








































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

Architecture Philosophy proudly acknowledges the financial support from the Oklahoma 
State University School of  Architecture and the College of  Engineering Architecture 
and Technology that makes free distribution of  print copies possible. The journal 
also acknowledges the support from the Oklahoma State University Library for 
making the submission management software, the journal’s online presence, and its 
indexing in academic search engines a reality. 

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

The graphical layout of  the journal and the cover design are by Carolyn Fahey. 

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

© Oklahoma State University

Printed in the United States by Oklahoma State University.



Managing Editor
Tom Spector, Ph.D., University of  California - Berkeley

Assistant Editors
Christoph Baumberger, Ph.D., ETH Zürich
Carolyn Fahey, Ph.D., Newcastle University
Stefan Koller, Ph.D., Delft University of  Technology

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

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

Contact
Web isparchitecture.com
Email isparchitecture@gmail.com



CONTENTS

Matt Waggoner  27How Not to be at Home in 
One’s Home: Adorno’s Critique 
of  Architectural Reason

5Editorial

9Sean Akhane-Bryen and 
Chris L. Smith

The Space of  the Lacerated 
Subject: Architecture and 
Abjection

47Roger Paden  On The Use and Abuse of  
Historical Monuments for Life

81Tom Spector et. al.Should Architects Refrain from 
Designing Prisons for Long-
Term Solitary Confinement? An 
Open Letter to the architecture 
profession

67Dominique Moran, Yvonne 
Jewkes, and Colin Lorne  

Designing for Imprisonment

89Brian Irwin  Architecture as Participation 
in the World: Merleau-Ponty, 
Wölfflin, and the Bodily 
Experience of  the Built 
Environment

Tom Spector

103

125

reviewed by Thorsten 
Botz-Bornstein 

Book Reviews:
The Philosophy of  Chinese 
Architecture by David Wang

Thinking Like a Mall by Steven 
Vogel

reviewed by Tom Spector





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We are living through a radicalized, unsettling 
moment in Western politics as what seemed 
the drift of  history towards democracy, greater 
individual freedoms, increased fairness and greater 
international cooperation is at least temporarily 
reversed. As we finished production of  this 
issue, ISPA was also concluding its 4th Biennial 
conference at a most overtly political venue—
The United States Air Force Academy—which is 
simultaneously a Mecca for modern architecture 
lovers as well as an indisputable seat of  the 
projection of  American power. This fact was 
underscored as our philosophical discussions were 
occasionally interrupted by fighter jets buzzing the 
campus. Thus, it should make sense that even in 
the slow-moving world of  applied philosophy, the 
times would lead us to produce this most overtly 
political issue. This development was not by design 
but rather by accretion—but one we eventually 
embraced as a legitimate extension of  the 
exploration of  the conjunction of  architecture and 
philosophy. The issue begins at a broadly theoretical 
level but gradually becomes more pointedly critical 
culminating in a first-ever (for Architecture Philosophy) 
open letter to the architecture establishment. 
 To begin, Sean Akhane-Bryen and Chris 
L. Smith take up the concept of  abjection in “The 
Space of  the Lacerated Subject.” As theorized 
by Julia Kristeva, abjection is the necessary 
demarcation process, one that begins in infancy, of  
distancing oneself  from what is not true and proper 
to the individual. But this process is susceptible 
to cooption. Architecture can be pressed into the 

OUR 
PHILOSOPHICAL 

DISCUSSIONS WERE 
OCCASIONALLY 

INTERRUPTED 
BY FIGHTER JETS 

BUZZING 

THE CAMPUS

“

”

ARCHITECTURE AND THE POLITICAL

TOM SPECTOR



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service of  abjective strategies to banish difference or conversely, to create 
totalizing environments that serve power. Architecture, they argue, is not 
only a “potential abject, but also the instrument or vector of  abjection.” 
Bataille’s writings on architecture and abjection are employed to craft an 
alternative to bad abjective strategies.
 In a related vein, Matt Waggoner discusses Adorno’s solution 
to the problem of  living in a system of  unfair power relations as the 
imperative “How Not to be at Home in One’s Home.” Adorno made no 
real distinction between the problems of  dwelling and morality. Waggoner 
argues that, for Adorno, “The proper relation (to property in an age of  
inextricable entanglement with illegitimate power relations is)…to refuse 
the logic of  possession and of  exclusive habitation by assuming the status 
of  a visitor in one’s own home.” Given the many truly awful immigrant and 
refugee crises across the world, this imperative applies at least as pointedly 
to the dilemmas of  international immigration as it does to making room 
for strangers in more intimate settings. 
 Given Loos’ famous assertion that “only a very small part of  
architecture belongs to the realm of  art: The tomb and the monument” we 
thought it both appropriate and, given events in Charlottesville, Virginia 
in 2017, timely, to include Roger Paden’s thoughtful proposals for the 
treatment of  Confederate monuments in American towns in “The Use 
and Abuse of  Historical Monuments for Life.”  Here, Paden resources 
Nietzsche, perhaps an initially unlikely choice, to help him propose a way 
out of  the dichotomy presented between the antiquarians (who engage 
history as connoisseurs) and the revisionists (who advocate removal 
of  such monuments altogether) with an approach that “serves life” by 
incorporating such monuments into larger works.
 While the  APDSR (Architects Planners and Designers for Social 
Responsibility) has urged the American Institute of  Architects to take an 
ethical stance against the design of  prisons for solitary confinement and 
capital punishment, the Institute has resisted getting drawn into what it 
sees as a divisive issue. For Dominique Moran Yvonne Jewkes and Colin 
Lorne, this situation is just another example of  architects’ aversion to moral 
introspection. “Designing for Imprisonment,” discusses the current state 
of  architects’ capacity for moral leadership by using the controversy over 
prison design as centerpiece. In the spirit of  their essay, the open letter to 
the American Institute of  Architects following Moran’s essay written by 
one of  the editors and a group of  his students makes a moral case that the 
Institute should come down decisively against the design of  prisons for 
the torturous practice of  long-term solitary confinement. The intention 
of  this piece is not to create a litmus test for readers but to explore 



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legitimate implications of  moral philosophy applied 
to architecture. We hope it opens new avenues for 
reader response.
 Following this plea to the architecture 
profession, Brian Irwin’s “Architecture as 
Participation in the World: Merleau-Ponty, 
Wölfflin, and the Bodily Experience of  the Built 
Environment” brings the essays back to a more 
serene, hope-filled tenor as he invites the reader to 
consider the renewed possibilities for participating 
in, instead of  visually consuming, architecture by 
combining insights by the great phenomenologist 
with those of  the great architectural historian. The 
issue concludes with two book reviews: a review of  
David Wang’s The Philosophy of  Chinese Architecture by 
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and a review of  Steven 
Vogel’s Thinking Like a Mall. 
 Taken together, these essays make a case 
for the benefits of  the philosophical consideration 
of  the political dimensions of  architecture. They 
also form something of  a bridge between the 
Bamberg essays in volumes 3.1 and 3.2, focussed 
on the human in architecture, and the next planned 
volume emanating from the Colorado Springs 
conference. They have certainly helped demarcate 
new areas from which to explore the conjunction 
of  architecture and philosophy.

Tom Spector 

TAKEN 
TOGETHER, THESE 

ESSAYS MAKE 
A CASE FOR THE 
BENEFITS OF THE 

PHILOSOPHICAL 
CONSIDERATION 

OF THE POLITICAL 
DIMENSIONS OF 
ARCHITECTURE

“

”



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THE SPACE OF THE LACERATED 
SUBJECT: ARCHITECTURE AND 
ABJECTION
SEAN AKAHANE-BRYEN AND CHRIS L. SMITH

Introduction

In Powers of  Horror (1980),1  the psychoanalyst Julia 
Kristeva presented the first explicit, elaborated 
theory of  ‘abjection,’ which she defines as the 
casting off  of  that which is not of  one’s “clean and 
proper”2  self. According to Kristeva, abjection is a 
demarcating impulse which establishes the basis of  
all object relations, and is operative in the Lacanian 
narrative of  subject formation in early childhood 
via object differentiation. (I am a subject: me. 
That is an object: not me.) Abjection continues to 
operate post-Oedipally to prevent the dissolution 
of  the subject by repressing identification with 
that which is other, and particularly that which is 
only tenuously other: the abject. Though Kristeva’s 
theory is braided into problematic Freudian 
premises, this essay will argue that abjection 
remains operative independent of  the Oedipal 
model. The focus of  Freudian psychoanalysis has 
largely been on the anxieties of  being extracted 
from other subjects, usually the mother. It has 
concerned itself  far less with the anxieties of  
extracting oneself  from the blankets, nursery walls, 
and doors which were equally a part of  the Real of  
infancy. We follow Kristeva and Georges Bataille 
in asserting that the necessary differentiations 
which occur between selves and other subjects in 
early childhood (especially the mothers and fathers 
and psychoanalytic fixation) also—or first—play 
themselves out in the differentiations of  selves from 
objects (our blankets, nursery walls, and doors). In 
doing so, we contest the centrality of  the Oedipal 
family triangle in subject formation, and recognise 



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a more general and parsimonious model of  subjecthood implied by the 
theory of  abjection—a model in which architecture necessarily plays a 
more substantial role, as both an object and instrument of  abjection. 

the Subject ‘en Process’ 

     Though Kristeva may be described today as poststructuralist, her early 
work on abjection is in keeping with Lacan. In Powers of  Horror, abjection 
is introduced as a preface to Lacan’s account of  the genesis of  the subject. 
According to that account, object relations emerge in the mirror stage, 
when an infant mistakenly identifies with a reflection of  herself—in 
a literal mirror, or some other mimetic representation—and begins 
to imagine herself  as an object which might be viewed from another 
perspective. Kristeva accepts this, but recognises that the Oedipal model, 
even as revised by Lacan, cannot account for the whole progression of  
consciousness from an experience of  undifferentiated sensation to that 
of  a self  discerning objects and other subjects. Instead, Kristeva asserts 
that the mirror stage is a secondary repression preceded by abjection, 
a “primal” repression3  which makes difference (differentiation) itself  
possible and “sets in motion, or implicates, the entire Freudian structure.”4  
Kristeva goes as far as to say that the Freudian narrative is “exploded 
by its contradictions and flimsiness”5  without abjection to precede it. 
Nevertheless, she declines to abandon the narrative altogether, leaving 
its linear progression of  stages intact and only placing her account of  
the development of  subject/object differentiations before it in time. 
Significantly, Kristeva credits Georges Bataille as the first philosopher 
to have “specified that the plane of  abjection is that of  the subject/
object relationship (and not subject/other subject).”6  As such, the earliest 
beginnings of  the subject involve an extraction not from other subjects, 
but what will become objects:

Do we not find, sooner (chronologically and logically speaking) [than the mirror 
stage], if  not objects, at least pre-objects, poles of  attraction of  a demand for 
air, food, and motion? Do we not also find, in the very process that constitutes 
the mother as other, a series of  semi-objects that stake out the transition from a 
state of  indifferentiation to one of  discretion (subject/object)—semi-objects that 
are called precisely “transitional” by Winnicott?7 

According to Winnicott, a paediatrician and psychoanalyst, an infant still 
in a state of  indifferentiation experiences subjective “omnipotence,”8  
believing that her own desire produces what is desired. The security blanket 
is a ‘transitional object,’ an infant’s first ‘not-me’ possession which eases 



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the disillusionment of  omnipotence and mediates 
the transition from undifferentiated sensation to 
the discernment of  ‘me’ and other ‘not-me’ objects. 
The transitional object already operates symbolically, 
standing in for the “object of  first relationship”9  
(traditionally the breast). Winnicott suggests that 
the symbolic operation of  the transitional object 
belies an antecedent repression:

When symbolism is employed the infant is already 
clearly distinguishing between fantasy and fact, between 
inner objects and external objects, between primary 
creativity and perception. But the term transitional 
object, according to my suggestion, gives room for 
the process of  becoming able to accept difference and 
similarity. I think there is use for a term for the root 
of  symbolism in time, a term that describes the infant’s 
journey from purely subjective to objectivity; and 
it seems to me that the transitional object (piece of  
blanket, etc.) is what we see of  this journey of  progress 
towards experiencing.10 

To Kristeva, abjection is that “root of  symbolism 
in time.” It is the repression which must occur 
before anything can operate symbolically, the first 
recognition of  difference in that traumatic moment 
when that which threatens the definition of  the 
‘clean and proper body’ (le corps propre) is cast off  
(ab-jected)11 by the animal impulse to protect 
the budding cognitive edifice that is the subject. 
“Even before things are—hence before they are 
signifiable—[the not-yet-subject] drives them out, 
dominated by the drive as he is, and constitutes his 
own territory, edged by the abject.”12 The casting off  
is traumatic because in a state of  undifferentiation, 
what is abjected is necessarily also the self.

I expell myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself 
within the same motion through which “I” claim to 
establish myself. … During the course in which “I” 
become, I give birth to myself  amid the violence of  sobs, 
of  vomit. Mute protest of  the symptom, shattering 
violence of  a convulsion that, to be sure, is inscribed in 

    I expell 
myself, I spit 
myself out,  I 

abject myself 
within the same 
motion through 

which  ‘I’ claim 
to establish 

myself

“

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a symbolic system, but in which, without either wanting or being able to become 
integrated in order to answer to it, it reacts, it abreacts. It abjects.13 

From here, Kristeva follows Lacan to a conclusion which poststructuralist 
philosophers vehemently eschew—that the object relation is, as it was put 
by Lacan, “a means of  masking, of  parrying the fundamental fund of  
anguish.”14  A “desiring quest,”15  doomed to anguished failure, for what 
Lacan called the objet petit a, the unattainable ‘object-cause of  desire.’ In 
Kristeva’s words:

The abjection of  self  would be the culminating form of  that experience of  the 
subject to which it is revealed that all its objects are based merely on the inaugural 
loss that laid the foundations of  its own being.16 

This acceptance of  the premise of  primordial lack is a focus of  much 
criticism of  Kristeva’s philosophy.17 In contrast, poststructuralist 
philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, 
and (anachronistically) Georges Bataille18 generally posit a plenitude out 
of  which subjectivity is folded.19 To properly address this debate—in 
particular, to discern the extent to which the dispute is rooted in style 
of  articulation rather than in fundamental disagreement—is beyond 
the scope of  this essay. Perhaps it will suffice to say that some ‘desiring 
quest’ for that which would destroy the subject as we know it if  reclaimed 
(reunion with the mother, the world) is necessary to render abjection an 
operable concept. In fact, the theory of  abjection appears to be entirely 
consistent with at least Bataille’s conception of  subjecthood—abjection 
being, in this case, an impulse which limits our access to the plenitude 
from which we emerged:

The first labor established the world of  things, to which the profane world of  
the Ancients generally corresponds. Once the world of  things was posited, man 
himself  became one of  the things of  this world, at least for the time in which he 
labored. It is this degradation that man has always tried to escape. In his strange 
myths, in his cruel rites, man is in search of  a lost intimacy from the first.20 

Bataille and Kristeva recognise abjection and the accession to the Symbolic 
(language, discursive logic) as necessary preconditions of  culture, but also 
that the repression is not so total that it cannot be undone. Far from it, 
Kristeva argues that the subject is always ‘en process’—by which is meant 
both ‘on trial’ and ‘in process.’21  The chaos of  the undifferentiated 
Real is always lapping at the edges of  the self. “We may call it a border; 
abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does 
not radically cut off  the subject from what threatens it—on the contrary, 
abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.”22 The abject clings 
to the subject, lacerating it, necessitating the constant defensive action 



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of  abjection. It is both horror and a siren’s song. 
Tellingly, Kristeva observes that the abject is “edged 
with the sublime,” which “has no object either.”23 It 
is the gallows humour which underlies all humour, 
and the reason eroticism shares so much territory 
with degradation and death.24 

      To Kristeva, the spectre of  the undifferentiated 
Real is first and foremost a danger which threatens 
to bring about the death of  the properly constituted 
subject. Bataille also recognises the subject as fragile 
and contingent, but is more motivated to remind us 
that a great ocean of  ecstatic experience remains 
dammed up around us while subject/object 
relations remain ‘properly’ constituted. He reminds 
us that “[c]oitus is the parody of  crime.”25 

No Subject Without a Space it is Not

     So, contrary to what is generally meant by the 
word ‘abject’ (filthy, low, wretched), it is not hygiene, 
according to Kristeva’s definition, that determines 
what is abject. Rather, the abject is that which “does 
not respect borders, positions, rules,”26 and threatens 
the legibility of  a system. Here, Kristeva draws on 
the pioneering work of  the anthropologist Mary 
Douglas (chiefly in Purity and Danger of  1966)27 on 
pollution avoidance in ‘primitive’ cultures. Douglas 
is careful to distinguish between purification and 
hygiene (modern germ theory):

If  we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our 
notion of  dirt, we are left with the old definition of  
dirt as matter out of  place. This is a very suggestive 
approach. It implies two conditions: a set of  ordered 
relations and a contravention of  that order. Dirt then, 
is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt 
there is a system.28 

… I have tried to show that rituals of  purity and 
impurity create unity in experience. So far from being 
aberrations from the central project of  religion, they 

contrary 
to what is 
generally 

meant by the 
word ‘abject’ 

(filthy, low, 
wretched), it 

is not hygiene, 
according to 

Kristeva’s 
definition, that 

determines 
what is Abject

“

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are positive contributions to atonement. By their means, symbolic patterns are 
worked out and publicly displayed.29 

   The insight that symbolic systems are “worked out” (not just 
“displayed”) and ritually maintained by expelling dirt lends support by 
analogy to Kristeva’s theory that subjecthood is established and shored up 
by abjection. To Kristeva, not only is there a system wherever there is dirt, 
the impulse to expel the dirt preceded and inaugurated the system. The 
corpse is the ultimate abject—just as death is the ultimate elision of  the 
subject with the world—not because it is infectious, and neither because 
it is a symbol of  death (yet), but because it “show[s] me what I permanently 
thrust aside in order to live.”30 

     Perhaps more importantly, Douglas’s work affirms the hypothesis that 
abjection is at work at every scale, across bodies and non-bodily objects:

… [A]ll margins are dangerous. … Matter issuing from [the orifices of  the 
body] is marginal stuff  of  the most obvious kind. Spittle, blood, milk, urine, 
faeces or tears by simply issuing forth have traversed the boundary of  the body. 
… The mistake is to treat bodily margins in isolation from all other margins.31 

In fact, there would seem to be nothing in the infant’s experience of  
undifferentiated sensation to categorically privilege the mother’s nipple as 
the first object of  abjection, and so as the symbolic locus of  post-Oedipal 
abjection. Abjection, then, is general to the subject’s intimacy with the 
world. This implies that architecture is a potential object of  abjection—a 
potential abject.32  The artist Victor Burgin goes as far as to describe first 
abjection as a “demarcation of  space,” and engages the dictum: “No space 
of  representation without a subject, and no subject without a space it is 
not.”33 

A Burning Cathedral

     The abjection of  space presents a troubling corollary. In reverse, it 
reveals architecture to be not only a potential abject, but also the instrument 
or vector of  abjection. Just as blood, tears and come are abject to bodies, 
traitors, scapegoats, and parvenues are abject to bodies politic. Just as shit 
and slough are flushed away and occluded by architecture, it is architecture 
again which surveils the suitably constituted subject and excludes or 
imprisons the category-transgressing other. Social and subjective abjection 
“follow the same logic, with no other goal than the survival of  both 
group and subject.”34  Unfortunately, writes Kristeva, “the absorption 
of  otherness proposed by our societies turns out to be inacceptable by 
the contemporary individual, jealous of  his difference—one that is not 



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only national and ethical but essentially subjective, 
unsurmountable.”35 The complicity of  architecture 
in this problem is perhaps obvious after Foucault, 
but it is Bataille, as ever, who cleaves to the deepest 
root of  the problem.

     Bataille problematised architecture by writing 
on the prison (among other typologies). But 
Bataille’s prison has nothing to do with Foucault’s 
Panopticon, and is instead, in Denis Hollier’s 
words, “an ostentatious, spectacular architecture, 
an architecture to be seen.”36 The prison is both 
the display of  the general condition of  the human 
subject and the “generic form of  architecture 
… primarily because man’s own form is his first 
prison.”37 Hollier writes:

The greatest motive for Bataille’s aggressivity towards 
architecture is its anthropomorphism. The article 
“Architecture” describes it as an essential stage in the 
process of  hominization, as a sort of  mirror stage 
that might be called in a parody of  Lacan’s title “the 
architecture stage as formative function of  the We, 
man’s social imago.” In this sense, even though he 
seems to denounce the repression exercised over man 
by architecture, Bataille is really intervening against 
the catachresis requiring that man only take form 
with architecture, that the human form as such, the 
formation of  man, be embedded in architecture.38 

That is, Bataille’s animus towards architecture 
is rooted in his fundamental revolt against the 
operation of  abjection in the accession of  the 
subject to culture. Architecture is at once formative 
of  the subject/society and that through which the 
subject/society generates its norms. In the cited 
article, Bataille describes architecture in general:

It is clear, in any case, that mathematical order imposed 
upon stone is really the culmination of  the evolution 
of  earthly forms, whose direction is indicated within 
the biological order by the passage from the simian to 
the human form, the latter already displaying all the 
elements of  architecture. Man would seem to represent 

       Man 
would seem 

to represent 
merely an 

intermediary 
stage...between 

monkey and 
building

“

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merely an intermediary stage within the morphological development between 
monkey and building.39 

     The declination to acknowledge the distinction between living bodies 
and buildings is not merely a provocation. If  the prison is the generic form 
of  architecture, the cathedral must be the most profuse and comprehensive 
imposition of  “mathematical order … upon stone,” and the culmination 
of  the “morphological development” encompassing humanity and 
architecture. Considering the cathedral in the context of  what Bataille 
calls the ‘general economy’ of  mediaeval European life reveals a mode of  
abjection which cuts across stone and flesh.

      A salient characteristic of  the Gothic cathedral at its highest development 
was its fractal scalelessness, or the quality of  being governed at every scale 
by the same repertoire of  geometric rules, such that a singular order could 
be observed in the smallest baldachin as in the tallest tower—an order 
exhibiting only a tenuous, grudging relationship with the dimensions of  
the human body. Every detail from the general arrangement of  the plan to 
the profile of  mullions might be derived procedurally, through the scaling, 
tessellation, rotation, and superimposition of  polygons believed to be 
numinous. In principle, a single module (such as a square defining the 
width of  a choir) could underlie the whole cathedral, rotations or divisions 
of  which would determine the size of  every element. So comprehensive 
and predictable was this craftlore that the historian François Bucher 
suggests, “to exaggerate one might say that a single finial preserved from 
a crumpled tower could suffice for a reasonably close reconstruction of  
the total structure, provided its position within the system were known.”40 
Except for logistical purposes, it was not necessary until the moment of  
construction to assign a measure to the module of  the cathedral, which 
in theory could be infinitely large and infinitely detailed. With no change 
whatsoever to the logic of  its design, a cathedral could be expanded to 
absorb any surplus.

    What Bataille finds objectionable in the cathedral is only an exaggeration 
of  the bad faith he finds in all architecture—indeed in all work, or what 
he calls ‘Icarian’ projects. These are organised teleological acts which 
result in the ‘deferral of  living to later’ (la remise de l’existence à plus tard). 
According to Bataille, Icarian projects circumscribe us in closed, ‘restricted’ 
economies which blind us to the Real of  the ‘general economy.’ Restricted 
economies are the economies of  accountancy; posed in the zero-sum 
terms of  equilibrium, of  profit here equated with loss there. They are also 
the economies of  much psychoanalysis founded on the corresponding 
notions of  a stable subject, developmental progression, and primordial 



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loss. The remit of  the general economy is wider 
than the field of  traditional economics:

Economic science … restricts its object to operations 
carried out with a view to a limited end, that of  
economic man. It does not take into consideration 
a play of  energy that no particular end limits: the 
play of  living matter in general, involved in the 
movement of  light of  which it is the result. On the 
surface of  the globe, for living matter in general, 
energy is always in excess; the question is always posed 
in terms of  extravagance. The choice is limited to how 
the wealth is to be squandered.41 

Figure 1: Jan van Eyck,  
Saint Barbara (1437)

Saint Barbara, out of 
scale with the building 
site behind her, is enlarged 
to indicate her numinous 
importance. The measure 
of the human body is 
incidental to the scheme 
of the cathedral, which 
is perpetually under 
construction.



