer, “[t]echnology is for Germany what sun is 
for Spain’s wine, for Canada’s grain, for Argentina’s pastures.” (Friedrich 
Dessauer, Philosophie der Technik: das Problem der Realisierung (Bonn: Friedrich 
Cohen Verlag, 1927), 31. 

[34] Plessner, Die Stufen, 321.

[35] Ibid., 32.

[36] Hugo Häring, Die Form, vol. 1 (October 1925): 5, cited in Peter Blundell 
Jones, Hugo Häring (Stuttgart and London: Axel Menges, 1999), 78.

[37] See Peter Bernhard, “Plessners Konzept der offenen Form im Kontext 
der Avantgarde der 1920er Jahre” (“Plessner’s concept of  open form in the 
context of  the avant-garde in the 1920s”), in Arhe IV (July 2007). There 
is by now a large bibliography on the relationship between biology and 
architectural modernism. The English-speaking reader will be more familiar 
with D’Arcy Thompson’s book On Growth and Form (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1961). This is an abridged version of  the original book 
published in 1917. Thomson’s ideas about the relationship between biological 
and structural and architectural form were taken up with alacrity in the years 
following its re-edition.

[38] Helmuth Plessner, “Wiedergeburt der Form im technischen Zeitalter” 
(“Rebirth of  Form in the Technical Age”), in Arch+ no. 161 (June 2002): 
52-57, transcript of  Plessner’s speech on October 14, 1932 in Berlin on the 
occasion of  the twenty-fifth anniversary of  the German Werkbund, here 
54. (“Es soll schön sein! Diese malerische Blickhaltung wird irgendwie als 
überwunden empfunden. […] Ein Raum ist zum Wohnen da. Ein Stuhl 
ist zum Sitzen da.”) Translations from this speech are my own, although a 
complete English translation exists: Helmuth Plessner, “Rebirth of  Form in 



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the Technical Age,” trans. Jonathan Blower, in Art in Translation 3, 1 (2011): 
37-51. First published in German in Politik—Anthropologie—Philosophie: 
Aufsätze und Vorträge, ed. Salvatore Giammusso and Hans-Ulrich Lessing 
(Munich: Fink, 2001), 71-86. The International Style exhibition opened at 
MoMA, New York City on February 9, 1932, some eight months before 
the Werkbund’s anniversary meeting in Berlin.

[39] Plessner, Die Stufen, 341.

[40] Plessner, “Wiedergeburt der Form,” 57.

[41] Helmuth Plessner, “Das Lächeln,” in Helmuth Plessner, Mit anderen 
Augen: Aspekte einer philosophischen Anthropologie (Frankfurt am Main: 
Suhrkamp, 1982), 183-97. Originally published in 1950.

[42] See Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass 
Media (Cambridge and London: MIT, 1994). “We are divided between 
what we think and what we say and do,” from Colomina, Private and 
Publicity, 33. Colomina is referring to the fin-de-siècle disjunctions 
manifested in ‘civilised’ cultures, especially visible in Vienna, between rich 
and poor, outside and inside, technology and culture, and so on. She starts 
the section with an apposite quote of  Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s (from 
his Buch der Freude): “Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.” See 
also Janet Stewart, Fashioning Vienna: Adolf  Loos’s cultural criticism (London: 
Routledge, 2000), especially chapter four, “The display and disguise of  
difference,” 98-130.

[43] Lethen, Cool Conduct, 55, and Richard Sennett, The Fall of  Public 
Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). Lethen goes on to 
account for just such ‘coolness’ in western mores and habits of  behaviour 
since the Enlightenment:  “[Richard] Sennett [in The Fall of  Public Man, 
1976] looks for orientation to public dialogue in the eighteenth century, 
while Plessner’s theory breathes the air of  seventeenth-century French 
classicism.” Since 2007, Lethen has been Director of  the International 
Research Centre for Cultural Studies in Vienna (University of  Art and 
Design Linz). Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften, 
accessed March 29, 2018, ifk.ac.at/pdfs/helmut_lethen_bibliographie.pdf.

[44] Lethen, Cool Conduct, 62, citing Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke in drei 
Bänden vol. 2 (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1963), 604. Nietzsche’s actual words 
are “[j[eder tiefe Geist braucht eine Maske,” literally, “every deep spirit 
needs a mask.” Lethen further emphasises the point: “Plessner does not 
tolerate the enactment of  ‘naked honesty’ or ‘eruptive authenticity’ either 
in contemporary design, whether the new objectivity interiors of  Bauhaus 
architecture—‘with overhead lighting and tiled walls’—or in expressionist 



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stage sets. Hygiene resides for him at the cold pole, ‘reckless sincerity’ at 
the warm. He takes aim at all forms of  unmediated directness, pleading for 
moderate temperatures and indirect lighting, for art and literature of  whatever 
type as long as they eschew intimate self-revelation in favor of  the regulating 
practice of  distance.” From Lethen, Cool Conduct, 54.

[45] Plessner must have been aware—although his writings do not attest 
to it—of  the Dessau visionary designer Siegfried Ebeling, whose tract 
“Space as Membrane” was published in 1926. See Siegfried Ebeling, Space 
as Membrane (London: Architectural Association, 2010), edited and with an 
afterword by Spyros Papapetros; introduction by Walter Scheiffele; translated 
by Pamela Johnston based on an earlier translation by Anna Kathryn 
Schoefert. Originally published in German as Der Raum als Membran (Dessau: 
Dünnhaupt, 1926).

[46] See Gerald Adler, “Energising the Building Edge: Siegfried Ebeling, 
Bauhaus bioconstructivist,” in Peripheries, eds. Ruth Morrow and Mohamed 
Abdelmonem (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), 183-99.

[47] Heinrich Tessenow, “Die Sachlichkeit oder die Wahrheit in der 
gewerblichen Arbeit” (“Objectivity or Truth in Craftsmanship”), in 
Heinrich Tessenow, Hausbau und dergleichen (Weimar and Rostock: Edition 
M, 2011), Heinrich Tessenow Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, ed. Theodor Böll, 38. 
Originally published in Berlin by Bruno Cassirer, 1916, and subsequently in 
Braunschweig by Vieweg, 1986.

[48] Helmuth Plessner, “Mit anderen Augen” (“With other Eyes”), in 
Helmuth Plessner, Mit anderen Augen: Aspekte einer philosophischen Anthropologie 
(Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1982), 171.

[49] Adolf  Loos, “Ornament und Verbrechen” (“Ornament and Crime”) 
(1908), in Adolf  Loos, Trotzdem (Vienna: Prachner, 1982), 78-88. Originally 
published in Adolf  Loos, Trotzdem. 1900- 1930 (Innsbruck: Brenner-Verlag, 
1931). Loos’s writings can still appear shocking, especially “Ornament and 
Crime.” However, his buildings and interiors are remarkably and richly 
finished and furnished, in complete contrast, for instance, with the generally 
more polemical German modern architects. To take an extreme pairing, one 
need only compare, say, Loos’s famous Müller House in Prague (1930) with 
Hannes Meyer’s starkly ascetic ‘Co-op Zimmer’ installation of  1926.

[50] Josef  Frank, “Accidentism,” in Josef  Frank, Schriften/Writings, vol. 
2, trans. Christopher Long (Vienna: Metroverlag, 2012), 373. Originally 
published (in Swedish) as “Accidentism,” in Form 54 (1958): 160-65, and in 
German in Baukunst und Werkform, Year 14, Nuremberg 1961, vol. 4, 216-18. 
Frank continued:



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In our age of  scientific thinking, all traditions are gradually being lost; there is 
no longer any reason to recognize rules that cannot be proven. Thus, concepts such 
as art and beauty–which cannot even be fully defined–have come under doubt. 
A person without tradition is forced to invent his own rules of  art, which, as a 
result, must be quite arbitrary. To believe these rules himself  and to disseminate 
the belief  in them, he must base them on moral, scientific, utilitarian, or mystical 
motives.

For a pithy and concise assessment of  Frank’s centrality in Vienna’s interwar 
architecture and debates concerning aesthetics, see Friedrich Achleitner, 
“Josef  Frank und die Wiener Architektur der Zwischenkriegszeit,” in 
Friedrich Achleitner, Wiener Architektur: zwischen typologischem Fatalismus 
und semantischem Schlamassel (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 1996), 
81-87.

[51] Plessner, Die Stufen, 341.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Helmuth Plessner, Die verspätete Nation (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 
1959), 97. This book, originally published in 1935 with the title Das 
Schicksal deutschen Geistes im Ausgang seiner bürgerlichen Epoche (The Fate of  
the German Spirit at the End of  its Bourgeois Epoch) was suppressed the 
following year. It was only republished in 1959 with its new title.

[54] Helmuth Plessner, “De Homine Abscondito,” trans. Claus Mueller, in 
Social Research 36, no. 4 (Winter 1969): 509.

[55] Ferdinand Tönnies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Leipzig: Fues’s 
Verlag, 1887). Tönnies famously distinguished notions of  (traditional) 
‘community’ from those of  (modern) ‘society,’ paving the way for much 
of  the sociological and political thinking of  the twentieth century. 

[56] Lethen, Cool Conduct, xi.

[57] Plessner, Die verspätete Nation, 166.

[58] Plessner, “Wiedergeburt der Form,” 52.

[59] Ibid., 53.

[60] Ibid., 55.

[61] See Peter Bernhard, “Plessners Konzept der offenen Form.” This is a version 
of  a lecture given by Bernhard at the Plessner Workshop held at the TU 
Dresden in April 2005. It is essentially a commentary on the position 
‘open form’ has in Plessner’s “Rebirth of  Form” speech on the occasion 
of  the Werkbund’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 1932. Bernhard alludes to 



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Plessner’s understanding of  open form in the context of  technology as well 
as of  life itself. For technical artefacts, such as machines, their ‘open forms’ 
enable them to change as needs and capabilities change. 

[62] Helmuth Plessner, Grenzen der Gemeinschaft. Eine Kritik des sozialen 
Radikalismus (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002), 14. Originally published 
by Friedrich Cohen, Bonn, 1924. It remains untranslated into English. 
Helmut Lethen has commented that “[w]ith term ‘radicalism,’ Plessner 
attacks worldviews based on a conviction that there was any good to be had 
from ‘a return to the roots of  existence.’ To the wish projections of  ‘primary 
unity’ and radical therapies, Plessner opposes his behavioural doctrine of  
distance and bases it on the anthropological principle that every human 
being, from the moment of  birth, leads an incomplete existence. ‘That is 
why man is “by nature” artificial and never in balance.’” From Lethen, Cool 
Conduct. Embedded quotation from Helmuth Plessner, Macht und menschliche 
Natur (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), 199, quoted in Helmut Lethen, 
Cool Conduct: the culture of  distance in Weimar Germany, trans. Don Reneau 
(Berkeley and London: University of  California Press, 2002), 53.

[63] Josef  Frank, “Architektur als Symbol. Elemente deutschen neuen Bauens” 
(“Architecture as Symbol: Elements of  the German New Building”), in Josef  
Frank, Schriften/Writings, vol. 2, trans. John Sands (Vienna: Metroverlag, 
2012), 9-191, here 27-28.

[64] Josef  Frank, “Das Haus als Weg und Platz” (“The House as Path and 
Place”), in Josef  Frank, Schriften/Writings, vol. 2, trans. Wilfried Wang Vienna: 
Metroverlag, 2012), 198-209, here 207. Originally published in Der Baumeister 
29/8 (August 1931): 316-23.

[65] Ibid., 209. See also Christopher Long, The New Space: Movement and 
Experience in Viennese Modern Architecture (New Haven and London: Yale 
University Press, 2016), with photographs by Wolfgang Thaler. Here Long 
enlarges on his earlier monograph on Frank (See Christopher Long, Josef  
Frank: Life and Work (Chicago and London: The University of  Chicago 
Press, 2002)) and relates Frank’s concept of  Weg (path) to similar concepts 
of  movement and experience in the work of  Loos and Oskar Strnad. 
Long focusses in particular on the Beer House, and cites a contemporary 
reviewer’s description of  the entry sequence that evokes the visitor’s 
experience of  entering the Plessner House: “One enters the hall [from the 
anteroom] through an unobtrusive door and is at once standing, surprised 
and moved, in the heart of  the structure. The first glance instantly offers a 
clear understanding of  the entire arrangement.” From Long, The New Space, 
140, Long’s translation, citing Wolfgang Born, “Ein Haus in Wien-Hietzing,” 



Innen-Dekoration 42 (September 1931): 364.



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Aporia in Architectural Design

Aleksandar Kostic

INTRODUCTION

In this paper, I will be looking at the notion 
of  aporia, as traditionally understood, and how 
it may apply in the field of  architectural design. 
First, I will explain what aporia is and then clarify 
its role in inquiry, as originally conceived in Plato 
and Aristotle, emphasizing its way of  searching 
by encountering an impasse and articulating and 
formulating an intractable puzzle.

 In book Beta of  his Metaphysics, Aristotle 
says: “Those who search without first engaging 
with aporiai are like people who don’t know where 
they need to be going; moreover, they do not even 
know whether or not they have found what they are 
searching for. For the end [of  a search] is not clear 
to such a person, but it is clear to the person who 
has first raised aporiai.”1 If  we accept Aristotle’s 
claim that aporia is indeed necessary for inquiry and 
if  design is a form of  inquiry, then it is reasonable 
to expect to find aporia in design.

In section two I consider the domain for the 
emergence of  aporia which will show us where to 
look for aporia in design. I will also indicate laws 
of  thought that traditionally apply in the setting of  
this domain. Not all laws of  thought are universally 
accepted in contemporary logic, and some relevant 
distinctions must be noted. It is important to note 
that the domain includes classical and formal logic 
extended to modal logic, but excludes paraconsistent 
logical systems. Setting aporia’s domain will allow 
me to identify both the source and necessary 
conditions for the emergence of  aporia and, in 



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turn, the necessary conditions for finding aporia in design.

Section three presents a clear case of  aporia in architectural design. 
I will show that, given the initial distinctions and certain rules that apply, 
any problem with clearly defined design intention would present a good 
enough source to demonstrate this type of  puzzle in architecture. The 
conflict inherent in cornering the classical Ionic order presents such an 
example of  aporetic reasoning in architectural design. Aporia, therefore, 
can be shown not only to be useful and routinely used, it is also of  
instrumental value in the practice of  architectural design.

Section four investigates whether aporia is also intrinsic to design 
theory. If  it is the case that aporia has intrinsic value for design, then 
it should somehow be present in the more abstract subject matter of  
design itself. Its existence might be revealed within an attempt to establish 
the foundations of  a design theory. After making a distinction between 
dilemmas and aporiai, one of  these attempts will be examined to determine 
if  the question of  the subject matter of  design and its unclear ontological 
status may indeed produce an aporetic situation.

If  this proves to be the case, it shows that design is intrinsically 
aporetic. An ancient myth of  Prometheus tells us that the “wisdom of  the 
arts,” such as house building indeed have something intrinsically aporetic. 
In Protagoras’s speech given by Plato in his dialogue Protagoras,2 human 
beings receive gifts from the Titan Prometheus (the Fore-thinker),3 namely 
fire, and, often forgotten, the arts (τέχνη). This was a compensation for 
the lack of  other human abilities, since these had already been distributed 
to other living creatures by his twin-brother, Epimetheus (the After-
thinker).4 For our purposes, it is important to underline two aspects here. 
Firstly, this story explains to us some of  the fundamental tensions of  the 
human condition; in our actions, we seem to be spread between planning 
and reflecting upon our plans; in our emotions, we are sometimes split 
between desire and fear; and in our thoughts, we are often torn between 
thinking ahead and an afterthought. But more importantly, this story is 
relevant as Prometheus himself  seems to be in perplexity, in the state of  
aporia.5 Out of  his aporia he reasons out and finds a solution: fire and arts 
are to be given to human kind. Both the “wisdom of  arts” and fire (which, 
in Plato, is an image of  knowledge or insight) were instilled in human kind. 
Thanks to this, people invented house building and many other crafts. In 
some, perhaps remote sense, both human access to knowledge and the 
human condition are related to aporetic states of  mind as their original 
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1. WHAT EXACTLY IS APORIA?

Aporia is a Greek word, and it literally means 
“no passage” or “no way out” (‎a-, “a-”=no, 
without) + πόρος ‎(póros=“passage”).6 Plato, 
committed to the method of  dialectic, never 
spells out an exact definition of  aporia. He rather 
demonstrates aporiai through conversations 
between the interlocutors in his dialogues. Some of  
the dialogues begin with aporia, some are centred 
on it, while others end in it. On the other hand, 
Aristotle provides a few definitions of  aporia: one 
in Metaphysics, quoted above;7 and another one in 
his Topics, when he defines aporia as a state of  mind 
caused by “equality of  opposite reasonings.”8 Plato 
strictly distinguished knowledge from opinions in 
his Republic.9 His elaboration on the poverty of  the 
senses in the Myth of  the Cave10 comes after the 
distinction between the realm of  opinions from 
the realm of  knowledge in the famous divided line 
analogy.11 The realm of  reality which is accessible 
to the senses, the apparent world, is subjected to 
experiential opinions, while the intellectual, or, for 
Plato, the only real world, is accessible through 
knowledge (Figure 1).12 The only entities that really 
exist are universal Forms or ideas. Thanks to their 
high ontological status, these Forms represent 
the only possible object of  knowledge, as only 
what is perfectly real can be properly known. 
In the divided line analogy, a clear hierarchy of  
cognitive capacities (παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς) and 
their corresponding objects is established. Images, 
shadows and reflections of  things are less real than 
things themselves; images of  Forms are more real 
than things, but less real than Forms themselves, 
and so on. In addition, each cognitive capacity has 
its own mode of  cognition and way of  searching. 
The lower end of  cognitive capacities, concerned 
with sensible particulars, is reserved for imagination 
(εἰκασία) and belief  (πίστις). These two capacities 
are based on observation and together form an 

aporia—the 
state of being 

perplexed, 
puzzled, 
lacking 

resources, or 
being at a loss

“

”



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opinion (δόξα). The higher end (intellect) is also split into two cognitive 
capacities—between thinking (διάνοια) and reasoning (νοῦς). The 
unchangeable objects, corresponding with thinking, are representable in 
the physical world (by use of  drawings, numbers, etc.) and sometimes are 
referred to as mathematicals or as intermediaries. Discursive thought, with 
the use of  a hypothesis (assumed to be true), is its mode of  cognition. The 
commonly used example to describe this way of  searching is mathematics, 
or Plato’s favourite—geometry. Our highest cognitive capacity, which is 
reasoning (νοῦς), has Forms (ideas) as its object of  searching; it reaches 
towards the highest realm of  knowing (ἐπιστήμη), and it searches through 
dialectic.

 It is precisely dialectic that puts the “mind’s eye” in a position to 
access and “see” the puzzles within this highest realm of  reality. The 
capacity to recognise how exactly a particular puzzle becomes the source 
of  aporia belongs to a “considerable dialectical ability.”13 Aporiai are 
therefore resolved by means of  dialectical investigation.

It is traditionally accepted that aporia in Plato has a purifying effect. 
Supposedly, aporia purifies the inquirer from the pretence of  knowledge 
on the subject of  investigation. Often, Socrates’s interlocutor, faced with 
a Socratic demand for definition, presents an account about the matter of  

Figure 1: Plato’s Divided Line. See Plato, Republic, VII, 509d-511e. 



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inquiry, typically based on personal experience or 
belief. After Socrates has refuted him, or at any rate 
put his belief  to the test, the interlocutor, having 
no other alternative, doesn’t know how to proceed 
and is in a state of  aporia. The immediate effects of  
the aporetic state of  mind are speechlessness and 
inarticulateness, but, as Politis points out,14 these 
are only adding to the overwhelming feeling of  
uneasiness and distress15 or lack of  resourcefulness 
and a strong sense of  intellectual incompetence.16 
Generally, the way the interlocutor responds to this 
disclosure largely depends on his character, but 
it also points at his intellectual limitations. If  the 
interlocutor exhibits anger and remains paralysed, 
his chances to progress in dialectics are quite 
limited. If, on the other hand one accepts one’s own 
lack of  knowledge, only then it will be possible for 
one to progress further in the search. Besides this 
cathartic role, more importantly, aporia has also a 
searching (zetetic) function.17 Namely, aporia is not 
only a mental state of  puzzlement but is indeed a 
puzzle about the matter of  inquiry. The essential 
property of  such a puzzle is the co-existence 
of  two sides, seemingly opposed. The apparent 
contradiction is present in an aporia when two 
propositions both seem to be true, but are mutually 
exclusive. Apparently, when two propositions are 
contradictory, at least one of  them must be false. 
This is precisely what constitutes aporia—seeming 
logical impossibility. The decisive move then, in 
order to resolve aporia, consists in searching for 
the possibility to eliminate contradiction (e.g., by 
arguing that both sides of  aporia are true).

Let us now look at a classic example of  Socratic 
aporia and its resolution, which incidentally is about 
Socrates’ own wisdom: “What can the god possibly 
mean and why does he speak in riddles? For I am 
only too conscious that I have no pretence of  
wisdom, great or small. So what can he mean when 
he [Apollo] says that I am the most wise? For surely 



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he does not utter falsehoods; that would not be proper for him.”18 In analysis 
of  this passage Politis suggests two seemingly contradictory propositions 
(both apparently true, but mutually exclusive): “(1) ‘I know that I am not 
wise in any way’; and (2) ‘The god, who does not lie, pronounces me the 
most wise.’”19 He points out that Socrates’s “immediate response is to 
ask what this apparent contradiction can possibly mean, that is how both 
its sides can be true.”20 Politis goes even further, proposing that this way 
of  posing the problem is also a model of  at least one way of  solving an 
aporia—by drawing a distinction.21

2. NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR EMERGENCE OF APORIA

It is now established that the essential property of  aporia is the 
apparent contradiction between two attractive propositions. I will next set 
the domain and elaborate the conditions for the emergence of  aporia, 
bearing in mind differences between standard and non-standard logical 
systems. 

In classical logic, a proposition can have only one out of  two truth-
values at any given time and in any given sense—these values are true or 
false: Either Socrates is wise, or he is not.

Aristotle’s law of  non-contradiction (LNC) maintains that it is 
impossible to hold the same thing to exist and not to exist; or for the same 
thing to have and not to have the same property; or for the same thing to 
have a property and a contrary property.22 Aristotle argues that this principle 
cannot be strictly demonstrated (for any demonstration presupposes it 
and makes use of  it), but also that it is the firmest of  all basic principles.23 
However, some non-standard logical systems partially or in whole reject 
this principle of  non-contradiction (Figure 2). For example, in the logic 
of  Łukasiewicz a proposition can have three distinct truth-values—true, 
false, and unknown (“neither true nor false”).24 In probabilistic and fuzzy 
logic a proposition can have an infinite number of  different truth-values.25

Any paraconsistent logical system (fuzzy logic, intuitionist logic, 
or dialetheism) are not of  interest here not only because the topic of  
this paper deals predominantly with the notions of  aporia in Plato and 
Aristotle, which in time greatly precedes the emergence of  these extended 
systems of  logic in the twentieth-century, but also because classical and 
standard logic as well as  modern science and contemporary thinking are 
still vastly depending on the truth-values in a traditional sense and have 



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FIGURE 2: Classification of logic, based on the inclusion of the principles of reasoning (ID, LC, LM), use 

of quantificators and formal language, and, finally, domain of truth-values (standard 2-valued 

logic systems including modal logic; paraconsistent logic systems including 3-value logic system of 

Łukasiewitz, Gödel’s finite-many value logic, and infinite-many value logic (fuzzy logic). 



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no tolerance for inconsistency within the system.26 Furthermore, any 
form of  many-valued logic systems must be excluded here, because where 
the tension between opposing truth-values is downplayed (fuzzy logic), 
or largely non-existent (dialethism), due to the presentation of  another 
one or many other options (besides true and false), the notion of  aporia, 
which rests on precisely this tension between the equality of  reasoning 
on opposing sides simply would not apply or even make much sense in 
any such inquiry.27 In fact, if  there is another way out, besides the two 
apparently mutually-exclusive propositions being true, the impasse, which 
is a key feature of  aporia, will simply not arise. The aporia also cannot 
arise when the principle of  non-contradiction is excluded from the logical 
system simply because it wouldn’t be possible to distinguish between a 
contradiction and a non-contradiction, let alone to make a distinction 
between the apparent and the real contradiction. 

To further refine the conditions under which aporiai can arise, 
a distinction must be made between (1) contradictory claims, which 
can give rise to aporia, and (2) the situations where opposing sides of  
reasoning are only contraries or sub-contraries, in which case they cannot 
give rise to aporia. Let us remind ourselves of  the difference between 
the contradictions and contraries in traditional propositional and predicate 
logic. Two propositions are contradictory when the truth of  one implies 
the falsity of  the other, or when the falsity of  one determines the truth 
of  other. According to Johnson, “contradictories have exactly opposite 
truth-values. If  A is true, then O is false, and vice versa.”28 For example, 
in propositional logic, the negation of  the proposition “Socrates is 
wise” would be “it is not the case that Socrates is wise.” This forms a 
contradictory opposition between the propositions. In standard logic, these 
two propositions are (1) mutually exclusive, which means that only one of  
them can be true, and (2) mutually exhaustive, which means that nothing 
else is possible. It becomes clear that if  and only if  it is the case that two 
propositions are at least apparently contradictory, then aporia can arise. 
If  the Law of  Excluded Middle (LEM)29 is invalidated (as in intuitionistic 
logic),30 then two propositions do not fulfil the second condition—they 
cannot be mutually exhaustive. There would be a middle ground between 
the two. Hence aporia cannot exist in such systems. For example, let us 
look at a slightly different formulation of  the two propositions: “Socrates 
is wise” and “Socrates is unwise.” It may be tempting to hold this new 
pair of  propositions as also contradictory. However, that is not the case. 
They are only contrary. Propositions are contrary when they cannot both 
be true (Socrates cannot be both wise and unwise in the same sense and 



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at the same time), but there is a possibility for both 
of  the propositions to be false (Socrates being 
neither wise nor unwise). The latter means that the 
propositions are not mutually exhaustive; namely, 
the pressure of  apparent contradiction (that is, only 
one of  the otherwise plausible propositions can 
be true) does not arise as there is a possibility of  
both propositions to be false. Hence, with merely 
contrary propositions, aporia cannot arise.

The outcome is the same in predicate logic. 
Predicate logic extends propositional logic by 
including the quantifiers (Ɐ and ꓱ) which determine 
whether subject (x) of  the categorical proposition is 
respectively universal or particular and includes two 
types of  assertions—affirmative and negative. This 
results in four types of  propositions—Universal 
Affirmative (All men are wise), Universal Negative 
(No man is wise), Particular Affirmative (Some 
men are wise) and Particular Negative (Some men 
are not wise). There are also four possible types 
of  relationships between these propositions. The 
relationship between each type is shown on the 
classical square of  opposites in the diagram (Figure 
3), which originates from Aristotle, but also figures 
in modern times, especially in Boolean algebra and 
in Fregean logic.

As in propositional logic, categorical 
propositions are contrary when they cannot both be 
true (All men are wise and No man is wise), but 
there is a possibility for both of  them to be false (it 
may be the case that neither everybody is wise nor 
that nobody is wise), namely, there is a possibility 
of  the middle ground (perhaps only a few men are 
wise). This means that aporia cannot arise in the case 
of  the contraries, simply because there is a passage 
away from the mutual exclusion of  propositions. 
The situation is similar with propositions which are 
sub-contrary. This is the case when it is impossible 
for both categorical propositions to be false (Some 
men are wise and Some men are not wise); however, 



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there is a possibility for both of  them to be true. If  both propositions can 
be true, then the mutual exclusion, which was a primary condition for the 
emergence of  aporia, is removed and together with it also the pressure of  
finding a way out of  the impasse has disappeared. It can be concluded that 
in none of  these cases does aporia arise.

Therefore, aporia has bearing only in cases of  apparently contradictory 

propositions, both of  which (or sets of  which) appear attractive, but 
neither the tension nor the attraction have been properly investigated or 
understood. It has been demonstrated that aporiai apply directly within 
the domain of  at least propositional and predicate logic. It naturally 
follows that aporia will also have bearing in all forms of  standard and 
modern logic that extend the field of  classical logic, but retain the laws 
of  thinking such as the law of  non-contradiction and the law of  excluded 
middle. Such cases not only automatically apply to Boolean mathematical 
logic but also, perhaps more interestingly for designers and architects, to 
the non-classical logical system of  modal logic. The application of  modal 
logic in design and architecture is significant because it relates to what 
necessarily follows and to what might or ought to follow in deductive 
reasoning. Therefore, modal logic encompasses design propositions (with 
respects to certain rules or styles) and it is useful in design predictions.

FIGURE 3: Traditional Square of Opposition.



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Now that the domain and the source of  
aporia have been clarified along with its nature, we 
can look more closely into how aporia applies to 
architectural design.

3. APORIA IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 

An actual design situation may reveal a particular 
reference of  aporia in design. In architecture, the 
well-known corner conflict inherent in the employ 
of  the classical Ionic order provides a good example 
of  aporetic reasoning in architectural design.

The Ionic order’s sensual spiralling volutes that 
cushion the architrave provide an enduring source 
of  difficulty for designers needing a 
colonnade to turn a corner—for the 
traditional volutes only face forward. 
Traditionally, in Greek and Roman 
architecture, the corner capital in 
the Ionic order is different to other 
capitals as, for example, on the 
external corner of  Palladio’s Basilica 
in Vicenza and in Piranesi’s study 
(Figure 4).

The corner problem with 
the Ionic order arises due to 
the requirement for each capital 
(including the one on the corner) 
to appear the same in all elevations. 
Because of  the lateral position of  
volutes, the corner capital in the 
Ionic order cannot be the same if  
the appearance of  the capital is to be 
equal for all capitals on both front 
and side elevations. That constitutes 
a clear case of  aporia in design. In 
the case of  the corner capital conflict, 
aporia can be clearly represented with the 
following two, apparently contradictory, 
propositions:

FIGURE 4: Sketch after Opere di 
Giovanni Battista Piranesi.



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(1) All volutes are positioned in the same manner in all elevations, and

(2) Some volutes (namely corner capitals) are not positioned the same.

One is invited to compare these propositions to the previously given 
examples in propositional and predicate logic (Figure 3). It is obvious that 
this example forms an apparent contradiction in the first-order predicate 
logic and its representation as an aporia clarifies the design challenge 
that must be addressed. One may elect to confront the aporia in various 
creative ways or try to avoid the contradictory situation by eliminating the 
columns altogether from the side elevations, as in Palladio’s Villa Capra 
(La Rotunda) shown in Figure 5.

 

However, once aporia is engaged, 

two alternatives are possible. The first alternative is when the apparent 
contradiction is not resolved and hence it becomes prominent as in the 
Temple of  Fortuna Virilis or Palladio’s Villa Foscari (Figure 6). Some cases, 
such as the exposed inside corner capital in Palladio’s Palazzo Barbaran 
Porto (Figure 7), reveal the unresolved puzzle in greater detail.

FIGURE 5: Villa Capra (La Rotunda), 
Palladio, 1567. 

FIGURE 6: Villa Foscari (La Malcontenta), 
Palladio, 1560.



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 The other alternative is when the apparent 
contradiction is resolved and contradiction 
removed by adjusting the architectural element 
or the way it is used. One of  the resolutions of  
the Ionic capital corner conflict can be found in 
the work by Palladio’s contemporary architect 
Vincenzo Scamozzi. The evidence for this can be 
found in his book The Idea of  a Universal Architecture, 
where he proposes a new capital for the Ionic order 
with diagonally positioned volutes.31 Scamozzi’s 
drawings (Figure 8) and writings on the Ionic capital 
conflict testify that, not only was he fully engaged 
with this particular aporia, he also proposed a way 
of  resolving it. It is important to note that the 
solution to this puzzle was independent of  the level 
of  craftsmanship applied. The resolution depended 
only on an architect’s ability to recognise the aporia 
and engage with it through design.

I will now show the plan and elevation of  another 
Ionic capital that is partly copied from antiquity, 
partly based on Vitruvius and for the rest is a design 
I have invented and used. To this day it remains 
different from any other [Ionic] capital ever invented 
because of  the concave profile of  the abacus and the 
corner volutes that look the same whether they are 

FIGURE 7: Palazzo 
Barbaran Da Porto,  

Palladio, 1569.



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viewed from the front or the side, which is not the case when capitals have volutes 
at the front… It is the kind I have used most frequently in my buildings.32

FIGURE 8: Sketch after Scamozzi’s drawing of Ionic capital, 
L’Idea Della Architettura Universale.



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4. APORIA IN DESIGN THEORY

For architects and planners it is quite possible 
to confuse the state of  perplexity which comes 
from aporia with the perplexity which is a result 
of  a wicked problem. Rittel and Webber, in the 
classic essay “Dilemmas in a General Theory of  
Planning,” described  planning problems as wicked 
problems, which can always be recontextualized in 
terms of  other problems and which therefore admit 
an utter lack of  stopping rules or ‘solutions’ in the 
mathematical sense.33 For efficiency, a distinction 
between the two is drawn on the relevant points 
and summarized in a table below (Figure 10). 
Besides perplexity, the other similarities between 
the two are that of  the possible paralyzing effect of  
both aporiai and wicked problems and the fact that 
an aporia may as well remain as unresolved as the 
wicked problem. It seems that the only intrinsic link 
between the two is that some wicked problems can 
indeed turn out to be aporiai, but never the other 
way round. 

‘Wicked Problem’ Aporia

impossible to solve sometimes possible to solve

cannot be formulated can be formulated

solutions cannot be true or 
false

solutions can be true or false

caused by another problem caused by apparent 
contradiction

FIGURE 9: The distinction between Rittel and Weber’s wicked problems and aporia. 
.



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In what seems to be an outline for a framework of  a coherent 
design theory, Per Galle identifies two “dilemmas of  references” as he 
calls them. Basing his case on the presupposition that design is related 
to predictions (of  a certain artefact as its product), and on the fact that 
designers sometimes in their predictions refer to things, or entities, whose 
ontological status is at best unclear, Galle proposes two questions as a 
starting point in search for the common ground of  a coherent design 
theory: (1) “If  the singular terms of  design predictions do not refer [to 
an entity], how and in what sense can the predictions be true or even 
meaningful?” and (2) “If  those terms do refer [to an entity], to what 
category of  entities are they referring?”34 Even though Galle recognises 
this situation as a “puzzlement,” and presents this problem as a challenge 
to design theorists, he appears to think that this seeming contradiction 
in questions of  fundamental importance to design is a sort of  an 
embarrassment for designers. In a way, he seems to suggest that these 
“dilemmas of  references” at hand are practically a problem of  choice, 
closely associated with ready-made philosophical world views: Nominalism 
and Realism. Moreover, theorists of  design are invited to untangle this 
conundrum by selecting a world view from which to create a coherent 
design theory. Galle claims that this sort of  a problem has a more general, 
philosophical context and that other “philosophical disciplines” might 
help in resolving it.35 But, instead of  philosophy generally, Galle proposes 
to use philosophy of  language to engage with this fundamental puzzle in 
design—that is: What exactly is the subject of  Design? I agree with Galle that, 
as sciences got Philosophy of  Science and languages got Philosophy of  
Language, perhaps Design needs to get Philosophy of  Design. However, 
I propose that a fundamental philosophical question about design can be 
addressed through philosophy directly and, likewise, that question about 
the merits of  philosophy in design should be addressed through design 
itself. 

I propose that the problem at hand here is more fruitfully treated, 
not as dilemma as suggested by Galle, but as an aporia. In order to 
demonstrate this with clarity, an important distinction must first be drawn 
between the notions of  aporia and dilemma.36 Despite the fact that both 
dilemmas and aporiai can produce a state of  indecisiveness and perplexity, 
they are also profoundly different. Dilemma is commonly used in everyday 
speech to describe a problem of  choice, where none of  the two given 
options (not necessarily propositions) are desired or preferred (but not 
necessarily with any truth value at all). It is sometimes used in rhetoric, 
as a persuasive device. However, in formal, propositional logic, dilemma 



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is a form of  valid argument always leading to the 
same conclusion (true), regardless of  the truth-
value in either of  the propositions. In a dilemma we 
are presented with a choice, none of  which may be 
appealing to us, while in aporia, as we have seen, we 
are faced with two equally plausible propositions in 
an apparent contradiction, effectively producing a 
lack of  choice. The troubling case of  design entity 
ontological status cannot be a dilemma, or a problem 
of  choice in any way, as that would mean that 
there would be no problem in reasoning correctly. 
The only problem would be to select one of  the 
options. However, both of  the “references” seem 
to be true, and it is obvious that they are mutually 
exclusive. Namely one cannot assert that both of  
them are true at the same time and in the same 
sense. That means these assertions are in apparent 
contradiction. Let us look closer and see if  these 
two sides are indeed in an apparent contradiction.

First of  all, we need to disburden ourselves 
of  the pretence of  knowledge, and at least for the 
moment assume without false pretence, that we truly 
do not know what the nature of  the subject matter 
of  Design is. Hence, I propose to re-formulate 
Galle’s questions into these two propositions:

(1) During the design process, artefacts that 
are being designed must refer to an entity that 
exists, for they are in the process of  being 
designed, we can refer to them (even in space 
and time), and they are not purely imaginary. (I 
shall argue for the plausibility of  this presently).

(2) During the design process, artefacts that are 
designed must refer to an entity that does not 
exist, for if  they did exist that would entail that 
they have already been designed.

These two propositions are apparently equally true, 
but opposed and mutually exclusive, therefore 



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seemingly contradictory. The propositions are also mutually exhaustive as 
there is no other conceivable option offered to a designer. There seems to 
be no middle ground left to settle, and an inquirer is under pressure, left 
without any easy and obvious way out. This is what constitutes an aporia 
by its definition. Now an inquirer is ready to engage with aporia and its 
zetetic (searching) function by, ideally I suggest, answering the question—
what is required for both of  these propositions to be true at the same 
time?

It might be objected that the first side of  the aporia has no real 
attraction. Why, it may be said, not simply suppose that the object of  design 
is purely imaginary, just like fictional objects? Unlike mere phantasies and 
purely imaginary objects, a key capacity of  an architectural designer is 
to create not only meaningful, but accurate and reasonable predictions 
with respect to objects designed.37 The main attraction of  this side of  
aporia is in that a designer can provide accurate predictions about those 
objects. Consequently, we should not be satisfied with a general theory of  
imaginary or fictional objects as suitable for either articulating or gauging 
the attractiveness of  this side of  the aporia. 

This example is explicated here in order to demonstrate that aporia 
is necessarily a part of  inquiry into the consistency of  a Design Theory. 
The way one reasons out of  aporiai in design is, in part, a subject of  
this whole project, and it would take us a lot more space to attempt its 
resolution here. Therefore, unless curious readers engage themselves with 
this particular aporia on the subject matter of  Design, they are asked to 
suspend their judgements and remain puzzled.

If  it is indeed the case that a world view on design theory can be 
grown out of  these “seed questions” as Galle proposes, then one must 
be first fully engaged with them by recognising the aporia.38 I agree with 
Galle that these questions are “not to be shrugged off ”, as he says.39 
Furthermore, it seems to me that they are fundamental for any design 
theory. In other words, if  one wishes to establish a consistent design 
theory, it is necessary for one to engage with this particular aporia in one 
way or the other. For how can we otherwise give an account for the subject 
matter of  design itself ? Any design theory must either reject at least one 
of  the propositions and embrace the other, or find a way to embrace 
both. An informal thinker may indeed find more compelling evidence why 
one proposition is more acceptable to him or her than the other. But, as 
we have seen, unless one rejects the principle of  non-contradiction, it is 
difficult to find a firm ground on which one can dismiss one and embrace 
the other proposition as they both seem to be plausible. One way forward 



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could be to find a way in which both propositions 
can be true, namely, explore the possibilities that are 
required in cases where both of  these propositions 
are true at the same time. That means engaging 
in aporia. The only alternative to that is to find a 
justification to abandon reasoning on the subject 
matter of  design altogether and conceive of  design 
as a craft-like activity and accept that design is 
fully exhausted through practice alone like any 
other techne. However, if  we indeed do that we will 
resemble people who are not engaged with aporia 
and as Aristotle says, don’t know where they need to be 
going in their inquiry. In that case it is difficult to see 
how design can be understood as a form of  inquiry, 
and a form of  enquiry grounded in design theory.

For those willing to engage the aporias that 
present themselves, architectural design does 
indeed become a form of  inquiry. This conception 
of  architecture that is engaged with aporia opens 
up the possibility of  removing the experiential 
limits sometimes imposed on design and to realign 
architectural design within the classical division 
of  knowledge in such a way so that all cognitive 
capacities are engaged in design—from experiential 
to higher, intellectual capacities.40 

I have not attempted to resolve this aporia—
this is for another occasion. What I have done is 
argue that, if  we want to take seriously the idea of  
design as a form of  inquiry, and a form of  inquiry 
grounded in design theory, then we must engage 
with and try to resolve this (and similar) aporiai.

I want to end by drawing attention to one 
condition for a successful resolution of  this 
aporia—which is, I believe, a core aporia in design 
theory. For, as we saw in our response to Galle, 
there is a danger here that grand philosophical 
views—be it this, that, or the other philosophical 
position—be hauled in ready-made to do the job 
of  resolving an aporia that, if  it is at all genuine and 
worth taking seriously, is specific to and rooted in 

aporia is 
indeed rooted, 

not only 
in general 

philosophical 
considerations 

about design 
theory, but 
also in the 
process of 

design itself. 

“

”



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design and design theory. This, I believe, has to be resisted. For if  this is 
what we do to engage with and try to resolve the aporia, then we are in 
effect admitting that the aporia is not specific to or rooted in design and 
design theory: since its resolution will not make use of  any tools or idea 
that are specific to design or design theory. In that case, however, one 
would be forgiven for wondering why design theory should worry about 
this aporia and not simply leave it to the philosophers.

Nonetheless, we have shown that aporia is indeed rooted, not only in 
general philosophical considerations about design theory, but also—and, 
for us designers and design theorists, primarily—in the process of  design 
itself. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the (guest-)editors, Martin Düchs and Christian 
Illies, as well as Tom Spector, the managing editor of  the Journal 
Architecture Philosophy for their help, constructive criticism, and inspiring 
challenges posed in the various drafts they reviewed. I am also very 
grateful to the anonymous referees for their influential comments and 
valuable suggestions.

Very special thanks I owe to the people at the Plato Centre at Trinity 
College Dublin, especially to professor of  philosophy Vasilis Politis for 
many stimulating discussions on the subject and philosopher Brendan 
O’Byrne for unreserved support.

ENDNOTES

[1] Aristotle, The Basic Works of  Aristotle (New York: Random House 
Incorporated, 2001), Metaphysics, III. 1, 995a34-b1.

[2] See Plato, Protagoras, 321c. Extract from Protagoras’s speech: 

Prometheus arrived to examine his [Epimetheus] distribution, and saw that whereas 
the other creatures were fully and suitably provided, man was naked, unshod, unbedded, 
unarmed; and already the destined day was come, whereon man like the rest should 
emerge from earth to light. Then Prometheus, in his perplexity [ἀπορία] as to what 
preservation he could devise for man, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the 
arts together with fire—since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully 
used by any—and he handed it there and then as a gift to man.

[3] The meaning of  the word Prometheus can be translated as 
“Forethought.”



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[4] The meaning of  the word Epimetheus can be translated as “Afterthought.”

[5] Plato actually uses the word aporia to depict Titan’s mental state. See 
Plato, Protagoras, 321c2.

[6] ἀπορία = aporia—the state of  being perplexed, puzzled, lacking resources, 
or being at a loss.

[7] Aristotle, The Basic Works, Metaphysics, III. 1, 995a34-b1.

[8] Aristotle, Posterior Analytics Topica, ed. Loeb Classical Library (London and 
New York: Harvard University Press, 1960), 145b17.

[9] If  not stated otherwise, in this paper I have generally relied on Cooper’s 
edition of  Plato’s Complete Works. See Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. 
Cooper, (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997).

[10] Plato, Republic, 514a-519a.

[11] Ibid., 509d-511e.

[12] See Plato, Republic, VII, 509d-511e. Illustration by Aleksandar Kostić.

[13] Vasilis Politis, “Aporia and Searching in the Early Plato,” in Remembering 
Socrates: Philosophical Essays, eds. Lindsay Judson and Vassilis Karasmanēs 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 101. For the place of  aporia in 
Plato’s philosophy, see especially Politis, The Structure of  Enquiry in Plato’s Early 
Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), Part II.

[14] Ibid., 88-110.

[15] Plato, Laches, 194a-b.

[16] Plato, Meno, 80a-c.

[17] Politis proposes that besides being a mental state, “aporia is [also] zetetic: 
[its aim is] to generate particular searches, defined and directed by the puzzle 
and problem at hand.” See Politis, “Aporia,” 108.

[18] Plato, Apology, 21b3–7.

[19] Politis, “Aporia,” 88–110.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Ibid., 98.

[22] Aristotle, The Basic Works, Metaphysics, IV, 1005b24.

[23] Ibid., 1011b13–14.

[24] Graham Priest, An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 119.



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[25] Susan Haack, Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism (Chicago: 
University of  Chicago Press, 1996).

[26] The belief  that it is possible for a single proposition to be at the same 
time both true and false, without inferring that this leads to any and every 
proposition being true is called Dialetheism. However, this view fails to 
define a negation, as it is difficult to grasp what a concept of  disagreement 
would be in the world where a proposition can be both true and false at the 
same time. Another important and undesired consequence of  Dialetheism 
is the principle of  explosion. Namely, if  we hold both propositions p and 
¬p to be true, then it follows that for any statement q both p˅q and ¬p˅q 
to be also true, which means any and every proposition q is true.

[27] A passionate read on many-valued logic can be found in Graham 
Priest’s An Introduction on Non-Classical Logic, cited above.

[28] Robert M. Johnson, A Logic Book: Fundamentals of  Reasoning (Belmont: 
Thomson Wadsworth, 2007), 63.

[29] The Law of  excluded middle (LEM) is the third law of  thinking in 
traditional logic and it simply means that besides true or false there is no 
other available option for truth-value.

[30] Intuitionistic logic invalidates the Law of  excluded middle. This 
rejection has “far-reaching consequences.” (See Joan Moschovakis, 
“Intuitionistic Logic,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of  Philosophy, ed. Edward 
N. Zalta, Spring 2015 edition, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-
intuitionistic/.) One of  those consequences being that the principle of  
elimination of  double negation also becomes invalid and, perhaps more 
importantly, intuitionistic logic becomes “axiomatically incomplete.” For 
our purposes, it is important to note that rejection of  the LEM practically 
disables the condition of  the principle of  mutual exhaustion (i.e., there is 
a middle ground available, hence aporia is not possible).

[31] Vincenzo Scamozzi, The Idea of  a Universal Architecture, Volume VI 
(Amsterdam: Architectura & Natura Press, 2008).