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     Bataille insists that because in general, energy and wealth are always in 
excess, some share of  it must be consumed without profit, or ‘sacrificed’ 
according to his use of  the term. The fundamental problem of  political 
economy then, is how to sacrifice the surplus so that living is not deferred 
to later. For Bataille, this requires the removal of  the surplus from 
circulation in the realm of  exchange values—an extravagant consumption 
which is a means to no end, which burns brightly like “the sexual act … in 
time,” like a “tiger in … space.”42  This ‘useless’ consumption nevertheless 
has the use value of  briefly restoring intimacy with the Real. In fact, a 
failure to sacrifice the surplus leads to ruination:

These excesses of  life force, which locally block the poorest economies, are in fact 
the most dangerous factors of  ruination. Hence relieving the blockage was always, 
if  only in the darkest region of  consciousness, the object of  a feverish pursuit. 
Ancient societies found relief  in festivals; some erected admirable monuments 
that had no useful purpose … Their existence in excess nevertheless (in certain 
respects) has perpetually doomed multitudes of  human beings and great quantities 
of  useful goods to the destruction of  wars.43 

     The cathedral is one of  many modes of  sacrifice available to society, 
some more ruinous and ethically bankrupt than others. The enormous cost 
of  a cathedral cannot all be held against its account, since some portion 
of  that spectacular consumption was necessary to avoid even worse 
ruination. (Better a cathedral than a crusade.) Perhaps this is why Bataille 
does not attack the cathedral head-on as an instrument of  theocracy,  but 
instead uproots it, and all architecture with it, by locating the problem 
in something like abjection. Fundamentally, what is objectionable is the 
repression of  the sovereignty of  the subject exercised by its idealism, its 
presumption of  an a priori ideal form for matter. As Hollier emphasises, 
this is only an ossification of  the anguished relation human subjects already 
have to abjects, as architecture is ‘anthropomorphic.’ Architecture, like all 
symbolic practices, is a “frock coat”44  of  form and meaning thrown over 
the unassimilable Real. But the cathedral is particularly egregious because it 
is totalising (claims total moral authority) and monist (establishes a system 
of  infinitely regressive geometries capable of  assimilating all matter, all 
difference, at any scale). In this sense, the cathedral is the Icarian project 
par excellence. A canon of  Seville is said to have uttered, in 1402, “We shall 
build so large a cathedral that those who see it in its finished state will 
think that we were mad.”45 

     Not by accident, one of  the events which turned Bataille towards 
contemplating the limits of  human experience was the shelling of  Notre-
Dame de Reims, where he received baptism in the summer of  1914 amid 



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a crowd of  soldiers.46 (He would later recognise 
his conversion as bad faith.) German artillery 
arrived within range of  Reims and soon after, 
on the 20th of  September, the cathedral burned. 
By then Bataille and his mother had evacuated 
Reims, ‘abandoning’47  his blind, paralytic father to 
apparent doom. Bataille recalls the “filthy, smelly 
state to which [his father’s] total disablement 
reduced him (for instance, he sometimes left shit 
on his trousers).”48  The abjected real father, as it 
were, put the lie to the Name-of-the-Father. “Still,” 
remembers Bataille, “I believe he faced up to it, 
as always.”49  Joseph-Aristide Bataille’s immanent 
sovereignty, it might have seemed to his son, was 
analogous to a perpetually burning cathedral—a 
cathedral in the grip of  a violent sacrifice which put 
the lie to the Word of  the Father, which left only a 
Father with shit on his trousers.

     The ghost of  his father was no doubt on 
Bataille’s mind when he fixated on the man with 

Figure 2: Hans Bellmer, the 
Woman at the Cathedral, 
1948, reprinted by 
permission. 

The woman and cathedral 
are equals in the 
composition, but this time 
because the cathedral 
is foreshortened. 
The cathedral and 
woman are elided, both 
constituted through the 
force of abjection imposing 
itself on the hypergraphic 
horror vacui of the Real.



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shitty breeches in Salvador Dalí’s painting, The Lugubrious Game, seeing 
in him an emasculation fundamental to the human condition.50 André 
Breton and the Surrealists (including Dalí himself) were disgusted by and 
rejected the interpretation, exposing themselves to criticism by Bataille 
as being ‘Icarian’ themselves. To Bataille, their surrealism only served to 
exchange one restricted economy for another which happened to privilege 
creative inspiration in dreams. Bataille’s revolt was more total, and general 
to abjection.

Base Materialism 

     Thankfully, Bataille points us to a “loophole”51 in the Symbolic which 
promises to restore the sovereignty of  the subject, if  only momentarily. 
It is a narrow path “traced by the painters,”52  which might also apply to 
architects:

Nothing is more common than for a painter to accept the reduction of  his being 
to painting.

Living in a world in which to paint is one possible function, he chooses it as his 
limit. […] From this moment he defines this means as an end, for he must deny 
his servility. […]

Nevertheless, it is not as futile as it seems at first.

This domain of  means at least offers a loophole. All traditional means are 
asserted as a law which one can possibly breach, and this painter, attached as 
he is to his scorn for what painting is not, finally comes out of  by means of  a 
negation of  the limit he wanted to uphold. At this moment his passion ceases to 
be painting, and becomes liberty …53 

A sovereign architecture ought to be, in Hollier’s words, a “Bastille in no 
way different from its own storming.”54 The paradox may be a rhetorical 
simplification. (We recall that the Native American potlatch is “at once a 
surpassing of  calculation and the height of  calculation.”)55 A sovereign 
architecture, though still an Icarian project, is an architecture which 
‘negates the limit the architect wants to uphold.’ It is a cathedral which 
perpetually burns, a wall which perpetually crumbles, just as the abject 
perpetually clings to and tears at the frayed edges of  the subject.

     In the Oedipal narrative of  subject formation, the revolt begins with 
a matricide (the objectification of  the mother) and culminates in a single 
event, the patricide. But to Bataille and Kristeva, revolt is a part of  the 
constant deconstruction and reconstruction of  the subject. Revolt serves 
to subvert and perhaps reform the symbolic order it ruptures through, 
and is the implicit goal of  art which exploits the potential of  non-sense 



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and non-meaning—including, as Hollier observes, 
Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette. Tschumi 
writes, “Good architecture must be conceived, 
erected and burned in vain. [our italics] The greatest 
architecture of  all is the fireworker’s: it perfectly 
shows the gratuitous consumption of  pleasure.”56

    Both Bataille and Kristeva prescribe revolt—a 
confrontation with the abject, which Bataille spoke 
of  in terms of  ‘low’ or ‘base materialism,’ and which 
Imogen Tyler described critically as “affirmative 
abjection.”57Neither Bataille nor Kristeva were the 
first to observe that the accession to culture entailed 
a concomitant denial of  our base material, or to 
suggest its (temporary) undoing. Hollier observes:

In April 1929, Emmanuel Berl published his 
pamphlet, The Death of  Bourgeois Thought. 
The Death of  Bourgeois Morality followed 
a few months later. Its conclusion, entitled ‘Defence 
of  materialism’, proposed a materialism that 
deserves Bataille’s label of  base materialism, a 
materialism of  an aggressive vulgarity which Berl 
presents as the proletarian weapon par excellence, 
the only ideological weapon of  any weight against the 
bourgeoisie.58 

But Bataille in particular was aware that this weapon 
of  the proletariat cuts both ways. Every explicit 
attempt at affirmative abjection either fails as it were 
to consummate its revolt, ultimately reinforcing the 
symbolic order it was designed to subvert, or simply 
reverses the hierarchy to establish another. Abject 
art, so-called, usually succumbs to the first pitfall. In 
response to an exhibition of  such artworks, Hollier 
asks, “What is abject about it? Everything was very 
neat; the objects were clearly art works. They were 
on the side of  the victor.”59  The problem is not 
of  course that the artworks were insufficiently 
repulsing, but that in exhibiting them, they were 
constituted as objects rather than abjects, and 
inscribed in a particular closed political economy. 
Presumably the artworks were to be viewed from a 

      ... a 
cathedral 

which 
perpetually 

burns, a 
wall which 

perpetually 
crumbles

“

”



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distance rather than licked.

Conclusion

    It may be that affirmative abjection is definitionally futile. Culture cannot 
be sustained outside the symbolic order, and a project to escape project is 
still a project. But we infer from Bataille that architecture may be incited to 
do, at the very least, a little more. Doesn’t its deep complicity in fact render 
it a singularly suitable instrument for material political action attenuating 
the cruelties of  abjection—if  only because it is most guilty?

    Drawing further on Bataille, we pose an alternative inflection to the 
project of  affirmative abjection. Lacan suggested that the conscious 
subject is structured as text, just as the structuralists established the 
intellectual habit of  reading buildings as texts. Whereas a text might 
be persuasive, teleological, or metaphorical, a document is, in theory, 
according to Hollier, “aggressively realist,”60  something which “cannot be 
invented.”61  Documents expose “the radical incongruity of  the concrete: 
all at once, the most ordinary beings resemble nothing at all, cease to be 
in their places.”62 

     A building which is a document would be one which declines to wear 
its frock coat—one which aggressively negates symbolic operation, so that 
what is formless, different, or meaningless cannot be appropriated, cannot 
be commodified. (A cathedral, we might say, is absolved of  symbolic 
operation when it burns.) Such a building, so designed (or ignited) as 
to frustrate its own operation as an instrument of  abjection, might be a 
venue for sacrifice, for the “gratuitous consumption of  pleasure.”63  But 
unlike the Parc de la Villette, which may be analogous to the avant-garde 
non-sense poetry Kristeva once championed (but has since cooled on), a 
building which is a document would not so much carve meaning out of  
its signifying containers (a kind of  Surrealist project), but rather expose 
the wounds of  abjection which it already bears. A building which is a 
document might be a space for the kissing of  bared wounds.

Endnotes

1. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of  Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by 
Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, [1980] 1982.

2. (propre) “Usually, in expository prose, the context removes the ambiguities 
that poetic language thrives on. Kristeva is not averse to using polysemy to 
her advantage, as other French theorists like Derrida and Lacan have also 
done. The French word propre, for instance, has kept the meaning of  the 



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Latin proprius (one’s own, characteristic, proper) and 
also acquired a new one: clean. At first, in Powers 
of  Horror, the criteria of  expository prose seemed 
to apply, but in several instances I began to have 
my doubts about this. When I asked Kristeva which 
meaning she intended the answer was, both.” Leon 
S. Roudiez, translator’s note to Powers of  Horror, by 
Julia Kristeva (New York: Columbia University, 
[1980] 1982), viii.

3. Kristeva, Powers of  Horror, 10.

4. Ibid, 33.

5. Ibid, 32.

6. Ibid, 64.

7. Ibid, 32.

8. Winnicott, D. W., Playing and Reality (London: 
Routledge, [1971] 2010), 15.

9. Ibid, 12.

10. Ibid, 8.

11. Kristeva, Powers of  Horror, 13. Abject: ab-ject, 
from the Latin roots ab (away) and iacio (to throw).

12. Ibid, 6.

13. Ibid, 3.

14. Lacan, Seminar of  1956-57, quoted in Kristeva,  
Powers of  Horror, 33.

15. Ibid, 35.

16. Ibid, 5.

17. The problematic gendering of  Kristeva’s 
model of  abjection has also been criticised. See 
for example: Tyler, Imogen. “Against Abjection.” 
Feminist Theory 10, no. 1 (2009): 77–98. doi: 
10.1177/1464700108100393.

18. “There is something anachronistic in associating 
Bataille [1897–1962], a writer who died even 
before people started to talk about structuralism, 
with poststructuralism.” Denis Hollier, Against 
Architecture: The Writings of  Georges Bataille, trans. 
Betsy Wing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1974] 



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1992), ix.

19. The spatial aspects of  the philosophies of  Kristeva, Deleuze and 
Guattari are compared in: West-Pavlov, Russell. Space in Theory: Kristeva, 
Foucault, Deleuze. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009.

20. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, trans. 
Robert Hurley, vol. 1, Consumption (New York: Zone Books, [1967] 2007), 
57.

21. ‘Process’ is an English loan word (see note 2).

22. Kristeva, Powers of  Horror, 9.

23. Ibid, 11, 12.

24. On laughter and the Kristevan  Abject:  John Limon, Stand-up Comedy 
in Theory, or, Abjection in America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 
2000), 73–75.

25. Georges Bataille, “The Solar Anus,” in Visions of  Excess: Selected Writings, 
1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl et al. (Minneapolis: 
University of  Minnesota Press, 2008), 5.

26. Kristeva, Powers of  Horror, 4.

27. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An analysis of  concept of  pollution and 
taboo. London: Routledge, [1966] 2009.

28. Ibid, 44.

29. Ibid, 3.

30. Kristeva, Powers of  Horror, 3.

31. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 150.

32. For example, the symptoms of  abjection in architecture have already 
been theorised in terms of  the erotic and unheimlich by architectural theorist 
Anthony Vidler’s discussion of  Roger Callois’ theory of  “dark space” 
and “legendary psychasthenia.” Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny: 
Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 173. 

33. Victor Burgin, In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture 
(Berkeley: University of  California Press, 1996), 52. 

34. Kristeva, Powers of  Horror, 68.

35. Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1991), 2.

36. Denis Hollier, Against Architecture: The Writings of  Georges Bataille, trans. 
Betsy Wing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, [1974] 1992), x.

37. Hollier, Against Architecture, xii.



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38. Ibid, xi–xii.

39. Georges Bataille, “Architecture,” in Encyclopædia 
Acephalica, eds. Robert   Lebel and Isabelle Waldberg, 
trans. Ian White et al. (London: Atlas, 1995), 35. 
The passage originally appeared in the journal 
Documents (no. 2, May 1929), co-founded and later 
solely edited by Bataille.

40. François Bucher, “Medieval Architectural 
Design Methods, 800–1560,” Gesta 11, no. 2 (1972): 
41, doi:10.2307/766593.

41. Bataille, The Accursed Share I, 23.

42. Ibid, 12.

43. Ibid, 24. 

44. Georges Bataille, “Formless,” in Visions of  
Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. Allan Stoekl, 
trans. Allan Stoekl et al. (Minneapolis: University of  
Minnesota Press, 2008), 31. This passage originally 
appeared in Documents no. 7,  (December 1929).

45. Quoted in the frontmatter of: Erlande-
Brandenburg, Alain. The Cathedral: The Social and 
Architectural Dynamics of  Construction. Translated by 
Martin Thom. Cambridge: Cambridge University 
Press, [1989] 1994.

46. The cathedral was the subject of  Bataille’s first 
published text, written some time before 1920 when 
he apostatized. See: Hollier, Against Architecture, 
14–19 (in which the text is reproduced).

47. Georges Bataille, Story of  the Eye, trans. Joachim 
Neugroschal (New York: Penguin Classics, [1928] 
2014) 78.

48. Ibid, 72-73.

49. Ibid, 78.

50. Georges Bataille, “The Lugubrious Game,” in 
Visions of  Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939, ed. 
Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl et al. (Minneapolis: 
University of  Minnesota Press, 2008), 24–30.

51. Georges Bataille, “André Masson,” in The 
Absence of  Myth, (London: Verso, 2006), 180.



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52. Bataille, “Architecture,” 36.

53. Bataille, “André Masson,” 179–180.

54. Hollier, Against Architecture, xi.

55. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: Essay on General Economy, trans. 
Robert Hurley, vol. 2, History of  Eroticism (New York: Zone, 1993), 47.

56. Bernard Tschumi, “Fireworks” [1974], extract from A Space: A Thousand 
Words, (London: Royal, 1975). Cited in: Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and 
Disjunction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 262.

57. Tyler, “Against Abjection,” 77-78.

59. Denis Hollier, “The Use Value of  the Impossible,” in Bataille: Writing 
the Sacred, ed. Carolyn Bailey Gill (London: Routledge, 1995), 147.

59. Denis Hollier quoted in: Martin Jay, “Force Fields: Abjection 
Overruled,” Salmagundi no. 103 (Summer 1994): 244.

60. Denis Hollier, Absent Without Leave: French Literature under the Threat of  
War, trans. Catherine Porter, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 
1997), 141.

61. Ibid, 140.

62. Ibid, 139.

63. Tschumi, “Fireworks,” 262.



how not to be at home in one’s home: 
adorno’s critique of architectural 
reason

matt waggoner

Adorno wrote prolifically about modernism in 
culture and the arts, but little has been written about 
whether or in what form he might have addressed 
architectural concerns. The project of  exploring 
this potentially fruitful intersection has been helped 
in the last couple of  decades by authors from 
philosophy and critical theory contrasting his ideas 
about dwelling with Heidegger’s and by architectural 
theorists considering the import of  his aesthetic 
theory.1 If  these fall shy of  the more immediate 
connections to architecture that some have hoped 
to uncover, this is because Adorno almost never 
wrote about specific buildings and their designers 
(which is the kind of  specificity that you do find in 
what he wrote about music and literature). Neither 
did he publish any texts dedicated exclusively to 
architecture or dwelling, which is not to say that 
he never wrote about them or that architectural 
concerns are absent from his work. Adorno’s 
writings on dwelling and architecture live here and 
there, emerging and then moving on to surface later, 
if  not often as direct commentary then as a kind of  
architectural gaze his thinking sometimes employs. 
Dwelling and architecture exist like exiles in his 
writings even though the question of  dwelling—
of  what it means to inhabit social and space-time 
worlds as embodied beings—lies as much at the core 
of  Adorno’s philosophy as it did in Heidegger’s. In 
Adorno’s case, the fact that dwelling resides there 
as restlessly as it does is a stylistic impression of  the 
theory itself.  

              the 
question of 

dwelling... lies 
as much at the 

core of Adorno’s 
philosophy as it 
did in Heidegger’s

“

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     I begin by revisiting one of  his instances of  sustained architectural 
specificity. Though it is no more than a couple of  pages, Minima 
Moralia’s (1951) aphorism A18, “Shelter for the Shelterless,” is packed 
with observations about houses and housing that epitomize Adorno’s 
incisive brand of  cultural criticism.2 I suggest the passage should firstly be 
seen in relation to the opening sections of  Le Corbusier’s Towards a New 
Architecture (1927).3 Adorno’s pronouncement at the start of  “Shelter for 
the Shelterless” that “dwelling, in the proper sense, is impossible today” is 
usually set against Heidegger’s desire to recover an original, pure dwelling 
practice. From 1949 (the year Adorno returned to Germany) until 1951, 
they were both working on problems of  dwelling, culminating in the 
publication of  Minima Moralia in the Spring of  1951 and Heidegger’s 
delivery of  the lectures “Building Dwelling Thinking” and “... Poetically 
Man Dwells ...” later that year.4 But the question of  whether they 
consciously responded to one another in these texts and what level 
of  interaction they might have had may well be less significant for the 
purposes of  analysis and interpretation than the fact that Corbusier’s text 
was by all appearances a common touchstone for both of  them. When 
Adorno also writes in “Shelter for the Shelterless” that “the house is past,” 
for instance, he echoes Corbusier’s claim that “the house will fall to dust.”5 

     To acknowledge points of  convergence between Adorno, Heidegger, 
and Corbusier is not to equivocate, and indeed, the fault lines between 
Adorno and Corbusier are conspicuous (just as they are with Heidegger). 
Corbusier identifies housing as the architectural question, a “problem 
for the epoch.” Setting an agenda for architecture in the 20th century, 
Towards a New Architecture sets up the house as one of  modernity’s central 
“problems,” which modern architecture was poised to solve by harnessing 
processes of  mass production. By contrast, “Shelter for the Shelterless” 
insists that dwelling in modern life is a problem without a solution. More 
to the point, and bearing in mind Germany’s “final solution” and Stalin’s 
“Death solves all problems,” Adorno held that what has to be resisted are 
the usually ominous implications of  guarantees of  a wholesale solution. 
Adorno’s anxiety about the problem solving attitude was not simply a 
reaction to the historical events and conditions that shaped his life. It 
was also, for him, a philosophical claim (a counterpoint to the positivistic 
tendencies of  his day) nicely summarized in his early examination of  
Husserl’s philosophy:

The idea that a philosopher must produce a fixed set of  irrefutable findings ... 
presupposes that all the tasks he sets for himself  can be fulfilled, that there can 
be an answer to every question he raises. This assumption, however, is disputable. 



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It is possible that there are philosophical tasks which, 
although arising necessarily in a coherent process of  
thinking, can not be fulfilled; thus, they lead to an 
impasse … which has its roots in inherent antagonisms 
of  the problem itself.6

This is the root of  Adorno’s much-discussed 
negative utopianism. It is why he regarded the 
highest tribute that can be paid to utopia as the 
refusal to entertain premature substitutes or to gloss 
over the persistence of  contradictions forestalling 
its genuine realization. The paradoxical expression 
of  such an act of  fidelity is that in order to be true 
to utopia, one has to resist it. 

     While this could be seen as a manifesto 
for architectural pessimism—an inability to 
countenance Corbusier’s hope for an engineered 
utopia—from Adorno’s standpoint it is about 
safeguarding against the falsification of  utopia. The 
goal was to preserve the real and future possibility of  
a society transformed so that living with others and 
otherness, without doing so at anyone’s expense, is 
both publicly supported and privately possible. In a 
word, the obstacle to such possibilities for Adorno 
is most certainly capitalism, but more precisely it is 
the necessity in market societies to secure shelter 
through exchange and what he calls (for reasons 
discussed below) the “property relation.”

     Adorno’s generation of  intellectuals witnessed 
capitalism at a time when it was rapidly and very 
effectively learning how to manage the internal 
contradictions that Marx suspected would lead to its 
self-incurred demise. To Adorno and his colleagues 
in the 1920s and 1930s (the Frankfurt School’s 
formative years), the hope of  a successful transition 
away from capitalism seemed increasingly fraught 
as the various countermovements protesting the 
liberal model proved themselves to be deformed 
versions of  the same “identitarian” (totalizing, 
universalizing) logic of  equivalence implicit in 
capitalism. As long as the underlying contradictions 

dwelling in 
modern life is a 

problem without 
a solution

“
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of  society were going to remain unaltered in any substantial way for the 
foreseeable future, faithfulness to the idea of  the right life was going to 
necessitate refusals to accept its semblance, no matter how well-planned or 
well-intentioned the proposals. His rejections of  the idea of  a “blueprint” 
for utopia suggest that he sensed an affinity between two trends: on the 
one hand, the sweeping programs advanced by political parties claiming 
to once-and-for-all solve the problems of  modern society (interpreted as 
cultural degradation in Germany and inequality and alienation in Russia); 
on the other hand, the similarly sweeping proposals advanced by architects 
for master-planned communities and cities (Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse 
in 1930, Wright’s Broadacre City in 1932). One of  Adorno’s concerns 
about architectural blueprints for utopia was that they failed to account 
for the persistence of  fundamental contradictions like those inherent in 
the property relation. His other concern about this penchant for master 
plans was that they seemed to harbor the same totalitarian tendencies as 
the parties. 

     Still, Corbusier’s criticisms of  the “cult of  home” and his insistence 
that the problem of  housing remained unsolved resonates with part of  the 
argument of  “Shelter for the Shelterless,” whose title, it is worth noting, is 
borrowed from a chapter of  Siegfried Kracauer’s The Salaried Masses (1930). 
Kracauer tutored Adorno in philosophy during the latter’s precocious teen 
years, poring over such onerous texts as Kant’s Critique of  Pure Reason. 
Kracauer was a trained and practicing architect in those days and The 
Salaried Masses would become one of  the first critical examinations of  the 
birth of  middle class labor environs like the office space.7 It interrogates 
the fin de siècle social fantasy that cubicle life provided respite and greater 
self-determination than the oppressive drudgery of  the factory space, an 
assumption Kracauer challenges by stressing the mechanization of  office 
work, Kafkaesque means of  control implemented by office planners and 
new managerial systems, and the onset of  an even more paralyzing work-
incited ennui. 

     Similarly, “Shelter for the Shelterless” insists that shelter fantasies 
cannot be abstracted from the material conditions that make optimistic 
programs of  escape, refuge, or shelter-based “problem solving” acts of  
wishful thinking. The conditions informing Adorno’s spatial-architectural 
pessimism in “Shelter for the Shelterless” include the wartime decimation 
of  the housing stock (Germans, including Heidegger, called it a “housing 
shortage,” which Adorno thought was specious, a way of  ignoring the 
past); the exclusions and the violence of  state-sponsored nativism 
(promoting authentic ties to home and homeland); the mechanizing 



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effects of  technology and mass production on 
all forms of  interiority (including the invasion of  
the factory model, with its compulsory discipline 
and injunction to produce and be useful, into the 
private sphere); and the inescapable means-end 
logic of  the property relation. Adorno’s adamance 
about the underlying conditions of  dwelling and 
the impossibility of  extricating oneself  from their 
contradictions responds as much to Heidegger 
as to Corbusier, despite the obvious tension 
between Heidegger’s concerns about technological 
reason and Corbusier’s technophilia. Adorno’s 
disagreement in both instances is not with the claim 
that we were not building right, but with the claim 
that we have the capacity to definitively resolve 
housing’s problems here and now as if  they had 
only to do with misguided conceptions of  genuine 
or optimally efficient dwelling and not with the 
economic foundations of  society.

     “Shelter for the Shelterless” illustrates the 
unresolved nature of  dwelling’s problems by 
throwing a spotlight on some of  the attempts to 
evade them and how they fail. German post-war 
“traditional residences” are contaminated by the 
“musty pact of  family interests.” Regardless of  one’s 
relation to what took place in them, one cannot live 
in them free of  guilt. “Functional modern houses” 
like Corbusier’s machines for living in facilitate 
the “straying of  the factory model into the private 
sphere.” “Period-style houses” that have been 
restored and then purchased as historical novelties 
are mausoleums embalming their inhabitants alive. 
“Hotels and furnished rooms” sought after in some 
avant-garde attempt to sidestep the trappings of  
bourgeois ownership make a mockery of  those 
who really have been driven into homelessness 
or provisional housing situations. Bombed-out 
cities and the abandoned structures of  what had 
recently been labor and concentration camps, but 
are now too politically toxic to repurpose, have 
become omens of  the fate of  all housing. Like 

architectural 
blueprints for 

utopia...failed 
to account for 

the persistence 
of fundamental 

contradictions

“

”



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the job that one needs in order to avoid homelessness in a society that 
commodifies shelter, these neglected structures serve as concrete symbols 
of  the disposable nature of  everyone and everything in late modernism 
after they no longer prove useful. And finally, Adorno cites the Bauhaus-
inspired craft movement in architecture, furniture, and design that had 
set out to eschew form in favor of  function but eventually backslid into 
stylized, curvilinear ornamentation, which is precisely what Corbusier, 
Loos, Gropius, and others indicted as bourgeois pretension.8

     Adorno offers the reader a compendium of  what are still contemporary 
tactics for evading the contradictions of  dwelling. We could read these 
six pseudo-solutions as descriptions of  various chic-urban attempts today 
on the part of  city planners, private developers, architects, and shelter 
consumers to make dwelling strategies seem like solutions to bigger 
problems. The argument of  “Shelter for the Shelterless” is that none of  
them resolves anything because the underlying issues remain unchanged. 
Nothing escapes the predicament of  dwelling in modern life and our 
attempts, clever and noble though they may be, are shabby conceits and 
naively complicit. 