[32] Ibid.

[33] Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General 
Theory of  Planning,” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155-169.

[34] Per Galle, “Candidate worldviews for design theory,” Design Studies 29, 
3 (May 2008): 279. 

[35] Ibid., 280.

[36] Some philosophers consider a notion of  dilemma that is closely related 



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to aporia. For example, Karamanolis uses the term “dilemmatic structure” 
to describe weighing various possibilities or ways out of  the aporia. (See 
George Karamanolis, “The Aporetic Character of  Plotinus’ Philosophy,” 
in The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, eds. George Karamanolis and 
Vasilis Politis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 250.) Others 
hold that the reasoning leading to an aporia need not take the form of  
dilemma. (For example, see John Palmer, “Contradiction and Aporia in Early 
Greek Philosophy,” in The Aporetic Tradition in Ancient Philosophy, eds. George 
Karamanolis and Vasilis Politis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
2017), 9.) Gelber maintains that a particular type of  aporia, in cases where 
we are presented with equally impossible options (i.e., ‘negative aporias’), can 
present itself  in a form of  dilemma, but also that some aporiai do not have 
“the appearance of  dilemma at all” and so on. (See Jessica Gelber, “Uses 
of  Aporiai in Aristotle’s Generation of  Animals,” in The Aporetic Tradition in 
Ancient Philosophy, eds. George Karamanolis and Vasilis Politis (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2017), 164-165.) I am considering the notion 
of  dilemma here in the context of  Galle’s proposition (seed questions) to 
distinguish between problems of  choice and aporiai.   

[37] To describe the predictions architects make, Galle gives an example of  
an architect designing an opera who points “to one of  his drawings, saying 
‘every seat on this balcony has an unobstructed view of  the stage.’” Galle 
rightly emphasizes that “if  we could not rely on such design predictions as 
largely true, we should hardly be able to make artefacts at all.” See Galle, 
“Candidate Worldviews for Design Theory,” 278.

[38] Galle, “Candidate Worldviews for Design Theory,” 267-303.

[39] Ibid.

[40] For Plato, architecture is indeed a form inquiry leading to true knowledge. 
In the Statesman, when Plato makes a distinction concerning the highest kinds 
of  knowledge, he specifically uses the example of  an architect to depict the 
highest level of  knowing (γνωστικὴ ἐπιτακτικὴν), which is removed from 
practical experience and belongs to higher cognitive capacities. See Plato, 
Statesman, 260d.





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The anthropology of a smoke-
filled room: Ethnography and 
the human at oma
  

Graham Owen

INTRODUCTION

This paper examines ethnographic studies 
of  design processes within the celebrated Dutch 
architectural practice OMA, studies undertaken 
from an Actor Network Theory perspective as 
promulgated by the anthropologist-philosopher 
Bruno Latour. Considering the participant-
observation work of  Yaneva, the article contrasts 
the relative absence of  discussion of  issues of  labour 
and working conditions with their prominence in 
recent work by observers of  architectural education 
and by activist academics such as Deamer, Tombesi 
and Wilson. Why might this ethnographic study 
have overlooked or de-emphasised these aspects 
of  human relations at OMA? With critiques of  
Latourian and ANT-based approaches in mind, 
the paper asks if  this is an aversion characteristic 
of  such perspectives, with their defining self-
distinction from critical theory. This paper argues 
for at least four reasons that these studies of  OMA 
do not tackle the issues of  architectural “labour 
in the making,” reasons that are respectively 
ethnographic, methodological, epistemological, and 
ontological. The article draws upon the reflections 
of  Ignacio Farías and Alex Wilkie on the evolution 
of  “Studio Studies” from Latour et al.’s laboratory 
studies. From a philosophical point of  view, it 
proposes potential extensions of  studio studies to 
foreground labour conditions, which can be seen as 
central to design processes in studios such as OMA.



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IN MEDIAS RES

The year is 1991. The scene is a two-bedroom apartment in 
Rotterdam. I am visiting former classmates working at Rem Koolhaas’s 
Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Five OMA employees share the 
flat. My friends, a couple with some means, have one of  the bedrooms. 
The rest are, in effect, camping. One, from the States, has a thin mattress 
on the floor. All his possessions are scattered around it, like those of  a 
homeless person under a bridge. I have come to visit OMA, but also to see 
significant Modernist works in Rotterdam. But my friends do not know 
where those are. All they know is the route between the apartment and the 
office, and the cafes where they eat breakfast and dinner when they can.

When I arrive, trouble is brewing. No one, other than Rem and the 
three associates, has been paid for two months, say the junior architectural 
staff. Simply, no cheques have appeared. A letter of  protest is being 
drafted: the staff, after all, do have bills of  their own to pay. And the pay, 
when it has come, is not great: 14,000 pounds a year, or a dollar figure in 
the 20,000s. A typical work week consists of  70 to 100 hours. The average 
time to burnout and departure for a staff  person at their level, they report, 
is two to three months, although my classmates, with more personal 
resources at their disposal, have lasted longer. The staff  are international, 
but many have come to Rotterdam without work permits, under the radar; 
they receive no employment benefits.1

Over time, did success change OMA? Did the practice become able to 
offer working conditions befitting trained professionals, recognizing that 
they too have lives to lead outside the office, obligations to others to fulfil? 
Anecdotal but firsthand web reports from 2015 suggest otherwise. One 
former employee of  less than a year describes a spirit of  camaraderie on 
all-nighters, but nonetheless acknowledges “Extremely long hours–Below 
market pay–Very high turnover rate,” and remarks that “if  everyone is 
going to be there for 15-18 hours a day, maybe include more than just a 
coffee machine and microwave in the kitchen”.

Another former staff  member recognizes the attraction of  an OMA 
stint on one’s resume, and reports receiving benefits, but confirms a 

“[r]uthless working environment. Management really doesn’t care if  
you don’t sleep for days in a row as long as deadlines are met. Working 
hours are ridiculously long. You basically never stop working, specially 
[sic] if  you are an intern or junior architect. Forget about having anything 
resembling a life outside of  the office, the office is open 24/7. Office 
culture is bad. Lots of  dissatisfied employees. Incredibly disorganized 



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project environment. Very high rate of  turnover 
[…] most employees who [have been] here for 
a long time have been raised in these types of  
environments so they ‘don’t know any better’ and 
have little ‘real world’ experience.” A third former 
staff  member observes more succinctly: “No sleep 
ever. Tense environment. And no sleep ever. Ever. 
Ever.”2

While the review comments on OMA are 
among the more extreme, such concerns are not 
unfamiliar among architectural firms that seek 
celebrity status within the discipline, indicating a 
set of  labour issues endemic to culturally ambitious 
“starchitect” practices and certainly worthy of  
investigation.

ANT AND ARCHITECTURE, LABORATORY AND LABOUR

To think back today to the mattress of  the 1991 
OMA employee, to his belongings scattered on the 
floor around him, is to be reminded all too easily 
of  other more recent sleeping accommodations 
associated with 
the production of  
culturally ambitious 
architecture. Those 
in the Rotterdam 
apartment were 
admittedly less 
dire and more self-
chosen than those 
of  migrant workers 
with which we are 
now familiar in 
the Emirates, as 
evidenced by the 
work of  investigative journalists and activist groups,3  
but as those activists have argued, the two instances 
are connected by a disciplinary complex of  issues as 
regards architectural labour. These issues, however, 

FIGURE 1: DUBAI MIGRANT 

WORKERS’ SLEEPING 

ACCOMMODATIONS



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do not appear to have surfaced in the ethnographic studies of  OMA’s 
practice, despite their focus on the daily practices of  design as a necessary 
component in the understanding of  architecture.

Trained as a philosopher and anthropologist, Bruno Latour has 
brought influential attention to design in the more recent decades of  his 
career.4 Drawing upon his applications of  Actor Network Theory and the 
concept of  the Thing in studies of  science and technology, Latour seeks, 
as Ariane Lourie Harrison observes, to challenge architecture

to revise its conception of  buildings as static objects, to understand that 
buildings develop agency as sociotechnical systems, through negotiations among 
people, institutions, and technologies. […] Any entity (human or non-human, 
individual or organization, architecture) can be conceptualized as both an actor 
and a network, in actor-network theory, its constitutive actions redistributed 
accordingly. […] By this approach, it becomes more difficult (and less productive) 
to refer to an entity as a discrete or isolated object. […] All phenomena are 
networked assemblages of  actors, each capable of  reconfiguring the network, 
affecting each of  its constituents. Latour proposes the term Thing to describe 
these socio-technical assemblages that make up the bulk of  our environment and 
experience, and to distinguish his hybrid schema from the more rigid, modernist 
categorization of  phenomena into subject and object. An ANT approach to 
architecture highlights the discrepancy between the manifest Thingness of  
a building (multiple constituencies, overlapping material, technological and 
discursive systems, inherent spaces of  controversy) and its representation as a 
rendered object (static, set serenely in Cartesian space). […] [A]n ANT’s view 
would suggest that buildings be represented as dynamic ‘spaces of  controversy’.5

Latour and Yaneva remark that, “It is paradoxical to say that a building 
is always a ‘thing’ that is, etymologically, a contested gathering of  many 
conflicting demands and yet, having said that, to be utterly unable to draw 
those conflicting claims in the same space as what they are conflicting 
about.”6 Latour himself  asserts that, “What is needed instead are tools 
that capture what have always been the hidden practices of  modernist 
innovations: objects have always been projects.”7 Particularly through 
his students and collaborators, he has encouraged close studies of  the 
processes of  the studio. Transposing their techniques from Latour’s earlier 
studies of  laboratory life, and seeking to understand “architecture in the 
making,” his colleagues have undertaken ethnographic enquiries into the 
process by which architecture comes into being, and have challenged 
conventional interpretations. In philosophical terms, these studies 
constitute a search for, if  not “truth,” a more accurate understanding of  
the construction of  knowledge and the relationship between architecture 



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and the social. In examining the respective roles 
of  human and non-human actors, this work alters 
normative assumptions about the extent of  human 
agency.

Albena Yaneva has made notable contributions 
to this 
e n d e a v o u r . 
She claims that 
a r c h i t e c t u r e 
cannot be 
understood by 
conven t iona l 
narratives of  its 
production and 
reception. In 
essays such as 
“Give Me a Gun 
and I will Make 
All Buildings 
Move,” of  2008, 
by Latour and 
Yaneva, they seek to reverse Etienne Jules Marey’s 
ambition to build a “photographic gun” that would 
freeze the stages of  a bird’s action in flight.  Instead, 
they seek a theoretical device to reveal “that a 
building is not a static object but a moving project, 
and that even once it is has been built, it ages, it is 
transformed by its users, modified by all of  what 
happens inside and outside, and that it will pass or 
be renovated, adulterated and transformed beyond 
recognition.”8

In the process of  this argument’s elaboration, 
theorists as notable as George Baird, Neil Leach, 
Ian Borden, and Jane Rendell are set aside as 
representative of  superseded paradigms of  
interpretation:  

Everyone knows that a building is a contested territory 
and that it cannot be reduced to what is and what it 
means, as architectural theory has traditionally done. 
[…] As long as we have not found a way to do for 

FIGURE 2: BRUNO LATOUR 

LECTURING AT HARVARD 

UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL 

OF DESIGN.  2009. 



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buildings the reverse of  what Marey managed to do for the flights of  birds and 
the gaits of  horses, architectural theory will be a rather parasitical endeavor that 
adds historical, philosophical, stylistic, and semiotic ‘dimensions’ to a conception 
of  buildings that has not moved an inch.9

In writing of  her observations of  OMA, Yaneva insists that, “You can still 
appreciate a building, like or dislike it, praise or dismiss it, without knowing 
anything about the design experience that made it happen; but you cannot 
understand a building without taking these design experiences into account.”10 
Thus Yaneva asserts that there is a deep and wide knowledge (attainable 
by both outsiders and, ultimately, by those involved in its production) of  
a work of  architecture that takes into account the extensive processes 
and controversies through which it has come into physical being; and, 
indeed, she is asserting that the work of  architecture is that assemblage 
of  processes, controversies, actors… Without that recognition, Yaneva 
is claiming, there is no adequate knowledge of  architecture; rather, only 
a superficial appreciation or casual evaluation. But given these substantial 
epistemological claims, it is surprising—even though Yaneva picks up 
clues in the texts under consideration here—that issues of  employment 
ethics, conditions of  work, and their rationalization by staff  members, do 
not surface as foregrounded parts of  the assemblage.

Yaneva’s work opens up in detail the day-to-day working practices 
in an ambitious and influential practice such as OMA. Her painstaking 
observation of  the role of  physical models and digital representations 
in their process of  design undoubtedly offers valuable insights. Years 
of  fieldwork, the demanding tasks of  collation of  notes, transcripts 
and correspondence, and the continued research enterprise through the 
University of  Manchester are worthy of  respect, and the writings of  both 
Yaneva and Latour have become increasingly evident in architectural 
discourse in recent years. But as others have observed,11 Latour’s 
aggressive promotion of  paradigm shifts and his inclination to use the 
language of  warfare in seeking to colonize and dominate intellectual fields 
suggest that some circumspection is warranted in assessing these claims 
regarding the formation and adequacy of  knowledge (at least scholarly and 
practitioners’ knowledge) of  architecture. And in this particular instance, 
that circumspection needs to address the downplaying of  those aspects of  
studio life that pertain to the ethics of  architectural labour.



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THE VOLUNTARY PRISONERS OF OMA

In the early 2000s, Yaneva undertook research 
as a participant observer within OMA. The results 
of  this ethnographic observation were published 
as Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An 
Ethnography of  Design (2009), hereafter Made by 
OMA, and The Making of  a Building:  A Pragmatist 
Approach to Architecture, also of  2009. In her 
interviews excerpted in Made by OMA, in particular, 
she confirms that there is an “overproduction” of  
design ideas in blue foam model form; hears of  staff  
being asked to 
“put a [design] 
p r o p o s a l 
on the table 
overnight;”12 and 
hears another say, 
“[S]ometimes I 
don’t have dinner 
for like two 
days, because I 
work during the 
evenings. [AY:] 
[T]hat’s how 
everybody works 
here? [Abji:] Yes, 
we even work in 
the weekends, 
but it’s OK, it’s 
a good atmosphere.”13 In The Making of  a Building, 
Yaneva observes that:

at the end of  the ordinary working day (around six 
o’clock), computer music announces the beginning 
of  ‘the evening shift’. Architects start buzzing 
with excitement following the departure of  all the 
administrative staff. They find themselves alone with 
specific design tasks to complete surrounded by the 
sounds of  the same music they have listened to during 
the day in the privacy of  their earphones. Now the 
music is given the opportunity to contribute to the office 

FIGURE 3: OMA “NEWHITNEY” 

SELECTED STUDY MODELS



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hubbub, and to amplify the excitement. The architects share a pizza around the 
table of  models […] [S]ometimes a new model arrives with the sunrise, more 
updated drawings are printed out and set up on the table just as the city of  
Rotterdam is about to wake up.14

The young architects recover from their nocturnal labours with “one of  
those strong OMA coffees that really wake you up even if  you have only 
slept for a couple of  hours.”15

Yaneva remarks that, because designs for terminated projects are 
sometimes resurrected in later commissions, “the sleepless nights spent 
in the company of  a foam-cutter, a computer and a couple of  fellow 
architects from the same [project team] have not been in vain.”16 The 
blue foam “smells,” she notes, when cut on the hot-wire cutter17—and it 
does so because it is releasing toxic fumes—but no one, we might note, 
seems concerned with the health risks to the staff. Indeed, the demands of  
OMA’s working conditions seem to serve Yaneva’s larger claims regarding 
knowledge and reality:

“The fact that there is no urban life ‘out there’, far from the studio, has been 
demonstrated by all those who never visited the Whitney [Museum] site in 
Manhattan but kept on designing for it, by all those who never learned Spanish 
but built in Cordoba, and by those who never borrowed a book from the Seattle 
Library but reinvented the library typology. Designers never go ‘outside’; there is 
no outside. […] The studio constitutes their world. […] OMA and Koolhaas 
treat the studio as the world.”18

One may well ask whether these descriptions and assessments constitute 
an apologia for the conditions observed, or whether they serve instead to 
expose the conditions of  labour without direct accusation or criticism? 
The tone of  the description of  the musical all-nighter is positive, even 
approbatory, conveying the student-like “excitement” of  the participants 
without evident irony; generally speaking, irony is by no means absent 
from the Latourian rhetorical repertoire, but conspicuous by its absence 
in this instance.

REFLEXIVITY 

Yet Yaneva’s observations, undertaken in the early 2000s, overlap 
with a period of  notable reflexivity within architectural practice and 
education, particularly within the North American context. Brought to 
professional attention in the publication Progressive Architecture in the early 
1990s,19 given intensity by the accidental deaths of  several students after 



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multiple all-night work sessions, exposed to the 
wider academy and the public at large through 
further journalistic exposés,20 concerns with the 
adverse effects of  the traditions of  the design 
discipline and profession were confronted in The 
Redesign of  Studio Culture, of  2002.21 In these and 
subsequent reports, the reproductive cycle between 
the architectural academy’s tradition of  do-or-
die work practices and a similar culture in the 
profession, particularly among its most culturally 
ambitious members—with all the implications for 
work-life balance, health, and the perceived value 
of  architects’ time—was indicted. But traditions 
die hard, bound up as they are with identity, and 
debates over such concerns and indictments have 
continued internationally to the present day.22

Philipp Oswalt and Matthias Hollwich, who 
between them had experienced working at OMA 
from 1996 to at least 2000, published in that latter 
year “OMA at work,” an account of  that experience. 
Oswalt, editor of  the journal Arch+ from 1988 
to 1994, evidently brought a critic’s eye to that 
endeavour. They describe and explicate in detail 
the processes of  the office, and it is worth quoting 
these accounts at some length for comparison 
with Yaneva’s observations and the more recent 
ex-employee reports online:  

An important precondition is that the majority of  
the employees are quite inexperienced and young. Not 
only do they work unbelievably hard for relatively 
little money and thereby make it possible to pursue 
thousands of  ideas, to try them out and reject them, 
which no client would ever want or be able to pay 
for, but more importantly, it is the naivety with which 
they approach the tasks they are set. Ignorant of  
how the problem would normally be solved, they can 
experiment with a childlike lack of  inhibitions and 
thus develop new ideas. […]

Rem’s instructions are mostly so vague, his presence 
over long periods only intermittent and his distance 



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to the design team so great that some employees opine that he is not really a 
designer at all, it is his staff  who produce the architecture. […] [But t]he 
distance between the team of  designers and Rem leads to great flexibility: at any 
time, the direction can be changed unexpectedly, and the more doggedly the design 
team sticks to a solution or a problem, the likelier it is that this will happen. 
The work of  days or weeks can be discarded in the space of  a minute without 
much discussion. […] [O]ther members of  staff  are occasionally drawn in at 
short notice. […] Less in awe of  that which has already been achieved, the staff  
who have been uninvolved until then foil the intentions of  their colleagues, which 
makes it at the same time much easier to develop substantial new ideas.

Basically, almost any form of  destabilization appears to be welcome. It is rather 
unlikely that the team that has begun a project takes it through to realization. 
It may happen that a team, having worked through the night and an interim 
presentation, comes into the office to find that the workplaces have been seized 
by colleagues and the team has to find new ones. The concept of  private property 
does not exist in the office anyway: every drafting pen, every adhesive film, every 
geodesic triangle that you have with difficulty acquired for yourself  can disappear 
again within days or hours. And it would not surprise anyone in the office if  he or 
she were told that they had to fly that very day to Hanoi for several days because 
of  a project. One hundred per cent availability is implicitly demanded–24 hours 
a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with the exception of  Christmas. […]

It can happen that just a few hours before a presentation or a deadline Rem 
wants to change the design, the model, the drawings or collages. Then arguments 
of  time or costs are of  no import, to the despair of  the financial director and the 
curses of  the staff  who have to change everything at the last moment.23

As Oswalt and Hollwich suggest, these accounts describe, by comparison 
with conventional professional practices, a deliberately unstable and 
chaotic situation, one in which “human resources management” evidently 
occurs in part by placing staff  and their design ideas in a quasi-Darwinian 
struggle for recognition, with status, approval, and reliable communication 
and decision-making constantly undermined; the possibility of  predatory 
internal competition apparently tacitly condoned. Billable hours (those 
hours of  work charged to the fee that the client has agreed to pay) are 
clearly far exceeded by actual hours expended and, from that conventional 
professional perspective, the financial viability of  such an office is enabled 
only by the absence of  overtime pay, an intense stigma attached to 
time-in-lieu (paid time off  equivalent to unpaid overtime worked), and 
significantly below-par compensation for the majority of  staff.24 Drawn in, 
it seems, by the cachet of  being known to have worked for OMA, and by 
its apparent value—if  not in monetary terms—in one’s portfolio and CV 



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(especially given Koolhaas’s international renown 
and influence), young staff  in particular appear 
to find themselves in an exploitative situation.  
Mutinies, by the time that Oswalt and Hollwich are 
working there (and Yaneva is about to undertake 
her observations), seem less likely, as some of  the 
“voluntary prisoners”25 turn out to be the warders 
of  their co-workers: in a passage of  sharply ironic 
tone, Oswalt and Hollwich note that, “The office is 
characterized more by an American mentality than 
a European one: produce, criticize and don’t ask for 
reasons, don’t argue, show unlimited commitment, 
don’t expect any solidarity from your colleagues – 
don’t worry, be happy. It is not by chance that almost 
all the project leaders come from the USA.”26

Yaneva cites Oswalt and Hollwich’s article in The 
Making of  a Building, but takes pains to distinguish 
her intentions from theirs: “My aim is not to 
present the habits of  the office and the general 
rules of  their design philosophy […] but to make 
the reader hear the architects’ voices, to follow the 
reactions and discussions of  architects, engineers, 
stage designers, cost evaluators, curators and artists, 
to see them draw, build models, negotiate the costs 
of  a building, and design the NEWhitney.”27

RESISTANCE

In her participant observations, Yaneva adheres 
to Latour’s exhortation to “follow the actors” (both 
human and non-human), and to describe rather than 
seek to explain, in order to observe “architecture 
in the making.” Such an approach contrasts with 
recent investigations into attitudes in the discipline 
and profession to work and labour, regarding the 
fabrication of  buildings but also regarding the 
production of  design. These include the studies 
undertaken by Peggy Deamer, Paolo Tombesi et 
al.;28 by the artists’ activist group Gulf  Labor with 
Andrew Ross on the exploitation of  migrant labour 

produce, 
criticize and 

don’t ask 
for reasons, 
don’t argue, 

show unlimited 
commitment, 

don’t expect 
any solidarity 

from your 
colleagues – 

don’t worry, be 
happy.

“

”



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for cultural projects in the Gulf  States;29 and by Mabel Wilson and others 
of  the academic activist group Who Builds Your Architecture,30 who have 
argued that the conditions under which architecture is produced are an 
integral part of  its ethical dimension. It might be asserted that such studies 
revisit Marxist concerns characteristic of  the 1970s, and indeed Deamer’s 
edited collection The Architect as Worker opens its “Foreword” with a 
quotation from Marx distinguishing between mental and material labour. 
Nonetheless, the contributors are at pains to identify the differences at 
play in our times: Joan Ockman, in that same “Foreword,” acknowledges 
that:

intellectual labor has become increasingly arduous and stressful today by virtue 
of  the expansion of  the workday to the 24/7 cycle, ‘flexible’ hiring and firing 
policies, insecurity with respect to healthcare and other social benefits, and–
in the particular case of  young, highly educated architects–low compensation 
and unpaid internships. […] These problems are compounded today in the 
context of  a disorganized global ‘precariat’ that has to market its own skills as 
‘entrepreneur of  itself.’ 31

To these formulations we might add other dimensions of  the neoliberal 
dispensation: the virtuous social roles ascribed to “creativity” as 
“innovation,” construed as bringing economic liberation to cities (through 
the creative class itself; the Bilbao Guggenheim, etc.) and individuals 
(liberated, by means of  digital platforms, from the need of  nanny-
employer conditions such as benefits, unions, workplace rights) alike. 
And, indeed, in her online summary of  Made by OMA, Yaneva declares 
her intention to show “how innovation permeates design practice, how 
everyday techniques and workaday choices set new standards for buildings 
and urban phenomena.”32 In contrast, as Manuel Shvartzberg confirms, 
under that neoliberal dispensation, “In material terms, creativity is the 
measure by which workers will cannibalize themselves for the sake of  the 
company – extreme work hours, no parallel commitments (love, friendship, 
community, etcetera).”33

OMA’s location in this complex of  concerns has in part to do with 
the firm’s status as an acknowledged generator of  innovation in those 
terms (the Seattle Public Library’s impact on library usage and the city’s 
economy, for example), and in part with its principals’ and former staff ’s 
status in the world of  architectural education (Koolhaas’s appointment at 
the Harvard Graduate School of  Design, for instance). If  the university—
in spite of  the ongoing attempts to reconstruct it in the image of  
neoliberal values—is still expected by some to engage in challenges to 
the ideological conventions of  its time, then the prominent architectural 



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practitioner-teacher might well be expected to use 
their affiliation with the academy not simply as a 
source of  clients and junior staff, but rather as a 
venue to be openly reflexive about the conditions 
of  their own professional practices. As Dariel Cobb 
observes:

Academics now need to do more: examine the 
labor rights of  architecture workers and the labor 
practices of  architecture offices within a larger 
social history. Having personally experienced the 
unmitigated drudgery of  long hours and low pay 
within a purportedly elite professional architecture 
setting, I think it’s time to move workers’ whispers 
and complaints from blogs and trade publications to 
the arena of  sustained critical discourse. Generations 
have passed during which such engagement would 
have been vilified, only to arrive at this ripe political 
moment for reexamination.34

With such initiatives in mind, could one suggest that 
an additional path of  observation might have been 
undertaken in the ethnography of  OMA; namely, 
Who Builds Your Foam Models?

THE METHODS OF SISYPHUS

A further objection might be raised, however, 
that many culturally ambitious architects have 
obtained from their staff, by one means or another, 
long hours at low pay, and that this is indicative 
of  the low value placed by society at large upon 
architectural work. Quality of  ideas and execution 
takes more time (so the argument goes) and 
therefore costs more than most clients are willing 
to pay; thus, in this noble shared cause, the shortfall 
in income has to be passed on to staff. In other 
words, inadequacy of  compensation is a condition 
forced upon the practice as a whole for those who 
set their ambitions high; and (by implication of  this 
argument) the moral issue is shifted to the societal 
level. Might this constitute a rationale for Yaneva’s 

Who Builds 
Your Foam 

Models?
“

”



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overlooking of  the labour issues at OMA? It seems unlikely, given this 
invocation of  Latour in Making: “society has to be composed, made up, 
constructed, established, maintained, and assembled. It is no longer to 
be taken as the hidden source of  causality which could be mobilized 
so as to account for the existence and stability of  some other action or 
behaviour.”35

Oswalt and Hollwich, though, in their laconic recounting of  the 
particularities of  OMA’s design method, offer apologias for some of  its 
more extreme demands:

Settling on a solution, or to put it more precisely, filtering out a solution from the 
pool of  ideas, takes place very late; the alternatives are developed in parallel over 
a long period. The decision is postponed as long as possible, because it always 
implies the loss of  other possibilities, limitation. […]

When you are involved in this process, you can sometimes despair over the 
inefficiency and the absence of  conventional professionalism. But in the end, 
you are obliged to concede that the non-linearity of  the design process, the lack 
of  routine or an established canon of  methods or solutions are the basis for the 
quality of  the office’s work. […] It is characteristic that Rem assesses a project 
sceptically precisely when it has developed continuously without conflicts, crises 
and interruptions. […] It is the ambition of  the office to structure the design 
process in such a way that the maximum number of  influences, criteria and ideas 
are included. […]

It is indicative that innumerable alternatives will also be investigated when an 
obviously brilliant idea has already been come up with: although Rem had already 
had the basic idea at the beginning of  the IIT project [the McCormick Tribune 
Campus Center of  1997-2003], all the same he kept the team investigating and 
developing completely different ideas for weeks. As none of  the newly developed 
options was any more convincing, though, the idea that was there from the start 
was taken up again.

This Sisyphus-like way of  proceeding may appear totally inefficient, but it proves 
to be extremely fruitful.36

RATIONALISATION

Sisyphean indeed; yet as Yaneva’s interviewees demonstrate, OMA’s 
young staff  nonetheless rationalise their intense and difficult working 
conditions. In the OMA publication Content (cited by Yaneva as one of  her 
guides to the office’s practice),37 staff  chosen to collaborate with Herzog 
and de Meuron at their Basel office comment ironically but disparagingly 



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on the more civilised and relaxed conditions they 
see there: “We don’t have time for long weekends, 
lunches, coffee breaks, and short workdays. We 
want to work hard, do things fast, have no free 
time, learn, and move on. In Basel, people do not 
move on; they have good lives.”38 Contrary to the 
Studio Culture studies’ alarm at inadequate rest and 
poor eating habits, the OMA staff  writing in Content 
“dread the hour lunch break, during which we have 
to roam the boring streets of  Basel in search of  
expensive, tasteless food. Thank God for globalism, 
Mr Wong and McDonald’s.”39

Angela McRobbie, in her studies of  the 
individualization of  precarious labour in the culture 
industries, observes that:

One of  the most perplexing issues facing social 
scientists and policy-makers is the sheer enthusiasm 
on the part of  young people for ‘creative’ jobs they 
know in advance will require long stints of  working, 
often through the night, for relatively low pay. Such 
enthusiasm is unabated even for those who are well-
versed in the politics of  precaritie, and this opens 
up important questions for the future of  work.  In 
particular, does this ethos confirm Michel Foucault’s 
oft-quoted insight that power works most effectively 
when it is tied to the promise of  pleasure and self-
reward, in this case through ‘creative enterprise’ or 
‘passionate work’?40

In the example from Content, there is an 
identification of  the working conditions as a kind 
of  rite of  passage, indicative of  the seriousness 
and substance of  the endeavour. Some might 
suggest that there is an internalization of  abuse as 
a badge of  courage, as a confirmation of  the most 
serious commitment to the field; but also that this 
internalization constitutes an essential mechanism 
of  social reproduction, a process by which a prized 
identity is handed down from one generation to 
another.



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William Wiles, reporting in 2011, assembles a further set of  telling 
rationalisations by the firm’s managers themselves:

OMA’s breakneck internal pace comes at a cost – the company has an extremely 
high turnover of  staff, as implied by the number of  independent practices that 
spin out of  it; high numbers of  burnouts are also rumoured. Incredibly, this high 
turnover is company policy. ‘We want to refresh and renew our organisation on a 
permanent basis,’ says [Victor] Van der Chijs [managing partner]. ‘We really 
want every year at least 25 percent of  our people to be new. And we want them 
to be young, bright people. The idea [is] [...] that we really need those people to 
feed in new ideas, make sure that OMA stays relevant and really understands 
what is going on.’

Many companies would balk at this kind of  turnover. A high churn rate 
of  staff  is very costly–time is tied up training, knowledge and experience is 
continually leaking away, good practices can be hard to maintain.  […] ‘Most 
people know that when they join OMA, that they work on average for three 
years here and after that, they leave,’ says Van der Chijs. ‘It’s already in their 
minds.’ […]

Looked at with these expectations in mind–people join OMA knowing they are 
in for an intensive but short and valuable experience that will leave them ready 
to start up on their own–and the office starts to look more like an elite college 
than an architecture and research firm. ‘The environment that is generated from 
the projects here is an incredibly strong learning experience, a fast-track learning 
experience,’ says [project architect Mark] Veldman. ‘You learn much more here 
in a year than you would learn in a university.’ 41

In these passages, the upper echelons of  OMA invoke familiar neoliberal 
shibboleths as justifications of  the office’s work practices: the casualisation 
of  labour;42 employment as a springboard to personal entrepreneurship 
(every short-term employee is, regardless of  their prior socio-economic 
status, potentially the next Bjarke Ingels, Jeanne Gang, or Joshua Prince-
Ramus); and the value of  experience in the firm as a form of  education 
(implicitly justifying low compensation). The nature of  OMA’s design 
method, in which many non-linear directions are explored and physical-
model options generated—almost as if  a process of  emergence were 
being set in motion out of  multiplicity—is evidently inextricably tied 
to high demands on low-cost labour (of  which there has been a reliable 
supply, given the practice’s ties to academies). Thus an understanding of  
OMA’s approach to design would seem to necessitate attention to this 
relationship to labour. Such a situation might even have been considered 
from the Actor Network Theory (ANT) perspective as worthy of  study 



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as a controversy in itself: “Design,” after all, “has 
a proactive power to incite public controversies 
over thorny issues and generate social effects.”43 
But in the case of  OMA’s labour practices, these 
opportunities appear not to have been taken up.

ETHICS AND AGENCY, CRITIQUE AND DESCRIPTION

Why might this ethnographic study have 
overlooked or de-emphasised these aspects of  
human relations at OMA? What are the constraints 
on this project of  philosophical anthropology? Is the 
Latourian approach inherently unable to tackle such 
a topic, or are there affordances 
that could adjust its scope? 
Variations in interpretations 
of  that method’s assumptions 
suggest that it has versions that 
are more or less circumscribed. 
Greater circumscription does not 
appear to result from an inherent 
limitation of  pragmatist ethics 
per se, which after all seeks to 
adapt its practices on the basis 
of  experience, unless one equates 
pragmatism in this instance with a 
cynical realism, in the Sloterdijkian 
sense,44 on Koolhaas’ part (a 
valid concern, given Latour’s 
enthusiasm for Sloterdijk as a 
philosopher of  design).45 Latour’s 
ethics, construed by Gabriel 
Hankins in the context of  
literature, occurs in the “nonmodern” condition, 
where nature, society and culture no longer exhibit 
the categorical distinctions presumed in the 
Modern. “Action,” observes Hankins, “becomes 
distributed between actants [human and non-
human] that coproduce the action rather than 
figured as a subject acting on its object.”46 He quotes 
Latour:  “An ‘actor’ in the hyphenated expression 

FIGURE 4: WBYA PROPOSED REVI-

SIONS TO AIA CODE OF ETHICS P.1



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actor-network is not the source of  an action but the moving target of  
a vast array of  entities swarming towards it.”47 “A Latourian account,” 
continues Hankins, “remains uncertain as to location of  agency.”48

Such a situation, and the emphasis on description over explanation, 
has led to the charge for ANT of  descriptivism. Whittle and Spicer assert 
that:

by producing descriptions of  existing networks of  actors in an apparently neutral, 
apolitical manner, ANT actually reinforces the state of  affairs that it describes. 
Indeed, Law (2003) recognizes the possibility that ANT simply reproduces 
rather than challenges the hegemony of  the networks they describe. […] ANT 
remains indifferent about the specific means through which power is established 
(Amsterdamska, 1990).  For instance, coercion, corruption and intimidation 
are not distinguished on any normative basis from persuasion, negotiation and 
reward. […] ANT brings with it a tendency to legitimize hegemonic power 
relations, ignore relations of  oppression, and sidestep any normative assessment 
of  existing organizational forms.49

In an essay published in 2004, Latour famously asked, “Why Has Critique 
Run out of  Steam?”50 His purpose was to distinguish the methods he 
was propounding from those of  critical theory, which he felt had fallen 
prey to popularization and misapplication. Extending this position in a 
debate of  2011 with Neil Brenner and others over the methods of  urban 
studies, Ignacio Farías emphasizes inquiry as ANT’s “style of  cognitive 
engagement,” as distinct from critique. He acknowledges Brenner et al.’s 
charge that assemblage-based urban studies risk a “naïve positivism” 
and ideological affirmation of  current conditions, but seeks to argue 
against that charge. “Three methodological principles,” observes Farías, 
“summarize [ANT’s] commitment to the empirical: ‘follow the actors, 
forget the contexts’, ‘describe, don’t explain’ and ‘do not switch conceptual 
repertoires when you describe’.”51 

The world is not all in, […] it is in the making. […] The most obvious 
consequence of  this ontology is that it involves accounting for all actual entities 
involved in such processes of  construction, whether human or nonhuman, their 
interactions and transformations. The most important consequence […] is that 
the notion of  assemblage involves no outside, no exteriority. […] Assemblages 
are self-contained processes of  heterogeneous associations calling for a positive 
description of  their becoming, not external explanations.52

Here, journalist Sander Pleij’s interviews in his 2014 article “Who is Rem 
Koolhaas” affirm the connections. Koolhaas remarks: “But being critical 
is the basis of  it all, I think that in the last 25 years the critical from outside 



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is no longer existent. Just like Žižek, Latour and all 
those other ones are declaring. You can’t look at it 
from the outside.”53

Farías, however, continues:  “Precisely 
because asymmetry is not presumed and explained 
structurally or contextually, the study of  urban 
assemblages involves unveiling the actual practices, 
processes, sociomaterial orderings, reproducing 
asymmetries in the distribution of  resources, of  
power and of  agency capacities, opening up black-
boxed arrangements.”54

By contrast with Farías’ qualification, Yaneva 
asserts that her “intentions were humble: I did 
not try to explain the OMA practice or Koolhaas’s 
approach […] [I had] the pure purpose of  generating 
infra-reflexive descriptions of  invention which 
would keep the freshness of  design experiences […] 
far from the reach of  the prevailing meta-reflexive 
theories of  design. […] I simply described various 
design practices without sticking to references 
outside architecture.”55

ARCHITECTURAL “LABOUR IN THE MAKING”: CONCLUSIONS AND OPENINGS

In her “Introduction” to The Making of  a Building, 
Yaneva notes that “I have deliberately chosen not to 
discuss Koolhaas’s early works and his theoretical 
and philosophical thinking […] as this can bias 
my description of  the design process at OMA.”56 
This is in keeping with Yaneva’s interpretation of  
the descriptive approach, but carries certain risks. 
In its 1978 project for the extension of  the Dutch 
Parliament in the Hague, OMA had proposed a 
generously equipped chamber for what they saw 
as the characteristic “orgies of  speech” of  Dutch 
politics, but down the hall had also provided a 
“smoke-filled room”—Miesian in its aesthetic—
where the actual decisions would be made. The 
ironic tone of  this contrast occurs innumerable 
times in OMA’s work, suggestive of  Koolhaas’s 

“Why Has 
Critique Run out 

of Steam?”

“
”



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cynical realism about transparency and democracy and, later, of  his 
equivocal embrace of  authoritarian clients (for example, China’s CCTV). In 
the context of  this paper, metaphorically the Hague Parliament’s debating 
chamber embodies the public presentation of  OMA’s intentions and 
values; the smoke-filled room, its actual internal practices. In the latter we 
find the “black-boxed arrangements” of  Farías’s analysis. In this instance, 
has the smoke prevented the black box of  labour ethics from being 
opened up? “Give Me a Gun and I will Make All Buildings Move,” wrote 
Latour and Yaneva in 2008; for all the benefits of  this idea, one would not 
want to think that the gun was adding to the smoke in the metaphorical 
room. OMA, after all, in its daily practices had been able to implement, by 
the early 2000s, the neoliberal corporation’s wildest dreams: an unending 
supply of  short-term contract labour, entirely flexible, eager to work up to 
24 hours a day, seven days a week for minimal fixed salary, self-unorganised 
and self-policing, readily pitched into predatory competition, abnegating 
any expectations of  structured career advancement, enthusiastic about 
unrelenting stress as the normal state of  affairs, with work-life balance a 
non-issue, and conveniently departing when burnt out, before the right 
to an unlimited contract would kick in. Are not the staff ’s acceptance of  
this situation—its relationship to their sense of  disciplinary belonging and 
“chops”—and its fundamental role in OMA’s disciplinary reputation and 
success also vital circulating components of  the actor network in play?

There may be at least four reasons that these studies of  OMA do 
not tackle the issues of  architectural “labour in the making.” First, in the 
ethnographic project, the studies may have encountered a twin hazard for 
anthropologists: becoming too close to their subjects and yet, in other 
respects, not close enough. There is a sense of  identification with the 
practice, and not only through the daily intimacy with their studio activities 
and thoughts: the design of  the book Made by OMA (presumably the work 
of  an actor network of  which the author was a part) also pays a conspicuous 
homage, in its use of  a sequence of  quasi-cinematic images on its opening 
pages, to those of  SMLXL, the 1995 bible of  OMA’s practice to that date. 
Latour was a contributor to the 2006 Domus d’Autore volume on “AMO 
Post-Occupancy,” edited by Koolhaas and AMO, the research arm of  
OMA.57 OMA was a participant in the 2005 exhibition “Making Things 
Public,” curated by Latour (with Peter Weibel) at the ZKM Karlsruhe, and 
Latour has been an apologist, enthusiast, and kindred intellectual spirit for 
Koolhaas in interviews.58

Farías and Wilkie, in their Introduction to Studio Studies, make a series 
of  observations relevant to the larger implications of  this first reason and 



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those that follow. The intimacy of  studio life, they 
assert, means that ethnographers “almost inevitably 
cannot restrain themselves from becoming ‘native’ 
members of  studio collectives and thus actively 
involved in creation processes.”59 We may observe 
that the countervailing need to “come home” 
periodically is thus made more difficult, in spite 
of—or perhaps also because of—the fact that the 
researcher’s grant, academic contract, or salary 
enables them to maintain a certain immunity to 
the coercions of  studio employment. If  we may 
propose here a possible extension of  the OMA 
study, what might be needed is a periodic process 
of  more sustained auto-ethnographic reflection on 
the researcher’s own enthusiasm for the culture of  
the studio.

Second, in the methodological project, there is 
the resistance to “external” perspectives and values, 
in which labour ethics may have been implicitly 
and a priori defined as outside. Yaneva takes pains, 
particularly in The Making of  a Building, to distinguish 
her pragmatist approach from that of  critical 
sociology and theory, which would be “to mobilize 
and evoke ideas from outside architecture to interpret 
design and reveal a myriad of  hidden meanings and 
mechanisms of  architectural practices.”60

Here, Farías and Wilkie’s remarks indicate that 
this resistance is indeed characteristic of  the larger 
Latourian and ANT projects. In their literature 
review, Farías and Wilkie touch on the issue of  
labour, but appear to distance their research program 
from it, both as a concern of  “critical” scholars and 
as a condition (they imply) not manifested in the 
day-to-day practices of  the studio itself:

In examining the political economy of  creative 
labour, critical scholars (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 
2010) have pointed to the market and institutional 
arrangements that allow firms in the media and 
cultural sector to extract the surplus value of  creative 
work, such as exploiting unpaid labour time. […] 



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As such, the social and cultural sciences overlook the very settings where the 
products of  the creative industries are brought into being by focusing on the … 
inter-institutional conditions in which creativity is achieved.61

Earlier sociologists such as Richard Petersons, Pierre Bourdieu and 
Howard Becker dwelt, Farías and Wilkie note, on the “broader’ social, 
industrial and institutional contexts” of  cultural production. Against this 
approach, they invoke Antoine Hennion’s charge that it “only attempted 
the study of  milieu, professions, institutions, markets, policies–that is, 
everything ‘around’ the object itself.”62 This categorical exclusion of  
“institutional contexts” from studio studies63 seems, however, at odds with 
Farías’ own earlier confidence (cited above) that ANT-derived methods do 
enable foregrounding of  “the asymmetries of  distribution […] of  power 
and of  agency capacities [and] opening up black-boxed arrangements,” 
which seem entirely worthy goals.64

Third, in the epistemological project, there is an evident parallel 
exclusion of  the context of  the socialization of  architects into 
generationally reproductive labour practices. Yet as Yaneva herself  
observes, “For me, the ‘apprentice’ in architecture […] [t]he rhythm of  
the office tamed me at the end to the extent that I became ‘trained by the 
field’ and began, up to a certain point, to think and act like an architect.”65  
But “[t]he protagonists of  my story were always quicker than me […] 
and always spent more time working overnight.”66 Even so, “[my] routine 
of  interview and observations followed by transcription was loading my 
fieldwork weeks in such an intensive way that I was literally living in the 
office.”67 Thus in her own “apprenticeship,” Yaneva herself  reproduces, 
albeit initially by choice, the labour practices of  her subjects. Her overall 
approach is “inspired by William James’s project of  radical empiricism. 
[…] Empirical would mean to be faithful to what is given to experience and 
the numerous connections that are revealed in it. […] Such an approach 
to architecture consists in investigating the architectural culture and the 
practices of  designers rather than their theories and their ideologies.”68 
However, reflexive analysis of  that experienced process of  reproduction 
does not appear to figure in this empirical investigation of  OMA’s culture 
of  “voluntary prisoners of  architecture” and the connections potentially 
revealed within. Could we then imagine the project being extended such 
that the researcher arranges to “follow the actors” further, to accompany 
the staff  home (when they do go home); when they quit, are terminated 
or their contracts expire; or when they attempt to deal with the rest of  
life? Farías and Wilkie acknowledge, after all, that in the laboratory studies 
that they take as initial inspiration for studio ethnography, “equal attention 



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is paid to all the activities undertaken by scientists 
and lab technicians, whether routine informal talk, 
strategic career decisions, or fact-making efforts. All 
such practices are considered part of  knowledge-
making processes.”69

Fourth, in the ontological project,70 the drive to 
ascribe agency to non-human actors (in this case, 
the blue foam models) may diminish perception 
of  the agency of  human actors. The junior staff, 
though identified in the “Acknowledgements” 
of  The Making of  a Building, appear by first name 
only in the “short stories” that form the chapters 
of  Made by OMA (an exemplification of  Latour’s 
early advocacy of  story-telling as an alternative to 
explanation); some of  the female architectural staff  
are there described as “girls”; and design is presented 
as a form of  play that generates its own rewards. 
This can have the unfortunate effect of  a kind of  
infantilisation of  those most affected by the firm’s 
working conditions. Again, the broad ambition to 
describe “distributed creation processes” in the 
studio ensemble is shared by others coming from 
a similar intellectual formation: Farías and Wilkie 
assert that “the notion of  studio life […] designates 
a vitality: a generative capacity that inheres in the 
human-material arrangements and circulations 
taking place in studios and converging in the 
creation of  new cultural artefacts.”71 Such a vitalist 
narrative of  creativity can sometimes obscure, 
though, the possibility that the studio organism is 
self-devouring.

“a kind of 
infantilisation 
of those most 

affected by 
the firm’s 

working 
conditions”

“

”



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the organizers of  the original conference “The Human in 
Architecture and Philosophy” for the invaluable opportunity to develop this 
paper in the context of  that event, and for their patience; and the editors, 
reviewers and my fellow conference participants for their constructive 
comments. I also thank my graduate research assistants Bahareh Javadi 
and particularly Kekeli Dawes and Jonathan House for their enthusiastic 
contributions to the primary documentary research for this paper.

ENDNOTES

[1] Observations by the author.