     He credits the inadequacy of  these solutions to the structural constraints 
of  the property relation, which is of  course something most architects 
admit and have experienced first-hand. There are two explanations for 
Adorno’s preference for the term “property relation.” First, when the 
Institute for Social Research relocated to Columbia University in the 
1930s (because it was forced to shutter when National Socialism rose to 
power), it began avoiding anything that could have been perceived in the 
U.S. context as overtly Marxist terminology. They self-censored terms 
like communism and revolution, even substituting seemingly innocuous 
terms such as “market society” and “capitalism” for a variety of  more 
generic designations like “exchange society,” “instrumental reason,” and 
the “property relation.”9 But the second reason Adorno preferred the 
language of  the property relation is because it allowed him to accentuate 
the claim that property is indeed a relation, not a thing, which is to say that 
property is the quintessential example of  what Adorno and his colleagues, 
inspired by Georg Lukacs’ writings on the subject, called reification.10 

    Heidegger opens his remarks in “Building Dwelling Thinking” by 
saying that dwelling is about belonging. The difference between Adorno’s 
philosophy of  dwelling and Heidegger’s has, in a nutshell, to do with 
Adorno’s suggestion that belonging in communitarian and contractual 
models of  inclusion and ownership is an extension of  the logic of  
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to belong in those ways is to be incorporated—to 
“rest in the preserve of  Being” (Heidegger) or to be 
assimilated as an appendage of  the self  (Locke)—
thereby nullifying the otherness and particularity 
(the “non-identity,” in Adorno’s phraseology) of  
the thing or person that belongs. To insist on the 
word “relation” when speaking of  the system of  
private property is to recognize that everything that 
belongs (a home or a homeland, for instance) is 
only naively and ideologically the exclusive domain 
of  those whose claims of  belonging are deemed 
legitimate. All property, including every home 
and every homeland, exists in relation to what lies 
beyond it, which our ways of  speaking and thinking 
about them disavow.   

     Adorno’s reflections on the nature and scope of  
the property relation go beyond architecture’s often 
complacent recognition of  the constraints of  client 
expectations and market demands. The deepest 
problem of  housing in a capitalist society is that 
it is a basic need that can only be purchased as a 
commodity (by most) with wages—money earned 
by finding purchasers for another commodity, 
labor—in a market that will not always need to 
increase production to full employment levels and 
is sometimes economically compelled to decrease 
it by shrinking the labor force.11 This is the double 
bind of  a market-based shelter economy. In addition 
to the basic economic contradiction that makes 
dwelling, in the proper sense, impossible, Adorno 
unpacks the moral facets of  its conundrum as well, 
insisting that regardless of  one’s relation to it (as 
property owners, renters, or participants in one 
of  shelter’s sub-economies—squatting, camping, 
living in rehabilitated refuse) every relation to home 
(and to homeland) is implicated in a system that 
entails one kind of  unsheltering or another. 

     He argues, for instance, that there is no morally 
responsible way to own because ownership is 
inherently exclusive, always taking something from 



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someone somewhere in the social ensemble (contrary to Locke’s claim in 
the Second Treatise that it does not); that the application of  techniques of  
mass production to housing strips them, as it does all commodities, of  a 
singular relation to the owner, negating the claims of  genuine belonging; 
that there is no way out of  entanglement since to try and extricate oneself  
from the system of  shelter and shelter impropriety would leave one 
intolerably exposed; that the interiors of  houses have become scenes of  
pseudo-autonomy from an external world that has, nonetheless, thoroughly 
intruded upon interiority. “Wrong life,” Adorno concluded, “cannot be 
lived rightly.”12 Economically, morally, and in many cases physically, we are 
all somehow unhoused. 

     It was perhaps too hasty, though, to have suggested that Adorno 
rejects all forms of  problem solving. He does offer something, but as 
one should expect from a consummate dialectician, it takes the form of  
a paradox. In “Shelter for the Shelterless,” he holds that the solution to 
the predicaments of  housing will consist in living in one’s home in full 
knowledge that if  one owns (for instance), one does not singularly own 
anything, and that in some sense it is owners who are objectified and who 
become possessions. Looking beyond its effects on owners, ownership 
participates in the unsheltering of  others (a claim that can be illustrated 
in many ways, one of  which is the well-studied regional correlation today 
between increases in property values and subsequent increases in eviction 
rates). 

    There is no way out of  these kinds of  entanglement, so the only 
responsible course of  action, Adorno claims (to the consternation of  
many of  his Left-wing peers and readers, still today), is to participate in 
an “uncommitted, suspended way,” and “not to attach weight to it.”13 This 
would be hardly different than the knee-jerk architectural shrug were it 
not for an astonishing additional claim he makes: one must “learn how 
not to be at home in one’s home.”14 A good deal can be said about this 
deceptively compact formulation: it appears to have originated from 
Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way (1845), which Adorno quotes in his 
first post-habilitation book-length study of  Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard: 
Construction of  the Aesthetic, 1933); Walter Benjamin includes it in his Arcades 
Project (finally published in 1999 but written in the 1930s), not citing the 
original but Adorno’s rendition of  it; Adorno revisits it in Minima Moralia 
(in “Shelter for the Shelterless”) two decades later, ostensibly as a way of  
responding to Nietzsche’s pride at having never been a homeowner, but 
more broadly in response to the aforementioned pseudo-solutions to the 
moral conundrums of  housing in post-war Germany; and it resembles 



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Freud’s concept of  das unheimliche, the uncanny, 
which is to say not homelike, strangely familiar, or 
not at home with oneself  (many of  the Frankfurt 
School’s members, including Adorno, were greatly 
influenced by Freud, who in a 1919 essay describes 
the uncanny as an experience of  strangeness in the 
ordinary).15 

     I think we have to read Adorno’s dictum as 
an entreaty to take up relations to homes and 
homelands—to how we “construct” them 
geographically and architecturally, as well as to 
how we inhabit them—in ways that are not just 
open to neighbors, strangers, and other kinds of  
visitors, including those who have been excluded 
or rendered obsolete by various incarnations of  the 
property relation. Even more radically than that, it 
means that we will need to see ourselves as visitors 
in our own homes, guests of  a sort with no more 
exclusive claim to them than others. His is an ethic 
of  displacement and a politics of  unbelonging that 
starkly contrasts with communitarian and contractual 
traditions of  right, where moral responsibility is 
predicated either on a sense of  belonging within 
a community of  shared norms and identity or on 
the abstract logic of  an equivalent exchange of  
possessions. Adorno’s argument is that in both 
cases, communities and contracts are constituted 
on the model of  the property relation, where the 
good is dependent on claiming sovereignty over 
this place, this identity, this property, claims that 
rely on necessary exclusions. 

      What would be the outcome of  such a dramatically 
reconstituted understanding of  property, home, 
belonging and dwelling? The ethic of  displacement 
points, I suggest, toward the formation of  anti-
communities, ad hoc and provisional aggregations 
of  those who are commonly displaced and for 
which the foundational value that binds people 
together is not identity but non-identity, living with 
difference. Like the uncanny, it would make the 

ownership 
participates in 

the unsheltering 
of others

“
”



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ordinary strange and the stranger at home. 

     This idea of  informal, ad hoc communities and alternative kinships 
appears throughout Adorno’s writings, including his reflections on 
American exile after returning to Germany (in which he wrote warmly 
about the reception he received and about the spirit of  collaboration he 
experienced, despite arriving with a very different methodological and 
theoretical orientation than what was practiced in the U.S. at that time).16 
The question he leads us to ask is how we might live (and design living 
arrangements) in ways that subvert the logic of  exclusive possession, even 
though there is no way to escape it under present conditions. Since choosing 
not to dwell is not an option, and since there is no dwelling in modern life 
that escapes the property relation, how can we “be at home,” how can we 
rethink its meaning and practice—but also how can we develop, design, 
and build housing that installs some new practice of  being at home so that 
home is not a possession that excludes but a relation that invites intimacy 
amid environs of  otherness? How can new paradigms of  constructing 
dwelling systems, structures, and arrangements allow for the mobilization 
of  reciprocal styles of  residence, where residents are visitors and visitors 
are welcomed. To do so would be to address the “problem of  the epoch” 
by modeling housing on the precarity of  the unsheltered exile rather than 
on the security of  the native/owner with so-called authentic ties to place 
and property. 

     Are there pathways from Adorno’s post-war philosophy of  housing 
to the present? I will not labor over the obvious associations with 
contemporary social and political movements like sanctuary cities, the right 
to the city, and the right to housing, except to affirm that these are certainly 
benefactors of  the kind of  reasoning that one finds in Adorno’s writings 
on housing, hospitality, and dwelling. I can think of  other examples as 
well. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of  Law (2017) includes a section near 
the end of  the book in which he permits himself  to speculate on how 
housing segregation could be rectified if  there was political determination 
to do so. He imagines policies aimed at incentivized means of  rolling back 
local zoning practices and federal tax benefits that promote segregated 
housing patterns. This could be accomplished by making tax subsidies 
conditional on the inclusion in wealthy areas of  a sizable percentage of  
affordable housing stock and by mandating aggressive measures to attract 
racially diverse tenants. 

     Rothstein argues that, although the Supreme Court does not currently 
recognize it, the legal justification for such assertive measures is based 
on the fact that it was de jure policies backed by federal and local 



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governments that for decades created and sustained 
housing segregation, and thus government has a 
14th-amendment obligation 
to rectify the consequences 
of  its New Deal-, Civil 
Rights-, and even post-Civil 
Rights-era illegalities. The 
intergenerational effects of  
inclusive housing (through 
access to better-funded 
schools and community 
resources for the children 
of  relocated tenants, 
for instance) would be 
enormously impactful.17 To 
be sure, even this does not 
escape entanglement since it 
involves displacing families 
from neighborhoods in 
which they may have deep 
roots in the community, 
but it also requires wealthy 
neighborhoods to open 
themselves to changes that would fundamentally 
alter the makeup of  those communities as 
well. Measures that make dwelling inclusive 
(particularly in middle and upper-middle class white 
neighborhoods) by dismantling and repairing the 
harms of  housing segregation would be consistent, 
I think, with what it could mean in a practical, 
present-day sense to learn how not to be at home 
in one’s home. 

    In the period between 1964 and 1968, prominent 
voices in the civil rights movement, including 
President Johnson himself, became intensely vocal 
about the incapacity of  the new civil rights laws—
outlawing discrimination in public accommodations 
and extending the right to vote—to overcome 
segregation and its direct effect on income and 
opportunity inequality.18 Martin Luther King, Jr. 
argued that expanding the quantity, access, and 

        king’s 
rhetoric 

routinely 
employed 

architectural 
metaphors

“

”

Figure 1:  Martin Luther 
King Jr. Memorial, 
Washington, D. C. 



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location of  low income housing in the U.S. was a necessary step toward 
racial and economic justice. Usually known for its theological imagery, 
King’s rhetoric routinely employed architectural metaphors as well, such 
as when he said that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to 
a beggar ... It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs 
restructuring”19; and when he lamented to Harry Belafonte that after all 
of  their efforts and the eventual passage of  the civil rights laws in the 
1960s, he realized that economic inequality linked to housing segregation 
would continue unabated. He worried that they had done little more than 
integrate into a “burning house.” (Figure 1).

     In 1967, King adopted the image of  a “world house” which informed 
an essay of  the same name: 

A famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of  suggested plots 
for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “A widely 
separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” This is 
the great new problem of  mankind. We have inherited a large house, a great 
“world house” in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and 
Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant,  Moslem and Hindu—a 
family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never 
again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace.20

The image of  a world house asks us to see human beings as common 
inhabitants of  the earth who are mutually affected by one another’s 
suffering and insecurity. It is an image of  living with difference, which is 
not only suggestive of  welcoming and responding to the other. Implicit in 
its concept is the idea that I can lay no exclusive claim to a singular instance 
of  housing, homeland, social belonging, or citizenship since there is but 
one planetary mesh of  interconnected housings. King tries to reimagine 
the shelter of  physical residence, political recognition, and economic well-
being that white society assured for itself  at others’ expense as a site of  
ordinariness that has to become uncanny, defamiliarized. As a radically 
exteriorized conception of  what it means to be housed, this image is 
reminiscent of  what Adorno tries to accomplish with a seemingly very 
different kind of  spatial-architectural metaphor. 

     Adorno’s “no man’s lands” are playful in their discourse with the 
meaning of  utopia, which is another kind of  no-place. To impute utopian 
significance to places whose historical references include dumping 
grounds and the space between two fronts in trench warfare (where the 
carnage of  bombed buildings and disfigured bodies abound) is tongue-in-
cheek, a conscious attempt on Adorno’s part to insist that utopias will not 
yet come in the form of  successfully implemented solutions to sweeping 



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problems. For now, they will appear in the rubble 
of  failed solutions, the refuse of  damaged life. “The 
resurrection of  the dead,” Adorno wrote, “will take 
place in the auto-graveyards.”21 But no man’s lands 
are not only scenes of  destruction and obsolescence. 
They are also sites of  contiguity, non-spaces of  in 
betweenness that lie beyond the boundaries of  
regions of  exclusive possession and control. To 
inhabit the no man’s land is thus to exteriorize the 
self, to abandon the security of  the carapace for the 
vulnerability and precarity of  border regions. No 
man’s lands are deconstructive zones of  contact 
and cross-contamination where binarily conceived 
relations no longer hold, relations between subject/
object, self/other, mind/body, resident/stranger, 
life/death, reason/affect, utopia/dystopia, home/
exile.  

Adorno’s no man’s lands acknowledge that our 
materiality is an inescapably shared feature of  our 
existence as embodied beings, making us both 
dependent on and responsive to that which is 
outside us. This is true because of  our need to seek 
food and shelter amid external environs and social 
arrangements and because of  historically specific 
intrusions into interiority—mental, affective, and 
aesthetic interiority through the culture industry, 
architectural interiority through the mass production 
of  houses and the penetration of  the spaces of  work 
and life by new forms of  influence and control, and 
the interiority of  social and political belonging, 
when in the name of  authentic ties to home and 
homeland one is dislocated, either into exile or to 
the concentration camp. This is why, rather than 
Kierkegaard’s constructions of  selfhood through 
images of  interiority (his touchstones tended to be 
the accoutrements of  the 19th-century bourgeois 
apartment), Adorno preferred Kafka, whose 
characters could not find refuge. They were instead 
expelled onto barren surfaces, exoskeletal and 
exposed. In reference to Kafka, Adorno once called 
upon the image of  no man’s lands to describe the 

           The image 
of a world 

house asks us 
to see human 

beings as common 
inhabitants of 

the earth who 
are mutually 

affected by 
one another’s 
suffering and 

insecurity

“

”



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unlocatable position of  characters who suffered an “unsuccessful death,” 
having been so thoroughly depleted and made obsolete that, though not 
physically dead, they exist in a kind of  socially dead/undead state.22 

     But like the unsuccessful deaths in Kafka’s stories, Adorno sees 
promise in the precarity and dislocation of  no man’s lands. He sees 
them, for one thing, as scenes that expose us, and for that reason they 
also expose the real nature of  embodied life. The shared frailty of  bodies 
and of  the environs upon which they depend is a reminder that to be an 
embodied being is to be something that lives outside itself  (this is another 
sense in which Adorno used the phrase no man’s land, to describe the 
experience of  exteriorization). In other words, embodied life contains 
within its phenomenology a template of  what we mean by dwelling. The 
necessity of  corporeal beings to seek housing in a place, in relations of  
both physical and social geography, is never purely subjective and cannot 
be individualized. The sensorium of  embodied subjectivity is not even 
something that happens on its own; it is enlivened by contact with 
and exposure to other bodies and bodily states. Embodiment bears an 
essential relation to dwelling because to inhabit a body is to inhabit bodies 
as such, a common corporeality stitched together by the reflexivity of  the 
touch and by collective modes of  meeting shared needs and responding 
to shared vulnerability. The human experience of  dwelling begins with 
embodiment, with the fact that consciousness is inseparable from the 
somatic and the sensorial, which are, like everything physical, inherently 
responsive to, dependent upon, and passively and actively bound up with 
that which is external to consciousness. Modes of  dwelling in bodies and 
in space are not those of  enclosure and sovereignty but of  cohabitation 
and an ethically enlivening non-sovereignty.

      No one ever singularly inhabits a body because embodiment is not, as 
we like to imagine it, a state of  being a self-sufficient thing. Its existence 
is inseparable from and can only be constituted as such within a matrix of  
contact and connectivity that can either prove sustaining or detrimental, 
depending on the quality of  the bonds. What we should add to this is that 
the scope of  that which stitches me into the world is not exclusively the 
interfacing of  organic bodies. It includes the kind of  tethering that binds 
bodies together by housing them in time and space. There are other ways 
that I come to exist as a place-holding being in the world and that I am 
delivered into and hopefully preserved in such constitutive contact with it 
and with others. For if, as Judith Butler argues in Senses of  the Subject, it is 
not the case that there is already a pre-existent “I” prior to being touched, 
but that the touch instead enlivens me as a feeling, sensing self, then we must 



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also maintain that there is no way to conceive of  the 
human being apart from the kind of  tethering and 
contiguous relations that enable me to inhabit the 
external world.23 We are fastened to one another by 
virtue of  our common embodiment, but our bodies 
are also intertwined with one another and with the 
world inside a global tissue of  connected environs 
that includes such things as streets, neighborhoods, 
cities, infrastructures, and coverings, the matrix 
of  shelters and shelter arrangements in which we 
dwell. It is within these structures that we reside 
with varying degrees of  satiety and security, some 
more enlivening than others. Just as the body does 
not enclose us from others, shelter does not enclose 
us from that which surrounds us and in relation to 
which we are only ostensibly distant and distinct. 
Rather, dwelling is the activity and shelter the fabric 
with which the self  is extended into and implicated 
in worlds of  being and belonging, which I take to be 
what King envisioned when he adopted the image 
of  a world house and what Adorno envisioned 
when he upheld no man’s lands as potentially 
fruitful shared experiences of  propulsion into 
scenes that exteriorize us, over which none of  us 
can claim exclusive nativity or possession. 

     This brings me, finally, to the other architecturally 
compelling feature of  no man’s lands in Adorno’s 
works. It is that Adorno’s models of  living with 
difference—aggregations of  the commonly 
dislocated and the kinds of  alternative bonds that 
crystallize among them—invite redefinition of  the 
meaning of  housing and home, of  the designed 
character of  dwelling and the social arrangements 
it facilitates. Repositioning exilic states as the 
foundation for ethical responsibility, Adorno inverts 
the relation between home and exile such that our 
model of  home is fashioned after the non-exclusive 
relations that characterize communities of  shared 
displacement. This aspect of  Adorno’s philosophy 
of  dwelling is just as consistent with King’s interest 
in an expanded and exteriorized conception of  the 

          utopias...
will appear in the 

rubble of failed 
solutions,  the 

refuse of 
damaged life

“

”



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house as it is with different models of  family and kinship (which were also 
present in King’s reflections on the world house). For it is on the basis of  a 
traditional concept of  kinship that homes and homelands have historically 
acquired their meaning as scenes of  common identity and exclusive claims 
of  the right of  belonging and possession. Learning how not to be at 
home in one’s home will necessitate, then, learning how to forge bonds of  
belonging that are predicated on intimacy and proximity between aliens 
and strangers rather than kin and countrymen. Reimagining houses and 
housing as no man’s lands enlists us in the project of  reconstituting the 
social arrangements that have traditionally organized and orchestrated 
shelter, and it includes risking their contamination with conceptually 
promiscuous alternative cohabitation structures. These would no longer be 
arrangements whose bonds are rooted in exclusive claims of  cultural and 
genetic belonging, nor the claims of  contractually legitimized, inherited or 
purchased belonging. 

    It is difficult, for obvious reasons, for us to imagine dwelling and 
housing apart from the logic of  possessive exclusion rooted in relations 
of  the family and private property. We know that under the circumstances, 
when territorial sovereignty, patriarchal vestiges, and the property relation 
circumscribe every form of  dwelling, we would intolerably expose ourselves 
to insecure states if  we did not participate in the shelter-based economy 
according to its rules. This is why Adorno’s “solution” cannot take the 
form of  a master-planned blueprint for utopian dwelling. What he offers 
us instead is an architectural counter-image to the blueprint by comparing 
the task of  reimagining dwelling and housing to images from land surveys. 
The blueprint is an abstraction, a rationalization of  reality, whereas aerial 
photographs of  the surface of  the earth capture the materiality of  the 
terrain. In “Notes on Kafka,” having likened the unsuccessful death to a 
no man’s land, Adorno argues that Kafka’s stories function like wartime 
aerial photographs of  demolished cities, neighborhoods, buildings, and 
homes. He describes this function as the production of  an impossible 
view from the standpoint of  an as yet unforeseeable utopia, “hell seen 
from the perspective of  salvation.” His writing “feigns a standpoint from 
which the creation appears as lacerated and mutilated as it conceives hell 
to be.” Recalling Jews in the middle ages who were tortured, executed, 
and hung head down, Adorno tells us that “Kafka, the land-surveyor, 
photographs the earth’s surface just as it must have appeared to these 
victims during the endless hours of  their dying.”24 When Adorno describes 
these views of  the extremes of  exposure, suffering, and insecurity as 
the standpoint of  salvation, he is suggesting that we need to invert our 
notions of  pessimism and optimism. Genuine optimism does not conceal 



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realities beneath abstractions and pseudo-solutions. 
Its conception of  utopia is not that of  the blueprint 
but of  the preservation, if  only in thought 
(whose focal point is like an image from afar), 
of  an as yet unforeseeable transformation of  the 
material conditions for dwelling and cohabitation. 
“To include [Kafka] among the pessimists, the 
existentialists of  despair, is as misguided as to make 
him a prophet of  salvation” since “the light-source 
which shows the world’s crevices to be infernal is 
the optimal one.”25

     Ever since the ideal cities of  Corbusier and 
Wright, the “optimal solutions” of  architecture 
to the problems of  housing have not captured 
the depth of  the damages incurred by dwelling 
because of  its enmeshment in the property 
relation. Rothstein and others remind us how those 
blueprints, once approximated in the development 
of  New Deal housing programs and postwar 
suburbs, led to the even deeper entrenchment 
of  racially exclusive property relations. With the 
aid of  federal support and local zoning practices, 
the approaches they inspired contributed to the 
intransigence of  segregated housing patterns 
and the intergenerational economic debilitation 
of  African Americans that resulted from those 
patterns. In no small part, ideological notions of  
the proper family model played a role in justifying 
the exclusions of  housing as well, both because 
of  racially coded discrimination against single 
parent families and because of  the inviolable status 
accorded the nuclear family and individual property, 
effectively shielding them against government’s 
ability to prevent or police the segregationist 
practices of  developers, real estate agents, banks, 
and neighborhood associations.    

    Adorno’s critique of  architectural reason 
is an immanent critique that thinks through 
the categories and concepts of  architectural 
perspectives and practices. What is architecture to 

 adorno’s 
‘solution’ cannot 
take the form of  

a master-
planned 

blueprint for 
utopian dwelling  

“

”



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do when its entire task is beset by the ineluctable contradictions of  the 
property relation? Adorno’s answer is that architecture must do what art 
did during the period of  high modernism and what artists at its periphery 
(such as Gordon Matta-Clark) have intimated in their works. Architecture 
must become anti-architectural, not in the sense that it no longer plans, 
designs, and builds dwellings and dwelling arrangements, but that it does 
so in ways that feign an impossible standpoint (rather than blueprinting 
false solutions) by reimagining dwelling as no man’s lands of  exteriorized 
contiguity and dwelling’s ideal social arrangements as alternative kinships. 
It has to learn how not to be at home in its traditional mandate to build 
spaces that reinforce our preconceptions of  proper social space. Dwelling 
in the proper sense may be impossible today, but its future may be what is, 
til then, deemed improper. 

Endnotes

1.  Samir Gandesha, “Leaving Home: On Adorno and Heidegger” in 
Adorno and Heidegger: Philosophical Questions (Redwood City, CA: Stanford 
University Press, 2007, pp. 101-28); Hilde Heynen, Architecture and 
Modernity: A Critique (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).

2.  Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life (New 
York: Verso, 1974). I use “Shelter for the Shelterless” to translate “Asyl 
für Obdachlose” rather than Jephcott’s “Refuge for the Homeless.” For 
an extended investigation into “Shelter for the Shelterless,” see Waggoner, 
Unhoused: Adorno and the Problem of  Dwelling (New York: Columbia 
University Press, 2018).

3.  Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Frederick Etchells, trans. 
(New York: Dover, 1986). Most readers will be familiar with the history 
of  the text and its title. Originally published in French in 1923 as Vers 
Une Architecture, the first English translation by Etchells appeared in 1927, 
in which the title was interpreted as Towards a New Architecture. In 2007, 
Getty published a new English translation returning Corbusier’s title to 
the original Toward an Architecture. When referring to the book’s title in 
what follows, I follow the Etchells translation since it remains the most 
widely used version of  the text in English.

4.  Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought. Albert Hofstadter, trans. 
(New York: Harper Collins, 1977, pp. 141-160, 209-227).

5.  Heidegger questions the role of  the house in a far less pointed and 
pithy way in “Building Dwelling Thinking”: “Today’s houses may even be 
well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light, and sun, 



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but do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee 
that dwelling occurs in them?” (p. 144).

6.  Theodor Adorno, “Husserl and the Problem 
of  Idealism,” Journal of  Philosophy (Vol. 37, no. 1, 
January 4, 1940: pp. 5–18).