[2] “OMA*AMO ARCHITECTURE Reviews,” Glassdoor, https://
www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/OMA-AMO-ARCHITECTURE-
Reviews-E429120.htm, accessed January 31, 2016. From an informal 
survey of  employee reviews published on Glassdoor of  practices such 
as Zaha Hadid Architects, ShoP, Foster + Partners, Bjarke Ingels Group, 
Heatherwick, DS+A, Mecanoo, MVRDV, Asymptote, Steven Holl, Gehry 
Partners, Morphosis, Jean Nouvel, etc. Recurring complaints include long 
hours, chronic understaffing of  projects, poor pay, unpaid overtime, poor 
work-life balance, inadequate professional development or advancement 
opportunities, junior staff  treated as replaceable, limited technical depth 
among the long-term staff, predatory internal competition promoted 
by the firm’s culture, unskilled and bullying but inequitably rewarded 
management.

[3] See, for example, “Migrant Workers’ Rights on Saadiyat Island in the 
United Arab Emirates,” Human Rights Watch, published 2015, accessed 
February 18, 2015, hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/uae0215_
ForUploadR.pdf. See also “What can architects do about workers’ rights 
in the Gulf?,” Icon, published March 26, 2015, accessed May 21, 2015, 
iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/11715-what.

[4] See, for example, Bruno Latour, “A Cautious Prometheus? A Few 
Steps Toward a Philosophy of  Design (with Special Attention to Peter 
Sloterdijk),” keynote lecture for the Networks of  Design meeting of  the Design 
History Society, Falmouth, Cornwall, September 3, 2008, http://www.
bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/112-DESIGN-CORNWALL-GB.pdf.

[5] Ariane Lourie Harrison, “Latour and Yaneva: an ANT’s view of  
Architecture,” in Architectural Theories of  the Environment: Posthuman Territories, 
ed. Harrison (New York: Routledge, 2013), 107-8.



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[6] Bruno Latour and Albena Yaneva, “‘Give Me A Gun and I Will Make 
All Buildings Move’: An ANT’s View of  Architecture,” in Explorations in 
Architecture: Teaching, Design, Research, ed. Reto Geiser (Basel: Birkhäuser, 
2008), 86.

[7] Latour, “A Cautious Prometheus?,” 13.

[8] Latour and Yaneva, “‘Give Me A Gun,’” 80.

[9] Ibid., 86-88.

[10] Albena Yaneva, Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An 
Ethnography of  Design (Rotterdam:  010, 2009), 104. Indeed, Latour comments 
disparagingly on architectural theory in general in Rania Ghosn, El Hadi 
Jazairy, and Stephen Ramos, “The Space of  Controversies: An Interview 
with Bruno Latour,” New Geographies 0 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard GSD, 
2008), 122–135.

[11] Olga Amsterdamska, “Surely You Are Joking, Monsieur Latour!,” Science, 
Technology, and Human Values 15, 4 (Autumn 1990), 495-504; Sal Restivo, 
“Politics of  Latour,” review essay, Organization and Environment 8, 1 (March 
2005), 111-115.

[12] Yaneva, Made by OMA, 72.

[13] Yaneva, Made by OMA, 43.

[14] Albena Yaneva, The Making of  a Building:  A Pragmatist Approach to 
Architecture (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 38.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Yaneva, Made by OMA, 89.

[17] Yaneva, Made by OMA, 58.

[18] Yaneva, Made by OMA, 84-85.

[19] Thomas Fisher, “Patterns of  Exploitation,” Progressive Architecture (May 
1991), 9.

[20] Patrick Monaghan, “The ‘Insane Little Bubble of  Nonreality’ That Is 
Life for Architecture Students,” The Chronicle of  Higher Education (June 2001); 
and Jody Temkin, “For would-be architects, grad school like boot camp,” The 
Chicago Tribune, January 6, 2002.

[21] Aaron Koch et al., The Redesign of  Studio Culture: A Report of  the AIAS 
Studio Culture Task Force (Washington, DC: American Institute of  Architecture 
Students, 2002).

[22] See, for example, “Mental Health Reports 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16,” 



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Graduate Architecture Landscape and Design Student Union, University of  
Toronto, http://www.galdsu.ca/Mental-Health-Report-2013-2014. See 
also, Richard Waite and Ella Braidwood, “Mental health problems exposed 
by AJ Student Survey 2016,” Architects’ Journal 243, 16 (July 28, 2016), n.p. 
See also, Leah Sottile, “The AEC Industry’s Deadly Problem,” Architecture, 
August 31, 2016.

[23] Philipp Oswalt and Matthias Hollwich, “OMA at work,” trans. Fiona 
Greenwood, Archis 7 (1998), n.p. Also available at Philipp Oswalt and 
Matthias Hollwich, “OMA at work,” trans. Fiona Greenwood, Volume 
Project, http://volumeproject.org/oma-at-work/. Also available at Philipp 
Oswalt and Matthias Hollwich, “OMA at work,” trans. Fiona Greenwood, 
Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, http://www.cloud-cuckoo.net/openarchive/wolke/
eng/Subjects/991/Oswalt/oswalt.html.

[24] And perhaps, given the hindsight now available, Koolhaas’s reported 
semi-retirement to Switzerland; which would tend to confirm that the 
strictures of  inadequate fees have not been evenly distributed across the 
hierarchy of  the office.

[25] The phrase is Koolhaas’s, from his widely published Architectural 
Association student thesis project Exodus. See Rem Koolhaas and Elia 
Zenghelis, “Exodus: or the Voluntary Prisoners of  Architecture,” The 
White Slave, 1972, https://thewhiteslave.wordpress.com/2013/07/04/
exodus-or-the-voluntary-prisoners-of-architecture/#jp-carousel-333.

[26] Oswalt and Hollwich, “OMA at work,” n.p.

[27] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 24.

[28] Peggy Deamer, ed., The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative 
Class and the Politics of  Design (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).

[29] Andrew Ross, ed. [for Gulf  Labor], The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor 
(New York: OR Books, 2015).

[30] Who Builds Your Architecture?, http://whobuilds.org/.

[31] Joan Ockman, “Foreword”, in The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, 
the Creative Class and the Politics of  Design, ed. Deamer (London: Bloomsbury 
Academic, 2015), xxi-xxii.

[32] Albena Yaneva, “Abstract,” for Made by the Office for Metropolitan 
Architecture: An Ethnography of  Design (Rotterdam:  010, 2009), the University 
of  Manchester Library, available at https://www.escholar.manchester.
ac.uk/uk-ac-man-scw:87450.

[33] Manuel Schvartzberg, “Foucault’s ‘Environmental’ Power: Architecture 



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and Neoliberal Subjectivization,” in The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, 
the Creative Class and the Politics of  Design, ed. Deamer (London: Bloomsbury 
Academic, 2015), 189-90.

[34] Dariel Cobb, “Dispatches from MIT: Becoming Political,” in Asymmetric 
Labors: The Economy of  Architecture in Theory and Practice, eds. Aaron Cayer, 
Peggy Deamer et al. (Brooklyn, NY: The Architecture Lobby, 2016), 147.

[35] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 198 n. 4, from Bruno Latour, “When 
Things Strike Back: a Possible Contribution of  Science Studies to the Social 
Sciences,” British Journal of  Sociology 51, 105-23.

[36] Oswalt and Hollwich, “OMA at work,” n.p.

[37] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 32 n. 34.

[38] Fenna Haakma Wagenaar, “Astorology: Protect us from what we want,” 
in Content, ed. Rem Koolhaas et al. (Köln: Taschen, 2004), 204.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Angela McRobbie, “Is Passionate Work a Neoliberal Delusion?,” 
Transformation, published April 22, 2015, accessed July 19, 2016, https://
www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/angela-mcrobbie/is-passionate-
work-neoliberal-delusion. See also Angela McRobbie, Be Creative: Making a 
Living in the New Culture Industries (London: Polity Press, 2015).

[41] William Wiles, “Inside OMA,” Icon, published September 30, 2011, 
https://www.iconeye.com/architecture/features/item/9554-inside-oma.

[42] In Dutch employment law, three years has been the maximum total 
duration of  fixed-term employment contracts, beyond which further 
employment would automatically be for an unlimited term. See Expat Survival 
Guide 2014 (Haarlem: Expatica, 2013), 60.

[43] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 199.  But see also Albena Yaneva, 
Mapping Controversies in Architecture (Farnham, UK:  Ashgate, 2012).

[44] See Kazys Varnelis, “‘We Cannot Not Know History’: Philip Johnson’s 
Politics and Cynical Survival,” Journal of  Architectural Education 49:2 (November 
1995), 92-104. As Varnelis observes, “The modern cynic understands what 
false consciousness is, Sloterdijk explains, but uses that knowledge to pull a 
fast one. Acting fundamentally in their own self-interest, cynics ‘see to it that 
they are not taken for suckers.’” Quotation from Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of  
Cynical Reason (Minneapolis:  University of  Minnesota Press, 1987), 5, quoted 
in Varnelis, “‘We Cannot Not Know History,’” 101.

[45] See Latour, “A Cautious Prometheus?” See also Bruno Latour, “Spheres 



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and Networks: Two Ways to Interpret Globalization,” Harvard Design 
Magazine 30 (Spring/Summer 2009), 138-44.

[46] Gabriel Hankins, “The Objects of  Ethics: Rilke and Woolf  with 
Latour,” Twentieth-Century Literature 61:3 (September 2015), 333.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid. Latour, ever the agile guru in his “On Recalling ANT” essay of  
1999, acknowledged concerns about moral issues, while not appearing to 
respond fully to them. See Bruno Latour, “On Recalling ANT,” in Actor-
Network Theory and After, eds. J. Law and J. Hassard (Oxford: Blackwell, 
1999), 15-25.

[49] Andrea Whittle and André Spicer, “Is Actor Network Theory 
Critique?,” Organization Studies 29:04 (2008), 622-623.

[50] Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of  Steam? From Matters 
of  Fact to Matters of  Concern,” Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter 2004), 225-248.

[51] Ignacio Farías, “The politics of  urban assemblages,” CITY 15:3-4 
(June-August 2011), 367.

[52] Farías, “The politics of  urban assemblages,” 369-70.

[53] Sander Pleij, “I hate being an architect,” Medium, published June 8, 
2014, accessed December 1, 2015, https://medium.com/@pleij/i-hate-
being-an-architect-7c42abbcd6d#.b7v4rvms2.

[54] Farías, “The Politics of  Urban Assemblages,” 369-370.

[55] Yaneva, Made by OMA, 100-101.

[56] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 26 n. 29.

[57] Rem Koolhaas and AMO, “AMO Post-Occupancy,” Domus d’Autore 
series, 2006.

[58] María J. Prieto and Elise S. Youn, “Interview with Bruno Latour: 
Decoding the Collective Experiment,” agglutinations, published July 5, 2004, 
accessed October 30, 2016, http://agglutinations.com/archives/000040.
html.

[59] Ignacio Farías and Alex Wilkie, “Studio Studies: Notes for a Research 
Program,” Studio Studies: Operations, Topologies, Displacements (Abingdon:  
Routledge, 2015), 9.

[60] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 25-26.

[61] Farías and Wilkie, “Studio Studies,” 3. The internal reference is to 
David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker, Creative labour: Media Work in three 



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Cultural Industries (Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2010).

[62] Antoine Hennion, “An Intermediary Between Production and 
Consumption: The Producer of  Popular Music,” Science, Technology and Human 
Values 14:4 (1989), 401, cited in Farías and Wilkie, “Studio Studies.”

[63] As a further example, the ethnographic studies by Sophie Houdart of  
image production in the architectural studio of  Kengo Kuma also appear 
to eschew the topic of  labour conditions. See Sophie Houdart, “Copying, 
Cutting and Pasting Social Spheres: Computer Designers’ Participation in 
Architectural Projects,” Science Studies 21:1 (2008), 47-63.

[64] Sophie Houdart, “Multiple Ways of  Being Real: The Representations in 
Perspective in the Architectural Project,” Land 46 (2006), 107-122.

[65] Yaneva, The Making of  a Building, 34-35.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Ibid., 196-197.

[69] Farías and Wilkie, “Studio Studies,” 4. As a further possibility for future 
research, one might also propose a comparative ethnographic study of  at least 
Herzog & de Meuron’s practice, whose design techniques have resembled 
OMA’s (including blue foam models), but whose working environment is 
seen—at least by their OMA collaborators in Content—as quite different.

[70] Here I refer to the Latourian concern, in propounding the notion of  
the complex and contested Thing, to move beyond distinctions between 
objective and subjective agencies in order to acknowledge the active role of  
inanimate entities in actor networks. See also, for a more extended discussion 
of  the topic, Pauline Lefebvre, “From Autonomy to Pragmatism: Objects 
Made Moral,” ArchitecturePhilosophy 2:1 (2016), 23-37.

[71] Farías and Wilkie, “Studio Studies,” 6.





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Ut Architectura Philosophia?
Questioning the Relationship of 
Architecture and Philosophy
 

Karsten  Harries

1 

This conference has been organized by the 
International Society for the Philosophy of  Architecture. 
Our topic is “The Human in Architecture and 
Philosophy.” It raises the question: just what is the 
relationship between philosophy and architecture? 
What do they have to contribute to each other? What 
does architecture have to contribute to philosophy? 
And what does philosophy have to contribute to 
architecture? I shall return to both questions. That 
both are concerned with the human, with the ways 
human beings relate or should relate to each other 
and to the world that environs them seems obvious 
enough. In that sense both would seem to have an 
ethical significance. And both would seem to engage 
in work of  construction, work that presupposes 
some sort of  space, the space of  everyday life in 
the case of  architecture, a spiritual or logical space 
in the case of  philosophy. Philosophers have thus 
frequently invoked architectural metaphors, have 
liked to speak of  laying foundations, of  raising 
conceptual edifices, of  the architectonics of  some 
philosophical system. Think of  Descartes, who 
likened himself  to an architect, his philosophy 
to a chapel raised on firm foundations. But what 
work do such metaphors really do? Are they not at 
bottom dispensable? 

Yet especially in recent years it has once again 
become fashionable to think the philosopher in the 
image of  the architect, if  now often in a critical 

just 
what is the 

relationship 
between 

philosophy and 
architecture?

“

”



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key, to think of  him as a would-be builder, someone who seeks to edify. 
The very word “edify” should make us think: once it meant simply to 
raise a dwelling or structure, later it came to mean “to improve morally or 
spiritually” — Kierkegaard thus wrote edifying discourses — but today it 
tends to carry a negative connotation: philosophers should not attempt to 
be edifying. 

That shift in meaning invites attention. The word “edify” thus invites 
us to think about recent attacks on both traditional architecture and system-
building philosophy: What, for example are we to make of  invocations 
of  Georges Bataille’s stance against architecture, where architecture, 
both material and spiritual, stands for an order that by assigning us our 
place threatens to imprison us and should be destroyed, even if  such 
destruction threatens chaos? The kind of  thinking that here makes the 
prison the paradigmatic work of  architecture, a kind of  lens through 
which to look at all architecture, is of  the sort that lets Dostoevsky’s Man 
from the Underground call twice-two-makes-four a piece of  impudence 
and celebrate twice-two-makes-five as the ultimate refuge of  a freedom 
that, resisting placement, dreams of  labyrinth and chaos. Was Nietzsche 
perhaps right to claim that “If  we willed and dared an architecture 
according to the kind of  souls we possess (for that we are too cowardly!) 
the labyrinth would have to be our model”?1 Consider, for example, the 
influential exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture, curated by Mark Wigley 
und Philip Johnson in 1988. The catalogue spoke of  the emergence of  
a new sensibility, fascinated by possibilities of  contaminating, disrupting, 
violating, subverting architecture. That sensibility led to an architecture 
that self-consciously calls traditional architecture into question, that is to 
say, an anti-architecture, which in today’s architecture world, both in theory 
and practice, has played a significant role in the work of  Frank Gehry, 
Zaha Hadid, Peter Eisenman, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Kohlhaas, and Coop 
Himmelb(l)au, the architects celebrated by that exhibition. Although 
perhaps claiming something like an ethical significance, such attacks on 
architecture as traditionally understood are also attacks on ethics in its 
usual sense, which does seek to edify, i.e. to raise a spiritual architecture 
that would help human beings find their proper place. Freedom resists 
such placement. But should every spiritual architecture that would thus 
place us be challenged? 

What, for example, are we to make of  the vogue enjoyed by the word 
“deconstruction” and all it stands for, the word itself  an architectural 
metaphor of  sorts, embraced not just by philosophers and literary critics, 
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come to expect from architecture, a practice that in 
extreme cases has led to attempts to blur what would 
seem to separate so obviously the philosopher 
from the architect: I am thinking especially, but 
not only, of  Derrida’s collaboration with Bernard 
Tschumi and Peter Eisenman, a collaboration that 
threatened to make of  deconstructive discourse a 
strangely cerebral kind of  architectural ornament. 

But does architecture, taken in its usual sense, 
really belong with ethics in that it, too, has by its 
very nature an ethical function, seeking to help 
orient individuals by providing more than just 
physical shelter, by interpreting their place in the 
world, especially in the community, the polis? Or is 
just this understanding of  architecture as having as 
a central task the representation of  a community’s 
shared values or divinities something that we 
moderns, who in so many ways have left behind the 
ancient polis, should resist as incompatible with the 
world we live in, with the values that inform it, first 
of  all with the value placed on the individual and on 
freedom? That was the charge Mark Lilla directed 
against my The Ethical Function of  Architecture: “It 
never seems to occur to Harries that modern 
society is not re-presented in modern architecture 
for the simple reason that it is un-representable. 
That, indeed, was the point, or at least the result of  
the revolution in modern politics.”2 This criticism 
claims that the ethical function of  architecture, 
as I presented it in that book, lies behind those 
who are truly of  this modern age. And if  such an 
ethical, and this means inevitably also a political 
function, was indeed, as Hegel thought, once part 
of  the very essence of  architecture in what he took 
to be its highest sense, must we who are truly of  
today not resist all such architecture, which, when 
attempts are made to realize it in this modern 
age, invites disaster: think of  the architecture of  
totalitarian governments, say of  the architecture of  
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transform Munich’s Königsplatz into a worthy setting of  a new national 
cult. The buildings that provided this cult with a stage were then widely 
celebrated as an enormous success, applauded by the party ideologue 
Alfred Rosenberg as “the first attempt to realize the ancient Greek 
ideal” and praised by the architectural critic Wilhelm Lotz for showing 
for the first time in the modern age that “a deeper meaning can dwell in 
a city-square” as long as it has its origin in a spiritual principle and not 
in a desire for aesthetic variety in the built-environment or in a merely 
decorative intention. We should note the rejection of  an architecture that 
would be no more than an aesthetic dressing up of  functional buildings. 
The transformation of  the Königsplatz was supposed to have shown 
that it was still possible to create an architecture that emerges from inner 
principles of  dedication and value instead of  being derived from external 
contingencies of  use.3 Did architecture here not achieve that repetition of  
the Greek in the modern of  which Nietzsche and also Heidegger in The 
Origin of  the World of  Art dreamed? It is more than an historical accident 
that Heidegger first gave this lecture on November 13, 1935, just four days 
before Hitler was to give in Munich a powerful demonstration of  what 
such a repetition of  the Greek in the modern might mean in the 20th 
century.4 This unhappy conjunction needs to be confronted by anyone 
who, drawing on Heidegger, wants to claim, as I do, an ethical function 
for architecture. Has Walter Benjamin not taught us to associate such an 
aestheticized politics with fascism—and with kitsch and bad faith, with 
The Myth of  the Twentieth Century? 

Countering Mark Lilla’s claim that modern society is not re-presented 
in modern architecture because it is un-representable, I want to insist 
that buildings cannot but re-present the ethos presiding over their 
construction. But that ethos all too often invites critique. Despite a stream 
of  mostly positive, but sometimes also critical responses, I have not seen 
a need to change my position in any fundamental way. But circumstances 
have changed; the world has changed, demanding a reconsideration of  
aspects of  some of  the central issues that I neglected. More especially, the 
way we today relate to space has changed and continues to change. Two 
developments here seem to me to be particularly significant. 

One is the way an ever developing technology, and today especially 
the digital revolution, have opened up our everyday existence in ways that 
will continue to change our lives in ways we cannot quite foresee. We are 
open today to the world, to the universe, and to imaginary, virtual spaces 
as never before. This revolution has transformed the way architects do 
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distance, place, and space, and inseparable from it, 
our way of  life, our sense of  freedom, and that is 
to say also our way of  dwelling, which should have 
consequences for our way of  building. 

The other, in a sense opposite, but perhaps 
even more important way in which our world is 
changing has to do with the way the inevitably 
limited resources provided by this small planet have 
to collide with a still increasing humanity and its ever 
increasing demands for a higher standard of  living. 
Not just air and water, even space is becoming an 
ever scarcer, and all too often contested resource. 
Much that gets built today wastes space in ways that 
I find irresponsible. 

These developments call for a reconsideration 
of  what I had worked out in The Ethical Function of  
Architecture. 

2

Let me return to the suggestion that the 
philosopher and the architect are both builders, 
to be sure, using very different media. Just how is 
the bond between architecture and philosophy to 
be understood? Hence the title of  my lecture with 
its question mark: Ut architectura philosophia? The 
Latin obviously makes reference to the Horatian 
Ut pictura poesis, “as is painting so is poetry.” Poetry 
here is said to be like painting in that it, too, 
represents reality. Painting, to be sure, addresses 
itself  to the eye, relying on visible figures, poetry 
to the ear, relying on words. The Horatian dictum 
was thus famously called into question by Lessing 
in his Laocoon. Lessing insisted on the gulf  that 
separates eye and ear, percept and concept, arts 
of  space and arts of  time. And should the kind 
of  considerations advanced by Lessing not call 
into question even more decisively any attempt to 
obscure what so obviously would seem to separate 

buildings 
cannot but 

re-present the 
ethos presiding 

over their 
construction. 

“

”



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the architect who deals with matter from the philosopher who works with 
concepts, a distinction self-consciously blurred by some recent writing on 
architecture? Should they not call into question, to give just one example, 
a work such as Mark Wigley’s The Architecture of  Deconstruction: Derrida’s 
Haunt? 5 To be sure, philosophers like Kant or Descartes have liked to 
invoke architectural metaphors, have liked to speak of  laying foundations, 
of  raising conceptual edifices, of  the architectonics of  some philosophical 
system. But, to repeat the question, are such metaphors not at bottom 
dispensable? Or is there indeed a deeper bond between the two that awaits 
adequate exploration?

The organizers of  this symposium, we are told, were inspired, by two 
observations and two questions:

1) Many architects, contemporary and historical, claim to focus on the 
needs of  human beings. The resulting architecture, however, often 
does not meet the needs and desires of  the people who live there. For 
whom should architecture actually build?

2) Architecture, traditionally, has played a negligible role in our 
philosophical understanding of  human beings (as also for our 
sociological, psychological, and other anthropological analyses). 
Although it has always been generally acknowledged that human 
beings need built dwelling places, more careful analysis of  this need 
is surely necessary. What does it say about human beings that they 
depend upon the buildings they construct for their own habitation?

The first observation points out that architecture often fails to meet 
the needs of  those whom it supposedly serves. It is impossible to disagree 
with that observation. But it raises the obvious question: just what are 
these needs and why should architecture so often have failed to meet 
them? A first, albeit all too reductive answer, is implied by an observation 
made by Adolf  Loos, who, many years ago standing before an Alpine lake-
side villa, thought that an architect who designs such a building ought to 
feel ashamed. Confronted by today’s macmansions, I share his sentiment:

Everything breathes beauty and peace. What’s this then? A false note disturbs 
this peace. Like an unnecessary screech: among the peasants’ houses, which were 
not made by them but by god, there is a villa. The work of  a good architect, or 
a bad one? I don’t know. I only know that peace, rest, and beauty have fled.

Before god there are neither good nor bad architects. In towns, in the realms of  
Beelzebub, there may be fine distinctions, as there are even in kinds of  crime. 
And I therefore ask: why is it that every architect, whether he is good or bad, 
harms the lake-side? 6



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Hyperbolically, invoking God and the devil, the 
atheist Loos here suggests that it is architecture itself  
that is the problem. His idealized peasant builder 
is thought as so in tune with his environment that 
his buildings have somewhat the same necessity as 
the shelters animals construct to protect themselves 
from an often hostile environment. This allows 
Loos to claim that his peasant houses were made, 
not by his peasants, but by God. They answer to 
and belong to their environment. Such houses 
do not strike us as the work of  some particular 
builder. Satisfying the needs they were meant to 
serve as best they could, they do not mean to be 
works of  art. Precisely that gives them their look 
of  inevitability. With the work of  the architect the 
city is said to invade the countryside, to destroy the 
harmony visible in the peasant houses, a harmony 
today equally visible, Loos thought, in the work 
of  the engineer, who, understanding his task, the 
available means, and the forces of  nature, is not 
concerned to create an aesthetic object.

Loos’ remark suggests that we should draw a 
distinction between the kind of  building that raised 
houses such as those built by his peasants and the 
work of  the engineer, on the one hand, and the 
work of  an architect, on the other. It is of  course 
possible to use the word architecture, as I have 
done so far in this lecture, in so broad a sense that it 
names simply the craft of  building, where building 
would cover a vast range of  different structures 
and approaches. The title of  this conference would 
seem to do so. But the distinction between mere 
building and architecture does seem to have an 
obvious sense. However we finally may want to 
draw it, we have no difficulty making sense of  the 
distinction Loos makes in the quoted passage. His 
peasants, like his engineers, are attuned to the order 
of  nature and thus in harmony with something 
that transcends them. Their buildings reflect this. 
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bad, other concerns enter. The city is said by Loos to invade nature, to 
violate it, where the city would seem to be understood by him here as a 
place of  artificial, unnecessary needs. At issue is the way human beings 
relate to their environment. Architecture, Loos suggests hyperbolically, 
answers to unnatural needs. We are reminded of  the way the Book of  
Genesis opposes the shepherd Abel to the city building Cain. A suspicion 
of  architecture has indeed attended reflections about architecture from 
the very beginning, inevitably tied to thoughts of  a mode of  dwelling 
that had gone astray. Think of  the Tower of  Babel. Behind and buried 
in Loos’s distinction between architecture and building lies the collision 
of  a theocentric and an anthropocentric conception of  proper human 
dwelling, which understood metaphorically, survives the death of  God. 

Related would seem to be the distinction that in that Darmstädter 
Gespräch in which Heidegger delivered his lecture “Building Dwelling 
Thinking” found expression in the collision of  Heidegger’s remarks, 
which bade the assembled architects learn from a Black Forest farmhouse 
of  the 18th century what kind of  building once allowed for an authentic 
dwelling, with those made by Ortega y Gasset. Were those who built 
Heidegger’s farmhouse really at home in their world, content with 
themselves and their world? Was this what Heidegger wanted to say? 
Ortega, at any rate, speaking at the same symposium, did not want to hear 
of  such contentment; and so he called our discontent “the highest thing 
the human being possesses, precisely because it is a discontent, because 
man wants to possess things that he never had.”7 And does this always 
wanting more, this striving for what is higher, not determine our essence? 
Is it not bound up with our reason, which has to assign to everything 
real a place in the logical space of  the possible and thus lets us ever again 
compare what happens to be our life-world with other possible worlds, 
whose temptations and promises seem to render the world to which we 
have become accustomed sadly deficient? Again and again human beings 
have demanded more. Our technology has its origin in such discontent. 
Such discontent bids us create a new world “because, as it is, our world 
does not fit us, because it has made us sick. This new world of  technology 
is like a gigantic orthopedic apparatus, that you [and here Ortega was 
addressing his audience, the architects present] want to create, and all this 
technology has this wonderful, but—as is the case with everything human 
— dramatic movement and quality, to be a fabulous, great orthopedic 
device”8 Is this then how architecture should be understood, as a gigantic 
orthopedic device?

I called the distinction between building and architecture helpful and 



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obvious. But how architecture is to be understood 
here remains in question. Just what is the need 
that architecture, as opposed to mere building, 
addresses? Consider the way Nikolaus Pevsner 
begins his An Outline of  European Architecture with this 
seemingly unproblematic observation: “A bicycle 
shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of  
architecture.” Pevsner interprets this distinction 
for us when he suggests that works of  architecture 
differ from functional buildings in that they are 
“designed with a view to aesthetic appeal.” Most 
works of  architecture are of  course also functional 
buildings. Accepting Pevsner’s distinction we can 
say: Work of  architecture = functional building + 
aesthetic component. On this view it would seem 
to be an aesthetic concern that raises the architect 
above the mere builder, that makes him an artist. 
Works of  architecture, so understood, are buildings 
built to be not just useful, but to have an aesthetic 
appeal. 

Loos suggests that it is precisely this aesthetic 
concern that gets in the way of  good building. 
And since philosophers have tended to discuss 
architecture as one of  the arts and the philosophy 
of  art has evolved as aesthetics, philosophy would 
seem to have contributed to bad building. Consider 
the way the novelist and philosopher William Gass 
praises Peter Eisenman’s House VI because it 
presents itself  to us as a convincing aesthetic object 
that pays no heed to practicality: “Thank God, I 
thought. This house has no concern for me and 
mine, over which it has no rights, but displays in 
every aspect and angle and fall of  light the concern 
for the nature and beauty of  building that is the 
architect’s trust and obligation.”9 Presupposed is 
that the architect’s primary task is that of  creating 
a beautiful object, as opposed to the mere builder 
who is concerned with more practical matters. 

But this opposition of  architecture to building 
raises a host of  questions: what needs does building, 

Loos 
suggests that 

it is precisely 
the aesthetic 
concern that 

gets in the 
way of good 

building. 

“

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so understood, address? There are some obvious answers such as the need 
to provide protection from an often hostile development or a suitable 
frame for certain activities. But do these needs exclude the beauty of  a 
building? What need does beauty address? And just how is beauty, and 
more especially the beauty of  a building to be understood? In opposition 
to the requirements of  everyday dwelling? The distinction between 
building and architecture begins to blur.

This returns us to the first question posed by the organizers of  this 
symposium: for whom does the architect build? What need does or should 
he address?

3

Even a brief  look at some familiar accounts of  the origin of  building, 
such as those of  Vitruvius, Hegel or Corbusier, is sufficient to make us 
question those who would claim that the needs that our building serves are 
so obvious that there is as little need for philosophical reflection as there 
is in the case of  the need for clothing. 

One aspect of  the Vitruvian account of  the origin of  architecture 
especially deserves our attention: when Vitruvius likens his first builders 
in their need for shelter to wild beasts, he also insists on what makes them 
different and he mentions first their “not being obliged to walk with faces 
to the ground, but upright and gazing upon the splendor of  the starry 
firmament.”10 How are we to understand this remark, which links human 
verticality to the firmament? What does the sight of  a splendor that the 
ancients thought essentially inaccessible, a permanent order open only 
to eye and spirit, beyond human reach, what does this vision of  cosmic 
permanence have to do with the origin of  building? 

I want to underscore Vitruvius’ emphasis on the verticality of  human 
being. To be sure, in sleep or death we return to earth-bound horizontality. 
But unlike the other animals, he points out, we are not obliged by our 
bodies “to walk with faces to the ground.” But if  the human animal is 
thus free to look up to the firmament, such freedom is more than a gift 
of  the upright body: “Nature had not only endowed the human race with 
senses like the rest of  the animals, but had also equipped their minds with 
the powers of  thought and understanding, thus putting all other animals 
under their sway.”11 The human body’s verticality signifies spirit. And such 
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gaze lets human beings raise themselves beyond the 
here and now, allows them to look up out of  their 
horizontal temporal condition, that circumscribes 
the lives of  the other animals, to the seemingly 
ageless order of  the firmament. 

Did the sublime spectacle of  the starry sky, 
which the ancients thought to be a perfect sphere, 
awaken the spirit sleeping in Vitruvius’s proto-
humans, somewhat as the snake’s promise, “you 
will be like God,” opened the eyes of  Adam and 
Eve? Did it awaken them at the same time to 
their own subjection to time, to their mortality, 
even as it allowed them to glimpse in the heaven’s 
unchanging order possibilities of  a more perfect, 
more spiritual dwelling? Is the task of  human 
building to carry something of  this promise into 
this death-shadowed world? Or did Vitruvius also 
associate “the splendor of  the starry firmament” 
with the light- and life-granting sun, the hearth 
of  the cosmos, being represented by the warmth-
giving hearth of  his primitive home? This much 
at any rate seems clear: by linking the origin of  
the first house to the awe-inspiring sight of  the 
inaccessible unchanging order of  the sky, Vitruvius 
places human building between animal shelter 
and the divinely ordered cosmos. The human 
being looks up to and measures himself  here by a 
timeless logos, figured by the firmament. Building, 
too, should be informed by this logos; and so we 
find Vitruvius insisting on symmetry and harmony, 
prefigured both by the divinely ordered cosmos 
and the similarly ordered body of  the well shaped 
human being.

Hegel’s understanding of  the origin of  
architecture points in what is essentially the same 
direction: 

It is architecture that pioneers the way for the adequate 
realization of  the God, and in this its service bestows 
hard toil upon existing nature, in order to disentangle 
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chance. By this means it levels a space for the God, gives form to his external 
surroundings, and builds him his temple as a fit place for concentration of  spirit, 
and for its direction to the mind’s absolute objects. It raises an enclosure round 
the assembly of  those gathered together, as a defense against the threatening of  
the storm, against rain, the hurricane, and wild beasts, and reveals the will to 
assemble, although externally, yet in conformance with the principles of  art.12

Hegel’ builders, too, impose a spiritual, and that means for Hegel a truly 
human order on a recalcitrant material; human beings assert and celebrate 
their humanity in the face of  an initially indifferent environment, when 
they level the ground, break the stone, raise walls and columns. They 
defend themselves against nature, not only or even primarily against 
physical threats, but against its contingency. In this struggle they rely on 
and exhibit the power of  the universal. That is why architecture for Hegel 
is in its very essence not the work of  isolated individuals, but of  the spirit, 
and that means of  the community: the spirit breaks down the walls that 
separate individuals. Genuine architecture establishes community.

And not so very different is Corbusier’s account of  the origin of  
architecture:

Primitive man has brought his chariot to a stop: he decides that here shall be 
his native soil. He chooses a glade, he cuts down the trees which are too close; he 
levels the earth around; he opens up the road which will carry him to the river 
or to those of  his tribe whom he has just left. [...] The road is as straight as he 
can manage with his implements, his arms and his time. The pegs of  his tent 
describe a square, hexagon, or octagon. The palisade forms a rectangle whose 
four angles are equal. The door of  this hut is on the axis of  the enclosure—and 
the gate of  the enclosure faces exactly the door of  the hut. [...] You may see, in 
some archeological work, the representation of  this hut, the representation of  
this sanctuary: it is the plan of  a house, or the plan of  a temple. It is the same 
spirit one finds again in the Pompeian house. It is the spirit indeed of  the Temple 
of  Luxor.

There is no such thing as primitive man; there are primitive resources. The idea 
is constant, in full sway from the beginning.13 

A look at the history of  architecture supports that impression. From 
the very beginning the requirements of  human dwelling resist their 
reduction to the need for physical shelter or functional frames for certain 
activities. Not only the body, the spirit, too, needs shelter, shelter especially 
from the terror of  time. 



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4

But let me turn to the second observation 
made by the organizers of  this symposium and to 
the question it raises. Architecture, it asserts, has 
played no very significant part in our philosophical 
understanding of  human beings. We can grant that. 
And yet the prevalence of  architectural metaphors 
in philosophical discourse invites reflection: What 
is the bond that ties philosophy and architecture 
together and allows such metaphors to make 
some sense? An answer is suggested by Martin 
Heidegger’s already mentioned essay “Building 
Dwelling Thinking”, which calls our attention to 
the obvious fact that building serves dwelling, but 
then in characteristic fashion turns to etymology 
to unearth beneath the familiar everyday sense of  
“dwelling” a deeper meaning that is said to have 
been lost to us: 

The real meaning of  the verb, namely to dwell, has 
been lost to us. But a covert trace of  it has been 
preserved in the German word Nachbar, neighbor. 
The neighbor is in Old English the neahgebur, 
neah near, and gebur, dweller. The Nachbar is the 
Nachgeebur, the Nachgebauer, the near-dweller, he 
who dwells nearby. The verbs, buri, büren, beuren, 
beuron, all signify dwelling, the abode, the place of  
dwelling.14

In its origin, Heidegger claims, building means 
dwelling. To really dwell is to be at home in 
the world. Such dwelling presupposes that we 
experience the world not, as science would have us 
do, as the totality of  mute facts that just happen to 
be as they are, but as a meaningful order. But is the 
transformation of  mute alien material into a home 
not the essence of  building? And is it perhaps also 
the essence of  thinking? 

To show how dwelling is to be thought in its 
original sense Heidegger adds: 

Where the word bauen still speaks in its original 

To really 
dwell is to be 
at home in the 

world. 

“
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sense, it also says how far the nature of  dwelling reaches. That is, bauen, buan, 
bhu, beo are our word bin in the versions: ich bin, I am, du bist, you are, the 
imperative form bis, be. What then does ich bin mean? The word bauen, to which 
it belongs answers: ich bin, du bist mean: I dwell, you dwell.15 

Heidegger sums up his discussion with three propositions:

1. Building is really dwelling.

2. Dwelling is the manner in which mortals are on the earth. 

3. Building as dwelling unfolds into the building that cultivates growing 
things [German Ackerbau] and the building that erects building. 

If  we accept Heidegger’s claim that “Dwelling is the manner in which 
mortals are on the earth” this suggests that we can add as a fourth 
proposition: 

 4. Building as dwelling unfolds also into the architectures that thought 
erects, more especially the thought of  philosophers. 

This then would yield a first answer to the question: What is the bond 
that ties philosophy and architecture together and allows such metaphors 
to make some sense? Both can be said unfold in their distinctive ways the 
essence of  building. That brings to mind Kant’s famous statement that our 
reason is by its very nature architectonic, seeking to assign to everything 
its proper place in some conceptual edifice.16 Heidegger would seem to 
think this in more encompassing fashion, extending it to our being-in-the-
world, which always already has assigned to all we encounter its place in a 
linguistic edifice. Heidegger thus calls language the house of  Being. 

These remarks hint at a deep connection between architecture and 
language. The French prehistorian André-Leroi Gourhan speaks to this 
connection:

the earliest surviving buildings are contemporary with the appearance of  the first 
rhythmic marks. […] [although] the foundation of  moral and physical comfort in 
man is the altogether animal perception of  the perimeter of  security, the enclosed 
refuge, or of  the socialization of  rhythms: [so] that there is no point in seeking 
for a scission between animal and human to explain our attachment to social 
rhythms and inhabited space […] [yet] the little that is known [of  pre-Homo 
sapiens habitations] is enough to show that a profound change occurred about 
the time which corresponds to the development of  the control sections of  the brain 
in strains relating to Homo sapiens. […] Such archeological evidence [as there 
is] would seem to justify the assumption, that from the higher paleolithic period 
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by symbolic means, of  which language was the chief. 
They imply a real ‘taking charge’ of  space and time 
through the mediation of  symbols: a domestication 
of  them in a strict sense, since it involves, within the 
house and about the house, a controllable space and 
time.17

This suggests that we might want to define building 
in its most fundamental sense as “a taking charge of  
space and time through the mediation of  symbols.” 
So understood building would include both, the 
raising of  structures that provide both physical and 
psychological shelter and the use of  language to 
control and feel at home in the world around us. 
That language and architecture are linked in their 
origin is hinted at by the story of  the Tower of  
Babel.

  

5

Let me return to Heidegger’s claim that human 
being is essentially a dwelling. If  for us humans to 
be is to dwell, it would seem that to build anything 
we must already dwell in some fashion. But does all 
dwelling not presuppose in turn something like a 
building? We seem to be moving in a circle. 

Something analogous would seem to hold 
of  the creation of  language—think of  the story 
of  Adam’s naming of  the animals. Paradise must 
have presented itself  to Adam already as rather 
like a divinely created garden in which everything 
had its proper place. Dwelling, understood in this 
fundamental sense, would thus seem to imply 
something like an experience of  the world as an 
order that assigns us as mortals our place on earth, 
beneath the sky, presided over, Heidegger suggests 
in “Building Dwelling Thinking,” by what there he 
calls the divinities, where we must wonder whether 
our modern world still allows us to make sense of  
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 Consider once more the meaning of  “building.” To build is to bound 
space. How is this space to be thought? Genesis begins by having God 
create the heavens and the earth by bounding the formless. Plato’s Timaeus 
offers a similar account. To build is to wrest place from space. That seems 
uncontroversial. And to think such building is inevitably also to think 
space as in some sense pre-given and formless. But how are we to think 
that pre-given and formless space? When we attempt to do so, do we 
not inevitably give it some structure? Think of  Euclidean space and its 
three dimensions. Is all such thinking not an attempt to domesticate what 
resists domestication? The meaning of  space remains elusive. I want to 
claim that every human attempt to master space leads us into an antinomy, 
places us between some finite structure and the infinite. That antinomy, 
I want to suggest, also haunts our dwelling as it haunts our building and 
our thinking as the tension between a desire for freedom and a desire to 
be firmly placed.

My introduction of  the term “antinomy” calls for comment. When 
a philosopher thinks of  antinomies he is likely to think first of  all of  the 
four antinomies Kant stated and discussed in his Critique of  Pure Reason. 
And I, too, am thinking here of  Kant’s antinomies, especially of  the first, 
which concerns the difficulty we face when we attempt to represent our 
universe as a cosmos, as a well-constructed, bounded whole, as a building 
in that sense. Kant shows that we are unable to understand this cosmos as 
finite and as having a beginning, as our astronomers and physicists would 
once again have us do, only to get entangled once more in some version 
of  Kant’s antinomy. But Kant also showed that we cannot understand it 
as infinite. The infinite transcends our comprehension. And yet we are in 
some fashion in touch with the infinite whenever we are open to some 
thing in its finally incomprehensible materiality. Not only infinite space, 
but every particular thing in its ineffable particularity, transcends whatever 
our reason is able to construct. As mystics such as Meister Eckhart or 
Angelus Silesius knew, an infinity is buried in every thing. I want to 
confront Heidegger’s metaphor of  language as the house of  Being with 
a question: is Being really at home in that house? Architecture raises an 
analogous question: are buildings without windows and doors that allow 
access to a reality beyond not prisons? This suggests: openings such as 
windows and doors provide a key to successful architecture.

 In using the word “antinomy” I was also thinking of  Kant’s third 
antinomy, which concerns freedom. Like nature, freedom, too, familiar 
as it is to all of  us, eludes comprehension: we are thus unable to think 
what we seem to be so familiar with and call “freedom” as either free 



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from or as governed by the laws of  nature. In the 
attempt to think freedom our reason once again 
suffers shipwreck on the reef  of  the infinite. No 
more than space and time will freedom be mastered 
conceptually. Once again reason is forced to 
recognize its limits. But are these limits not also 
limits that building must respect if  it is not to do 
violence to the demands of  freedom and thus of  
human dwelling?

Kant’s four antinomies were supposed to prove 
the necessity of  understanding every thing in two 
very different senses: as an appearance dependent 
on our human understanding and the architecture 
it imposes and as a thing in itself, transcending that 
architecture. The antinomies thus tear open a depth 
dimension passed over in our everyday dealings with 
things, open windows and doors in the architecture 
raised by our architectonic understanding. But why 
is the opening of  such windows and doors, if  it can 
even be understood as such, of  existential import? 

6

With this let me turn to the question: What 
does architecture have to contribute to philosophy? 
At first blush the answer would seem to have to 
be, despite philosophy’s reliance on architectural 
metaphors: very little, at least given common ideas 
of  what philosophy is. Most philosophers don’t feel 
a need to concern themselves with architecture. 

 I do feel such a need. So let me approach the 
question “what does architecture have to contribute 
to philosophy?” in a more personal way by speaking 
briefly of  the way art and architecture has been 
important to my work in philosophy. 

My interest in both art and architecture is far 
older than my interest in philosophy. As a child I 
liked to draw, paint, and build. A self-conscious 



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interest in architecture goes back to my first encounter with a rather modest 
rococo church: when I was seven my mother moved with us children from 
Berlin, which the constant air raids had made rather unpleasant, to the 
Franconian Königshofen, some 25 kilometers northeast of  Bamberg. On 
the outskirts is a little known, but quite lovely pilgrimage church in the 
village of  Ipthausen, consecrated to the Birth of  Mary (1746-54). The 
landscape, the town, but especially this church spoke to me of  a way of  
life very different from what I had been used to. Today I would say that 
mine was not so much an aesthetic response, but an ethical response, 
ethical in that broad sense in which Heidegger attributes to the Greek 
temple an ethical function when he claims that presenting the world, it 
establishes the earth, with that difference that I knew even then that the 
world opened up by this church was one from which I was excluded, that 
much as I loved it, this was not my world. But it seemed to beckon me to 
a better world. Four years later a teacher in Munich’s Maxgymnasium took 
me to the Benedictine monastery church of  Andechs. The visit to that 
church, too, had a crucial importance. I pay tribute to that teacher in the 
preface to my book The Bavarian Rococo Church (1983) and placed an image 
of  that church on its back cover.

The very fact that I felt a need to write such a book, which has now 
also appeared in a German version,18 suggests a certain impatience with 
academic philosophy. I personally do not see a break between this book 
and my more obviously philosophical work, much of  which has centered 
on Heidegger. It touches on many, perhaps all the themes that matter to me 
as a philosopher, but it does so in a way that pleases me more, that seems 
to me much more concrete, more likely to get readers to really understand 
what concerns me, to touch them, than my more purely philosophical 
essays. Let me mention just a few of  these themes:

1. As opposed to those who, like the art historian Michael Fried, 
oppose authenticity to theatricality, I wanted to exhibit what I experienced 
as the profundity of  an architecture that ever since the Enlightenment 
has often been dismissed as theatrical and superficial, as not really 
authentic. The artistic culture of  the Rococo taught me to question the 
presupposed notion of  authenticity and with it the Enlightenment faith in 
reason and to appreciate the profundity of  superficiality, of  interest in the 
visible, sensible world, for which Nietzsche praised the Greeks: “to stop 
courageously at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore appearance, to 
believe in forms, tones, words, the whole Olympus of  appearance. Those 
Greeks were superficial — out of  profundity.” 19

My book on the Bavarian Rococo Church is also a reflection on 



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the threshold that joins and separates the Rococo 
from the Enlightenment, and that is to say from 
modernity. There is thus a sense in which this book 
is also a reflection on our own spiritual culture, on 
its legitimacy and its limits, a topic that continues to 
concern me. 

2. A reviewer called that book a preamble after 
the fact of  my The Meaning of  Modern Art (1968). In 
a sense he was right. That earlier book called for a 
step beyond modern art, and not just modern art, 
but beyond what that modern art presupposed. 
I spoke there of  the need for a new realism. In 
philosophy, too, there seems to me a need for such 
a realism. That drew me to phenomenology. 