7.  Siegfried Kracauer, The Salaried Masses: Duty and 
Distraction in Weimar. Quintin Hoare, trans. (New 
York: Verso, 1998).

8.  Adorno, 1974: pp. 38-39. 

9. The Institute for Social Research was the 
institution, founded in Frankfurt under the auspices 
of  its University, that gave birth to the group of  
scholars known as the Frankfurt School, some of  
whom were less directly connected to the Institute 
than others. See Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: 
A History of  the Frankfurt School and the Institute for 
Social Research, 1923-1950 (Berkeley: University of  
California Press, 1973).

10.  Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness: 
Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 
1971).

11.  Marx, of  course, goes one step further when he 
argues that even labor shrinkages are economically 
strategic for capital. They create what he calls 
an industrial reserve army: unemployed (often 
homeless or insecurely sheltered) workers who are 
ready at a moment’s notice to report to the factory 
or the office as soon as their labor is again required.

12.  Adorno, 1974, p. 39.

13.  Ibid.

14.  Ibid.

15. Theodor Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of  the 
Aesthetic. Robert Hullot-Kentor, trans. (Minneapolis: 
University of  Minneapolis Press, 1989); Walter 
Benjamin, The Arcades Project. Howard Eiland 
and Kevin McLaughlin, trans. (Cambridge, MA: 
Belknap Press of  Harvard University Press, 1999); 
Sigmund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny’” in The Standard 
Edition of  the Complete Psychological Works of  Sigmund 



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er

Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, pp. 
217-256.  I suspect there are still more reference points for the quote that 
I am not yet aware of.

16. Theodor Adorno, “Scientific Experiences of  a European Scholar 
in America” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1998, pp. 215-242); Adorno, “Foreword” in 
Prisms. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, trans. (Cambridge, 
MA: MIT Press, 1967, pp. 7-8).

17.  Richard Rothstein, The Color of  Law: A Forgotten History of  How Our 
Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017).

18.  See Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold 
History of  Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. 
Norton and Company, 2006).

19.  Michael Eric Dyson, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the 
Color of  Disaster (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007).

20.  Martin Luther King, Jr., “The World House” in Where Do We Go From 
Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968, p. 177)

21.  Adorno 1967, p. 271.

22.  Adorno 1967, pp. 270-271.

23.  Judith Butler, Senses of  the Subject (New York: Fordham University 
Press, 2015).

24.   Adorno 1967, p. 271.

25.  Ibid.



isparchitecture.com

on the use and abuse of historical 
monuments for life: Nietzsche and 
confederate monuments  

roger paden
The practice of  preserving various parts of  urban 
landscapes for historical purposes raises a variety of  
normative, metaphysical, and conceptual questions 
that invite philosophical analysis. The normative 
questions are particularly interesting. Why should 
we preserve historical sites? What sites are worth 
preserving? How should they be preserved and 
interpreted?1 In this essay, I apply Nietzsche’s 
theories of  history and culture as found in the 
first two Untimely Meditations to provide a fresh 
critical framework to some normative questions 
raised by a particularly difficult instance of  
historical preservation; namely, the preservation of  
Confederate monuments. This framework allows 
me to argue that some monuments should be 
removed from their prominent public sites, while 
others should be retained and reinterpreted.

Nietzsche on the Advantages and Disadvantages 
of History 

        Nietzsche’s work might seem to be a strange 
place to look for ideas concerning historical 
preservation. He wrote very little about cityscapes 
(and what little he did write is largely confined 
to an early work, the first Meditation on David 
Strauss; and he wrote nothing at all about historical 
preservation.2 His most systematic writing about 
history is found in the second Meditation, “On 
the Uses and Disadvantages of  History for Life,” 
which begins with a rather unpromising quote from 
Goethe: “I hate everything that merely instructs 
me without augmenting or directly invigorating my 



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activity.”3 As the study of  history is rarely thought invigorating, it might be 
supposed that Nietzsche would be an opponent not only of  the study of  
history, but of  historical preservation, as well; but this supposition would 
be mistaken as he immediately goes on to argue that, if  history does not 
invigorate, it is

a costly superfluity and luxury [which must be hated by us] because we still 
lack even the things we need and the superfluous is the enemy of  the necessary. 
[However,] we need history ... but we need it ... for the sake of  life and action, not 
so as to turn comfortably away from life and action.... We want to serve history 
only to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value the study of  
history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and degenerate... 4 

In fact, Nietzsche held that history is essential to a well-lived life, but that 
only some approaches to history can serve life, while others are always 
dangerous to it. Moreover, he believed that any approach can become 
dangerous if  relied upon exclusively. The point of  the second Meditation 
is to show how history – and what kinds of  history – can be useful.

     In that Meditation, Nietzsche argues that humans differ from other animals, 
not because we are essentially rational while they are not; rather, we differ 
because we have far better and more complex memory. This seemingly 
small psychological difference, however, has great consequences: humans 
are “historical animals,” while other animals, lacking a sense of  history, 
live entirely (and happily) in the present. It also follows that these other 
animals are incapable of  significant historical action and cannot grow or 
change as a species in historical time, while humans live in a world with 
both a past and a future and, consequently, can plan alternative futures. At 
the limit, humans can make a project of  themselves: unlike animals, they 
can engage in historically-significant, transformative action. 

     Nietzsche argues that, to live historically-significant lives, our lives must 
contain both “historical” moments that involve remembering history and 
“unhistorical” moments that involve forgetting or ignoring history. To 
plan, we must be aware of  our situation and this requires knowledge of  
our past, but, to act and create, we must forget – even dismiss – parts 
of  that past. Thus, the “historical and the unhistorical are necessary in 
equal measure for the health of  an individual, of  a people, and a culture.”5 

However, because he believes that the modern age suffers from “an 
excess of  history,”6 he focuses his argument on the claim that too much 
remembering is dangerous; that “there is a degree of  ... historical sense 
which is harmful and ultimately fatal.” 7

     Nietzsche distinguishes several approaches to history. Two unnamed 
approaches, which are wholly harmful to life, are described in the first 



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and second Meditations, and when he criticizes “the 
oversaturation of  an age with history,” I believe that 
it is these two unnamed approaches that he has in 
mind.8  The first—and  less important of  the two—
I  will call “scientific history.” On Nietzsche’s view, 
scientific historians are “idler[s] in the garden of  
knowledge,” “pedantic micrologists,” “who stand 
aside from life so as to know it unobstructedly.”9 

But, because the facts they seek are objective, 
isolated historical facts, unrelated to life and action, 
they can only be a harmful distraction. I will call the 
second, more important, approach, “teleological 
history.” As Daniel Breazeale points out in his 
Introduction to the Untimely Meditations:

Though the second Untimely Meditation is sometimes 
read as a blanket rejection of  “historicism,” this is 
far from the truth. What Nietzsche rejects ... is not 
the basic thesis that every aspect and expression of  
human life is unavoidably conditioned by history, 
but rather, the progressive or whiggish consequences 
that are typically—albeit, in Nietzsche’s view, quite 
illicitly—drawn from this thesis. It is not historicism 
per se to which he objects..., but rather the unexamined 
teleology that usually accompanies it.10  

Since Hegel and the neo-Hegelians took such a 
teleological approach to history, throughout the 
second Meditation, Nietzsche repeatedly criticizes 
their views, which present history as the inevitable 
unfolding of  a pre-established and providential 
plan. Especially dangerous versions of  this history, 
on Nietzsche’s view, portray this unfolding as 
essentially complete, as having arrived at what 
Hegel called, “the end of  history.” 

      Nietzsche criticizes this approach on a number 
of  grounds. Most important, he claims that “it 
implants a belief  … in the old age of  mankind, the 
belief  that one is a latecomer and epigone” who 
believes he or she is living at the end of  history.11 

Since, in this approach, this belief  is accompanied 
both by the notion that “as things are they had to 

    nietzsche 
held that 
history is 

essential to 
a well-lived 

life,  but that 
only some 

approaches 
to history can 

serve life

“

”



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be, as men now are they were bound to become, [and] none may resist 
this inevitability”12  and by the notion that the present age possesses “the 
rarest of  virtues, justice, to a greater degree than any other,”13 epigones 
are led to the belief  that new, historically-significant action is both 
impossible and undesirable; and this, in turn, leads to “the total surrender 
of  the personality to the world-process”14 Thus, as a teleological approach 
comes to dominate a person or a society, “the instinct for creation will be 
enfeebled and discouraged”15 and will be replaced by a “cynical ... prudent 
practical egoism, through which the forces of  life are paralyzed and at last 
destroyed.”16 Epigones seek “self-contentment,” while avoiding disturbing 
“enthusiasms”; indeed, “stupefaction is ... the goal” of  those who take this 
approach.17 This self-satisfaction, however, is purchased at a great cost: 
because epigones are incapable of  historically-significant action, they are 
condemned to an a-historical, animal-like existence. 

      In the second Meditation, Nietzsche explicitly discusses three approaches 
toward history that, unlike the first two, are useful or even “necessary for 
life.”18 The first is “antiquarian history.” The antiquarian turns to history 
to “preserve and revere.”19 The advantage of  antiquarian history is that 
it can help create a community by presenting it as the result of  a wholly-
positive history and, in doing so, it can give its members an identity. The 
antiquarian can 

look back to whence he has come, to where he came into being, with love and 
loyalty.... By tending with care that which has existed from of  old, he wants to 
preserve for those who shall come into existence after him the conditions under 
which he ... came into existence.... The history of  his city becomes for him the 
history of  himself; he reads its walls, its towered gate, its rules and regulations, 
its holidays, like an illuminated diary of  his youth and in all this he finds again 
himself.... Here we lived, he says to himself, for here we are living; here we shall 
live, for we are tough and not to be ruined overnight. Thus, with the aid of  this 
“we,” he looks beyond his own individual transitory existence and feels himself  
to be the spirit of  his house, his race, his city.20 

Nietzsche holds that this “antiquarian sense of  veneration of  the past 
is of  the greatest value when it spreads a simple feeling of  pleasure and 
contentment over the modest, rude, even wretched conditions in which 
a man or a nation lives.” It not only gives “less favored generations 
and peoples” the courage to endure, but it “restrains them from roving 
abroad in search of  something they think more worth having,” thereby 
dissipating their energies and abandoning their identity.21 It protects 
a people from being unfaithful “to its own origins and ... given over 
to a restless, cosmopolitan hunting after new and ever newer things.”22  



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Antiquarian history can have certain disadvantages, 
however. It does not make distinctions as all parts 
of  the antiquarian’s history are equally revered and, 
because nothing is criticized, nothing is understood. 
More important, by undermining the power of  
judgment, antiquarian history

undermines continuing and especially higher life..., [as 
it] no longer conserves but mummifies.... For it knows 
only how to preserve life, not how to engender it; it 
always undervalues that which is becoming.... Thus 
it hinders any firm resolve to attempt something new 
[and] paralyzes the man of  action...23 

     The second form, “critical history,” is adopted 
by “a being who suffers and seeks deliverance.”24 

Nietzsche argues that if, “he is to live, man must 
possess and from time to time employ the strength 
to break up and dissolve a part of  the past: he does 
this by bringing it before the tribunal, scrupulously 
examining it, and finally condemning it.”25 This 
approach remembers the past only in order to 
condemn its evils. It provides several advantages to 
its practitioners: it supplies an antidote to antiquarian 
history, but more important, it frees people from 
the past and opens up an unbounded future. But it 
also has several disadvantages. Because “every past 
is … worthy to be condemned, for that is the nature 
of  human things, [this approach to history suggests 
that] it would be better if  nothing existed.”26 But 
by rejecting too much of  the past, it leaves critical 
historians without a horizon to orient their actions: 
it rejects the existing, historically-grounded self  
and replaces it with a new one that is so weakly 
grounded that it turns to mindless cosmopolitan 
consumption.27 

     The third approach, “monumental history,” is 
adopted by those who wish to “act and strive.”28 

Focusing on great individuals and their struggles, 
this approach makes use of  the past to inspire: it 
finds greatness there and argues that we, too, can be 
great, if  only we “flee from resignation” (the belief  



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that historically-significant action is not possible) and use “history as a 
specific against it.”29  This approach has several advantages: it can give us 
the courage to act in historically-significant ways; it can distance us from 
our current situation; and it can bring about a new world in which lesser 
individuals can lead happy lives. But it also has certain disadvantages. 
The past is always different from the present and the historical analogy 
on which this approach depends is false. More important, monumental 
history, on its own, cannot guide us and does not lend itself  to planning. 
Thus, it can lead to great mistakes and pointless destruction.

     Nietzsche claims that each of  these three approaches has a role to 
play in a well-ordered life and society. We need antiquarian history to 
help ground us in that which is valuable in our lives; critical history to 
distance ourselves from our mistakes; and monumental history to inspire 
us to significant action. But, we need to balance each approach against the 
others. If  monumental history dominates, change can become irrational 
and may lead to disaster. If  critical history dominates, we can lose both 
identity and community. If  antiquarian history dominates, we can lose our 
ability to face the challenges of  the present effectively. 

     In order to understand Nietzsche at this point, it is essential to understand 
what he means by “life” and why he values it; and to do this it is necessary 
to read the two Meditations together as they develop parallel distinctions 
that are central to understanding that concept. In the second Meditation, 
Nietzsche contrasts cosmopolitans with people who understand and 
properly use history, while in the first, he contrasts “cultural philistines” 
with “geniuses,” who understand and properly use culture.30 In each 
pair, the second term denotes someone who lives life well, while the first 
denotes a person who does not. The descriptions overlap to a great degree. 

     Nietzsche claims that epigones inevitably become cosmopolitans who 
live for the present moment (understood to be the last historical moment) 
and seek pleasure through the satisfaction of  immediate felt needs. As 
such, they are “given over to a restless ... hunting after new and ever 
newer things ... thought more worth having.”31 Given Nietzsche’s contrast 
between historical and a-historical beings, cosmopolitans are a-historical 
beings who live less-than-human lives in which the “forces of  life are 
paralyzed and at last destroyed.”32 The cultural philistine is described in 
similar terms. These philistines “devised the concept of  the epigone-age 
[in which they think they are living] with the object of  obtaining peace and 
quiet.”33 They do this to reject the life of  the restless, searching genius; 
and then repress even the memory of  that rejection. Desiring only “self-
contentment,” they declare that “all seeking [for a truly better life] is at 



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an end.”34 Characterized by “a lack of  style or a 
chaotic jumble of  all styles,”35 both cosmopolitans 
and philistines reject self-transformation, and this 
rejection paralyzes and destroys their life force. 

     This notion of  self-transformation is central 
to Nietzsche’s concept of  life. He describes life as 
a “plastic power” and claims that the greatness of  
“a man, a people, or a culture” can be measured by 
the degree to which they possess it.36 This plastic 
power is inwardly-directed, as it names “the capacity 
to develop out of  oneself  in one’s own way, to 
transform and incorporate into oneself  what is past 
and foreign, to heal wounds, [and] to replace what 
has been lost...”37 This notion of  life is connected to 
Nietzsche’s notion of  culture, as he not only believes 
that a good life requires a vital connection with true 
culture, but his notion of  life is modeled on the 
idea of  culture: it is the epitome of  a good life as it 
involves a continuous transformation which aims at 
a “unity of  artistic style in all the expressions of  the 
life of  a people”; at “a stylistic unity within which 
the manifold phenomena which characterize it are 
harmonized.”38 While Nietzsche points out that this 
stylistic unity cannot be attained through systematic 
and oppressive exclusion, he nevertheless thinks 
that it can be attained only through struggle, as we 
always find ourselves in states of  partial disunity 
and disorganization. This “grand style originates 
[only] when the beautiful carries off  the victory 
over the monstrous”; only when life creates a new 
order out of  existing disorder.39 A good life is one 
that seeks to create an integrated beauty from a 
chaos of  existing forms.

     Pursuing this project requires many things. 
Negatively, it requires the rejection of  the “modern” 
all-consuming search for pleasure; it requires the 
rejection of  the life of  the cultural philistine or 
cosmopolitan.40 Positively, what it requires can be 
determined by reference to the three ways in which 
history can be useful to life. As emphasized by 

THIS NOTION 
OF SELF-

TRANSFORMATION 
IS CENTRAL TO 

NIETZSCHE’S 
CONCEPT OF LIFE

“

”



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antiquarians, we (as individuals, peoples, or cultures) need a stable and 
valued foundation in our identity.41 As emphasized by the critical historian, 
we need to be able to consider and devalue parts of  our history and 
identity. Finally, as emphasized by the monumental historian, we need the 
courage to reject a life of  pleasure so as to pursue “life.”

Historic Preservation in the United States

      Oddly, given our self-conception as a future-oriented society with 
little time for the past, the United States, like Nietzsche’s Germany, seems 
“oversaturated” with history – and with the wrong kinds of  history. This 
can be seen in the many political battles that are fought over the proper 
interpretation of  our history, in which each side – rather than seeking to 
promote “life” in Nietzsche’s sense – attempts to “use” history to support 
its political program, while charging the other side of  “abusing” history 
when it does the same. In these battles, American preservationists have 
typically adopted two approaches toward history described by Nietzsche. 
The dominant approach has been teleological; a secondary approach, 
antiquarian.

     Serious preservation work began in the U.S. during the early nineteenth 
century with attempts to preserve Mount Vernon and Independence Hall. 
These projects were undertaken by members of  upper-class eastern society, 
and the approach they took to historical preservation—in which they 
sought to preserve those sites and structures that played important roles 
in the development of  the nation—still dominates the practice. According 
to William Murtagh, “patriotism fueled the energies of  nineteenth-century 
preservationists to the excluding of  any other interest.” Preservationists 
adopted this approach because they believed that “it is good policy in a 
republican government to inculcate sentiments of  veneration for those 
departed heroes who have rendered service to their country in times of  
danger.” To achieve this goal, they sought to protect the houses of  worthy 
political or military figures, along with important political buildings and 
battlefields, treating them as “shrines or icons.” The dominant theme 
of  these efforts has been a “secular pietism” which sought to preserve 
buildings thought “worthy of  attention for transcendent [i.e., nation 
building] rather than intrinsic reasons.”42 

     Such an approach to preservation fits particularly well with the 
historically dominant self-conception of  the United States that 
understands the country through phrases drawn from a religious context: 
our county is like a ‘city on a hill’ with a unique ‘manifest destiny.’ This 
approach is clearly teleological in nature, but as the United States achieved 



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hegemonic status, this approach increasingly took 
what Nietzsche thought its most pernicious form, 
which portrays us as living in “an epigone-age” 
or, as a best-selling book of  a few years back put 
it, as living at The End of  History.43 According to 
Nietzsche, both these approaches, but especially 
the latter, would have the effect of  producing a 
cynical, self-satisfied cosmopolitanism that would 
make self-transcending actions (“life”) increasingly 
difficult for both individuals and cultures.

     Beginning in the early twentieth century, a second 
form of  preservationism took an antiquarian 
approach toward history and should be understood 
as part of  a wider project to raise the status and 
power of  the post-Civil War South. Central to this 
project is “the myth of  the Lost Cause,” which 
attempts to put the South’s defeat in the Civil War 
in the best possible light. It does this by arguing 
for a set of  mythical ideas including the idea (1) 
that slavery was a benign institution; (2) that slavery 
was an institution in decline; (3) that slavery was not 
the cause of  the South’s secession; (4) that, in the 
face of  demographic and industrial differences, the 
South could not have won the Civil War; (5) that 
Lee was one of  the greatest generals in history, who 
bravely fought for a “lost cause,” while Grant was 
an incompetent brute; and (6) and that Southerners 
and Southern society were morally superior to their 
Northern counterparts.44 Partisans of  this myth 
have adopted a preservationist program similar to 
that of  the dominant culture. They have sought 
to preserve the mansions and plantations of  
important political figures, but they have placed a 
relatively greater emphasis on military sites, placing 
statues of  Confederate generals in public places, 
and displays featuring Confederate battle flags. 

     As Nietzsche notes about antiquarian approaches 
to history in general, this project can help preserve 
the antiquarian’s identity, but it does so at some 
cost. David Lowenthal has argued:

     ODDLY, GIVEN 
OUR SELF-

CONCEPTION AS A 
FUTURE-ORIENTED 

SOCIETY  WITH 
LITTLE TIME FOR 

THE PAST, THE 
UNITED STATES, 

LIKE NIETZSCHE’S 
GERMANY,  SEEMS 
‘OVERSATURATED’ 

WITH HISTORY

“

”



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In recoiling from tragic loss or fending off  a fearsome future, people the world 
over revert to ancestral legacies. As hope of  progress fades, heritage [Nietzsche’s 
“antiquarian history”] consoles us with tradition.... [However, this search 
for historical justification is] oppressive, defeatist, [and] decadent.... Breeding 
xenophobic hate, it becomes a byword for bellicose discord. Perverting the “true” 
past for greedy or chauvinist ends, heritage undermines historical truth with 
twisted myth. Exalting rooted faith over critical reason, it stymies social action 
and sanctions passive acceptance of  preordained fate.45 

And indeed, Southern antiquarian history has helped perpetuate racism, 
while stifling education and economic growth. A Nietzschean, however, 
would reject the myth of  the lost cause for a different reason, namely, 
that like all antiquarian histories, Southern antiquarian history undermines 
“higher life” and “paralyzes the man of  action.”46 As Lowenthal put 
it: “Miring us in the obsolete, the cult of  heritage immures life within 
museums and monuments.”47 The myth of  the Lost Cause, like most 
antiquarian histories, does not aid “life.”

     Moreover, contrary to what Nietzsche argues, this antiquarian history has 
not protected the South from consumerist cosmopolitanism as its partisans 
have adopted the same practical egoism that Nietzsche thought the most 
reprehensible consequence of  cosmopolitanism. The myth of  the Lost 
Cause gives some Southerners a relatively shallow identity and explains 
their supposedly-unjust relative poverty, powerlessness, and cultural 
subordination, only to allow them to more easily pursue their consumer 
interests. Indeed, the only difference between this antiquarian history and 
the more dominant teleological history is the dating of  history’s end: both 
present us as epigones, living at the twilight end of  meaningful history; 
both produce “stupefaction”; and both make historically-significant, 
transformative action difficult. 

On the Use and Abuse of Confederate Monuments 

        Following the 2016 murder of  nine black parishioners at the Emanuel 
AME Church in Charleston SC, the debate over the preservation of  
Confederate monuments intensified. Several photos of  the murderer 
with a Confederate battle flag led to protests at public sites featuring 
this flag, particularly at the State House in Columbia, and these protests 
raised questions—and inspired further protests (and counter-protests)—
concerning the many Confederate monuments located on public sites. 
Perhaps the most significant of  these protests, which occurred in 
Charlottesville, VA in 2017, was triggered by the City Council’s decision 
to remove a statue of  Confederate General Robert E. Lee and to rename 



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the park where it stood. This decision attracted the 
attention of  a number of  white supremacist groups 
who, seemingly with President Trump’s blessing, 
protested against the statue’s removal. One of  these 
white supremacists killed a counter-protestor.

     The issue ostensibly at stake in most of  these 
controversies is whether such statues should be 
kept in place, removed to other sites, or simply 
destroyed.48 From a Nietzschean perspective these 
controversies reflect two approaches to history: 
Southern antiquarians seek to preserve the statues 
in place, while their opponents, who have adopted a 
critical approach, call for the statues to be removed 
or destroyed. Antiquarians offer several arguments 
in favor of  their position. First, they argue that 
attempts to remove these statues amount to an 
attack on “Southern” heritage and identity. Note, 
for example, how the intentionally provocative 
phrase chanted by Neo-Nazi protestors, “Jews will 
not replace us,” reflects Nietzsche’s antiquarian 
who asserts that “here we lived, here we are living, 
and here we shall live, for we are tough and not 
to be ruined overnight.”49 In addition, Southern 
antiquarians argue that removing these statues 
amounts to an attempt to “erase history” and is, 
therefore, an attack on truth.