3. With this call for a new realism I meant to 
challenge the hold of  the aesthetic approach to art 
and architecture that has presided over both theory 
and practice. As I show in The Ethical Function of  
Architecture, that approach invites an understanding 
of  works of  architecture as decorated sheds in the 
broadest sense, as functional buildings to which 
an aesthetic component has been added. But as I 
have suggested in this lecture: What distinguishes 
architecture from building is not adequately 
understood as the addition of  an aesthetic 
component. That calls for further reflection on 
the requirements of  dwelling, and more especially, 

FIGURE 1: Pilgrimage church 

Mariä Geburt, Ipthausen



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on what these requirements are in today’s world, marked by the digital 
revolution and the threatening environmental crisis. 

4. But inadequate as it is to the requirements of  dwelling, the decorated 
shed nevertheless presents itself  as a potent figure for the spiritual situation 
of  this age, which tends to cover up the spiritual poverty that is the price 
of  our objectification of  reality, with an often borrowed aesthetic veneer. 
In that sense, to call ours the age of  the decorated shed is to offer more 
than just an illuminating caricature. 

5. As Heidegger points out, building serves dwelling, as it is born 
of  dwelling. To understand the essence of  architecture we have to enter 
that circle. But we cannot enter it successfully as long as we remain on 
the level of  abstract speculation and mere words. Our words must have 
their ground in concrete experiences. We have to return to the things 
themselves, and that means here first of  all to buildings. But the point 
should be generalized. 

      
7

Let me conclude with the question: What does philosophy have to 
contribute to architecture? It is not the philosopher’s task to tell architects 
what to do. But perhaps philosophy can help make architecture more 
responsible by questioning certain assumptions that stand in the way of  
such responsibility. 

Wittgenstein claimed that philosophical problems have the form, 

“I do not know my way about.”20 Of  course, not all problems having 
this form are therefore already philosophical. To lose one’s way in a 
strange city is not sufficient to make one a philosopher. Nor is failure to 
understand a new piece of  equipment. Say my computer misbehaves and 
I don’t know what to do; I don’t know my way about. Such a loss of  way 
does not present us with a philosophical problem. But why not? I would 
suggest that it fails to do so because in such cases our disorientation is only 
superficial. Thus in the first case I might study a map; in the second I might 
ask an expert for help. The problem here poses itself  against a background 
of  established and accepted ways of  doing things to which we can turn 
to help us decide what is to be done. Genuinely philosophical problems 
have no such background. They are born of  a more profound uncertainty. 
Philosophical reflection flourishes thus where traditions disintegrate and 
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nature, society, and history, and searching for firmer 
ground demand that this place be more securely 
established. In that sense all genuine philosophy is 
at bottom ethical reflection. That also holds for the 
philosophical reflection on architecture.

If  this is accepted, philosophy comes to an end 
either when it believes to have gained firm ground 
and to have laid a secure foundation or when it 
despairs of  responsibly addressing the questions 
that haunt it. There is thus a sense in which science 
and skepticism may be said to bound philosophy. 
Today science presents philosophy with a challenge 
that resembles the challenge that in the 19th 
century photography presented to representational 
painting. 

But science itself  presents itself  today to us 
as anything but unquestionable. There is a sense 
in which everyone of  us, I suspect, stands in an 
ambiguous relationship to science and its offspring, 
technology. On one hand we have to affirm science. 
Technological advances have shaped our life-world 
in ways that we have to affirm. On the other hand, 
science cannot know anything of  persons or values. 
This is why the social sciences stand inevitably 
uneasily between science and what we can call 
folk wisdom or perhaps philosophy. A compelling 
account of  both the legitimacy and the limits of  
scientific understanding and that means also of  
technological thinking seems to me one of  the main 
requirements facing philosophy today. Architectural 
theory and practice, too, seem to me to be in need 
of  such an account. 

But such an account must be guided by some 
understanding of  where we should be going, where 
today such an account must be informed by the 
digital revolution which cannot but shape our 
understanding of  space and even more importantly 
it must be informed by the growing environmental 
crisis. Does philosophy offer much help here? I 
continue to be surprised, given all we know, that 



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not more is being done and I am afraid reason has not proven itself  very 
effective in bringing about needed changes. Needed is a change of  heart. 
But how do hearts change? Traditionally such change has been brought 
about not so much by philosophers, as by prophets and poets, artists, 
and also by architects. In his discussion of  the Greek temple Heidegger 
recognizes thus something of  the mythopoeic function of  architecture. 

Plato’s Republic gives expression to the claim of  the philosopher to 
be in a privileged position to tell human beings what their place should 
be. The ethical function that art and religion once possessed, comes to 
be claimed by reason. Unfortunately reason has proved unequal to the 
assumed task. We live today in the ruins of  the inherited value system. To 
support this claim I could point to the history of  the past two centuries. 
I could also show that, notwithstanding the efforts of  philosophers from 
Plato to Kant and indeed right down to the present, unprejudiced pure 
reason has shown itself  inadequate to this task. Such change requires the 
aid of  those able to touch us more immediately. The need for architecture’s 
ethical function remains. What kind of  architecture? Temple and cathedral 
lie behind us. Not only has the kind of  communal dwelling their building 
presupposed and reaffirmed been lost, but few of  us would wish it to 
return, for it is incompatible with one of  our own ruling myths: the myth 
of  the value of  personal freedom. That myth has freed art, too, from 
its former servitude to religion and state. But if  art has thus gained a 
new freedom, the price of  this privatization of  art has been its peripheral 
placement in a world ruled increasingly by economic imperatives. Art and 
architecture have lost much of  their former ethical significance.

What then is the role of  philosophy? A healthy society needs places 
where it tests what has come to be established and taken for granted. There 
has to be an openness to the future. One task of  philosophy is to open 
windows in the edifice raised by the ruling common sense. I also have a 
contrary sympathy. The conservatives, too, are needed in a healthy society, 
those who insist on the preservation of  the inherited. There is inevitable 
tension between voices pointing in different directions, one forward 
— challenging, testing — the other backward — wanting to preserve. 
Neither should be so immediately associated with political power that it 
can translate its views into political reality without being mediated by an 
ongoing conversation. In this conversation, and more especially in the 
architectural conversation, the philosopher’s words should be like yeast. 
Perhaps in this way they can contribute in some way towards bringing 
about that change of  heart that just today is so desperately needed. 



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Endnotes

[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Morgenröthe, 169; Werke, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. 
Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich, Berlin, and New York: 
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag and de Gruyter, 1980), vol. 3, 152. 

[2] Mark Lilla, “Pseuds’ Skyscraper,” London Review of  Books, 5 June 1997, 33.

[3] Robert Jan van Pelt, “Apocalyptic Abjection,” in Robert Jan van Pelt and 
Carroll Willliam Westfall, Architectural Principles in the Age of  Historicism (New 
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 328-329.

[4] See Karsten Harries, “Review: Robert Jan van Pelt and Carroll William 
Westfall, Architectural Principles in the Age of  Historicism,” American 
Historical Review, December 1992, 1490.

[5] Mark Wigley, The Architecture of  Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt (Cambridge, 
Mass. and London: MIT Press,1993).

[6] Adolf  Loos, “Architecture,” cited in Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in 
Paradise. The Idea of  the Primitive Hut in Architectural History (New York: The 
Museum of  Modern Art, 1972 ), 27.

[7] José Ortega y Gasset, “Der Mythus des Menschen hinter der Technik” in 
Otto Bartning, ed.: Mensch und Raum. 2. Darmstädter Gespräch 1951 (Darmstadt: 
Neue Darmstädter Verlags-Anstalt. 1952) 117. Translation by K. Harries.

[8] Ibid., 117.

[9] William Gass, “House VI,” Progressive Architecture, 58, June 1977, p. 64.

[10] Vitruvius, The Ten Books of  Architecture, trans. Morris Hickey Morgan 
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926), 38. 

[11] Ibid., 40.

[12] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. 
Bernard Bosanquet, ed. and intro. Michael Inwood (Harmondsworth: 
Penguin, 1993), 90-91.

 [13] Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells (New 
York: Praeger, 1960), 65-66.

[14] Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Poetry, Language, 
Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 
146-147. See also the original version: Martin Heidegger, “Bauen Wohnen 
Denken” in Otto Bartning (ed.): Mensch und Raum. 2. Darmstädter Gespräch 
1951. (Darmstadt: Neue Darmstädter Verlags-Anstalt 1952) 72–84.

[15] Ibid., 147.



[16] With his antinomies, to be sure, Kant showed that this striving 
can never be satisfied. Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 474/B 502. See Paula 
Manchester, “Kant’s Conception of  Architectonic in Its Philosophical 
Context,” Kant Studien. Volume 99, Issue 2, June, 2008 133–151.

[17] André Leroi -Gourhan, Le geste et la parole (Paris 1964), vol. 2., 139-
140, as quoted in Joseph Rykwert, On Adams’s House in Paradise (New York: 
The Museum of  Modern Art, 1972), 21

[18] Karsten Harries, Die Bayerische Rokokokirche. Das Irrationale und das 
Sakrale (Dorfen: Hawel Verlag, 2009),

[19] Nietzsche, The Gay Science. With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an 
Appendix of  Songs. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 2001).

[20] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe 
(New York: Macmillan, 1959) par. 123.



isparchitecture.com

Aesthetic Education and Design
  

roger Scruton

In his celebrated letters on the Aesthetic Education 
of  Mankind, Schiller argued that to achieve the sense 
of  order and civic virtue our best recourse in the 
modern world is aesthetic education. Kant had 
marked out a central place for aesthetic pleasure 
in the life of  the rational being, arguing that the 
judgment of  beauty is both disinterested and 
universal in its scope. In aesthetic judgment, Kant 
wrote, we are ‘suitors for agreement’, and it is a 
small step from that idea to Schiller’s view that the 
pursuit of  beauty is a shared enterprise, with civic 
virtue as its goal. In aesthetic judgment we view 
our surroundings as ends in themselves, abstracting 
from the demands of  utility and function. Hence 
aesthetic interest looks for permanent values, rather 
than transitory functions. It is the one sure guide to 
getting things right, not just for the here and now of  
our current interests, but permanently, and for the 
community as a whole. My aim in this paper is to 
outline a form of  architectural education in which 
pattern, composition, and the idea of  fit are given 
a proper place, and in which function and utility 
are regarded as the consequences of  beauty and 
not prior requirements that must be independently 
fulfilled.

Schiller believed that education and high 
culture would release what is best in us, and bring 
about civic virtue without any particular person 
taking charge of  the process. Subsequent history 
has dented any confidence that we might have had 
in such a vision. Indeed, the experience of  the 20th 
century suggests that the greatest changes come 
about as a result of  particular people and their 

Schiller 
argued that 

to achieve 
the sense of 

order and 
civic virtue 

our best 
recourse in 
the modern 

world is 
aesthetic 
education. 

“

”



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influence, and that the most influential people–the ones who have done 
most to create the world in which we now live–have been mad. 

This is certainly true in the realm of  politics, which was irreversibly 
changed by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Ze Dong, and a host of  lesser 
lunatics. The interesting thing about those madmen is their astonishing 
ability to recruit a following, to march into the future like the Pied Piper 
of  Hamelin, with an ever-growing crocodile of  mesmerised imbeciles 
following them to destruction. The madness exemplified by the ‘great 
leaders’ exhibits their shared desire for a total solution, a transition to 
a new state in which everything has been solved and nothing is left for 
discussion. But this total solution is the answer to no coherent problem. 
Of  course you can invent a problem: the Jews, the bourgeoisie, the ‘enemy 
within’ or (in the case of  ISIS today) the apostate or the infidel. But it is 
clear to the most casual outside observer that the problem is dictated by 
the solution, and not the other way round. It is the desire for the total 
reorganisation of  everything, the total destruction of  all obstacles and the 
total transfer of  power to me, the Leader, that requires the invention of  
a problem that can be solved in no other way. For this reason the most 
frequent tale told by modern politics is the tale of  an enemy within, whose 
destruction will open the way to a new order of  being. It was thus that the 
‘bourgeoisie’ was invented, to play such a remarkable role in the theories 
of  Marx, Sartre, Foucault and the Frankfurt school. 

This feature of  modern politics is replicated by modern architecture. 
Here too the most influential people have been mad, expressing their 
desire for total control in manifestoes and projects that involve destroying 
whole settlements and cities. Like the pioneers of  totalitarian politics, 
Corbusier, Gropius, Lubetkin and their kind wanted a total solution, and 
they hunted the world for the problem that would justify their aim.

Thus Le Corbusier’s total solution for the problem of  Paris north of  
the Seine involved wiping away the great city of  stone and replacing it with 
an array of  concrete towers rimmed by grass verges. As comprehensive a 
solution as could be imagined. But what was the problem? Le Corbusier 
made a few fashionable noises about health, and the conditions of  the 
working class. However, they were improvised around the solution, rather 
than discovered from the facts. The Council of  Paris put a stop to this 
nonsense, causing Le Corbusier to turn his attention to the far more 
vulnerable city of  Algiers, where his plans to wipe this excrescence from 
the map were stopped only by the collapse of  the Vichy government, 
which he had persuaded to adopt him as its architectural advisor.  



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Unfortunately the City Council of  Paris has 
no power to match that of  a President, and when 
President Pompidou, whose wife prided herself  
on her advanced aesthetic taste, wished to create a 
monument to himself, a small-scale version of  Le 
Corbusier’s vandalism was carried out, resulting in 
the clearance of  beautiful residential streets in the 
lovely Lutetian limestone, and their replacement 
by a vast fun palace of  scaffolding in playground 
colours, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo 
Piano. This, the Centre Beaubourg, is perhaps the 
greatest eyesore in Europe, if  only because it is 
conceived entirely as an insult to its surroundings. 
It is expressly designed not to fit in, and this has 
been the pattern followed by Richard Rogers in 
all subsequent buildings: to create something 
that stands out from the urban fabric, as though 
dropped from another planet. But ‘fitting in’ is the 
primary goal of  aesthetic judgment, and it is why 
Schiller connected aesthetic education to his ideal 
of  civic order. 

I will return to that point, since it seems to me 
that the art of  fitting things together–both internally, 
within the work you are composing, and externally, 
within the fabric of  a human settlement–is of  the 
essence of  aesthetic education in all its forms. And 
it points us in a certain direction–towards a kind 
of  grammar, repeatability, and the relation of  part 
to part. Before exploring that suggestion, however, 
I want to dwell for a moment on the question of  
madness. 

We should make a distinction, I believe, 
between those conditions, like schizophrenia and 
bi-polar disorder, which stem from a dysfunction of  
the central nervous system, and those conditions in 
which perception, cognition and affective states are 
all normal and functional, but devoted entirely to 
some goal that cannot be moderated or renounced, 
and which is immune to rational argument–by 
which I mean argument that weighs with all of  



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us. It is this second condition that I have in mind, when describing the 
madness of  Stalin, Mao or Le Corbusier: a kind of  inability to give weight 
to any consideration that does not originate in the over-mastering Idea. 
The mad person is the one in the grip of  a vision, who cannot recognize 
the legitimacy of  opposition or adapt his projects to the needs of  others. 
He recognizes no boundaries, and regards reality as a plastic material to be 
shaped according to his aims. His thought is uni-directional, and he cries 
ever ‘Forward!’ in the face of  obstacles. 

Aesthetic education, as I see it, is one part of  the broader practice 
of  humane education–the kind of  education that transmits knowledge 
of  the human world. Its purpose is to teach students how to renounce 
their obsessions, and to learn the ways of  sympathy and compromise. 
It fosters cooperation with one’s kind. Its goal is to transmit a culture 
that embodies shared conceptions of  life and discovered solutions to 
life’s problems, including the principal problem, which is how to live at 
peace with one’s neighbours and competitors, even when you dislike them. 
Art, music and literature are all part of  this culture, embodying pictures, 
stories and dramas that raise the human condition to a dignity that sets 
an example in our daily lives. To transmit such a culture involves teaching 
students to exercise taste, to compare and contrast, to distinguish refined 
from crude perceptions, and in general to understand the distinction 
between products that accommodate our shared humanity and products 
that are to be understood merely as whimsy or self-centred display. The 
goal is to enhance our dignity, our sympathy and our understanding for 
our kind. However difficult it might be to express this goal in words, it 
is straightforwardly manifested in the art, literature and music that we 
have inherited, and apparent to everyone who has learned how to enjoy 
those things. And it is manifest too in our everyday judgments about our 
surroundings and about the behaviour, manners and appearance of  our 
fellows. 

In everything human we distinguish the harmonious from the 
dissonant, the thing that fits from the thing that jars. And even if  there is 
a place for the dissonant and the jarring in the scheme of  things, we know 
that they make sense for us only because of  the context in which they are 
resolved. Aesthetic education teaches us how to avoid or resolve them, 
as we teach children to avoid garish colours, rude language and slovenly 
gestures.

Any philosophical account of  aesthetic judgment must explore its 
roots in the moral life, and in those aspects of  the human condition that 
lead us to search not only for shared rules of  behaviour, but for a shared 



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canon of  taste. Errors of  taste and self-advertising 
defiance of  aesthetic norms can be just as offensive 
as rudeness or public belligerence, and we strive 
to avoid them not simply for our own pleasure’s 
sake, but for the sake of  the community. If  this 
is evident in no other sphere, it is surely evident 
in the sphere of  architecture. From Ruskin’s Seven 
Lamps of  Architecture onwards the question of  how 
our buildings and our cities should look has been 
treated as a moral question, and one on which 
much more depends than we are in the habit of  
supposing. Writers have been conscious that faulty 
aesthetic choices lead to destroyed communities, 
and this is often announced in the very titles 
of  their books–for example Jane Jacobs’s The 
Death and Life of  Great American Cities (1961), and 
Alexander Mitscherlich’s Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer 
Städte: Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (1965). Both those 
writers saw themselves as fighting a war on behalf  
of  common sense against madness–no longer, 
perhaps, the madness of  a single person, like the 
madness of  Gropius and Le Corbusier, but a 
madness that had become programmed into the 
planning system, dictating outcomes that would 
leave no room for negotiation. And if  you look at 
the situation against which Jacobs and Mitscherlich 
were both in rebellion, you will see that it is one from 
which humane education–the only known antidote 
to madness of  this kind–had been abolished. 

A kind of  depersonalised madness had 
possessed the schools of  architecture and town 
planning in the wake of  the Second World War, 
with Le Corbusier and Gropius constantly invoked 
as heroes, and the curriculum purified of  all 
reference to aesthetic values other than those that 
emphasize originality, innovation, progress and the 
conquest of  space. The ground plan was conceived 
in purely geometrical terms, as was the city plan 
of  which it was a part. The total conception took 
precedence over the individual building, and each 

A kind of 
depersonalised 

madness had 
possessed the 

schools of 
architecture 

and town 
planning in the 

wake of the 
Second World 

War  

“

”



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element was defined by its function. The city itself  was disaggregated into 
zones, with living, shopping, studying and manufacturing each confined 
to its own separate area, and the resulting blocks of  mono-functional 
buildings assembled side-by-side and without a heart. The result can be 
seen in new towns like Milton Keynes, in derelict American cities like 
Detroit, and in the post-war reconstruction of  Germany. I think it is right, 
when witnessing these things, to speak of  madness. For here were massive 
enterprises, producing unwanted and threatening products, but entirely 
unable to adapt to the desires and opinions of  those destined to make use 
of  them. 

Consult the textbooks of  architecture and town-planning then 
employed and you will see this immediately–for example in Siegfried 
Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture (1941), in Pevsner’s Pioneers of  the Modern 
Movement (1936), and the madness has been replicated in the many recent 
manuals devoted to curtain wall construction. (Take a look at the current 
textbooks: for example Keith Boswell’s Exterior Building Enclosures: Design 
Process and Composition for Innovative Facades, or Alija Aksamija’s Sustainable 
Facades: Design Methods for High Performance Building Envelopes.) Here once 
again are the total solutions without the problems, the comprehensive 
plans without the human beings who are supposed to require them. And 
for the most part the education advanced by the schools of  architecture 
and planning either avoids discussion of  aesthetic values, or subdues them 
with the all-justifying ideas of  progress and innovation. The fact that the 
‘sustainable facades’ and ‘exterior building enclosures’ are to be inserted 
into the fabric of  a living city, in which the aesthetic of  the street, the 
house and the façade has been followed for centuries, is not mentioned. 
For the madman the ‘total solution’ involves the destruction of  all that is.

In the face of  such madness it seems to me that our first duty is to 
reaffirm the fundamental principles of  the moral life. These principles, 
I maintain, include the following three: that the other is more important 
than the self, that conflicts are to be resolved by negotiation, and that 
opposition must be treated with humility. Those principles are of  universal 
application, since they make it possible for people to live at peace, 
regardless of  their individual differences. Their relevance to architecture 
and planning can be seen at once, when we compare the traditional street 
with the modern housing estate. The high-rise estate, largely the invention 
of  Gropius, came to dominate housing projects between the wars and 
subsequently, since it was a perfect expression of  the comprehensive plan. 
It involved tearing down the streets over a large area, making way for large 
structures standing in open spaces, which could be designed geometrically 



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as ground-plans, and then raised up to the height 
desired by isometric drawings. No need to worry 
about fitting part to part, of  finding the appropriate 
window surrounds and doorways, about creating an 
acceptable façade on a public street: all traditional 
aesthetic constraints had been abolished. There 
were to be no more streets, and windows would 
be distant apertures, many of  them hundreds of  
feet in the air, which had no special relation to the 
observer outside the building, and with no special 
relation to the lines and forms of  the doors below. 

Furthermore, the high-rise estate was the 
expression in architecture of  a new kind of  politics– 
the politics of  total control, in which large projects, 
initiated by the state and its favoured experts, were 
imposed on the rest of  us without seeking our 
consent. Of  course this was the outlook that gave 
such scope to madmen in politics too–and the near 
impossibility of  mounting effective resistance was 
the same in both cases. History favoured the new, 
progressive and total solutions, over the random 
chaos of  the old. So we were taught, and so it was 
believed.

In the end, of  course, madmen lose their 
following, and this is beginning to be true in 
architecture too. The real question that we confront 
today is that of  restoration: how to return to the 
genial traditions that endowed our cities with 
their hearts, and which made them into durable 
settlements where generations have been at home. 
Sometimes this has been achieved with the help 
of  a comprehensive plan, as at Bath. But on the 
whole the fabric of  a city, even if  it adapts to a plan, 
has another source than planning. It is the result 
of  cooperation over many years, between people 
whose goals may not be shared, but who recognize 
the boundary between public and private space. 

The most important feature of  the Gropius 
housing estate, one that is copied by all the 
modernist schemes from Corbusier to Koolhaas, 



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is the dissolution of  the boundary. The street disappears, as does the 
façade that presses against it. Walls cease to be private faces onto a public 
realm, and become featureless curtains between undefined areas, hung on 
invisible frames. Buildings grow upwards indefinitely, with no boundary  
between the building and the sky. (For that is how we should think of  the 
sky-line, the most precious and vulnerable of  the city’s many edges.) Doors 
and windows are no longer ceremonial thresholds, but simply functional 
apertures, cleaned of  their liminal character. And around every building is a 
blank space, a no-man’s land of  discarded rubbish and stunted vegetation, 
from which the towers rise sheer and formless as though washed up by 
some primordial flood.

Among the factors lending themselves to this result–as Mitscherlich 
points out–are the forms of  social ownership instituted by the German 
cities. But even where private property is supposedly sacrosanct, as in 
America and Britain, governments have made use of  Eminent Domain 
(America) or ‘compulsory purchase’ (Britain) in order to embark on the 
large scale clearances that the housing estates require. Hand in hand with 
this kind of  presumption has been the revised image of  building, the image 
forced on us by Le Corbusier in Vers une architecture, and gleefully endorsed 
by Libeskind, Foster and Piano today. For such practitioners the architect 
has no need of  aesthetic education since his comprehensive plan issues 
from an integral artistic idea. He is inspired and led by the same ‘genius’ 
that guides the poet, the composer and the painter. Thus is perpetuated 
the illusion of  architecture as a ‘fine art’ rescued by the demands of  genius 
from the obligations of  daily life. 