     Critical historians who favor removing these 
statues respond that these statues are monuments 
and, as such, do not simply record history (as the 
erasure charge implies); instead, they memorialize 
it. Monuments commemorate; they celebrate, 
honor, or valorize events, often by depicting a 
person who played a significant role in them. 
These figures are valued for the role they played in 
these historically-important dramas; their personal 
character is of  secondary importance. Statues of  
Lee, for example, are erected, not because he was 
an especially virtuous person, but rather because he 
was a noteworthy Confederate general. Moreover, 
by expressing value judgments, monuments serve 

     ’MIRING US IN 
THE OBSOLETE,  

THE CULT OF 
HERITAGE 

IMMURES LIFE 
WITHIN MUSEUMS 
AND MONUMENTS’

“

”



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the needs of  contemporary politics. This service can be seen in the history 
of  Confederate monuments raised during the Jim Crow period so as to 
refashion contemporary Southern society around a fixed, fundamentalist 
identity looking favorably on slavery and most at home when surrounded 
by racist institutions and practices. When this identity was again challenged 
during the Civil Rights era, these monuments were given legal protection to 
make their removal difficult, thereby adding a new layer to the institutional 
racism associated with this identity. Given that the purpose of  these 
statues is to valorize particular historical events in support of  a specific 
Southern identity associated with existing oppressive institutions, attempts 
to remove them are best understood, not as attempts to erase history, but 
as attempts to oppose these institutions.50 

     Southern antiquarians try to respond to this argument with a reductio 
ad absurdum: if  monuments valorize and if  slavery is evil, then we 
should remove all statues that celebrate slave owners, including those 
of  Washington and Jefferson and, if  this is true, we would soon have to 
remove all memorials. The objection to this slippery-slope argument is 
obvious: these statues valorize Washington and Jefferson, not as defenders 
of  slavery, but for other, highly significant, historically-transformative 
actions. Putting this objection aside, however, note how the antiquarian’s 
argument reflects Nietzsche’s claim that critical history is problematic 
because, since every past is worthy of  condemnation, it soon rejects all 
history. But Nietzsche, unlike the Southern antiquarian, makes this claim 
in support of  a broader point; namely, that, since the critical approach 
tends to sever all connections to history, it is dangerous to life: “men 
and ages which serve life by judging and destroying a past are always ... 
endangered men and ages.”51 

     The real problem with the two approaches to history that have shaped 
the controversy over Confederate statues is that neither approach “serves 
life.” At best the antiquarian approach might preserve, or “mummify,” a 
(particularly unacceptable and vexed) form of  life and identity, while critical 
history, because it destroys its own historical horizon, tends to produce 
a weakened personality that itself  cannot tolerate criticism. But these 
criticisms raise two questions: First, philosophically, how should history 
be approached? And second, how can these philosophical criticisms help 
solve the essentially historical/architectural controversy over Confederate 
statues? As to the first question, at the end of  his critique of  critical 
history, Nietzsche writes:

For since we are the outcome of  earlier generations, we are also the outcome of  
their aberrations ... and errors, and indeed of  their crimes; it is not possible 



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wholly to free ourselves from this chain. If  we condemn 
these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of  them, 
this does not alter the fact that we originated in them. 
The best we can do is to confront our inherited and 
hereditary nature with our knowledge, and through a 
new, stern discipline combat our inborn heritage and 
implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a new 
second nature, so that our first nature withers away.52 

     It would seem that, here, Nietzsche is arguing 
that these two approaches need to be combined, 
if  they are to support life; that it is necessary to 
both criticize one’s history and to ground oneself  
in it. We must understand not only that our identity 
grows out of  our past but also that it cannot simply 
be identified with it. In addition, we need the 
courage to take on the task of  developing a new 
identity out of  our history—of  bringing unity to 
the historical manifold—and this, Nietzsche argues, 
is only possible with the aid of  monumental history. 
In addition, we must separate the notion of  growth 
and development from the teleological notion of  
inevitable fate: we must incorporate notions of  
inescapable struggle and contingency into our 
history.

     But how can such a complex approach to history 
be represented in an urban landscape? How can 
monuments help us accomplish this task? Consider 
another example: The Appomattox Memorial in 
Alexandria VA is a bronze statue of  an unarmed 
Confederate soldier standing on a stone base with 
inscriptions on four sides. Modeled on a painting 
by John Elder of  a soldier viewing the Appomattox 
battlefield after Lee’s surrender, the statue portrays 
a soldier standing with crossed arms, equipment 
hanging from one shoulder and one hand holding 
a hat. (Figure 1) His head is bowed, his eyes 
look down. His expression is often described as 
“somber” or “contemplative.” The inscriptions state 
that the memorial was “Erected to the Memory of  
Confederate Dead of  Alexandria by their Surviving 

     CRITICAL 
HISTORY IS 

PROBLEMMATIC 
BECAUSE, SINCE 

EVERY PAST 
IS WORTHY OF 

CONDEMNATION, IT 
SOON  REJECTS ALL 

HISTORY

“

”



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Comrades” and, claiming that “They Died in the Consciousness of  Duty 
Faithfully Performed,” list 100 names. The memorial is set at the center of  
an intersection where, at the beginning of  the war, local troops assembled 
in advance of  an invading Union army to march south to join Lee, and 
the soldier looks south along the path they took. Originally set on a broad 
median, the site of  the memorial was greatly reduced to accommodate the 
construction of  a new parkway, eventually named after Jefferson Davis. 
On the intersection’s southwest corner stands the Lyceum, Alexandria’s 
history museum.53 The memorial was erected by the Robert E. Lee Camp 
of  the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) in 1889, early in the Jim 
Crow period. Realizing that the statue would be controversial, the UCV 
successfully petitioned the Virginia House of  Delegates to protected it 
from being removed and, indeed, although it was thought a fine work 
of  public art when in was erected, it has long been controversial. This 
controversy came to a head in late 2016, following the Charleston murders, 
when the City Council voted to remove the statue to another location and 
rename the adjacent parkway.54 

     As with other recent controversies, this controversy took the form 
of  a debate between antiquarians and critical historians, and conventional 
alternatives would have us choose between the antiquarian preservation 
of  the statue as is, or its critical removal. A third approach that Nietzsche’s 
thinking opens us to—one that “serves life”—would be to incorporate 
the existing memorial into a larger work of  art by taking advantage of  the 
remaining, narrow landscaped median immediately south of  the memorial. 
This median should be the site of  two low panels displaying friezes visible 
to passing pedestrians and motorists. The western (southbound) side of  
these panels should contain scenes of  slaves being marched south from 
the auction houses of  Alexandria, home to one of  the largest slave-trading 
operations in the country. The eastern side of  the panels should contain 
scenes showing self-emancipated slaves traveling north on the underground 
railroad, an important route of  which ran through Alexandria. To the 
south of  these panels, in the middle of  the next intersection, a new statue 
should be erected showing members of  the 29th and 31st Brigades of  
“U.S. Colored Troops,” who helped defeat Lee’s army at Appomattox. 
An account of  Alexandria’s role in both the slave trade and the Civil War, 
and an account of  history of  the statue and these recent changes, should 
be available at the adjacent Lyceum, and at the Alexandria Black History 
Museum, a few blocks north. 

     This new work of  urban art avoids the pitfalls of  dichotomous 
thinking that contributed to the debacle in Charlottesville by weaving 



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together Nietzsche’s 
three approaches 
to history so as to 
make a complete 
monument that serves 
life. Critical history 
would be served by the 
low panels showing 
slaves being marched 
south. These panels 
would make the evils 
of  slavery visible, and 
their presence near the 
soldier would indicate 
the cause of  the war. 
As could be made clear 
at the nearby museums, 
their height and 
orientation, relative 
to the soldier, and 
delayed construction 
would gesture at 
their ‘invisibility’ 
perpetuated in 
repressive bad faith 
by the myth of  the 
lost cause. Antiquarian history would be served 
by retaining the contemplative look of  the soldier. 
Pondering his loss in this cause, he might now 
be understood as realizing that the ‘duty’ which 
he “faithfully performed” was embedded in a 
controversial identity, shaped and imposed by 
economic interests that may have differed from 
his own. He now faces the future with a new task: 
mummification or the development of  a new, 
more vital identity based on a more complete 
understanding of  history. Monumental history 
would be served by the statue of  the black soldiers 
at the southern end of  the ensemble, by the slaves 
emancipating themselves as they travel north on the 
railroad, and, possibly, by the Confederate soldier 

figure 1: Appomattox 
Memorial, Alexandria, VA



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now given an opportunity for a new identity. This new memorial would 
also reject the teleological history of  most memorials by showing that 
the conflict at the heart of  the memorial is not yet fully resolved: the 
myth is still with us; the soldier has not yet begun his new life. The task 
of  forging a new American identity rooted in the crimes and ideals, the 
struggles and the values of  the past is not yet complete, nor is its outcome 
clear. The purpose of  the new monument is to lead people to contemplate 
these ideas. Of  course, this statue possesses several unique advantages (its 
emotional qualities and location) that make it easy to re-purpose. Other 
statues would be more difficult to redesign and some are best taken down. 
In some cases, there may simply be no room to add new materials. In 
others, the statues might simply be too caught up in the Myth of  the 
Lost Cause, too antiquarian, or too racist to be successfully transformed. 
Public artists can be very creative people and may be able to salvage many 
existing statues, but in judging their proposals the important question to 
ask is: “Does this proposal transform this monument in such a way that it 
serves life?” If  not, it should be removed or destroyed.55

     Nietzsche’s theories of  history and culture can help us understand 
that cities need to incorporate history into the urban fabric and that both 
historical preservation and memorialization have central roles in the urban 
design. Memorials can fulfill this role, but only if  they aim at engendering 
the life goal of  vital, unified, and beautiful identities. As the United States 
continues to ponder the role of  Confederate monuments in its urban 
spaces, Nietzsche’s life-serving approach to history provides a useful 
alternative to the debilitating stand-off  between subservience to history 
and cosmopolitan forgetfulness. 

Endnotes 

1. William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of  Preservation in 
America (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006), p. 5; see also Charles 
B. Hosmer, Presence of  the Past (New York: Putnam, 1965).

2. Friedrich Nietzsche, “David Strauss: The Confessor and the Writer,” 
In Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, edited by Daniel Breazeale. 
Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1997): 1-55. Hereinafter, “Strauss.”

[3] Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of  History 
for Life,” In Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations: 57-124, p. 59. Hereinafter, 
“History.”

4. Nietzsche, “History,” 59.



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5. Nietzsche, “History,” 63.

6. Nietzsche, “History,” 67,

7. Nietzsche, “History,” 62.

8. Nietzsche, “History,” 83; and Nietzsche, 
“Strauss,” 30-35.

9. Nietzsche, “History,” 59, 68, and 117.

10. Daniel Breazeale, “Introduction.” In Nietzsche, 
Untimely Meditations: vii-xxxiii, p. xv. 

11. Nietzsche, History, 83.

12. Nietzsche, “History,” 107.

13. Nietzsche, “History,” 83,

14. Nietzsche, “History,” 107.

15. Nietzsche, “History,” 95.

16. Nietzsche, “History,” 83.

17. Nietzsche, “Strauss,” 10-11.

18. Nietzsche, “History,” 75.

19. Nietzsche, “History,” 67.

20. Nietzsche, “History,” 72-3.

21. Nietzsche, “History,” 73.

22. Nietzsche, “History” 74.

23. Nietzsche, “History,” 75.

24. Nietzsche, “History,” 67.

25. Nietzsche, “History,” 75-6.

26. Nietzsche, “History,” 76.

27. Nietzsche, “History,” 76.

28. Nietzsche, “History,” 67.

29. Nietzsche, “History,” 68.

30. Nietzsche, “Strauss,” 11.

31. Nietzsche, “History,” 73-74.

32. Nietzsche, “History,” 83.

33. Nietzsche, “Strauss,” 10.

34. Nietzsche, “Strauss,” 10-11.

35. Nietzsche, “Strauss,” 6,

36. Nietzsche, “History,” 62.



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37. Nietzsche, “History,” 62.

38. Nietzsche, “Strauss,” 7-8.

39. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and his Shadow,” in Friedrich 
Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. 
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 301-395, p. 334.

40. William Arrowsmith, “Introduction,” in Friedrich Nietzsche, Unmodern 
Observations. Edited by William Arrowsmith. (New Haven: Yale University 
Press, 1990), p. xi, quoting “History,” 60.

41. Nietzsche, “History,” 63.

42. Murtagh, Keeping Time, pp. xxvii, xxviii, and 11-24; also see Hosmer, 
Presence of  the Past, pp. 298-303.

43. Francis Fukuyama, The End of  History and the Last Man, (New York: 
Free Press, 1992).

44. Edward H. Bonekemper, The Myth of  the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought 
the Civil War and Why the North Won (Washington, DC: Regnery History, 
2015); and Caroline Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits 
of  Reconciliation, (Chapel Hill, University of  North Carolina Press, 2013), 
pp. 251-254.

45.David Lowenthal, “The Heritage Crusade and its Contradictions.” In 
Max Page and Randall Mason, Giving Preservation a History, (New York: 
Routledge, 2004): 19-43, p. 19.

46. Nietzsche, “History,” 75.

47. Lowenthal, “The Heritage Crusade,” p. 19.

48. Monica Hesse, “A Quandary Set in Stone,” Washington Post, 5/9/2016, 
C1; Christopher Phelps, “Removing Racist Symbols Isn’t a Denial of  
History,” The Chronicle of  Higher Education, Jan 29, 2016, pp. 48-51; Sarah 
Fenton, “The Confederacy, Its Symbols, and the Politics of  Public 
Culture,” AHA Today, 1/9/2016.

49. Nietzsche, “History,”  73.

50. In fact, the erasure charge is more accurately applied to the attempts 
to preserve these statues, as these monuments materialize an ideology that 
attempts to erase the history of  slavery. This is consistent with another of  
Nietzsche’s criticisms of  antiquarian history; namely, that it “possesses an 
extremely restricted field of  vision” (Nietzsche, “History,” 74).

51. Nietzsche, “History,” 76.

52. Nietzsche, “History,” 76.

53. Office of  Historic Alexandria, “The Confederate Statue,” https://www.



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alexandriava.gov/ uploadedFiles/historic/info/brochures/
ConfederateStatueBrochure.pdf/, accessed 5/12/2015.

54.  Sullivan, Patricia, “Alexandria will seek to move 
Confederate statue and rename Jefferson Davis 
Highway,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/
virginia-politics/alexandria-will-seek-to-move-confederate-
statue-and-rename-jefferson-davis-highway/2016/09/17/
fec35310-7b53-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html?utm_
term=.1b5f0e67d0e7rnon/ accessed 9/26/2017. 

55. The controversy surrounding the Confederacy 
Memorial Carving at Stone Mountain, Georgia that 
gained prominence during the 2018 Governor’s 
race between a white male and a black female 
candidate may be one such example admitting of  
no life-serving solution.



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designing for imprisonment: 
ARCHITECTURal ethics and prison 
design

Dominique Moran, Yvonne Jewkes, and  Colin Lorne 

Introduction

Architectural ethics has only begun to consider 
in earnest what it means, in a moral sense, to be 
an architect.1 The academy, however, has yet to 
adequately to explore the ethical problems raised,2 
to evaluate the types of  moral issues that arise, 
and to develop moral principles or moral reasons 
that should guide decisions when encountering 
these moral issues inherent in certain project 
types. This is the case despite the practice of  
architecture entailing “behaviours, our choices 
of  which may be illuminated by ethical analysis.”3 
Although distinguishing practice from product 
allows ethical critique of  the practice involved in 
designing buildings, and recognises the significance 
of  the architect’s moral agency, there remains very 
little empirically-based understanding of  how the 

                  figure 1: 

HM Low Moss Prison



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architect, once identified as a moral agent, operates as such, and still less 
about the circumstances in which ‘professional’ conduct may be at odds 
with ‘ethical’ behaviour. 

   Architects encounter moral dilemmas in everyday practice, in designing 
buildings to address clients’ briefs. Although they may undertake moral 
consideration when accepting or declining commissions, analyzing 
this process is in its infancy in architectural and ethical scholarship, 
consequently little is known about how architects balance moral concerns 
against the need for profitable work. Although McNeill has characterised 
the architects’ refrain ‘if  we didn’t design it, someone else would’ as a 
“worrying abdication of  ethical responsibility,”4 it could alternatively be 
viewed as exhibiting direct moral concern, that if  they themselves do not 
undertake a particular commission, another architect (or possibly non-
architect) would, and possibly with much worse consequences, under what 
Wisor has termed the “moral problem of  worse actors.”5 

     Prison design, as a building type, thrusts the ethical role of  the architect 
sharply into focus. Design is a key element in prison modernisation 
programmes, and a staple for many firms. But architects’ involvement is 
not without controversy. The problematic nature of  prisons themselves, 
(their questionable effectiveness in deterring criminal behaviour or 
enabling rehabilitation, and the ethically dubious practices which may 
take place within them), has meant that the legitimacy of  incarceration 
is continually debated. As physical objects of  the carceral estate, prison 
design offers a compelling ‘test case’ for how the role of  the architect can 
be legitimately conceived as ethical. 

     It seems little progress has been made since Banham registered his 
concern that the architecture profession acts as a “black box,”6 drawing 
and making objects rather than designing in relation to social and ethical 
issues. Although the profession readily assumes responsibility for aesthetic 
design of  buildings as commodity-objects, as well as legal obligations 
surrounding delivery, architects as professionals are more uncertain about 
their moral responsibilities towards those who inhabit or are affected 
by their buildings.7 To counter the ‘black box’ mentality Jeremy Till has 
called for architects to deploy architectural intelligence as responsible 
agents concerned less with the production of  abstract objects, and more 
with their role in enabling wider social processes, thereby engaging their 
ongoing complicity with the social consequences of  their actions.8

The ethics of architecture and the built environment

Considering what sorts of  conceptions about architectural ethics might 



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prove effective in allowing us to gain some 
perspective on the ethics of  prison design requires 
us to review previous thought on this topic. 

Thomas Fisher argued that in his Continental ethics, 
Karsten Harries treated architecture “primarily 
as a product, not a practice,” resulting in an ethical 
perspective “that attaches moral values and their 
realisation to buildings, not to the people who build 
them”9(our emphasis). Although the relationship 
between ethics and aesthetics has long preoccupied 
scholars of  architectural ethics, as evidenced by 
Wasserman et. al.’s assertion that “a building’s 
aesthetic embodiment is a part of  its virtue, its ethical 
value,”10 in creating buildings which are aesthetically 
pleasing, there may be a tendency to equate their 
beauty with notions of  their healthiness, sociability, 
democracy, sustainability and social justice, just as 
there is sometimes an assumption that buildings 
which are less aesthetically pleasing are somehow 
‘worse’ on these counts. However, Fisher described 
the attachment of  moral value to buildings as 
a form of  “mysticism;”11 a building might be 
“inhumane in that it is bleak and uninhabitable. 
It does not follow, nor is it intelligible to suggest, 
that the building itself  has inhumane values.”12 It 
is, he argued, on the basis of  this misassignment of  
values that Harries offered an ‘impossible vision’ of  
artefacts reflecting values without the moral input 
of  the individual (moral) agents who created them. 
Fundamentally, Harries’ approach failed to recognise 
the significance of  the architect’s moral agency in 
the practice of  architecture. Fox concurred that 
the built environment is not an appropriate focus 
of  moral concern; the “non-rational, non-sentient, 
non-living, non-self-organising, non-self-renewing, 
built environment is not... of  moral consequence 
in its own right.”13 He continued: “questions 
regarding built environments should only enter into 
moral discussion in so far as these environments 
are considered to matter to, impact upon, or in 
some way affect, those kinds of  beings or entities 

 fisher 
described the 

attachment of 
moral value 

to buildings 
as a form of 

‘mysticism’

“

”



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in respect of  which we think we have direct moral obligations.”14 

    This urge to focus on architectural practice and the moral agency of  the 
architect points up an important distinction between ‘architecture’ and the 
practice thereof, with both Fisher and Fox having argued that philosophical 
ethicists have not yet adequately explored the ethical problems posed by 
architectural practice. Instead, most of  the attention has been confined to 
such legal considerations as intellectual property and to responsibilities to 
clients; core elements of  business ethics for the design of  any building, 
not just a prison, and equally applicable to architects, building contractors, 
and any other professionals involved in design and construction. Fisher, 
however, claimed that architecture merits its own branch of  applied ethics, 
arguing that it has special issues as a consequence of  the idiosyncrasies 
which distinguish it from the arts, sciences and social practices. Previous 
attempts to address architectural ethics have, he argued, failed to 
produce worthwhile outcomes. The way to identify architectural ethics, 
he contended, is to “place architectural practice, and thus the architect 
as moral agent” and not just legal or professional operator, at the centre 
of  focus15 (our emphasis). As Carroll put it, “there can be no question 
that architects as designers of  built environments can use their skills 
for good or ill, morally speaking.”16 The identification of  architectural 
practice, rather than product, as the location of  ethical agency is a useful 
philosophical advancement, but the practical operation of  this agency is 
opaque. Professional architectural codes of  conduct or of  ethics, such 
as those introduced by the Royal Institute of  British Architects (RIBA), 
or the American Institute of  Architects (AIA), are relatively ineffectual 
in relation to the architects’ moral obligations.17 These codes of  conduct 
represent general guiding principles and rules of  conduct which express 
the considered opinion of  the profession primarily on business ethics, 
in part to protect the profession against liability problems. In the main, 
they focus on business, fiduciary, insurance or liability functions. As codes 
of  conduct, these stipulations are rigid and do not facilitate individual, 
flexible ethical choice. Motivation for obedience is driven by compulsion, 
membership requirements and punishment for violation. 

     These codes of  conduct tend to focus on protecting the client (the 
person who procures the services of  the architect) and as a result they 
often appear deficient as vehicles for advancing the greater good. Clients’ 
priorities, however, may be short-term, exploitative, commercial, and 
detrimental to user wellbeing or to environmental concerns. In this case, 
serving the client through fulfilling this kind of  code of  conduct may 
be highly antithetical to achieving these worthwhile goals. While codes 



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contain platitudes towards the environment and 
the public, they contain little incentive beyond 
telling architects to act within the law. Thus, Till’s 
assertion that acting professionally is different from 
acting ethically, and that the two operate according 
to different parameters, makes sense here. 
Professional conduct is determined by adherence 
to various codes, whereas ethical conduct addresses 
the wider responsibilities of  the architect, to those 
“in respect of  which we think we have direct 
moral obligations”18 including those beyond the 
immediate client.

    The omission of  these wider responsibilities 
towards others who stand to benefit or suffer from 
architects’ buildings gains particular poignancy 
when applied to consideration of  those who have 
little say in the matter of  whether or not they 
want to inhabit them.  Thus, ethically motivated 
architects must, at minimum, concern themselves 
with a social ethic extending beyond the short term 
fiscal exchange of  architectural commissions. As 
Till pointed out, “a client may argue that they are 
not paying for an architect to address these broader 
ethics, and an architect may say that the whole idea 
of  wider responsibilities smacks of  idealism”19 The 
point is though, 

that issues of  social ethics are inherent in the design of  
any building, and just to ignore them does not mean 
that they will go away. Better then to face up to them, 
and in this way deal with the tension between the values 
and priorities attached to the professional codes and 
those implicit in social ethics. 20 

By ‘social ethics’, Till meant the ethics concerned 
with social context and social implications, and 
which pertain to a collective vision of  a ‘good’ 
society in contrast to ethics which focus on the on 
the more contractual concerns regarding what we 
owe to one another. Although Till did not refer 
here to any particular circumstance of  architectural 
commissioning in which professional conduct with 

philosophic 
study of...

the design 
of prisons, is 

embryonic

“
”



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clients was at odds with ethical behaviour in the social sense, the role of  
architects in designing prison buildings can be beneficially examined in 
exactly these terms. In the remainder of  the paper we therefore consider 
prison design as a test case for the social ethics of  architectural practice.

Architects’ social ethics of prison design

     If  the ethics of  architecture is a nascent philosophical field, then the 
philosophical study of  the practice of  architecture within the correctional 
field, namely the design of  prisons, is embryonic. Philosophical discussion 
of  architectural ethics rarely focuses on any particular type of  building, in 
line with Taylor’s assertion that buildings themselves cannot be the targets 
of  moral criticism: “moral criticism presupposes moral agency, and so is 
only appropriately applied to people and their actions, not to inanimate 
objects.”21 Although judging it appropriate to critique of  the practices 
of  the people involved in designing buildings, he argued that buildings 
as inanimate objects are morally innocent. Having said this, Taylor hints, 
in his demonstration of  this point, at the ethically questionable nature 
of  prisons; “a building constructed for an evil purpose, such as a dungeon, 
might later be used for a good purpose, such as an exhibition space or a 
chapel, and vice versa.”22 (our emphasis) 

     If  for Taylor a dungeon serves an ‘evil purpose’, then he is in accord 
with retired architect and writer Arthur Allen, who surveyed the history of  
architectural scholarship as it pertains to imprisonment. Allen found that 
“the provision of  architectural service to institutions that aggravate rather 
than resolve the problems they are asked to manage is a complex issue 
arising in the operation of  confining buildings.”23 In a survey originating 
with the idealism of  nineteenth century penal institutions, he observed 
that there was no published architectural concern on the subject of  the 
suffering caused by prisons until a discussion in 1973 in the magazine 
Architectural Forum, which urged that “architects consider withdrawal 
from design of  prisons for non-violent inmates.”24 Allen argued that the 
“proposition that architects can and should consider the record of  success 
or failure of  their clients’ intentions and operations is at the heart of  this 
problem.”25 In narrowly observing their internal professional codes of  
conduct, in terms of  integrity, honesty and diligent design in matters 
of  structural safety and so on, some architects still, he argued, pretend 
innocence of  the conflict between professional and social ethics in their 
work. 

     In 1977, Allen began publishing about the moral agency of  architects 
with respect to incarceration. He questioned the architect’s “traditional 



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obedience”26 in the case of  prison building, noting 
that although they built them, architects seldom 
wrote about or discussed prisons. Encouraging 
architects to be more attuned to the prison debate 
of  the time, he argued that 

…if  [the prison debate] concludes that imprisonment 
is unavoidable, then I can agree that decent architecture 
will have its place. If  prisons, however, are found to be 
ineffective instruments of  misery, then architects must 
question their part in the prison business.27 

Addressing the moral agency of  architects, he later 
wrote that “the architectural profession is unusually 
silent, even evasive, concerning the moral character 
of  its clients;”28 and considering the language 
architects use to discuss clientele, and architecture’s 
apparent isolation from social debate, he argued 
that:

If  architects design prison cells, which in their dreadful 
simplicity are designed for solitary confinement, then 
surely architects and architecture are implicated in 
the mental and physical destruction which occurs in 
these cells. If  there is any doubt about the cruelty of  
solitary confinement, or of  imprisonment, I suggest 
that architects read social, rather than architectural, 
criticism.29 

He effectively argued that by using a technical 
jargon to describe buildings, architecture creates 
a professional mystique which avoids making 
reference to the moral or political character of  the 
patrons of  architecture, contributing to what he 
described as “a wide language gap between architects 
and writers on the issue of  imprisonment.”30 

Terms such as ‘good design’, ‘pure, crisp and clean 
design’, and ‘visual logic’, enabled the architect to 
refrain from “comment on the moral and ethical 
character of  captives and captors,” and to “flatter 
the institution with limited moral and ethical 
comment on the nature of  its prison designs.”31 

He also argued that euphemistic language is used 
by architects in public relations terms, in deflecting 

            That the 
ethics of the 

practice of 
architecture 

within the 
correctional 

field has 
thus far 

been largely 
overlooked by 

the academy 
strikes us as 
remarkable. 