If  we are to understand the role of  aesthetic education we must 
recognize, however, that most buildings are the work of  ordinary people 
who strive to accommodate what they do both to the purpose in hand 
and to the desires and tastes of  their neighbours. Genius has no part to 
play in their decisions, and nothing is more disruptive than the illusion 
that they possess it. Many of  the most agreeable parts of  our cities, their 
centres in particular, depend on an urban fabric knitted from humble 
and unpretentious façades that show the mark of  style only here and 
there and often in their pre-fabricated parts, such as doors and window 
frames. The ordinary vernacular street may have little to recommend it 
to those, like Libeskind and Koolhaas, who prefer to violate its outline 
rather than to conform to it, but there is no denying that the traditional 
street illustrates the first principle of  aesthetic education, which is the 
principle of  fittingness. The houses in a street must fit side by side along 
its edge, and in doing so define the boundary between the public and the 



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private. They may be of  different heights, and using 
different materials and different pattern-books. But 
if  each façade is internally coherent, and shares the 
overall posture of  other houses in the street, then 
each house might fit to its neighbour, and play its 
own particular part in creating the shared boundary 
which is the edge of  the public realm.

Two observations should be made concerning 
the relation of  fit. The builder who is fitting a house 
into a street is not looking for the form that fits 
a particular function. He is fitting a form into its 
context, regardless of  the function. His reasoning 
is not ‘instrumental’ reasoning, but an assessment 
of  how things look. Ever since Louis Sullivan’s well 
known adage that ‘form follows function’ architects 
have felt free to allow the use of  a building to 
dictate its appearance, to build as though there 
were no aesthetic constraints, and that their task 
was simply to find the forms best suited to the end 
in view. Hence the emergence of  the windowless 
warehouse as an architectural type. However, no 
ordinary builder, and certainly no person building 
or arranging something as part of  his own habitat, 
thinks in that way. The aim is always to make 
things fit together as they should, with the function 
conceived as a result and not as a premise of  the 
exercise. 

In fact there are good utilitarian reasons for 
not thinking in a utilitarian way. A building that is 
construed purely as the means to a present purpose 
will not survive the extinction of  that purpose: it 
will be an un-adaptable feature of  the environment, 
destined for demolition as soon as its function 
expires. From such buildings no permanent 
townscape can be constructed, and their ugliness 
is a vivid symbol of  their impracticality, of  the fact 
that there is nothing to be done with them once 
their present function has gone. This is the principal 
cause of  the dereliction of  city centres – namely 
that they are not centres, but merely the casing 

If we are 
to understand 

the role of 
aesthetic 
education 

we must 
recognize, 

however, that 
most buildings 
are the work 

of ordinary 
people 

“

”



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around activities that have ceased. Detroit is an eloquent illustration of  
this. Much of  the city of  London is moving in the same direction, and you 
see, now, a vivid contrast between the functional blocks already marked 
out for destruction, and the noble buildings constructed according to 
aesthetic principles which have survived the loss of  their original use–like 
the Royal Exchange building, now a meeting place and restaurant. 

This utilitarian argument against utilitarian thinking goes to the heart 
of  our topic, and tells us something about why aesthetic education matters. 
In a world dominated by instrumental thinking many people imagine that 
they have made advances in rationality, that they are no longer hampered 
by irrelevant goals which have no purpose but themselves, that the life 
of  frills and ornaments has at last been left behind. But it is such people 
who are irrational, since they are denying the kind of  reasoning that would 
enable them to envision the fruition of  their projects.  

Let me take a simple illustration of  this: the electricity transformer 
station. When transformer stations were first introduced the instinct of  
our ancestors was to find an architectural casing for them that would fit 
in to the surroundings, whether urban or rural. This was not a denial of  
the great benefits brought to us by electricity, but a way of  humanizing 
those benefits, of  making them part of  a life lived for its own sake and 
not just for the sake of  consumption. Nowadays, under the impact of  
the instrumentalised worldview, transformer stations are left exposed, 
hostile, surrounded by barbed wire, outposts of  the gulag, whose only 
meaning is their function. At the heart of  Islington, London, stands one 
of  the original transformer stations, built in 1905 and modelled on George 
Dance’s design for Newgate Prison, which had just been demolished. 
Now, after several changes of  use, it is a popular arcade of  shops and 
restaurants. Here is a building designed for a use, but designed also as an 
end in itself, and therefore as something that can form the hub of  social 
sentiments in the place where it stands. As a result it has survived the loss 
of  its original use, and been incorporated into the enduring fabric of  the 
city. 

I don’t say that the Islington Transformer Station is a masterpiece: on 
the contrary, its not being a masterpiece is one reason why it is so much 
liked. This is not a building designed to stand out, but one designed to fit 
in. No genius took charge of  creating it, or conceived it as the expression 
of  his individual soul. It is the work of  the London County Council’s 
design department, which at the time was composed of  unassuming 
people who had received an aesthetic education of  a broadly classical kind, 
based in drawing, proportion and the Orders–people who took delight in 



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the appearance of  buildings, and in the way that 
buildings are composed from matching parts. And 
it has lasted, because it is more valuable than its 
original function.

One very obvious feature of  the Islington 
transformer station 
is that it has firm 
boundaries –
indeed, it consists 
of  boundaries, 
carefully modulated 
and composed 
boundaries which 
define both the 
public space 
outside them and 
the reserved space 
within. The modern 
transformer station 
does not have 
boundaries in that sense–certainly not boundaries 
in which the transition from public to private is 
articulated or given ceremonial presence. It is 
surrounded by wire fences whose only message is 
‘keep out’–not ‘look at me’ or ‘here I am’ or ‘come 
stand in my shadow’ but ‘go away!’ 

Reflecting on boundaries, I believe, is a very 
good way of  grasping the significance of  aesthetic 
education generally. In every sphere we depend upon 
boundaries. We are protected from domination 
by our rights, which in a civilised society create 
a sphere of  sovereignty around every individual 
member. We are protected from prurient curiosity 
by our clothes, which we also use in order to signal 
the various degrees of  approachability that seem 
appropriate. We are walled round by manners and 
conventions that bring safety and certainty in the 
otherwise intimidating life among strangers. Some 
of  our boundaries are permeable and expressly 
designed to offer a welcome, when the welcome has 

FIGURE 1:  Islington           

Transformer Station



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been earned: so it is with manners and courtesies. Other boundaries are 
firm rebuttals, such as those created by the law. These distinctions have 
their counterpart in the language of  architecture. Walls can be forbidding, 
inviting, permeable or semi-permeable. Doorways may be ceremonious or 
perfunctory. Exteriors can be accommodating or severe. And the language 
here is integral to the way in which a building fits to its neighbours. In this 
way the art of  the boundary, through which we learn to accommodate our 
desires and places to those of  our neighbours, is replicated in the sphere 
of  architecture, and illustrates the way in which aesthetic education and 
moral education are rooted in the same human need–the need to live in 
harmony with others, and to reconcile individual ambition with a shared 
sense of  home.

Creating and managing boundaries is one part of  it. Just as important 
is the art of  fitting one thing to another so that it looks right. ‘Looking 
right’ does not mean ‘looking right to me’: in this judgment, as Kant made 
clear, we open ourselves to criticism. We are ‘suitors for agreement’, aware 
that what we do is of  interest to others, and that we are creating something 
that is shared–whether or not with any specific person. Grasping this point 
has always seemed to me to be the most crucial step in understanding the 
place of  the aesthetic in human life. It is a point that Wittgenstein, in his 
own idiom, makes central to his all-too-brief  lectures on aesthetics, and 
it is a point that can be illustrated in a way of  which Wittgenstein would 
surely have approved, by studying the ‘natural expression’ of  aesthetic 
choice in the faces and gestures of  children. Ask children to lay a table 
or to arrange a room, and at once they begin to attend to the way things 
look, and to the meaning of  the way things look–the meaning for others. 
Is it right to put the napkin on the plate or should it be by the side of  it? 
The emphasis on ‘getting it right’, rather than beauty, is easily understood 
from examples of  this kind. So too is the connection between getting it 
right and fitting in. 

The ability to match things to each other is hard to reduce to any more 
primitive capacity, but it seems to be fundamental to what we are, and to 
our ways of  negotiating our way through social and visual complexities. 
And it has two aspects. We match one thing to another of  the same broad 
category–for example knife to fork in a given pattern, or a certain style of  
porcelain to a certain kind of  napkin. But we also match objects to moods, 
life-styles, ways of  being and feeling, and in this way make the most far-
reaching connections between aesthetic judgment and the moral life. 

The ‘matching’ process can be educated. When a choice is exposed 
to judgment, the search for reasons begins. We can ask the child why she 



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put the spoon to the right of  the bowl, and she 
might well have an answer: because that is what is 
done, because it looks right, because then you have 
a nice straight line and a circle. We can teach her 
to make comparisons–which style of  spoon looks 
best, for example, and why. Inevitably the ‘why?’ 
question, even if  it peters out in the declaration 
that there is nothing further to be said, commits 
us to comparative judgments, to finding meaning 
and emotion in the objects that we choose, and to 
developing a repertoire of  forms that go easily and 
unquestionably together. Style is precipitated out 
from judgment, since it is what gives purchase to 
a reasoned answer to the question ‘why this, given 
that?’ 

Style is not the same as syntax, and if  we refer 
to the classical style in architecture we are not, 
literally, referring to a grammar,–that is, a system 
of  rules for generating complex meanings from 
meaningful parts. All kinds of  misleading analogies 
arise at this point, and the analogy with language 
is perhaps the most dangerous of  them, since it 
seems to imply that the rules of  style are arbitrary in 
the way that the grammatical rules of  a language are 
arbitrary. Although styles are many and varied, they 
are rooted in features of  the human condition that 
influence how we perceive and respond to shape, 
colour, form and mass. No stylistic convention can 
make a vast featureless hulk like the new Linked-In 
building in San Francisco look anything but 
oppressive and at odds with its surroundings. No 
stylistic convention can endow one of  Libeskind’s 
knife-like assaults on a traditional building with a 
humane meaning when we are ineluctably led to see 
the result as a species of  architectural murder. 

This does not mean that the idea of  grammar, 
used as a metaphorical summary of  something 
that we expect a building to exhibit, is entirely 
inappropriate. On the contrary. It reminds us of  
the fact that order and harmony, here as elsewhere 

No 
stylistic 

convention 
can endow one 

of Libeskind’s 
knife-like 

assaults on 
a traditional 
building with 

a humane 
meaning 

“

”



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in our lives, come about through composition. It is because significant 
parts are matched to significant parts that we sense the emergence of  
order in architecture, and forms that elide all parts into a single molten 
flow as in so much post-modernist ‘gadget’ architecture offend against a 
primary need. The case is comparable to that of  music, which has evolved 
as an art-form largely through quasi-syntactical conventions, governing 
key relations, voice-leading and harmonic progressions, and in which we 
have acquired the pronounced feeling for the ‘wrong note’ and the ‘wrong 
chord’. If  you compose while ignoring those conventions then you risk 
producing music in which nothing sounds wrong, because nothing sounds 
right. 

The features of  aesthetic education that I am trying to bring to mind 
are well illustrated by the Classical Orders, and especially by those aspects 
of  the Orders that have rubbed off  on vernacular architecture down 
the centuries. We should see the Orders as summaries of  a long process 
of  matching, through which the post and beam structure–the prima 
materia of  functional building–has been embellished and humanised. The 
textbooks, from Vitruvius through the Renaissance manuals to Chambers, 
provide rules of  proportion and detail, which have all the appearance of  a 
grammar: if  you do this, you must do that, and so on. But as with treatises 
of  tonal harmony, the imperative mood is misleading. The real speech-act 
is not prescriptive but descriptive: these manuals tell us what has been 
done, with a vague exhortation to respect it. 

The study of  the Orders was a training in the matching of  parts, 
and in understanding what constitutes a part rather than a chunk or a 
section. They taught proportion, by teaching the student how to perceive 
it. Proportion is not a purely geometrical idea. It arises from the relation 
between measures, and measures exist only where there are parts that begin 
and end, and the edges that close them. Hence proportion is perceivable 
only where there are boundaries, divisions, and significant details. A 
building like the Linked-In Building that I referred to earlier can never be 
seen as proportionate or harmonious, since it has no details. Nothing on 
the visible surface of  this building, is ‘between’ one place and another. No 
line has closure, no surface detail stands out and nothing begins, ends or 
moves to a conclusion. 

In the Tuscan Doric Order the column is wrapped by an astragal 
just below the capital: a semi-circular moulding which has the effect of  
tempering the upward thrust of  the column, and also introducing a kind 
of  ambiguity as to whether the section of  column above the astragal is part 
of  the capital or part of  the column. This ambiguity endows the vertical 



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with a kind of  elasticity, as though it were actively 
changing places with itself  in its determination 
to push from below. Just focusing for a while on 
this moulding is an education in itself: it illustrates 
the point that proportion needs measure and 
measure needs the edge; it exemplifies the idea of  
a meaningful part, and also shows the way in which 
such a part is not stuck on like the metopes in the 
frieze but grows 
from within the 
structure–it is an 
efflorescence of  
the stone. And it 
illustrates the way in 
which lines, edges, 
and boundaries in 
architecture are 
not made of  hard 
materials, but of  
light and shade. 
A boundary is 
perceivable only if  it 
casts a shadow, and 
there is shadow only 
where there is light. 
The study of  the 
Orders was a study 
of  the fall of  light 
on a work of  stone, 
and of  the ways 
in which the life 
of  the stone could 
be coaxed into the 
surface. Students of  the Beaux-Arts school would 
be required to draw the shadows on a Corinthian 
Capital, as these were cast during the divisions of  
the day. This education is reflected in all successful 
forms of  architecture, from the ordinary use of  
beading in window and door surrounds, to the 
supreme refinements of  the Gothic mouldings, 
as lovingly set out in F.A. Paley’s Manual of  Gothic 

FIGURE 2: LinkedIn building



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Mouldings, 1841. 

Among the many radical changes that divide modern from traditional 
architecture two in particular should be noted: the replacement of  the 
vertical by the horizontal as the axis of  emphasis, and the disappearance of  
mouldings. Traditional buildings were arranged in a vertical axis, and this 
is exactly what the Orders were used to teach–a vertical section that could 
be repeated again and again so as to create an upward vector uniting the 
whole façade. And the edges were folded over, wrapped around shadows 
and emphasized with parallels, so that vectors came steadily to closure 
rather than ceasing abruptly. Those two features shape the background 
expectations of  building not only according to the Orders but in almost 
all traditional styles. Their loss is associated with the rise of  the ground 
plan and isometric drawing, both made possible by curtain wall structures, 
steel frames and the replacement of  the arch and the beam by continuous 
girders of  steel or reinforced concrete. These innovations in engineering, 
however, were accompanied by no comparable developments in aesthetic 
education, so that architects entered a realm of  aesthetic ignorance, 
exemplified by the Linked-In Building discussed above. For a while, it is 
true, the ordinary architect attempted to pin the vertical order and moulded 
edges to the façade of  a steel frame buildings–as in the wonderful street 
assemblages of  downtown Manhattan. Even Louis Sullivan worked in 
that way. But then came Mies van der Rohe, the multi-storey tower block 
in glass and alloy, and the final abolition of  light, shade and significant 
detail. Many praised the result as the sign of  a new aesthetic; but ordinary 
opinion has never been at ease with it, for all the reasons that are implied 
in my present discussion.

The kind of  aesthetic education that I have been associating with 
the Orders is the property of  all who seek to build for others. It is not 
addressed to the genius, still less to the madman. It is addressed to those 
humble civil servants who designed the Islington transformer station, to 
the builders of  our pattern-book towns, and to those who produced the 
pattern books. But here we come up against a great difficulty, which is 
that contained in the concept of  genius. The genius is to a great extent a 
creation of  the Romantic Movement, which presented us with a new idea 
of  the aesthetic endeavour. For Kant and Schopenhauer genius defined 
the distinctive condition of  the artist, who was not conceived as a diligent 
craftsman whose endeavour is to find a place for his art in the existing 
culture. He was the one with a unique capacity to transcend the rules 
and conventions that govern lesser mortals, and to put before them his 
inner life in all its shining and redemptive perfection. He was the one 



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with the beautiful soul, to use Hegel’s language: the 
soul distinguished by its sublime and unclassifiable 
apartness.

Appealing though that idea might be, when 
considering the great works of  poetry, painting 
and music, it fits ill with the so-called ‘useful’ arts 
of  architecture, clothing and decoration. There 
are two reasons for this. Frist, by the very fact that 
it is useful, architecture involves pursuing a non-
aesthetic aim. Even if  it is true, as I have argued, 
that the aim will expire before the building, so that 
we must make a building that is adaptable to the 
changes in human interest, and even if  it is true that 
prioritising aesthetic values is the only reliable way 
to do this, nevertheless the surrender to a purely 
aesthetic approach, in which nothing matters save 
the expressive nature of  the design, is a kind of  
denial of  architecture. 

But there is a second and more important 
reason for disallowing the Romantic idea of  genius, 
which is that works of  architecture are public, 
observable to, and imposed upon, all who move in 
their vicinity. You can escape from the poetic genius 
by not opening his book, and from the musical 
genius by keeping clear of  concert halls. But you 
cannot escape from the architectural genius. Our 
cities are being everywhere littered with gadgets 
whose aggressive refusal to fit in is amplified by 
their un-composed character, so that they do not 
fit in even with themselves. Yet, we are assured, 
they are works of  genius, innovative gestures that 
challenge our expectations, forge new paths into the 
future, break free from the stultifying constraints of  
etc. etc.

It is precisely the public nature of  architecture 
that demands aesthetic education. And the goal of  
that education is not to open the way to the genius, 
but to civilize the manners of  the ordinary builder, 
who is no more likely to be a genius than Rem 
Koolhaas, even if  somewhat less likely to behave 

It is 
precisely 

the public 
nature of 

architecture 
that demands 

aesthetic 
education

“

”



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as one. This is not to say that there is not such a thing as architectural 
genius. But it is manifest most of  all in the inspiration that finds new ways 
of  fitting things together, and producing adaptable solutions to aesthetic 
problems. In this connection it is surely right to commend the genius 
of  Vignola, Palladio, Borromini and more recently Lutyens, whose war 
memorials showed how to make plain stone arches stand to mournful 
attention above the dead. And the inspiration of  those modest architects 
can be felt even in the most modern forms, such as Aldo Rossi’s City Hall 
at Borgoricco, which as it were reaches back to the Palladian serenity, while 
eschewing the classical grammar.

I have outlined the way in which aesthetic education plays a part in 
architecture, teaching ordinary builders how to fit part to part and building 
to building. This process of  fitting is what we mean, or ought to mean, by 
settlement. All durable cities bear witness to this–not just long-standing 
cities like Siena and Florence, but modern cities too. New York has the 
air of  a durable settlement in part because the iron frame vernacular, with 
its street-friendly facades, and the early sky-scrapers which hovered above 
genial doorways on the street, created an adaptable city, one in which 
buildings have been preserved because their aesthetic qualities make 
them more valuable than their initial purposes. Compare Detroit, Tampa 
or Buffalo, in which aesthetic indifference, combined with gargantuan 
schemes executed by people without aesthetic education, have created 
‘built deserts’, at vast expense, financially, aesthetically and ecologically. It 
is surely reasonable, in the wake of  recent experience, to hope for a new 
kind of  architectural education, which is not simply a matter of  teaching 
how to hang panels onto frames, or to transfer computer-designed doodles 
onto the townscape, but which begins from inculcating an understanding 
of  the true raw materials of  architecture, which are light and shade.



isparchitecture.com

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gerald Adler is an Architect and Professor at the Kent School of  Architecture, 
University of  Kent, Canterbury (UK), and is a member of  the University’s Centre 
for Research in European Architecture (CREAte). 

Aleksandar Kostic  is an Architect and Lecturer at the Waterford Institute of  
Technology (IRL).

Graham Owen is an Architect and Associate Professor at the Tulane School of  
Architecture in New Orleans (USA). He is the 2018-19 recipient of  the Jean & 
Saul A. Mintz Professorship.

SIR Roger Scruton is a writer and philosopher and a fellow at the Ethics and Public 
Policy Center in Washington.

Karsten Harries is Professor of  Philosophy at Yale University and has been chair of  
the Department of  Philosophy.

IMAGE CREDITS
Cover: drawing taken from Jacques-Francois Blondel, Cours d´Architecture (1771).

Editorial
Figure 1: Timo Allin, www.kopfwerk.com. Via Wikimedia Commons

“Architecture is Concealed unto Itself ” 
Figure 1-3: Photos by Gerhard Kerff. Taken From Zeit-Räume der Architektin 
Lucy Hillebrand, ed. Dieter Boeminghaus (Stuttgart: Krämer, 1983), 156/157. 
Permission to reproduce the pictures were given by Mrs. Krämer.
Figure 4: unknown photographer, published in Innen-Dekoration 42 (October 
1931): 362-98, here 387.

“Aporia in Architectural Design” 
Figure 1/2/3/9: Illustrations by Aleksandar Kostic
Figure 4: Sketch after Opere di Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Figure 5: Photo in public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
Figure 6/7: Photo in public domain by Hans A. Rosbach via Wikimedia Commons
Figure 8: Sketch after Scamozzi’s drawing of  Ionic capital, 
L’Idea Della Architettura Universale

“The Anthropology of  a Smoke-filled Room” 
Figure 1: © Jonas Bendiksen/Magnum Photos, 2012
Figure 2: Harvard University Graduate School of  Design
Figure 3: Tumblr image. Photographer unknown.
Figure 4: Illustration by WBYA? 2014.

“Ut Architectura Philosophia?”
Figure 1: by Mattana via Wikimedia Commons

“Aesthetic Education and Design”
Figure 1: © Mike Quinn - geograph.org.uk/p/4731227
Figure 2: by Atomiccharles via Wikimedia Commons



AP . vol 3 . No 2 . 2018

Architecture Philosophy conducts double-blind reviews of  all papers submitted. Each 
paper is reviewed by one philosophy expert and one architecture expert. Reviewers 
are members of  the editorial board and are asked to evaluate submissions according 
to the following criteria:

Appropriateness to the field of architecture philosophy
Does the paper acknowledge and/or build on existing scholarship in both 
architecture and philosophy?
Does the paper acknowledge existing scholarship in philosophy and architecture 
respectively?

Philosophical analysis
Is philosophy engaged directly?
Is there an argument?
Is there analysis of  the claims made?
Is the logic of  the argument presented explicitly?
Are the paper’s arguments valid and sound?

Architectural analysis
Is architecture engaged directly?
Is architecture’s relevant history/contemporary situation acknowledged?
Is architecture’s history/contemporary situation dealt with accurately?

Originality
Is this paper a contribution to knowledge?
Does the paper present new ways of  solving philosophical problems 
in architecture (philosophy) or does it engage architecture to illustrate 
philosophical problems?
Does the paper present new ways of  engaging architecture and the built 
environment?

Presentation
Is the paper written in English to general academic writing standards for the 
humanities?
Does the paper follow the journal’s submission guidelines?

review criteria



isparchitecture.com

Please direct all submissions and general inquiries to isparchitecture@gmail.com. 
There are no deadlines for submissions, unless otherwise announced (e.g. special 
issue, conference proceedings, etc.).

submission Types
Authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. Full 
papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word 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