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attention from troubling issues; for example in architectural designs where 
groups of  cells are called ‘villages’ and corridors between ‘villages’ are 
called ‘walks’ or ‘streets’ – labels, through the use of  which, he posited “we 
are only fooling ourselves.”32 He concluded that: 

If  architecture continues to support questionable institutions and movements, and 
to defend them with euphemistic and specially constructed ethical languages, then 
the profession’s part in deception and its self-centred indifference to moral and 
ethical issues cannot be defended on moral and ethical grounds.33 

That the ethics of  the practice of  architecture within the correctional 
field has thus far been largely overlooked by the academy strikes us as 
remarkable. In 2004, ADPSR (Architects/Designers/Planners for Social 
Responsibility) launched a Prison Design Boycott for Alternatives to 
Incarceration in the United States, asking architects and allied professionals 
to refuse prison work. It asked architects to decline death chamber 
and Supermax prison commissions on the grounds of  human rights 
violations. Supermax prisons are considered to inflict torture through 
long-term solitary isolation and the carrying-out of  death sentences, 
which are considered to be prima-facie torture. This pledge campaign was 
not specifically aimed at the American Institute of  Architects [AIA], but 
it asked the AIA to amend its Code of  Ethics and Professional Conduct 
to prohibit the design of  these facilities. Later, in 2013, ADPSR added a 
separate petition campaign asking AIA to amend their Code of  Ethics to 
specifically prohibit the design of  spaces intended for killing, torture, or 
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. “Cruel, inhuman, or degrading” is 
a key human rights standard widely held to include solitary confinement of  
the kinds currently used within the United States, including but not limited 
to Supermax prisons. The campaigns triggered intense media debate but 
in December 2014, the AIA rejected the proposals. Although dialogue 
between AIA and ADPSR continues, the AIA position is essentially that 
ethical decisions rest firmly with architects’ practices, and with individual 
architects . 

     In narrowly observing their internal professional codes of  conduct, 
architects can, Allen argued, pretend innocence of  the conflict between 
professional and social ethics in their work. His suggestion of  pretended 
‘innocence’ perhaps invites an unwarranted scapegoating of  architects, 
hence we argue for a better understanding of  the contextual nature of  the 
constraints architects face in acting in accordance with the moral values 
they may hold. Although we may speculate about these constraints, very 
little is understood of  the socially embedded nature of  ethical stances 
in relation to architectural practice, and the contextual nature of  these 



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stances, for example, in relation to prevailing 
punitive philosophies. Punitive sentiment (i.e. the 
attitudes towards imprisonment widely held in 
a given context), and the nature of  the processes 
through which prisons are built (e.g. privatisation, 
private financing, design and build contracts, 
competitive tendering) may predetermine the 
role of  the architect and the nature of  his or 
her involvement in prison design. In the highly 
incarcerative settings of  the US and UK, architects’ 
reluctance to address these issues may be due to 
the lucrative nature of  projects generated when 
imprisonment is used politically to placate public 
anxiety. In essence, challenging public authorities 
and fellow professionals on substantial moral issues 
may damage business. 

    The commissioning of  prison buildings varies in 
different contexts, shaping the capacity for architects 
to introduce design creativity into the process, 
and defining the nature of  their involvement. In 
order to design with a concern for social ethics in 
mind, architects will need early involvement in a 
building project to creatively engage with and query 
the client’s brief, rather than adopting a narrower 
technical role in relation to predetermined plans. 
Such an approach allows architects to include 
the client as part of  the commission, rather than 
focus only on the building itself, thus enabling 
consideration of  architecture’s social ethics. The 
potential for such an approach, given the various 
financing and contracting processes in place in 
different contexts, may have profound implications 
for architects’ deployment of  moral agency in 
relation to the social context of  imprisonment. 

     In the UK, for example, the Private Finance 
Initiative process means that consortia of  
contractors and architects tender for prison projects 
whose basic design has already been determined 
prior to the tender being offered by the Ministry 
of  Justice, thus minimising architects’ creative 

         In the highly 
incarcerative 

settings of 
the US and UK, 

architects’ 
reluctance 
to address 

these issues 
may be due to 
the lucrative 

nature of 
projects 

generated 

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input, and perhaps also assuaging their sense of  responsibility for the 
built outcome itself. This process only allows architects to participate as 
providers of  an efficient process with predetermined outcomes. In the 
lower incarceration setting of  Denmark, by contrast, tenders for prison 
commissions ask bidders to deliver their own designs for the prison, ab 
initio, with the result that architects have a much freer hand, and with it, 
a concomitant sense of  responsibility. At the state level in the US, the 
design ab initio system prevails, but designs which appear too ‘lenient’ 
will not be successful: “at the end of  the day, my clients are my clients. 
We’ve been told we can’t make it look too good, because the public won’t 
accept it.”34 It seems only reasonable to assume, then, that architects 
operating in different commissioning environments will see their moral 
responsibilities—as well as their options—differently. In other words, 
architects’ ability to introduce more ‘humane’ elements into prison 
design in Denmark may act to assuage the ethical concerns felt by their 
counterparts in the U. K. If  architects’ ethical concerns are assuaged in this 
way, we believe that it is not necessarily through a form of  the ‘mysticism’ 
of  attaching moral value to a building so roundly critiqued by Fisher but 
through the anticipation of  genuine improvements in people’s lives that 
accrue because of  architects’ actions. Thus, the case of  prison design 
suggests that concern over the ethics of  not only architects’ actions, but 
also the products of  those actions due to their long-term consequences 
over peoples’ lives is not at all misplaced and should be part of  an ethically-
motivated architect’s deliberations. 

     Even the usually ethically-neutral subject of  aesthetics becomes 
morally relevant in the case of  prisons. It may be the case that restrictions 
imposed by clients on the design of  prisons (e.g. predetermined plans 
offered for tender, issues of  ‘public acceptability’ of  designs, tight build 
budgets, preferred/cheaper layouts and finishes) may reduce the appeal 
of  prison design to architects seeking to deliver humane, aesthetically 
pleasing buildings. Conversely, it is possible that architects focus on 
prison aesthetics to the detriment of  concern for the lived experience of  
prisoners. Through the aesthetics of  their prisons, architects communicate 
the purpose of  imprisonment and the relationship between prisons and 
the community.35 Aesthetically bland, functional, and rather nondescript 
exteriors of  recently built UK prisons, for example, may be read as 
indicators of  a loss of  public empathy for prisoners. 

Conclusion: Prison design as architectural ethics in practice

Architecture still lacks its own branch of  applied ethics, in which 



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architectural practice, and the architect as moral 
agent, are focal. Whilst these issues are usually 
considered in rather abstract terms, we argue that 
prison design brings them more clearly into focus, 
enables advancement of  discussion of  the ethics 
of  architecture, and enhanced understanding of  
the ethics of  architectural practice. It does so in 
the context of  the transition from ideal to nonideal 
theory in ethics and political philosophy, describing 
principles for the design of  institutions and the 
conduct of  persons in a moral and political order 
that is realistic, rather than utopian, and that asks 
how long-term ideal goals might be achieved, or 
worked toward, in ways that are morally permissible 
and politically possible as well as likely to be 
effective.36

     With the exception of  McNeill, there are few 
studies which consider how the architect, once 
identified as a moral agent, thinks and operates 
as such, and accordingly we know little about 
the moral issues arising from architecture’s 
idiosyncrasies. Professional codes of  conduct 
are generally expected to address these issues 
but, operating largely to protect the consumer 
procuring architects’ services, and the profession 
against liability, they address business ethics rather 
than issues that arise out of  architects’ design 
function. Learning the declarative form of  the 
professional codes of  conduct cannot address 
the complex ethical demands of  architectural 
practice.37 Ethical conduct addresses social context, 
which exists beyond the short term fiscal exchange 
of  architectural commissions, and involves longer 
term vision. Negotiating these commissions is not 
straightforward. The need to make a profit may 
compromise architects’ ability to act on ethical 
concerns, compelling them to explore nonideal 
situations, the ways in which these dilemmas are 
addressed and worked through in relation to actual 
commissions accepted or declined, as well as any 
derivative duties discharged.

Even the 
usually 

ethically-
neutral subject 

of aesthetics 
becomes 
morally 

relevant in the 
case of prisons.

“

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     It is clear that some architects grapple with these questions and are fully 
aware of  the ethical dilemmas they face. Indeed it seems that prominent 
architects debate this point – for example, at a recent discussion   about 
conscience in architectural practice, audience members commented that 
“beautiful things can do ugly things”38 and “Architects are whores of  the 
arts, we have a conscience as long as clients want it.”39 In his summing-up 
the Chair stressed the importance of  social value in design, and another 
speaker stated: “We serve. It is our job to decide who we serve, and how.”40 
Clearly, the appetite exists for giving due consideration to the effects of  
our actions. 

     We opened with a question about architects’ negotiation of  their moral 
roles. Tracing the nascent development of  the philosophical field of  
architectural ethics, it is clear that philosophical discussion locates social 
responsibility with the individual architect as a moral agent--a stance 
confirmed both by the comments of  professional architects, and by the 
reluctance of  the AIA to assume any responsibility for the ethical conduct 
of  its members beyond the standard professionalism of  business ethics.

     We argued here that taking prison design as a ‘test case’ enables a more 
grounded understanding of  architects’ navigation of  ethical dilemmas 
beyond professional business practice, dilemmas which require them to 
address their wider responsibilities and to decide to whom, beyond the 
immediate client, they consider themselves to have obligations. In our view 
these obligations extend to both the prisoners who inhabit their buildings 
and suffer incarceration individually, and to a society which bears the 
collective burden of  the economic and social costs of  imprisonment. As 
professional architects’ discussions of  conscience make clear, architects’ 
ethical roles beyond their professional responsibilities remain under-
explored, as evidenced by the lack of  academic debate over the ethical 
role of  the architect in prison design, and despite longstanding discussion 
of  the ethics of  imprisonment itself.

endnotes

1. See, for example, Harries, Karsten, The Ethical Function of  Architecture. 
Cambridge, MIT Press. 1998. Wasserman, Barry, P. J. Sullivan,  & Gregory 
Palermo, Ethics and the Practice of  Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, 2000. 
Fox, Warwick, (Ed.) Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000.  
Spector, Tom, The Ethical Architect: the Dilemma of  Contemporary Practice. 
Princeton Architectural Press, 2001. Matteson, J. T. & Donovan, M. Z., 
“Ethics and the architect,” Architectural Record, (10), 2002, 96. Taylor, W. 
M., & Levine, M. P., Prospects for an Ethics of  Architecture, Routledge, 2012. 



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Sadri, H., “Professional Ethics in Architecture and 
Responsibilities of  Architects towards Humanity” 
Turkish Journal of  Business Ethics, 5 (9), 2012, 86-96.  
Schrijver, Laura, “Architecture as an Object of  
Research: Incorporating Ethical Questions in 
Design Thinking” in Basta, C. & Moroni, S. (Eds.) 
Ethics, Design and Planning of  the Built Environment,  
Springer, 2013, 79-9. Stein, S. M. & Harper, T. L., 
Designing for Meaning: The Designer’s Ethical 
Responsibility in Basta, C, & Moroni, S (Eds.) Ethics, 
Design and Planning of  the Built Environment  Springer, 
2013, 143-166.

2. See, for example, McNeill, D., “Globalization 
and the ethics of  architectural design,” City, 10(01),  
2006, 49-58. Till, Jeremy, Architecture Depends. MIT 
Press, 2009. Lagueux, Maurice, “Ethics versus 
aesthetics in architecture,” The Philosophical Forum 
Vol. 35, No. 2, 2004, 117-133. Fisher, S., “How to 
think about the ethics of  architecture” in Fox, W. 
(Ed.). Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 
2000, 170-182. Koller, Stefan, “Architects on Value: 
Reducing Ethics to Aesthetics?” in Ethics, Design 
and Planning of  the Built Environment 57-75, Springer, 
2013. Basta, C. & Moroni, S., (Eds.) Ethics, Design and 
Planning of  the Built Environment (Vol. 12) Springer, 
2013. Spector, Tom, C. Fahey & S. Koller “Why 
Architecture Philosophy?” Architecture Philosophy 1 
(1), 2014, 5-8.

3. Fisher, Saul, “How to Think About the Ethics of  
Architecture,” in Fox, W. (Ed.). Ethics and the Built 
Environment. Routledge, 2000, 170-182.

4. McNeill, D “Globalization and the ethics of  
architectural design,” City, 10(01), 2006 49-58, 57.

5. Wisor, S., “The Moral Problem of  Worse Actors,” 
Ethics & Global Politics, 7 (2), 2014, 47–64.

6. Banham, Reyner,  “A Black Box: The Secret 
Profession of  Architecture,” in M Banham, P 
Barker, L Sutherland & C Price (eds), A Critic Writes: 
Essays by Reyner Banham. University of  California 
Press, 1996, 351.



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7. Awan, N., Schneider, T., & Till, J., Spatial Agency: Other Ways of  Doing 
Architecture. Routledge, 2013.

8. Till, Jeremy, Architecture Depends, MIT Press, 2009.

9. Fisher, Saul, “How to think about the Ethics of  Architecture,” In Fox, 
W. (ed.), Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 170-182.175.

10. Wasserman, Barry, P. J. Sullivan,  & Gregory Palermo, Ethics and the 
Practice of  Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, 2000, 86. 

11. Fisher, Saul, “How to think about the Ethics of  Architecture,” In Fox, 
W. (ed.), Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 170-182,

175.

12. ibid.

13. Fox, Warwick, (ed.) Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 
207.

14. ibid.

15.  Fisher, Saul, “How to think about the Ethics of  Architecture,” In Fox, 
W. (ed.), Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 170-182,

177-8.

16. Carroll, Noel, “Architecture and Ethics: Autonomy, Architecture and 
Art” in Architecture Philosophy 1(2), 139-156, 140.

17. Fisher, Saul, “How to think about the Ethics of  Architecture,” In Fox, 
W. (ed.), Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 170-182,

177-8.

18. Fox, Warwick, (ed.) Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 
207.

19.Till, Jeremy, Architecture Depends. MIT Press, 2009, 182.

20. ibid.

21.Taylor, N., “Ethical arguments about the aesthetics of  architecture,” 
Fox, W (ed.) Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000, 193-206, 
194.

22. ibid.

23. Allen, Arthur, “Architecture and Confinement , an Open Letter to the 
Profession of  Architecture,” 2014,

https://www.academia.edu/11115882/Open_Letter_at_3_to_the_Profession_of_
Architecture, 3.

24. Allen, Arthur, “Architecture and Confinement , an Open Letter to the 
Profession of  Architecture,” 2014,



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https://www.academia.edu/11115882/Open_Letter_at_3_to_the_Profession_of_
Architecture, 4.

25. ibid.

26. Allen, A., “Prison Design and the Architect,” The Canadian Architect, July 
1977

https://www.academia.edu/7214030/PRISON_DESIGN_AND_THE_
ARCHITECT, 1977, 1.

27. Allen, A., “Prison Design and the Architect,” The Canadian Architect, July 
1977

https://www.academia.edu/7214030/PRISON_DESIGN_AND_THE_
ARCHITECT, 1977, 2.

28. Allen, A., “The Language of  Architecture,” The Canadian Architect, July 
1981, 26, 1.

h t t p s : / / w w w . a c a d e m i a . e d u / 7 2 1 4 0 4 6 /
THE_LANGUAGE_OF_ARCHITECTURE 

1981, 2.

29. ibid.

30. Allen, 1981, 5.

31. ibid.

32. Allen, 1981, 6.

33. Allen, 1981, 7.

34. architect Jeff  Goodale, quoted in The New York Times 10.6.2009).

35. Jewkes, Y. & D. Moran, “Should Prison Architecture be Brutal, Bland or 
Beautiful?” Scottish Justice Matters, 2(1), 2014, 8-11.

36. Simmons, A. J., “Ideal and nonideal theory,” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 
38(1), 2010, 5-36.   

37. For example, Cobb, Henry N. (1992) “Ethics and Architecture,” Harvard 
Architecture Review, 8, 1992, 44-49. Boyer, E. L. & Mitgang, L. D., (1996) 
Building Community: A New Future for Architectural Education and Practice. The 
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of  Teaching, 1996. Fisher, 
Saul, “How to think about the Ethics of  Architecture,” In Fox, W. (ed.), 
Ethics and the Built Environment. Routledge, 2000. Spector, Tom, The Ethical 
Architect: the Dilemma of  Contemporary Practice. Princeton Architectural Press, 
2001. Saint, Andrew, (2005) “Practical Wisdom for Architects: The Uses of  
Ethics,” in Ray, Nicholas, (ed.), Architecture and its Ethical Dilemmas, Taylor & 
Francis,  2005, 7-22. Fox, W. A., “Architecture Ethics,” In J. K. B. Olsen, S. A. 
Pedersen & V. F. Hendricks (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of  Technology, 



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Wiley-Blackwell, 387-391. Till, Jeremy, Architecture Depends. MIT Press, 
2009. Fisher, Thomas, Ethics for architects: 50 Dilemmas of  Professional Practice. 
Princeton Architectural Press. 2010. Chan, J. K. H., “Teaching ethics in 
architecture: contexts, issues and strategies.” Journal of  the NUS Teaching 
Academy, 3(3), 2013, 85-99.

38. Spoken by Richard Woolf  as reported in Intelligence RIBAJ120 Series/
Collective conscience article “Only way is ethics?” by Eleanor Young, 
RIBA Journal published 1.11.2013, 68. Available at https://darkroom.ribaj.
com/
39. Spoken by Peter Tompkins,  ibid.
40.Spoken by Maxwell Hutchinson, ibid.
                                                                     

 



isparchitecture.com

 Should Architects refrain from 
designing prisons for long-term 
Solitary Confinement? 
– An Open Letter to the 
Architecture Profession

Tom Spector, AIA, with Craig Borkenhagen, Mark Davis, Carrie 
Foster, Jacob Gann, Tou Lee Her, Aaron Klossner, Evan Murta, 
Ryan Rankin, Maria Cristina Rodriguez Santos, Connor Tas-
cott,Sarah Turner, and Spencer Williams

In a profile in the November, 2012 issue of  the 
magazine Architect, activist-architect Raphael 
Sperry, a founder of  the group Architects Planners 
& Designers for Social Responsibility (APDSR) 
discussed his petition to amend the AIA’s Code 
of  Ethics and Professional Conduct to include a 

figure 1: 

pelican bay state 
prison Prison



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prohibition on  “the design of  (prison) spaces intended for long-term 
solitary isolation and execution.”1  This issue is both serious and timely. It 
deserves contemplative attention before any action is taken. The purpose 
of  this letter is to provide the the architecture profession a condensed 
analysis of  the possible justification for taking the action Mr. Sperry 
advocates. After review and consideration, we are persuaded that Mr. 
Sperry’s proposal does merit action by the AIA. 

     Far from the prison system’s causing architects to perpetuate injustice, 
the design of  incarceration facilities is a building type showing real 
creativity and concern for prisoner rehabilitation. The article in Architect 
mentions several firms engaged in such work but many others can be 
found to impress the observer with the variety and vitality of  this specialty.2  
Thus, while certainly not without its structural deficiencies, charges that 
the American justice system is incorrigible and that it can only corrupt 
architects’ best intentions do not withstand scrutiny and should not form 
the basis for any AIA calls to action.

     The proposal promoted by APDSR, however, is more targeted than 
this. Specifically, Mr. Sperry is asking AIA members to foreswear designing 
facilities for long-term solitary confinement and for the administration 
of  the death penalty on the concept that these punishments amount to 
human torture, and that architects cannot make themselves part of  any 
torture apparatus. Approval of  the Sperry proposal, then, depends on 
two important assertions: that long-term solitary confinement is torture, 
and that architects, by virtue of  their professional roles, have a special 
responsibility in this situation to oppose policy enacted by democratically 
elected state and federal governments. To maintain the focus and brevity 
of  this document, the controversies surrounding the death penalty will not 
be addressed. We will only take up the case against solitary confinement.

     Prison design for long-term solitary confinement—also called 
disciplinary segregation—in the United States can be traced back to the 
Philadelphia Prison of  1829. Though much studied and even emulated in 
Europe at the time, the practice fell into disrepute in the early twentieth 
century. It was only revived in the late twentieth century during the great 
rise in imprisonment and consequent boom in prison construction. In 
the U. S., more than 80,000 inmates live in some form of  disciplinary 
isolation.3  Approximately 25,000 of  these are housed in what has come to 
be known as “supermax” prisons.4  Though conditions differ from prison 
to prison, a widely accepted definition of  solitary confinement is “the 
physical and social isolation of  individuals who are confined to their cells 
for 22 to 24 hours a day.”5  Typically, prisoners do not enter long-term 



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solitary confinement from initial sentencing. They 
are placed in solitary as a quick fix to end a variety 
of  disruptions they cause within the prison system.  
Even teenagers are regularly placed in solitary for 
extended periods.6 

     Humans are fundamentally social beings. Much of  
our sense of  reality, of  emotional stability and sense 
of  self  derives from fairly constant interactions with 
other people. Thus, it comes as little surprise that, 
deprived of  this crucial source of  reality, people 
who are already displaying adjustment difficulties 
would quickly become even more unhinged from 
reality in disciplinary segregation. The permanent 
psychological impact of  solitary confinement 
is well-documented.7   Even those who enter 
disciplinary segregation with an apparently strong 
and stable sense of  self  will begin to experience 
a constellation of  psychiatric problems in a short 
period of  time. Isolation panic and delirium are but 
two manifestations of  “confinement psychosis,” a 
medical condition typified by “psychotic reaction 
characterised frequently by hallucinations and 
delusions, produced by prolonged physical isolation 
and inactivity in completely segregated areas”8  

Symptoms of  psychological distress can begin in 
only a few days. A report to the United Nations 
proposed 15 days “as the limit between solitary 
confinement and prolonged solitary confinement.”9 

Stuart Grassian found in his interviews of  49 inmates 
of  the Pelican Bay “Supermax” prison in Northern 
California that “seventeen were actively psychotic…
in urgent need of  hospital treatment, and twenty-
three others suffered serious psychopathological 
reactions to solitary,”10  Surely, we feel compelled 
to conclude, a disciplinary system which results in 
most of  its prisoners suffering severe psychological 
trauma is indistinguishable from torture.

     We are far from alone in this conclusion. The 
Inter American Court of  Human Rights has 
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solitary confinement, in itself, may violate Article 5 of  the American 
Convention on Human Rights: “prolonged isolation and deprivation of  
communication are in themselves cruel and inhuman treatment, harmful 
to the psychological and moral integrity of  the person, and a violation of  
the right of  any detainee to respect for his inherent dignity as a human 
being. Such treatment, therefore, violates Article 5 of  the Convention...” 
The UN Human Rights Committee has objected to “... the practice of  
solitary confinement which affected the physical and mental health of  
persons deprived of  freedom and which amounted to a cruel, inhuman 
and degrading treatment.” Perhaps the most comprehensive statement 
against solitary confinement was expressed by The Istanbul Statement on 
the Use and Effects of  Solitary Confinement, adopted on December 9, 
2007 at the International Psychological Trauma Symposium, Istanbul. 

    It has been convincingly documented on numerous occasions that solitary 
confinement may cause serious psychological and sometimes physiological ill 
effects. Research suggests that between one third and as many as 90 per cent of  
prisoners experience adverse symptoms in solitary confinement. A long list of  
symptoms ranging from insomnia and confusion to hallucinations and psychosis 
has been documented. Negative health effects can occur after only a few days in 
solitary confinement, and the health risks rise with each additional day spent 
in such conditions. Individuals may react to solitary confinement differently. 
Still, a significant number of  individuals will experience serious health problems 
regardless of  the specific conditions, regardless of  time and place, and regardless of  
pre-existing personal factors. The central harmful feature of  solitary confinement 
is that it reduces meaningful social contact to a level of  social and psychological 
stimulus that many will experience as insufficient to sustain health and well 
being.11 

    Despite the United States’ ratification in 1994 of  the Convention 
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or 
Punishment passed by the United Nations in December 1984,12  the U. 
S. Supreme Court has steadfastly refused to engage the issue of  solitary 
confinement as torture. In cases involving solitary confinement, it has 
in modern times repeatedly reasserted the state’s interests over those of  
prisoners and the right of  the prison administration to institute whatever 
punishment deemed necessary, including solitary.13  Thus, its use is still 
sanctioned by the high court making its torturous features a continuing 
issue here.14  

     The frequent use of  disciplinary segregation, its predictable effects on 
inmates’ psychological states, and its resulting identification with torture 
poses a dilemma for professionals whose work engages the American 



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penal system. Medical professionals, who are 
charged with safeguarding individuals’ well-being, 
are wholly unable and unwilling to certify who is 
and who is not able to withstand the psychological 
stresses of  solitary confinement. Though in some 
cases, such medical intervention might be a blessing, 
singling out individuals as too psychologically 
fragile for solitary implicitly certifies the rest as 
fit to withstand its rigors—and this is simply 
antithetical to physicians’ ethics.15  As a result, such 
decisions are left for prison administration solely. 
Similarly with architects. The AIA Code of  Ethics’ 
Ethical Standard 1.4 specifies that “members 
should uphold human rights in all their professional 
endeavors.” Since any mainstream interpretation of  
human rights includes the right not to be tortured, 
and since long-term solitary confinement can be 
counted on to inflict substantial psychological 
pain, a recognized form of  torture, the logic 
behind asking architects to forego design of  prison 
facilities for long term solitary confinement appears 
to be a straightforward extension of  the AIA’s 
existing Code of  Ethics. We recommend that the 
AIA adopt Mr. Sperry’s proposal. It is a stand that 
is long overdue.

Endnotes

1. Karrie Jacobs, “Prison Break,” Architect. Nov 
2012. 134-141.  

2. Jim Lewis, “Behind Bars…Sort of,” New York 
Times Magazine, June 10, 2009. See also: http://
weburbanist.com/2011/09/23/not-just-jail-12-
modern-futuristic-fascinating-prisons/ (November, 
2012).

3. Angela Brown, Alissa Cambier and Suzanne 
Agha, “Prisons Within Prisons: The Use of  
Segregation in the United States,” Federal Sentencing 
Reporter, v24n1, October 2011. 46.

4. Daniel P. Mears, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of  
Supermax Prisons,” Urban Institute Justice Policy 



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ec

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r

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t.

 a
l.

Center, March 2006, 4.

5. United Nations General Assembly Department of  Public Information, 
“Special Rapporteaur on Torture tells Third Committee Use of  Prolonged 
Solitary Confinement on Rise, Calls for Global Ban on Practice,” GA/
SHC/4014, October 18, 2011.

6.“The New York City Department of  Corrections, for example, reported 
that in fiscal year 2012, which ended in June, more than 14 percent of  
all adolescents were held in at least one period of  solitary confinement 
while detained. The average length of  time young people spent in solitary 
confinement at Rikers Island was 43 days.” –“US: Teens in Solitary 
Confinement” Human Rights Watch, October 10, 2012. www.hrw.org/
news/2012/10/10/us-teens-solitary-confinement

7. Stuart Grassian’s report on his career study is perhaps the most complete: 
“Psychiatric Effects of  Solitary Confinement,” Journal of  Law and Policy, 
v22, n325 325-383. For other studies on the health effects of  solitary 
confinement, see Peter Scharff  Smith “The Effects of  Solitary Confinement 
on Prison Inmates. A Brief  History and Review of  the Literature” in Crime 
and Justice vol. 34, 2006 (pp. 441-528); Craig Haney “Mental Health Issues in 
Long-Term Solitary and ‘Supermax’ Confinement” in Crime & Delinquency 
49(1), 2003 (pp. 124-56); Stuart Grassian “Psychopathological Effects of  
Solitary Confinement” in American Journal of  Psychiatry 140, 1983 (pp. 1450-
4). Even attempts to justify solitary appear not to stand up to scrutiny. See 
November 29, 2010 “ACLU and Experts Slam findings of  Doc Report on 
Solitary Confinement.” www.aclu-co.org which criticizes a report written 
by Maureen O’Keefe et al. entitled “One Year Longitudinal Study of  the 
Psychological Effects of  Administrative Segregation,” Denver: State of  
Colorado, October 31,2010.

8. Scott, G. & Gendreau, P. “Psychiatric implications of  sensory deprivation 
in a maximum security prison.” Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, v14, 
1969: 337-341. 338.

9. United Nations General Assembly Department of  Public Information, 
“Special Rapporteaur on Torture tells Third Committee Use of  Prolonged 
Solitary Confinement on Rise, Calls for Global Ban on Practice,” GA/
SHC/4014, October 18, 2011.

10. Grassian, 349.

11. Available at: http://www.univie.ac.at/bimtor/dateien/topic8_
istanbul_statement_effects_solconfinment.pdf

12. Part 1 Article 1 of  the UN Convention against Torture and Other 
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment states: “For the 



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purposes of  this Convention, the term ‘torture’ 
means any act by which severe pain or suffering, 
whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted 
on a person for such purposes as obtaining from 
him or a third person information or a confession, 
punishing him for an act he or a third person has 
committed or is suspected of  having committed, or 
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or 
for any reason based on discrimination of  any kind, 
when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the 
instigation of  or with the consent or acquiescence 
of  a public official or other person acting in an 
official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering 
arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful 
sanctions.” http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_
doc.asp?symbol=a/res/39/46

13. Hilary McConnaughey, “Punishment 
Narratives: Tracking Supreme Court Jurisprudence 
Concerning Solitary Confinement,” Colgate Academic 
Review, v8, fall 2010. McConnaughey concludes, “In 
sum, the Supreme Court expanded the concept of  
solitary confinement so that it is warranted for a 
variety of  infractions and can be an expected part 
of  a person’s sentence.” (99).

14. Recent Supreme Court attitudes toward 
solitary confinement reverse, somewhat, the 
opinion expressed in the nineteenth century, when 
it observed that solitary confinement “was an 
additional punishment of  the most important and 
painful character,” IN RE MEDLEY, 134 U.S. 160 
(1890) http://laws.findlaw.com/us/134/160.html

15. Jeffrey L. Metzner MD and Jamie Fellner Esq. 
“Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness in U. S. 
Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics,” Journal of  
the American Academy of  Psychiatry and the Law Online, 
v38n1 104-108. March 2010



isparchitecture.com

Architecture as Participation 
in the World: Merleau-
Ponty, Wölfflin, and the 
Bodily Experience of the Built 
Environment
brian irwin

Introduction

Many discussions of  Merleau-Ponty’s treatment 
of  the bodily experience of  space turn to his opus 
Phenomenology of  Perception, where he most explicitly 
takes up the theme. Yet in Merleau-Ponty’s own 
view this treatment, while providing rich and 
valuable insights into spatial experience, remains 
unsatisfying: ultimately Phenomenology of  Perception 
does not escape a dualism that, despite the work’s 
inestimable contributions to the philosophy of  
embodied experience, situates it within a flawed 
tradition running back through Husserl, Kant, and 
Descartes. As Merleau-Ponty himself  puts it, “The 
problems posed in Ph.P. are insoluble because I start 
there from the ‘consciousness’-‘object’ distinction.” 
1 Only in his later philosophy, particularly with his 
development of  the ontology of  the flesh, did he 
approach the fulfillment of  his goal to leave this 
distinction and all its Cartesian corollaries behind 
once and for all. If  we want to derive from his work 
an approach to architecture that doesn’t recapitulate 
these Cartesian assumptions, that instead seeks to 
understand architectural practice and experience as 
important ways in which we belong to the world, 
then it is to his later philosophy that we should turn. 

     In this essay I want to emphasize in particular 
that our mode of  engaging with the world, in 
Merleau-Ponty’s later writings, can be understood 
as one of  participation, as I argue in the first section. 



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In considering how this principle might apply to architectural theory in 
practice, I turn to Heinrich Wölfflin, whose “Prolegomena to a Psychology 
of  Architecture” suggests a way of  thinking about architecture in 
participatory terms. I conclude with a few remarks about how these ideas 
may be applied to the contemporary world of  architectural theory and 
practice.

Drawing out the theme of participation in Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy

     It is a bit ironic that vision figures so prominently, even in the very titles 
of  two of  Merleau-Ponty’s last works —The Visible and the Invisible and 
“Eye and Mind”—considering that in these writings he makes a radical 
departure from the ocular-centrism that has for so long characterized the 
Western philosophical tradition. In Merleau-Ponty’s use, though, vision 
functions as a synecdoche for sensing in general. In the ontology of  the 
flesh, the visual and the tactile are bound up in a general sensing which 
is embedded in the “flesh of  the world,” the term Merleau-Ponty uses to 
signify that element in which sensing and sensible, subject and object, occur 
together, wherein “between the seeing and the seen, between touching and 
the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand, a 
blending of  some sort takes place – then the spark is lit between sensing 
and sensible, lighting the fire that will not stop burning.”2 Indeed, the 
tactile can be taken as primary insofar as it is by means of  the tactile 
that the embeddedness of  vision in the world is explicated. The visible 
“envelops, palpates, espouses the visible things.”3 Merleau-Ponty asks:

What is this prepossession of  the visible, this art of  interrogating it according to 
its own wishes, this inspired exegesis? We would perhaps find the answer in the 
tactile palpation where the questioner and the questioned are closer, and of  which, 
after all, the palpation of  the eye is a remarkable variant. …

[B]etween my movements and what I touch, there must exist some relationship by 
principle, some kinship, according to which they are not only, like the pseudopods 
of  the amoeba, vague and ephemeral deformations of  the corporeal space, but the 
initiation to and opening upon a tactile world. This can happen only if  my hand, 
while it is felt from within, is also accessible from without, itself  tangible, for my 
other hand, for example, if  it takes its place among the things it touches, is in a 
sense one of  them, opens finally upon a tangible world of  which it is also a part.4

Compared to vision, the immediacy and density of  contact with things 
through touch better reveals the common dimension of  the sensing and 
the sensed. For the hand that touches is manifestly a thing in the world – a 
thing we can see, and indeed a thing we can touch (with the other hand). 
It meets resistance when it slaps against the table in the same way that 



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the ball meets resistance when it lands in the palm.5 

This commonality of  touching and touched – their 
mutual embeddedness in the place of  contact – 
is what makes it possible for the tactile world to 
open up to sensing. This phenomenon, in fact, is 
enough for us to overthrow our naturalistic idea 
of  the thing as object, as essentially separate from 
ourselves, since we find ourselves suddenly among 
the world of  objects, and this, as he says elsewhere, 
“results in an ontological rehabilitation of  the 
sensible.”6 This is the crux of  Merleau-Ponty’s later 
ontology – or not crux but what he terms chiasm: 
the flesh of  the world finds expression in both 
sensing and sensible as two sides of  the same coin. 
While there is a gap (he uses the term écart) between 
these two sides, they are nonetheless characterized 
by “overlapping or encroachment, so that we may 
say that the things pass into us, as well as we into 
the things.”7 It is a relation of  intertwining, such 
that there is not an ontological separation between 
the self  and the world, but an emergence of  self  
from the world (and of  the world from self). As he 
says in a working note to The Visible and the Invisible 
with the header “The chiasm,” “A relation to Being 
is needed that would form itself  within Being.”8 The 
experience of  tactility is the best example of  this 
relation because it most clearly depends on our 
moving about within the world, discovering its 
resistances and textures through grasping, stroking, 
or palpating actions, and providing resistances of  
our own through our acts of  touch. Given the 
nature of  this bodily engagement with the world, 
it is very difficult to imagine that we simply represent 
the world through touch, or that a world of  objects 
is translated by touch into a tactile representation. 

     Only once we see this do we see that vision 
and the visible operate according to the same 
principle; that, in fact, “the palpation of  the eye 
is a remarkable variant” of  the tactile encounter 
with things, and vision does in fact participate in 
the sensible world as surely as does touch. For at 

   In the 
ontology of 

the flesh, the 
visual and 
the tactile 

are bound up 
in a general 

sensing which is 
embedded in the 

‘flesh of the 
world’

“

”



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a fundamental level, as the example of  tactility demonstrates, this is just 
what it is to sense: to make contact with the world, to be among things 
rather than before them. After all, I am visible as a seeing thing, even if  
by physiological circumstance I am not directly visible as a seeing thing 
to myself; as Merleau-Ponty notes, “[i]t is a marvel too little noticed that 
every movement of  my eyes—even more, every displacement of  my body 
—has its place in the same visible universe that I itemize and explore with 
them.”9 Just as it is only by belonging to the world of  touchable things that 
the hand is able to feel, so the eyes can only see by virtue of  their being 
within a visible world.

     So we see that this sort of  belonging is characteristic of  sensing in 
general; that the sensible world is open to us as sensing beings because 
of  our chiasmic relation to it from within—an active participation, a 
movement that always takes us beyond ourselves in the incessant palpation 
of  our surroundings. And, as actions are carried out by our whole moving, 
sensing body, rather than merely any isolated sense, the unity of  the body 
is entailed in any sensory experience. The senses interpolate each other, 
and operate according to each other’s modes. Thus we see the tactile 
qualities and feel the visible qualities of  things; or as Merleau-Ponty puts 
it “there is encroachment, infringement, not only between the touched 
and the touching, but also between the tangible and the visible, which is 
encrusted in it, as, conversely, the tangible itself  is not a nothingness of  
visibility, is not without visual existence.”10 The chiasm, in which sensing 
and sensible are intertwined, also allows for the intertwining of  the senses 
with each other. As he notes elsewhere, “Cezanne said that one could see 
the velvetiness, the hardness, the softness, and even the odor of  objects. 
My perception is therefore not a sum of  visual, tactile and audible givens: 
I perceive in a total way with my whole being; I grasp a unique structure of  
the thing, a unique way of  being, which speaks to all my senses at once.”11

     To “see,” then, is to be intertwined through all our senses with the 
world around us. Vision therefore does not involve rendering a picture 
or representation of  the world, which would entail standing outside of  
it, at a distance. Merleau-Ponty takes Descartes’ Dioptrics as paradigmatic 
of  “thought that wants no longer to abide in the visible and so decides 
to reconstruct it according to a model-in-thought.”12 On the Cartesian 
view, there is a separation between “the thing itself ” outside us and that 
which occurs for the mind, “that other thing which is only reflected light 
rays and which happens to have an ordered correspondence with the real 
thing.”13 Such a conception leads Descartes to hold outline and form as 
most essential in engravings, for they “present the object by its outside, or 



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its envelope” in contrast to which coloring is merely 
incidental decoration.14

     But we don’t perceive the world from the 
outside, we perceive it—and can only perceive it— 
by participating in it. In being “[i]mmersed in the 
visible by his body, itself  visible, the see-er does not 
appropriate what he sees; he merely approaches it 
by looking, he opens onto the world.”15 In contrast 
to Cartesian representationalism, “I do not see 
[space] according to its exterior envelope; I live 
it from the inside.”16 For the painting that moves 
us is not the one that most accurately renders the 
form of  the object, but that which binds us with the 
things of  the world, in which the world has been 
allowed to express itself  through the expressive 
body of  the painter. Merleau-Ponty quotes Klee, 
who says of  artistic expression, “A certain fire wills 
to live; it wakes. Working its way along the hand’s 
conductor, it reaches the canvas and invades it; then, 
a leaping spark, it arcs the gap in the circle it was to 
trace: the return to the eye, and beyond.”17 Being 
expresses itself  in a gesture that ties together the 
individual and the world such that “it is impossible 
to say that here nature ends and the human being 
or expression begins.”18 It is in the resonances that 
leap from the world to inhabit the artist, course 
through her and emerge back into the world again, 
that artistic expression is achieved. Though the 
thought is inspired by painting, the principle applies 
to experience generally: it is through chiasmic 
participation in the world through moving acts 
of  perception and gestures of  expression, that 
meaningful inhabitation is accomplished.

Heinrich Wölfflin and architecture as participation in the 
world

If  we don’t presuppose, as so much of  Western 
thought has, a representationalism that places the 
subject and the world in ontological opposition 
to each other, and instead start from the 

we see the 
tactile 

qualities and 
feel the visible 

qualities of 
things

“

”



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Merleau-Pontian perspective that, as fleshy beings, we are part of  the world 
and belong to it, what will be the consequences for how we conceive the 
built environment? Rachel McCann, in applying the lessons of  Merleau-
Ponty’s later philosophy, speaks of  architecture as a “carnal echo,” which 
emphasizes that the power of  an architectural work emerges from the 
intertwining of  human beings with their surroundings.19 We can see in the 
analysis by the 19th century art historian Heinrich Wölfflin that, in fact, 
traditional Western architecture has been motivated, consciously or not, 
by a logic of  carnality.

     In “Prolegomena to a Psychology of  Architecture,” Wölfflin argued 
that the forms that had defined traditional architecture since classical times 
reflected the ways in which we relate to the world as embodied beings, 
especially through what we would now call a proprioceptive sense. What 
had sometimes been reduced, in Wölfflin’s estimation, to a question of  
being “pleasing to the eye,” was in fact a question of  how we relate to 
structures as motile upright creatures. As he wrote, “physical forms possess 
a character only because we ourselves possess a body. If  we were purely 
visual beings, we would always be denied an aesthetic judgment of  the 
physical world. But as human beings with a body that teaches us the nature 
of  gravity, contraction, strength, and so on, we gather the experience that 
enables us to identify with the conditions of  other forms.”20

     Wölfflin is giving expression here to an idea that is consonant with the 
fact that we do not stand before the world as cognizing observers, but 
belong to it as participants. For our manner of  understanding structures 
is not purely conceptual; rather, it proceeds from our own experience as 
fleshy beings with our own mass and weight. As he writes, “we read our 
own image into all phenomena. We expect everything to possess what we 
know to be the conditions of  our own well-being.”21 We understand the 
physical world in terms of  the categories we share with it; so, for instance, 
we “have carried loads and experienced pressure and counterpressure, we 
have collapsed to the ground when we no longer had the strength to resist 
the downward pull of  our own bodies, and that is why we can appreciate 
the noble serenity of  a column and understand the tendency of  all matter 
to spread out formlessly on the ground.”22

     This natural experience of  weight, of  the downward pull that roots 
us and that is both condition and constraint for our upright, vertical 
postures, is expressed in traditional architecture not just in the column, 
but also, for instance, in the use of  rustication at the lower portions of  
buildings. By emphasizing the mass of  materials, rustication produces a 
sense of  bottom-heavy stability, a sense that is not just established visually, 



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but proprioceptively, involving our own sense of  
balance, and a sense of  movement as well. Similarly, 
arches over doors and windows discharge the 
weight of  materials around the apertures so that 
they protect movement (entrance and egress of  our 
bodies, or even just of  our line of  sight) without being 
oppressive, while elements conveying a freer sense 
of  movement, expressiveness, and even whimsy are 
typical of  the upper portions of  buildings built in 
traditional Western styles. This logic is expressed 
in Louis Sullivan’s prescriptions for office building 
design, for instance, which Kent Bloomer describes 
as “an expression of  taut firmness at the bottom, 
an expression of  efflorescence and ornament at the 
top,” allowing the building as a whole to express an 
“upward awakening.”23

     For Wölfflin, “[o]ur own bodily organization is 
the form through which we apprehend everything 
physical.”24 This apprehension, he claims, is a sort 
of  empathy, and it is self-evident in our relations 
to others: children can’t see someone cry without 
bursting into tears themselves; people adopt the 
expressions of  strangers around them; a person 
who is hoarse speaks and we clear our own 
throats.25 But it extends as well to our interactions 
with objects, structures, and everything else in our 
world as a general characteristic of  our experience. 
Hence, for instance, an architectural asymmetry “is 
often experienced as physical pain, as if  a limb were 
missing or injured.”26

    There is thus an anthropomorphism that is 
essential to the meaning of  structural forms – an 
anthropomorphism that is present whether we 
will it to be there or not.27 We read the relation 
of  height to width in a building, for instance, as 
a relation between a sense of  ascent and repose. 
This kinesthetic sense in turn connotes a whole 
personality: an upright orientation is vital, active, 
dignified. A horizontally-oriented building, on the 
other hand, may connote restfulness or calm (or 

        There 
is thus an 

anthropomorphism 
that is essential 

to the meaning 
of structural 

forms – an 
anthropomorphism 

that is present 
whether we will it 

to be there or not”

“



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perhaps inertia and sloth – and whether the former sense is evoked or the 
latter we might chalk up to the quality of  the design). The perfect square, 
meanwhile, is distinctive for lacking a clear anthropomorphic orientation: 
it “is called bulky, heavy, contented, plain, good-natured, stupid… We can 
not tell if  the body is reclining or standing.”28

     Think of  what it means, in this light, to say that a building “faces” the 
street, or that we stand at the “foot” of  the stairs leading up to the entrance, 
or that, as Juhani Pallasmaa says, “[t]he door handle is the handshake of  the 
building.”29 Structures lend themselves to these metaphors because they 
reflect us back upon ourselves through a close and profound resonance. 
A door or window that has a vertical orientation, for instance, frames 
the upright form of  the human body, an effect that may be emphasized 
through the use of  arches or transom windows that extend and emphasize 
headspace: every aperture is a kind of  potential aedicule. The picture 
windows that became popular in the postwar period, on the other hand, 
suggest a supine form, and thus bear a sensation of  inertness. Or think 
again of  how the freest movement of  energies—the rhythmic and organic 
character of  foliated ornamentation, for instance—are natural to the 
upper portions of  buildings in traditional architecture, a reflection of  the 
fact that, as Wölfflin points out, the most expressive part of  the human 
body is the head.30 If, on the other hand, a design is indifferent with regard 
to this anthropomorphizing tendency, we may read it as “turning its back 
on us,” seeming “cold” or “lifeless,” being orientationally “indecisive,” 
as the form of  the square is for Wölfflin; that is to say, we imbue the 
meaning of  structures with human characteristics, even if  they are only 
notable for their absence. Whatever these characteristics might be, they 
solicit us to respond in an embodied way, much like a person who engages 
us in a conversation, with their particular tone and body language and so 
forth. The question of  whether a structure solicits a disposition in us that 
enhances our sense of  bodily well-being is the question of  whether that 
structure is dignifying.

     We can reflect again on the flesh of  the world from the Merleau-
Pontian perspective. Consider the flesh of  buildings: in their weighty mass, 
their anthropomorphic form, and not least their function as places of  
human inhabitation, they are chiasmically intertwined with our own flesh. 
They are organic in this sense, and organic in this specifically human way: 
as products of  thought and language (which are themselves expressions 
of  bodily capacities, from the Merleau-Pontian perspective), they 
express human ideas, the carnal existence of  those ideas made manifest 
in the material world, and made manifest precisely for the sake of  our 



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own inhabitation in the world. For 
this reason, the flesh of  architecture 
perhaps gives clearest expression to 
what it means to belong to the world, 
to participate in it, to continue into it 
and to be a continuation of  it. 

     The architect Peter Zumthor 
describes architecture as “a kind of  
anatomy... Really, I mean the word 
<body> quite literally. It’s like our own 
bodies with their anatomy and things 
we can’t see and skin covering us—
that’s what architecture means to me 
and that’s how I try to think about it. 
As a bodily mass, a membrane, a fabric, 
a kind of  covering, cloth, velvet, silk, all 
around me. The body! Not the idea of  
the body – the body itself! A body that 
can touch me.”31 Zumthor conceives 
of  architecture as an extension of  our 
bodily organization into the world. 
(Figure 1) But architecture is also the 
manner in which the world draws us to 
inhabit it. And in this intertwining of  
body and world is the possibility of  a 
certain kind of  expression, an elevation 
of  the experience of  inhabitation as such.

Concluding remarks

  The chiasm, Merleau-Ponty says, is “an 
exchange between me and the world, between the 
phenomenal body and the ‘objective’ body, between 
the perceiving and the perceived,”32 and the flesh is 
the “element”33 in which the chiasmic intertwining 
between the body and the world takes place. Such an 
ontological perspective lends credence to Wölfflin’s 
analysis of  the bodily logic of  traditional Western 
architecture: if  our bodies participate in the world 
from within, rather than across the distance that 
would separate an ontologically distinct subject and 

Figure 1: Wachendorf 
Feldkapelle interior, by 

Peter Zumthor



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object, then it would make sense to understand architecture – the practice 
of  providing the means of  inhabitation for human bodies – as expressing 
the “basic conditions of  organic life;”34 that is, as being organized 
according to the same principles as those by which our bodily experience 
is organized. Moreover, when Wölfflin’s treatment of  architecture is cast 
in terms of  Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology (a philosophical project which, 
of  course, he antedates by more than half  a century), it can help us to 
conceive just what it would mean to think about – and do – architecture 
from such an ontological orientation.

     This orientation can help to diagnose a particular peril of  contemporary 
architectural practice: the emphasis on the conceptual over the concretely 
material. Pallasmaa has argued that over the last century, architecture has 
increasingly become “an art form of  instant visual image.”35 In adopting 
this purely visual disposition, we are rendering our structures “repulsively 
flat, sharp-edged, immaterial, unreal.”36 This disposition is expressed 
especially in a commitment to abstract form, an uncanny echo of  the 
Cartesian “model-in-thought” that Merleau-Ponty criticizes.37 The over-
emphasis on the visual, absent a synesthetic engagement with the other 
senses, is emblematic of  a dualistic separation between the object outside 
of  us and our mental experience of  that object. What leads Descartes to 
regard outline and form as the most essential elements in engravings also 
leads architects toward the supremacy of  the purely visual. 

     Consider, as an example of  the trend, Rafael Viñoly’s comment that 
his recent prominent addition to the New York skyline, 432 Park Avenue, 
(Figure 2) is based on “the purest geometric form: the square… The body 
of  432 Park Avenue remains abstract and radical – a pure product of  
the grid.”38 The elevation of  geometrical abstraction as an aesthetic ideal 
stands in telling contrast to Wölfflin’s characterization of  the square as 
“bulky, heavy, contented, plain, good-natured, stupid.” What appeals to 
Viñoly from a perspective of  intellectual abstraction is indecisive and 
“stupid” when considered from a perspective of  embodied engagement.

     This tendency is exacerbated by something Loureiro has pointed out: 
that the technologies employed in architectural design have increasingly 
subsumed the creative and poetic craft of  the architect in such a way 
as to elevate the visual image of  the architectural work above the built 
work itself. “Now,” he writes, “it is the picture that generates the building. 
Photo-realistic 3D renderings… are ‘models for photographs,’ and not 
depictions of  architectural ideas.”39 Meanwhile, Rob Imrie has found that 
discussion of  the body is all but absent in architectural education, and in 
the thinking of  many contemporary architects.40 



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     But if  we regard the human 
body as participating in the 
flesh of  the world, and thus 
as intertwined with things, 
including architectural works 
which are so essential to our 
experience of  inhabitation in 
the world, we will acknowledge 
that this intertwining occurs 
through all the senses, and 
that these senses seek out, 
in Wölfflin’s phrase, “the 
conditions of  our own well-
being.”41 We might find the 
conditions for well-being in 
ornament, for instance, which 
can play such an important 
role in the kinesthetic sense 
of  an “upward awakening” in 
a building, to use Bloomer’s 
phrase. We might find it, as 
well, in the use of  natural 
materials which integrate a 
haptic sense; as Pallasmaa 
says, “stone, brick, and 
wood… allow the gaze to 
penetrate their surfaces and… enable us to become 
convinced of  the veracity of  matter.” The textures 
of  these materials are of  the natural world. They 
have a depth that is lacking in concrete and glass: 
“Natural material expresses its age and history as 
well as the tale of  its birth and human use.”42 These 
materials take us beyond the visual, beyond the 
bird’s-eye view of  the tabletop architectural model 
and the flat forms of  geometrical abstraction, into 
that synesthesia that characterizes our sense of  
belonging as participants in the world.

     Of  course, Wölfflin was writing in the 19th 
century, and could speak of  the principles of  Western 
architectural design as adhering to a generally 
continuous tradition going back to classical times. 

figure 2: 432 Park Avenue, 
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But I am not sugggesting that the lesson to draw here is that architecture 
needs to return to its traditional forms to recoup a sense of  multisensory 
engagement and of  participation between human beings and the built 
environment. If  the various modernisms and post-modernisms that have 
arisen since Wölfflin’s time have tended toward obliviousness with regard 
to this function of  architecture, by ceaselessly challenging convention they 
have also opened up the field to as many new architectural possibilities as 
can be imagined. Architects like Pallasmaa, Zumthor, Steven Holl, and 
many others have found in this realm of  possibilities new ways of  giving 
expression to the idea of  architecture as participation in the world. As 
varied and heterogeneous as embodied experience is, these possibilities 
will surely never be exhausted.

     So, finally, we might find the conditions for our well-being by asking a 
new range of  questions. Rather than asking what a work of  architecture 
represents, we can ask: what spirit of  participation in the world does it 
elicit, and how does this relate to the purpose of  the structure?  How does 
it engage us through all of  our senses? What ideas are expressed through 
the body? To ask such questions is to ask how architecture performs its 
essential function: to structure our inhabitation of  the world. It is also, 
notably, to acknowledge an ethical dimension intrinsic to architecture. For 
if  architecture is properly attentive to this function, then it is attentive to 
producing well-being for every human. There could be no more ethical a 
task. 

Endnotes

1. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible, Alphonso Lingis, 
trans (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 200.
2. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Eye and Mind,” in The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics 
Reader, Johnson, Galen A. and Michael B. Smith, eds. (Evanston: 
Northwestern University Press, 1993), 125.
3. Ibid., 133.
4. Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, 133.
5. Perhaps we only understand the notion of  resistance in things in the 
world because we experience it as bodies. Merleau-Ponty describes the 
body as an “exemplar sensible, which offers to him who inhabits it and 
senses it the wherewithal to sense everything that resembles himself  on 
the outside” (Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, 135). These comments 
suggest a kind of  bodily logic which we extend or project onto the world, 
and by which we come to understand the world, an idea that resonates with 
Wölfflin’s theories on architecture.



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6. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Philosopher and 
His Shadow,” in Signs. (Chicago: Northwestern 
University Press, 1964), 166-7.
7. Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, 123.
8. Ibid., 215.
9. Ibid., 134.
10. Ibid.
11. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “The Film and the 
New Psychology,” in Signs, Richard C. McCleary, 
trans. (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 
1964), 49-50.
12. Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind,” 130.
13. Ibid., 131.
14. Ibid., 133.
15. Ibid., 124.
16. Ibid., 138.
17. Ibid., 147. 
18. Ibid.
19. McCann, Rachel. “Entwining the Body and 
the World: Architectural Design and Experience 
in the Light of  ‘Eye and Mind’,” in Intertwinings: 
Interdisciplinary Encounters with Merleau-Ponty, Gail 
Weiss, ed. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008), 267.
20. Wölfflin, Heinrich. “Prolegomena to a 
Psychology of  Architecture,” in Empathy, Form, and 
Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873-1893, Harry 
Francis Mallgrave and Eleftherios Ikonomou, trans. 
(New York: Getty Center for the History of  Art and 
the Humanities, 1994), 151.
21. Ibid., 152.
22. Ibid., 151.
23. Bloomer, Kent. The Nature of  Ornament. (New 
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), 83. 
Ironically, the modernists’ cri de coeur that form must 
follow function derives from Sullivan’s declaration 
that “shape, form, outward expression, design, or 
whatever we may choose of  the tall office building 
should in the very nature of  things follow the 
functions of  the building” (Sullivan, Louis. “The 
Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” in 
Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, (New York: 



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Dover, 1979), 208.). Sullivan’s point was that visual functionality could 
be enhanced by ornament, not that any expression that wasn’t structurally 
necessitated ought to be suppressed.
24. Wölfflin., “Prolegomena,” 157-8.
25. Ibid., 156.
26. Ibid., 155. So ubiquitous is the desire to find symmetry in things, Wölfflin 
observes, that in the case of  that rare object that on the face of  it defies 
symmetry – the one-handled mug – we unconsciously treat the handle as 
the “back” of  the mug, so that a lateral symmetry is maintained (Ibid., 164).
27. This anthropomorphism extends to other objects as well, and even to 
geographical regions: Yi-Fu Tuan notes that cities give the impression of  
having a front and a back, and “[m]ost people in the United States probably 
regard the northeastern seaboard as the nation’s front” (Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space 
and Place: The Perspective of  Experience. (Minneapolis: University of  Minnesota 
Press, 1977), 42).
28. Wölfflin, “Prolegomena,” 168.
29. Pallasmaa, Juhani. “An Architecture of  the Seven Senses,” in Questions of  
Perception: Phenomenology of  Architecture, Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto 
Perez-Gomez. (New York: William Stout, 2006), 33.
30. Wölfflin, “Prolegomena,” 176.
31. Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres, 11. Accessed 
July 11, 2015. http://ebookbrowsee. net/gdoc.
php?id=466463785&url=982c587b925fe3103a612676616e5bd.
32. Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, 215.
33. Ibid., 139.
34. Wölfflin, “Prolegomena,” 160. Though Wölfflin is concerned with 
Western architecture, it would be interesting to apply his insights to non-
Western traditions.
35. Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Hapticity and Time,” Architectural Review 207 (2000). 
See also his argument in Eyes of  the Skin (London: Academy Editions, 1996).
36. Pallasmaa, “Seven Senses,” 29.
37. Merleau-Ponty, Visible and the Invisible, 134.
38. Garutti, Francesco. “Rafael Viñoly/432 Park Avenue/New York,” 
Abitare, June 2013.
39. Loureira, Felipe Guimarães de Souza Fernandes. “The Image in Power: 
Vilém Flusser and the Craft of  Architecture,” Architecture Philosophy 1(2) 
(2015): 222.
40. Imrie, Rob. “Architects’ Conceptions of  the Human Body,” Environment 
and Planning D: Society and Space, 21 (2003), 47-65.
41. Wölfflin, “Prolegomena,” 152.
42. Pallasmaa, “Seven Senses,” 29.



Book review

Book reviews
A Chinese Philosophy of  Architecture: Past, Present, 
Future 
David Wang 
New York: Routledge, 2017.
Hardcover: $180. Paperback: $50

In this book, David Wang attempts to derive a 
philosophy of  architecture from Chinese sources. 
The attempt is made at a moment when revivals 
of  old ways in China are once again discussed in 
academic literature (for example, Billioud and 
Thoraval in their The Sage and the People: The Confucian 
Revival in China, which appeared in 2015). Wang’s 
book cannot be read as a textbook showing how 
to systematically apply certain Confucian or Daoist 
ideas to modern architecture. Instead, it should be 
read as a philosophical reflection on contemporary 
architecture delivered from a Chinese point of  view. 
The book contains many fresh considerations and 
provocative ideas about how non-Western sources 
can challenge well-established Western architectural 
theories. 

The book is divided into three parts: Past, 
Present, and Future. The first part explains traditional 
Chinese architecture and contrasts it with Western 
paradigms. The “Present” part is concerned with 
the opening of  China towards the West and the 
influence of  postmodernism. The “Future” part 
talks about influences like virtual reality but also 
about the possibility for future development of  a 
Chinese philosophy of  architecture.

On the one hand, the book is inspired by Jianfei 
Zhu’s Architecture of  Modern China: A Historical 
Critique (2009), which suggests a new “criticalist” 
approach to architecture. On the other hand, 



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Wang does not address the theme of  criticality that was important 
not only for Zhu but also for critics of  Chinese architecture like Peter 
Eisenman who had once declared Chinese architecture conservative 
and accommodating because it lacks a tradition of  resistance. For 
Eisenman, the critical consciousness linked to European Enlightenment 
is missing in the Chinese tradition.1 Wang’s comparative approach has 
a different starting point, which is not The Enlightenment but Plato. 
Wang wants to go back to the roots of  all differences, which is Plato’s 
essentialism and its absence in China. In particular, Wang employs 
Plato’s distinction between matter and spirit to contrast Chinese 
philosophies of  architecture with Western ones. Wang makes the 
following four distinctions: 

First, in China, “excellence of  being is not always dependent on 
infusions of  moral value into material objects” (65) because the Platonic 
distinctions between matter and spirit do not exist in Chinese culture. 
This assertion put Chinese architecture on a completely different track 
missed by most Western architects. 

Second, while the Confucian notion of  the morally perfected 
person is important, the value of  that person is entirely internal and 
will not manifest itself  materially. Wang puts much weight on the 
quotation of  a certain Wan Juren (source not documented) who would 
have written about Confucius’s notion of  ren that the virtuous nature 
is purely internal. According to Wan Juren, Confucius does not suggest 
that one should “externally pursue any kind of  technical perfection or 
realization of  material end,” (5, the source is referenced as Zuangzi). 
The essence of  things is not defined philosophically (as it was by 
Aristotle) and, as a consequence, no values or virtues can act on material 
or on architecture. Instead, “in China moral instantiation [remains] in 
between relational social roles” and the “moral focus is on people and 
their social enactments.” (5) Chinese architectural conceptions are fluid 
because there are no essences like beauty or the good but everything 
depends on the social situation. 

Third, in the West, spirit is individual, while in Chinese architectural 
thought spiritual components appear as constellations. Feng shui, for 
example, “is about losing human individuality into the larger cosmos.” 
What matters is not the essence, but the “positioning alone assures 
beneficial outcomes” (5). 

Fourth, the Platonic idea of  reason leads to a concept of  time-
dependent progress towards ideals, which does not exist in China 
either. Due to its Platonic idealistic heritage, Materiality held negative 



Book reviewconnotations as it is always opposed to the spiritual 
and non-material truth and able to retard progress. 
Therefore, Western architects attempted to 
introduce much non-material light, a goal not found 
in Chinese architecture, which is most obvious in 
Western religious architecture. (43) 

Thus, with these four contrasts, Wang draws a 
sharp distinction in intent between Western Platonic 
essentialism and Chinese relational truths. But such 
an orientation invites the question: without such 
Platonic essences, some essential foundations, will 
those purely “relational” truths not lead to relativism? 
Wang offers a few provocative conclusions. For 
example, what is called pastiche style in the West 
cannot be called such in China because “Chinese 
philosophy accommodates this style of  affairs.” 
(6) Logically, you cannot have a pastiche unless 
you have some theoretical framework that informs 
what is not pastiche. There is no ideology of  style 
in China, which means that anything goes as long as 
it is “relationally” justified: “prior to 1840, Chinese 
structures were not motivated by an ideology of  
style.” (7) After 1840, there is a proliferation of  
styles but no indigenous theoretical tradition to 
guide design thinking. This is how the Chinese 
could reinvent postmodern hybridity without being 
postmodern. The hybridity we find in China is 
“not a self-conscious choice” and therefore not 
really postmodern (124) in conception. Instead it is 
simply due to a lack of  purified aesthetic ideologies. 

This relativism is pushed one step further 
when Wang legitimizes an aesthetics of  clutter. 
Since there is no aesthetic ideology of  proportion 
and since the wen (cultural pattern) is clearly open-
ended, clutter becomes a positive term. The Chinese 
notion of  wen is an untranslatable term meaning, in 
different contexts “pattern,” “structure,” “writing,” 
and “literature.” The pattern of  wen is found not 
only in culture but also in animals, vegetation, 
and cosmological phenomena. Wang applies this 



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in an unusual context. The clutter on Chinese sidewalks is “teeming 
with activity” (66) and Wang holds that wen can be understood as “a 
cluttered array of  things.” (80)

In Chinese architecture, everything moves towards a fluidity-
based paradigm, which can be contrasted with the essentialist styles of  
Western architecture in which purified or fixed notions of  style tended 
to be justified by essentialist concepts of  styles based on (Platonic-
Aristotelian) philosophies. Chinese architectural reality is fluid as it is 
determined by the ying and the yang, which produces no essence but just 
qi. Qi is a cosmological notion providing coherence among all things. 
It translates as “breath” and is used in the sense of  “energy flow” in 
traditional Chinese culture, especially Chinese medicine and martial arts. 

After all those considerations of  fluidity and interrelatedness one 
could perhaps conclude that Chinese architecture is organic. If  this is 
the case, Wang could have developed this line of  thought further. A 
fluid and dynamic perception of  architectural space is precisely what 
organic architecture, initiated by Frank Lloyd Wright and developed by 
generations of  architects, always wanted. Organic architecture promotes 
harmony between all elements, natural and architectural, precisely in the 
way in which Wang describes the qi flowing out of  the play of  ying and 
yang.  As is, those tantalizing connections between East and West go 
unexplored.

It is in the context of  fluidity that Wang also makes interesting 
statements about different preservation cultures in East and West. 
Fluidity-based architectural paradigms will find the preservation 
mentality pervasive in the West too restrictive: “In a correlative world in 
which fluid change is fundamental, wood gives way to fire, fire to soil, 
in a cyclical process.” (23) Is the Daoist penchant “to let things be” (67) 
favoring preservation or against preservation? There is no clear answer 
to this in Wang’s book.

However, in all his elaborations on fluidity and dynamism there is 
a paradox. European styles change while Chinese styles have remained 
relatively constant until the modern era.  If  architecture is so fluid in 
China, why did styles remain constant? Instead they evolved in non-
fluid Europe. Stylistic evolution in the West owes much to an artistic 
self-consciousness arising out of  the tradition of  resistance of  which 
Eisenman spoke. Wang acknowledges the stable character of  Chinese 
architectural styles. His answer to the paradox of  fluid architectural 
conceptions not bound by Platonic essences that nevertheless led to 
stylistic stasis is to explain the idea of  fluidity within an overall largely static 



Book reviewconception by reference to the cosmic fabric called 
fen, which Buddhism-informed neo-Confucianism 
saw as a familial-social cosmic system guaranteeing 
unchanging social roles. (52) Each fen conducts 
itself  in correct li-rituals. Similarly static are the 
Yingzao Fashi, (營造法式) a 12th century manual 
of  Building Standards, which formalized imperial 
construction as an expression of  social hierarchy. 
Another reason for stasis is the imperative of  moral 
excellence that philosophies about the li tended to 
express in the form of  theoretical logic. Here Wang 
points to Xunzi, who believed that architecture can 
be subsumed under the embrace of  li-ritual: “A 
benefit of  this approach is that moral excellence is 
embedded in the theoretical logic.” (143)

What seems to matter most for Wang is that 
there is no Platonic essence in Chinese thought 
able to formulate the good and the beautiful. Since 
nothing philosophical could be said about the 
goodness and beauty of  material, Chinese literati 
never embraced architecture as a contemplative 
pursuit. Architecture was seen as a craft, which gave 
it a lot of  freedom. This is possibly true. However, 
was the West that unfree? Ideas concerning the 
good and the beautiful have changed a lot over the 
centuries in the West. True, European culture tended 
to justify aesthetic truths in terms of  philosophical 
truth (since Plato), which is not the case with the 
more vague Buddhist-Confucian prescriptions. At 
the same time, this lack of  philosophical back-up 
might be the reason why, as Wang points out, 
modern Chinese architecture has not yet found its 
own vocabulary. (123) 

I want to conclude by returning to the concept 
of  the organic. Jianfei Zhu’s “relational critique” 
seems to point more consistently to the idea of  
an organic whole. Wang also mentions Liu Xiaohu 
from Wuhan who uses terms like feng shui and 
xiao (filial peity) in organic contexts (143). The 
Hangzhounese architect Wang Shu is also often 



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mentioned as a protagonist of  the “fluency” inherent in Chinese 
architectural culture. Would a real alternative architectural thinking 
moving beyond Platonism but incorporating “criticality” with the 
organic not be the next step in this search for a philosophy of  Chinese 
architecture? Wang does not take this step. He derives a critique of  
the Western tradition from Chinese sources. However, calling this a “a 
Chinese philosophy of  architecture” seems to be too ambitious. An 
aesthetics of  clutter and fluidity-based paradigms can inspire interesting 
critiques but it will take more work to develop those critiques into real 
philosophies.

ENDNOTES

1. Peter. Eisenman,  “Critical Architecture in a Geopolitical World” 
in Cynthia Davidson and Ismail Serageldin (eds). Architecture Beyond 
Architecture: Creativity and Social Transformations in Islamic Cultures. London: 
Academy Editions, 1995.

Thinking like a Mall: Environmental Philosophy After the End of  Nature
Steven Vogel 
Boston: MIT Press, 2016.
Paperback: $24
reviewed by Tom Spector

Steven Vogel agrees with what Warwick Fox called attention to two 
decades ago, a view which I believe all we architecture-philosophy types 
share: that an environmental ethic is both incomplete and of  little effect 
without a robust account of  the human-made environment incorporated 
into it. Thinking Like a Mall attempts such an account, not so much 
by describing the relationship between the built and self-determining 
environments as by dismantling the divide between them. Vogel takes 
his title from Aldo Leopold’s treatise “Thinking Like a Mountain,” in 
which Leopold describes his personal journey out of  an ego-centric 
view of  nature to one understood in more relational terms. If  Vogel can 
make the case that that a shopping mall (that much unloved building 
type) is no less and no more natural than Leopold’s mountain, then he 
can well extend the argument to include all built environments. While 
he makes progress on these fronts, we may yet hesitate to agree he has 



Book reviewlaid the problem to rest.

     Vogel argues that mainstream environmental 
ethics has tried to create a sense of  separation 
between humanity and nature to justify its 
prescriptions. “What ends nature is nothing other 
than the human touch, a touch that, rather Midas-
like, has the uncanny ability to transform the 
natural into something outside of  nature.” (11) 
This divide creates an insoluble contradiction 
for environmental ethics in its current 
formulations. It seems that either we think 
of  nature as everything that exists by and for 
itself  without the interference of  humans, or 
else we make room for a larger conception of  
nature that also includes what humans do as 
being part of  nature. But here’s the problem: 
if  we consider humans as part of  nature, then 
there’s no reason to consider, say, hydroelectric 
dams as any more unnatural than beaver dams 
and cities are no more or less than the habitats 
we create that are most natural for us. But if  we 
leave human activity out of  the equation, then 
it becomes problematic to find untouched 
nature, and to determine how far back we have to 
go before the influence of  mankind spoiled it. After 
all, it appears highly likely that humans caused the 
extinction of  the wooly mammoth in Pleistocene 
times. 

     Environmentalists have avoided this contradiction 
by trading on an equivocation. They use “nature” 
to mean “wild, untouched and self-determining” 
when it suits them, but then they make an about-
face and insist that humans are part of  nature 
when it comes time to formulate an action plan. 
He sees an “odd inconsistency” if  the nature we 
are called on to preserve is nonhuman nature. The 
environmentalists who worry about the destruction 
of  nature also believe that “humans need to learn to 
live more in accordance with nature.”(11) Human 
anthropocentrism, the unwillingness to accept that 



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we should live more within the natural order of  things rather than seek 
to transform them more to our liking, is the source of  the problem. 
“But if  the production of  a toaster or the changing of  a temperature 
or the restoring of  a prairie involves the transformation of  nature into 
something that is no longer natural, then it is not at all clear that humans 
are embedded in nature.”(12) Here is the crux of  the contradiction: If  
human actions are outside nature, then what could it possibly mean 
to advocate that we live more in tune with nature?  Conversely, if  we 
humans are in fact part of  nature, then so are our buildings—and this 
leaves the environmentalists without a cause. There is no basis for 
bemoaning technology.  

     Some Environmentalists would have it that the value of  untouched 
nature is its independence.  Others, its diversity or richness. Therefore, 
we have an obligation to help preserve its diversity. But how do we 
get from this definition to an obligation? What if  we try to assert that 
there is something wrong with human-created global warming that 
extends beyond its effect on other humans and into its effect on the 
natural order of  things? We could say, “yes, but its going to be very 
destructive,” but in the larger sense, this assertion is simply untrue. It 
will be just as productive as it is destructive. So we could amend that 
statement and say that it will be very disruptive, which is certainly true, 
but disruption is itself  entirely natural and goes on all the time out in 
nature. So we could amend it still more and say that it will be disruptive 
at a speed and scale rarely found in nature, and that is also certainly true, 
but then that is not always the case either—nature can be astoundingly 
disruptive- and in short order: Every time a volcano blows, for example, 
or a 100-year drought occurs. So, if  there’s nothing we are doing or 
causing that nature doesn’t already, then where is the foul? 

     Thus, Vogel thinks we do well to abandon the word “nature” altogether 
as a source of  guidance for an environmental ethic. But he notes one 
last way the word nature is used, and this is why environmentalists have 
been resistant to abandoning it: it is often used normatively, natural 
is associated with what’s right, and unnatural is associated with what’s 
wrong. But taking nature as a guide for right and wrong human action 
is going to lead to some pretty odd results. Think of  what a spider does 
with its prey. So, he says, trying to act more ‘naturally’ in this sense 
scarcely seems like a good idea. 

     Vogel concludes that Nature is a useless concept, not only because 
there seems to be so little of  it remaining, not only because we cannot 
seem to decide whether we are part of  it or not, but also because it 



Book reviewprovides no moral guidance—only circularity. It 
becomes something more like a religion based in 
a set of  unprovable assumptions and less like a 
set of  rational reasons underlying prescriptions 
for how we should act. He wants to drop nature, 
and adopt “environment,” which includes the built 
environment, into an environmental philosophy. 
Thus, if  we want to ground an environmental 
ethic, it will have to be that certain actions and 
products are bad or good for us humans—and 
we will just have to bring the rest of  nature along 
with us. It is logically impossible to protect nature’s 
independence from us. All environment—shopping 
malls as well as the Amazon river basin are equally 
potentially capable of  moral consideration. 

     Part of  my hesitation in fully embracing this 
line of  thought lies in how Vogel analyzes the 
concept of  nature: much like a blender analyzes an 
avocado. You hate to congratulate him for liquifying 
a perfectly useful idea (within its limits) into 
something unrecognizable. Most any concept can be 
found to contain contradictions and irrationalities 
when pushed to its limits, but this should not 
cause us to abstain from the entire notion—
which is what Vogel wants us to do. His point that 
environmentalists conveniently equivocate is well 
taken, but should that not be a reason to demand 
clarity from them and not necessarily a reason to 
abandon the term “nature”? I still think there is a 
commonsense meaningfulness to being in touch 
with or alienated from nature that finds expression 
in such useful antidotes as the Boy Scouts, the 
National Parks, treks into wilderness, dismay when 
native species are overrun by invaders, the desire 
to clean up roadside trash, immense sadness at the 
barrenness caused by coral bleaching, and so many 
more instances. Are we really supposed to give up 
on the idea that getting to appreciate what goes 
on outside of  human purposes provides a source 
of  moral import even if  not a source of  moral 
guidance? 



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     Where I really want to take issue, however, comes in the last chapters, 
where he reduces environmental ethics to democratic politics. He says 
that since mountains and wolves cannot speak for themselves, then only 
humans in dialogue can speak up for them. This idea seems to leave 
no point of  triangulation from which to critique what those humans in 
dialogue decide for the wolves. In fact, I find this surprisingly naive—
philosophically as well as socially. It almost seems a desperate move. 
Apart from this disappointment, however, he does quite a nice job 
analyzing the tragedy of  the commons in relation to global warming. 
He argues that the problem is not that any individual’s contribution 
to the problem is negligible, and therefore futile to hold accountable, 
but rather it is the lack of  mechanisms by which individuals can band 
together to act for the common good that lead to tragic results. As I was 
reading this section, I realized that the tragedy of  the commons just is 
the state of  nature.   



isparchitecture.com

About the Authors

Sean Akahne-Bryen  MArch, University of  Sydney 
Dr. Chris L. Smith, Associate Professor of  Architecture and Technê, The University of  
Sydney

matt waggoner, Professor of  Philosophy and Humanities, Albertus Magnus College  

roger paden,  Emeritus Professor of  Philosophy, George Mason University.

dominique moran,  Professor, University of  Birmingham
Yvonne Jewkes, Professor, University of  Bath
Dr Colin Lorne, University of  Manchester 

brian irwin, John Jay College of  Criminal Justice, CUNY 

Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Gulf  University for Science and Technology

Image Credits

Cover: The Washington Monument: Tom Spector
Martin Luther King Memorial: Tom Spector
Appamattox Memorial: Roger Paden
Hans Bellmer, The Woman at the Cathedral, Hans Bellmer/ADAGP. Copyright 
Agency, 2018.
HMP Low Moss: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/
HMP_Low_Moss_from_the_air%2C_2012_%28geograph_2965671%29.jpg 
Wachendorf  Feldkapelle interior: Till Niermann [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/
copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons
432 Park Avenue: GrissJr, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:432ParkNov2017.jpg#filelinks



AP . vol 4 . No 1 . 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

review criteria



isparchitecture.com

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

submission Types
Authors are invited to submit full papers, response pieces, and book reviews. Full 
papers should be between 4,000 and 5,000 words with a 200-300 word abstract, 
response pieces should be between 500 and 1,500 words, and book reviews between 
1,000 to 2,000 words.

General Formatting
All submissions should be presented in accordance with the University of  Chicago 
Style. Papers should be RTF documents, 12 point font, Times New Roman, 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


